1. The first is the Brethren, among whom I grew up. John N Darby, an Anglican minister, broke away from the Anglicans to found the Brethren. The Brethren started off well, breaking away from the staid and dying traditions of the mainline Anglicans, meeting in simple places called halls or chapels. Their raison d'etre was the New Testament church truths which they called Assembly Testimony (many things were similar to other Christian groups) with distinctives such as silence for women (with their hair covered), communion (which they called Breaking of Bread) every Sunday. But soon the "love for truth" so overpowered the Darbyites that they split from Benjamin Newton's brethren, and soon the virus to divide and split overwhelmed them that they have ended up with numerous Brethren groups, each staking claim to exclusive truth. They have yet to learn that truth must be caught in lives of agape love, and not merely forced down the throats of listeners.
The Brethren have ended up with the Closed Brethren who are quite shut away from what they call the infection of other so-called Christians, living like the Amish apart from the mainstream of Evangelical life. Then there are the Open Brethren who are in touch (selectively so) other Christians.
2. During a trip to Kota Kinabalu, I chanced upon a leader of another church group called "True Jesus Church". They showed the same characteristic of claiming to reach back to the original springs of New Testament Christianity. They were out to proselytise other Christians.
3. Recently I met a medical doctor introduced to me to be a Christian social worker in the town. I met up with him and discovered that his church is the "Church of God". In talking to him I discovered the same tendency of claiming to be the one and only original church with roots reaching back to the New Testament.
A good grasp of Church History and of human fallen nature (the Flesh in Scripture) will save all of us from claiming to be the original copy of the New Testament church. Every denomination you meet will have the same claim to the one and only true church. The Pentecostals will claim that their speaking in tongues (based on 2 or 3 texts of Scripture) mark them out to be the genuine followers of Christ. The Baptists can claim that their emphasis on immersion as the correct method of baptism marks them out to be the successors of the Anabaptists of the early centuries of the New Testament era.
However, the Roman Catholic monolithic church based in the masterly Vatican city is the zenith of the claimants of being the one and only true church. While some soft-headed Evangelicals including normally clear-headed theologians like James Packer, Baptist evangelist Billy Graham and socio-political activist Charles Colson desire to return Protestants to the fold of Rome, they should not close their eyes to the fact that the Roman Catholic church has stuck to the Council of Trent dogma until today, yielding none of their mariolatry, salvation by works, transubstantiation, last rites, and the host of evil man-centered doctrine and practices which are the essence of hellish idolatry.
Andrew Loh
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