When a Step Backwards Becomes a Step Forward
By Batsell Barrett Baxter
Is there ever a time when a step backward is a step forward?  
I believe there is.  For example, if you plan to reach a specific 
destination but take the wrong road, you must turn around and 
return to the right road; else you will never reach the right 
destination.  In a case like that when you're on the wrong road 
obviously a step backward is a step forward.  This illustration 
has its implication in the field of religion, for as time has 
passed, men have often "lost the way." We must go back in order 
to go forward.  Today on our program we will talk about a step 
backward which becomes a step forward.  Please stay tuned.
The West End church of Christ presents this program every 
Sunday here on this station.  Our purpose is to help you 
understand things that pertain to life and godliness and to help 
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information.
We are living more than sixty generations after Jesus; yet 
we have not been able to stamp out the evils of the world that 
are rampant about us.  We are ineffective in fighting against 
crime, and war, and unbelief.  Surely there is something wrong.  
In sixty generations, we should have been able to remake the 
world into a Christian community, but we are far from it. In one 
of his greatest pre-Civil War speeches, Abraham Lincoln said, "A 
house divided against itself cannot stand.  This nation cannot 
endure half-slave and half-free."  Of course, we know that he 
borrowed this truth from Jesus, for it is in Matthew 12:25 that 
Jesus said, "Every house divided against itself shall not stand."
In our twentieth century, the religious world is divided 
into thousands of different bodies, or churches, and we are 
fighting ineffectively against the evils of the world.  Millions 
of us believe in Christ as the Son of God; yet the power of 
Christianity is vitiated by the divisions that exist.  In all of 
this, a step backward is the only possible way to make progress 
forward.  We must achieve again the unity with which the church 
began.
THE FALLING AWAY
Actually, we should begin our study with the apostasy or 
falling away.  Remember the glorious beginning of the church on 
the day of Pentecost, A. D. 30.  On that opening day, the Lord’s 
church began with three thousand members.  A little later, we 
read of five thousand men and then multitudes of both men and 
women.  In one generation Christianity reached out and touched 
the whole known world.  "All they that dwelt in Asia heard the 
word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks," said the apostle Paul 
(Acts 19:10).  It was a grand beginning, but Satan soon came to 
divide the church, thus sapping away its strength and blighting 
the success that might have been.  Divisions came in spite of 
such warnings as the one given by Paul to the Galatians, "Though 
we, or an angel from in heaven, should preach unto you any gospel 
other than that which we preached unto you, let him be anathema.  
As we have said before, so say I now again, If any man preacheth 
unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be 
anathema" (Galatians 1:8,9).  It was the apostle John who wrote, 
“Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of 
Christ, hath not God!" (Meaning that he hath not God's approval): 
he that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father 
and the Son" (II John 9).
We are admonished in countless passages (these are only 
typical ones) that we are not to go beyond the Lord's teaching.  
Likewise, we must not stop short.  In every truth, we are to 
speak where the Lord speaks and be silent where He is silent.  
Down through the ages that has not been the practice.  Men have 
spoken where the Lord has not spoken; they have bound teachings 
upon followers that the Lord did not bind.  They have drawn lines 
which the Lord did not draw.  The story can be told briefly: 
differences of opinion . . . open debates . . . councils . . . 
creeds . . . anathemas ... multiplicity of churches.  These few 
words tell the story.  As the centuries rolled by, instead of 
getting closer to God's plan, men got further from it.  We 
usually think of the "Dark Ages" as political, economic, and 
social, but they were dark also in the realm of religion.  
Tradition came to be more and more important, and what the 
various councils decreed became more and more binding.
THE REFORMATION
In the course of time, in God's providence, the Reformation 
came.  In the sixteenth century it came into its flower.  Earlier 
there had been men like John Wycliffe, John Huss, Girolamo 
Savonarola the pre-reformers.  They gave their lives in order to 
say, "The church is corrupt."  It is a thrilling thing to think 
of these men standing against the religious and political power 
of their day and saying, "We've drifted far from the original 
pattern."
In later generations came men like Martin Luther.  Luther 
spoke of freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of 
the individual to interpret the scriptures.  Not the church, but 
the individual, God-fearing man, has the right to read the Bible 
and interpret its meaning.  After Luther there came others: 
Huldreich Zwingli, Hugh Latimer, John Knox and John Calvin.  
Calvin's primary interest was in the sovereignty of God.  John 
Wesley came still later and tried to restore feeling and 
conviction to the dry, lifeless forms of the religion of his day.  
For all these reformers we are grateful.  They have helped men 
see that the only way is to listen as God speaks.  We are 
grateful for men like John Wesley, for he breathed into the 
lifeless forms and rituals of his church some of the life that it 
so desperately needed.  Down through the ages, these reformers 
have done much.  These sixteenth century lights still shine.  The 
tragedy is, however, that they did not go all the way back to the 
Bible.  They reformed much that was wrong, but they stopped 
before they finished the job.
THE RESTORATION
Nearly three centuries went by; then came the Restoration.  
The first name that I would like to mention is that of James 
O'Kelly, who lived in North Carolina and Virginia, over on the 
eastern seaboard.  In the year 1793, he went to the Baltimore 
conference of his church and declared that he could no longer 
hold to some of the things he had pledged himself to preach, 
because he could not find them in the Bible.  The history of that 
period records the fact that five thousand people went with him, 
endeavored to call things by Bible names and to do things as the 
Bible teaches they be done.
A few years later, in 1802, two New England preachers, Abner 
Jones and Elias Smith, were "disturbed over sectarian names and 
creeds" and left them to take only Bible names and Bible 
practices.  These men were from a different church background.  
Out in what was then the frontier state of Kentucky in the year 
1804, a man by the name of Barton Warren Stone and a half-dozen 
other preachers felt the same way.  They were from a third church 
background.  "Why can't all of us who believe in Christ be 
united?" they asked.  "Why can't we just take the Bible as the 
only sure guide to heaven?" In the year 1804 the Springfield 
Presbytery of their church had a meeting, and in that meeting 
they drew up what they called "The Last Will and Testament," thus 
dissolving that body.
In 1809, Thomas Campbell delivered what became known as the 
"Declaration and Address," in which he said, "Our desire, 
therefore, for ourselves and our brethren would be, that, 
rejecting human opinions and the inventions of men as of any 
authority, or as having any place in the Church of God, we might 
forever cease from further contentions about such things; . . 
taking the Divine word alone for our rule; the Holy Spirit for 
our teacher and guide, to lead us into all truth; and Christ 
alone, as exhibited in the word, for our salvation; that by so 
doing we may be at peace among ourselves follow peace with all 
men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord . . . 
Nothing ought to be admitted, as of divine obligation in their 
Church constitution and managements, but what is expressly 
enjoined by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and his 
apostles upon the New Testament Church, either in express terms 
or by approved precedent . . . Nothing ought to be received into 
the faith or worship of the Church, or be made a term of 
communion among Christians, that is not as old as the New 
Testament."
As you hear these sentiments, I hope they say to you what 
they say to me, that good men from different religious bodies, 
desiring unity with all believers in Christ everywhere say, "Why 
can't we just go back and take the Bible only?"  Now all of this 
is a matter of study and intellectual reasoning, but I believe 
the openhearted will see that it is solid ground.  We want to be 
united; we need to be united; the Lord prayed that we be united; 
and the only possible way is in terms of going back and standing 
on His truths.  Anything that I or anyone else might add to them 
is not worthy of acceptance in religion.
ARE WE LOOKING FOR THE NEW?
In our day we hear much about things that are new.  Anything 
that is more recent than something else is assumed to be better 
than that something else.  That may be true in the things that 
men make: cars, airplanes, electrical appliances, and so on.  It 
is not true in the things that God makes.  The wiseman, Solomon, 
wrote: “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: 
nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God 
doeth it, that men should fear before him” (Eccl. 3:14).  
When God makes something, He makes it perfect from the 
beginning.  There has been no improvement upon God's sunshine or 
rain, or seasons, or the productivity of the ground.  When God 
makes something He makes it right, and so it is in the realm of 
religion.  There has been no finer system of ethics or morals 
than you find in Christianity.  Nobody has improved on the 
example of Jesus.  Hence, I believe it follows that no one has 
ever, or will ever improve on Christ's church.  God makes things 
right.  There is a perfection in what God does.  The essential 
need of our time is that all of us simply take a step backward, 
for that is the only way that we can go forward.  When we return 
to the Bible, speaking where the scriptures speak and being 
silent where they are silent, when we develop a loyalty to what 
God says above anything that anyone else may say, then we have a 
"thus saith the Lord" for everything that we do.  When we say 
"Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth," then we are on the road which 
God would have us travel.
Would it not be wonderful if every sincere earnest believer 
in Christ would simply repent of his sins, confess the name of 
Jesus before men, and be buried with his Lord in baptism, just as 
was done 1900 years ago when the church began?  Then would it not 
be wonderful if each of these new-born Christians would worship 
with the same simplicity and conviction that the early Christians 
had?  Would it not be wonderful if the church would follow only 
the New Testament and leave off the opinions and doctrines and 
creeds of men?
So we say, there are times when the only way to make 
progress forward is by going backward.  When we find, as we do in 
our modern divided religious world, that we are off the original 
God-given path, the only way to make progress forward is by going 
backward until we get on the right road again.  May God give each 
one of us the courage to go back to the Bible, its Christ, and 
His church.

Thank you for being with us today.  Please remember to tune 
in WBGN next Sunday at 8 a.m.  If you want our paper, please 
write a note or card to West End Church of Christ, 1609 Parkside 
Drive, Bowling Green, KY, 42101.  If you have questions about 
this lesson today, or anything else you hear on our program 
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this work.  May God bless each of you.  Good bye.
Adapted from Herald of Truth, August 1962, pages 10-12
Radio Sermon No. 169, Page 1