FOREWORD
What
follows was written in 1995 as a contribution to a discussion at an
Internet list. Here the position of the author is found as it was then
in 1995, and also very much before that, and it has not changed
regarding the criteria to receive believers at the Lord's Table, in
accordance to what is shown below. One of the purposes of the
publication of this writing is to clarify a perspective that the author
has maintained publicly since his reading and study of this matter
between the middle to the end of the 1970s. In another file an appendix
is given with a compilation of letters and articles in this and other
issues by J. N. Darby, William Kelly and Andrew Miller, which support
and enlarge on the criteria shown here. The said file can be read
clicking here.
From: Santiago Escuain,
100533,3324
To: PB List,
INTERNET:pb@cs.dal.ca
Date: juev., 16 novi
1995, 11:49
RE: Table(s)
Please take the following
as from a brother who loves all his fellow-brethren and who has been
thinking about these issues in Spain during the last 30 years. I am
not speaking lightly, but before the Lord.
Brother G----- L-----
says:
It has seemed
to me that one of the reasons why assemblies lose their young
people is that many reach
a point in their life and experience where they
suddenly discover that
there are other sincere truly born again Christians 'out there'.
How can they balance this
with the teaching they have been brought up with of
"us" as the
true remnant, of us having the true table of the Lord?
I think we are mixing two
separate questions here. When one reads the history in the beginning
of the testimony, it is not one of exclusiveness in the sense that it
is today being presented. Rather, it was a protest against
denominationalism dividing true born again Christians in differing
and rival groups, in the fragmentation of Christendom. That work and
testimony was that all Christians are one, and that they should so
meet and be ruled by the Word of God, and not by traditions. Never,
but never, did Darby, Kelly, Dennett or other early brethren teachers
and preachers suggest that there were no real true Christians "out
there". Far from it, they all recognized them as their brothers
and sisters wherever they were, went and taught them where they were
if given the opportunity, and accepted them if visiting, being known
as such Christians by the testimony of two or three, and in
fellowship with "orthodox societies" [i.e., not knowingly
in fellowship at a place where fundamental errors as to the Person
and Work of Christ were taught].
Of course, history meant
decisions of discipline, and situations were created where there was
disciplinary exclusion of those rejecting certain decisions. I am not
going to enter into any details, as I would have to write some thick
books (I don't agree completely with the lines of the "official"
books I have seen, although some are very valuable on many points;
generally, though, and understandably, partisan in one or more
questions —I would have my own things to add on some points ...).
This meant that where
there had been an integration in principle, there was now division.
This was most humbling for those concerned, and felt as a judgment of
the Lord for wordliness and coldness towards the Lord. And I believe
they were right. Israel's division was of the Lord as a judgment, and
so the divisions in Christianity ... and in that movement of God
amongst Christians that made them to see again God's goal for His
people. Now, the reality is: we —Christians— have failed on all
counts. To God be the glory. We should humble ourselves and
acknowledge the glory of the Only Faithful and True Servant, the Lord
Jesus Christ. We all are useless servants, kept only by the grace and
mercy of the Lord. But we cannot ignore the divisions, nor live as if
they had never happened.
Now, all pretense that
the Christians "out there" in the "systems" are
somehow to be shunned is against Christian love and the truth. If
there is something the Lord teaches us as to the unity of the Body,
we must make it known to our brothers and sisters. If they are in a
wrong ecclesiastical position, or we believe they are, we ought to
communicate in love, not to argue "our system", but to get
them to where the Lord would want them to be. Away from human systems
of ministry, away from denominationalism, away from Independence, if
we can show them by the Scripture that the Lord, as the Head, is the
one who by His Spirit gives sovereignly his Gifts to His Church:
Pastors, Teachers, Evangelists, etc., to the One Body which is the
Church: and that is not "our" circle, but all the Body of
Christ on earth, all the saints scattered throughout this world
today. But we are called to express this truth in the practice, even
if in weakness and the shame of failure. Of this I am fully
convinced.
The issue of grace is
something to be maintained too: In spite of all that we have done to
God's house on earth (the ground of the testimony to the Lord,
evidenced outwardly by Christian Trinitary Baptism as in Matthew
28:19), we know the Lord acts in grace towards His people, whether on
Independent, Congregationalist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian or
whatever other ground in Christendom. And that is only grace that
preserves us Christians wherever we are. The Lord revealed Himself in
grace to those going from Jerusalem to Emmaus. He did not wait till
they were back in Jerusalem. And the Lord will get each one of His at
His pierced feet in Glory.
So, as Darby aptly
remarked:
"Suppose a person,
known to be godly and sound in faith, who has not left some
ecclesiastical system —nay, thinks Scripture favours an ordained
ministry, but is glad when the occasion occurs; suppose we alone are
in the place, or he is not in connection with any other body in the
place—staying with a brother, or the like: is he to be excluded
because he is of some system as to which his conscience is not
enlightened, nay, which he may think more right? He is a godly member
of the body, known such: is he to be shut out? If so, the degree of
light is a title to communion, and the unity of the body is denied by
the assembly which refuses him. The principle of meeting (as members
of Christ walking in godliness) is given up, agreement with us is
made the rule, and the assembly becomes a sect with its members like
any other. They meet on their principles, Baptist or other— you on
yours; and if they do not beling to you formally as such, you do not
let them in. The principle of Brethren's meeting is gone, and another
sect is made —say with more light, and that is all. It may give more
trouble, requiring more care to treat every case on its merits, on
the principle of the unity of all Christ's members, than to say: "You
do not belong to us, you cannot come"; but the whole principle
of meeting is gone. The path is not of God." ["Principles
of Gathering", Collected Writings, Vol. 31, pp. 381-382.]
As we can see, Darby
treats this matter attacking "exclusivism". Of course, he
does not accept an indiscriminate openness. As we can see from
himself and other writers, as Andrew Miller and William Kelly,
amongst others, they held that the connections had to be clean, the
person belonging to "an orthodox society" and personally of
good testimony, "known as such". But they "had to"
be accepted as brethren, BECAUSE THEY WERE MEMBERS of the SAME BODY.
So, one of the distinguising traits of "the Lord's table"
must be its inclusion, *in principle*, of all Christians. Any
exclusion has to be for reasons that belong also to the character of
the Lord's Table. Again Darby remarks:
"In all that
concerns faithfulness, God is my witness, I seek no looseness; but
Satan is busy, seeking to lead us one side or the other—to destroy
the largeness of the unity of the body, or to make it mean looseness
in practice and doctrine. We must not fall into one in avoiding the
other. Reception of all true saints is what gives its force to the
exclusion of those walking loosely. If I exclude all those who walk
godlily as well, who do not follow with us, it loses its power, for
those who are godly are shut out too.
"There is no
membership of Brethren. Membership of an assembly is unknown in
Scripture. There it is members of Christ body. If people must be all
of you, it is practically membership of your body. The Lord keep you
from it: that is simply dissenting ground. ..." [ibid., p.
383).
So you see, brethren,
that the One Table of the Lord does not mean sectarianism. It is open
to all Normal Christians [in the sense that Watchman Nee would use
this term: godly Christians, those who seek to please the Lord and
walk with Him]. Now, the practical application of it in each
historical situation requires the wisdom from above, and therefore
that the Christians at the Lord's table in each place are in
fellowship with their Lord as to all these things and in love with
Him and with those that are His, and in no way compromising with the
world and with ungodliness. These are the general principles.
This, taken together with
the fact that the Lord's presence as promised in Matthew 18:20 is
meant to be "official", in the sense of sanctioning what is
done "in His Name" [see context], that is, in accordance to
all that His Name means, all that He is, tells us that if there are
different groups of Christians who meet separately because of having
taken different decisions as to some issues, whether ecclesiological,
or as to discipline, the Lord cannot be —in this sense— in the midst
of all sanctioning them all, as He would sanctioning schism. He, of
course, is with each Christian, and in His grace He bears with us all
in our weaknesses, foibles, and deals with us in our sins, and
carries us along in the midst of all this confusion. But we must not
make Him the approver of the confusion as if it were indifferent to
Him. He has His One Table, and if we have to go to history to find
it, well, the Lord works through our lives, individually and
collectively, and it is through these exercises that He seeks to
prove our hearts and draw us to Himself.
So, as to going to "other
Tables", I would not feel free, as there is a history behind the
divisions. But I will NOT condemn my brethren there. Who am I to
condemn, a poor sinner saved by grace, when grace reigns for all of
US, who ALL have been saved by pure grace? All of us who depend so
totally on the patience, grace and guidance of our Lord, who has made
us One in Him? And if there is the opportunity for Christians to
fellowship at the Lord's table in our place, or wherever it is set,
with the conditions so ably expressed by Darby above, so much the
better. And, by the way, I do believe that a big problem amongst some
"Brethren" is not that they follow Darby, but that they
have disregarded that gift of the Lord to His Church. His exposition
of Scripture is being neglected by many who profess alegiance to his
ministry, and in fact Darby becomes associated with very distorted
ideas he did NOT teach, like systematic exclusiveness, etc. We must
not put anybody on a par with Scripture, but we ought to be careful
not to despise those gifts the Lord sends to His Church, holding
always the fact that each man is a responsible steward before the
Lord and must apply the test of Scripture to all teachings claiming
to issue from Scripture.
Your brother by pure
grace, and wishing the Lord's coming to sort all this mess and bring
to fulfilment the desire of His heart: a spotless Bride for Him,
Santiago Escuain
P.O. Box 126
08200 SABADELL
(Barcelona) ESPAÑA