This morning, Bro Dale led a very interactive group discussion on four characteristics of the true church.  This discussion was centered around an excerpt taken directly from a book written in 1921 titled Birth of a Reformation; Life and Labors of D.S. Warner. It was authored by Andy L. (A. L.) Byers.

It is a real challenge today to be a true representative of the New Testament church. However, if we can get these four simple characteristics working properly, it is strongly believed that great things can be accomplished on a world-wide scale. While these principles may seem foreign to many of us today, as our environment has caused us to become very sectarian minded, they are as old as the NT church herself.

The article is as follows:

The true church of God, comprising all Christians, has in her normal state under her divine head certain essential characteristics which make her exclusively the church, the whole and not a part. These might be expressed as follows:

1. Possession of divine spiritual life. If the church does not possess this she is not Christ’s body and therefore not the church. She must know the Spirit of God.

2. Disposition to obey all Scripture and to let the Spirit have His way and rule. This constitutes her safety in matters of doctrine and government.

3. An attitude receptive to any further truth and light. This safeguards against dogmatism and a spirit of infallibility and intolerance, against interpreting Christianity in the light of traditions and old ideas.

4. Acknowledgment of good wherever found and the placing of no barrier that would exclude any who might be Christians. This makes salvation, a holy life, and a Christian spirit the only test of fellowship, and disapproves all human standards of church membership and fellowship.

We repeat that these constitute the Scriptural standard of the church and characterize her in her unity and integrity. It is by lacking in one or more of these essentials that a sect is a sect. In the rise of the church out of apostasy, any reformation that does not develop to the full the essentials that characterize the church in her wholeness and completeness must necessarily fall short of being the final reformation and must leave a cause for further reformation. This is the explanation of the existence of the so-called Christian sects, viewing them in the most charitable light.

Any tendency to establish traditions, or to regard a past course as giving direction in all respects for the future, or to become self-centered and manifest a “we are it” spirit and bar the door of progress against the entrance of further light and truth, or in any way to refuse fellowship with any others who may be Christians, would itself be sectarian, altogether unlike the true reformation, which, if it be final, must necessarily be a restoration and possess universal characteristics.

D S Warner, a radical reformer in the late 1800s, believed that the signs of true reformation were; (1) the breakup of old relations, (2) the drawing of new lines of fellowship, (3) exposure to persecution. If these be true, can we not say that to a small degree we are already in a time of reformation?