 BEWARE THE REVISIONISTS
In recent years we have witnessed the deceptive work of historical revisionists who have rewritten certain areas of history in order to inject their personal views into the words and deeds of past leaders. By this dishonest method, they seek to exonerate the guilty and condemn the honorable. They make good evil and evil good (Is. 5:20). Revisionists have succeeded in dishonoring and belittling the founders of our nation. They are disguising Japan's brutal aggressions in World War II. Now the aims, purposes and goals of our Restoration Movement are being revised by some of our own preachers and educators.
As I read and listen to our revisionist preachers offer their critiques of the Lord's church my reaction varies from disbelief to disgust. It is clear that many of them see no value or benefit, much less scriptural necessity, for restoring New Testament Christianity. Many of them see nothing sinful or wrong with the denominational variety of Christianity prevalent in our world.
It is evident that many of them have little knowledge of the genesis of the Restoration Movement. Certainly they have not done much reading in original sources such as the biographies, sermons and gospel papers of the first 150 years of our history. Most of them share an obvious and pronounced dislike for the preachers and publications of our brotherhood prior to c.a. 1960.
Few if any of them have ever done pioneer work, planting churches in difficult mission fields where they had to do battle with error and wrest souls away from malignant error. Rather virtually all of them live handsomely and comfortably off the labors of those older pioneers whom they despise.
Our revisionists can find serious flaws in the best of our past leaders that discredit them, while finding only admirable virtues in liberal heretics and denominational leaders. When they tell the story of our beginnings on this continent, they use carefully crafted, partial truths that are designed to convince the unknowing that our pioneers were attempting to do something different than our brethren were trying to do in the 20th century. One such
brother's eyes twinkled as he boldly proclaimed that our earliest pioneers were all actually denominational preachers, not bothering to explain that they all chose to leave their denominational connections behind them.
Let every Christian remember that in interpreting the past as in interpreting the Scriptures, only truth can make us free (John 8:24). If these men had a modicum of integrity, they would simply renounce the Churches of Christ and their goal of Restoring New Testament Christianity, embrace the denominationalism they love and abandon their attempts to revise our history.
JHW
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