Assembly History

In the epistles of the Romans chapter 10 Romans chapter 10 and I'm beginning at verse 14 but perhaps to pick up the context of the verses I want you to notice we should go back as far as verse 12 for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard and how shall they hear without a preacher and how shall they preach except they be sent as it is written how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things but they have not all obeyed the gospel for Isaiah said Lord who has believed our report so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God now first Corinthians please chapter 1 I have found my mind going to this passage of scripture more in the last few years than almost any passage like it in all the Bible 1st Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 20 where is the wise where is the scribe where is the disputer of this world have not God made foolish the wisdom of this world for after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe for the Jews require a sign and the Greeks seek after wisdom but we preach Christ crucified unto the Jews a stumbling block and unto the Greeks foolishness but unto them which are called both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God because the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men for you see your calling brethren how that not many wise men after the flesh not many mighty not many noble are called but God has chosen it's most interestingly the repetition of that statement throughout what follows God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty and base things of the world and the things which are despised have God chosen yea and things which are not to bring to naught the things that are that no flesh should glory in his presence but of whom are you in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto his wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written he that gloryeth let him glory in the Lord what I have before me is something not normal I hope what I say will not be substandard I hope it will not be of less worth or of less value than what we call ordinary ministry and I have to confess that in taking up the subjects I have before me just now that I have a good bit of a sense of my weakness and great dependence on God I'm not sure if this will be helpful to you but I have spent more time in preparation for this meeting tonight than any comparable meeting I can ever remember but you won't recognize that fact in fact you'll wonder what I spent all the time at but nevertheless I would like to try to be a help if I can my subject really is testimony for God in our day at our time in this land and what I would like to do if I can is to look back at where we came from to look at our present need where are we now and to try at least to look ahead with some concern and exercise of heart as to what the future will hold for assembly testimony and I assure you that I have struggled a great deal with some of these things and I will not have any kind of miraculous answers but I trust that a study of the Word of God will be encouraging to us will be stirring to our hearts and I trust it'll be preservative and to be honest I must confess that that may be the leading effect of what is said in these meetings that it will be preservative God grant it will be all of us know this but let me just remind you almost two centuries ago there was a movement of God you know there have been many movements of men even in religion but the reason I'm calling this a movement of God is as you know God moved on the hearts of believers in many different parts of the world at the same time the reason we know that it was God was moving on their hearts is because they knew nothing about each other had no link or contact and yet God moved on the hearts of Christians in places as far removed as England is from British Guiana in South America or as far removed from one another as Northern Ireland is from South Africa and in places as far away as Australia and in India and the Orkney Islands for instance the Spirit of God was moving on the hearts of believers some of these believers were leading clergymen in denominations many of them were men who were taught in the Hebrew and Greek languages in which the Bible was originally written and some of them were men and women of nobility and many of them were like you and me just simple believers but God did move on their hearts and made the most dissatisfied with what they found in the religious systems the formality, the coldness, the deadness, the lack of genuine salvation and the great hierarchy of religious systems getting more and more controlling in its rules and regulations that were not based upon the Bible at all. These people many times on their knees searched the scriptures to find what the Bible said about their circumstances and they learned as you know that they were in organizations which were not according to the Word of God and in obedience to the Word of God and often at great cost to themselves they turned their back on all that had been familiar and they lost friends and family and at great personal cost in some cases the cost of position and of rank and prestige they turned their back on all that to obey the Word of God. That is a thrilling story and we should not forget it.

I used to sometimes get a little provoked at men who talked about those days but of course sometimes when you get a little older you get a little wiser and sometimes you don't but those names are names that most of us have heard of. They are linked with that mighty movement of the Holy Spirit where men like John Nelson Darby, Lord Congleton, J.G. Bellet, Anthony Norris Groves and those mighty men of God have certainly left their mark for God on testimony but as I told you a couple of months ago here on a Lord's Day when we had a ministry meeting, assemblies as we know them and that's what is the best way I can describe them, assemblies as we know them, assemblies such as the Sark Road Assembly here in Livonia. Assemblies as we know them have no historical link.

There is no continuity that will take us back to Mr. John Nelson Darby at all because the continuity of assemblies as we know them as I have pointed out to you goes back not to Ireland or southern England but goes back to Scotland and it was an entirely distinct unique movement of the Holy Spirit of the same kind and yet perhaps not exactly of the same kind because in the days of Lord Congleton and J.G. Bellet and Mr. Darby and those people it was teaching from the Word of God that convinced them of the wrong of where they were but the heritage of assemblies as we know them is a heritage of gospel preaching and that's my only reason tonight for going back over this ground. I haven't repeated so far what I have said on the previous occasion when we took up this subject but I may repeat some of those things to you and there's a good reason for it because what I am interested in doing tonight is showing you the gospel background of assemblies who gather unto the name of the Lord Jesus Christ such as this assembly. Now Scotland has been a scene of many many blessings from God.

It has been pointed out that on one particular occasion on the 21st of January in the year 1630 the gospel was preached in a single gospel meeting in the north of Scotland and the converts in that meeting numbered over 500. It was not just an emotional thing they lived to prove that they had really gotten to Christ but that was unique that was an unusual event. Actually the gospel was faithfully preached by the men of that day but very quickly the religious systems fell into a formalism and a deadness with a Sunday a Sabbath day profession and a weekday of ungodliness and God in mercy moved again at the beginning of the last century.

God saved two remarkable men in Scotland. He saved a man by the name of Thomas Chalmers and his name certainly should be familiar to us all. He saved another man by the name of Andrew Thompson and Thomas Chalmers and Andrew Thompson were clergymen and God saved them and they began to preach the gospel in the places where they were and through their preaching many confirmed church members were awakened, convicted of their sin, brought under deep conviction and brought to the Savior so multitudes of people were saved and it seems that from the preaching of Duncan Matheson, Thomas Chalmers and men of that kind that the gospel continued to be preached with power and under that preaching a man was saved by the name of Donald Ross.

Now we have told you before about Donald Ross and you have perhaps read his book and could I urge you if you have not read it recently to obtain it and read it. Both the biographies of Mr. Donald Monroe and Mr. Donald Ross are now available in a new printing and they are available to you and I have good reasons for urging on you the reading of those biographies again. What I'm saying tonight you will find in those biographies I am certain because in the year 1858 Mr. Ross was made superintendent of the Northeast Coast Mission.

It was an interdenominational gospel mission that was organized to carry the gospel to the villages along what is known as the North Coast, an area that's about 500 miles long actually. That sounds like a long distance for Scotland doesn't it? But it's a deeply indented coast. Along that 500 mile stretch the Aberdeen Shire Coast along the Moray Firth there were about 58 or 59 villages.

Those villages of course lived fishermen who fished in the North Sea. And from the year 1858 and of course 1859 was the great revival. Multitudes were saved.

And those men, Mr. Donald Ross, when he took charge as superintendent of the Northeast Coast Mission, he did not have a preacher, he didn't have any farms. But he gathered men around him. He sought out godly men with deep exercise of heart.

And it's most interesting to us that the men he sought out were men by the name of Donald Monroe, a man by the name of John Gill, a man by the name of John Smith, a man by the name of George Mason, and another man by the name of Andrew Carney. And gathering those men around him they went out with the gospel and of course God worked in mighty, mighty power. Many of the assemblies along that coast today owe their beginning to the preaching of those men at that time.

But there were no assemblies then. And as I told you, Mr. Ross and all those men were involved in an interdenominational mission. And actually they received some financial support on a regular basis, although it was never too sure.

And it was probably a minimal amount, but they did receive funds that came from different denominations that were funneled to them. And they were given direction as to where they should preach and what they should, what area they should work in. Difficulty was of course that as people began to get saved there was a mighty stir.

Here were people with religious professions, here were people with an empty name to live, and they were getting convicted and awakened by the Holy Spirit. And the awakenings were real and deep and genuine. The conviction of sin and the terror of dropping into hell was real to those people.

When they were delivered from their sin and darkness and got to Christ, they were joyous converts who spoke of their experience wherever they went. And of course they went back to the denominations from which they came and gave witness to the fact that they had been saved, they had been converted. And the opposition that rose against them was like a mighty tide.

It started in a small way and it grew with impetus, until the leaders in the opposition against the new converts were the clergymen, men who had professed to take a vow to preach the Word of God. They were the chief opponents of the unbelievers now. In fact the opposition grew to such a point that Mr. Ross and the men with him became convinced that they were in a wrong association.

I told you the rest of this story a couple of months ago. He left the Northeast Coast Mission, which was denominationally funded, where they exerted pressure on the preachers whenever they saw a lot of people saved in the community, like Foot Dee. So many people got saved that the whole congregation in the established church was in an uproar.

And the clergymen of the place appealed to the leaders of the Northeast Coast Mission, take these men out of here. And so in the midst of the great blessing from God, the news came from headquarters in the city of Aberdeen, you'll have to leave Foot Dee. Too much disturbance there.

And of course Mr. Ross wrote back, there are too many people getting saved to suit the unconverted clergymen. But you can imagine what kind of a stir that would be if you know anything about how God works in communities. And we have seen this in our lifetime, how God moves in mighty power upon hearts and people get awakened and they have courage to do things that I would find most difficult to do.

We have seen people saved who went directly to their clergymen and said to them, were you ever lost? Did you ever find out you were going to hell? And of course you can imagine the kind of response that would get. So Mr. Ross and his fellow workers decided they could not continue in that organization and they formed an independent organization called the Northern Evangelical Society. Mr. Monroe and Mr. Gill and Mr. Smith and Mr. Carney and so forth joined with Mr. Ross in that new organization.

They had freedom to be guided by the Lord. They could go where the Lord led them and stay as long as the Lord wanted them to stay and they had no promised income at all. They did receive contributions from people but they distributed them as they came in and did not beg for funds and did not take any offerings in their meetings and so forth.

But now they moved inland and you'll know that this is a thrilling story because in a place called Inverurie, God began to work in such mighty power that the local religionists, the local church people got up a pamphlet and the pamphlet was entitled the new prophets and it was spread all through the community charging these men with terrible things and for a while they struggled under bitter opposition. They would have groups of men come to their meetings and shout and holler and while they were trying to preach the gospel. But God was working.

In fact in that very village of just a few hundred people within a few months time there were 200 young men saved by the grace of God, attending the meetings and urging others to come of their relatives and friends. Among those young men was a man whose name is a household word to us still, John Ritchie. John Ritchie was saved in that village of where God works so mightily, Inverurie, and so great was the blessing there that eventually the the entire community turned to hear the gospel.

They saw that happen in other places as well and it was now about the year 1869-1870 and some of you will know that Mr. Monroe at that time had relatives in Ontario near Park Hill, Ontario and he came to Thedford to visit his relatives. When he was there in Ontario he witnessed to them about the saving power of the gospel, told them of his personal experience in knowing Christ and preached to his religious brothers and their families about Christ. Some of them got awakened so that he started meetings and he saw them saved.

He then went back to Scotland and found Mr. Ross had been baptized in the River Dee on in the month of April in the year 1870. Mr. Ross had turned to the Bible to know what to teach the new believers and he learned first of all that he himself must be baptized as a believer. He obeyed the Lord and was baptized and when Mr. Monroe returned from Canada he said to Mr. Monroe you must be baptized by a merchant as a believer.

Mr. Monroe said to him you'll have no argument from me. I have seen that in the word of God for myself and was coming to tell you the need of believers baptism and as some of you will know then they had a baptism almost every Lord's Day for weeks and weeks and baptized hundreds thousands of people actually were baptized and in the village of Old Rain in a carpenter shop they met together for prayer so many came that they had to be outside more than inside and on one Lord's Day morning when they met together so many Christians gathered. Mr. Ross took a loaf of bread and a cup of wine and set it on a table in the midst.

He said to the company there are some of us here who have been saved and baptized and we're going to remember the Lord this morning and the rest of you may look on and see what is happening. Mr. John Ritchie who was in that company that day said that we did not know that there was another company on all the face of the earth that ever carried out the breaking of bread in that way. They knew nothing about assemblies.

God taught them. They had learned from the Word of God on their knees. God had taught these dear men the principle of gathering to the Lord's name and of course it all began with gospel work with seeing people saved and then teaching them.

Mr. Ross became deeply concerned about the Commission going into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature and make disciples of all nations is the passage I'm thinking of in Matthew 28. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And he saw that it wasn't just a matter of seeing people saved and sending them back to the denominations to sit under men who couldn't teach them or feed them.

But it was a responsibility of the evangelist not only to see people saved but also to teach them and feed them and nourish them. And they continued to do that. Now the rest of the story you know I'm certain because to Northern Ireland went a man by the name of James Campbell from Scotland and many of the assemblies we know today in Northern Ireland were planted through the same link as the assemblies here in America.

And to Boston came John Gill. I was just in Boston yesterday. Down in the Boston Commons which is still there.

John Gill stood for months preaching the gospel with hardly any interest. Till God began to move on hearts and people got saved and the same thing happened again as it happened in Scotland on a much smaller scale. As you know Mr. Monroe came to Ontario and he saw God working in mighty power in so many of those Ontario towns.

Park Hill where his relatives lived the first assembly was gathered. The second assembly gathered in Forest. The third assembly gathered at Lakeshore.

These were religious Presbyterians for the most part. Scottish people. And they of course went to hear the preacher visiting from Scotland.

And they heard what they had never heard before in their life and got under deep conviction and saw their religion wouldn't take them to heaven. And those dear people got to Christ as their Savior. And of course assemblies were planted in each place where they saw a blessing.

In Hamilton Ontario, in East Toronto, in London Ontario and so forth. And those assemblies spread throughout the North American continent. As happened in Scotland after they first gathered there in old rain.

So it happened in Ontario. The word spread abroad. They went with the gospel.

They preached. They preached nightly. They preached sometimes for months and saw people saved and then taught them they should be baptized and then taught them they should gather alone in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course to the city of Detroit came the very Mr. Donald Ross that I've been speaking to you about. He went on to Chicago. He went to Kansas City and he saw God working in mighty power in the city of Chicago and in Kansas City.

To Cleveland went Mr. John Smith. And to Iowa, a man by the name of Mr. John Blair. Very interesting how God works.

There's a little village in Iowa called Dunkerton. It has in it now I would suppose 500 to 600 people. And here's a man from Scotland who has been related to all this mighty work of God and the planting of all these assemblies.

And he has a relative who lives in Dunkerton, Iowa. And her name is Mrs. Robert Orr. And Mr. John Blair comes all the way from Scotland to Dunkerton, Iowa to preach the gospel to his sister.

She is the grandmother of Robert Orr, the preacher. And God worked there in mighty power and God saved a number of people and the assemblies began in Iowa through the labors of Mr. John Blair. So you see all the assemblies as we know them, as far away as the southern coast of California and along the British Columbia coast and in the Maritimes, Mr. John Knox McEwen, a man of the same stamp who had come from Ireland and saved through the preaching of Scotsmen in Ireland and through New England and through the Middle States and through all of Canada and across the prairies, the gospel spread from the labors of those men.

Now the reason I'm laboring on that, forgive me, I hope I haven't wearied you to death with it. But the point is this, that's our heritage. You know, in religious systems and in organizations, they make so very, very much of their background.

And they're constantly reminding the people of their history, and we seldom ever do it. But we need to know what our heritage is. Where did we come from? We came from a work that was characterized by mighty preaching of the gospel and mighty work for God done in the souls of men.

Sinners saved, converted, and their lives manifesting it. And assemblies gathered from that material.