The Recovery of the Local Churches

The Plymouth Brethren

The matter of the local church is of vital importance to all believers for the proper Christian practice as well as for the proper testimony of the oneness of the Body of Christ. In the nineteenth century there was a further recovery of the proper local church life, similar to that among the Moravian Brethren but with a more enduring impact and effect. This group of believers was known by others as the Brethren, although they themselves adopted no name. The Brethren had their humble beginnings in the back parlor of a house on Lower Pembroke Street in Dublin, Ireland in the year 1826. A man by the name of Edwin Cronin, who was educated at Trinity College and was by profession a dentist, is generally credited with having initiated this movement. As a young man, Edwin Cronin was led to a personal faith in Christ. He had been raised as a Roman Catholic but in time turned away from the seeming unity of the papal system. In his early twenties he moved to Dublin for medical reasons; there he pursued his studies in dentistry while spending a considerable amount of time visiting various independent Christian groups. As he circulated among these diverse groups, many warmly welcomed him based on his confessed conversion experience. He was invited to partake of the Lord's table with several of these groups. Strangely, though, in his heart he never felt quite at rest. He could not reconcile any of these groups with the church spoken of in the New Testament. For a time he continued to meet with them, but when he decided to stay in Dublin after completing his studies many of these same groups began to pressure him, demanding that he either formally join them or leave. For a time he joined the Independents, a congregation under the ministry of Reverend W. Cooper, but in time he was compelled to leave, his conscious being bound by the conviction that the church the Lord had spoken of in Matthew 16:18 was one and indivisible. He could find no ground in the Bible for the divisions he saw; all these believers were simply the Lord's children. Furthermore, he found the clergy system, the practice of one-man ministry both repugnant and irreconcilable with Scripture. Perplexed as to the condition of the Christian meetings in Dublin and his own convictions, he ceased meeting altogether, going “outside the camp” (Hebrews). Of this period in his life we have a most precious account from his own personal writings:

This liberty was continued till it was found that I became a resident in Dublin. I was informed that I could no longer be allowed to break bread with any of them without special membership. This left me in separation from them for several months, and then feeling unable to attend their meetings from the growing feeling of opposition to one-man ministry, I was left exposed to the charges of irreligion and antinomianism. This affected me to such an extent that it was a season of deep exercise of heart, and separation from many that I loved in the Lord; and to avoid the appearance of evil, I spent many a Lord’s day under a tree or a haystack during the time of their services. My name being publicly denounced from one of their pulpits (Rev. W. Cooper’s), one of their deacons, Edward Wilson (assistant secretary to the Bible Society), was constrained to protest against this step, which led ultimately to his leaving also. Thus separated, we together met for the breaking of bread and prayer in one of his rooms, until his departure for England.

After Edward Wilson left for England, two of Edwin Cronnin’s cousins, the Misses Drury, joined him as well as a Mr. Tims who was a bookseller. This was the beginning of the Brethren movement as we know it. At first they were castigated and even denounced by various religious groups for meeting in such a fashion, but it soon became apparent that the Lord’s presence and blessing was with them. Concerning those early days Cronin wrote:

Oh the blessed seasons with my soul, with John Parnell, William Stokes, and others, while removing the furniture aside, and laying the simple table with its bread and wine on Saturday evenings—seasons of joy never to be forgotten—for surely we had the Master’s smile and sanction in the beginning of such a movement as this was.

As the Lord’s blessing continued, the number who met with them continued to grow. Among these were Anthony Norris Groves, J.G. Bellet, and John Nelson Darby. Many of these were men of high standing, some being ordained ministers in the Anglican Church. But all were captive, captive to the simple ground on which they met to celebrate the Lord’s table.

Witness Lee spoke often of the Brethren in relation to their ministries, crediting them, along with the Moravian Brethren, for having begun the recovery of the proper practice of the proper local church life:

In 1825 in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, there were several believers whose hearts were moved by God to love all the children of the Lord, regardless of their denomination. This kind of love was not to be frustrated by the walls of denomination. They began to see that in the Scriptures God says there is but one Body of Christ, regardless of how many sects men may divide her into. They further read the Scriptures and saw that the system of one man administering the church and one man preaching was not scriptural. So they began to meet every Lord’s Day to break bread and pray. In 1825—after more than a thousand years of the Roman Catholic Church and several hundred years of the Protestant churches—there was the first return to the simple, free, and spiritual worship in the Scriptures. At the beginning there were but two persons; later, there were four or five.

(Watchman Nee, Orthodoxy, 69)

In 1827 a group of people were raised up in Dublin, Ireland. Among them were men like Edward Cronin and Anthony Norris Groves. They saw that many things in the church were dead, lifeless, and formal. They began to ask the Lord to show them the church according to the biblical revelation. Through prayer and fellowship, they felt that they should rise up and meet according to the principle of 1 Corinthians 14. As a result, they began to break bread at a brother’s home. A short while later, a former Anglican minister, John Nelson Darby, began to join their meeting and to expound the Bible among them. Gradually, more and more expositors were raised up among them, such as William Kelly, C.H. Mackintosh, B.W. Newton, and J.G. Bellett. Through reading their books, I received light to see the error of denominational organizations and to realize that there is only one Body of Christ. The church should not be formed by human opinions but should be under the direct leading of the Holy Spirit. When we consider the present-day church organizations, we see many human traditions and opinions and little direct leading of the Holy Spirit. This is not according to God’s desire. In God’s will, the church should not be under man’s control; it should be directed only by the Holy Spirit. All those who belong to the Lord should learn to be led by the Holy Spirit and should not follow man’s direction. These are all truths discovered by the Brethren.

(Watchman Nee, What Are We?, 13-14)

Both Watchman Nee and Witness Lee have testified that they received much spiritual help and scriptural enlightenment from the Brethren. They were particularly impressed by the abundant blessing that accompanied their emphasis on the equality and oneness of the believers. Although the Brethren were not fully clear regarding the matter of the local church, they nevertheless experienced the blessing that God bestows upon believers who meet together in unity (Psalm 133). Today those meeting in the local churches enjoy the same divine blessing upon all those who are willing to forsake every element of division in order to be one.

Main

The Reformation

The Moravian Brethren

The Plymouth Brethren

A New Beginning

Watchman Nee’s Calling

Watchman Nee’s Revelation

Watchman Nee’s Care for the Local Churches

The Local Church in Foochow, China

Witness Lee’s Revelation

The Spread of the Local Churches

Bibliography

Links