The Great Value of the Historical Record

When a commercial airline plane crashes, a great deal of systematic and meticulous analysis is applied to discovering the reason(s) for the failure. Enormous amounts of time, money, and energy are devoted to determining why such a failure occurred. Such study is intended to prevent further disasters.

Surely it is worthwhile to carefully review all the evidence that can be accumulated about these spiritual disasters that have occurred regularly throughout the era of the gospel. God is able to open the eyes of our understanding that we may avoid the same errors where others have made shipwreck.

I asked a minister brother about certain things that happened in the spiritual reformation at the beginning of this century. I quoted him passages from certain old writings of that time. In a discouraging tone, he replied that was a long time ago, and that we could hardly properly understand the issues or the people involved. In other words, it was not worthwhile to attempt this type of research.

There is certainly no doubt that it is harder in some ways to gather evidence of happenings in those days, but can we afford not to do so? And after all, if it is hard to get a correct understanding of just what happened nearly a hundred years ago, is not even more difficult to understand what happened nearly two thousand years ago in the New Testament? And if we shrug our shoulders and conclude that investigation is useless because of elapsed time, are we not yielding to doubts of whether we can know the truth at all?

There were survivors. God has not left us without witness. Some of these were writers. There have always been some of God’s little children who were willing to pay the price to stay clear of compromise and to stay with God. The writings of these survivors is of great interest to us who intend, by the grace of God, to stay true to God at any cost. These records hint at spiritual conditions at the time, and they almost always clearly illustrate the spiritual principles at stake.

It is vital to clearly understand and to firmly hold to these spiritual principles. Many view this entire subject from a superficial standpoint. As long as we do not change our practices or our doctrines, they think, we have not compromised. I still do as I did; therefore, I am safe. I have not changed.

But this thinking ignores motive—why I do as I do. We may do the right things for the wrong reasons. What may have been practiced because of pure love for God can degenerate into motives that arise out of our flesh. Expediency, organizational loyalty, or some other reason(s) which may seem indistinguishable from our “first love”* (Revelation 2:4) to our human thinking (except the Lord have mercy upon us and help us) would then be our motivating characteristics.