The Church, the Falling Away, and the Restoration by J.W. Shepherd is an excellent overview of the three subjects in the title. That is this book discusses briefly and largely accurately the doctrines of what the Church should be, how the Church fell away afterwards, and then the attempt at restoring the New Testament church, which is a continuous process. Although, Shepherd focuses on the attempts in the late 1790’s to mid 1800’s.

The fascinating part that I find in this book is the last portion. This is because it appears as if numerous people from various denominations(Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian) decided to eventually depart from their various creeds and preach the Gospel pure and simple. They chose to cross the sectarian lines separating the various denominations. There is even one part where two groups operated without knowledge of one another, but for the same purpose. Eventually word got around and they decided to meet one another to see whether they saw eye to eye or not. After some discussion, they decided that they basically did believe the same things and joined together to form what they called “the Church of Christ”. They also cases before this point such as when John “Raccoon” Smith started a small movement and then later joined with Campbell in the Restoration movement.

It’s always good to be reminded of the non-sectarian spirit of the past, lest it die out and be forgotten.(from my blog: aevaughn.wordpress.com) ( )