Visitors at last summer's Michigan State Fair may have encountered a group believed to have been extinct -- the Christadelphians. Importing most of their literature from Australia, the group appears to be trying a comeback in its native country.
The sect was founded by a British physician, Dr. John Thomas, the son of a non-conformist minister. He came to America in 1832 and for a while became a follower of Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell, the leading figures in establishing the Disciples of Christ movement.
After becoming convinced that the Disciples movement was not the true restoration of primitive Christianity it claimed to be, but rather the apostate Church predicted by Scripture, he broke with the movement and in 1848 began to establish his own local groups, each of which he called "ecclesia." They bore no formal name until their doctrine of non-resistance during the Civil War led to their adoption of the name Christadelphians, the "Brethren in Christ". As with members of many other sects, the Christadelphians came to believe that they were the only true people of God.
GOD AND IMMORTALITY
While zealous to restore what he perceived to be primitive Christianity, Dr. Thomas succeeded only in compiling some of the leading theological errors of his day into a system that overthrows the Bible's teachings. he rejected the biblical doctrine of the Trinity (taught in such passages as Matthew 28:19), and adopted the old heresy that Jesus was the Son of God but not God the Son. Jesus "had to sides: Deity and humanity. The man was the Son whose existence dates from the birth of Jesus; the deity dwelling in Him was the Father." (The Declaration or The Truth Defined in a Series of Propositions, pp. 19-22) The Holy Spirit in such a heretical construction is necessarily reduced to a term that refers to the power of God. The Spirit accordingly is stripped of personal qualities, such as speaking, grieving, willing, interceding, which are ascribed to Him by the Bible.
Thomas also taught conditional immortality. Like the Jehovah's Witnesses, who later adopted the same erroneous idea, Thomas taught that the soul has no separate existence apart from the body. Thus, when a man dies, he simply ceases to exist, Thomas taught. Only the righteous and those who had been extremely wicked and deserved punishment will be brought back into existence at the future resurrection, the rest of mankind simply ceases to exist at the time of death, Thomas taught. Accordingly, Jesus' words that "all who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth" is canceled out by Christadelphians through semantic manipulation. Building on the fact that the word "graves" in Greek was derived from the Greek word for "remember" (because men bury their dead as a way of remembering them), this sect twists this etymology into meaning that only those whom God wants "to remember" will be resurrected. This ignores the fact that by Jesus' day the term had become the regular word for "tomb." (Matthew 8:28; Luke 11:47)
Thomas' erroneous teaching that man does not have an immortal soul or spirit that exists after death is the same error the Sadducees of Jesus' time had adopted. The Sadducees did not believe that any spirit existed beyond this life and extended this to deny any possibility of a resurrection. (Acts 23:8) Jesus stressed the fact that they did "greatly err" and pointed out from the books of Moses (the only portion of the Bible the Sadducees would accept as authoritative) that hundreds of years after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died, God still called himself their God. Since God is the God of living persons and not the God of non-existent beings, He could only speak in such a manner if those who had physically died were really still living. (Luke 20:38)
Jesus further noted that people could kill a person's body without killing his soul. (Matthew 10:28) This could only be possible if the soul continued to exist separately after death. If the soul merely were the life force animating the body, then to kill the body would be to kill the soul as well. Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man is built on just such a premise of continued conscious existence after physical death has occurred. (Luke 16:19-31) Both Lazarus and the rich man died and Father Abraham had been dead for centuries, yet there is conscious activity pictured as taking place in the sphere beyond the earthly life. The rich man's great desire is to warn his brothers that death does not end man's conscious existence.
SALVATION BY WORKS
For Christadelphians, salvation requires three steps -- belief, baptism and obedience. Belief for them is believing the story concerning the fulfillment of the promises made to Abraham about the promised seed, the Messiah. Focusing on Galatians 3:8 ("God preached before the gospel unto Abraham saying: in thee will all nations be blessed"), the gospel is for them therefore mainly a rehearsal of the events that led to the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. There is little emphasis placed on a personal trust in Jesus for forgiveness. This doubtless is because of their teaching that forgiveness only comes through baptism by immersion. They depend heavily on Mark 16:16 ("He that believes and is baptized shall be saved"), oblivious to the fact that Mark 16:9-20 apparently was added to that Gospel in the mid-second century A.D. and is not an authentic part of Scripture. So tenacious is their belief that baptism is essential to salvation that they say the thief on the cross must have been baptized previously for Jesus to have offered him paradise. (Baptism Essential to Salvation, pg. 13) Furthermore, "obedience to his commandments must follow baptism if we would attain unto life." (ibid, pg. 2)
The stress on baptism as essential to forgiveness is accompanied by a diminishing of Christ's suffering on the cross. Jesus had led a sinless life, they claim, never giving way to the flesh with its lusts. He thus put to death the deeds of the flesh. "His nature was identical with that of all mankind, but He triumphed over it, in that he never gave way to its weakness... Yet, in spite of his sinless life, the Lord was required to lay it down in a sacrificial death! Why was that? He was teaching that men must die to the flesh if they would live eternally." (ibid, pg. 11) Thus, "his crucifixion was a public dramatization of what men must try to do if they would attain unto salvation." (ibid, pg. 9)
Given this object lesson of the importance of denying fleshly lusts and sacrificially dedicating one's life to God, the Christadelphian sees baptism as a symbolic recognition of this two-fold obligation. Without such an attitude of dedication, there is no forgiveness of sin, they claim, editing Hebrews 9:22 to read: "without the shedding of blood (a dedication of life) there is no remission of sin." (ibid, pg. 9) Those who receive baptism without such adequate understanding must be immersed again. "Those who are so baptized, and learn thus to deny themselves in order to serve God, are assured of a resurrection to life eternal at the coming of the Lord Jesus." (ibid, pg. 10) Such self denial gives victory over the Devil, who has no real existence but is merely "the Scriptural personification of sin in the flesh."
MILLENNIAL KINGDOM
Christ's Millennial Kingdom is an important part of Christadelphian thinking. They hope by a resurrection to be brought from a non-existent state (brought about by death) to an immortal existence. They hope to serve as Christ's assistants, ruling over those who are still mortal during a millennial reign of Christ.
The Christadelphians teach that Christ will establish his rule quietly. "He will return unobtrusively (Revelation 16:15) and not as some great flaming spectacle descending from the sky" (The Coming New World Order, pg. 7) They add, "He will probably be viewed as a new and powerful Jewish leader when he first manifests himself in the earth, for he will reach the headlines by defeating a great Russian confederated army which will invade Israel". (ibid, pg. 7) He will first take over the Middle East and ultimately subdue the entire world. The Jews will come to recognize him by his crucifixion scars. Thus the Millennium will quietly dawn upon this world and Christ will rule from the new world capitol, Jerusalem. The human, political and religious organizations will be swept away, including "all the false religions of the Christian, Jewish and Mohammedan persuasions." (ibid, pg. 14)
To support this scenario, the noise and high visibility associated by the Bible with Christ's return are interpreted away by the Christadelphians. The noisy accompaniments of 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 are silenced. The shout, they say, is really a silent "command"; the "voice of the archangel" is really a way of referring to Michael's (read "Christ's") being manifest in the earth (Daniel 12:2); and the "trumpet" is a symbolic reference to the trumpets associated with the Old Testament Day of Atonement and symbolizes the resurrection of "the responsible dead of past ages." (ibid, pg. 9)
This is but a sample of the mental gymnastics Christadelphians must use in order to support the system of doctrine left them by their founder. While they may view themselves as "Brethren in Christ," it is doubtful if Christ would recognize their teachings as anything like those he imparted to his apostles. What vestiges of truth the Christadelphians have preserved in their teachings is overpowered by the errors in their thinking. Without meaning to impugn the moral character of Christadelphians, their theological errors are serious enough that Orthodox Christians cannot regard them as "Brethren in Christ".
For further reading see:
F.E. Mayer, The Religious Bodies of America, St. Louis, 1956. pp. 518f.
McClintock & Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, N.Y., 1894. XI pp. 937-939, XII pp. 868f.
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