The History of the Local Churches

Every Believer Belonging to the Church of God

If we are to understand the history of the local churches properly, we must begin with those who first obeyed the gospel. As Watchman Nee and Witness Lee note, very little is said in the record of the earliest local churches in Acts concerning the organization of the church. They observe that whenever a group of people heard the gospel and obeyed it, they simply became the local church—that is, the church in that place. Watchman Nee explains:

In the previous chapter we observed that the word “church” was only mentioned twice in the Gospels. It is used frequently in the Acts, but we are never explicitly told there how a church was formed. The second chapter speaks of the salvation of about three thousand men, and the fourth chapter of a further five thousand, but nothing whatever is said about these believers forming a church. Without a single word of explanation they are referred to in the following chapter as the church—“And great fear came upon the whole church” (5:11). Here the Scriptures call the children of God “the church,” without even mentioning how the church came into being. In Acts 8:1, immediately after the death of Stephen, the word is again used, and the connection in this case is clearer than before. “There occurred in that day a great persecution against the church which was in Jerusalem.” From this passage it is obvious that the believers in Jerusalem are the church in Jerusalem. So we know now what the church is. It consists of all the saved ones in a given locality.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 73)

Later on, in the course of the apostles’ first missionary tour, many people were saved in different places through the preaching of the gospel. Nothing is mentioned about their being formed into churches, but in Acts 14:23, it is said of Paul and Barnabas that “they had appointed elders for them in every church.” The groups of believers in these different places are called churches, without any explanation whatever as to how they came to be churches. They were groups of believers, so they simply were churches. Whenever a number of people in any place were saved, they spontaneously became the church in that place. Without introduction or explanation of any kind, the Word of God presents such a group of believers to us as a church.

(Watchman Nee, Collected Works, Set 2, Vol. 30, 73-74)

The testimony of Scripture consistently confirms that the believers in a given city constitute the church in that place, the local church.

Main

Two Aspects of the Church

Who is the Church?

Local Churches in the N.T.

Degradation

Bibliography

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