This book is one among several others which J H Burridge wrote in response to the influx of “Needed Truth” teachings then gaining rapid support among the Open Brethren, this being the so-called “tightening process” as sometimes called.
Elsewhere on this website are matters in connection with the notions taken up by certain brothers within the OBs which were firstly set out in the late 1870s in a question-and-answer form by J A Boswell in "The Witness” magazine until J R Caldwell the then editor eventually put a stop to it. Hence JAB with several others started up their own magazine which they called “Needed Truth”.
When the “separation” took place, not all who subscribed to “Needed Truth” ideas went out but continued to spread their church doctrine among OB. Among such teachers were A J Holiday and W H Hunter, both having been editors and contributors to “Needed Truth” magazine, the latter appearing to adhere to the whole concept. Taught in a convincing manner with the usual “we’re right and everybody else wrong” mentality (sadly an attitude which all the multiple factions of Plymouth Brethren have adopted), others took it on board, distorting the Scriptures to suit.
Most in “tight OB meetings” think they have not imbibed “Needed Truth” teaching since they are not in the Needed Truth “churches of God”. However, they do, and if Henry Pickering had taken to “Needed Truth” himself, somewhere along the line he had changed his point of view, indeed the whole stance of “The Witness” having been against it.
I suggest that it was W E Vine that made “Needed Truth” church doctrine spread rapidly through OB with his book “The Church and the Churches” published in the 1930s, to which J H Burridge alludes.
Interestingly, W W Fereday took the matter up with W E Vine in “The Harvester” in the late 1940s when the latter had set out his doctrine in it.
Mark Best
Are you able to indicate which issues the articles by Vine and Fereday appeared in, Mark? Much of the “The Harvester” from the 1940s is online at the CBA: https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/view/search?showAll=when&q=Harvester&sort=reference_number%2Cimage_sequence_number
Roger
An article appeared in the November 1948 (?) issue of “The Harvester” by W E Vine which had the title “A Local Church in Scripture” to which W W Fereday responded with one having the title “Reverting to Sectarianism” in January 1949.
W R Lewis then joined with W E Vine and wrote “Wrong Ideas On the Church” by way of a response to WWF in March 1949, Mr Fereday responding to it in May of that year with an article bearing the same title.
My photocopies taken during my visits to the CBA do not show the dates clearly, but I am pretty sure that 1948 going into 1949 is correct. Sadly, only Mr Fereday’s article in the May 1949 issue appears to be available on the CBA website.
Mr Fereday's January 1949 article was later published as tract and was republished by Andrew Poots in the 1990s. It might be still available from him or from Chapter Two.
Mark Best
I agree with Syd that the “Needed Truth” notion of the church which is [Christ’s] body and a church of God being two distinct churches has now spread throughout the (so-called) “open” assemblies and has become "the standard view of the OBs."
For example: "Almost without question, no subject that can be taught about the church and the churches is more relevant to today’s needs than this distinction between (sic) the church which is His body and a local church of God on earth … There are as many as forty differences … Being in it is distinct from being in the body." (Norman Crawford, Assembly Truth, pp. 14 and 18.)
Mr Crawford explains 27 of these so-called "differences" in his book, but they are either contrived or irrelevant. I suggest that its title is a complete misnomer. Incidentally, in it Mr Crawford regards his meetings in North America has having an origin distinct from those of Mr Darby or Mr Muller.
To quote Mr Vine: "The church of God he mentions was the local church in Jerusalem. When that was scattered under his persecution other churches had not been formed. The phrase is not anywhere used of the entire Church the Body of Christ. Paul did not persecute that Church when he so acted; only a small part of that Body had come into existence, and it is not yet complete." (W E Vine, First Corinthians, p. 206.)
I regard this from WEV as completely absurd. It is clearly a doctrine being forced into the Scriptures and the Scriptures are being explained away to suit. It has been claimed by several leading OB teachers that the doctrine of the church of God embracing all true Christians living on earth is "exclusivism" and for that reason alone is to be rejected.
Mark Best
André’s question is a bit challenging to answer. At least it is in North America, where there are two strands of OB, roughly designated under the typical names of their meeting places: chapels and halls. These have less and less to do with one another. The latter definitely subscribe in the majority to the Vine-Crawford view. Just go to the Truth&Tidings website and search alternately, “the local assembly” and “the church which is His body” or “the universal church.” The numbers speak for themselves.
The more-open OBs, “chapels,” possibly align more with Burridge and Fereday, but I don’t know where you would take a reading on that.
It would be interesting to pinpoint the time when such exchanges as took place in The Harvester, 1948-49, were no longer possible, and what particular events led to that breakdown.
