Inter-Church Conference and Acts 15
“THE most striking thing about the whole conference,” says the Nashville Christian Advocate, speaking of the inter-church conference in New York City, “was the sweet readiness of all its members to agree to ignore, though without forgetting, the points of difference between them, and to strike hands on the great issues concerning which all are agreed.” Comparing this conference with the Christian council recorded in Acts 15, it is interesting to note that the most striking thing about that early council was not an agreement to ignore, without forgetting, differences of religious belief among the disciples, but the complete harmony of view which was reached by the assembly under the influence of the Holy Spirit, though at the first there had been “much disputing.” The only question which divided the believers at that time was settled to the satisfaction of all, the object of the council being to settle existing points of dispute in order that the spiritual efficiency of the church might not be impaired. The Advocate says further that this inter-church conference ranks with the church councils “which made history in the early Christian centuries.” The Advocate omits to state what kind of history was made by those early church councils; if it had stated this, it might have told more truth than it wished to tell. For out of those councils which made history in the early Christian centuries, as is plainly to be seen from the records of those times, emerged the full-fledged papacy. The history of those early centuries is repeating itself to-day.