Preface

This study of the local church, a work of God, is for the purpose of impressing upon believers in every local body, that God's work is a progressive work.

Although God himself has known from the beginning, He has chosen to reveal his work to man From Faith to faith. (As we see in Isaiah 28:10:)

Isaiah 28:10—For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:

It is strange indeed how we tend to put the temporal into a permanent perspective. Consider the many groups and individuals who, having received one portion of God's great revelation for the ages, proceed to expand it so out of proportion as to consider it "the whole of God's Revelation", we have ceased to grow and thus have become stagnant and spiritually diseased. Consider Job's comment to his all-knowing friends in Job 12:2).

Job 12:2—No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.

The only way we may avoid either becoming lukewarm or being contaminated with spiritual anemia is to continue to progress and to flow in the mainstream of the moving of the Holy Ghost.

All scripture portions and references are taken from the authorized King James Version of the Bible. I will endeavor to show, through the scripture, that God's work in the Local Assembly is a progressive work, and that the Holy Ghost is restoring the New Testament pattern to evangelize the world and to nurture the Body of believers. I trust that I will be able to identify, using the Holy Scriptures, what the New Testament pattern is and how it may be manifested in the Body of Believers.

Signed Rev. Joel McLain

Editor's Note (November 2024):

These notes are largely the work product of Rev. Joel McLain with additions by the editor with his permission. He tragically passed before these notes could be completed and therefore any existing errors or mistakes should be the burden of the editors. It is the editor's intent to simply and clearly discuss what the Holy Scriptures prescribe concerning the local church. The subject at hand is not the universal Church, or the historical church, but in particular the local assembly of Christians who regularly gather for the purposes of worship, fellowship, instruction and encouragement in the faith — the local church.