When the early pioneer preachers of the 1800's began the religious revolution in America, commonly called The Restoration Movement, they determined to restore the church of the New Testament in the hearts and minds of people. They realized this could only be accomplished by a return to the word of God, making it the final authority in all religious matters. By showing the greatest respect for God's word, i.e., speaking only as the Bible speaks, doing Bible things in Bible ways, and calling Bible things by Bible names, (1Pet 4:11; 1Cor 2:10-13; Col 3:16), they succeeded in restoring the original church in organization, worship, and conditions of membership. As a result of their efforts the church of Christ became one of the fastest growing religious groups in America. They grew mightily, just like the church of the first century. But the devil soon threw a monkey wrench into the machinery.

As history shows, man just cannot be satisfied with God's arrangement, So, as seen in previous articles, some learned (?) men decided the church needed some help. It wasn't growing fast enough. In their human wisdom they designed a human institution to assist the church in the work of spreading the gospel. In 1849 the UCMS was born. Its express purpose was to expedite the local churches in fulfilling their mission of evangelism, by supplying, supporting, and sending missionaries to preach the gospel to the lost. The Society was designed to act in place of the churches, to be an organization through which churches could cooperate in the work of evangelism. In the years following the birth of the UCMS, at least six other missionary organizations grew out of the original effort. These organizations finally were brought together under one head with the establishment of the United Missionary Society in 1919.

Everyone of the these human societies (institutions) was opposed by faithful men. They were considered to be unscriptural, existing without Biblical authority. The previous article showed they were felt to be SUBSTITUTES for the church since they occupied the same ground God had assigned the church. They were HUMAN INSTITUTIONS, encroaching on the will and wisdom of God.

As has been previously mentioned, the Society advocates admitted they had no scriptural basis to defend their innovation, so they turned to EXPEDIENCY. The argument was that God charged the church universal with preaching the gospel to the world but failed to provide any method to do so, therefore it was left up to HUMAN EXPEDIENCY to devise the plan. The fatal error in this argument is the misunderstanding of the church universal. The church universal is nothing more than a relationship, composed of all of God's people wherever they are located. God provided no earthly organization for it, and therefore it has none. Since it has no earthly organization, it has no earthly work to do. It cannot DO anything, OWN anything or SAY anything on earth. Anytime men seek to activate the church universal they demonstrate a basic misunderstanding of the church universal. They think the church universal is made up of local churches, but this is not so. It is made up strictly of individuals. Whatever the church universal accomplishes is accomplished by each indivdual saint joining a local church and fulfilling the mission of the local church. It is denominational to the core to seek to activate the church universal, but it is a persistent and prevalent idea among brethren. This type of thinking produced the Society, and does so today in the proliferation of human organizations and institutions that plague the church.

In spite of all the hard-fought battles and intense teaching by every possible medium during the next six decades following the introduction of the first human institution (The UCMS), these men were unable to stem the tide of apostacy. Many individuals and churches were lost to the digression. Finally in 1906 the departure was complete when the denomination known as the Christian Church was offically recognized by the government census of that time . But, thankfully, a faithful remnant remained true to God's word.