Why was T. Austin Sparks wrong?

As we have seen T. Austin Sparks was wrong when he said, “The answer is decidedly No!” (regarding Biblical locality) since the answer is decidedly Yes given the proof. Therefore, when Sparks said, “Is there in the New Testament a revelation of God's mind as to the Church, in its nature, constitution, and vocation? it is no contradiction of the above when we say: Yes, decidedly Yes!,” he was being pretentious, because he rejected the revelation, nature, constitution, and vocation of the Church by not accepting God’s Word about church locales.

This is an incorrect claim by T. Austin Sparks: “He would have seen to it that in some way a precise and unmistakable prototype existed, with adequate safeguards against all the confusion and misapprehension which has actually eventuated.” The reason this is wrong is because in Revelation 2 & 3 we see all the problems the Church would experience, becoming a shadow of itself. In the first century Ephesus period, for example, there is the first love that was lost. Yes, it was lost that quickly. Then, in the last Church period (today), we see the Church is neither hot nor cold, but luke warm and confused in “differing opinions,” the meaning of Laodicean.

We must accept the fact that there is the inward as well as the outward. To deny the outward while claiming the inward is a dead works. Even sparks admits, “variety of presentations, resulting in a very large variety of organized bodies, every one of which claims the New Testament for its authority. This in turn issues in rivalries, competitiveness, controversy, and, eventually, in the presenting to the world of a Christianity divided into a vast number of independent and unrelated parts, far removed from 'all speaking the same thing'.”

The teaching in the Word is a spiritual truth about the local expression of the Church. The reason it is spiritual is because it prevents the ability of the Church to be like the world with combines as Watchman Nee well points out. Do not reject this truth because T. Austin Sparks, confused himself with these words, “The external and objective approach to the New Testament, with a view to studying it as a manual or text-book of Christian life, teaching and work, is a false one, a dangerous one, and - so far as any real spiritual outcome is concerned - a dead one.” Remember, T. Austin Sparks is Laodicean.