Type:
Robert Raikes of Gloucester, England, was the founder of Sunday Schools in 1781, by teaching the
poorer class of children on Sundays in the "Rudiments of a Common School Educations" and
not in the instructions in the theology of the Bible.
Prototype:
David Benedict
(Fifty Years Among the Baptists) in Pawtuckett, RI (life - 1779-1874) did the same
thing exactly in the USA ad did Robert Raikes in England.
Antitype:
Modern-day theological Sunda Schools are unscriptural. John Wesley, first in 1784, expressed the hope
that Sunday Schools would become "nurseries for Christians." (Wesley was the founder of "The Method"; i.e. the Methodists).
In
McClintock & Strong's
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclessiastical Literature, Vol. 10, page 21, it states:
"...that the problem of the conversion of the world is in process of solution."
If all this be true, it appears that, for nearly 1,800 years of the Christian era, the true church,
as set up by Jesus Christ in the days of John the Baptist and the Apostles, had been destitute of
an "essential" requisite in its work, and the problem of the conversion of the world had not begun
to be solved until the 19th century.
Wonder why Jesus did not institute Sunday Schools
if they are so important to, a function of and a branch or part of the true New Testament church ?
Also, wonder why Jesus, nor any of His apostles, nor any of the New Testament writers did not mention Sunday School ?
Also, notice it was the so-called modern,contemporary New School Missionary Baptists, and others,
including the Protestants, that have built this addition onto the church. These scriptures forbid
such:
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- Deut. 4:2;</font>
- Prov. 30:5;</font>
- Rev. 22:18,19</font>
Form the times of the children of Israel in the Old Testament, God taught the
parents to teach their
children the word of the law (Deut. 6:1-6; 11:18-21). The benefits of such teaching would be that
they would inhabit the land flowing with milk and honey; their days would be multiplied and the days
of their children, in the land which the Lord sware unto their fathers to give them, as the days of
heaven upon the earth. The parents were to teach such, speaking of them when they sat down in their
house, when walking by the way, when lying down, when rising up.
These laws were written upon the
doorposts of their houses and upon the gates. They would possess great and goodly cities which they
built not; houses full of all good things, which they did not have to buy,; wells dug which they did
not dig; vineyards and olive trees which they
planted not.
This is the historical picture of the
New Testament church of timely gospel benefit. Solomon wisely wrote:
"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from
it" Prov.22:6
Again, he taught in Ecc. 12:1:
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth....."
Jeremiah taught in Lamentations 3:27:<p>
"It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth."
This teaching was to come directly from the parents. These prophecies point us directly to the same
principle in the New Testament.
The ante-type, the literal substance realized and fulfilled,
was taught in the New Testament church kingdom in Matthew 19:14:
"But Jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me;
for such is the kingdom of heaven."
See also Mark 10:14 and Luke 18:16.
The Apostle Paul further magnifies this principle in Eph. 6:4 by telling the fathers (parents):
"And ye, fathers, provoke not your children to wrath; but bring them up in the admonition
of the Lord."
Further, Paul amplifies this principle in 2 Tim. 1:5 where he relates that young Timothy was taught at
home by his grandmother and mother.
...and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures..."
There is no scripture teaching us to send our children to some other teacher or instructor apart from
the parents at home and a God-called preacher/pastor/teacher
in the assembly at church. Further, the
Old Testament procedure for teaching the law is illustrated in Deut. 31:12,13:
"Gather the people together, men and women, and children, and the stranger that is within
thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe
to do all the words of this law: And that their children, which have not known any thing, may hear,
and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over Jordan to
possess it."
Therefore, it is clear that the teaching of children about spiritual matters is not to be "farmed
out" to some other entity (organization), but, first, it is to be done by parents at home and then
in the assembly where the men, women, and children are
gathered together.
Separating children and others into various classrooms by age, sex, marital status, etc., is not scriptural.
