We should like to ask the reader this one question, If the Apostle Paul were to come to London for the next Lord’s day, where could he find what he found in Troas, eighteen hundred years ago, as recorded in Acts 20:7? Where could he find a company of disciples gathered simply by the Holy Ghost, to the Name of Jesus, to break bread in remembrance of Him, and to show forth His death till He come? Such was the divine order then, and such must be the divine order now. We cannot for a moment, believe that the apostle would accept anything else. He would look for the divine thing; he would have that or nothing. Now, where could he find it? Where could he go and find the table of his Lord as appointed by Himself, the same night in which He was betrayed?

   Mark, reader, we are bound to believe that the apostle Paul would insist upon having the table and the supper of his Lord, as he received them direct from Himself in the glory, and given them by the Spirit, in the tenth and eleventh chapter of his epistle to the Corinthians—an epistle addressed to “all that in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both theirs and ours.” We cannot believe that he would teach God’s order, in the first century and accept man’s disorder in the nineteenth. Man has no right to tamper with a divine institution. He has no more authority to alter a single jot or tittle connected with the Lord’s supper than Israel had to interfere with the order of the Passover.

   Now, we repeat the question—and earnestly entreat the reader to ponder and answer it in the divine presence, and in the light of scripture—Where could the apostle find this in London, or anywhere else in Christendom on next Lord’s day? Where could he go and take his seat at the table of his Lord, in the midst of a company of disciples gathered simply on the ground of the one body, to the one center, the Name of Jesus, by the power of the Holy Ghost, and on the authority of the word of God? Where could he find a sphere in which he could exercise his gifts without human authority, appointment, or ordination? We ask these questions in order to exercise the heart and conscience of the reader. We are fully convinced that there are places, here and there, where Paul could find these things carried out, though in weakness and failure; and we believe the Christian reader is solemnly responsible to find them out. Alas! alas! they are few and far between, compared with the mass of Christians meeting otherwise. 

Notes On The Book Of Deuteronomy (Vol. 2) - C.H. Mackintosh