Re: Anyone know Thomas Weisser?
I think the "restoration" viewpoint was born out of two things.
1 The larger "Restoration Movement" which was an ideological concept popular among many revival movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which posited that Biblical Truth was being restored, in the sense of mass public movements and evangelism, after having been buried under centuries of Catholic and Protestant hegemony. The entire Protestant Reformation, in fact, was a forerunner and type of "restoration" movement.
2 The need to allow for professing Christians not in the restoration movement(s) to be considered still in the church. IE the actual "Light Doctrine", where the idea is that for centuries the church was under a blanket of false doctrine (but not quite enough to be completely lost in heresy altogether) and now God through various revivals and reformations was "restoring" the church to its former doctrinal and practical purity. Thus, Granny Catholic or Grandpa Lutheran still get to go to heaven even though they never even heard of the key doctrines promoted by some particular restoration movement.
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