The Church began on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Jesus had already died on the cross, risen from the dead, and ascended into Heaven. Peter and the other apostles preached the first Gospel sermon and 3000 people responded to the message by being baptized into Christ (Acts 2:41). We have a Scriptural account of the early Church through about the turn of the first century A.D. After that, our knowledge of the Church’s history is reliant upon man’s records.

The Church held to the pattern of the New Testament Church until about 300 A.D. when the Roman government got involved and tried to make Christianity the state religion. That resulted in the birth of the Roman Catholic Church. From 300-1500 A.D. Roman Catholicism ruled.

In the 1500’s some well-intentioned men started to reform the Catholic Church. Their efforts are called the Reformation and resulted in the birth of denominationalism. Men such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley fought to reform the Church from some of the perversions brought about by Catholicism.

In the early 1800’s another group of men who belonged to various denominations started to see that the reformation of the Catholic Church wasn't sufficient. If the Church was ever to return to what God had intended for it to be, there would have to be a complete restoration of the Church of the New Testament. This was the beginning of what is called the Restoration Movement.

The Restoration plea was for all men to go back to the Bible and use it as the only source of faith and practice. Churches that are associated with the Restoration Movement got away from names given by men and went back to the Scriptural names for the Church such as “Churches of Christ” (Romans 16:16).