Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

deemed, or, as Paul expresses it, ( Ephesians 3:15) ‘the whole family in
heaven and earth.’ Kingdom of heaven and church are not identical, though
inseparately and closely connected. The churches of Christ are the external
manifestations of this kingdom in the world.” f25
In an excellent article in Smith’s Bible Dictionary. f26 A. Hovey, D.D.,
President Newton Theological Seminary, says:
“This kingdom, though in its nature spiritual, was to have, while on earth, the
visible form in Christian Churches, and the simple rites belonging to church
life were to be observed by every loyal subject ( Matthew 28:18; John
3:5; Acts 2:38 Luke 21:17: 1 Corinthians 11:24.) It cannot,
however, be said that the New Testament makes the spiritual kingdom of
Christ exactly co-extensive with the visible church. There are many in the
latter who do not belong to the former, ( 1 John 2:9,) and some, doubtless,
in the former, who do not take their place in the latter.”
Tholuck:
“A kingdom of God — that is an organic commonwealth.”
“The New Testament kingdom of God, is both from within and from without,
in the individual as in the whole community.”
“The idea of the kingdom of God … is an organized community, which has its
principle of life in the will of the personal God.” f27
In the invisible church and kingdom theory are all disorganizers who reject
baptism and church organization. Under the pretense of great zeal and
spirituality they make the invisible everything and the organization nothing.
This is illustrated by the following from The Watchman, of Boston:
“But, of late, there has been a marked disposition among certain thinkers to
contrast the ‘kingdom’ with the ‘church,’ to the disadvantage of the latter.
What we need to-day, they say, is not to strengthen the church, but to extend
the kingdom of God; to work for the reorganization of society and the
influence of Christian principles and motives in every department of life, and
not for the salvation of individual men and women, which is the peculiar work
of the church. Some of these writers have gone so far as to imply that the
church is the greatest obstacle in the way of the advance of the kingdom of
God.”
As Luke 17:21 is the main passage for an invisible kingdom, I submit the
following from that critical scholar, Dr. Geo. Varden:
“The weight of critical authority inclines mightily to ‘in your midst.’ Lexicon
Pasoris (1735) so renders. Raphel (Notre Philologicoe 1749) similarly.
Rosenmuller (Scholia, 1803) seeks to show at some length that, though entos
may in general mean within, the character of the persons addressed forces the