Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

“doctrine” would not maintain the scriptural church organization! Where, today,
find we men and women who maintain Bible principles, Bible ordinances,
Bible doctrine, etc., without scriptural organization? Indeed, what is such a life
in manifestation but organization and the work of organization? The
Scriptures represent the organization as indispensable to the purity, the
preservation of the doctrine, the gospel and the ordinances. But, to rob the
church of the promise of preservation, it is denied that the church is necessary
to such purposes. What these deniers of Church Perpetuity think the church
was instituted for, would require more than the wisdom of Solomon to tell.
(2.) It is claimed that the apostasy of some churches proves the apostasy of all.
Excuse me for reducing the objection to a logical absurdity, in stating it. As
well prove that a whole army deserts from some having deserted. The
Scriptures speak of some churches being spewed out, their candlesticks being
removed. The Romish church is only apostasy. But the promises to the church
and to the kingdom, as institutions, are, that “it shall stand forever,” that “the
gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
The attempt is, also, made to weaken the statements of commentators, etc., that
the Scriptures promise Church Perpetuity. This is done in the same way by
which the attempt is made to weaken the direct statements of the Scriptures,
viz., by saying that these commentators mean the general, indefinable,
intangible, “invisible” body of men and women — church means men and
women — with no place of meeting, no objects before it — the “invisible
church.” To this I reply: Some of these writers have fallen into the error of
speaking of an “invisible church,” but
(1.) I have shown that they speak of the “visible” church as being preserved.
For example, Adam Clark says, that the church, of Ephesians 5:23-29, is a
church with ordinances. f47
(2.) But, if every one of these writers under-stood these promises as applicable
to only an “invisible church” it does not, in the least, weaken their testimony to
these promises guaranteeing Church Perpetuity. The promises of perpetuity to
a church are one thing; to what kind of a church is given.these promises is
quite another. I have not quoted any of these writers as de-fining the church to
which the promises were given; but I have quoted them all to prove that the
promises clearly leave no ground to doubt that perpetuity of some kind of a
church if promised. Having proved that the churches f48 of the New Testament
are organizations, to which are committed the gospel, the doctrine, the
ordinances, the discipline — that they are thus “the house of God, which is the
church of the living God, the PILLAR and GROUND of the Truth,” ( 1
Timothy 3:15.) whoever denies that these are the church to which the promises
of preservation are given has his controversy not with me so much as with the