Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

the uninterrupted existence of the office as a standing and permanent
monument of the great primary facts of Christianity, and as therefore
demonstrative evidence of its truth. … There are a number of Scripture
declarations of the promises, of the permanence and perpetuity of a ministry
in the church, which have been appropriated and perverted by the advocates
of apostolic succession into arguments in favor of the doctrine. … In short,
most of those Scripture statements, which afford us warrant to say that there
shall be a church always on this earth, and that the office of minister and
pastor is a standing appointment in the church, have been pressed into the
service of the theory that an apostolical succession in the line of each
individual minister is essential to the validity of the ministerial title, f53 and, as
most, if not all, the advocates hold essential also the existence of a church at
all. Now, with regard to such statements of Scripture, it may readily be
admitted — nay, it is to be strenuously affirmed — that they demonstrate this
much, that a Church of Christ, more or less visible, is always to exist on the
earth; but this conclusion has nothing to do with apostolic succession in the
church. Further still, many of these texts may be held as demonstrating that
the office of the ministry is a standing and permanent one in the church. …
There are not a few statements in Scripture that justify us in believing that the
office of the ministry in the church can never, as an office, become extinct;
that an order of men set apart to its public duties can never, as an order, be
interrupted and come to an end, so long as the church itself endures.” f54
Prof. Bannerman, feeling the force of this, against the Presbyterian church,
tries to evade it by a resort to the notion of a “universal Christian society, and
in all the branches of the Christian church.” But this does not weaken the force
of the quoted statements. How significantly, then, is every honest scholar
bound to voice the Lord’s statement: “Upon this rock I will build. my church
and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” — Matthew 16:18.
XII. “Unto Him be glory in the church, by Jesus Christ, throughout all ages,
world without end.” — Ephesians 3:21. By her fulfilling the great
commission — her godly life — the church perpetuates and extends Christ’s
glory. Many, in our age, rather reverse this by having this glory out of the
church. But this makes His glory dependent on the church. As this glory is “in
the church throughout all ages, world without end,” the perpetuity of the
church is assured.
The Scriptures more than justify the lines of Newton:
“Glorious things of thee are spoken,
Zion, city of our God;
He whose word cannot be broken,
Formed thee for His own abode.