Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Or of Kelley:
Lord, thy Church is still thy dwelling,
Still is precious in thy sight,
Judah’s temple for excelling,
Beaming with the gospel’s light.
On the Rock of Ages founded,
What can shake her sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded,
She can smile at all her foes.”
“Zion stands with hills surrounded,
Zion kept by power divine;
All her foes shall be confounded,
Though the world in arms combine:
Happy Zion,
What a favored lot is thine.
In the furnace God may prove thee,
Thence to bring thee forth more bright,
But can never cease to love thee;
Thou art precious in His sight;
God is with thee;
God, thine everlasting life.”
Thus poets join scriptural expositors in declaring church preservation a
fundamental Bible doctrine.
Having proved that the church should never apostatize is a fundamental Bible
doctrine, I pass
To notice that it is a fundamental infidel doctrine that it should apostatize.
A few years ago I met in debate a Spiritist, who affirmed, as a proposition, that
the church has apostatized. So Mormonism teaches. Swedenborg says of the
church:
“Its condition may be compared with a ship, laden with merchandise, of the
greatest value, which, as soon as it got out of the harbor, was immediately
tossed about with a tempest, and presently being wrecked in the sea, sinks to
the bottom.” f55
Says Buckle:
“The new religion was corrupted by old follies, … until after a lapse of a few
generations, Christianity exhibited so grotesque and hideous a form that its
best features were lost, and the lineaments of its earlier loveliness were
altogether destroyed.” f56