Jarrel - Baptist Church Perpetuity - Landmark Baptist

Infidels, of the present, seeing that the church yet stands, are preaching its
apostasy. Voltaire said the church would be extinct before A.D. 1800. Robert
Ingersoll, and every infidel lecturer and writer, proclaim the doctrine of the
apostasy. The Devil has believed in and worked for church apostasy ever since
its birth. Christ said: “The gates of Hades shall not prevail against” the church;
the combined powers of hell have ever said “they shall” and “that they have
prevailed against it.” With which of these parties do you, my dear reader,
agree? Remember, you cannot evade the question, by resorting to the
assumption of an “invisible” church; for we have seen
(a) that the only church which the New Testament speaks of is a local
organization, and
(b) if there were “invisible” churches, the promise of preservation is given to
the “visible,”
Modern churches are essentially based on the infidel assumption, viz., the
apostasy, harlotry of the blessed Bride or Church of Christ.
A wife is “off on a visit.” To steal the wife’s place, a woman circulates the
report that the wife has been lost at sea. The woman knows this report is
necessary to make room for her. So, every new sect builder and new sect —
and sects now number hundreds — knowing there is no room for another Bride
of Christ, while the first is alive or true to Him, proclaim the death or the
unfaithfulness of His first Bride. Bangs, one of the earliest Methodist writers,
said:
“That the state of society was such in Great Britain at the time Wesley arose
as to call, in most imperious language, for a Reformation, no one, at all
acquainted with those times, I presume, will pretend to question.” f57
Again: “Methodism arose from the necessity of the times.” f58 Mr. Bangs
omitted telling his readers that the very church — the Episcopal — that then
ruled Britain, was a church which originated with the bold assumptions of the
apostasy or harlotry of the Bride of Christ, and of the necessity of a
“reformation.”
Porter, another standard Methodist writer:
“More than a thousand years the church was sunk in the deepest ignorance
and corruption, so that it is exceedingly doubtful whether there was a valid
bishop on earth.” f59
“The church was dead.” f60 A sect, calling themselves “Bible Christians” —
wonder if the Campbellites cannot get a suggestion from this name, as to what
to call their church? — says: “In subsequent times, when reformation was
needed, a Luther, a Calvin, a Melancthon and others have been raised up, etc.
… Under Providence” — by the way, these sect builders all talk of a