Nearly every book I have read and every sermon I have heard on the subject ‘The New Testament Church’ made two dogmatic assumptions followed by a logical conclusion based upon those two assumptions. The two assumptions were not spelled out as clearly in each case, but always these two assumptions were treated as ‘biblical facts’ that were beyond either question or discussion. As a result, the view of the church was already established before you ever opened the Bible to discuss the subject. The implications flowing out of the conclusions were not always stated in bold terms, but again, all of the points were assumed to have been established unquestionably as biblical facts. These ‘established facts’ were then used as the key arguments to settle many difficult questions of church membership, of who may or may not partake of the Lord’s Table, of which church is a ‘true’ church, etc.
ASSUMPTION NUMBER ONE: Jesus established a church on this earth and promised that this church would prevail in all ages. That ‘fact’ proves that there is a physical local church organization in the New Testament Scriptures given to us as a clear role model to be followed today in all of its details.
When I speak of ‘a true NT church’ in this book, it is this institutional role model concept that I am referring to. Those who make this assumption feel the very integrity and sufficiency of the Bible are at stake. In their minds, to reject this assumption is to reject the Bible as our complete rule of faith and practice, and believe that God has left us basically to ‘do as we please’ in church order. This assumption irrevocably commits you to a mindset toward the Scriptures that cannot avoid a sectarian and separatist attitude characterized by external legalism and tyrannical leadership.
ASSUMPTION NUMBER TWO: We can only expect God’s blessing when we organize and operate our local church exactly like this ‘true New Testament role model church.’ We must follow the ‘clear apostolic example’ in its total function, its method of organization and operation, its officers, its membership requirements, etc., as they are clearly set forth in the Scriptures in every essential detail. I read an article on the church that began, ’We believe that simply a return to the biblical pattern of the church in a spirit of seeking the Lord with all of our hearts will bring the revival…’
CONCLUSION: To refuse to organize and operate the local congregation according to the role model given to us in Scripture by divine inspiration is to ‘substitute man’s wisdom for God’s clearly revealed will.’ This conclusion is inevitable when a sincere person adopts these two assumptions. He will more and more isolate himself from any individual or group that ‘refuses to follow the true NT pattern for the church.’ He will justify his actions by saying, “My conscience is bound to obey God’s Word (clearly set forth in my creed). For me to have fellowship with any group or individual that deliberately refuses to submit to God’s truth (my creed), is the same as my denying that God has spoken clearly on this matter.” The very inspiration and authority of the Word of God is at stake in this man’s mind. I readily admit that if the two assumptions are correct, then such a conclusion is valid. However, both assumptions are false.
It is a total waste of time to discuss any kind of organization or cooperation in the work of God’s kingdom with a man committed to these two basic assumptions unless the particular work begins and ends with his specific ‘local church.’ It is all or nothing with him. One of his favorite expressions will be, “We cannot open the door to even the slightest exception to God’s true church order.” This person sees only two possible positions. (1) Admit that God’s truth (his creed) cannot be violated by any exceptions, or else (2) admit that the Word of God is insufficient as a rule of practice for church order. The creed may be Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, or even the ‘no creed’ creed of the Brethren, but the mentality and attitude toward other Christians will always be the same.
It ought to be obvious that such an approach to the doctrine of the church must soon lead to the attitude, spoken or unspoken, that “WE alone are the only people who really believe and follow all that the New Testament Scriptures teach about the church.” Once this attitude is imbedded in the mind it does not take long to reason ‘therefore we are the true New Testament church.’ The arrogant pride and intolerance that attends such an attitude is an abomination to both God and men. No one thing has hindered the gospel of God’s sovereign grace more than this attitude and mind set. History is full of bloodshed because men who held these presuppositions also acted upon the necessary implications whenever they had the civil or ecclesiastical power to do so.
It is impossible to make the first assumption without also making the second one. You cannot believe that the NTS reveal an institutional role model for church order as clearly as it teaches justification by faith without being forced to believe that we have all of the essential details of that model in our particular local church. Once this is believed, you have no choice but to claim divine authority for every detail of your particular system since God himself ‘revealed that system in his inspired Word.’ Likewise, you must then treat all who disagree with you as rebels that ‘reject God’s authority’ because they ‘refuse to bow to God’s true church polity.’
I repeat: it is impossible to make the first assumption without finally coming to the logical conclusion that your system and organization is the true New Testament church. You may say that you are a true New Testament church, and that all who agree with you are also true New Testament churches, but the result will be basically the same in your attitude toward other believers. This kind of mind-set simply must lead to bigotry and conceit in order to be consistent with itself. You will only be able to enter into any kind of meaningful relationship and labor in the gospel with those who dot their I’s and cross their T’s exactly as you do. Even the slightest deviation must be seen as opening the door in compromise that in twenty years will erode and destroy everything.
We shall go into these assumptions in detail later; for now let me say that I reject both of these basic assumptions and the logical conclusions drawn from them. I believe this kind of reasoning forms the basic foundation of pure institutionalism, and institutionalism is the excuse that men of a certain temperament use to practice totalitarianism. Authority ‘divinely vested’ in either a man or an institution is Romanism, and it will always lead to the same totalitarian attitude expressed in that system. A man or an organization that sincerely believes they are ‘duly authorized by God’ to be his vicar will soon assume the right to control both the church as a whole and the conscience of every individual. I say without hesitation that I am an avowed opponent of papal authoritarian institutionalism regardless of whether it wears a Roman, Presbyterian, Baptist, Plymouth Brethren or any other robe. It is this error that produces tyrants for leaders and narrow-minded bigots as disciples. It has destroyed some good men and some great churches when every other weapon of Satan had failed.
Let me quickly state a few things that may be misunderstood. I believe, preach, and practice that every Christian should be a member of a local assembly and subject to its love and discipline. That does not mean an individual gives up either his liberty of conscience or his responsibility for using his gifts and talents as God leads him. In no sense am I downgrading the local assemblies of God’s people. I have spent my life helping to establish and nurture congregations of God’s people. Likewise, I am in no way opposed to a church having a doctrinal statement, constitution, order of worship, agreed procedures of operation, etc. Every group of people needs rules of order for the group’s activities, and there must be agreement on those rules. All I am insisting on is that Scripture does not give us all of those rules, and we must therefore use our best judgment for the particular situation in which we find ourselves. We do not have, and we do not need, a proof text for everything in our constitution. We must follow every specific rule that God has given in his Word but we must also not add rules that he has not given.
I will never forget having breakfast with three Reformed Baptist brethren several years ago. They wanted to discuss the authority of the local church. The conversation went like this:
The first brother said, “You do, of course, agree that Christ did institute a church.”
I replied, “If I understand what I think you mean then the answer is absolutely NO!”
The dear brother was shocked and did not know what to say. I urged him to tell me exactly what he meant by the word ‘church’ and the word ‘institute.’ He was reluctant to give any kind of clear definition to either word, and kept saying, “But surely you believe Christ established a church.” I could not get him to define the terms he was using. I finally said:
“If, by the word church you mean a physical organization that was organized and operated exactly like yours, or, put another way, if you mean that Christ established a specific organization that would perpetuate itself and gave that one organization and its leaders the ‘duly authorized authority’ to be his vicar on earth, then the answer is an emphatic NO—Christ did not ‘found, institute, or establish,’ that kind of an organized institution with that kind of authority. He did begin to save a people and give those people his Holy Spirit. He also gave apostles to guide them as well as begin the job of evangelizing the world with the gospel. The same apostles were inspired to write epistles that gave those people (and us today) principles and guidelines on how to get along with each other as they served their one Lord. However, he did not ‘institute’ a physical organization and ‘endow it with authority’ to be his vicar on earth. That is pure Romanism regardless of what label you put on it.”
Needless to say, the discussion accomplished very little because these men refused to use the Scriptures either to define their terms or prove their basic assumptions. They kept saying: “But all Reformed Baptists believe these things.” I kept replying, “No, they do not. I am only one of many Reformed Baptists that do not believe your Roman Catholic view of authority. Let us look at your very first question in the light of some specific texts of Scripture.”
These brethren would not try to prove their own position from passages of Scripture, nor would they discuss specific texts that clearly contradicted some of their basic concepts. One of the men had a book by John Owen and he kept insisting on quoting from it as if it were the Bible. When I would ask him to show me the specific Scripture texts from which Owen drew his ‘facts,’ he would go back to the ‘all Reformed Baptists believe this’ routine. On several occasions when a proof text was given, I would say, ”Where does that verse say what your book is saying?” It was like getting a Presbyterian to discuss the ‘proof texts’ in the Westminster Confession that ‘prove’ infant baptism.
These men were dear brethren in the Lord, but they had accepted a view of church authority based entirely upon the two basic and wrong assumptions mentioned earlier. They had never examined their basic presuppositions in the light of the Word of God. The Reformed Baptist position set forth in sermons by a few well-known and influential Reformed Baptists preachers were accepted the same way a Roman Catholic accepts the statements of the Pope. It is tragic but true. I should add that two of those same brethren are now openly attacking and refuting the very thing that they were trying to convince me of that day.
I want to set forth my own basic presuppositions clearly so the reader will not only know exactly where I am going, but he will also be able to judge the arguments and see if I am truly establishing the basic facts that are the foundation of my position. Men of a certain temperament will scream “sophistry” and refuse to discuss differences when they cannot defend their position with Scripture. We should be both careful and specific when we set forth the basic presuppositions of our position when discussing differences. It is not enough to reject a given view if we do not put something in its place. Knowing for sure that my view is wrong in no way proves that your view is right. We are not only interested in what the Bible does not teach but also what it does teach about ‘the ekklesia.’
MY BASIC PRESUPPOSITION
My college philosophy teacher once said, “A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there.” In our present discussion, I believe ‘the black cat that isn’t there’ in the Scripture is the clear role model of the physical organization that men call the true New Testament Church when referring to a local assembly (their own) of believers. There just is no such animal in the New Testament Scriptures. I totally reject the two basic assumptions mentioned earlier. The institutionalist is wholeheartedly convinced that he has found the cat that is not there.
I have added a little to my philosophy teacher’s bit of wisdom. I have found that the most narrow-minded separatists are the people who sincerely believe that they have actually caught the cat that is not there. They really believe that their particular church is in all points like the one ‘true NT role model church established by Christ’ and found in the New Testament Scriptures! These people usually accuse all who disagree with them of rejecting the authority of the Word of God and following ‘pragmatism and expediency.’ Sometimes we rebels are granted the license of pure ignorance or stupidity. However, the usual charge is deliberate unbelief in ‘God’s clearly revealed truth.’
The ‘true NT church’ mind-set will always bear the same fruit. There will be a near total emphasis on the local church as an organization and a neglect of the Christian community as a whole. The consuming passion will be to have the right kind of officers exercising total authority and control. There will always be a wide gap between the leaders (usually called elders) and the ordinary Christians (usually called lay persons), and only the ‘duly authorized officers’ are capable of doing anything spiritual. Wherever these things take a hold, a church will move toward a Roman Catholic concept of authority.
As previously stated, it is no accident that Rome hates the doctrine of the invisible church. One of the essential marks of the true church, according to Rome, is visibility. You cannot exercise control over a spiritual entity, but you can totally control a physical organization. Whenever there is a strong emphasis on the church as an organization instead of an organism, you will invariably find an authority structure that puts all of the power in the hands of the spiritual elite. You may not find the leaders being called “Father,” but they will be treated as such. You will find a Roman mentality of church authority when the spirituality of the body of Christ is not emphasized. It will not be long before such a church will consider itself to be the only ‘true witness’ to the Reformed faith, or Dispensational truth, or Baptist practice, or to whatever particular emphasis created that particular congregation.
The real problem is not separating the socalled ‘universal’ church from the socalled ‘local’ church. That particular argument is really only an outgrowth of another and more serious difference. The real error is thinking of the church only in purely institutional terms instead of seeing it as redeemed people who are all bound together in Christ whether they act like it or not. The church surely has clearly defined institutional functions and responsibilities, but that is not the primary emphasis in the New Testament Scriptures.
Every duty enjoined on a believer in the New Testament Scriptures is always based on the fact that he is joined to Christ and therefore joined to every other believer. No one is urged to right behavior toward another believer because they both joined the same local church. The exhortation is always because both are members of the body of Christ, and there is only one body of Christ.
“Hereby we know we love God because we love the brethren” cannot be turned into “because we love the Baptists” or “because we love the particular Christians in our local church.” “Exhort one another” is a duty toward all of God’s people who profess Christ, not just toward the people who are members of a local congregation.
The real danger in institutionalizing the church is the view of authority that must inevitably follow. Instead of being a ‘means of grace’ the church soon becomes the ‘agent of grace.’ The next step makes the ‘ordained clergy’ to be the only people ‘duly authorized’ to dispense that grace. It is impossible for such a view to keep the church, especially its leaders, from becoming essential intermediaries between God and the souls of men and women. The evils so clearly and forcefully condemned in the book Shepherding God’s Flock are a direct result of this institutional view of the church.
HISTORICAL EXAMPLES OF INSTITUTIONALISM
In the next chapter, I will give two examples from history of what I am talking about. I will give a lengthy quote from James Henley Thornwell, a well-known and influential Presbyterian, and also a quote from Hezekiah Harvey, a well-known and influential Baptist writer. Both of these men were totally committed to the assumptions and the mind-set that I reject.
Let me give you the gist of what both of these men say and in the next chapter we will give extensive quotations to show we have not taken them out of context. Here is Thornwell’s basic thesis:
There are amongst us those who hold that God gave us our church-government, as truly as He gave us our doctrines; and that we have no more right to add to the church-government, which is Divine, than to add to the doctrine, which is Divine[1] (emphasis mine).
Thornwell sets the whole issue in clear focus. The Word of God is just as clear about church government as it is about the doctrine of salvation. We should hold to the system of Presbyterianism just as strongly as we hold to the doctrine of justification by faith simply because the Word of God is equally clear on both subjects. To refuse to do so is to deny the sufficiency of Scripture.
Harvey, the Baptist, does the same thing. The title heading in the introduction of Harvey’s book on church polity says it all: “INTRODUCTION: The External Institutions of Christianity Divinely Instituted.” By ‘external institutions,’ Harvey means the whole of church polity. He is not talking about baptism and the Lord’s Supper. He means exactly the same thing that Thornwell means. He is not just talking about the ordinances, but about the totality of church order and practice. By ‘divinely instituted’ Harvey means that the church polity he is about to set forth is to be received the same as you receive Scripture itself. Harvey’s church polity is as divinely inspired as the message that ‘Jesus saves.’ The emphasis in the following quotation is mine.
In the following discussion it is assumed [remember the two basic assumptions] that the outward institutions of the Christian religion are of God, and that, therefore their form and order, as delineated in the New Testament, are of divine obligation. The Bible presents a definite and final constitution of the church, the ordinances, and the ministry, and is on these subjects the sufficient guide and the only authority; no man may set aside, alter, or supplement the divine model there given.
… Explicit directions are given respecting the membership, officers, and the discipline of the churches, and the ordinances to be administered…[2]
Harvey and Thornwell are in agreement concerning the truth of the two assumptions previously noted. In their minds, it is the worst of heresy to believe that there is no true New Testament role model institutional church in the NTS. Both of these men are convinced they have caught the cat that is not there. They differ only on the color of the cat.
Both of these godly men ministered in the mid-1800s when both the Southern Presbyterians and the Baptists were struggling with the identical issues that many churches, especially Reformed Baptists, are discussing today. In no sense am I suggesting that either Thornwell or Harvey were not godly Christians or that the Presbyterian and Baptist churches are not great churches. Nor am I saying, “Away with all forms of organization.” We must have church structure and some form of institutional organization. I wholeheartedly believe in pastors and elders as well as a clearly defined church order and procedure. I recently left the pastorate of a congregation that elected, under my leadership, three godly elders. However, we never claimed textual evidence for the manner in which we elected them, how long they should serve, and specifically what all of their duties were.
I agree it is nearly always a good practice that no one should go to the mission field who has not first proven his gifts and calling within the context of a local church. However, I cannot say, “That is the way they did this in the apostolic age.” I also agree that the missionary should definitely be under the moral and doctrinal authority of the church, or churches, that support him. In the same breath I must insist that was not true in the apostolic churches. The normal and I think best way today is for a local group of believers to recognize an individual’s gifts and calling. It is good if that person can be sent out, be supported, and be under the love and direct discipline of a local congregation. However, I again insist this was not found in the book of Acts.
If God leads someone to serve him under an interdenominational mission board (and despite what the Baptist paper just quoted believes, God has indeed called thousands of Christians to do that very thing), then that missionary should be under the operational and functional control of the particular mission board under which he is serving. We are assuming that the person has complete liberty to teach the truth as he understands it. Can I prove any of this from the Bible? No, I cannot. The reason is that we do not have a single instance in the Bible of either a local church or a mission board sending out a missionary. Acts 13:1-4 is often grossly misread in an attempt to prove this. Everything in the apostolic age was directly under the personal control of the apostles. The apostles were ‘free-lance’ popes responsible to Christ alone. As mentioned earlier, we today are not apostles and therefore dare not act as free lancers under no human control.
Such a working relationship between the local church and an interdenominational mission board in no way contradicts any Scripture. It does violate the basic principle of the ‘true church’ institutionalist that we are challenging in this book. I am talking about a mindset that must, because of its absolutist nature, find in the Scripture what is simply not there, namely, a full blown detailed church order and practice that covers all of church life and each individual work of God’s kingdom. The institutionalist must do this in order to be consistent with himself and his false assumptions. He must ultimately come to the conclusion, “There is only one true church model in the New Testament Scriptures and the rest are wrong. Ours alone is the only correct one.”
All I am pleading for is that we acknowledge that the NTS are not clear on church government. Let’s admit that every system, including our own, is made up of much logic and some Bible texts. Once we admit that, we can then live comfortably with what we believe to be the best system and not accuse those who disagree with our system of either ignorance or rebellion. The institutionalist simply cannot make this admission without giving up his basic assumption or presupposition. We can be wholeheartedly tolerant only when we admit that there really is no cat to be caught. Until we can admit this, we must view tolerance as compromise with truth. It is impossible for an institutional absolutist not to become a consistent sectarian since he is really convinced that he alone has the truth concerning the NT church.
A dear Baptist pastor recently stated in a public meeting that neither he nor the congregation he pastored could support his own daughter and her husband on the mission field. The mission board under which they serve Christ is not totally baptistic nor is it under the authority of a local church. I told the man that I sincerely loved him and respected his right to hold his views. I also told him that I admired his consistency in maintaining his principles in exactly the same manner that I admire the consistency of the Puritans for killing the Anabaptists, and others, with a sword. Given their basic presuppositions of theonomic Covenant Theology, the Puritans had no choice but to kill anyone who rejected the authority of the state church. Given the basic presuppositions of this fellow pastor’s ‘consistent’ Baptist theology, he has no choice but to refuse to support his own daughter in a nondenominational mission society because they were rejecting the ‘God-ordained authority’ of the local church. If situations like this do not make a person look at his basic presupposition and say, “Something has to be wrong some place,” then nothing ever will. When men like the Puritans can kill other believers and think they are doing God a favor, discussing anything but basic presuppositions is a waste of time.
THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
We must face and deal with two realities today that were both impossibilities in the apostolic age. We did not create the problems nor do we like the confusion created by the problems, but facts are facts and reality is reality. The institutionalist is simply unwilling to face reality. For him to admit to the fact of these present problems is to totally deny the basic presuppositions of his whole approach to Scripture. Here are two things you and I must face and wrestle with that no New Testament believer ever faced.
ONE: It is impossible to conceive that a person in the apostolic age could be a true believer in Christ and not also be a living part of the ekklesia of Christ in his area. There is no way you can think in terms of ‘Christians’ and the ‘ekklesia at Ephesus’ as not one and the same thing in their entirety. The believers themselves were the church itself and there was only one church—you did not join it, but rather, you were ‘joined to it’ by the Holy Spirit. In the apostolic age no one ever got converted in an ‘interdenominational evangelistic campaign’ and then decided which brand of church he wanted to join. Such a scenario would have been impossible. Just the opposite is true today in many cases.
A strong Baptist once said to me, “Show me one instance in the NTS where a person joined a local church before he was baptized as a believer.” I replied, “You show me one instance in the NTS where someone joined a local church after he was baptized as a believer.” I told the man that his question was a nonsense question and the answer would prove absolutely nothing since he was using a ‘joining the church’ concept that is not found in the NTS. Believers did not ‘join’ the church; they were in the church the moment they were born of God! Christ’s church existed before any institution was organized.
I am in no way suggesting that it is wrong to ‘join a church’ today. I believe that whenever possible every believer should be a faithful member of a local congregation in his or her area. He should choose a church where the gospel is preached in purity and support it with his presence and money. I do not say this because believers in the book of Acts joined a local church and therefore it is a biblical practice. Believers did not, at least in the sense we use the phrase ‘joining a church,’ join anything. They did not have to join what they were automatically a part of by conversion to Christ. The events of church history have changed that situation. Instead of having ‘the ekklesia of (Any Town),’ our little village has many different kinds of ekklesias. That situation would have been impossible in the apostolic age.
I urge every Christian to join a local church because the Scriptures command Christians to do certain things that can only be performed in our present society by officially becoming part of a particular congregation. However, those things can be performed by joining any one of four or five different denominations. I recommend choosing a church to join based on its own merits and not on the basis of its denominational connections, since there is no one true church organization today. In some towns I would join the Presbyterian church and in other towns I would join the Baptist church, and in still others I might join the Evangelical Free church, or Brethren Assembly, or an Independent Bible church. Likewise, any one of these in another town might be the last church I would even consider.
Again, the true institutionalist must deny that such choices are possible since Christ founded only one church (order). Christ establishing his ‘church’ and establishing a particular church ‘order and government’ is one and the same thing to a true institutionalist. His basic problem is that he has confused Christ’s ekklesia with an institutional organization.
TWO: It is also impossible to conceive that any believer in the apostolic age had either the option or the problem of choosing between two or more kinds of churches that he could join. Granted, the denominationalism of today forces us to think and act that way, but it must also be admitted that denominationalism in any form is totally inconceivable in the New Testament Scriptures. Whether we like it or not, we must accept denominationalism as a fact of life, but we must also remember that no apostle of Christ would have ever tolerated for a moment the idea of even two kinds of Christians let alone a hundred different kinds! In other words, we are literally forced to cope with a reality that the NTS make clear could never have existed or been tolerated under apostolic authority and control. The institutional legalist simply cannot face this reality. It destroys his whole philosophy of the church.
Can you conceive of the apostle Paul accepting the fact that there were sixteen different kinds of Christian assemblies at Ephesus with each one having a different doctrinal statement and different forms of baptism? That situation is forced on us today, and we must cope with it, but it would have been impossible for such a thing to exist in the apostolic age. It would have been considered heresy of the worst kind.
As we shall see, we must deal with the reality of two thousand years of church history as well as the information in the New Testament Scriptures. We cannot ignore or deny either the facts of Scripture or the events of two thousand years of church history. When we face these two things honestly, we soon discover that the New Testament Scriptures do not give us chapter and verse for answers to many questions raised by the events in church history simply because those questions could not possibly have been raised in the apostolic age. Again, the consistent institutionalist cannot live with such an admission. He simply must find the one true cat in the Scriptures and then duplicate it in detail today. It just has to be there or his whole approach to the doctrine of the church collapses.
People often ask me what the Bible says my attitude, as a Baptist, should be toward a Presbyterian who is a real believer. I always reply, “The Bible does not answer your question simply because it nowhere conceives that there are such creatures as Presbyterians.” After a moment’s pause, I add, “or such creatures as Baptists.” In the early church, saved people were known as ‘brethren’ without any additional adjective necessary to describe how they differed from other believers; in fact to use any additional adjective to differentiate you from other ‘kinds of Christians’ would have brought an apostolic thunderbolt down on your head. Can anyone really believe that a particular congregation of believers in Corinth could have gotten away with calling themselves the ‘First Baptist Church of Corinth’? Again, such is not the case today. The different beliefs among true Christians today require a label of identification.
In the apostolic age, all of the believers together constituted the ekklesia of Christ. You could not be a believer without being part of the ekklesia, and you were not part of the ekklesia until you were a believer. Everyone in the so-called universal church was also part of a so-called local church, and there was only one local church in town and it was the ekklesia of Christ. It was neither a Baptist ekklesia nor a Presbyterian ekklesia. It was the one and only ekklesia of Christ in that location. It was all of the believers in that area. I repeat, such is not the case today, nor is it possible to make it that way.
The same thing is true as it pertains to the doctrine of baptism. A person in the apostolic age was not even accepted as a true Christian until he publicly confessed his submission to Christ as Lord in baptism (Acts 2:3741). That same thing is true today in a staunch Moslem country or among orthodox Jews. A Jew may confess to be a secret believer but until he is ready to confess his faith publicly by Christian baptism, most Jewish Christians will not accept the validity of his conversion. That same thing is not true among gentile believers in general. Anybody and his cousin are considered saved with or without baptism, church membership, or a changed life. Likewise, most churches will baptize anyone who is not on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Most Baptists feel that a Presbyterian or Methodist believer will get to heaven, but a really consistent Baptist must believe that ‘true church’ equals immersed believers.
We simply must admit that we face a situation today that could not have existed in the early church. We not only have ‘unbaptized’ Christians (sprinkling cannot be considered baptism under any circumstance by a consistent Baptist); we even have whole denominations of ‘unbaptized’ believers. What is even worse, we have ‘unbaptized’ preachers of the gospel of grace being blessed by God in seeing people saved under their ministries. Some of us even invite these ‘unbaptized’ believers to preach at our conferences. How can God so continuously bless the efforts of men who deliberately disobey his clear and explicit commandments to be immersed? A consistent Baptist institutionalist has real problems with the Calvins, Luthers, Whitfields, and the over 50,000 evangelical (dare I put the word in print?) interdenominational missionaries around the world today.
The really consistent institutionalist cannot even make the above mentioned men part of the bride of Christ. Calvin, Luther and Whitfield are said to be ‘friends of the Bridegroom’ but not part of his bride. The Baptist churches alone (the really ‘true’ ones) are the bride of Christ. It is all so logical and consistent if you are convinced that you truly have caught the cat that is not there.
The situation that existed in the times of the apostles is not true today nor is it possible to make it become true. I am concerned with a mind-set that has a view of Scripture that must force any sincere person to think and act as if the NT situation is either actually true today or that we can recreate it in an institutional sense. The more earnest such a person is, the more separated and bigoted he will become.
It is impossible for us to recreate the early church situation unless we can produce one world church. As long as there are Calvinists and Arminians, sprinklers and immersionists, Covenant theologians and dispensationalists, and all of the other hundreds of distinctions, we cannot have the same situation that existed in the early church. I am one hundred percent in favor of all believers getting together under one roof in one world church, provided of course, it is a ‘true’ Reformed Baptist roof that I have designed and built personally. In all seriousness, I doubt this will happen in the next ten or twenty years. The real purpose of this book is to help us cope honestly with the events imposed upon us by church history, and at the same time be honest with the inspired writing that God has given us in his Word. It seems to me that it is impossible for us to do either of these things until we get rid of the mind-set that will not allow us to admit openly that the NTS simply do not give us a clear institutional role model church in all of its details.
The institutionalist simply must force the Bible to say far more than it does in order to hold on to his true NT church concept. The lone ranger individualist refuses to use the clear principles that God actually has given in his Word and does his own thing without any authority over him but his own desire. An honest study of Scripture will not allow either of these two attitudes to exist.
Some mission societies and some theological schools have demonstrated that their approach is honest with both Scripture and the realities created by history. They have an authority structure that prohibits individualism and also safeguards doctrinal and moral purity. The obvious and continued blessing of God on their efforts ought to make us question our own spiritual state if we do not experience the same blessings. If our basic assumptions simply will not allow us to have anything to do with these people (because they are ‘free lancers’ and out of the will of God because they are not under the authority of a local church), we had better look again at our basic presuppositions in the light of Scripture.
Why do many interdenominational schools and mission societies go for over 150 years without changing directions while every local church in town has gone into liberalism? How many local churches in Chicago have become liberal while Moody Bible Institute continues its same doctrinal position and its staunch evangelicalism? Why are local churches and denominational schools the very first organizations to change directions? The answer lies in their view of leadership, authority, and institutionalism.
In the next chapter we will examine very carefully Thornwell’s—the Presbyterian, and Harvey’s—the Baptist, defense of their position. They are both convinced that there not only is a cat, they are both positive they have caught the cat that is not there.