"Did God then leave Himself without a witness? Did the gates of Hell prevail against His church? Were the foundations of His kingdom laid in sand, that it yielded to the storms of persecution which befell it during the reign of the Man of Sin? Or did the church exist and stand, as firm as the rock of its foundation? And where was it in the long and dreary night, from the revelation of the Son of the Perdition until until the Reformation of the sixteenth century? Their inquiries demand serious consideration and satisfactory answers."It will not do, be the way of response, to urge the existence of an 'invisible church.' This is to evade and not to meet the difficulty. The Savior did not build an 'invisible church' upon the 'rock' confessed by Peter. The Church of Christ on earth is visible. The light of the gospel was not given to be put under a bushel. The Church of the Redeemer is as a city set upon a hill, whose light cannot be hid. . . It is certain from the positive testimony of the Scriptures, that the adherents of Popery from the beginning, saw, and hence pursued and persecuted the saints of the Most High -- the people or church of the Redeemer -- those who followed the Lamb whithersoever He went -- who would not worship the beast, neither his image -- and who refused to receive his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands." -- John L. Waller
{John L. Waller (1809-1854) helped to found the General Association of Baptists in Kentucky where he served as clerk, general agent, and moderator of that body. He also founded and edited the Western Baptist Review from 1845 – 1851 and later served as the first editor of the Western Recorder. Notice that Waller denied that Matthew 16:18 referred to the invisible church. He also believed this verse was scriptural proof that true churches existed from the origins of Popery until the start of the Reformation. The above quote is from the Southern Baptist Review, August-September, pp. 560-561.}
========== [From The Landmark Southern Baptist Forum, via R.L. Vaughn, 2009. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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