J. R. Graves wrote: Baptists claim that they are successors to the ‘Witnesses of Jesus,’ who preserved the faith once delivered to the saints, and kept the ordinances as they were originally committed to the primitive churches. They claim to be the lineal descendants of the martyrs who, for so many ages, sealed their testimony with their blood. They claim that they can trace the history of communities, essentially like themselves, back through the ‘wilderness,’ into which they were driven by the dragon, and the beast that succeeded to him, and the image of the beast, by a trail of blood,lighted up by a thousand stake-fires, until that blood mingles with the blood of the apostles, and the Son of God, and John the Baptist. They believe that they never did, ecclesiastically, symbolize with the Papacy, but ever repudiated it as Antichrist, and withdrew from it, and refused to recognize its baptisms or ordinances, or its priests as the ministers of Christ. These are bold claims, we admit; yet if we can sustain them successfully against those of any other communion, it is not only our right, but our imperative duty to do so. (Trilemma, pages 119, 120).
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 23:14:35 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015