Imperishable Inheritance

I would like to exam­ine the Bap­tist Brider move­ment. Let me explain exactly what is held to in this sote­ri­o­log­i­cal & eccle­si­as­ti­cal system.

This is usu­ally indica­tive of Land­mark Bap­tist churches who believe, among other things, that the KJV is the only ver­sion of God’s word in Eng­lish, that they are not Protes­tant but can trace back to the ear­li­est churches, and they often take the inde­pen­dent con­vic­tion in Bap­tist eccle­si­ol­ogy to exces­sive dimen­sions (not only not part of a denom­i­na­tion or con­ven­tion but often don’t asso­ciate with any other church). Not all Land­mark churches believe this (as the one I attended didn’t), but it is still around. So, what exactly is this movement?

An Expla­na­tion

In short, the Bap­tist Brider move­ment is com­posed of a strain of Bap­tist who believe that only those who are a mem­ber of a “New Tes­ta­ment Local Church” (i.e. their churches) are a part of the “Bride of Christ.” Every other redeemed per­son will be in heaven but not part of the Bride. Fur­ther, Old Tes­ta­ment saints are also not a part of this Bride (because, of course, their were none of these churches back then!), and so they are seen as “hon­ored guests” at the eter­nal wed­ding feast of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). I found an arti­cle which sum­ma­rizes this posi­tion aptly.

“[W]e see there will be a gath­er­ing in heaven of three dis­tinct groups of redeemed peo­ple, (a) the Gen­eral Assem­bly (those saved dur­ing the Gospel era, but not mem­bers of, or under the author­ity of, any Spe­cial Assem­bly), (b) the Church (Spe­cial Assem­bly) of the First Born, and © the spir­its of just men made per­fect (Old Tes­ta­ment Saints). These three groups will be (a) Gen­eral Assem­bly: the friends of the Groom (John 3:29), (b) the church: the Bride (Eph. 5:31), ©, Old Tes­ta­ment Saints: the hon­ored Guests (Rev. 19:9). We see, there­fore, that the Bride of Christ is not all of the redeemed, nor even all of the saved from the Gospel Era (Church Age), but only those faith­ful mem­bers of true New Tes­ta­ment churches.”

The Bib­li­cal Basis for the Movement

These adher­ents first state the Bride of Christ has been mis­in­ter­preted through­out Protestant/Catholic church his­tory. Fur­ther, many who hold to this posi­tion hold to some fla­vor of Dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ism which makes divid­ing up the redeemed quick and con­ve­nient! The pas­sages most often cited are from Gen­e­sis 24 and Hebrews 12:22–24. I’m going to pro­vide one exam­ple of the Bap­tist Brider exe­ge­sis of Gen 24 (from pre­vi­ously cited article).

“In Gen­e­sis chap­ter 24 we see a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the Bride. Abra­ham (type of God the Father), sends his ser­vant (type of the Holy Spirit), into a far coun­try to call out a bride for his son Isaac (type of the Lord Jesus Christ)…The bride is to come out of the king­dom of the father, and out of the fam­ily of the father. You will notice that Isaac did not marry the whole fam­ily, but only one part of the fam­ily, Rebekah (the one who was faith­ful in doing all that the ser­vant asked of her). All of the redeemed will not be part of the Bride, but only those mem­bers of the fam­ily of God who have proved their love for the Lord through true obe­di­ence to His Word, by being faith­ful to His true New Tes­ta­ment church, and all that church mem­ber­ship entails.” (empha­sis added)

Next, their inter­pre­ta­tion of Heb 12:12–24 which says: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the liv­ing God, the heav­enly Jerusalem, and to myr­i­ads of angels, to the gen­eral assem­bly and church of the first­born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spir­its of the right­eous made per­fect, and to Jesus, the medi­a­tor of a new covenant, and to the sprin­kled blood, which speaks bet­ter than the blood of Abel.”

They seek to rec­og­nize sev­eral groups. First, are the angels which are “self explana­tory.” Next there is the “gen­eral assem­bly” which is dis­tinct from the “church of the first­born.” These two groups serve as a gen­eral assem­bly are folks from the “Gospel era” who were saved but not apart of their breed of churches. The “church of the first­born” are those who are saved, bap­tized (by their stip­u­la­tions), and mem­bers of their brand of churches. The last group of redeemed con­sist of the Old Tes­ta­ment saints which is an extrap­o­la­tion from Heb 11:32–40. In other words, there are New Tes­ta­ment believ­ers that will have a higher posi­tion than Old Tes­ta­ment believ­ers in the King­dom of God! There is also never any kind of “uni­ver­sal church” even in the escha­ton! The Church (ekkle­sia) always has a local con­text to it.

An Exam­i­na­tion

While I as well am leery of a cur­rent “uni­ver­sal church” (pre-eschaton), but there is no doubt that it will one day cul­mi­nate into a real­ity (Rev 5:9, 7:9). Fur­ther, the New Tes­ta­ment does speak often of the spir­i­tual, mys­ti­cal nature of Christ’s Body (Mat 16:18; Acts 9:31; 20:28; 1 Cor 10:32; Eph 1:22, 5:23–25, 27, 29, 32; Col 1:18, 24; Heb 12:23). The church that Christ died for (Eph 5:25) con­sists of the redeemed of all ages from every tribe, tongue, and nation. All peo­ple groups (eth­nos) are included in this glo­ri­ous event. There is no dis­tinc­tion between those who are saved in the eter­nal state (with the excep­tion of the Apos­tles, Rev 21:14).

Paul admon­ishes Gen­tiles to “not be arro­gant toward the branches [OT Saints]; but if you are arro­gant, remem­ber that it is not you who sup­ports the root, but the root sup­ports you” (Rom 11:18). I believe the Bap­tist Brider move­ment vio­lates this com­mand of Paul; they are arro­gant towards the nat­ural branches by plac­ing them­selves in a higher escha­to­log­i­cal state. Paul also says that “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26), and that “There is nei­ther Jew nor Greek, there is nei­ther slave nor free man, there is nei­ther male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). All the redeemed of all ages are heirs to the spir­i­tual promises made to Abra­ham (Gen 12:1–3) through their union with Christ (Gal 3:29). Inter­est­ingly, Jesus men­tioned the wed­ding feast that He will be the head of when He says to the Roman cen­tu­rion (a gen­tile): “I say to you that many will come from east and west, and recline at the table with Abra­ham, Isaac and Jacob in the king­dom of heaven” (Mat 8:11). In other words, Christ made it pos­si­ble for Gen­tiles to be at the same ban­quet as these Old Tes­ta­ment saints!

I’ll be hon­est, I have absolutely no idea how they get their read­ing from Gen 24. I think they are fish­ing for typol­ogy where there is none. The point of the chap­ter is his­tor­i­cal and didac­tic that Abra­ham sent his ser­vant to get a wife for Isaac. There is no allu­sion to Christ and His Church here. I don’t even know how to respond to it, because I can’t find that read­ing even plau­si­ble in that passage.

The Heb 12 pas­sage is a lit­tle more involved. It is clear that there is a dis­tinc­tion between the “angels” and the redeemed, but it is not a defen­si­ble posi­tion that the “gen­eral assem­bly” and “church of the first­born” are two sep­a­rate groups. The author is sim­ply giv­ing two names to the same entity as Paul does in Gal 6:16 by call­ing God’s elect by the names “peace and mercy be on them [those who are a new cre­ation]” and “the Israel of God.” The Lit­eral Trans­la­tion of the Holy Bible helps us with their trans­la­tion: “and to a gath­er­ing, an assem­bly of the first-born ones hav­ing been enrolled in Heaven” (Heb 12:23).

Con­clu­sion

The good news of the Gospel is that with belief in it you will join the one peo­ple of God, His Body, the Church. From Abra­ham to today (Rom 4:1–13; Gal 3:8–9) the same Gospel saves sin­ners the same way into the same eter­nal Body. The Bap­tist Brider move­ment must be rejected, because it is based on an erro­neous extrap­o­la­tion of texts. Wor­thy is our Lamb who brought together sin­ners through­out the ages!