The Local Assembly

The Cadillac Baptist Church was and is founded upon the truth that Jesus started a kind of assembly (church). He said, “I will build my church (assembly).” That is, He promised that He would start, teach, organize, authorize and send His kind of church into the world to preach the Gospel, baptize believers, instruct those believers in the doctrine of Christ, carry out mission work, organize churches of like faith and order, and train and ordain pastors to oversee those works. Further, Jesus also promised in that same Scripture that His kind of church (assembly) would never be prevailed upon by the gates of hell. Hell, not as most people assume — the forces of the devil — but hell as in the power of the grave. 

In other words, the church that Jesus started would never die. Never go out of existence upon the earth. Never enter into the spiritual realm of the grave, where, like the dead, it would be heard and seen no more. His kind of church (assembly) would then always be a VISIBLE, PHYSICAL presence in the world. A VISIBLE, PHYSICAL assembly of his people. A LOCAL, VISIBLE ASSEMBLY. A PHYSICAL BODY that would show forth the person of Christ who has gone into the spiritual and the invisible.

Since Jesus promised that His kind of church would always be on earth as a physical representative of Himself, we must believe that since the time Jesus called out His apostles from the rest of His disciples to be the foundational members of His church (see Luke 6:13 and 1 Cor. 12:28) that His kind of church has always been here. That it never went out of existence, never became something corrupt, never needed to be reformed, reorganized, remade, etc. Never became the Catholic (Universal) church, didn’t come from the Catholic church nor its Protestant Reformation, needed no pope or king or reformer to start it again and do what Jesus promised to do Himself.

Therefore, standing upon this promise of Jesus to build and to preserve His church until His return, we do not believe the church that Jesus built has ever needed rebuilding or repair. Nor at this time is it broken down, but rather is strong and soundly, standing as the pillar and ground of the truth in sound New Testament churches that have descended from that first church in Jerusalem (1 Tim. 3:15). All because of the faithfulness and power of Jesus!

Further believing that the church that Jesus built is a local, visible assembly of baptized believers, organized according to the pattern and authority of the church commission of Matt. 28:16-20, we must also believe that the body of Christ is not universal and invisible but rather local and visible. And that it is not made up of all kinds of churches of all kinds of differing beliefs scattered all over the world, but is comprehended only in each individual New Testament assembly, which truly is holding to the “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” of the Bible (Eph. 4:5). In other words, every true New Testament church is THE BODY of Christ in its location. Consider, for example, the institutions of the Home and Public School. No one ever draws the conclusion that the Home and Public School are universal and invisible. We know when we speak of such institutions that we are referring to something that can be found all over the world or this country, and that it can only be experienced in person in a local, visible way. We actually have to go to school to get credit for being there. The church that Jesus built is no different. It is an institution that can only be realized in a local, visible way. You must be in church to be benefitted by it and participate with it in service to Christ. You must actually be baptized (scripturally immersed in water in profession of your faith in the person and doctrine of Christ by the authority of a true New Testament church) to actually be a member of the Body of Christ in that location.

To be clear then, all of the different kinds of churches in any given area which hold to differing versions of the Bible, differing doctrines concerning the way of salvation, differing modes and reasons for baptism, mission work, church, etc. certainly are not the same kind of church. How then can they be the one body of Christ which holds to the “One Lord, one faith, one baptism” of the Bible? And how then can they communicate to the world, to the lost, to the residents of that area an accurate representation of the person and unified doctrine of Jesus Christ?

By faith in Jesus Christ we are saved and become part of the family of God and we enter into the kingdom of God (John 3:16; Acts 16:30-31). By baptism (in water) we enter into a particular, local, visible church of God (Acts 2:41; 1 Cor. 12:13, 27, 28). This church, if a scripturally organized one, is the body of Christ in its location (Col. 1:18, 24). Therefore, all believers in the world are in the family and kingdom of God. But they are not the church nor the body of Christ, because only those believers who are baptized into a true church of Jesus are the body of Christ. 

It is upon this core belief and foundational doctrine that the Cadillac Baptist Church was founded and stands, and it is for this reason we write. That there be a clear distinction between a universal, invisible church and the local, visible church — the kind of church that Jesus built.

Cardinal Hosius (Catholic, A.D. 1524), President of the Council of Trent: “Were it not that the baptists have been grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past twelve hundred years, they would swarm in greater number than all the Reformers.” (Hosius, Letters, Apud Opera, pages 112,133.)

Sir Isaac Newton: “The Baptists are the only body of known Christians that have never symbolized with Rome.”

Mosheim (Lutheran): “Before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay secreted in almost all the countries of Europe persons who adhered tenaciously to the principles of Modern Dutch Baptists.”

Edinburg Cyclopedia (Presbyterian): “It must have already occurred to our readers that the Baptists are the same sect of Christians that were formerly described as Ana-Baptists. Indeed this seems to have been their leading principle from the time of Tertullian to the present time.” (Tertullian was born just fifty years after the death of the Apostle John.)

John Clark Ridpath (great historian and Methodist): “I should not readily admit that there was a Baptist Church as far back as 100 A.D., although without doubt there were Baptist churches then, as all Christians were then Baptists.”

A. Ypeij and J.J. Dermout (Reformed historians): “We have now seen that the Baptists, who were formerly called Anabaptists… were the original Waldenses, and who have long in history received the honour of that origin. On this account the Baptists may be considered as the only Christian community which has stood since the days of the Apostles, and as a Christian society which has preserved pure the doctrine of the Gospel through all ages.” (Gescbiedenis der Netherlandsehe Hervomke Kerk, I, p. 148)