What is the global church?

And this fact is as strong against their pretence of infallibility as catholicity; for we have the church four or five hundred years after Christ, expressly decreeing that no article shall be added; and we have those who call themselves the church, fifteen or sixteen hundred years after Christ, adding twelve articles as matters of faith, and rejecting all who deny them. Was the church in the first ages, or the church of Rome at the Reformation in the right? or how can that be infallible which contradicts itself? But the true catholic church, brethren, that seed of God, which shall indeed never fail, the body of Christ, the real communion of saints, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, subsists in the company of true believers, in every age united to the great Head, Christ Jesus, by His Spirit dwelling in them, and incorporating them into His mystical body. And while the power of the Lord lasts, even to the end of the world, while the influences of the divine Spirit shew to souls His glory in hope, so long will there be a church upon earth. But to say that this is any particular communion or body of professing Christians (and that too without inquiring whether they hold the faith once delivered to the saints) is nothing else but the spirit of Antichrist.

Thus we have found the church of the scriptures to be the church of God, composed of every believer born of God since God began the church at Pentecost. And that all believers are now baptized into the one body of Christ. And that to use the word church, as meaning any worldly system, as that of Rome, or England, is not only unscriptural, but calculated to deceive souls.

So, dear friends, we can see how wonderful this truth is, whether we think of it in its broadest possible context that all over the world in all nations there are people who belong to Christ, or in the smallest context. We have been saved, we belong to Him through His work, oh, how wonderful, and we form the church of God upon earth without any consideration whatever of the various names and titles that we have, because all who belong to Christ are part of the church. When we think of a specific area, whether it be a city, a town or a village, all persons belonging to Christ, really, vitally saved and indwelt by the Spirit, form the church in that place whether it be large or whether it comes down to this small conception of a church in a house, both equally form a church in that particular area.

The Scriptures speak of "the Church of God which is at Corinth," or "the Church of the Thessalonians." This does not mean there are many Churches of God, independent one of another: but each individual church is representative of the whole. In 1 Cor. 15:9, Paul tells us, "I persecuted the church of God." He persecuted the church, (or, assembly) at Jerusalem: but then he tells us, "I persecuted them even unto strange cities." (Acts 26:10-11). Here we may see that all the true Christians in Jerusalem and those in the strange cities, all together formed "the church of God." It is but one ek-klesia but one Church; and every blood-bought soul throughout the whole world is part of that one church.

"All Christians, then, in every part of the earth, where there are any, are members of the same Church, whether they know it or not; for the Bible does not recognize any other division of the universal Church but that of place or time - that division, in a word, which renders communion of believers amongst themselves impossible."*

The whole Church on earth at any given moment, which is the one body of Christ, animated by the one Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:4).

The church therefore was as distinctly separate from the world, as it was Christ's alone, bearing witness, wherever it existed on earth, to its Head in heaven. The Christians formed the "within," as all who were not, Jews or Gentiles, were the, "without." It was the only divine society here below. Israel of old had been Jehovah's chosen nation. But this place they for the time forfeited. Thereon God visited Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, called by sovereign grace to incomparably higher privileges, and to heavenly glory as heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The same cross of Christ which ended Judaism founded God's reconciliation of both Jews and Gentiles that believe in one body, the enmity being slain thereby. Thus through Christ we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. So real and efficacious the presence of the Spirit, that in each locality (as at Corinth) the gathered saints were addressed as "Christ's body" (1 Cor. 12:27); and so are they all together on earth "the church" (1 Cor. 12:28). The unity was universal as well as local. A member of Christ was so equally in Antioch and in Ephesus, in Jerusalem and in Rome, so were apostles and prophets, evangelists, also pastors and teachers. There was one body, and one Spirit.

Nor is it in detail only that the discord is complete. Neither the established party nor the non-conformists seem to see that what Christ set up by the Holy Spirit was one body everywhere; meeting perhaps in a hundred localities throughout even a city no larger than Jerusalem, but all designated as the church there; meeting in hundreds or thousands of places in other lands and in other tongues, but all alike members of one and the same body. Churches there were in different towns and of different districts; yet not so as in our day, and for many sad years, where a member of one is for this reason not of another; but a member of God's church where he lived, and therefore a member of His church wherever he moved. The saints in Rome, in Jerusalem, in Corinth, in Antioch, and everywhere else, composed the church of God on earth.

Not only does the apostle address the assembly of God in Corinth, but also “all that in every place call on the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The whole Christian profession is addressed, for the truth communicated to the Corinthian church was for saints of God everywhere, and the injunctions given to the local assembly were binding upon all who professed the Name of Christ. This at once manifests and acknowledges the unity of the church, for there is but one church of God, and the whole church is responsible to God to act according to the divine instructions given by the Holy Spirit.

We have thus a practical representation of the church in its entirety, extending beyond those who are for the time being actually and visibly gathered together "into one place." The "body" includes every christian throughout the length and breadth of this world, each and all united to Christ by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven at Pentecost. (Compare 1 Cor. 1:2, with 12:12).