Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelical
A view that a true church does not exist, or that it is not visible, is a false view, and possibly a result of being affected by new-age mumbo jumbo.
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The true Church absolutely does exist, and it is visible. Always has been.
The Church is always visible somehow. Your error is in thinking it must be visible in some kind of cut-and-dried practical organization. There is no reason to believe this. For decades the Church in China was only visible in home churches with a few members, because that's the only thing the government allowed. But visible it was.
God is not limited by your insistence on a particular local organization of a church for the Church to be visible, or valid.
But actually now you are contradicting yourself. Because if the true Church can only be embodied in LCM-like local churches, then by that definition it was invisible for at least 1700 years. Yet you just said saying it can be invisible is a false view.
So either the Church has been visible in every century since Christ ascended, in which case localism is not necessary for a valid expression of the Church, or the Church was invisible until the Brethren and Nee came along with localism, which is to say that the Lord had no visible Church on the earth for centuries.