[Evangelical]

Back to Baptists, for a minute:

Baptists believe that only the Baptist Closed communion is genuine communion and they are the only true Christians descended from the time of Christ. They believe a communion held between members of different denominations (divisions) or in Open Communion is not a genuine communion.

This is taken from The New Testament Church By T.T. Martin where he defends the practice of the baptist church to have "closed communion" and says that if Baptists stopped taking closed communion there would be no genuine communion on the Earth.

In many respects the doctrine is similar to the recovery, as it emphasizes the symbolism behind the bread and wine as relating to the one body, and believes that not every church which has bread and wine is genuine communion if it is a communion of division (1 Cor 11:18-20).

One major flaw is that the Baptist communion is not based on the locality but on doctrine about how the communion should be done and their identity as Baptists. They seem to represent a group of Christians of like mind who get together and claim to be without division, and claim their Lord's Table is genuine. Is not every denomination like this? Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, all consider their communion to be without division, and so a genuine communion. But they forget that they themselves are a division within the city.

I don't believe that Paul in 1 Cor 11:18-20 meant that any group of Christians who can get along with each other can meet together hold the Lord's Table, claim to be without division and satisfy 1 Cor 11:18-20. Because I see the principle of locality, I see that the only non-divisive Lord's Table which satisfies 1 Cor 11:18-20 must be one which is based on the locality. 1 Corinthians 11:20 indicates this when it says "when you come together in one place", other versions say "gather together in the same place". There is nothing said about gathering together because of any other reason than being in the same one place. A true divided communion then according to 1 Cor 11:18-20, must be one which is a gathering together because of a reason other than being in the same one place, such as "I am a Pharisee" or "I am a Sadducee". The communion of denominations, including Baptist, therefore, must be a communion based on faction "I am a Baptist, I am a Catholic", just as Judaism was divided into factions.