Closed Communion

With closed communion, a member of the church can partake of the Lord's Supper

as it should be. Only members of the church can partake.

Those that teach the invisible church would allow open communion.

which is unscriptural and sinful.

Can a local church, scripturally or consistently,

extend the invitation to participate beyond her own membership and discipline?

It is a local church ordinance,

to be observed in and by a local church.

A church is strictly an independent body.

It absolutely controls its own acts, and can, in no sense, control those of any other church.

Her prerogatives, like her responsibilities, terminate with herself,

and her authority is limited, as to the objects over which it is exercised,

to her own membership, and she has not a church privilege she can extend to those outside her pale.

If, then, the supper was committed to each local church,

its observance was limited to the membership of each church,

and it can rightly be observed, only by the united membership of such churches,

and not by them, in common with the membership of other churches.

When a person, having accepted Christ as his Savior, and seeks, as he should,

the privileges of His church, he unites with a local church only,

and not with the denomination generally,

and receives and enjoys church privileges in that church alone.

He can vote on all questions of ecclesiastical polity in that particular church,

and in no other.

He can participate in the supper in that church and no other,

since he is under the watch and care of that church and no other.

The One Loaf.—

There should be but one loaf upon the table. Christ used but one.

The Unleavened Loaf.—

The loaf used by Christ was one of those prepared for the Passover Supper,

and was, therefore unleavened.

1 Cor. 10:17

"The bread which we break,

is it not the communion of the body of Christ?

17 For we being many are one bread, and one body:

for we are all partakers of that one bread."

This one, undivided loaf was designed to teach

that only one undivided body—organization—church as such—not several churches as an Association,

nor parts of several—was authorized to celebrate this ordinance,

or could do it without vitiating it.

1 Corinthians 5

"8 Therefore let us keep the feast,

not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness;

but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

The Wine.—The Savior used wine made of "the grape" —it was "the fruit of the vine."

It could not have been unfermented wine He used,

for unfermented wine, is a misnomer.

There never was, there can not be, a drop of wine without fermentation.

unfermented juice of the grape is but a mass of leaven.

It is this element in the juice that causes it to ferment,

and fermentation is the process by which it throws off, and clears itself,

of this impurity.

Thoroughly fermented wine contains no leaven,

and, therefore, it is only after this natural clarification of itself

that the Savior used, and commanded His churches to use it;

and, limiting this element to wine,

One Cup only should be used, to preserve the symbolism;

yet, where the church is large, and the wine to be used necessarily considerable,

it can be placed upon the table in one vessel, and thanks given,

before it is divided into smaller ones, to be distributed.

See CHAPTER VII Old Landmarkism]

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