Curtis Hutson, Rice's successor, was not KJV Only either. He accepted a position on the North American Overview Committee of the New King James Version. KJV Only is a new dogma that appears to have been slipped into the IFB movement in the mid 1980s mainly through the influence of Jack Hyles, who originally was not KJV Only himself, either.
I think this is an accurate summation of Rice's beliefs. However, I am not sure if Rice was consistently "Universal Church." In his book "Some Serious, Popular False Doctrines Answered From the Scriptures," he says "Not one time is the word 'church' in the Bible used to represent any human organization larger than one local congregation. When a group of local congregations are mentioned, they are called 'churches' (plural, not singular)."
In the book "Dr. Rice, Here are More Questions" he says, " A 'New Testament church' is a local congregation, as I understand it, like 'the church of God at Corinth,' 'the church at Jerusalem,' 'the 7 churches of Asia,' and 'the churches of Galatia.' Thus a denomination is not a church in the New Testament sense. That called-out assembly, including all the saved, referred to I Hebrews 12:22-23, is called a church also, but that is not the way the term is generally used in the New Testament nor the immediate and practical meaning of the term for organized Christian work, as I see it." Here Rice appears to leave open the possibility of Hebrews 12 referring to a Universal Church, but perhaps only in the future.
This post is not intended as the final word on Rice's convictions regarding the Universal Church. If anyone has more information on that, please share it.
