Watchman Magazine

COMMON SENSE QUESTIONS A "CHURCH OF CHRIST" PREACHER CANNOT CLEARLY ANSWER

By Pastor David Martin
Solid Rock Baptist Church

David Martin is pastor of the Solid Rock Baptist Church, 5893 Old Brownsville Rd. E, Bartlett, TN 38135 USA; phone: 901-634-1622. He is a 1984 graduate of Pensacola Bible Institute of Florida, and was ordained to the gospel ministry in 1986. He has been in his current pastorate for eight years. His article on the Church of Christ cult is the result of in-depth personal conversation with a Church of Christ elder that led to a 3-day public debate with a Church of Christ evangelist in 1997. The debate was attended by 250 people nightly from within a 300-mile radius of Memphis, Tennessee.This is one of the most controversial articles on the church of Christ you will find anywhere. No church of Christ preacher can satisfactorily answer any of the questions posed by Pastor Martin.

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"For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words." (1 Corinthians 2:10-13, NASB)

From this passage we learn that God has revealed Himself through the work of the Holy Spirit to the chosen apostles of Christ. The apostles are said to teach in words, “…not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit.” It is only reasonable to assume that the revelation of the mind of God in words are words that man can understand, and understand these words in the same way that God understands them. The issue of understandable language gets to the very heart of the issue of faith. Do we believe the Bible? Is it God’s word? Is the Bible God’s complete and final revelation of God to man? Does Hebrews 1:1-2 mean what it says about God’s speaking to man in these last times? "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world" (NASB). When you break down this statement without all the modifiers it says that God has spoken, that God has spoken to man, and that God has spoken to man through His Son. What do we believe?

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Dear Larry,

Due to the fact that you believe that you are saved in part or wholly by baptism, I must mark you as one still in darkness and as one who has not seen that we are complete in Jesus Christ and his finished work. Ephesians 2:8-9 says that we are saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves. What is it about that that you don’t understand? Paul said if it be works it is something that God owes us but grace is the gift of God which is faith. Larry, due to the fact that the Bible says that we are saved by grace through faith, and you say that it is by some work that we do like baptism, or any other thing, I would bid you to repent and trust in the finished work of Christ and nothing else but Christ and God will save you. I hope you will take this as a letter of love and may God have mercy on you.

By his grace, Frank L. McClanahan

 

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your letter and for your clarity of expression. I appreciate your willingness to state boldly what you believe. I trust that you will grant me the same right to respond with equal directness to your arguments.

(1) Baptism And The Finished Work Of Christ: Frank, suppose I were to say, "Due to the fact that you believe that you are saved in part or wholly by faith, I must mark you as one still in darkness and as one who has not seen that we are complete in Jesus Christ and his finished work," how would you answer me? Primitive (Hardshell) Baptists make the same argument against you as you have made against me. They do not believe that faith is essential to salvation. Thus, when you say that one must believe in Jesus, they will accuse you of not trusting "in the finished work of Jesus Christ." Tell me, Frank, how you would answer their charge?

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In a recent exchange between a Christian evangelist and a Baptist "pastor," the latter stated that anything one needs to do in order to be saved is a work, and thus nullifies grace.

His Calvinistic "faith only" doctrine is coming back to bite him. Surely, he will admit that one needs to believe in order to be saved. Is belief a work that nullifies grace? Some of Christ’s followers asked him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?". Jesus answered and said to them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent’" (John 6:28-29).

But the Calvinist will also agree that a little confession is good for the soul. He submits to Paul’s teaching in Romans 10:9 which demands that oral confession precede salvation: "[I]f you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus … you will be saved." The minimal effort required to articulate such a confession as the Ethiopian eunuch made in Acts 8:37 is a facet of faith, the Calvinist argues and thus is not really a work. Oh?

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September 24-25, 2001
Cincinnati, Ohio

In May of 2001, a David Steinmann challenged Tom Roberts concerning what Steinmann called "baptismal regeneration". Tom, of course, had only stood for the truth of God’s word that Jesus commanded and His apostles taught water baptism for the remission of sins. Both Stan Cox, editor of Watchman Magazine and myself, as Associate Editor supported Tom and answered Mr. Steinmann through several e-mails. In an e-mail of May 26, under the subject line "Pony Up Stan" Mr. Steinmann offered a challenge to a public debate. His challenge was very weak, but did produce a serious response from Stan Cox:

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If we want to understand the gospel which Jesus preached, we go back to its beginning. That beginning is not the personal teaching of Christ while on earth, but the preparatory work done by John the Baptist. Mark notes this fact as he begins his Gospel account with these words:

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the Prophets: "Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You. The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (Mark 1:1-4).

Hence, the following facts must be understood from the work of John the Baptist:

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People often comment on how much things change with the passing of time. We also see this with things found in the New Testament. Many things we find therein are very different from what we see in modern day religion. A good example of this is seen when we compare cases of conversion from the book of Acts with some modern day concepts. Let us read of the case recorded in Acts 8:26-39:

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In the 8th chapter of Acts, we find the record of the work of Philip the Evangelist in Samaria, and as he was called by an angel of God for a special mission to preach to one man (Acts 8:5; Acts 8:26). He preached to multitudes in Samaria with great success. Philip was not an apostle, but was obviously a gifted teacher and preacher of God’s word who had the gift to do miracles but not the apostolic privilege of passing on his gifts to others (Acts 8:7, 13, 18).

In the case of both circumstances where Philip preached, people were baptized into Christ (Acts 8:12, 13, 38). The record tells of his preaching “the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12) and simply preaching “Jesus” (Acts 8:35) both of which resulted in the baptism of those who heard him preach and believed what they heard. All of this was in keeping with the command of Jesus given first to His apostles to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and in baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16).

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This subject is perhaps the most argued, the most denied, and the most misunderstood among people who say they believe in God, in Christ, and say they are saved. I myself have debated this subject twice between November of 1998 and March of 1999. I affirmed that baptism was necessary for the remission of sins and my opponent denied this. Why is this such a controversial topic? Why such division on this subject when the New Testament is filled with references concerning the necessity of baptism?

Defining “Baptism”Baptism, as the word is used in the Bible, is “consisting of the processes of immersion, submersion and emergence …. to dip” (Vine’s Amplified Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, p. 62). Mr. Thayer defines baptism as, “to immerge, submerge …. to overwhelm, to be overwhelmed with calamities, of those who must bear them” (Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon, p. 94). Therefore, baptism itself is an immersion in something. The context tells us the element. This will be made clear in our next point.

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