The Baptist: a conversation

English: John the Baptist baptizing Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

B: "Well, we don't really agree with you. You see, we don't add to the Scriptures. We only use the original King James Version. And we don't add the idea that Baptism can save."

Me: "That's very interesting. I also believe that Scripture shouldn't be added to, and I would say also that it shouldn't be subtracted from either. That's why I believe that baptism does also now save us, not the removal of the filth from the flesh but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the resurrection of Christ. Just as He says in His Word."

I didn't give him the reference. I took him at face value when he stated that he didn't add to God's Word, the basic premise of that statement was that he knew God's Word. And before this point in our conversation he had claimed that he reads the entire Bible every year.

But he missed it the reference. He didn't know the passage.

B: "You can't add to God's Word like that."

Me: "Like what?"

B: "The Bible doesn't say that Baptism saves."

Me: "Isn't 1 Peter 3: 21 in the King James Version? Those are the word's I quoted."

Here he started to look a bit unsettled.

Me: "Even more, I believe that everyone who is baptized into Christ were baptized into His death. Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into His death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the Glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life."

Another, uncertain, puzzled look. Like, maybe he wasn't sure if I were quoting Scripture or just stating things in my own words.

B: "But baptism doesn't do anything. You can't add those ideas into the Scripture."

Me: "Let me see if I understand what you are saying. You read the Bible every year. Right?"

B: "Yes. And I believe what it says."

Me: "So when Peter and Paul said the words I just quoted about what God does through Baptism, then you believe it? I mean, when Peter says that baptism saves, and Paul says that baptism unites us with Christ in His death and resurrection, you believe what those words say plainly right there without adding to them or subtracting from them?"

B: "But baptism doesn't save. You can't add that to God's Word."

Me: "But all those who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ. That's what His apostle says in Galatians 3:27. In context Paul is explaining that the Galatians cannot be saved by the outward observance of the Law, that God makes no distinctions between Jew and Gentile. Rather God bestows faith in Christ on both Jew and Gentile through the gift of Baptism."

B: "But God's Word never says that children can be baptized."

OK, this was a change of direction. A distraction. I think he wanted to reestablish himself and feel more in control of the line of argument he was trying to make.

B: "That's why we have a dedication for the children instead of baptizing them."

Me: "So, which passage in Scripture tells you that you should dedicate children?"

B: "Well, children aren't really able to have faith until they're a bit older."

Me: "So you shouldn't strive to become like one of these little ones who believe in Christ? That's what Christ specifically tells us to be like in Matthew when the disciples asked about who would be the greatest in heaven. How do you explain Timothy who Paul writes, believe from his infancy, the Greek there is specific about the age. Or about John's reaction in the womb of his mother?"

B: "Well we don't deny that God can do special things in certain cases. We just don't add to the Scriptures."

Me: "I believe that baptism is a gracious water of life and washing of regeneration as St. Paul says in Titus 3 'But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.' Notice that He says that He saved us through baptism, that washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. No where does he forbid the baptism of infants. Rather the baptism of infants is already shown in the households baptized in the book of Acts."

B: "I know that Lutherans will claim that Cornelius' household means children also, but it doesn't mention children. We don't add to Scripture."

Me: "That's interesting, because the word 'Household' means everyone that the head of house is responsible for: his wife, children -- even infants, his slaves, and employees who are under his care. How is it adding to the Scripture to read the words as they are written and understood from context? It seems more like an unwillingness to trust what God actually says. How do you think people are saved?"

I tried to say this as nicely and politely as possible. I didn't want his frustration to turn into anger. I wanted him to think about what God's Word actually says about Baptism and about faith.

B: "Well, after serious and sincere reflection a person needs to give his heart to God. It needs to be genuine repentance."

I thank God for the words of Bo Giertz in his novel The Hammer of God for this next bit:

Me: "What would God want with such a vile and defiled thing as our hearts? We'd have to be more pure than St. Paul who admitted that no clean thing dwelt in his heart. Doesn't Christ's Apostle John say that we are not saved by the will of man, and that we didn't choose Christ, but He chose us? If faith is not possible for a child because it is an act of the will (if I understand you correctly-please correct me if I misunderstand) then all those who die in their sleep are doomed to eternal damnation, all the mentally incapable are likewise doomed. It would serve no purpose to preach to them if the source of conversion is their own will. But faith, in Scripture, is not an act of the human will, it is the gift of God. Surely you remember Ephesians chapter 2?"

B: "Well, yes, faith is a gift, but you need to really be genuinely repentant. And you need to use your reason because faith doesn't go against reason."

Me: "Two things: First, how can you ever be sure you've repented enough? Second, aren't you familiar with 1 Corinthians chapter 2 where Paul plainly teaches that our reason is so corrupt that it cannot even see sin without the enlightening power of God through His Word? There he says 'These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.' 

I continued: "It seems like you are saying, and please forgive me if I am misunderstanding--it seems like you think a person can make his own choice to be saved even though God describes our utter inability to do anything like that with words like 'You were dead in your trespasses and sins'. And from this death and inability he made us alive. He tells us specifically that this is His gift to us, the gift of faith is His to give. And He tells us how He gives it through Baptism when He writes, 'Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.'"

 B was very frustrated, but not angry. The topic changed to travel, the snow storm. I wished him and his family safe travels.

You see, it was his brother's funeral. In the sermon I did spend a short amount of time on how God had called his brother to faith through baptism, and we need to trust God's promise. It's one of those great ironies of Church history that those going by the name Baptist have no faith in Christ's written Word about His baptism and what He says He does by this Means of Grace. Our conversation was actually much longer and had more detail. But I can only recall the main flow of it and some of the main points. 

Funerals are a great opportunity for evangelism. I pray for the dead man's brother. I pray that he can some day actually believe that He is forgiven only for Christ's sake and that he is clothed in Christ's righteousness through the power of God's Word in Baptism.
 
For someone so concerned about not adding to God's Word, he didn't seem to really know it very well. And he seemed to have no hesitation in ignoring those parts of God's Word that disagreed with his own theory about how he can make himself righteous by "really repenting."

The Gospel of Jesus' Wife

Today, many academics and their disciples scoff at the efforts of Christian Apologists in the past who seemed desperate to prove the veracity of the Bible through archaelolgy, paleography, epigraphy, numismatics, or any piece of debris that the ancients threw into their trash piles.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was the source of great and enduring controversy for many reasons. One reason was that among those manuscripts were writings from the Hebrew Bible that basically demonstrated that the Hebrew Text we have received today had been faithfully copied from ancient times.

That simple fact demolished the generations of unbelieving scholarship that sought to undermine the text of the Bible by questioning the reliability of its transmission from generation to generation.

Irony plays into this, because there are many unbelieving scholars today who pin their hopes of undermining the Scriptures and the doctrine of God's Word on the discovery of some previously unknown manuscripts. These discovered manuscripts are held up as proof that the Bible is a dishonest representation of Christ and His teaching.

The latest attempt at this was just published at the International Congress of Coptic Studies by Karen L. King in Rome last week.

Her manuscript is a papyrus fragment about the size of a business card, acquired from an unnamed collector. It happened to be in a collection of manuscripts that this collector bought, and no one knows where the slip of papyrus came from.

The writing is in Coptic (Egyptian). King's translation of the fragment is as follows:

Well, according to newspapers like the New York Times: there you have it. A small scrap of paper which came from no-one knows-where and is a part of no-one-knows-what kind of document which unequivocally proves that Jesus was married and that he had a girl as one of his disciples!

The NY Times wrote: "Even with many questions unsettled, the discovery could reignite the debate over whether Jesus was married, whether Mary Magdalene was his wife and whether he had a female disciple. These debates date to the early centuries of Christianity, scholars say. But they are relevant today, when global Christianity is roiling over the place of women in ministry and the boundaries of marriage."

In that paragraph, the Times' author, Laura Goodstien,  has told us why she chose to publish an article about this scrap in their paper. The issue of Gay marriage is at the forefront in this election cycle. The Roman Catholic church is currently being attacked because of its Scriptural and traditional stance against women in the priesthood. Many mainstream protestant and reformed denominations are changing their theology away from the Biblical teaching to adapt their teaching and practice against the Sixth Commandment in accordance with popular society.

The discovery and publication of this scrap would appear to lend some academic credibility to these changes from the Bible's teaching.

But the scholars are never without their own bias and agenda. Consider the theological and political direction of Dr. Karen King's other publications: (from the Harvard website)

• The Secret Revelation of John
• The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle
• What Is Gnosticism?
• Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (with Elaine Pagels)
• Revelation of the Unknowable God. 
• Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed.) 
• Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today (ed.).

 "Her particular theoretical interests are in discourses of normativity (orthodoxy and heresy), gender studies, and religion and violence."

There is nothing in the scrap that calls the text a "Gospel." That was a term used by King to provoke interest and controversy.

Perhaps the controversy around the "Gospel of Judas" may be the best illustration of what happens when such texts are discovered and published in sensational ways. National Geographic did a big production about how that manuscript undermined key teachings of Scripture and the Church. Then later analysis showed that the hoopla was all incorrect--that the so called "Gospel" of Judas didn't say anything that it was made out to say.

So how should a Christian understand and react to discoveries like this? 

Consider the teaching in this prayer.

Lord Jesus Christ, with us abide,
For round us falls the eventide;
Nor let Thy Word, that heav'nly light,
For us be ever veiled in night.

In these last days of sore distress
Grant us, dear Lord, true steadfastness
That pure we keep, till life is spent,
Thy holy Word and Sacrament.

Lord Jesus, help, Thy Church uphold,
For we are sluggish, thoughtless, cold.
O prosper well Thy Word of grace
And spread its truth in ev'ry place!

O keep us in Thy Word, we pray;
The guile and rage of Satan stay!
O may Thy mercy never cease!
Give concord, patience, courage, peace.

O God, how sin's dread works abound!
Throughout the earth no rest is found,
And falsehood's spirit wide has spread,
And error boldly rears its head.

And ever is there something new
Devised to change Thy doctrine true;
Lord Jesus! as Thou still dost reign,
Those vain presumptuous minds restrain;

And as the cause and glory, Lord,
Are Thine, not ours, to us afford
Thy help and strength and constancy.
And keep us ever true to Thee.

Thy Word shall fortify us hence,
It is Thy Church's sure defense;
O let in its pow'r confide,
That we may seek no other guide.

O grant that in Thy holy Word
We here may live and die, dear Lord;
And when our journey endeth here,
Receive us into glory there.

False Messiah Sun Myung Moon Dies

Sun Myung Moon passed away today. He was the founder of the Unification Church in 1954. The full name of his cult is "The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity".

Rev. Joshua Cotter, vice president of the Unification Church USA, said Sunday that “the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, revered by millions as the Messiah and True Parent, who was born in Korea but who lived more than 40 years in America … has ascended.”  (WT article)

The Unification Church, commonly called "Moonism" in the United States, claims about 3 million members world-wide.

Moon claimed that Jesus came to him in 1935 and told him to finish the work of establishing the kingdom of God on earth. Moon wrote his book The Divine Principle (published 1945) about his theology and plan to unite Christianity and the world into a one-world/one-religion peace movement.

Moon claims to be the messiah of the Second Coming and his wife is the Holy Spirit. He and his wife, called The True Parents where he is the True Father and his wife the True Mother, are the first couple to be able to bring forth children with no original sin. "The cross is the symbol of the defeat of Christianity." The Bible is considered scripture along with Moon’s work "Divine Principles." Sin is genetically based. It is not a moral issue. The thieves on the cross represent political movements. The thief on the right side of Jesus represents democracy. The thief on the left of Jesus is communism. Adam and Eve fell because of sexual sin. Eve had sexual relations with Satan. Jesus is a ‘true person’ though not God in flesh. The Holy Spirit is ‘the True Mother,’ or ‘the Second Eve." The church denies the doctrine of the Trinity.

Nature is dualistic: male and female, positive and negative, external and internal. God has an external and internal aspect called the Universal Prime Energy.  It creates, develops, and sustains the cosmos. God's internal aspect of has to do with personhood - motivation, purpose and identity.

People determine their own future place in the spirit world after death through what they do here on earth. (CARM Unification Church)

Moon and his Unification Church have invested very heavily in quite diverse areas over the years. Just a few examples of media investments: Moon founded News World Communications in 1976 which purchased United Press International in 2000. In 1982 they founded the Washington Times.

What this means is that the non-Christian cult of Moonism has great power and influence in the world through many investments. It remains to be seen how the organization will shake down now that the founder/messiah has died.

Moon had instituted a political party in S. Korea called "The Party for God, Peace, Unification, and Home." This political group is now reported to be in charge of every polling station in S. Korea. It was Moon's intent to have this political group spread to Japan and the U.S.

Another Dooms-Day Prediction

I was reading the news this morning, watching a video of Garrett McNamera's new record setting surf on the face of a 78 foot wave off of Nazare, Portugal last November. Ads sometimes pop up to obscure the videos. One that popped up was "The End-Time Is Here: 2008 Was God's Last Warning. Economic Collapse, WWIII".

Of course I clicked on it. What with the McNamera story I had visions of Gil the Surfer in Niven and Pournel's apocalyptic sci-fi novel Lucifer's Hammer. Gil is a character in that novel who fills out the Sci-fi trope known as "Dying Moment of Awesome" when he surfs out a tsunami created by a cometary impact, only to be swatted out of the sea by a skyscraper.

Turns out the ad was for Ronald Weinland who believes:

May 27, 2012, is the time that I have stated as being the date Jesus Christ will return as King of kings over all government on this earth. For such an event to come to pass, the Trumpets of Revelation must all sound, the United States and dollar collapse, the ten nations of Europe arise to fulfill the final revival of the Holy Roman Empire, and Russia with China must unite against Europe in WWIII.

 His apocalypse page is found at the-end.com.

Weinland is associated with a group called The Church of God. The Church of God is a Millenialistic group following H.W.Armstrong and his Millerite views (not just the end of the world, but requiring the observance of Old Testament holy days) , and the views of Alexander Hislop (Read the section from TCoG page on Pagan Origins).

The Church of God runs the website titled biblical-truth.com where their doctrine is presented in a more organized way.

Weinland and The Church of God are the descendants of Herbert W. Armstrong's "Worldwide Church of God" which published the magazine "The Plain Truth" and had been non-Christian (non-Trinitarian) up until after H.W. Armstrong's death in 1986.

They believe that water baptism by immersion is a required condition for salvation but do not believe that Baptism is a means of grace through which God gives forgiveness. For them, Baptism is merely a law which requires them to show everyone else their faith by the symbolic act of baptism, just another law they are required to obey:

Water baptism is the ordinance ordained of Christ by which we express our FAITH in Christ as Saviour -- our ACCEPTANCE of His death, burial, and resurrection for us, and our repentance of the old life and burial of it, rising to new and higher life henceforth. It is a beautiful ordinance, full of meaning! 

So, we have a denomination that is nominally Christian in that it appears to acknowledge the Trinity. This denomination denies Scripture's teaching on Baptism and the Lord's Supper as means of God's grace and turns them into works of men. The denomination emphasizes the Mosaic Covenant to the obscuring of Salvation by Grace through Faith in Christ alone. They follow the Millerite doctrine and the delusion of Hilsop's anti-Catholic and anti-Christian attacks on the origins of Christian holidays and liturgical practices. They do not have the Word taught in truth and purity and they have no sacraments. They are not the Church of God as taught by God in the Scripture.

May 27th is just a few days away. Too bad they don't remember "The Great Disappointment" very well.

Sure, God could choose to end the world on that day. But the time is up to God, and He has made it clear that no sinful human knows when He will come again:

³⁶ “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. ³⁷ But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ³⁸ For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, ³⁹ and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. ⁴⁰ Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. ⁴¹ Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. ⁴² Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. ⁴³ But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. ⁴⁴ Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Matthew 24)

But there is a passage in this same chapter of Matthew that speaks of Wienland, Hilsop, Miller, Armstrong, The Church of God and others like them:

²³ “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. ²⁴ For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. ²⁵ See, I have told you beforehand. (Matthew 24)

Weinland is a false teacher based on his teaching about Scripture. His dooms-day prediction is just one facet of that teaching. But this dooms-day teaching is a very clear example of how willing to part from God's written Word.


Just when we appear to be through with Camping, another one crops up.


If Weinland and his group insist on doing according to the Old Testament requirements, let him consider the following from Deuteronomy 18:

²⁰ But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’ ²¹ And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’— ²² when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.

Under the New Covenant we no longer stone the false prophet, but he is still clearly labeled a false prophet and avoided. So also should Weinland be considered a false prophet and not heeded.

Walk Through the Bible Seminar: To Go or Not?

For those who don't want to take the time to read the full discussion:

Don't bother going to the seminar, open your Bible instead and read it regularly instead of going to seminars that refuse to tell you what is in them.

Their logo

For the rest:

I'm sorry I got to this so late. A few members asked me about a seminar that is being promoted for this weekend at an area church. The seminar is called Walk Through the Bible. And the promoters promise that it will open up your understanding like nothing else ever has.

Of course, the founder and author, Bruce Wilkinson, says this about everything he sells to popular Christian groups and individuals.

Some readers may remember his book The Prayer of Jabez (useful review) where he wrote

"I want to teach you how to pray a daring prayer that God always answers. It is brief—only one sentence with four parts—and tucked away in the Bible, but I believe it contains they key to a life of extraordinary favor with God. This petition has radically changed what I expect from God and what I experience every day by His power. In fact, thousands of believers who are applying its truths are seeing miracles happen on a regular basis."

 Yes, it was all works righteousness. Wilkinson went to Africa and a widely self-promoted mission. That mission was specifically designed not to preach Christ (his own description) but to reform society. Wilkinson's mission failed, in spite of fervently praying The Prayer of Jabez the way Wilkinson taught.

Wilkinson's own website is a very slick and powerful self-promotion. The website for Walk Through the Bible seminars is also very slick, extremely low on teaching content, high on promises and accolades, and offers a large variety of products for sale on the basis of this minimal information.

They do offer a pdf sample of a Walk Through the Bible study Bible. It contains the opening chapters of Genesis and their notes for study. There are a lot of motivational notes, very little about sin and redemption. There are no notes on the sins in Sodom and Gomorrah. This is probably to avoid controversial topics. The main focus is how to do better by conforming one's self to God's plan, and that plan is kind of tricky to see, but they find slogans for the things they like.

Another Lutheran pastor suggested to me that the content was likely based in the false doctrines of Dispensationalism because of the local radio promotions. I didn't find Dispensationalism on the product's website. So that view may be due to the nature of the promoters in our area.

What I did find in the website, besides all kinds of slick products on which to spend money, was this:

The Walk Through the Bible product is aimed at people who feel they don't know the Bible like they should and are looking for a quick and easy way to feel like they have a good sound understanding.

My sense about it is that those who don't really know Scripture will be amazed about what they learn and disappointed that their own pastors have failed them so much in teaching them the "real" truth about God's plan for them in this world. I think that the program will focus on false doctrines that the health and prosperity of the Christian is a sign of God's blessing and promote the false doctrine of social justice as "acts of Christian brotherly love."

I also think that if you know your Bible well you will be sadly disappointed with the seminar, even if some of the teaching gimmicks are cool.

Wilkinson has a track record. We know him by his fruits already. He is a false prophet. Maybe he's good at packaging, just like Rick Warren's 40 Days materials. But in the past it's all been packaging without real sound Biblical content.

Don't waste your money or time. Just open up your own Bible and start reading.