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A Defense of the Trail of Blood by James M. Carroll as Accurate Landmark Baptist History
Have you ever read the pamphlet The Trail of Blood by James M. Carroll? It is a classic presentation of the true history of Baptists–that they had an actual succession of churches from the time of Christ, who founded the first Baptist church, throughout the patristic, medieval, reformation, and modern eras until today. If you have not read it, you should do so. I have a link to a free electronic version in the ecclesiology section of faithsaves.net. You can buy a physical copy at the Lehigh Valley Baptist Church bookstore, among many other places. You can even get a copy at Amazon (affiliate link):
However, Amazon will probably charge more than what you would pay from a church-run Baptist publisher, although if you are getting a bunch of other stuff at Amazon anyway, maybe with free shipping their price will be acceptable.
The Trail of Blood gets a lot of criticism. However, that criticism is unjustified.
1.) The Trail of Blood is narrow-minded!
The Trail of Blood is criticized for its teaching that only Baptist churches are true churches, the kind established by Jesus Christ and preserved from Christ’s day until today. However, Baptist churches are the kind of churches established by Christ, a fact validated by their doctrine and practice, and the Bible promises that the churches Christ established would continue until His return (Ephesians 3:21; Matthew 16:18; 28:20, etc.). The promise of succession for Christ’s churches is not given to the “universal church,” for there is no such thing. Scripture, in the Great Commission and other passages, promises an actual succession of true churches. Scripture teaches what is called the Landmark Baptist view of church succession, and Scripture teaches that each true church is Christ’s bride, and so a “Baptist bride” (an ecclesiological, not a soteriological, assertion–one is in the kingdom through repentant faith alone, not through baptism into the Lord’s church).
2.) The Trail of Blood claims non-Baptist groups were Baptists!
First, one must keep in mind that the Trail of Blood is a large pamphlet, designed for a popular-level audience, not a scholarly book. It is too short to give nuance to every single statement that someone might argue about. Second, Roman Catholicism liked to lump everyone together who was not a Catholic and put the worst possible interpretation on their beliefs, something ancient pagans and post-Reformation Protestants were also not immune to doing. To consider some generally accepted examples, ancient pagans who asserted early Christians were cannibals who committed incest because Christians talked about the “body of Christ” in conjunction with “eating” and “drinking,” and they referred to each other as “brother” and “sister” were grossly inaccurate. Reformation-era opponents of Baptists who said that they were violent people who wished to overthrow the State grossly misrepresented the fact that a huge percentage of the Anabaptists were outright pacifists to smear the entire body of those who practiced believer’s baptism with the actions of a few at the city of Munster (many of whom were not even practitioners of believer’s baptism there). So we should not be surprised if Roman Catholics painted groups of dissenting Christians in the worst possible light.
Think about it this way: if by “Anabaptist” a Catholic simply means someone who baptizes believers, he would classify people who believe like a strong independent Baptist church, people who believe like the Watchtower Society, people in the American Baptist Convention who support sodomy and follow woman preachers who deny the inspiration of Scripture, Pentecostals who handle snakes and drink poison, people in the Iglesia Ni Cristo who think Felix Y. Manalo is the final prophet from God, and Mormons as “Anabaptists.” The Catholic could say that “Anabaptists” deny the Deity of Christ, believe in extra-scriptural revelations, believe Satan and Christ are brothers, believe sexual perversion is acceptable, deny the Bible is the Word of God, and handle snakes in their church services. However, that people who do these evil things also baptize believers does not mean that there are not thousands and thousands of people in independent Baptist churches that follow Scripture faithfully. If the situation is such in our day, should we be surprised that medieval Catholics painted those Anabaptists whom they slaughtered and tortured in the worst possible light?
There are many groups of non-Catholic believers in Christianity before the Reformation. Historical sources on some of them are better than for others, but there is sufficient evidence to believe that among groups such as the Waldenses, Cathari, and Anabaptists Christ’s promise of church perpetuity was fulfilled. That does not mean that every person who identified with these groups had sound beliefs, any more than it means that everyone in Oklahoma who says he is a Baptist has sound beliefs. But it is absolutely rational to believe that the line of true churches promised in Scripture is contained among such groups.
3.) The Trail of Blood takes quotes by historical sources out of context or makes up quotes!
Lord willing, we will deal with a few of these quotes in upcoming weeks. If you want a preview, please see the quotations by non-Baptist historians here in their context.
In summary, the Trail of Blood is a valuable historical source demonstrating the Scriptural truth that Christ has kept His promise to preserve His churches. It does a good job for a large pamphlet. If you have not read it, I encourage you to do so, and to share it with others, so that everyone in the world who is born again sees his need to unite with a Bible-believing Baptist church through baptism and serve the Lord Jesus Christ in His New Testament temple.
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 7 of 7
Summary
In summary, before encouraging anyone to adopt a conspiracy theory, please consider:
Have I followed Biblical principles for evaluating data?
These principles include:
Have the best arguments both for and against the conspiracy been carefully examined?
Is the conspiracy logical?
Are there conflicts of interest in those promoting the conspiracy?
Does the conspiracy theory produce extraordinary evidence for its extraordinary claims?
Does the conspiracy require me to think more highly of myself than I ought to think?
Is looking into this conspiracy redeeming the time?
Are Biblical patterns of authority followed by those spreading the conspiracy?
If the conspiracy passes these evaluative tests, then there may be something to it. If it fails these tests, it should be ignored. If the person promoting the conspiracy to you has not taken the time to follow these Biblical tests, kindly ask him or her to follow Scripture before promoting conspiracies to you, and tell him that after Scripture is followed we may have time to talk, but we won’t before then. Then instead of watching the video on the conspiracy, behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, by the illumination of the Spirit, in the infallible Word (2 Corinthians 3:18).
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 6 of 7
The text of this post started from the sentence: “Is looking into this conspiracy redeeming the time?”
and ended with: “We should follow God’s example in Genesis 18, not Satan’s pattern in Genesis 3.”
The complete 7 part series is now available at the link below. Please view the series there. Feel free to comment below on this sixth part, however. Thank you.
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 5 of 7
Does the conspiracy require me to think more highly of myself than I ought to think?
The Bible’s “love chapter” indicates that “charity vaunteth not itself” and “is not puffed up.” Scripture warns a man must “not … think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly” (Romans 12:3), a principle applicable to all areas of life. If a conspiracy requires us to believe something that the overwhelming majority of scientists or experts in the relevant field say is impossible, we need to have very strong evidence before we adopt this conclusion. If we think that a conspiracy-backed mechanism for causing disease is correct, although mainstream science strongly affirms the opposite, we need to remember that, unless we are experts, we know far less about biology and medicine than those do with whom we disagree. If we are going to adopt assertions about biology when we would fail an introductory biology course unless we spent lots of time reviewing, we need to be humble enough to recognize that biologists, medical doctors, and others with vast expertise are much more likely than us to avoid mistakes and make correct evaluations in their fields of knowledge. It is not logically impossible for the vast majority of airplane engineers to be wrong about something while we are right about it, even though we know next to nothing about how to design airplanes, but it is highly unlikely, and it would be a much better idea to fly in a plane designed by the airplane engineers rather than one that we designed based on videos we watched on YouTube. It is not logically impossible for the vast majority of cell biologists, professors in medical schools, and infectious disease researchers to be wrong about something pertaining to medicine, while we are right about it as non-experts, but it is likewise highly unlikely, and it is probably very wise and health-promoting to humbly recognize that fact as we evaluate conspiratorial claims about disease or the body, and place what a medical association or a health department advises on a higher level than what a body builder or a rapper on YouTube says is good for us.
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 4 of 7
Part four of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “Does the conspiracy theory produce extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims?” to the sentence: “We cannot disprove the possibility that tiny green elephants float and dance waltzes on Jupiter’s moons, while using advanced technology to avoid detection by humans, but the person who asserts that the green elephants are doing this needs to positively prove his assertion before we can rationally believe it.”
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, part 3 of 7
Part three of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “If the conspiracy involves logical contradictions, it cannot be true” to the sentence: “If any and all real or even potential conflicts of interest are not openly and plainly disclosed by the person promoting the conspiracy, a significantly higher level of skepticism is required in evaluating what the proponent of the conspiracy is arguing for.”
–TDR
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, 2 of 7
Part two of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the sentence: “If we have adopted and are going to share a conspiratorial belief with someone else, we need to have answered these questions ourselves and be ready to explain our answers to the person whom we seek to convince” to the sentence: “They are people who are created in God’s image, and we don’t get to slander them, even if their political persuasions, cultural practices, and other ways of living are different—or objectively far more worse and far more sinful—than ours are, thanks to God’s unmerited grace to us.” Feel free to continue to comment below on this post, if you wish, after reading it at the link below.
–TDR
The Regular History of Clever New Interpretations, Teachings, or Takes on and from Scripture: Socinianism
One way to get a Nobel prize in something, you’ve got to break some new ground or discover something no one has ever seen. In the world, the making of a printing press or light bulb changes everything. People still try to invent a better mousetrap. It happens. The phone replaced the telegraph and now our mobile devices, the phone.
Everyone can learn something new from scripture. You might even change or tweak a doctrine you’ve always believed. On the whole, you don’t want to teach from the Bible what no one has ever heard before. The goal is the original intent and understanding of the Author.
From the left comes progressivism. The U. S. Constitution, just over two hundred years old, means something different than when it was written. Loosely constructed, it has a flexible interpretation into which new meanings arise. Hegelian dialectics say a new thesis comes from synthesis of antithesis and a former thesis. Everything can be improved.
Early after the inspiration and then propagation of the Bible, men found new things no one ever saw in scripture. Many of these “finds” started a new movement. People have their fathers, the father of this or that teaching, contradictory to the other, causing division and new factions and denominations. Some of these changes become quite significant, a majority supplanting the constituents of the original teaching.
At the time of the Reformation, it was as if the world first found sole fide and sole scriptura. Men often call justification the Reformation doctrine of justification. This opened a large, proverbial can of worms. Many could read their own Bible in their own language. Others now dug into their own copy of the original languages of scripture. Skepticism grew. “If we didn’t know this before, what else did they not tell us?” It became a time ripe for religious shysters and this practice hasn’t stopped since then.
Socinus
The Italian, Laelius Socinus, was born in 1525 into a distinguished family of lawyers. Early his attention turned from law to scripture research. He doubted the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Socinus moved in 1548 to Zurich to study Greek and Hebrew. He still questioned established doctrine and challenged the Reformers. Laelius wrote his own confession of faith, which introduced different, conflicting beliefs. They took hold of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, born in 1539.
Faustus rejected orthodox Roman Catholic doctrines. The Inquisition denounced him in 1559, so he fled to Zurich in 1562. There he acquired his uncle’s writings. His doubt of Catholicism turned anti-Trinitarian. The Reformation did not go far enough for Socinus. His first published work in 1562 on the prologue of John rejected the essential deity of Jesus Christ.
Socinus’s journeys ended in Poland, where he became leader of the Minor Reformed Church, the Polish Brethren. His writings in the form of the Racovian Catechism survived through the press of the Racovian Academy of Rakow, Poland. His beliefs took the name, Socinianism, now also a catch-all for any type of dissenting doctrine.
Socinianism held that Jesus did not exist until his physical conception. God adopted Him as Son at His conception and became Son of God when the Holy Spirit conceived Him in Mary, a Gnostic view called “adoptionism.” It rejected the doctrine of original sin.
Socianism denied the omniscience of God. It introduced the first well developed concept of “open theism,” which said that man couldn’t have free will under a traditional (and scriptural) understanding of omniscience.
Socinianism also taught the moral example theory of atonement, teaching that Jesus sacrificed himself to motivate people to repent and believe. His death gave men the ability to be saved by their own works, who weren’t sinners by nature anyway.
Unitarians
The work of Socinus lived on in the belief of early English Unitarians, Henry Hedworth and John Biddle. Socinian belief was helped along also by its position of conscientious objection, a practice of refusing to perform military service. This principle was very popular with many and made Socinianism much more attractive to potential adherents. The First Unitarian Church, which followed Socianism as passed down through its leaders in England, was started in 1774 on Essex Street in London, where British Unitarian headquarters are still today.
As the Puritans of colonial America apostatized through various means, Unitarianism, a modern iteration of Socinianism took hold in the Congregational Church in America. After 1820, Congregationalists took Unitarianism as their established doctrine. The doctrine of Christ diminished to Jesus a good man and perhaps a prophet of God and in a sense the Son of God, but not God Himself.
Spirit of Skepticism
I write as an example of the diversity in the history of Christian doctrine and why it takes place. When you read the beliefs of Socinians, you easily see them in modern liberal Christianity. They influence on religious cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
A limited amount of skepticism wards away the acceptance of false doctrine. Better is a Berean attitude (Acts 17:11), searching the scripture to see if these things are so, and what Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, proving all things, holding fast to that which is good.
As I grew up among fundamentalists and independent Baptists, I witnessed regular desire to find something new in the Bible. Many sermons espoused interpretations I had never heard and didn’t see in the text. A preacher often said, “God gave it to me.” You should know God used the man because no one had seen such insights into scripture.
The same spirit of doctrinal novelty continues today in many evangelical churches. The same practice led Joseph Smith in his founding of Mormonism. Many cults arose in 19th century America under the same spirit of skepticism of established historical doctrines.
The Temptation of Novel Teaching
The temptation of novel teaching preys on anyone. Faustus Socinus accepted many orthodox doctrines of his day. He rejected Christ as fully God and fully human because it was contrary to sound reason (ratio sana). This steered Socinians toward Enlightenment thinking, where human reason took the highest role as arbiter of truth.
Warren Wiersbe wrote that H.A. Ironside, longtime pastor of Chicago’s Moody Church, said, “If it’s new, it’s not true, and if it’s true, it’s not new.” Elsewhere I read that Spurgeon first said that. I don’t know. Clever new interpretations, teachings, and takes on and from scripture corrupt and overturn scriptural, saving doctrines in the hearts of men. They condemn them through all eternity.
Conspiracy Theory: Biblical Methods of Evaluation, 1 of 7
Part one of this series is now at the link below. This post originally covered from the beginning of the article to the sentence: “If we have adopted and are going to share a conspiratorial belief with someone else, we need to have answered these questions ourselves and be ready to explain our answers to the person whom we seek to convince.”
–TDR
Reality and Truth: Celebrity Conservatives Versus True Bible Believers
Perhaps you, like me, as a Christian, pay attention to certain celebrity conservatives, who take many of the same or similar viewpoints as you. You know there are differences. Where is the overlap?
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