The early church leaders lived close to the time of Christ and the apostles; plus, they staunchly defended the faith against the first major heretics. However, even they, with their commitment, courage, and character also harbored error and even strange, scandalous, and silly teachings.

The Gospel of Thomas, (unknown author) as early as A.D. 40, ran off the rails by commanding nudity during baptism! “Jesus said: ‘When you unclothe yourselves and are not ashamed, and take your garments and lay them beneath your feet like the little children (and) trample on them, then [you will see] the Son of the Living One, and you will not be afraid.’” Jesus didn’t say that!

It seems they removed their clothes out of fear that a demon might hide inside a fold and be baptized with them! Silly and scandalous teaching so early in church history.

The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (A.D. 95) stoops to pagan mythology when it declared, “Let us consider that wonderful sign [of the resurrection] which takes place in Eastern lands, that is, in Arabia and the countries round about. There is a certain bird which is called a phoenix. This is the only one of its kind, and lives five hundred years.” Even such notable non-Christians as Herodotus, Lucan, and Pliny the Elder, along with Isidore of Seville (a professing Christian) propagated that same error! Some even said that the bird is resurrected after each life and can live 1400 years!

It is amazing what sane, educated, and professedly orthodox people believed and please note that Clement was bishop at Rome and knew the Apostle Peter. Some say Peter consecrated him as bishop yet Clement thought the Greek phoenix was a fact! Unbelievable!

Justin Martyr (died 165) declared, “And then, when Jesus had gone to the river Jordan, where John was baptizing, and when He had stepped into the water, a fire was kindled in the Jordan.” There is no fire in the Gospel account, just water.

Incredibly, Martyr also indicates that the “true religion” predated Christianity. He declared that the “seeds of Christianity” (manifestations of the Logos acting in history) actually predated Christ’s incarnation as unknowing Christians! Heresy from Martyr! This notion allowed him to claim many historical Greek philosophers including Plato and Socrates as unknowing Christians! Since personal salvation requires a choice, there cannot be any “unknowing” Christians. Furthermore, while dying, Socrates ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Aesculapius–the Roman god of healing.

This same heresy was taught by Clement of Alexandria (who died 215) that Greeks were saved through philosophy! “Before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for justification to the Greeks; now it is useful for piety . . . for it brought the Greeks to Christ as the law did the Hebrews” (Miscellanies 1:5 A.D. 208). He also taught that Christ’s promise of salvation is available to all, even those condemned to hell!

Clement declared, “By striving to imitate Christ, man can achieve salvation.” Say what! He suggested that Christ is neither male nor female, and that God the Father has both male and female aspects. Please note that Clement was an early pastor at the church in Rome!

Tertullian, who died in 240, taught that dedicated Christians would not have false hair, wear colored garments, have gold and silver vases, downy pillows, eat white bread, take warm baths, or shave the head or beard. In fact, he taught that to shave the face was to lie against our own face and was an attempt to improve on the works of the Creator.

He taught that there is no public entertainment which does not inflict spiritual damage.

He also taught, “Without baptism, salvation is attainable by none.” So, Tertullian taught baptismal regeneration!

Origen, considered one of the most alert, astute, and active minds of the early church, even castrated himself thinking he was obeying Matt. 19:12! Gibbon wittily commented, “As it was Origen’s general practice to allegorize Scripture, it seems unfortunate that, in this instance only, he should have adopted the literal sense.”

Self-castration! I would not call Origen alert, astute, and active but dumb, dumber, and dumbest.

Origen declared, “It is not possible to receive forgiveness of sins without baptism” (Exhortation to the Martyrs 30 A.D. 235). Here was another famous early church leader who taught baptismal regeneration!

Origen rejected the literal teaching of Scripture asserting that the reader would find many passages in the Gospels that were untrue events! He believed God had created other worlds and would do so again in the future. Origen was another mixed up dude!

One of the most famous early church leaders was Augustine who declared, “In the Church, therefore, there are three ways in which sins are forgiven: in baptisms, in prayer, and in the greater humility of penance.”

He even went further to teach baptism of infants! “The custom of Mother Church in baptizing infants is certainly not to be scorned, nor is it to be regarded in any way as superfluous, nor is it to be believed that its tradition is anything except apostolic” This famous theologian declared, “The sacrament of baptism is most assuredly the sacrament of regeneration.” Not according to Scripture.

In 420, he declared, “Baptism washes away all, absolutely all, our sins, whether of deed, word, or thought, whether sins original or added, whether knowingly or unknowingly contracted.” How do followers of Augustine handle his teaching of baptismal generation?

Augustine said, “It is better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected….Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal sufferings, before they attain the highest grade of religious development.”

By that teaching, Augustine laid the foundation for the bloody Inquisition in Europe by the Roman Church in dealing with “heretics.”

Modern Christians must ask some questions: Is it possible to be a born again person and hold some of the teachings revealed here? And remember that some of these men gladly went to their deaths for their faith. If a local pastor or seminary professor taught what Origin, Justin, and Tertullian believed, would he be fired peremptorily? Have Christians down through the centuries been too quick to accept a preacher or teacher because of his impressive preaching, pedigree, and personality? Has there been massive failure on the part of pastors and seminary professors to rebuke, exhort, and contend for the faith? What responsibility do laymen have in challenging a pastor who preaches strange, scandalous, and silly beliefs? Isn’t it time to get back to what we have professed: we teach only what the Bible teaches?

Maybe historian Will Durant provided the answer why the early church ran off the rails so quickly when he wrote, “While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity, and displayed the natural paganism of mankind.” Faithful Bible preaching would have kept early Christians on the right track and it will do so today.

Boys’ new book Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! was published recently by Barbwire Books; to get your copy, click here. An eBook edition is also available.

In plowing through King’s writings during the holidays, I found that he was very careless and poorly educated. He often started a sentence with the first two letters in caps, he repeated words, and he left the suffix or “s” off words. Misspellings are numerous and he seldom used commas! He evidently did not know the difference in led and lead since he made that mistake many times. He also did not know that there is no word undermind confusing it with undermine. His work is not the quality of a seminary student but maybe an average college freshman!

King’s major problem was his heresy. He easily disassociated himself from traditional Christianity and it is shocking that so many Christians and Conservatives refuse to hold his feet to the theological fire. Principled people traffic in truth and eschew error in anyone and everyone. Such people do not bow to “sacred cows.”

In a paper written on the “Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East,” I discovered eight spelling, punctuation, and composition mistakes in nine consecutive lines! Moreover, King posited the theological error that Scripture was subpoenaed to “appear before the judgement [sic] seat of reason.” He continued: “They realized that if they wanted to get an objective standard of reference they would they would [sic] have to go beyond the pages of the old [sic] testament [sic] into the path that lead [sic] to that locked door.” King was favoring the position that the Old Testament is not a reliable historical record.

He clearly asserted that the book of Jeremiah was not infallible. He also espoused the heretical view that the non-canonical books were as good as or better than the Old Testament books! “To my mind, many of the works of this period were infinitely more valuable than those that received canonicity. The materials to justify such statements are found mainly in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. These works, although presented pseudonymously, are of lasting significance to the Biblical student.” He is saying the contradictions, conflicts, and confusion of non-biblical books are better than the God-inspired books!

He also decided that the Genesis accounts of man’s creation and the Flood were not original–or accurate. King concluded that the writer of Genesis took information from the Gilgamesh Epic. King was like all unbelievers who jump at the opportunity to denounce, deny, and denigrate the Word of God and praise pagan literature.

King concludes his paper dealing with archeology and the Old Testament: “If we accept the Old Testament as being ‘true’ we will find it full of errors, contradictions, and obvious impossibilities–as that the Pentateuch was written by Moses.” No, the “contradictions” were in King’s life, not in the Scripture. And Moses did write the Pentateuch.

In a paper titled “What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection,” King let the kitty out of the sack as to his heresy. Note the title alone is incriminating. The doctrines of Christ did not come about because of “experiences” of the early Christians! They came about because the Holy Spirit moved upon men to write about eternal truths.

King declared, “But if we delve into the deeper meaning of these doctrines, [Christ’s deity, virgin birth, and physical resurrection] and somehow strip them of their literal interpretation, we will find that they are based on a profound foundation. Although we may be able to argue with all degrees of logic that these doctrines are historically and philolophically [sic] untenable.” Untenable means something that cannot be defended or maintained. You only thought you could defend the doctrines surrounding Christ.

He added, “Saint Paul and the early church followers could have never come to the conclusion that Jesus was divine if there had not been some uniqueness in the personality of the historical Jesus.” So the early Christians had no other reason to believe He was deity? What about His miraculous birth? What about walking on water? What about raising the dead? What about giving sight to the blind? What about rising from the dead? What about Christ’s declaration: “I and my Father are one.” No, no reason at all!

Returning to the divinity of Christ, King concluded: “So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit og [sic] God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.” So all men have the potential of being divine!

King was a great speaker, a crusader, and had courage but he was not a believer! He had no regard for truth. He can be respected for his contribution to civil rights but not revered, respected, and remembered as a Christian leader for that he was not.

My critics should remember Socrates’ concept that “a man must not be honored above the truth.” So, I won’t be honoring King this year as I have not in past years.

Boys’ eBook, Martin Luther King, Jr.: Judged by His Character, Not His Color! is available at amazon.com for $3.99.

Boys’ new book Muslim Invasion: The Fuse is Burning! was published recently by Barbwire Books; to get your copy, click here. An eBook edition is also available.

Revealing the very crass, crude, and corrupt King would destroy the hero worship of most Americans. King is not held to the same standard of “lesser” men; therefore preachers, pundits, and politicians refuse to tell the truth about him! Is that not black privilege? Moreover, have other black leaders assumed that they too have a right not to be judged by a high standard of civility, godly living, and personal conduct–Oh, all right, how about simple honesty?

Some King defenders excused his very close association with Communist activists such as Abner W. Berry, Bayard Rustin (who spent time in jail for public homosexual acts), Hunter Pitts O’Dell, Stanley Levison (bag man for the Communist Party in the U.S.), Robert Williams, and Carl and Anne Braden (convicted of conspiring to bomb the home of a Black and place the blame on “white segregationists.”) All the above were vile Communists dedicated to the overthrow of our government, but King climbed in bed with them. He was defended by his followers and since his mission was so sacred, he was forgiven. Black privilege on steroids.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy warned King to sever connections with the Communists that surrounded him but he refused to listen. Finally, President Kennedy told King: “They’re Communists. You’ve got to get rid of them.” Even then, King discussed, delayed, and dissimulated.

King’s many grammatical errors and plagiarism were admitted by King’s family and the plagiarism was characterized by King defenders as “textual appropriation.” King was “only doing what Blacks do.” That is a slander of all black scholars. Others identified his thievery as “borrowings,” “voice merging,” “resonances,” “intertextualizations,” “blending,” “alchemizing,” and other whoppers. King stole 66% of his Ph.D. dissertation at Boston University from another author but the university did not revoke, recall, or repudiate his degree! No white student would have been treated so kindly. It all translates: Black privilege. Special rules for special people.

Had I been a member of King’s church or a preacher in his movement, I would have charged him with heresy, tried him in a religious court, and stripped him of his religious credentials. He provided evidence of his heresy and heresy is not cancelled out by Black privilege!

King’s graduate paper titled “What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection,” let the kitty out of the sack as to his heresy. King declared, “But if we delve into the deeper meaning of these doctrines, [Christ’s deity, virgin birth, and physical resurrection] and somehow strip them of their literal interpretation, we will find that they are based on a profound foundation. Although we may be able to argue with all degrees of logic that these doctrines are historically and philolophically [sic] untenable.” So the early Christians had no other reason to believe He was deity? What about His miraculous birth? What about walking on water? What about raising the dead? What about giving sight to the blind? What about rising from the dead? What about Christ’s declaration: “I and my Father are one.” No, no reason at all!

Returning to the divinity of Christ, King concluded: “So that the orthodox view of the divinity of Christ is in my mind quite readily denied. The true significance of the divinity of Christ lies in the fact that his achievement is prophetic and promissory for every other true son of man who is willing to submit his will to the will and spirit og [sic] God. Christ was to be only the prototype of one among many brothers.” So all men have the potential of being divine! King was not a believer and any honest Bible scholar of any persuasion will admit that that statement alone would disqualify King being recognized as a Christian, let alone a leader in any Christian group.

He makes much of Mark’s Gospel not dealing with the virgin birth but a seminarian surely understands that the argument from silence is a very weak argument. No one says that all four gospels deal with the very same incidents or deal with them from the same perspective.

In a paper titled “The Sources of Fundamentalism and Liberalism Considered Historically and Psychologically” King wrote: “The fundamentalist is quite aware of the fact that scholars regard the garden [sic] of Eden and the serpent Satan and the hell of fire as myths analogous to those found in other oriental religions. He knows also that his beliefs are the center of redicule [sic] by many.”

He closes his paper with: “Others [sic] doctrines such as a supernatural plan of salvation, the Trinity, the substitutionary theory of the atonement, and the second coming of Christ are all quite prominant [sic] in fundamentalist thinking. Such are the views of the fundamentalist and they reveal that he is oppose [sic] to theological adaptation to social and cultural change. He sees a progressive scientific age as a retrogressive spiritual age. Amid change all around he is willing to preserve certain ancient ideas even though they are contrary to science.” King was saying that you are a dummy if you believe the Bible to be the very Word of God.

As to the atonement of Christ, he wrote, “First we may say that any doctrine which finds the meaning of atonement in the truimph [sic] of Christ over such cosmic powers as sin, death, and Satan is inadequate.” He added that to transfer guilt and punishment to another is “bizarre.” He goes on: “Moreover, no person can morally be punished in place of another. Such ideas as ethical and penal substitution become immoral.” Any white Baptist preacher would be drummed out the ministry for such heresy but King had special privilege.

As to the Second Coming of Christ, Day of Judgment and resurrection of the body King wrote that these teachings taken literally “are quite absurd….It is obvious that most twentieth century Christians must frankly and flatly reject any view of a physical return of Christ.”

He clearly asserted that the book of Jeremiah was not infallible. He also espoused the heretical view that non-canonical books were as good as or better than the Old Testament books! “To my mind, many of the works of this period were infinitely more valuable than those that received canonicity. The materials to justify such statements are found mainly in the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. These works, although presented pseudonymously, are of lasting significance to the Biblical student.” Any study of those books will easily confirm the fact that they are forgeries, foolishness, and fraudulent and did not come close to the canonical books which were inspired, infallible, and inerrant.

Throughout his writings, King scorns Bible-believing Christians and praises unbelieving liberals, but that is not surprising since he did that all his life.

A Black preacher encapsulated King’s theology and philosophy better than anyone else: “It is as though Socrates, Thoreau, Hegel, and Jesus were all dumped together into one philosophical bowl like tossed salad.” Then Gandhi was tossed in to add additional spice to the muddle!

When King received the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest man to receive it, he said: “I am a minister of the Gospel.” He was an ordained minister but not of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! He preached “another gospel,” and his Black privilege did not guarantee him a place in Heaven.

Moreover, I cringe to hear him called a “Baptist.”

http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!”

Cedarville University is in trouble, but then, we have known that for years. The school had an auspicious beginning in 1953 with the General Association of Regular Baptists (GARB), a group that has stood for biblical truth and ecclesiastical separation from its inception. However, in 2006, the GARB severed association with the university because of the school’s flirting with the inclusive Southern Baptist Convention.

The school has confused many with its interdenominational drift and permitting professors to attend non-Baptist churches even though they signed a Baptist doctrinal statement. Informed people have known for a long time that the University had broken from its Baptist moorings and was drifting rather swiftly with the tide toward mainstream evangelicalism.

There were concerns also about some theological problems at the college. One criticism of Cedarville is their insistence on “certainty” of Bible doctrine instead of the mere assurance of their beliefs. Some of the loosey-goosey faculty declares certainty of doctrine to be arrogance while the true Baptists considered the loosey-goosey crowd as heretics. I stand with the true Baptists.

As of October, 2012 the school lost its president and a vice president resigned after the school was accused of “moving toward a more robust and moderate evangelicalism.” Ten or more professors have felt the call elsewhere since 2007! Two professors were fired in 2007 allegedly because they were too conservative and their firing took place about four months after they signed up to teach another year! They were also challenging some of the more liberal professors during their classes. Additional liberal professors were hired only adding gasoline to the fire. One protest group charges, “The university is moving back toward conservative fundamentalism.” Gasp! It seems that the university is going in opposite directions at the same time!

The charge of moving back to its Fundamentalist roots would be news to those who read the school newspaper arguing that “there was nothing wrong with homosexuality,” and suggesting that “abortion wasn’t a black and white issue.” Also the invitation of a “Christian social activist” who has ties to the Emergent Church to speak on campus added more confusion. Inviting religious gadfly, Jim Wallis to speak didn’t add to the school’s Fundamentalist bona fides. And it didn’t help when they booked the Michael Moore documentary to be aired on campus in 2009. Then the president threw more gasoline on the fire when he put out his Recommended Book List with Emergent Church leader Brian McLaren, New Age guru James Redfield, and Philip Yancey on the list! No, not indications of moving toward fundamentalism!

It is charged by some that the school’s trustees are trying to move the Fundamentalist Baptist institution back toward its roots instead of rushing into the Emerging Church Movement. However, Cedarville “isn’t moving anywhere,” said board chairman Lorne Scharnburg, emphasizing that the Ohio school is an independent Baptist university. “We’re staying where we’ve always been,” declared Scharnburg. Not exactly true since Cedarville has been sipping the New Evangelical Kool-Aid for over a decade.

The two fired professors were given contracts and then fired after a three-day visit of a North Central Accreditation team. Can’t have a dust-up with the snoops on campus. The American Association of University Professors, a nearly100-year old national faculty advocacy group with 45,000 members, got involved and is investigating the firing of one of the professors. Cedarville has declined to cooperate with them. In my opinion, the AAUP never should have been involved; however, there is that always present desire for acceptability–hence, accreditation and affiliation.

No Christian can be pleased with trouble in Christian institutions and no one can defend lying, mistreatment, intrigue, suing other Christians, heresy, etc. Cedarville is one of many examples of some of the problems when a Christian institution (at any level) goes to a secular group for approval, licensure, commissioning, accreditation, etc. God has warned us about joining up with the world. Furthermore, can two walk together unless they are agreed? No secular organization can understand spiritual and doctrinal decisions and should therefore have no authority over churches and Christian schools.

Christian schools do not need the organizational stamp of approval from secular or governmental organizations. It is the kiss of death.