Posted on 01/17/2015 8:59:40 PM PST by John Leland 1789
Much of America is excited about the MLK movie titled “Selma”; however, there is discussion, debate, and some say distortion, if not dishonesty, about the role Lyndon Johnson played in some of King’s activities, especially the 54-mile march from Selma to the Alabama capital of Montgomery that led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Let me state clearly that I have little to no respect for Johnson or King and I’ve made that judgment based on their lives, not because Johnson was a Democrat and King was a Black. One’s political party or one’s race is not an issue that concerns me. I am concerned about truth and history, and specifically whether King actually was only a crusader but not a Christian.
I resent historians and media who refuse to deal with truth whether it is about Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton or Obama. Or, about preachers whether it be Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Bennie Hinn–or King. It is astounding that many conservatives refuse to acknowledge the historical record but emphasize only a small but commendable portion of a hero’s life. Therefore, they don’t feel cowardly in their very selective stand.
For the record, Johnson was a thief, liar, and foul-mouthed fornicator. The best thing he did for America was not run for reelection. That is not to say that he did not accidently accomplish some good during his stint in office. Moreover, it is a fact that Blacks were often intimidated and refused voting rights in some southern states and it is good that that has been corrected. However, one should not then leap to the conclusion that it is discrimination to demand that everyone prove citizenship when voting. That is not discrimination but common sense. Nor is it wrong to reject any ploy that permits a person to vote multiple times in various districts or makes it easy to commit voter fraud. In our desire to do good, we must not do stupid.
King was a social worker who used the ministry to accomplish his mission and let me be clear that there were many wrongs that needed to be righted. Most of the young people who faced the white bullies with dogs and clubs were heroes. Some of them even lost their lives to white thugs. King was an opportunist who accomplished some good. However, because King was black and was killed by a white racist who should have been executed within a few months of his crime, most media and academia refuse to research, recognize, and report the truth about King. I do so because I don’t worship anyone and try to hold everyone to the same standard.
Many reading this, including most conservatives, will be offended at the suggestion that King might not have been a Christian. But then a person is not a Christian because he professes to be or because he belongs to a “Christian” Church or because he is baptized. According to the Bible, one becomes a Christian when he or she exercises faith in the atoning death and resurrection of Christ. King, according to his own words was not a believer!
We can know much about a person if we study what he has written, and I have spent many hours reading King. His seminary papers are very revealing as to what he believed and what his motives were. The King papers are courtesy of the King family and those papers prove that he was not only an unbeliever but far from being a scholar! Since no one else will do so, I will try to set the record straight. I can live with my motives and I hope you can live with the truth. Some of this information is from my eBook Martin Luther King, Jr.: Judged by His Character Not His Color available at amazon.com with documentation. Please note that I will not deal with King’s philandering, plagiarism, politics, or partying.
Today, my main interest is to look at the evidence for proof of King’s salvation, not whether he was an accomplished community organizer and admired civil rights leader.
King received his B.D. from Crozer Seminary then started to work on his Ph.D. at Boston University. All the following information is from that time period.
King’s seminary and university papers show his taking a scalpel to excise the core doctrine of Christ’s physical resurrection from the Bible and from history: “From a literary, historical, and philosophical point of view this doctrine raises many questions. In fact the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting.” No, it is King who is found wanting after being weighed in the balances. Of course, King was aware that all four Gospels clearly teach the physical resurrection of Christ as do many of the epistles, but that is not good enough for King: the resurrection of our Savior is “found wanting.” Furthermore, there are scores of carefully documented books that support Christ’s physical resurrection. Any scholar would know that.
Regarding the virgin birth King wrote: “it seems downright improbable and even impossible for anyone to be born without a human father.” Of course, it is improbable but improbable does not mean impossible, especially with God! King further wrote: “First we must admit that the evidence for the tenability of this doctrine is to [sic] shallow to convince any objective thinker.” King was not objective and in my opinion not a deep thinker.
In a paper at Crozer titled “The Humanity and Divinity of Jesus," his professor rebuked him suggesting that it would be good if he proofread his papers before turning them in! He was given a B+ by his professor. In this paper he misspelled “Samaria,” “learned,” “agonizing,” “omniscient,” “omniscience,” “reliance,” “orbit,” “warmest,” “intimacy,” “inadequate," and others. That was graduate work! I would have given him a D, if he rewrote the paper maybe a C.
King wrote, “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. King was like all unbelievers who jump at the opportunity to denounce, deny, and denigrate the Word of God and praise, promote, and protect paganism.
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.” Surely he blushed to write about errors since his papers and books are riddled with errors or all kinds. When he purloined pages from other authors he also stole their mistakes!
In one of King’s papers at Crozer on the "Light on the Old Testament from the Ancient Near East," I discovered eight spelling, punctuation, and composition mistakes in nine consecutive lines! Maybe I will do another column on his astounding number of mistakes. No, the “contradictions” were in King’s life, not in the Scripture and he clearly denied the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, His resurrection, and the veracity of Scripture. By any objective standard King was not a Christian. Therefore, on January 15 I will be working as usual then have dinner with friends at our favorite Chinese restaurant. After all, because it is also my birthday, the dinner of steak, shrimp, and Peking duck is free. You can honor King as a crusader if you please, but not as a legitimate Christian leader. A Christian he was not.
(Next column: “Martin Luther King and Black Privilege!” 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!”
(Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Today for 8 years. His shocking books, ISLAM: America's Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters are all available at Amazon.com. These columns go to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations and may be used without change from title through the end tag. His web sites are www.cstnews.com and www.Muslimfact.com and www.thegodhaters.com. Contact Don for an interview or talk show.)
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Hey, easy now warsaw. I’m Christian and I don’t hate your guts. As a matter of fact, the reason I take time to say things sometimes and try to point to the truth is because I care about my fellow man and woman.
I’m an ex soldier with probably not a lot of tact, but I don’t hate.
I do admit I struggle with moslems.
“Sitting on this side of the pearly gates and proclaiming to know whether any person is in heaven is an indication the author doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
No, we cannot determine what any individual’s state is regarding salvation at the time of their death. BUT we do know the criteria from the Bible. If someone does not meet those criteria, then hell is their destination. That is not judging or condemning on the part of the Christian - it is merely invoking Scripture.
MLK was a communist fraud. The black community worships him like he’s Jesus or something is sad.Watch and learn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IShbhepwieA
The Church did not take this position because geocentrism was in the Bible, because it is not in the Bible. The Church took this position because it was in the writings of Aristotle, and in the middle ages, Aristotle was the next best thing to, well, Jesus, and so anything Aristotle said HAD to be correct, however boneheaded it happened to be.
As C. S. Lewis put it, whenever you start promoting "Christianity and," whatever comes after the "and" eventually becomes more important to you than the Christianity--and that would be true whether the "and" were Aristotle, as it was throughout much of the last millennium, or social justice, as it was with King, and is essentially with all Christian progressivists before, during, and after King.
And one more thing...
Parthenogenesis (where an offspring develops from an unfertilized egg) occurs in certain species, but not in mammals. Period.
But the Bible doesn't claim that Jesus developed from an unfertilized egg. It claims that Jesus was born of a virgin. It has nothing to say about the physical aspects of the conception: one either accepts it was an act of divine intervention, or one does not.
I cannot speak for "most people." I can only speak for myself, as an LCMS Lutheran. I have doctrinal differences with Catholicism--if I didn't, I would be a Catholic--but I do not assume that because a person is Catholic that somehow makes it impossible for him/her to be a Christian. On the contrary, if someone claims to be a Christian, my only two questions are, do you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and do you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Answer yes to both, and you have my hand of Christian fellowship.
Now here's where the problem lies for me with the original topic of this thread, MLK. The Bible, in the Romans passage hinted at above, says that you are saved if you believe in Jesus' resurrection. The Bible also says, in I Cor. 15 among other places, that not believing in the resurrection is a bonehead thing, because not believing in Jesus' resurrection logically leads to not believing in our resurrection, which removes the main incentive to accept Jesus' salvation. The Bible does not say, however, that a person who does not believe in Jesus' resurrection is thereby damned: "stupid" and "damned" are not mutually reflexive (for which I daily thank God, but I digress). Salvation is a divine act, made available by the blood of Jesus shed on the cross, and it is quite possible that someone could accept Jesus' offer of salvation, and still be stupid enough to not believe Jesus' resurrection, or His offer of resurrection for His people--whether that would be sufficient for salvation is a deeper theological question than I have time for this morning, as I prepare to go to church, read the Scripture, and play the pipe organ :-)
bump
Seems, the move Selma trashes Liberial icon, LJB, as an obstructionist to MLK's civil rights movement.
Many in worldly leadership, and even in Church leadership, profess to be Christians but might not be. Ultimately that’s only for God to say, but Christians do have an obligation to point out heresy. I’m not sure, however, that everyone who voices some heresy is a heretic. Some people might be mistaken or ignorant on some point and unknowingly embrace a heresy. Since the Lord is always better training us, as Jesus did with the disciples, who jumped to many wrong conclusions (their situation being a little different though since the Gospel hadn’t yet been so fully revealed), we’re always having errors in our understanding corrected. True heresy would seem to be a knowing rebellion against what one knows and understands to be God’s Word.
Considering we were in the full blown cold war mode, he never was, is , or will be a hero in my book.
“Jesus isn’t an accountant, and if MLK didn’t do enough, then no one can.”
Truly. Jesus is NOT an accountant, and no one can do enough!
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
18 “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” - Jesus
“What is a “good work”? “
“Then they said to 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
It’s about time! And I’m afraid since King’s time (or before) the exact same thing can be said about the vast majority of Black “ministers”—even in the rural South!
And judging by the replies on this thread, so are most FReepers!
There are a lot of non-Christians posting here, obviously ... and ... that’s quite revealing to me!
Based on his apparent beliefs, King was a flawed non-Christian.
Nope. You're wrong. He looks like a Christian to me. And I'm an expert. I suppose you're now gonna tell me the Pope isn't a Christian!!
YOU are wrong! He didn't believe the dogmas, therefore he wasn't an orthodox chrstian. Period.
Unless you want to re-define chrstianity as some sort of moral philosophy.
He was an impenitent whoremonger. An adulterer. That's hardly an innocuous "imperfection."
What utter, complete rot. I reject such a conclusion with contempt. Jesus isn’t an accountant, and if MLK didn’t do enough, then no one can. He faced the murderous equivalent of nazistic hate and responded with teaching millions a response of love and nonviolence and human dignity and calling on God. There’s not one in a hundred who could do what he did.
And lumping him in with LBJ is obscene.
I don’t care how the Left had abused his legacy and name for their own purposes - it doesn’t change what he did and taught. And if what he did and taught wasn’t Christian, then Christianity is useless.
Forget about where MLK's soul is. And forget about what he did, because that is irrelevant.
To be an orthodox chrstian one must believe the dogmas. He admitted he did not, therefore he was not an orthodox chrstian.
Spoken like a true liberal!
This jackass has no business deciding whether or not MLK was a Christian. He professed it, and preached it. This article is basically garbage. Wonder how this guys life would look if someone gave it that same rectal exam?
MLK did not profess orthodox chrstianity! He denied the dogmas! Orthodox chrstianity is not a moral philosophy, like Gandhi's. It professes to be a supernatural religion. King rejected supernatural religion.
He was not an orthodox chrstian. His moral philosophy and accomplishments are completely irrelevant to the point being discussed.
If he had been a faithful believer in Christ, I doubt he would be so popularized and emulated by unbelieving culture.
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