Countercult Apologetics

Hanging Up the Resource Blog

Stay tuned to this Website http://www.rctr.org/conference.htm for the details of our 2007 conference on the theme God: The Precondition for Intelligibility, August 31 & September 1, 2007. The conference will be held (tent.) at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lancaster PA.

Friday night will feature a debate between a Christian and an Atheist, on the existence of God. Saturday’s conference will feature various individuals from a presuppositional apologetic perspective, dealing with topics related to Christian theism and atheism.

If you would do me a favor, please pass on the word (i.e. the site above) about the debate and conference. I would appreciate all the help you can give by getting the word out.

The Church: Change Agents in Culture is the theme of the 2007 Evangelical Ministries to New Religions Conference. Plenary speakers include: Bill Honsberger, Lori MacGregor, Ergun Caner, Dave Johnson, Karen Pressley and David Platt.

There will also be over 30 workshops to choose from on subjects including: Mormonims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kabbalah, Word-Faith Movement, Islam, Buddhism, Oneness Pentecostalism and much more. These topics will be addressed by Countercult apologists such as Robert Bowman, Jr., Marcia Montenegro, Bill McKeever, Steve Cowan, and many others.

The conference will be held at The Church at Brookhills, Birminham AL, February 8-10, 2007. For registration costs click here.

This was included in today’s Resource blog post, but wanted to include it here since it specifically related to this blog:

The Midwest Christian Outreach Journal, Vol. 12 No. 3 (Fall 2006)
“The Resurrection: Watchtower-Style”, Joy Veinot.
“Thomas Merton: The Contemplative Dark Threat”, Jackie Alnor.
“The Labyrinth A Walk By Faith: Concerns about the Christian Use of Labyrinths”, Marcia Montenegro.

Strange thing, but this is one of those posts I have been looking forward to. I guess the reason for that are the good memories.

I wonder how many of you have used drugs in the past (I have). My drug of choice was Acid and the first time I used this drug was like no other. For some reason I never experienced the same things I did that very first time I used this drug.

Well, that’s certainly not what I’m going to talk about in a blog entry on my history in countercult apologetics. What I do want to write about is the first time I attended an Evangelical Ministries to New Religions conference. In 1994 my friend (mentioned in previous post) and myself decided to attend this conference. I think we might have seen an advertisement for this in the Watchman Expositor. Anyway, the night before we ended up staying up all night. Well, I had to drive…from Maryland to Phila. PA. I can’t tell you what roads I drove, but I was pretty scared at times - falling asleep at the wheel with a lot of traffic around. Needless to say we did make it to the conference. I remember registering and the first session we attended was with Vernon Grounds.

Well, let me tell you, this was one of the best conferences I have ever attended. You have to keep in mind, at the time, we were still new to Countercult apologetics. So, walking into a conference with that line up of speakers (see 1994 link above) was awesome (of course we didn’t really know most of them at the time). It’s funny because one of the speakers was James White. I like James and the work he does, but at the time I had no clue who he was.

The workshops I remember attending were Richard Fisher’s “Rodney Howard Browne and Holy Laughter” (which was big at the time), “Evangelizing Jehovah’s Witnesses,”Discussing the Bible with New Agers,” and if I remember correctly Bill Alnor’s “Heaven Can’t Wait: Alleged Trips to the Other Side” (actually, I think we might have left his session before Bill started speaking). And of course we attended the plenary sessions “Cults The Draw and Danger” with Norm Geisler, the panel discussion on Mind Control and the Word-Faith Movement and Hank Hanegraaff’s sessions. Looking at the PDF file linked above, you wouldn’t know that Hank Hangraaff was one of these Plenary speakers. More on that later.

I’m not sure if it was the Church the conference was hosted at or what, but this place was packed. I remember people were crammed in the room with Richard Fisher’s session. There was even a meal served before one of the plenary sessions. The room for (ministry) displays was huge…ministry after ministry - lots of free newsletters, etc. This, is where I bought my first Countercult book - The Maze of Mormonism, by Walter Martin.

I remember while being in the book room, over-hearing a man speaking to Bill Alnor, who I did not know at the time, and accusing EMNR of having a satanic emblem. Bill, at that time had to defend EMNR since he was the president.

Probably the session that stands out the most was Norm Geisler’s plenary session (probably because I’ve listened to the tape many times afterward). I am a front row man, so I remember sitting within spitting distance of Geisler. If you listen to the tape, you can hear my friend laughing at one point. After the session I went up and talked to Geisler…something about Tony Campolo. Also, if you listen to the tape with Elliott Miller, you can hear my friends voice at the end, asking a question.

Needless to say, this was my first, real introduction to Countercult apologetics. And it was great! More needs to be said (i.e. the bad) about this particular conference which I’ll do in the next post.

It is amazing how I can remember some things about this conference pretty vividly, but I actually have no recollection of driving home. We obviously made it though.

So, was my first EMNR conference similiar to the first time I took acid - the best?  Probably, but they have all been good and the difference is, others can be better than the first.

As I mentioned at the end of Part 1, I can remember having the tract “I Bear You My Testimony” by James Walker. James is a form Latter-day Saint (Mormon). Well, a buddy of mine and myself who used drugs together and went through recovery together read this tract and decided to put it to use. Mind you, I was a very young believer. The only thing I really had going for me (in the way knowledge) was that I listened to the Bible Answer Man. And I had this tract! So, I was familiar with the verses we needed to present.Armed and ready (yeah right), we would call the local LDS Ward or the 800 number seen on the commercials and invite the LDS to our homes. For those of you who have followed my footsteps or have even gone before me stating out in ministry this way, you probably know what took place during many of the conversations (i.e. Bible ping-pong). We would later (not much later) learn more about LDS beliefs. We of course thought we knew more about Mormonism then the Mormons knew about it themselves. This might have been accurate to some degree. We used what little knowledge we had to tried to dissuade the missionaries from continuing there two year journey. To my knowledge, this never happened. I do know that God’s word is alive and active and I pray that what we said had some effect. We did learn that the LDS have a lot of “meetings” to go to. It seems that once we really got into things, they had another oppointment. If I remember correctly, this has happened at every visit since then. Do they really have another appointment set? I doubted it then and I doubt it now (I’m not saying they lie about this all time).

Our presentation was certainly not the best. At that time, we were probably looking for an intellectual fight and really had no concern for the person (I hope my heart was in the right place, I just don’t think it was). But, I also know God can work through bad presenters and presentations.

I’ve certainly met with many LDS missionaries and JWs since those days, but I couldn’t tell you the last time I called the 800 number or the local ward. Although, over the summer, I did pull my car over to the side of the road to stop two LDS missionaries. I wanted to invite them to our conference we were having on cults, the occult and world religions!

To be continued…

One of my favorite lectures is online this month over at Walter Martin’s Religious InfoNet. It is a lecture from Walter Martin titled “The Cult of Liberalism.” If you have never heard this, I would recommend it to you. Since Martin died in 1989 it is a little dated, but everything he says is still on time.

Part 1 and Part 2.

The quality of the audio (in my opinion) adds to the lecture.

There was a time in my life when I wanted to write a book. Not about me as the title of this blog might lead you to think. A book about Countercult apologetics. Who knows, maybe someday this will happen, although I’m not as excited about this book project as I was. The end goal in this book was to get the Church excited about this very specific field of ministry. There are other books dealing with countercult apologetics I’d like to see published first. Due to some events taking place over the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking about my involvement in Countercult apologetics. So, I decided that I would write about this here. I not only hope to cover some history, but my view(s) on certain events which have taken place over years. I also hope to discuss some methodological issues, which has been a recent discussion among various individuals.

I am certainly not going to address everything that could be covered. I will be writing from my perspective and experience. Those involved in Countercult ministry might say “he didn’t talk about this or that.”  Well, perhaps you can post a thing or two in the comments section. Those who know nothing about Countercult ministry might wonder “why is he even doing this,” but isn’t this really what blogging is about?

Due to the schedule I am trying to keep, I don’t know how many posts this is going to take. Posts maybe be (very) short or long, depending on the time I’ll have to put into each post, or the thoughts coming to mind.

Well, here we go. For starters let me say that I became a Christian in 1991 and to tell you the truth, I really don’t remember to much of those early years. This was a time in my life when I was going to Narcotic Anonymous, getting clean off drugs (this is a story for another blog at another time). If I am remembering correctly, my first introduction to Countercult ministry was through the Bible Answer Man broadcast. This of course was the old days (well, old to me) when Hank Hanegraaff wasn’t the star of the show. In fact, (if I’m remembering correctly) Hanegraaff would always have someone in the studio with him. This was when Ron Rhodes and Paul Carden helped field questions on a regular basis. There were others such as Richard Abanes, and I remember hearing Erwin de Castro, Bill Alnor and probably others. I think everyone would agree with me, that the highlight in those days was Friday evenings. This is when CRI would play tapes of Walter Martin. Wow, this guy is on fire. He knew his stuff, he was confident, funny and in your face. But you know what, I wish I would have taped the shows that took place during the week when the co-hosts were on. Here you had two or three guys in studio, very knowledgable about cults and apologetics, fielding questions. If I remember correctly, the majority of calls that came in those days were specifically related to cults.

Walter Martin’s tapes are available, but those shows that aired during week, well, I know I’ll probably never hear them again. I do have, I believe, two tapes from those days. One is when Richard Abanes, Robert Lyle, Ken Samples and Erwin de Castro where all in studio discussing David Koresh and the Branch Dividians. The other is Hank interviewing William (Bill) Alnor on the topic Heaven Can’t Wait: A Survey of Alleged Trips to the Other Side (Baker/Revell, 1992). Both of these tapes (of course) are keepers.

Those were the days.

The next thing I remember is having a copy of a tract titled “I Bear You My Testimony”. I would later come to find out this was put out by Watchman Fellowship and James Walker. I’m not sure if the tract is available but this is.

More on all this later…

Last week, I caught wind that Richard J. Mouw wrote a piece for the November 2006 Christianity Today titled “Shoot-First Apologetics: What a dead bluebird taught Walter Martin about defending the faith.”

Anyone who knows anything about Countercult ministry and (somewhat) recent events, would be familiar with Richard Mouw. What probably stands out is his apology the LDS community which he offered at the LDS Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. Mouw apologized, from his perspective, on behalf of the evangelical community who have bore false witness against the LDS. If you do a simple search on the net, you’ll find responses from Evangelicals on both sides of fence.

Mouw has written several pieces now on the LDS and his involvement with them. So, I decided to ask if he would be willing come on The Narrow Mind to discuss his views. I was not expecting the response I received from him and when I did, it left me scratching my head. His response was “Wouldn’t you rather interview me about infralapsarianism versus supralapsarianism?” My response of course was “no” and I asked, based on his response “is that a no?” As you can guess, he is not scheduled to appear on The Narrow Mind.

In Mouw’s opening paragraph (of the above mentioned article) he states “I said the best way to know Mormon beliefs is to actually engage in dialogue with Mormons.” Well, it is quite obvious to me that Mouw is being inconsistent here. If the best way to know LDS beliefs is to speak to Latter-day Saints, why does not Mouw follow his own advise and allow us to dialogue with him. We all know we face problems with only speaking to the LDS, and not actually reading the writings of the presidency, general authorities, etc. of the LDS Church - you are not going to get the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Well, since Mouw is a believer, I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. If dialogue is the best way to understand, why not dialogue on The Narrow Mind so we can better understand what you “actually believe?” The offer still stands.

Here are some recent resources that directly relate to Countercult apologetics, even though the authors might not have this in mind:

Jesus’ Use of Psalm 82:6 in John 10:34-36. Byron H. Silvera (Th.M.) Capital Bible Seminary, 2006.

Backgrounds Of Messiah’s Preexistence As Stated In John 8:58. Vladimir Pikman (Th.M.), Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006.

Representations Of YHWH In The Hebrew Bible. Allen C. Hamlin (Th.M.), Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006.

The Image Of God In Pauline Thought. Eric R. Montgomery (Th.M.), Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006.