King's Business - 1968-05

manner in which He said we ‘must be born again ?’ “Does that seem incredible? “Just what did Christ mean, when He said to Nicodemus, ‘Except a man be BORN AGAIN, he cannot see the Kingdom of God?’ The universally accepted idea of fundamental­ ist Christians is that being ‘born again’ means the experience of having one’s sins for­ given. They call it a ‘born-again experience.’ By it they mean a SINNER being converted —experiencing salvation from SIN. “Many fundamentalist Protestants will say: ‘I am a sinner born again, and saved by grace’, and similar expressions. Have these people really been born again — or have they only been deceived? Have they had the same ‘born-again experience’ CHRIST had? “But wait a minute! Surely that last sen­ tence can’t mean what it said? “Was JESUS CHRIST actually born again? And in the same manner that He taught that we must be born again? INCREDIBLE? UN­ BELIEVABLE? Was Jesus Christ a sinner— did He need salvation from sin? NO! Of course not! Yet Jesus Christ was BORN AGAIN— just as He taught that WE must be born again! “ ‘And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first born among many brethren’ (Rom. 8 :28 -29 ). “Jesus Christ is THE FIRSTBORN OF MANY BRETHREN! Jesus Christ was BORN AGAIN, and the FIRST of many brethren to be BORN AGAIN! “Yet that very Scripture will not be believed by many who claim to have already had a ’born- again experience.’ ” If Armstrong is right, and Jesus Christ had to be born again in the same manner that He told Nicodemus he must be born again—and through Nicodemus told all men they must be bom again— then Jesus Christ had not only been tempted by the serpent, He had been bitten by it, and the poison of sin was coursing through His veins. But he is not right! That’s blasphemy! If Armstrong is right, and Jesus Christ wasn’t born again until His resurrection, then He never saw the “kingdom o f God” until He was resur­ rected. But he is not right! That’s blasphemy. There is no place in Herbert W. Armstrong’s system for the teaching and preaching of “ The Name” o f Christ. In his December, 1962, magazine, on page 13, he says: “ False apostles — ‘wolves in sheep’s cloth­ ing’ — entered in from without. They did not deny, they accepted the NAME Jesus Christ.

That is what they came in to get! They attrib­ uted the phenomenal growth of God’s Church to this NAME—the preaching about the Per­ son of the persecuted, martyred Jesus of Naza­ reth, who came back through a resurrection as a conquering HERO — a great CHAMPION who triumphed over his persecutors.” Herbert W. Armstrong’s system demands water baptism as an essential part of his “ salvation,” and that that system logically rejects the doctrine of eternal punishment of the wicked. All the cultists believe in salvation by works. All the cultists reject eternal punishment. Herbert W. Armstrong is a cultist. Herbert W. Armstrong’s “ true church” and his “World Tomorrow” propaganda are another of the scores of cults that have grown up in this country, all of which have in common basic and decisive marks and characteristics that bluntly and crudely distinguish them from genuine Christianity. In the first place, they are all boresomely proud and self-sufficient. The founders of all these cults, vain and proud as they have been and are, claim to have received from God visions and truth that had been hidden for ages from everybody else, including the Apostles. In the second place, these cults are uniformly lacking in the universal sympathy and compassion of genuine Christianity. Genuine Christianity is a weeping, deeply-burdened, seeking religion. Its great mission is that of seeking that which is lost. That’s why genuine Christianity has always had its missions among the wretched and outcasts as well as its churches and cathedrals for the upper classes. But when did you ever see a mission of one of these cults on a Skid Row or a Bowery? When did you ever in your life see a tear of urgent and profound concern for others trickle down the cheek of one of these cult leaders ? In the third place, the preaching of the death, burial, and resurrection o f Christ has always been the Gospel of genuine Christianity—first and most basic o f all, the death of Christ for sinners. “We preach Christ crucified.” That proclamation has always been central and basic to genuine Chris­ tianity. But the proclamation o f the Cross never has been and is not now central and basic in these cults. Herbert W. Armstrong has a great deal to say about sinners being converted. But we have already seen what constitutes Armstrong’s gospel: the coming government o f God on earth. These cults don’t have the spirit o f grace. They don’t speak the language of grace. They don’t sing the songs of grace. They don’t manifest the works o f grace. And they don’t smell of grace. D6' ‘ Condensed from the book Herbert Armstrong and His World Tomorrow, obtainable from Baptist Bible Tribune of Springfield, Mo. Used by permission.

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THE KING'S BUSINESS

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