A
couple of observations concerning Brother Altar's material here shared:
Brother
Altar has done much to help the strengthen vision for Baptist history in our
ranks. He is a passionate preacher, which is a blessing. I appreciate his zeal
to tell Baptists not to quote from Protestant preachers but to do their study
and research among Baptists. However,
He
claims the book of Acts is transitional.
While
that view feels like it solves a few problems some have with Acts, i.e.
provides a short answer to Pentecostalism, it also diminishes the authority of
the book for New Testament Baptists today. There is no biblical authority for
assigning it a transitional place in Scripture. It is rather a leap Altar asks
his audience to accept without any real proof it is a Biblically credible. I
instead see the Book of Acts as what it says it is; the Acts of the Apostles. I
view it as a representation of what all of the Apostles were doing at the same
time Paul was evangelizing in the Middle East and shores of Greece and Italy .
Brother
Altar claims that the Gospels are "Jewish"
This
also denigrates the authority of Scriptures for New Testament Baptists today. I
would not deny that there are certain Gospel passages that find their primary
application among the Jews. But I would deny that Matthew 16:18, Matthew
28:18-20 and all of the Gospel references to John the Baptist are Jewish. These
passages clearly relate to the church that Jesus founded in the Gospels with
members all baptized by a Baptist preacher.
I
certainly do not mean to be argumentative but I do believe we at least need to
hear from differing views that we may learn from them.
(This
is in response to the following e-mail sent to the GIBF forum. I have not sent
this response but wrote it as an exercise.)
On Jun 19, 2013, at 8:11 AM, David Warner <dwarner@ctcn.net>
wrote:
"Brethren,
Some
may have already gotten these studies on Baptist History but it seems not
everyone did. The link below allows you to download the studies AND the
PowerPoints on Baptist History as well as two that accompany the Word Doc
studies.
The two
main studies are the work of James Altar, Sidney ,
OH
Marvin McKenzie
In the field
