This just in from the Emergency Broadcast System. Lou Martuneac has issued the following statement: 1 I've been outted! I thought I got away with it. I thought I fooled everyone, but they finally got me.
Oh, Boy! The 296-page book I wrote titled In Defense of the Gospel was a cover up for my carefully planned web of deceit. My book fooled everyone into believing that I actually reject Tom Stegall's new no-burial interpretation of the gospel! (Oh, but I actually relish its subtlety [2 Cor. 11:4, NKJV]...a more postmodern message where people can believe in a non-buried and never-seen savior...it's brilliant!...so Gnostic friendly, a sort of spirit-savior...after all, nobody really saw His body...what body?..."immortality is conceived as escape from the body"...and I never did like that part about the third day...)
Through my book I outwardly denounced the reductionist errors of those who have "watered-down" the gospel of salvation. I told people:
"You find the gospel in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Okay. You find the gospel defined there....A weak gospel, easy-believism type thinking...This is wrong. Okay. This is wrong. And those who preach this watered-down gospel where people don't have to understand the sinfullness of man or the death, burial, resurrection of Christ - that's wrong!" 2
"[The] insistence that belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is to 'ADD FURTHER CONDITIONS' to the Gospel for salvation and eternal life is just plain ol' out of touch with the Scriptures." 3
"It cannot be stressed enough that the death, burial, and resurrection are equally important. The passage [in 1 Corinthians 15] says that all three are the gospel. If a man presents any one part as more important than the others, he is in gross doctrinal error and should be confronted!" 4
"Every Christian, not just a pastor, who has received the truth are to hold on to the truth, teach that truth and refute the teaching of all those who undermine the truth. Paul then tells us what we are to do when we encounter a teacher of false doctrine: 'Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith' (Titus 1:13)." 5
"One of the greatest betrayals of Bible believing churches, organizations and unsuspecting Christians has been tolerance for and cooperation with: Liberals, skeptics and disobedient Christians who reject and/or undermine the fundamentals of our faith such as: the Virgin birth of Jesus Christ, His deity and the gospel." 6
"As noted above, false teachers come from within the church as well as from without. Some men feel that the Bible does not teach separation from Christian brothers. The Bible does, however, command separation from professing believers: 2 Thess. 3:6, 14-15, Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us....And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother." 7
"To separate from another Christian brother is probably the most unpleasant thing a pastor or any Christian ever has to do. Separation will cost you friends; you may be misjudged and possibly labeled as being divisive. But if you are going to be loyal first to Jesus Christ and the Word of God, you must practice biblical separation from men who take a position that is a deviation from a major doctrine of the Bible." 8
"Paul did not let office or nationality stand in his way when it [came] to contending for true doctrine. Paul was not about to play politics when a grave doctrinal matter needed to be addressed." 9
I almost had the whole of Free Grace Christendom in the palm of my hand. They almost fell for my sinister plot to divide the Free Grace community, and then I could have swept them up with the teachings of Stegall's new groundless gospel. My coup was nearly complete, but as fate would have it...
To the rescue comes, Bible super-sleuth, Dudley Do-Right, and his able-bodied sidekick, Agent 87 and-a-half. They uncovered my clandestine, and dastardly plot!
Dudley & 87.5 have me pegged: They have exposed me as a God-cursed Compromiser! Now, I have to slither back to my pro-Compromise life and ministry, shamed and disgraced.
Curses, foiled again!!!
ENDNOTES:
1 Adapted from Lou Martuneac's "SHOCK, OUTRAGE & SCANDAL!!!," http://indefenseofthegospel.blogspot.com/2007/09/shockscandaloutrage.html (accessed October 19, 2009).
2 Lou Martuneac, "What Is Lordship Salvation?", 2007 Grace Conference Workshop.
3 Lou Martuneac, comment under "The Use and Abuse of the Gospel Message," http://free-grace.blogspot.com/2007/06/use-and-abuse-of-gospel-message.html (accessed October 4, 2008).
4 Lou Martuneac, In Defense of the Gospel (Xulon Press, 2006), pp. 42-43.
5 Ibid., pp. 194-195.
6 Ibid., p. 197.
7 Ibid., pp. 216-217.
8 Ibid., p. 218.
9 Ibid., p. 200.
Groundless and graceless too.
ReplyDeleteLou asks the following question in regards to the "crossless" gospel: "When a man comes along and actively says lost people DON’T have to believe in the very content that God says they must believe, how is that NOT 'preaching a false gospel' or 'heresy?'"
ReplyDeleteBut one may just as easily ask the same question in regards to the groundless gospel: "When a man like Tom Stegall comes along and actively says lost people DON'T have to believe in the very content that God says the lost must believe (e.g. Christ's burial, 1 Cor. 15:4), how is that NOT 'preaching a false gospel' or 'heresy?'"
Somehow I don't think Lou has ever asked that question! Chalk up another issue of incongruity for Lou's pro-compromise ministry.