Was Martin Luther King Jr. Saved?

[seer]

I believe Mr. was an adulterer to the end, and I also believed that he denied the deity of Christ.


http://www.freep.com/news/metro/mlk15_20010115.htm

http://www.christiancourier.com/penpoints/dysonKing.htm

http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/king.htm

[Amazing Rando]

Seer, when you use www.jesus-is-lord.com as a reliable and trustworthy source, I've got reason to believe your claims are suspect.

[Kenny]

The paper quoted on that Jesus-is-Lord site would be disturbing if it continued to reflect King's views, I recall reading some autobiographical info from King that said he had been involved in liberalism in his early seminary days but became disenfranchised with it. His later writings have appeared to me to reflect orthodox points of view, but I haven't done any extensive research here.

[bar Jonah]

Also, we need some material here. We need some quotes from those sources transplanted in this thread.

The OP is 100% argumentum ad hyperlinkem.

[suffer for joy]

argumentum ad hyperlinkem.
Wha?! :lol:

[Kenny]

Also, we need some material here. We need some quotes from those sources transplanted in this thread.

The OP is 100% argumentum ad hyperlinkem.

Right, and the papers quoted on the Jesus is Lord site came from King's second year at seminary, but some of the autobiographical material I have read suggests that King repudiated some of his early seminary views. It's not an uncommon thing to happen to theology students, when they suddenly have all their Sunday School beliefs challenged and what they thought were rock solid foundations swept out from under them, to swing over to liberalism for a while, even to the point of flirting with heterodox ideas, but then find their place back in orthodoxy again (at a much deeper level). I think that may be what happened to King.

[seer]

Seer, when you use www.jesus-is-lord.com as a reliable and trustworthy source, I've got reason to believe your claims are suspect.

I don't know about Jesus is Lord. Are you saying that they are lying. But it is clear by the other links about Michael Eric Dyson's book that King was an adulterer - I believe right up to his death. Paul says that adulterers are not saved.

[Solly]

I believe Mr. was an adulterer to the end, and I also believed that he denied the deity of Christ.


http://www.freep.com/news/metro/mlk15_20010115.htm

http://www.christiancourier.com/penpoints/dysonKing.htm

http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/king.htm

The first two are merely reviews of the book of another, so there is no evidence or real discussion of the fact. The third I can't see, as it is blocked by my employers netblocker, probably for good reason :lol:

Seriously Seer, is this the best you can do? Are you really siding with the Christian Courier types?

[seer]

Seriously Seer, is this the best you can do? Are you really siding with the Christian Courier types?

It is a well known fact that Mr. King was an adulterer. Are you denying that?

[Solly]

Are you trying to make capital out of it? what's your point for this thread?

I have done a websearch, and found some conspiracy sites with FBI reports about King, including allegations of FBI involvement in his death, at Hoovers instigation, which is how the allegations of adultery came out in the first place.
http://www.drewhendricks.freeservers.com/drmartin.htm

I also found this:

"Expediency Drives Double Standard of decrying adultry while OK'ing Racism"
By Robert M. Parham.

Adultery is wrong; racism is ok. Or so the righteous right signals with its sustained attacks on President Clinton for his infidelity and its thunderous silence about the affiliation of two highly visible Republicans with a racist organization.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Rep Bob Barr, R-LA. [and one of the House Managers prosecuting the President as we speak. -Eds], have been waltzing with the Council of Conservative Citizens, with a name and agenda strikingly similar to the segregationist organization known as tge Citizen's Council from the civil rights era, according to news reports.
Barr told the Washington Post he had no knowledge about the CCC's racist agenda when he addressed the group at a 1998 meeting. However, Gordon Lee Baum, CCC's national chief executive, disputed Barr's claim, saying "He knew wat we were all about before he spoke to us."
Barr justified his association by saying Lott had endorsed the organization.
At first Lott, too, claimed "no firsthand knowledge" of the group. Yet a recent Washington Post editorial noted a smiling Lott was pictured in a 1997 CCC newsletter meeting with CCC officials in Lott's Washington, D.C. office.
Speaking to a council meeting in Greenwood, Miss., five years earlier, Lott said, "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction and out children will be the beneficiaries."
The CCC's web site contains cmple evidence about its religo-political agenda. One Web page promotes a booklet "that reveals the ugly truth about Martin Luther King." Another page describes Latino voters who would rather vote for "a dead yellow chihuahua over any non-Latino."
One of the CCC's most far-fetched pages claims that "Northern Liberals have been waging a religious war against the Southern Whites all this time: secular humanism is intent upon stamping out Christianity." The article asserts that secular humanism became a driving force in the 1830's [the WHIG era] "when a number of New England's most-prestigious-but-disaffected Congregationalist ministers repudiated Calvinism." Their heirs, contemporary secular humanists, began waging "a full-scale idealogical war against Southern Christians" in the 1960's.
By associating with this group, Barr and Lott showed either their true colors or terrible bad judgement.
Equally troubling is the double standard of the religious right that condemns one sinful act and ignores another. Ironically, the religious right advances the moral relativism it so verbosely abhors when it refuses to identify racism as morally wrong as sexual infidelity.
What explains the double standard?
The easiest answer is the political explanation. The religious right hates Democrats, having its roots in the founding of the Moral Majority's campaign against President Jimmy ["nucular"] Carter. For almost 20 yearsm the religious right has courted over the Republican, sought its takeover and even proposed marriage.
The religious right's moral agenda is so dependant on Republican political power that is cannot risk a spate with such powerful elected officials.
The theraputic explanation holds that leaders of the religious right condemn what personally threatens them. They are so troubled by their own dark, sexual yearnings that the only way to keep them at bay is to condemn them in others. After all, preachers often preach most fervently against their own shadow side.
Having never or seldom experienced the stings of racism, these leaders do not fear racism. Therefore, they are not inclined to condemn it,
The sociological explanation says religious right leaders know they can mobilize their base on sexual issues. Their agenda is primarily abortion, adultery, homosexuality, and pronography. They raise money, sell books and turn out votes with sex, not race. These leaders know they cannot activate their supporters with claims of racism.
Aside from a few minority members, the religious right has had little, if any, real traction outside of white America. Religious right members will not risk alienating their constituancy with critical media releases about race.
The moral explanation contends that the religious right sees sexual issues in absolute terms, right and wrong, black and white. Such moral clarity does not exist on race.
Undoubtedly, sone religious right leaders see racism as morally wrong in the abstract. But their certitude dissipates in the street of real life. Civil rights, racial justice and affirmative action do not have the moral underpinning within the mostly white, religious right movement that these issues do within minority communities. The lack of moral certainty means the lack of a compelling reason to criticize Barr and Lott.
Despite the explanation or combination of reasons, the ethical double standard of the religious right advances the moral relativism and discloses how ill-fitting the modifier religious is when applied to these right-wingers.

Robert M. Parham directs the Nashville-based Baptist Center for ethics. This article was distributed [orignially] by Religion News Service.
http://bhorlor.4mg.com/newstuff.html

so what's your point Seer? King has gone to meet his maker, and answer for what he has done; why are you raking over the coals?

[Mimi]

Well, all I know is that he stood up for the Afro-American community and that he had the guts to fight against the white racist people. I don't care if he had a bad private life, bad marriage or doing it "on the side". All I care for is that the man died for his dream....no matter if he wrote that himself or not. He had a dream and the heart in the right place. Why tear down the image? Why trying to make him look really bad? What is the reason of this book anyway?....The writer just wants to make money and if you write a controversial book....everybody wants to read the darn thing.....

[Cyrus Johnson]

Seriously Seer, is this the best you can do? Are you really siding with the Christian Courier types?

It is a well known fact that Mr. King was an adulterer. Are you denying that?

I don't see anyone denying that. It's not exactly news. Nor is it news many of his speeches and his dissertation were extracted in part from the works of others.

He was a human. He made mistakes. He wasn't perfect.

But he also did great things.

I think the question is, how do you know what went on between him and his Maker?

[BlackOpal12]

I don't see anyone denying that. It's not exactly news. Nor is it news many of his speeches and his dissertation were extracted in part from the works of others.

He was a human. He made mistakes. He wasn't perfect.

But he also did great things.

I think the question is, how do you know what went on between him and his Maker?

Haven't you figured it out yet, Cyrus? Seer's buddy icon isn't a favorite picture, its a self-portrait. He's clearly Jesus Christ himself...or at least convinced that he is. I knew a guy like him in person once - but that one thought he was Napolean...odd, though, I think they make medication to help with this sort of problem.

Try it, seer.

[Solly]

:lol: And your icon BO?? *bean3

[Solly]

I read the autobiography of Tom Skinner, noted Black evangelist. He points out that during the sixties when he grew up in Harlem - his father was a Baptist minister, there was a great deal of sexual misadventure going on in the churches, it was endemic, such was the state things had got to. Anyone who stood against it and other sins was usually ostracised. I therefore do not take such things as a reflection simply on the man and his personal failings - failings I would not condone - but also the system, and the situation the Black community found itself in; and I take Skinner's analysis on that. That's not a justification either, but an attempt at understanding. But it's par for the course to focus on this man's failings, and not the failings of the nation, failings that led King to almost renounce nonViolence and marches, and which also led many into the arms of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers.

[reasonabledoubt]

It's useless to speculate. We can't know what went on between him and God, even on his very last day alive. He was a professing Christian, why can't you leave it at that? Sure he sinned, but so did David, and so has everybody. I am sure that King apologized and repented of his sins, but yet sometimes fell back into them. Pretty common.

[bar Jonah]

I am far more concerned with King's doctrinal statements than with his adultery (as terrible, as that sin was; and I won't even respond to Seer's preaching of a false gospel in this thread.)

I went ahead and read the three links (though the relevant content should have been posted in this thread, rather than arguing by hyperlink). Knowing several people who are now attending seminary or theology school, I am well aware that it can greatly challenge a person's doctrines that were previously taken for granted and cause them to explore a number of risky areas.

However, when we see King proclaiming that the beliefs of the deity of Christ, His resurrection and the virgin birth are untenable and not historical truths, that the early church ideas of Christ's deity are from pagan Greek thought, that Christianity is based on previous gnostic-style "mystery religions" like Mithraism, that the story of the Garden of Eden is akin to "Oriental" pagan myths... the burden now shifts to him to show that he abandoned those beliefs.


Are there any writings or recorded speeches of Dr. King which indicate he left those views behind? If not, then we have a serious problem in having even the slightest faith in his being an actual Christian. I absolutely agree we cannot know the heart of another man, and I don't pretend to. But I don't believe Stephen J. Hawking is saved, I don't believe Stalin went to heaven, I don't believe Stephen J. Gould went to heaven, and unless I can see any indication in King's own words that he rejected these heresies, I have no reason to think he was saved either. That doesn't mean I know he wasn't saved. It just means I have no reason to believe he was.

I greatly admire and respect his work in the area of civil rights. I thank God for what he did in that regard. But how can a man attend seminary, become a minister and preach for so many years, without any record of his proclaiming the deity and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ?

I am entirely open to evidence that he repudiated those beliefs, and I hope they can be provided.

[Cyrus Johnson]

I am far more concerned with King's doctrinal statements than with his adultery (as terrible, as that sin was; and I won't even respond to Seer's preaching of a false gospel in this thread.)

I went ahead and read the three links (though the relevant content should have been posted in this thread, rather than arguing by hyperlink). Knowing several people who are now attending seminary or theology school, I am well aware that it can greatly challenge a person's doctrines that were previously taken for granted and cause them to explore a number of risky areas.

However, when we see King proclaiming that the beliefs of the deity of Christ, His resurrection and the virgin birth are untenable and not historical truths, that the early church ideas of Christ's deity are from pagan Greek thought, that Christianity is based on previous gnostic-style "mystery religions" like Mithraism, that the story of the Garden of Eden is akin to "Oriental" pagan myths... the burden now shifts to him to show that he abandoned those beliefs.


Are there any writings or recorded speeches of Dr. King which indicate he left those views behind? If not, then we have a serious problem in having even the slightest faith in his being an actual Christian. I absolutely agree we cannot know the heart of another man, and I don't pretend to. But I don't believe Stephen J. Hawking is saved, I don't believe Stalin went to heaven, I don't believe Stephen J. Gould went to heaven, and unless I can see any indication in King's own words that he rejected these heresies, I have no reason to think he was saved either. That doesn't mean I know he wasn't saved. It just means I have no reason to believe he was.

I greatly admire and respect his work in the area of civil rights. I thank God for what he did in that regard. But how can a man attend seminary, become a minister and preach for so many years, without any record of his proclaiming the deity and historical resurrection of Jesus Christ?

I am entirely open to evidence that he repudiated those beliefs, and I hope they can be provided.

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing what you seem to be. Can you point to some passage in the afore mentioned links that you found particularly troubling?

I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

[Amazing Rando]

Right, and the papers quoted on the Jesus is Lord site came from King's second year at seminary, but some of the autobiographical material I have read suggests that King repudiated some of his early seminary views. It's not an uncommon thing to happen to theology students, when they suddenly have all their Sunday School beliefs challenged and what they thought were rock solid foundations swept out from under them, to swing over to liberalism for a while, even to the point of flirting with heterodox ideas, but then find their place back in orthodoxy again (at a much deeper level). I think that may be what happened to King.

Heck, I've had my beliefs challenged my first two weeks in seminary. :teeth:

Besides, isn't it a bit preposterous to play the "Guess if so-and-so is saved!" game? We can't know their heart, regardless of what they may have said or written at one time in their lives. The only person we can be 100% sure is saved or not is ourselves.

[GoBahnsen]

I believe Mr. was an adulterer to the end, and I also believed that he denied the deity of Christ.


http://www.freep.com/news/metro/mlk15_20010115.htm

http://www.christiancourier.com/penpoints/dysonKing.htm

http://www.jesus-is-lord.com/king.htmHow about this for a thread: Is Jessie Jackson saved? But hey, according to the OTC, none of us are saved. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. seer you are to cease from this nonsense at once or report to the Dean's office.

[Amazing Rando]

:lmbo: :thumb: You tell 'im, GB!