T. A. McMahon & Ron Merryman (Part 1)

Program Description:

Tom welcomes this week’s guest, Ron Merryman, former Bible College professor and president and author of several books, as they discuss some of the history of the church and where it began to go off-track.

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon.  I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us. In today’s program, Tom welcomes Ron Merryman, author, conference speaker, and former Bible College professor and president. Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC executive director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. Today, my guest is Ron Merryman. Ron is an author, former Bible college professor and president, long-time pastor, and is involved currently in writing as well as speaking at Bible conferences. Ron, welcome to Search the Scripture 24/7.

Ron: Oh, thank you very much. I consider it a great privilege to be with you all.

Tom: We offer many of Ron’s works, including Galatians: God’s Antidote to Legalism, Learning from Habakkuk: Discovering Certainty in Times of Uncertainty, and Understanding James:2:14-26 [14] What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? [15] If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, [16] And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? [17] Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. [18] Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. [19] Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. [20] But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead? [21] Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? [22] Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? [23] And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God. [24] Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. [25] Likewise also was not Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out another way? [26] For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.
See All...: Removing the Theological Tension Between Faith and Good Works. Ron, those books, as well as others that I have by you, I believe are of great value for the body of Christ, because they deal with misunderstandings of essential doctrines that are creating all kinds of problems for believers today. For example, your book on James, James’ epistle, that address the difference between faith and good works is terribly important in my view, because the most common error among those who profess to be Christians is works-salvation. Now, give us some background in what motivated you to start writing such books.

Ron: Well, I was actually in the pastorate when I started doing the book ministry, although from the time I got my first Masters and got into Christian work, which was 1958, I was always—seemed to be involved in some type of writing project. But I felt like reformed theological writers were flooding the market with their stuff, which I considered not biblically accurate. And for whatever reason in our circles, good men who understand, make the proper application of Scripture, didn’t see the church as replacing Israel and so on, for whatever reason or reasons, were not publishing, and I was, after leaving the pastorate, I was freed then up to do more writing in hopes to leave a legacy of good exegetical and doctrinal materials for, you know, the upcoming generation. Largely that was the motivation, some contribution to young men who needed our perspective of the teaching of Scriptures.

Tom: Ron, some of the things that impressed me about your books, just as you said, you’re talking about in the late ‘50s, early ‘60s and so on, things coming into the church. Well, now things are coming in like a flood, a tsunami! And yet you’re able to, and through the books that we offer by you, you’ll take an issue that is becoming prevalent because of those who, not just publishing, but advancing their beliefs, their theological ideas, and then they are influencing the church sometimes in an overwhelming fashion. Yet you deal with it biblically. You take us back to, “Wait a minute.” It’s like Isaiah: “To the law and the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it’s because there is no light in them.” But to bring the body of Christ, or to encourage the body of Christ to get back and understand these things biblically is huge, and that’s why I appreciate your books. You don’t mess around! You cut right to the chase, back to the Scriptures.

Ron: Well, thank you. That was, of course, one of my major purposes, and also as a pastor with a pastor’s heart, to lay before the people the primary meaning of Scripture, and that involves a certain hermeneutic, and this hermeneutic, the law of interpretation, is critical to understanding the text of Scripture consistently. So it has always been a purpose in my public ministry, wherever it is, to challenge people to know what the text is actually saying, and then from there we go to doctrinal various emphases, and then applications. But if you miss the primary meaning, then the application often doesn’t even jive with the passage, and I find this unfortunately too prevalent in evangelical circles. They’re not concerned enough with what the text actually says.

Tom: You’re getting at the next question I want to ask you. As you said, you’ve been in ministry as a pastor. You’ve seen how, as a shepherd, how the sheep are affected by what’s out there and so on. You’ve done that—you’ve been in ministry for more than half a century. From your observation for today, your experience in ministry, what changes have you seen that greatly disturb you?

Ron: Well, I think first of all, you kind of pushed a button here, and I hope I’m not too verbose, but first of all, there are too many confusing presentations of the gospel that really distorts its meaning and significance. If you were to ask ten evangelicals on the street how one gets saved or has their sins forgiven, you’d get maybe ten different answers, and that’s because we’ve strayed from the simplicity of the gospel. And I don’t like to be overly judgmental, but the only thing that I can see as an analysis is because we don’t have enough confidence in the gospel as the power of God unto salvation, like Paul says it is. So any effort to embellish or to change the simple significance of the gospel is extremely dangerous, and I’m afraid it’s prevalent in the evangelical church.

I’m also concerned about the mega-church—what I consider to be somewhat of a merchandising approach in terms of trying to appeal to people without dealing with primary issues like sin and the effects of sin in the eyes of a righteous God, and the gospel is really essentially dealing with His righteousness and how He protects it by offering a salvation totally dependent upon the saving merits of our Lord Jesus Christ and the power of His resurrection. So the mega-church in its appeal—I have problems with that. And I also have problems with the fact that it minimizes the personal involvement of believers—that is, a person could be involved in one of these mega-churches and the leaders would never even know their first names. It’s just, somehow, it’s out of whack. So I see that as a trend that’s been going on for the last maybe 25 years. That’s quite bothersome.

The third thing, I guess, would be ecumenical trends, and, again, mega-churches have sort of set you up as a platform for ecumenical trends. So there’s a problem with the perversion of the gospel. There’s a problem with our local churches—which I’m a local church guy, and I just feel like are we keeping our focus where it should be, and so on, and equipping the saints for the work of ministry? So there’s a multiplicity…well, I’ve done extensive traveling, and speaking in the last 25 years, and it becomes more and more difficult to find churches that have a focus on Jesus Christ and His Word. Now, they talk a lot about Jesus Christ, but they don’t do it in conjunction with the text of Scripture, and what we know authoritatively of our Lord Jesus Christ, we know from the Scriptures. And anything that tries to be authoritative apart from the Scriptures is subjectivism. So these kinds of trends—at one time, you could go to nearly every--at least larger--town or city in the United States, and there would be at least one really strong expositional type of a ministry, and often it transcended denominations. But that is not true any longer, and so I feel like one of the things that believers have to be very careful about then is their local church and its emphasis. I guess when you ask an older guy, he could go on and on about this. [chuckles] Anyhow…

Tom: And that’s true, because, you know, that’s why I love having…I’m entering into my golden years--well, actually, I’ll be 70 in about a year and a half--yet when I find brothers in Christ who, you know, “been there, done that,” have seen changes in the church, seen these things progressively increase in terms of problems for the body of Christ, these things need to be identified, and…you know, let me go back over some of the things that you mentioned, because they’re absolutely key. You called it “merchandising,” but the marketing of the church, which started with Schuller and the Church Growth Movement, but it went way beyond that to Rick Warren presently and so on, but basically, it’s a mentality of consumers. They’re playing to consumers…

Ron: Precisely.

Tom: …and one of the laws of marketing is, “The customer’s always right. Let’s not offend the customer, because he won’t come back.” So we’ve seen that in a huge way, and it’s related to ecumenism. We want to be popular, we don’t want to be considered, oh! the big “I” word, “intolerant.” And in all of that--call it a drift, or call it a flood--has moved evangelicals. I mean, that term’s almost meaningless anymore.

Ron: It is meaningless. It no longer has any meaning whatsoever. Yeah, you hit a very sore spot in the body. And I guess The Berean Call has been helpful to guys like myself who have been in the field for all these years in the trenches. It’s your publication that I leaned upon—at that time, you didn’t know me from Adam, nor did Dave. I had never met Dave or Ruth, but I had come to so value their research, because I found them to be careful. I also found them to be very loving, and the spirit of Christianity is the spirit of love and the spirit of truth. It’s like a circle, and the neo-evangelical movement began to emphasize the spirit of love, what they call love, apart and separate from the spirit of truth, and in which case, even your love becomes perverted if it’s not corrected by the spirit of truth, which is of course the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. So it won out largely as I see it in the sense of contributing to the mega-kind of church mentality that, as you say, want to market the truth, so yes. It’s bothersome to those of us who have sort of been down the road for so many years.

Tom: Yeah. You know, on the other hand, Ron, this doesn’t take the grieving off of what’s going on, but this is what Scripture said would happen. Paul writing to Timothy, “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” You know, that to me, that one verse, is like a billboard, because we see it developing almost exponentially to the point where, again, going back to the name of the ministry, which--and I appreciate your comments about it--the Bereans. You know, these weren’t even Christians, okay? They’re Jews in the synagogue in the city of Berea, yet Luke is commending them because they didn’t just buy into what the Apostle Paul had to say. “Oh, who’s this guy? What’s the latest new thing?” and so on. No! They took what he said seriously, and they searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

I remember 20 years ago when I was involved with Dave and formulating The Berean Call, I think we used the term in The Seduction of Christianity, but that came back to us big time. Yes, this is what the ministry needs to be; it needs to be called, because it’s not about Dave Hunt, it’s not about T.A. McMahon, it’s about the Word of God, and it’s about the body doing what they need to do!

Ron: Well, that’s what I was getting at when I mentioned the special ministry of Dave and The Berean Call, Tom. Those of us who were in the field--I always leaned on your publication for information that I felt was well-researched and also presented in a nice way, in a loving way, but without compromise relative to what was happening. So many of us--I’ve had others tell me about this, and I’m sure you probably get feedback, but at that time, in my Christian experience I did not know you personally, nor did I know Dave. But I did utilize the publication that the information was very, very helpful to me, and I’m sure to many in the body, as it still is. So we owe you a debt over the years and also an appreciation that was unique. I don’t know anybody else that was doing this, and so I always looked forward to your publications.

Tom: Well, Ron, I really appreciate what you’re saying. It’s an encouragement. Now let me shift that back to you.

Ron: Okay.

Tom: The first book that I read of yours was Justification by Faith Alone and Its Historical Challenges. Now, one of the reasons that book fascinated me was--well, it gave me an insight regarding something I’d wondered about ever since becoming a born-again Christian. You know, prior to that, I was a Roman Catholic since birth, and I often wondered, “Well, how did the Church of Rome come into being?” And your explanation of the rise within the early church of sacramentalism and sacerdotalism was a huge help in answering my questions. Now, give our listeners some of your insights that helped form the church of really a billion and a quarter members.

Ron: Well, let me just simply start by saying that church history was a passion of mine that the Lord put on my heart while I was doing undergraduate work. I felt like my primary ministry would be an exposition of Scripture, but then what happened with the Scriptures over time? And that’s what got me interested in church history. And relative to the western church, the Latin church, or what became the Latin church, there was an ultra-mysiticism associated early on with the two things, two practices, two observations, that our Lord had left for His church to observe. Now, these became known as sacraments, and outside of the Catholic circles, they became known as ordinances. I just say they were two things He asked us to do, and the one was water baptism and the other was the Lord’s Table. And it’s extremely unfortunate that some of the church fathers after the decease of the apostles began to make statements that mystified water baptism first of all, and slowly but surely water baptism in its essence becomes distorted. And instead of illustrating a believer’s salvation, that is, that at the moment of trust in Christ, in the gospel, and it alone, the Holy Spirit baptized them into the death, burial, and resurrection retroactively so that Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection was retroactively applied to that person, and he was brought into living union with Christ. That’s spirit baptism. And all water baptism does is illustrate that.

But that becomes convoluted in that water baptism becomes the means of being forgiven of sins. In other words, it’s identified with washing away of sins, and then eventually, baptismal regeneration, so that by the time you get to the middle of the fourth century, water baptism is totally destroyed, the significance of it.

The second thing that the Lord asked us to do repeatedly, as often we did it, we would remember Him was a little symbol and simple memorial service made up of symbols that also spoke of His death and His body and His physical death, the shedding of His blood, that we were to remember Him by. And it isn’t long till it gets mystified and becomes at first called the Eucharist, and then it becomes called a sacrifice, and then it becomes a sacrifice applied—that is, one contributing to one’s salvation. And critically to all of this was the person that administered it, the sacerdotalism, the priestism, only person that can perform these two observations was a priest, and it didn’t take long till it was a priest who was sanctioned by the western or the Latin church. So now you have a church instead of Jesus Christ being the saving Person, and His death, the saving sacrifice, you have a church that becomes institutionalized, and that its salvation becomes institutionalized by the church itself.

Tom: And that is the Roman Catholic Church. This is why I was so—so my understanding grew. And, again, it didn’t—we’re talking about the second centuries, so we’re not talking about the Catholic Church as we know it, but it didn’t begin with priests, it began with, well, some elders. “No, no you can’t baptize.” Or now the elements. “No, the elements have an efficacious value in their own.” This is how it begins, and then, you know, by the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth century—wow. You have the dogmas of the Catholic Church that are so far beyond anything in Scripture that it’s staggering.

Ron: Yeah, even Cyprian, who’s third century, his list of requirements were almost prophetical. It only took a couple hundred years and the whole thing was turned over so that the church became a saving institution. In this regard, just a little personal illustration, I was raised in east Pittsburg, Pennsylvania steel town, and it was a highly ethnic--ethnicized, maybe that would be the right word; there were Hungarians, and my grandparents were Czechoslovakian, and so on--and everybody had their institutionalized church. And where I lived, everyone was nearly Catholic, and at the end of the street was St. William’s Catholic Church.

Now, fortunately, my mother got saved when I was nine, and the Lord led her to a good Bible church, and my mother was not well educated. The sovereignty of God, bless her heart, she just was so sincere and open and obviously had to make a choice of a local church, and God led her to a church where I still believe the things that I was taught. I got saved when I was fourteen. But when I was nineteen, I decided, “Well, I’m going to check this thing out with the priest at St. William’s Church, which was at the end of the street where I lived on, and all my friends, all of my personal friends, were Catholic. So I made an appointment with the priest, and I sat down privately with him, and I said, “I’m sure that you believe in salvation,” and I said, “So to cut to the chase, what must I do to be saved?”

And to this day, I’m actually quoting his words, he said, “You join the Catholic Church and you do good works.” And I said, “Well, what about Ephesians:2:8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
See All...,9? ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith,’” and so on. I quoted it. And he said, “Oh, yes, that’s accurate, but we are the dispensers of grace. The Catholic Church is the dispenser of grace.” Now…

Tom: Through Mary, by the way.

Ron: Yeah, she helps out in the matter, so to speak. So that was a face-to-face confrontation, and of course, I was out of there. I said, “No, that can’t be. That can’t be accurate, because that makes you the savior instead of Jesus Christ being the Savior.” And He’s a personal Savior. So, anyhow…

Tom: Well, Ron, we’re out of time for this segment, but next week, the Lord willing, I want to talk about—really start off with…okay. We’ve identified these things within the Catholic Church, yet the Reformation turned some of those things around, but not everything. So, Lord willing, let’s pick up there next week. And, Ron, thanks for being with us today.

Ron: Thank you, and I’ll look forward to our next session. Appreciate it.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019, Bend, OR, 97708. Call us at 800-937-6638, or visit our website at the bereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. We’re glad you could join us, and we hope you can tune in again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.