Several members received letters from Dan Billingsly within the last week. Many of you probably glanced at the fourteen page dissertation and dismissed it as the rantings of an individual who thrives on controversy and wants to debate everybody and his cousin. In fact, he and Farrell Till would make an excellent team: they could debate each other from one end of the country to the other, wherever they could find an audience. Perhaps, eventually they might get their fill of confrontation.
Ostensibly, Billingsly wrote to members here at Pearl Street to warn us of the “great heresies” of Roy and Mac Deaver that they might present at our upcoming lectures. You see, Dan believes that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are Old Testament “gospels” (page 1 of his lengthy diatribe). He further (and falsely) asserts that Jesus did not teach New Testament doctrine and avers that even the Lord agrees with him (14).
Apparently, brother Billingsly is ready to pronounce as a false teacher everyone who disagrees with him, including not only the Deavers, but also Dub McClish, Johnny Ramsey, Dave Miller, and every Bible in the world that includes Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as part of the New Testament (they are all wrong, wrong, wrong, according to him). [What he lacks in common sense, he makes up in ego and pugnacity.]
Such belligerence does not deserves a reply, but we will deal with the issue briefly (even though we know of no major scholar or preacher within or without the church who agrees with Billingsly’s conclusions). Following are points that are designed to summarize the truth of the matter.
1. Jesus lived and died under the Law of Moses, which was nailed to the cross at His death (Col. 2:14).
2. He taught others to obey the law of Moses (Matt. 5:17-19).
3. The church began on the day of Pentecost, in actuality. Jesus promised to build the church (Matt. 16:18); He also promised that some would still be alive to see the kingdom of God come with power (Mark 9:1), which it did in Acts 2.
4. The church, however, had existed in the mind of God from all eternity (Eph. 3:1-12). It had been prophesied of by many (Isaiah 2:2-4, Daniel 2:44 & 7:13-14, Joel 2:28-32, etc.).
5. Jesus lived at the end of this Old Testament period, and while He upheld the law of Moses (since it was still in effect) and kept it Himself, He also taught many principles of New Testament doctrine. In other words, the things our Lord taught were not just part of the law of Moses; they were new and different teachings. If they were only part of the law, then why on the Mount of Transfiguration did God say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him” (Matt. 17:5)? Why did He not simply say, “Continue to listen to Moses for a little while longer”?
6. “God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son…” (Heb. 1:1-2). When did Jesus speak these things, if not during His earthly ministry? “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first was spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him?” (Heb. 2:3).
7. “He that rejecteth Me, and receiveth not My words, hath one that judgeth him: the word I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48). What words were these, by which we shall be judged, and when were they spoken? They were the teachings of Christ which He taught during His earthly ministry.
Billingsly claims that the “all things” that Jesus said should be taught to others (in Matt. 28:20) was not what He had taught during His earthly ministry, but rather what He taught them “during the forty days he was with the disciples after His resurrection (Acts 1:2-3)” (9). Here is a truly amazing assertion. What’s wrong with it?
1. It eliminates the things Jesus taught during His earthly ministry, by which He said men were to be judged (John 12:48).
2. It contradicts the Lord’s prophecy to the disciples. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). How many categories of “all things” are mentioned? Two: the “all things” that Jesus had taught them, and the “all things” they yet needed to know. There is no third category here of “all things” they would be taught during the forty days.
3. Billlingsly’s hypothesis makes the Holy Spirit look incompetent. Instead of revealing what Jesus taught the disciples during that forty day period, He foolishly waited more than two decades, left out the “all things” of Matt. 28:20, yet recorded the “all things” Jesus taught during His earthly ministry, which (according to Dan) were nothing more than Old Testament teaching. Why would the Holy Spirit record the wrong, useless, out-of-date teachings of Jesus and ignore those things which were relevant? Why, indeed. There is no proof whatsoever that Jesus taught any new information during that forty days. In fact, the question asked in Acts 1:6 (immediately prior to the Lord’s ascension) indicates that the apostles did not yet themselves understand the nature of the kingdom, an odd fact if He had explained it all to them.
A Position of DesperationWhy, one might ask, would someone adopt such an easily refutable doctrine, taking on the whole world (practically) in the process? It all relates to the discussion of mar-riage, divorce, and remarriage. Dan thinks that what Jesus taught in Matthew 19:3-9 is Old Testament doctrine and is therefore not applicable today, even though Jesus said that God had (under Moses’ law) allowed divorce, but “from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). How can Jesus be affirming the law of Moses when He taught that contrary to what the law allowed, it was not so.
In an effort to get away from Jesus’ teaching on this subject Billingsly is ready to do away with everything that Jesus taught, which is truly an act of desperation. He will, in fact, be judged by the things Jesus taught (John 12:48), as well as the rest of the teaching of the New Testament. And although it does not show great wisdom to hold such an extreme view, it does show that people who feel compelled to do away with God’s teaching on divorce at least understand what it says. Matthew 19 is not unclear or ambiguous. The force of the passage is so plain that some are willing to go to any lengths to get rid of it–even to the point of denying that Jesus ever taught New Testament doctrine.