by webmaster David Cox
It should go without stating (but I will state it here again) that you should not believe everything you hear, and that is doubly true in the area of things you find on the internet. In writing a book and getting it published, the credibility of the publish is put in jeopardy if there are blatant lies and falsehoods in one of his books. In the internet, nobody knows who these people are, and the bottom line is that anybody can put up a website with any kind of credentials or proposed expertise.
On my website, I try to keep to one of two types of works, either something by somebody well known in Christianity (not particularly to your liking but well known), or works by unknowns that prove themselves by their use of the Word of God (read this evidence, exposition, and clear explanation).
In general you should be weary of anything you read and compare it with the Holy Scriptures and leave them in their place of authority, and not let a sinful human author dominate your thinking, but rather thoroughly study the Scriptures and if some writing of a human author can help elucidate a point, fine.
There can be some good in a lot of bad. The trick is to be able to get the good out without getting stuck on the bad. Below are my general directives about using people that have some bad (everybody has weaknesses, and some off views on things I think, and that probably includes me first of all).
COC Church of Christ - These writers have some really good stuff, but you must know where they are coming from and what landmines (i.e. error) they have in their thinking. First of all many COC people are simply unsaved. That is because the simpletons among them believe and teach that water baptism is necessary for salvation. If they hold to this, then they are not saved because they have a works salvation. Many of them do not hold this position. Their position is that baptism is extremely important, but is after and apart from salvation. Here I agree with them.
The next problem in their theology is that of the name or denomination of God's people. They use the term "Church of Christ" but refuse to admit that this is a name or denomination, and that they are not formally a denomination. This is a problem and blessing for them. On the one hand it is a problem because it is denial of an obvious fact. They bring along with this that they, and they alone are the true church of God. Okay, that stinks. The true church of God is those who are truly saved, and it is difficult to break this true salvation from an acceptance of Jesus as Savior in faith and assign it to a group. That is what the Catholics have tried to do for years and horribly fail always. At the same time this has forced them as a group into a local autonomous assemblies which has protected them from the whole theology drift against biblically orthodoxy that all major denominations have suffered in the last 50 years.
The other major problem I see with Church of Christ people is that some factions among them are just down right cults. Some among them absolutely control the lives of their people (denying in practice Christian liberty) just like any cult does. This must be denounced as wrong.
Having laid down these problem areas in the Church of Christ people, they are extremely strong in putting out half way decent sermons. Particularly here is Mark Copeland who has a large number of sermons online and most that I have seen are very good meaty sermons, that are preachable by most preachers. As such I have included some of their material in these works because unless you are touching on these problem areas, their material good and useable in my opinion.
Assemblies of God - The Assemblies of God group is mixed. Basically as I understand them, they are mostly "leaning" towards Pentecostalism. I say leaning because not all of them go full fledged into the Pentecostal basics (tongues, healings, health and wealth gospel, etc). I have heard and talked to some from the Anderson Indiana Assemblies of God that are pretty straight on their doctrine (basically a fundamentalist position on things though they admit some Pentecostal type things, tongues possible, but not for today).
Calvinist - I should state first of all that I am not a Calvinist. My convictions and opinions about Calvinists run the gamut. I have known some that I think despise the grace of God, and rejoice in the perdition of the unsaved. I feel that is completely opposite of any biblical position. Others I feel are exactly where I am, except they do not understand that hard line Calvinism leads almost unilaterally the person into a cold dead religion, where praying, witnessing, missions, and preaching are against God's predetermined unmovable will, and so even though they do these things they cannot put their whole heart into it because it is against their Calvinists beliefs. They typically twist God's offer of salvation to be a two faced lie from God, because God cannot offer what He knows He will not give (because the person is not elect). I will leave my diatribe against Calvinism there. Elsewhere I am working on a good presentation of my problems with Calvinism.
Having said that, let me say that in general no group of people uniformly are writing or producing anything of any real spiritual value except Calvinists. I do not think that is because they are right, it is just an observation of truth. The typical Calvinist is very smart person that thinks he has figured out God and election. He is excellent are arguing and logic and builds his concept of Christianity (really a personal theology) on the basis of some Scripture and a lot of pretty sound logic in general. There are problems but overall, the Calvinist can produce a lot of good material that is very useful.
I do not have any hesitation in using most works by Calvinists, but I generally tend to shy away from promoting or exposing those who use my website to the extremes of Calvinism. I consider their doctrine of perdition to be unbiblical, and I include anything about that as a presentation of the enemy (false or erroneous) position.
Pentecostals - In general most preachers even consider the Pentecostal group as being saved. In recent years I have had more and more battles with Pentecostals and I am coming to the point of disbelieving their salvation in general. They believe in an experience that gave them eternal life, when I feel the Bible presents a faith in the experience of Jesus on the cross as the singular element that provides eternal life. Perhaps the difference is minor, but I feel that their extremely high estimation of experiences over faith (faith is not seen, is not an experience, but an unseen, "unexperienced" belief) would come extremely close to placing them outside of true salvation.
In general the works by Pentecostals is extremely limited and placed as first source material of unbiblical groups and beliefs. Because of their authority being experiences, few Pentecostals write anything approaching an expository type defense of anything. All of their "expository" writings are simply defenses of their own preconceived positions. They fail miserably before logic and the Scriptures in almost all cases.