Papers Written By Martin Luther King, Jr. Reveal He Was Not A Christian

MLK had no conversion experience, he had no relationship with Jesus Christ of any kind. In all of his writings he speaks of the Saviour in the same manner in which someone who had never been to outer space would speak of the stars.

“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 (KJV)

Martin Luther King, Jr. is not his real name. The civil rights leader was born Michael King Jr. on January 15, 1929. In 1934, however, his father, a pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, traveled to Germany and became inspired by the Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther. As a result, King Sr. changed his own name as well as that of his 5-year-old son. He was such a gifted student that he entered college at the age of 15, going on to receive his doctorate in Systematic Theology from Crozer Theological Seminary. Martin Luther King, JR. was a lot of things, but if we take him at the written word of his own testimony, he was not a Christian by an sort of Biblical definition.

An Autobiography of Religious Development

MLK Jr. wrote a large assortment of papers that have been recorded in the online archives of Stanford University. One of those papers entitled “An Autobiography of Religious Development” reveals a treasure trove of biographical information on King. Here are a few highlights from that paper:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. never became born again: Jesus, in the third chapter of the book of John, tells Nicodemus that he “must be born again” to enter into Heaven. MLK says that event never took place in his own life. Instead, MLK said he accepted religion but not a relationship with Jesus Christ as the One who paid his sin debt as the Bible teaches. “Conversion for me was never an abrupt something. I have never experienced the so called “crisis moment.” Religion has just been something that I grew up in. Conversion for me has been the gradual intaking of the noble {ideals} set forth in my family and my environment, and I must admit that this intaking has been largely unconscious.” source
• Martin Luther King, Jr. denied Jesus rose again: If Jesus Christ never rose from the grave, then take the Bible and throw it in the trash bin. Remove the Resurrection from the Bible and it’s just another book. MLK in no way believed that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day. “At the age of 13 I shocked my Sunday School class by denying the bodily resurrection of Jesus. From the age of thirteen on doubts began to spring forth unrelentingly. At the age of fifteen I entered college and more and more could I see a gap between what I had learned in Sunday School and what I was learning in college. This conflict continued until I studied a course in Bible in which I came to see that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape.” source
• Martin Luther King, Jr. denied a  literal interpretation of the Bible: Again, if the things mentioned in the Bible that we are told to hang our entire eternity on are not literal, then what good is it? MLK said that all the major tenants of the Christian faith could not be taken literally. “As stated above, my college training, especially the first two years, brought many doubts into my mind. It was at this period that the shackles of fundamentalism were removed from my body. This is why, when I came to Crozer, I could accept the liberal interpretation with relative ease.” source
• Martin Luther King, Jr. call to ministry was not from God: Amazingly, MLK never says that his “call to ministry” was even from God. Rather he talks about the humanistic nature of his call to work not for the salvation of souls, but to better humanity. ” I had felt the urge to enter the the ministry from my latter high school days, but accumulated doubts had somewhat blocked the urge. Now it appeared again with an inescapable drive. My call to the ministry was not a miraculous or supernatural something, on the contrary it was an inner urge calling me to serve humanity.” source

What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection

Actually, the bullet points listed above are more than sufficient to make and open and shut case for the fact that MLK was neither born again as the Bible commands nor was he a Christian. That is to say a disciple of Jesus Christ. By his own testimony, he is attracted to religion in order to make the world a better place, something not taught anywhere in the Bible.

He had another paper entitled “What Experiences of Christians Living in the Early Christian Century Led to the Christian Doctrines of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and the Bodily Resurrection” in which he said the following:

• Martin Luther King, Jr. denied the deity of Jesus Christ: MLK in no way believed that Jesus was born of a virgin as stated in both the Old and New Testaments. “The first doctrine of our discussion which deals with the divine sonship of Jesus went through a great process of development. It seems quite evident that the early followers of Jesus in Palestine. We may find a partial clue to the actual rise of this doctrine in the spreading of Christianity into the Greco-Roman world. Through philosophical thinking the Greeks came to the point of subordinating, distrusting, and even minimizing anything physical. Anything that possessed flesh was always undermined in Greek thought. And so in order to receive inspiration from Jesus the Greeks had to apotheosize him.” source
• Martin Luther King, Jr. denied the virgin birth: No commentary needed on this one. “First we must admit that the evidence for the tenability of this doctrine is to shallow to convince any objective thinker. To begin with, the earliest written documents in the New Testament make no mention of the virgin birth. Moreover, the Gospel of Mark, the most primitive and authentic of the four, gives not the slightest suggestion of the virgin birth. The effort to justify this doctrine on the grounds that it was predicted by the prophet Isaiah is immediately eliminated, for all New Testament scholars agree that the word virgin is not found in the Hebrew original, but only in the Greek text which is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word for “young woman.” How then did this doctrine arise? A clue to this inquiry may be found in a sentence from St. Justin’s First Apology. Here Justin states that the birth of Jesus is quite similar to the birth of the sons of Zeus. It was believed in Greek thought that an extraordinary person could only be explained by saying that he had a father who was more than human. It is probable that this Greek idea influenced Christian thought” source
• Martin Luther King, Jr. denied that Jesus rose again: We are mentioning this twice because MLK wrote about more than once. In this paper, he states that the apostles “were captivated by the magnetic personality of Jesus” which caused them to “have faith” that Jesus rose again. That’s utter nonsense. The apostles believed Jesus rose again because they SAW HIM ALIVE on the third day after watching Him die earlier on the cross. Faith was not needed, all they had to do was LOOK and see that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead. MLK never even mentions this fact one time. Amazing “The last doctrine in our discussion deals with the resurrection story. This doctrine, upon which the Easter Faith rests, symbolizes the ultimate Christian conviction: that Christ conquered death. From a literary, historical, and philosophical point of view this doctrine raises many questions.⁶ In fact the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting. But here again the external evidence is not the most important thing, for it in itself fails to tell us precisely the thing we most want to know: What experiences of early Christians lead to the formulation of the doctrine? The root of our inquiry is found in the fact that the early Christians had lived with Jesus. They had been captivated by the magnetic power of his personality. This basic experience led to the faith that he could never die.” source

Conclusion

Martin Luther King, Jr. did many good things. MLK stood against racism and intolerance, which I applaud. It absolutely disgusts me that any one race could ever think they were better than any other race based solely on skin color. MLK advocated, like Gandhi, non-violent protest and resistance to injustice. I applaud that as well. But sadly, MLK, though he is known as a Baptist preacher, was never Baptist in his doctrine and did not preach salvation by faith through grace alone in Jesus Christ which is the hallmark of any Christian preacher over the last 2,000 years.

The last work we will quote MLK from is called “A Conception and Impression of Religion Drawn from Dr. Brightman’s Book“, and like the others, is quite revealing. King wrote this essay as the first paper for the second term of Davis’s Philosophy of Religion course. Although the essay derives largely from Brightman’s Philosophy of Religion, King grapples with the various conceptions of God, a topic he would later discuss in greater depth in his dissertation. In contrast to his firm adherence to theism in early 1950, King, after reading Brightman’s book, admits to being “quite confused as to which definition [of God] was the most adequate.

“How I long now for that religious experience which Dr. Brightman so cogently speaks of throughout his book. It seems to be an experience, the lack of which life becomes dull and meaningless. As I reflect on the matter, however, I do remember moments that I have been awe awakened; there have been times that I have been carried out of myself by something greater than myself and to that something I gave myself. Has this great something been God? Maybe after all I have been religious for a number of years, and am now only becoming aware of it.” source

MLK had no conversion experience, he had no relationship with Jesus Christ of any kind. In all of his writings he speaks of the Saviour in the same manner in which someone who had never been to outer space would speak of the stars. He was on the outside looking in, and nothing more. MLK had a religion, that’s for sure, the religion of good works, good deeds and social justice. But that is not salvation, and that does not get you to Heaven or even close to it.

I have a friend and Christian brother in the Lord named Mitch who runs a barber shop. Every day that he works, his barber chairs are his pulpit and he preaches Jesus Christ to all who sit for a haircut. Many people have been saved through his ministry. Talk to Mitch about Jesus, and with tear-filled eyes he will happily tell you about how Jesus saved his soul one glorious day. He doesn’t question the virgin birth, the resurrection or the deity of Jesus Christ. Why not? Because my friend Mitch has a personal relationship with Jesus, and the Holy Spirit inside him which tells him these things are so. MLK had no such credentials.

MLK admitted that whatever his “awakening” was, that he remained unsure if it was even from God or not. Someone who had become born again has no doubts of what has caused their change. It’s not religion or even a religious experience with some generic God. It’s a relationship between the sinner, you, and the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3 (KJV)

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a worldwide platform to preach the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ, but instead he used it to preach the worldly gospel of social justice which saves no one. He gave rise to an entire generation of unsaved churchgoers doing good deeds and righting wrongs who remained unsaved when they died.

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matthew 16:26 (KJV)

The post Papers Written By Martin Luther King, Jr. Reveal He Was Not A Christian appeared first on Now The End Begins.

Source: http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/papers-written-by-martin-luther-king-jr-reveal-he-was-not-a-christian/