From: Pilgrimpub@aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 10:46 AM
To: Mentonebay@aol.com
Subject: THIS BROTHER UNDERSTANDS ME [08/03--2005]
THIS BROTHER UNDERSTANDS ME PERFECTLY
ON REGENERATION OR THE NEW BIRTH [08/03--2005]

The following email from my longtime friend and acquaintance, Brother Robert McKay, is representative of the vast majority of the mail I receive in regard to my view on the New Birth. People do understand what I am saying, and they do not conclude that I am a "Campbellite."

Brother McKay was used of the Lord for several years in a ministry devoted to refuting Mormonism, and that is how he first caught my attention and gained my respect. Later, I had the pleasure of doing some TV work with him dealing with Mormonism. That was my only personal meeting with Brother McKay, but in meeting him I grew in my respect for him even more than I had from his writings. In recent years, he has gone thru some fiery trials of faith, but the Lord has brought him thru them. I was glad to receive his recent email, commenting on my views about the New Birth.
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In a message dated 8/3/2005 8:31:32 AM Central Daylight Time, Brother Robert McKay writes:

I am not an expert in your theology (shoot, sometimes I'm not an expert on *my* theology!<lol>), but I've read several of your books on Campbellism, the one on the Landmark Baptists (which, BTW, helped wean me away from the last vestiges of Landmarkism that other study hadn't cured), and "the cowbell" book, and I flatly can't feature how anyone could come up with this assertion:
 
>It is my opinion that Bob does not understand what regeneration is, he somehow separates being >made alive from regeneration.

If that is what you believe - and I don't believe it is - you've very carefully hidden it from view in everything I've read from your pen.  You'd have to be as good as the Mormon church at pretending to believe one thing while actually believing another, to hold such a view without me at least suspecting it from your writings...and while you've good at a lot of things, I don't think you're quite as good at deception as Mormonism is.    :)
 
As I understand your view, regeneration *is* "being made alive"; it is the new birth.  This regeneration is the work of the Spirit, *through the instrument of the Scripture*.  Your quarrel is not with the new birth being a divine work, but with the view that it occurs apart from Scripture.
 
If that's your view - and I'm sure you'll correct me if it isn't<g> - then I have correctly understand what you've been saying all this time.  And if it's your view, then how on earth anyone could get from that to what the brother says above is a mystery beyond my comprehension.
 
Robert McKay



Bob's Note: Brother McKay has understood me perfectly, and how anyone could think that I am a "Campbellite" on the matter is a great mystery indeed. Campbellism does not even believe that the Holy Spirit exerts any additional or conjunctive influence other than what is written in the Bible.

I once asked Church of Christ preacher David Brown, in our 1992 debate in Houston on the work of the Holy in salvation, where the Holy Spirit is now, and what is He doing? Brown said the Holy Spirit is "in Heaven," more or less "retired" from any earthly work, and He no longer exerts any influence beyond what is written in the Word. According to Brown, the Holy Spirit supernaturally inspired the Word, therefore we must now obey the Word to saved, and there is no additional power of the Spirit exerted in, by, or upon the Word.
-- Bob L. Ross

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