Jeff Durbin & Walter Martin

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And so all of my early training and doctrinal instruction came by way of listening to the

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Christian faith defended. Like there were very few tapes in there that were actually lectures and sermons from Martin.

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Just more like application. It was all fights. It was like Walter Martin was, you know, at a church and Jehovah's Witnesses were coming up to the mic and trying to challenge him and I was just listening to him going to the

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Word of God and defending the faith in such a coherent and bold way. And that inspired me to do the kind of ministry that we're doing right now because that changed my life.

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Hearing the truth come against error was so powerful to me. It marked me for good and I could never shake it loose.

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And not in a suggestive, weak way. Yeah. Right. A strong, bold proclamation of the gospel against error.

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Right. That's so rare. It is. It is. And to see just such conviction on top of such historical connection.

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Like that was what got me too, is when I got to hear about the early Christians and the church fathers from Walter Martin.

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Like when somebody would bring up some random thing about God and the Trinity or whatever and try to diss the

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Trinity, Martin would not just go to the scriptures, but he'd go back to church history. And that was something that just inspired me.

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I was like, oh, this, this faith, this is something that God has been growing in history for 2000 years and now

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I'm a part of this. And it just created this love in me for the church itself and history and the church fathers and primarily my love for the word of God just grew.

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And it was through the ministry of Dr. Walter Martin. Powerful things. One of the things that I found particularly helpful, a lot of his stuff's on YouTube for free too.

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I mean, examining other worldviews is when he pretend, he steps into the shoes of whatever worldview he's examining and he says, this is how they would present using the scriptures to support what they're trying to teach you.

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And then this is what you have to be prepared for. I think that's particularly helpful as he assumes the perspective of the person of the opposite worldview that comes to you trying to put scripture forward as their foundation.

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But of course they have other traditions and things that run alongside that, but that's very helpful to hear it that way.

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And then he stops and he says, okay, now I want you to think about everything I just told you. Okay.

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And now we're going to go through and take it apart one thing at a time and compare it to scripture. Yeah. It was.

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Well and something about if you get the opportunity to watch interactions with Walter Martin on YouTube and not just listen to him,

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I do have to say that I love the like sort of like music of the time and the dress like the way that he's dressed is just very like seventies.

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It just adds to the enjoyment. I don't know. I'm with you. He feels like this, this, this classic, devout, fiery fifties

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Baptist preacher, right? Like the dress and yeah, totally, totally.

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And uh, yeah. So if you guys get a chance, we would encourage you to go check out some of Walter Martin stuff. He was mentored by Donald Gray Barnhouse, who was the pastor, the minister at a 10th

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Presbyterian church, I believe it's called in, in Philadelphia. And um, Donald Gray Barnhouse was obviously reformed.

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And so Martin was kind of a mixed bag. He was essentially reformed. And when he would really come down to nitty gritty and defend the gospel, you would hear all the, all the solid biblical reform stuff there.

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There were little areas where we would have some disagreements with Walter Martin areas, you know, of eschatology in one sense, but solid man of God, a man to be emulated, um, and honored, uh, for his labor for the gospel.

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And if you don't have kingdom of the cults or kingdom of the occult, right. Make sure you get those. Yeah. I was going to say he really did. He did.

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He's responsible for some huge resources to specific groups of people that he saw.

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He saw groups of people and he thought like, I need to create something that can reach out, that can, that can be passed on and given to others so that it can be a resource for them.

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Yeah. Um, he did that. Such detail too. Very, very well. I mean, just the research and the detail that goes into the examination.

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Yes. Before Dr. Martin wrote kingdom of the cults, there was no resource like the kingdom of the cults for the

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Christian church to be able to examine in the light of scripture, these different religions beliefs. And so you have to just understand just the compelling nature of the kingdom of the cults when it arrived in the hands of the

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Christian church. It was this one stop resource to understand this is what this religion teaches about God and Christ and salvation.

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And this is the, and it was solid stuff. And then would say, this is the biblical response to that.

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And you could just as a Christian have this resource where you can flip it open and go, I had some lots of Jehovah's witnesses show up at my door.

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What do they believe? And how do I talk to them? And you could spend a, you can spend two hours reading through that, which is the longest chapter

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I believe in the kingdom of the cults. And then you could sort of be ready to talk to him and say, okay, now I understand. And this is, let me say, this was probably the thing that makes me what

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I am today in evangelism. Of course, the spirit of God convicting me and challenging me, working on my heart, trying to love people that, that of course is premier.

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Please don't think anything other than that. But it was Dr. Martin's love, graciousness, respectfulness, and boldness that I found to be this consistent, oh, that's biblical, right?

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It wasn't just fiery sort of like smash them. And this is the truth. You're in error.