© Copyright December 5, 2002, Bernie L. Gillespie. All Rights
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Christ Alone! Web site.
Chapter One
“Where do we find the plan of salvation in the Bible?” This may seem
like a strange question to anyone familiar with the Bible. The
answer seems straightforward: We find the plan of salvation
throughout the whole Bible - progressively revealed from the Old to
New Testament. But, this simple answer is not enough for some; nor
is it as easy as it may seem. Some passionately demand that we can
only find the plan of salvation in one book of the Bible: the Book
of Acts. They assert that it is wrong to look in any other book of
the Bible for the plan of salvation. Any teaching about salvation
from the Book of Romans is rejected because it is not written to
sinners but to those already saved:
Now as far as the book of Romans being a book that you can place
all your whole salvation belief in I think that perhaps you
should consider that the book of Romans was not given to the
unsaved but to ‘the church’ the difference being that they did
not need salvation teaching but teachings on maintaining their
salvation . . . God uses the Gospels and Acts to teach salvation
or in easy way to look at it is the first four books of the New
Testament is for the sinner to become saved and then the books
to the churches is for the churches already saved.
An example of this position is illustrated by an online sermon. The
minister declared to a conference audience:
And some say the way to be saved is John 3:16. I’m telling you
that John 3:16 is not the plan of salvation . . . . That verse
is not telling you how to be saved, that tells us how much God
loves us. Nobody’s getting saved in that verse. In fact, the
church had not even been started in John 3:16. The church that
I’m a part of started in the upper room on the Day of Pentecost
in the Book of Acts.
This speaker, a pastor in the United Pentecostal Church (UPCI
hereafter), does not believe that the John 3:16 is intended to tell
sinners how to be saved. He believes Acts 2:38 is the real message
or plan of salvation, and that the way John 3:16 is preached by most
Evangelicals is erroneous and misguiding millions of people. Many
Evangelicals would respond: “What! How in the world do you support
that? John 3:16 is one of the most succinct and sublime statements
of salvation in the Bible.” On the other hand, many Oneness
Pentecostal churches (of which the United Pentecostal Church is the
largest) would probably reply, “Only Acts tells us how to be saved.
The epistles are written to people already saved. You can’t find the
plan of salvation in the epistles or any other part of Scripture
except the Book of Acts.”
The guiding hermeneutic, or way of reading the New Testament, behind
the latter view is called “Gospels-Acts-Epistles” (GAE). This
explication of the relationship between the New Testament books
holds that only the Book of Acts contains the true message or
formula for how one must be saved. The message of Acts is the
message of salvation for the unsaved. On the other hand, the
epistles have a different purpose and therefore a different message.
They were written only for the saved. Therefore, by this
logic, since the plan of salvation does not need to be taught to the
saved, the epistles, it is assumed, do not contain directions for
how to be saved. The epistles only address how to live the
Christian life and not how to be saved.
This view leads us to several important questions: Is this approach
to the Book of Acts and the Epistles valid? What is the
relationship between the books of the New Testament to the plan of
salvation? What is the proper way to relate Acts to the Epistles?
Is it true that the Book of Acts must be given priority concerning
the plan of salvation? Does the logic of those who believe GAE
follow sound biblical interpretation? If it does not, why? Why do
those who teach it respond so vigorously when others cite passages
in the Gospel of John, Romans, or Ephesians epistles as containing
the plan of salvation? A larger question in this whole subject may
be: “What is behind the UPCI’s tenacious argument that the plan of
salvation can only be found in the Book of Acts?”
What is “Gospels-Acts-Epistles”?
The impulse behind the GAE teaching is the search for an answer to
the question: “Where do we find the plan of salvation in the
Bible?” The current leading writer of the UPCI, David Bernard,
answers this question using the GAE interpretive grid:
The New Testament consists of four divisions: (1) Gospels
(Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), (2) Church History (Acts), (3)
Epistles (Romans to Jude), and (4) Prophecy (Revelation). The
Gospels are historical accounts of the life, teachings,
ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
None of them describes the establishing of a church; they
describe the One who would establish the church upon His person,
teaching, and work. The Book of Acts is a narrative history of
the New Testament church, describing its beginning in Jerusalem
and its spread to all Judea, Samaria, and the Gentile world. The
Epistles are letters of instruction and admonition written to
born-again believers to help them in Christian living. While the
Epistles do contain references to the initial conversion
experience, they assume the readers have already been born of
water and the Spirit. The Book of Revelation is also addressed
to established churches and believers, revealing God’s plan for
the future. Acts is the only book in the Bible to contain
historical accounts of people who received the new birth
experience in the New Testament church, including all accounts
of Christian water baptism and Spirit baptism. Because of the
nature and purpose of the book, it contains most of the direct
evidence relative to the question, “How can I be saved?” The
Book of Acts is the pattern and norm for the New Testament
church, not the exception. If Acts is not the norm, then the
Bible gives no example of what the church should be like. The
five accounts of the Spirit baptism in Acts are not exhaustive,
but representative of the way in which God poured out His Spirit
across the entire spectrum of humanity.
Bernard asserts that the Book of Acts provides the pattern and norm
for New Testament salvation, while the epistles do not because they
are written to those already saved. Therefore those saved do not
need to hear the plan of salvation again. His assumption is that the
epistles teach Christian living rather than the plan of salvation.
What is rather interesting is the fact that Bernard uses the
epistles to prove his Acts 2:38 doctrine. He asks and answers the
question:
How do we identify personally with the gospel? Paul gave the
answer to these questions in Romans 6:3-5, in which he explained
how a person actually identifies with Christ’s death, burial,
and resurrection.
Bernard and the UPCI say we cannot find the plan of salvation in the
epistles because they are written to save people who do not need
that information. But, he uses the epistles to prove his definition
of the plan of salvation as identifying “personally with the gospel”
by obeying Acts 2:38. This is a clear inconsistency. Others cannot
use the epistles as sources for the doctrine of salvation, but
Bernard can use the epistles to prove his view of Acts 2:38. Either
Bernard’s use of Romans six, to define “identifying with the
gospel,” is invalid, or the GAE doctrine is invalid and we can
reference the epistles to define the plan of salvation. This same
thing is true for many who write me. In an attempt to argue for the
UPCI doctrine, they use the Epistles and Gospels to support Acts
2:38 teaching. They cite Mark 16:16; 1 John 5:8,9; 1 Corinthians
6:11; 1 Peter 3:21; Romans 8:16; et. al.
This brings out the important point that the UPCI often
contradicts its GAE understanding by using the Epistles and Gospels
to prove their interpretations of Acts. If the Epistles can’t be
used to teach salvation, they can’t be used to support or prove
(their interpretation) Acts teaching salvation. This is an important
point, because Bernard and others builds their case for Acts 2:38 as
the plan of salvation on the GAE hermeneutic. If GAE is proven
invalid as a hermeneutic, his whole assumption, that Acts alone
provides the plan of salvation, falls flat. Many others in the UPCI
join Bernard in his view of Acts and Epistles:
This gift, the baptism of the Spirit, was promised by Jesus
(John 7:38). It is the earnest of our inheritance (Ephesians
1:13-14). In the actual examples of men and women being saved in
the Book of Acts, the Bible records that they received the gift
of the Holy Ghost. In fact, the only biblical examples of people
being saved in the New Testament church age are recorded in the
Book of Acts. We do not see anyone actually receiving salvation
in the Epistles, for they are letters written to those who have
already received salvation.
In order for the book of Romans to make sense it must be placed
in it's proper chronological order of events and other books of
the bible (sic) must absolutely support the intent (sic) meaning
of the book of Romans. You cannot depend solely on this book for
salvation.
On a recent discussion board, a Oneness Pentecostal minister
rejected finding the plan of salvation in the epistles, saying:
Paul (a saved man) is writing to saved people. He is not telling
them how to get saved or relating how he got saved. They are
already saved. The things he is saying, he is saying in the
present tense.
I received an a recent email from a member of a church who
said the GAE was the main reason his pastor still teaches Acts
2:38-is-the-New Birth:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are really before the new
dispensation of Grace and are really considered old testament
(sic). Acts is where one learns how to be saved, and the
epistles are what keep one saved. We must rightly divide the
word of truth. Certain things are not mentioned, as far as
salvation, in the epistles because Paul understands he is
writing to people who are already saved. So we can not look to
the epistles for salvational truths.
In a recent YouTube video, a Oneness pastor is preaching
about Acts 2:38 as the only way to be saved.
In the blog section below the video, a non-Oneness person asked this
questions:
Also can
you tell me what Romans 10:8-10 means? Because it seems pretty
clear from the words that it means 8 But what does it say? The
word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart[e](that is,
the word of faith which we preach): 9 that if you (confess with
your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has
raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.) 10 (For with the
heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth
confession is made unto salvation.)
There was a
response to the blog that said:
It means
exactly what it says, but this epistle wasn’t (sic) written to
the sinner. It (sic) was written to the "church" in Rome.
(believers) Paul was clearly speaking about Israel and them
being saved. That was his hearts desire.
Where does this form of interpretation come from? And why is it used
and held so tenaciously? The UPCI’s application of GAE is derived
from a particular way of interpreting the Bible, originally
developed by Pentecostals to support their view of the “Full Gospel”
and their view of Spirit-baptism, vis-a-vis most other
Christians. Gordon D. Fee, raised as a Pentecostal, and now one of
the foremost New Testament scholars, explains:
. . . in general the Pentecostals’ experience has preceded their
hermeneutics. In a sense, the Pentecostal tends to exegete his
or her experience. . . . They took the scriptural pattern they
had found, supported by their own personal experience and that
of thousands of others, and made it normative for all
Christians.
Fee further clarifies in a footnote:
It was not the natural reading of texts that led them to a view
of distinct from and subsequent to. They were in search of
something, and found it. This is not quite the same thing as
simply reading texts and coming to the conclusion that it
clearly teaches that this is the norm of Christian experience.
I would go further and suggest that, while the development of
specific religious beliefs or practices is not always neat and
clean, there is usually a combination of both experience and
cognition that goes into forming a belief. For Pentecostals it was
not simply that they had an experience, which they tried to find in
the Bible. It was that in reading the Bible, and feeling that
something was lacking in their experience, they found a phenomenon
in the Book of Acts that provided an answer. They sought to recreate
the experience found in the Book of Acts. When the descriptions they
longed for in the Bible became realized by their experience, the
interpretation developed that “this is that.” For them, experience,
at long last, matched what they saw in the Bible. The assumption
followed, they had experienced what the Bible taught. The next
logical step in their thinking was that those who did not have this
experience were missing something that the Bible expected or
required. This urged them to conclude that all Christians who did
not have the Pentecostal experience must not be “full” Christians.
They believed that it was their responsibility, as experienced
Pentecostals, to bring them up to the New Testament standard.
Pentecostals in the main have employed the GAE form of
interpretation because their central doctrines of Spirit baptism and
speaking with tongues as initial evidence were not found in
the Epistles. Even so, they believe their experience was the
restoration of those found in Acts. As a result, they viewed Acts as
holding a special theological role in the doctrines of the Church.
It was important for the heart of Pentecostalism to reinterpret the
didactic nature of Acts. The Epistles do not lend sufficient
didactic or theological weight to the Pentecostal distinctives.
Thus, another way of viewing the nature of Acts and its function in
the New Testament canon was needed.
Protestants have traditionally interpreted Acts by the Epistles. In
order to support their Pentecostal distinctives, Pentecostal
teachers and theologians attempted to place Acts on equal
interpretive grounds by advocating a more didactic, and thus
normative role for the narrative sections of Acts. It is granted
that all biblical narratives have a theological quality. But
Pentecostals say the Acts narratives intend to present paradigmatic
accounts of Spirit baptism, which are normative for all Christians,
of all times, everywhere. They assert the Acts narratives are of
equal authority in forming doctrine as the Epistles. In this way,
speaking in tongues as the initial evidence of Spirit baptism is
normative, even though there is no confirming doctrinal testimony
found within the Epistles. Acts is said to establish doctrine
through the use of narratives. This is a basic premise for the GAE
model.
