A faulty argument made by Catholic apologists is that “Surely, we’re the true church! See, some Protestants have converted to Catholicism after finding the truth we’re the one true church!” This presents a logical fallacy and a poor understanding of the Scriptures. I decided to take a bit of a jab with that thinking. With today’s Second Vatican Council being so blatantly ecumenical–there’s really no way that the Papacy is the Seat of blessed Saint Peter! Peter would’ve never preached any other Gospel. Neither would Paul or any of the people who left the Church its guidelines on how to live. Well, I discovered that some people raised in Baptist and/or Protestant homes do have these casualties. Some of them didn’t only convert to Roman Catholicism, others also converted to other religions such as Islam or Buddhism. In this case, I’ll focus on Buddhism since I grew up as a Catholic by default, while practicing Buddhism and Taoism without understanding anything. I even prayed at Buddhist temples without thinking about the purpose of the Buddhist novena was for a peaceful reincarnation–something Catholicism downright rejects!
It’s easy to brag that Tim Staples was raised a Southern Baptist and then converted to Catholicism. Catholicism is already the true Church, right? Well, research on Belinda Carlisle who started out as a Southern Baptist and converted to Buddhism. Man, Buddhism must be the truth based on how Catholics tend to argue for the truth huh? People can say that they started out here and there, then “discovered the truth” somewhere, and then “poof”–there they are! Richard Gere was a Methodist who converted to Buddhism. Lu Sheng Yen converted from Presbyterianism to Buddhism. I guess that should start to rain on the claims of Scott Hahn and Kimberly Hahn, two former Presbyterians who became Catholics!
I remember reading Dr. John F. MacArthur’s book Hard to Believe. I read it to investigate it against the claims of Hyles-Anderson College. Quite interestingly, Dr. MacArthur raises the fact he had some seminary mates who later converted to Buddhism.
“You’ve probably had a similar experience with someone you know. I’ve already recounted the stories of three of my closest friends—one in high school, one in college, and one in seminary—who seemed so dedicated to serving the Lord, and yet all of them eventually turned their backs on Him. One became a dope-smoking rock-concert promoter, and another became a Buddhist. These were not casual acquaintances, but friends at a very close level. I was sure they shared my passion for the true gospel as much as they shared my love for sports. These three young men proved to me that you can profess Christ and not know Him. You can think you’re a Christian and later see clearly that you’re not; you can certainly deceive other people. Seeing these seemingly intelligent, dedicated, strong Christians abandon their beliefs forced me to think about who is really a Christian and what being a Christian really means. Their actions portrayed them as fellow soldiers of Christ, but in the end their hearts exposed them as traitors. Spiritual defectors are an integral part of the story of Christianity, both past and present. They’re in your life and mine, just as they were in Jesus’ life. They shouldn’t surprise you, defeat you, disappoint you, or cause you to despair. Jesus’ insights on spiritual defectors in John 6, and the reaction to His teaching about the issue, give us one of the most compelling and enlightening stories of His ministry. It’s worth considering closely.”
Dr. MacArthur’s interview with Phil Johnson also contains some details that were added into the book. This really breaks my heart but we have the issue of apostasy:
And that was my first sort of need to understand this. What was going on here? What was the dynamic here? And then I went away to college and had another buddy. We played football in my days in college, and we were kind of a tandem in the backfield. We were close friends. We were on Student Council together. His dad was a pastor and a friend of my dad who was a pastor. So, I knew their family; I was in their home. He was – he said he was going to be in the ministry; that’s what he wanted to do.
He ended up totally denying the faith. He ended up becoming a philosopher, taught philosophy at California State University at Long Beach, was arrested for immoral improprieties in his classroom. He became some kind of an entrepreneur of rock concerts, had to serve some kind of a jail sentence. Totally denied the faith.
Got to seminary, the dean’s son denied the faith, put a Buddhist altar in his house, when he got married, and walked away from Christ.
Why would people abandon the worship of God who is there vs. a god who can’t do anything? Of course, the old argument of paganism is that “We’re not worshiping the image but the one portrayed by the image.” Incidents like this made me have doubts about Once Saved Always Saved. It’s very easy to believe one has OSAS but one’s totally unconverted. Is it possible for a person to reject Christ after getting saved? In some form of Arminian view, it’s possible, although they don’t believe people lose their salvation every time they sin. The more I study the Bible, I feel, “If one’s saved, can he or she de-convert?” I had to reread a pamphlet called Safe and Secure: The Permanence of Salvation, as a new convert.
Here’s something Dr. MacArthur also talks about Baptists and Protestants who later became Buddhists:
Went to seminary, made friends with the dean’s son in seminary. Sang in a quartet together, did a whole lot of things together. I graduated from seminary, launched off into ministry. He graduated from seminary, married a Buddhist, put a Buddhist altar in his house. Now this is pretty extreme stuff but those are absolutely true stories. It was very personal to me because these were people that I knew and cared about. And I needed a category to put these people in. It was also very, very obvious to me from my experience in churches that churches were filled with people who didn’t manifest any transformation, who came in the door and walked the aisle and then somehow disappeared out the side. There were people who didn’t seem to have any particular hunger for the Word of God. And so this was a deep concern to me.
I realized that there were then in the church the unconverted. I came across 1 John 2:19, “They went out from us because they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out from us that it might be made manifest they never were of us.” So I realized that no matter what appeared to be so, these people were never converted, because if you were truly converted, there’s a transformation that is manifest and unchanging, though not perfect. There is a direction of life, if not perfection, that is unmistakably the evidence of true conversion. And so I became profoundly concerned about evangelizing the church. This was working in my heart by the time I came here.
Baptists and Protestants who have converted to Buddhism are apostates–just like Baptists and Protestants who have converted to Catholicism, are unconverted. They may even be professors in Bible school, like some members of Catholic Answers. Other members like Trent Horn and Taylor Marshall, are also former Protestants. It reminds me of how Ruben L. Lumagbas Jr., before he was removed from office due to some issues, said, “But I’m a Baptist. Be a Baptist later, get saved first. There are also unsaved Baptists!” One of the members of Cebu Bible Baptist Church converted to Taoism. A deacon from Cebu Bible Baptist Church also left the church and is now serving in the Ang Dating Daan ministry run by the late Eliseo Soriano. I heard someone became a Protestant who later became a Muslim. These people never lost their salvation–they were unconverted from within, to begin with.
Reformed Baptist Christian Blogger 