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ECUMENICAL LITE BAPTIST
BOO-BOOS EXAMINED
By Dr Herb Evans
We have, before us, a booklet by Michael D. O'Neal, entitled
"Blunders & Boo-Boos of Baptist Briders," available from him for $2.00 at P.O. Box 3382, Albany, GA
31706. In it, Brother Mike conceitedly appraises (p. 1,3) his Baptist protagonists to be poor Bible students,
who know nothing of dispensational truth. A "good Bible student," to him, means that you embrace some of the
views of Bullinger, Stam, O'Hair, and the Bereans, which were refuted by interdenominational Harry Ironside,
years before O'Neal ever heard of them. O'Neal has the same problems that Hyper-Disps have, ignoring the
Gospel of John and "Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth." (O'Neal, doesn't seem to use enough Bible, in his
booklet, to be the Bible student that he fancies himself to be.)
Mike O'Neal, nevertheless, comes closer than most "invisible churchers" in defining (p. 1) what a "Baptist Brider"
is. According to the correct portion of Mike's definition (p. 1), a Baptist Brider believes that only saved members
of the local, scriptural Baptist church compose the bride at the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven and that
Baptist Briders generally hold that saved people of other denomina-tions will be "guests" at the marriage supper.
(Some Baptist Briders go as far as to tell us that only saved Baptists will be raptured.) Mike's description of
this main Brider distinctive is a fair and a correct one.
Brother O'Neal further defines (p. 1) the Baptist Brider as someone who believes the Body of Christ is "the local,
scriptural, Baptist church." While O'Neal rightly associates Baptist Briders with this local church/body only
doctrine, this added definition improperly describes a Brider. "Local Church Only Baptists," who are not Briders,
believe modified versions of O'Neal's misapplied definition, i.e., "EACH local, New Testament, Baptist church is a
representative body of the Lord Jesus Christ."
Mike O'Neal uses the "play it safe" tactic, i.e., try to destroy your opposition, by building a straw man, which
you then proceed to tear down (being unable to establish your own position). Under the guise of taking "Baptist
Briders" to task, Mike vicariously scorns the beliefs of many "local church only" Baptists, without any
distinction, leaving the impression that they are Baptist Briders. In the future, O'Neal may call us "King James
Only, Local Church Only Baptists," if he needs to brand us with a name.
Curiously, O'Neal does not bother to address his description of the main Baptist Brider distinctive. Instead, Mike
reveals what is really bugging him, i.e., local church/body only-ism, water baptism only-ism, closed communion (p.
2), and a local church, in the gospels, prior to the death of Christ. Still, the so-called blunders, with which he
deals, have nothing to do with BEING a Baptist Brider any more than being a Trinitarian and believing the virgin
birth makes one a Catholic. Baptists have related to many of these socalled blunders (only 4 of the 21 blunders
deal directly with any proof-text) before O'Neal was born, but we will not appeal to the history, which Mike O'Neal
despises, although he appeals to early history to show the absence of the Baptist name (p. 21,22) and the source of
Landmarkism (p. 1,2). We also could appeal to history for the source of invisible church-ism and
hyper-dispensationalism. Still, we will honor Mike O'Neal's sensitivity to positive Baptist history.
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