Workup 2

The other day a friend of mine asked me to send him a link to a timeline I had posted on Mormon convert David Alexander's religious peregrinations during his purported "47 years in evangelical Christianity" before becoming a Mormon on 20 March 2023. My friend responded back with one line: "Thanks! This guy is a regular Martin Harris." This was not the first time I had heard the comparison made between Harris and Alexander in the month or so since Alexander popped up on my radar. One person put the question like this: "Is Alexander a fraud or is he a Martin Harris?" As to the former, the idea that Alexander might be a fraud, was not without warrant. For one thing he did not sound like an evangelical. He did not obviously share their emphases or beliefs. If one asks an evangelical, "What is the most important thing for me to know?" His answer would be the same as was given by the Moravian August Gottlieb Spangenberg to the very zealous but as-yet-unsaved John Wesley when the latter arrived in Georgia as a missionary. The day after Welsey arrived in Savannah, he met Spangenberg and asked him his advice “with regard to my own conduct,” hoping to obtain counsel from the voice of experience as to the best way to proceed with his own missionary work. In reply Spangenberg immediately set to interrogating Wesley about his own spiritual condition “My brother,” said Spangenberg, “I must ask first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are the son of God? This was not a question Wesley was prepared for, and he says he was “surprised, and knew not what to answer.” This was the same question his father had pressed him about in his final illness the year previous (d. 25 April 1735). “The inward witness, son” the dying Samuel Wesley had stressed, “the inward witness, that is the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity”. Years later, John Wesley admitted that “at the time I understood him not.” (Letter to John Smith, 22 March 1748, see here. Spangenberg observed Wesley’s surprise and probed further: “Do you know Jesus Christ?” Wesley hesitated, then answered: “I know he is the Saviour of the world.

“True,” responded Spangenberg, “but do you know he has saved you?”

“I hope he has died to save me.” returned Wesley.“Do you know yourself?” Spangenberg returned.Wesley answered, “I do,” but confided more honestly to his Journal: “But I fear they were vain words” (Journal, 7 Feb 1736, see here. This is the most important question the evangelical must ask himself and others: Do I [you, we] know Jesus Christ and that he has saved not just the world but me. Do I have the witness within myself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that I am the son of God?” (see 2 Cor 13:5).

Alexander often affirms that before he became a Christian he knew that the Bible was true, and that Jesus died for his sins. But when it comes to the question of salvation itself he usually frames it in terms not of a relationship with Jesus but of finding the organization that follows Jesus correctly by keeping Jesus' commands and has real apostolic authority. The focus then is on finding an institution with divinely appointed authorities and the right rituals and practices. This is a strain that runs right through his history. In contrast evangelicals downplay those things and focus instead on knowing Jesus himself. We see this difference in language and emphasis in Alexander's description of where he was at when he joined the Twelve Tribes group in 2002, a quarter of a century after having accepted Christ:

"This is what I was looking for, an apostolic people that I could be baptized into with authority. Because by now I'd already been baptized like four times, and I'd just gotten wet, okay, because, there has to be the authority and there has to be a covenant people to be baptized into, that is the body of Christ, it actually is Heavenly Father's covenant people...I didn't feel any more saved than a pig in the mud...The Gospel with authority and power is designed to cut people out of the world and bring them into the kingdom of God on earth, like Paul, he says, " you know I turned you from darkness to light, and from the Kingdom of Satan unto God," it transfers you from the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of God on earth. And I knew that had never happened." (see here, min. 21-23). The evangelical would read the above passage as amounting to a frank confession on Alexander's part that he had never been born again, had never received, to echo Spangenberg's words, the witness within himself...the Spirit of God bearing witness with his spirit that he was the son of God. They would also interpret the quote from God's commission of the apostle Paul differently and remark on the additional details Alexander adds to it. Here are the words from Acts 26:17-18:

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The other day a friend of mine asked me to send him a link to a timeline I had posted on Mormon convert David Alexander's religious peregrinations during his purported "47 years in evangelical Christianity" before becoming a Mormon on 20 March 2023. My friend responded back with one line: "Thanks! This guy is a regular Martin Harris." This was not the first time I had heard the comparison made between Harris and Alexander in the month or so since Alexander popped up on my radar. One person put the question like this: "Is Alexander a fraud or is he a Martin Harris?" As to the former, the idea that Alexander might be a fraud, was not without warrant. For one thing he did not sound like an evangelical. He did not obviously share their emphases or beliefs. If one asks an evangelical, "What is the most important thing for me to know?" His answer would be the same as was given by the Moravian August Gottlieb Spangenberg to the very zealous but as-yet-unsaved John Wesley when the latter arrived in Georgia as a missionary. The day after Welsey arrived in Savannah, he met Spangenberg and asked him his advice “with regard to my own conduct,” hoping to obtain counsel from the voice of experience as to the best way to proceed with his own missionary work. In reply Spangenberg immediately set to interrogating Wesley about his own spiritual condition “My brother,” said Spangenberg, “I must ask first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are the son of God? This was not a question Wesley was prepared for, and he says he was “surprised, and knew not what to answer.” This was the same question his father had pressed him about in his final illness the year previous (d. 25 April 1735). “The inward witness, son” the dying Samuel Wesley had stressed, “the inward witness, that is the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity”. Years later, John Wesley admitted that “at the time I understood him not.” (Letter to John Smith, 22 March 1748, see here. Spangenberg observed Wesley’s surprise and probed further: “Do you know Jesus Christ?” Wesley hesitated, then answered: “I know he is the Saviour of the world.

“True,” responded Spangenberg, “but do you know he has saved you?”
“I hope he has died to save me.” returned Wesley.“Do you know yourself?” Spangenberg returned.Wesley answered, “I do,” but confided more honestly to his Journal: “But I fear they were vain words” (Journal, 7 Feb 1736, see here. This is the most important question the evangelical must ask himself and others: Do I [you, we] know Jesus Christ and that he has saved not just the world but me. Do I have the witness within myself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that I am the son of God?” (see 2 Cor 13:5).

Alexander often affirms that before he became a Christian he knew that the Bible was true, and that Jesus died for his sins. But when it comes to the question of salvation itself he usually frames it in terms not of a relationship with Jesus but of finding the organization that follows Jesus correctly by keeping Jesus' commands and has real apostolic authority. The focus then is on finding an institution with divinely appointed authorities and the right rituals and practices. This is a strain that runs right through his history. In contrast evangelicals downplay those things and focus instead on knowing Jesus himself. We see this difference in language and emphasis in Alexander's description of where he was at when he joined the Twelve Tribes group in 2002, a quarter of a century after having accepted Christ:

"This is what I was looking for, an apostolic people that I could be baptized into with authority. Because by now I'd already been baptized like four times, and I'd just gotten wet, okay, because, there has to be the authority and there has to be a covenant people to be baptized into, that is the body of Christ, it actually is Heavenly Father's covenant people...I didn't feel any more saved than a pig in the mud...The Gospel with authority and power is designed to cut people out of the world and bring them into the kingdom of God on earth, like Paul, he says, " you know I turned you from darkness to light, and from the Kingdom of Satan unto God," it transfers you from the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of God on earth. And I knew that had never happened." (see here, min. 21-23).

The evangelical would read the above passage as amounting to a frank confession on Alexander's part that he had never been born again, had never received, to echo Spangenberg's words, the witness within himself...the Spirit of God bearing witness with his spirit that he was the son of God. They would also interpret the quote from God's commission of the apostle Paul differently and remark on the additional details Alexander adds to it. Here are the words from Acts 26:17-18:

"I [Jesus] am sending you [Paul] to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me."

For the evangelical, following the teaching of Paul himself, it is not a matter of hunting down God's community and being joined to it through baptism. It is a matter, rather, of those who are born of the Spirit being at the same timejoined by the Spirit to the body of Christ. It is indeed very common for the new birth to occur prior to the physical rite of baptism, and equally as common to undergo the physical right of baptism without in being accompanied by the new birth. "For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free and we were all given the one spirit to drink" (1 Corinthians 12:13). If it were only a matter of being baptized into the body of Christ by someone with authority then why would Paul urge the Corinthians to "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you unless, of course you fail the test" (2 Corinthians 13:5). But Paul himself founded the Church at Corinth, so if they failed the test it was not because Paul didn't have the apostolic authority to baptize! But the real issue, which Paul pinpoints in the passage is that someone can be in a church founded by the apostle Paul himself and not be in the faith because Christ Jesus is not in them. In any case the fact that Alexander doesn't talk like an evangelical, naturally raised suspicion as to whether he had really ever been an evangelical. And this in turn led to the first half of the question: "Is Alexander a fraud or is he a Martin Harris?" Happily, Alexander very helpfully responded to the suspicion in a ten-video series, produced between 28/29 March and 5 April 2024, titled Who is Latter Day Saint Convert David Alexander? Really?In it he gave a broad outline of his various ecclesiastical associations (see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).