Expert: Tom Smith - 2/6/2009

Question
I've been searching my faith for many years. I grew up attending Church of Christ. Now that I'm an adult and have a child of my own I've been researching the different churches. For many deep and personal reasons I turned from God for 20 years. By the wonderful grace of God I've found I've been saved and have recommitted my life to Him. This is why I have so many questions, and with all the different and similar religions out there how do you choose. I pray about this and feel I've chosen the right one, but what is the "true" difference in the Bible based churches such as: Baptist, Calvary, Presbyterian and yes even Church of Christ churches. I feel in my heart and by scripture that you don't have to "baptized" to be saved. You do have to accept Jesus into your heart and as the Son of God. Church of Christ believes it's the "baptism" that saves you.
Since you seem to have studied the many different denominations I was hoping you can help me get down to the meat and potatoes of the similar religions.
God bless

Answer
Marcia,

My apologies for the delay in responding. There is no "true" denomination. Many denominations, such as the Church of Christ claim to be the only true Church (as does the Roman Catholic denomination) but Jesus came to save men and those who believe in Him are members of the body of Christ, the one and only true Church.

You are quite right about baptism. I have put together a webpage which answers, from scripture some of the more common questions regarding this topic. The webpage is found here:

http://www.geocities.com/smithtj.geo/baptism/baptism.html

It is difficult to try to put together a description of the difference between these various denominations. One reason is that, for baptist as an example, there are many different baptist denominations, which hold widely different views. Some would be classed as Calvinist, some as Arminian. Some are more strict on baptism and how it is to be done. Some less so. By Calvinist, I am referring largely to the principles in the theology of "Once Saved Always Saved" and the belief that we have no choice as to whether we are saved or not. Arminians tend to be the opposite, with the extreme Arminians believing that we lose our salvation whenever we sin and must ask for forgiveness again to regain it. I believe that the truth lies between these two views, but that is a much larger issue in and of itself.

Presbyterian churches are Calvinist, which would differentiate them from many Baptist and Church of Christ churches. Presbyterian church often will use baptism by sprinkling rather than by immersion.

The Church of Christ tends to be hyper-Arminian, and believes not just in baptism being essential for salvation, but also teaches a very legalistic theology, requiring obedience to the law for salvation. Many or perhaps most will deny some essentials of the Christian faith such as the trinitarian nature of God.

I know that this is very brief, but I hope that it helps. I do have a brief overview presentation on the Church of Christ which I could email you if you wish to contact me privately with you email address. You can get me through the website address given below.

Tom
http://discern.ca