Jon Gary Williams
Articles / Resources
0868
Foy E. Wallace, Jr. vs Glen V. Tingley (Christian Alliance - Premillennialism)
October 27, 1928
Birmingham, Alabama
(By Floyd H. Horton)
Debate held Sept. 20-30.
Held in open air. Around 3000 attended. Many people came from out of state. The debate greatly strengthened the church, many sinners saw how feeble error was when contrasted with God's word. Mr. Whit Windham, a prominent attorney of Birmingham, was chairman of moderators and made a splendid contribution to the debate. He had no trouble keeping the discussion on a high plane. Both speakers conducted themselves in a splendid manner. We are persuaded that Foy E. Wallace is a Christian gentleman. No greater defender of the faith is living today.
For three nights Tingley affirmed: "The Bible teaches that at the second coming of Christ the Jews as nation (national Israel) will be restored to Palestine and receive the kingdom of the Old Testament prophecy, and, with Christ as king, rule over the whole world." Mr. Tingley did not explain what sort of kingdom it would be, but he read many verses in Jeremiah and Isaiah and books written before these to prove his proposition.
Bro. Wallace proved that all the verses Mr. Tingley used pointed to the return of the Jews from Babylon, and not the future the future kingdom. Mr. Tingley began to quote from Campbell, using statements that some of our erring brethren had sent to him; and just here I should like to say to my erring brethren who tried to help Mr. Tingley win this debate by sending him material, that they just helped him to a more ignoble defeat. Mr. Tingley began to quote Campbell and bro. Wallace warned him that if he did not leave Campbell alone he was going to ruin him; but Tingley thought he had received correct information on Campbell, so he continued using him.
The third night bro. Wallace got out a number of books that contained the writings of Campbell and read some of the hardest statement against the future kingdom that I ever heard. He proved that Tingley's quotes from Campbell were inaccurate. After this Tingley would not shake hands with bro. Wallace on Campbell, and he dropped Campbell's name for the rest of he debate.
The millennial reign of 1,000 years was debated the next three nights. Mr. Tingley went to Rev. 20, but Wallace took this argument away from him.
The last subject discussed was: "The Bible teaches that all alien sinners must receive the Holy Spirit baptism to become a child of God. Mr. Tingley said there were two Holy Spirit baptisms - one to make you a child of God and one to keep you a child of God. He said that first a sinner had to first receive the Holy Spirit baptism, then be baptized in water because he was saved, and then receive another Holy Spirit baptism to keep one and dwell in one as a child of God. We had never before heard such an argument. He used as his text during these three discussion I Cor. 12:13, but bro. Wallace soon took his text away from him and insisted on Eph. 4:5, which says there is one baptism. After this bro. Wallace just let Tingley debate with Paul whether or not there are three baptisms.
Bro. Wallace had some well-arranged charts that he used throughout the debate\. These charts alone were enough to defeat any sectarian preacher. A few times Mr. Tingley tried to meet the arguments on the charts, but hew got into a big hornets nest each time.
We need more debates like this. The history of the church shows that we have grown faster when we fought hardest. When we stop fighting we stop growing.
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