The Reverend Walter Martin held four earned degrees and received his education at Stony Brook School and Shelton College. He completed his Master’s degree at New York University, and his Ph.D. at California Western University. He has authored 12 books, six booklets, and scores of articles. His tracts have been translated into a number of languages and circulated in the millions of copies around the world. He is a recognized authority on religions having their origins in the United States. The late Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, named by Billy Graham as one of the foremost Bible Teachers of the 20th Century, once wrote of Dr. Martin, “I know of no one who equals him in this field.” He is widely accepted as the “father” of the Counter-Cult Movement.
The Kingdom of the Cults, Professor Martin’s largest and most comprehensive text, was selected by both Christianity Today and Eternity magazines as “one of the best” of the year in 1965, and has since been revised and expanded. The July, 1985 edition of Newsweek Magazine listed the book as “one of the 10 best selling spiritual books in America.” It has now sold more than 750,000 copies.
Professor Martin served for six years as an Associate of Biblical Studies at the King’s College in Briarcliff Manor, New York, and has worked as Editorial Research Associate of Action Magazine, the official publication of the National Association of Evangelicals. He has contributed frequently to leading Christian magazines and has published articles in Christianity Today, Christian Life, Action, Eternity, and The Christian Reader. For five years he was a contributing editor to Eternity Magazine and served for ten years as an editor for the Zondervan Publishing House, heading up its Division of Cult Apologetics, which he founded in 1955.
Dr. Martin appeared for over ten years as a regular panel member on the largest night-time radio talk show in the nation. “The John Nebel Show” was heard in 43 states, six days a week over the NBC Radio Network. Professor Martin also appeared on “The Phil Donahue Show”, “The 700 Club”, “The John Ankerberg Show”, Trinity Broadcasting Network, the Canadian Broadcasting Network, and many other syndicated radio and television programs. Dr. Billy Graham has said of him, “He is one of the most articulate spokesmen for evangelical Christianity that I know.”
Walter Martin’s radio ministry expanded in 1965 with the addition of “The Bible Answer Man” program, a two-hour live telephone talk show in which Professor Martin answers questions about the Bible and related subjects. The program was recognized by the National Religious Broadcasters as “one of the newest and most controversially stimulating programs in Christian radio!” “Dateline Eternity” was another radio program, developed by Dr. Martin, which included the best Bible questions and answers from the live “Bible Answer Man” program. He was the Founder and President of the Christian Research Institute, located in Southern California.
Dr. Walter Martin was also featured in two syndicated film series, “Walter Martin Speaks Out on the Cults” and “The Kingdom of the Cults”. A pioneer in the field of teaching by tape, Professor Martin, in cooperation with Vision House, has produced 12 albums and over 60 cassettes on the cults, the occult, and general apologetics. He has recorded more than 5,000 audio tapes on general biblical subjects.
Professor Martin has also successfully represented historical Christianity on three occasions against the noted atheist, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, as well as atheistic philosophy professors, psychoanalysts, rabbis (orthodox, conservative, and reformed), skeptics, agnostics, liberal clergymen, non-Christian religionists, cultists, occultists, and the author of the best-selling attack on Christianity, The Passover Plot, Dr. Hugh J. Schonfield. Dr. Martin also debated the founder of the “God is Dead” movement, Thomas J. J. Altizer.
Walter Martin also pioneered the development of seminars dealing with cults and the problems of secularism in education. He was in great demand as a conference and seminar speaker, having lectured widely in colleges, seminaries, universities, and churches throughout the United States, Canada, and in more than 18 countries including Europe, Asia, South America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Christianity Today has called Professor Martin “The most productive evangelical scholar writing in the field of the sects today.” Time magazine gave special attention and recognition to Walter Martin’s research abilities and characterized him as “a research polemicist who brought peace and not a sword.”
Rev. Walter Martin was an ordained minister and a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. He maintained an active pulpit ministry and taught every Sunday at the Newport Mesa Christian Center in Costa Mesa, California.
Dr. Martin held membership in the American Academy of Religion, The Society of Biblical Literature, the Evangelical Theological Society, the National Association of Religious Broadcasters and the National Association of Evangelicals. He served for 15 years as a founding board member of the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Hamilton, Massachusetts and was a Professor in the M.A. program at the Simon Greenleaf School of Law in Anaheim, California.
Articles on Walter Martin can be found in Who’s Who in the West, Who’s Who in Religion, The Dictionary of American Biography, Community Leaders and Noteworthy Americans, The International Registry of Profiles, Men of Achievement, Who’s Who in Intellectuals, The International Register of Biographies, and Community Leaders of the World.