‘The Bible Answer Man’ Even Had a Posthumous Solution

When Baptist minister Walter Martin, known to millions of radio listeners around the world as “The Bible Answer Man,” died in June, the Irvine organization he had directed for more than 30 years never faltered. Martin had made sure of that before his death.

More than a year and half ago, Martin began planning extensively for the Christian Research Institute’s future after his death, which came at age 60 from a heart attack.

“About a year ago, he came to me and said he wanted to map out the organization’s direction for the next 10 years,” said Hendrick Hanegraaff, a member of the institute’s board of directors. “He felt that the institute was going to be even more significant to the community in the upcoming decade.”

Martin founded the organization in 1960, and four years later began to broadcast “The Bible Answer Man” on a New Jersey radio station. During his show, Martin would answer questions from listeners with an intense and often startling knowledge of the Scriptures.

Billy Graham once called him “one of the most articulate spokesmen for evangelical Christianity that I know.”

In 1974, Martin moved the show to El Toro, where it began on KYMS-FM in Santa Ana. Now the radio show is broadcast on KKLA in Los Angeles and KPZE in Anaheim and to more than 140 radio markets around the world, including Zaire, Burma and Canada.

Regarded as an authority on historical Christianity, Martin often told the press that his mission was to confront cults and unbiblical beliefs.

“The rise of cult activity was one of the reasons he felt the organization was going to be even more viable in the coming years,” Hanegraaff said. “Anyone who reads the paper can tell how important that issue is today.”

One of Martin’s first actions while planning for the future of the institute was to appoint Hanegraaff as director last year. Next, he made detailed plans for the differing divisions in the organization.

“Increasing our radio outreach program was one area that we concentrated on,” Hanegraaff said. “The plans called for extensive expansion in many other markets over the course of the coming years.”

Since Martin’s death, the radio show has extended its broadcasting to the United Kingdom, New York and Texas.

Plans are also developing for the expansion of the institute’s research center in Irvine.

“We are committed to being a first-rate research facility,” Hanegraaff said. “People call us from all over the world to ask us questions, and we need to have the answers.”

Hanegraaff added that publishing, ministry and seminar divisions are also expected to be expanded in coming years.

“What is very pleasing also, is that right now the institute is as economically sound as it’s ever been,” Hanegraaff said.

“Many times, when an organization loses its leader, it loses some of its economic standing. But because Martin planned everything so well, we are able to proceed with many of the things he wanted done.”

The institute employs 45 full-time workers and operates on a $3-million budget.

“The Bible Answer Man” had two co-hosts for the last few years, Martin and Craig Hawkins, who now handles most questions while the former chief of the institute’s Brazil bureau, Paul Carden, anchors the daily broadcast.

“Of course it’s very difficult to replace someone of Martin’s magnitude,” Hanegraaff said. “But it is possible to maintain that same amount of excellence, and that’s what I feel we’ve done since Martin’s death.”