Bible Discussion Thread

Because of what I'm saying about the churches of our day, I want to provide what I see from my own personal experience as well as what I have learned from others about church history and particularly the last 50-75 years or so. I am old enough to have observed some of this. Let me say emphatically that my observations and experience should never be a basis for scriptural interpretation in any sense. We can interpret our observations and experience from scripture. Never the other way around.

We can see from scripture that the church even very quickly after the cross began to depart somewhat from truth. We read this in Galatians and in the seven churches in Rev 2 and Rev 3. The Bible speaks for itself regarding this.

The church had gone very much astray by the time of the Reformation, when God raised up faithful men like Luther, Calvin, Knox and others along with the invention of the printing press that made Bibles available to the masses. Many of the Creeds and Confessions that define post-reformation churches and denominations were developed at that time and made giant steps toward correcting some of the false teachings prevalent in that day. But they were not infallible.

Unfortunately up until and including our day, very little in-depth Bible study and questioning by the churches of those Confessions has been done. And even worse, they came to have an authority in the churches equal to or more so than the Bible itself. But despite all this, God was very patient and longsuffering with the churches in continuing to use them as His primary means of getting the Gospel out into the world.

Today, however, if we examine what the churches are doing and teaching we find that the Bible has essentially lost its authority as we see activities and teachings within the churches that would never have been tolerated 50-75 years ago. And virtually every church teaches a do-it-yourself Gospel where WE need to DO something to become saved.

More later perhaps.