Believers Authority Bible Quotes

If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don't like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.

Different authors have different points of view. You can't just say, 'I believe in the Bible.

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost... [Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]

...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. ...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories. But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.

People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.

They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers. "Where does she get all them theories?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!

If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.

Quit Believing in Lies and Always Search For the Truth!

I especially loved the Old Testament. Even as a kid I had a sense of it being slightly illicit. As though someone had slipped an R-rated action movie into a pile of Disney DVDs. For starters Adam and Eve were naked on the first page. I was fascinated by Eve's ability to always stand in the Garden of Eden so that a tree branch or leaf was covering her private areas like some kind of organic bakini. But it was the Bible's murder and mayhem that really got my attention. When I started reading the real Bible I spent most of my time in Genesis Exodus 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Talk about violent. Cain killed Abel. The Egyptians fed babies to alligators. Moses killed an Egyptian. God killed thousands of Egyptians in the Red Sea. David killed Goliath and won a girl by bringing a bag of two hundred Philistine foreskins to his future father-in-law. I couldn't believe that Mom was so happy about my spending time each morning reading about gruesome battles prostitutes fratricide murder and adultery. What a way to have a "quiet time." While I grew up with a fairly solid grasp of Bible stories I didn't have a clear idea of how the Bible fit together or what it was all about. I certainly didn't understand how the exciting stories of the Old Testament connected to the rather less-exciting New Testament and the story of Jesus. This concept of the Bible as a bunch of disconnected stories sprinkled with wise advice and capped off with the inspirational life of Jesus seems fairly common among Christians. That is so unfortunate because to see the Bible as one book with one author and all about one main character is to see it in its breathtaking beauty.

There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority? ...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.

The justification I hear more often than any other for leaving the Bible behind is that “everyone knows” it is antiquated and full of scientific nonsense, if not blatant errors and contradictions. Amazingly, when I ask people to cite examples, many cannot bring to mind even one. Apparently, they base their opinion on hearsay and repeat a widespread misconception. Among those who do answer my question, one Bible portion draws more vigorous attack than all others combined: the first few chapters of Genesis. This attack opens a wonderful door of opportunity for me—and for every believer who knows something about the scientific discoveries of the past few decades. Instead of offering an excuse for disbelief and rejection, these chapters present some of the most persuasive evidences ever assembled for the supernatural authorship, accuracy, and authority of the Bible.

What happens to a culture that is clueless about what is true, good, and just? Pilate answered that question when he declared: “I have the power to crucify you or set you free.” When we believe truth is unknowable, we rob it of any authority. What is left is brute power wielding arbitrary force.

Be the one whose Lord is Jesus and who takes His words as a final authority without any thought of controversy. True believers follow Jehovah, not only for what He does, but specially for who He is.

God did not just start talking to us with the Bible or the church or the prophets. Do we really think that God had nothing at all to say for 13.7 billion years, and started speaking only in the latest nanosecond of geological time? Did all history prior to our sacred texts provide no basis for truth or authority? Of course not. The radiance of the Divine Presence has been glowing and expanding since the beginning of time, before there were any human eyes to see or know about it.

Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon." [From the author's concluding Historical Note]

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

I believe Buck Books is now the most powerful book promotion site for authors, and it’s free to use.

The approach to digital culture I abhor would indeed turn all the world's books into one book, just as Kevin (Kelly) suggested. It might start to happen in the next decade or so. Google and other companies are scanning library books into the cloud in a massive Manhattan Project of cultural digitization. What happens next is what's important. If the books in the cloud are accessed via user interfaces that encourage mashups of fragments that obscure the context and authorship of each fragment, there will be only one book. This is what happens today with a lot of content; often you don't know where a quoted fragment from a news story came from, who wrote a comment, or who shot a video. A continuation of the present trend will make us like various medieval religious empires, or like North Korea, a society with a single book. The Bible can serve as a prototypical example. Like Wikipedia, the Bible's authorship was shared, largely anonymous, and cumulative, and the obscurity of the individual authors served to create an oracle-like ambience for the document as "the literal word of God." If we take a non-metaphysical view of the Bible, it serves as a link to our ancestors, a window. The ethereal, digital replacement technology for the printing press happens to have come of age in a time when the unfortunate ideology I'm criticizing dominates technological culture. Authorship - the very idea of the individual point of view - is not a priority of the new ideology. The digital flattening of expression into a global mush is not presently enforced from the top down, as it is in the case of a North Korean printing press. Instead, the design of software builds the ideology into those actions that are the easiest to perform on the software designs that are becoming ubiquitous. It is true that by using these tools, individuals can author books or blogs or whatever, but people are encouraged by the economics of free content, crowd dynamics, and lord aggregators to serve up fragments instead of considered whole expressions or arguments. The efforts of authors are appreciated in a manner that erases the boundaries between them. The one collective book will absolutely not be the same thing as the library of books by individuals it is bankrupting. Some believe it will be better; others, including me, believe it will be disastrously worse. As the famous line goes from Inherit the Wind: 'The Bible is a book... but it is not the only book' Any singular, exclusive book, even the collective one accumulating in the cloud, will become a cruel book if it is the only one available.

In 1976 the PCUS General Assembly adopted “A Declaration of Faith” that said, “When we encounter apparent tensions and conflicts in what Scripture teaches us to believe and do, the final appeal must be to the authority of Christ.”50

Ecclesiastes This is a book of the Old Testament. I don't believe I've ever read this section of the Bible - I know my Genesis pretty well and my Ten Commandments (I like lists), but I'm hazy on a lot of the other parts. Here, the Britannica provides a handy Cliff Notes version of Ecclesiastes: [the author's] observations on life convinced him that 'the race is not swift, nor the battle strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all' (9:11). Man's fate, the author maintains, does not depend on righteous or wicked conduct but is an inscrutable mystery that remains hidden in God (9:1). All attempts to penetrate this mystery and thereby gain the wisdom necessary to secure one's fate are 'vanity' or futile. In the face of such uncertainty, the author's counsel is to enjoy the good things that God provides while one has them to enjoy. This is great. I've accumulated hundreds of facts in the last seven thousand pages, but i've been craving profundity and perspective. Yes, there was that Dyer poem, but that was just cynical. This is the real thing: the deepest paragraph I've read so far in the encyclopedia. Instant wisdom. It couldn't be more true: the race does not go to the swift. How else to explain the mouth-breathing cretins I knew in high school who now have multimillion-dollar salaries? How else to explain my brilliant friends who are stuck selling wheatgrass juice at health food stores? How else to explain Vin Diesel's show business career? Yes, life is desperately, insanely, absurdly unfair. But Ecclesiastes offers exactly the correct reaction to that fact. There's nothing to be done about it, so enjoy what you can. Take pleasure in the small things - like, for me, Julie's laugh, some nice onion dip, the insanely comfortable beat-up leather chair in our living room. I keep thinking about Ecclesiastes in the days that follow. What if this is the best the encyclopedia has to offer? What if I found the meaning of life on page 347 of the E volume? The Britannica is not a traditional book, so there's no reason why the big revelation should be at the end.

In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy.

A Judge personality strongly believes in right and wrong, which is great, but they also believe they are the ones who decide right and wrong and lord it over others to maintain authority and power. Right and wrong are less a moral code than they are a collar and leash they attach to others so they can lead them around. When a Judge personality is religious, they’ll use the Bible to gain control of others. The Bible becomes a book of rules they use to prove they are right rather than a book that introduces people to God.

I do not know you, my friends, not individually, most of you, but this is the wonderful thing about the work of a preacher, he does not need to know his congregation. Do you know why? Because I know the most important thing about every single one of you, and that is that each of you is a vile sinner. I do not care who you are, because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. I do not care what particular form your sin takes. There is a great deal of attention paid to that today. The preacher is not interested in that. I do not want a catalogue of your sins. I do not care what your sins are. They can be very respectable or they can be heinous, vile, foul, filthy. It does not matter, thank God. But what I have authority to tell you is this. Though you may be the vilest man or woman ever known, and though you may until this moment have lived your life in the gutters and the brothels of sin in every shape and form, I say this to you: be it known unto you that through this man, this Lord Jesus Christ, is preached unto you the forgiveness of sin. And by him all who believe, you included, are at this very moment justified entirely and completely from everything you have ever done— if you believe that this is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that he died there on the cross, for your sins and to bear your punishment. If you believe that, and thank him for it, and rely utterly only upon him and what he has done, I tell you, in the name of God, all your sins are blotted out completely, as if you had never sinned in your life, and his righteousness is put on you and God sees you perfect in his Son. That is the message of the cross, that is Christian preaching, that it is our Lord who saves us, by dying on the cross, and that nothing else can save us, but that that can save whosoever believeth in him.

changes—the use of “ye,” “thou,” and so forth remains unchanged. The King James translators simply did not believe that they had the authority to make changes reflecting developments in the English language, and so continued to reproduce the English of nearly three generations earlier.

Former Director of Kew Gardens, Sir Ghillean Prance FRS, gives equally clear expression to his faith: ‘For many years I have believed that God is the great designer behind all nature… All my studies in science since then have confirmed my faith. I regard the Bible as my principal source of authority.

To be an evangelical, according to the National Association of Evangelicals, is to uphold the Bible as one’s ultimate authority, to confess the centrality of Christ’s atonement, to believe in a born-again conversion experience, and to actively work to spread this good news and reform society accordingly.

If we can agree that the sky is blue, for example, how is it that such agreement is possible? If the world is a world of chance, how could anybody agree on anything? Agreement presupposes a world made by God, designed to be orderly and designed to be known by rational minds. You can see that this kind of argument is presuppositional. It’s appealing to the true knowledge of God that the unbeliever has but suppresses (Rom. 1)—a knowledge that he has in common with the believer. To argue this way is very different from saying, “Let’s assume that the Bible can be false, and let’s judge its truth on the higher authority of our senses and logic.” Now

The prayers of the collective Church are only as powerful as the individuals that make up the collective. By this I mean, if the individuals who have come together to pray do not know what prayer is, or are not aware of their responsibility and authority, they will most likely not be in agreement, and their prayers may be ineffective.

But the case is, that people have been so long in the habit of reading the books, called the Bible and Testament, with their eyes shut, and their senses locked up, that the most stupid inconsistencies have passed on them for truth, and imposition for prophecy. The all-wise Creator has been dishonored by being made the author of fable, and the human mind degraded by believing it.

No more peeping through keyholes! No more mas turbating in the dark! No more public confessions! Unscrew the doors from their jambs! I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw, primary colors, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins. I’m sick of looking at cunts all tickled up, disguised, deformed, idealized. Cunts with nerve ends exposed. I don’t want to watch young virgins masturbating in the privacy of their boudoirs or biting their nails or tearing their hair or lying on a bed full of bread crumbs for a whole chapter. I want Madagascan funeral poles, with animal upon animal and at the top Adam and Eve, and Eve with a crude, honest slit between the legs. I want hermaphrodites who are real hermaphrodites, and not make-believes walking around with an atrophied penis or a dried-up cunt. I want a classic purity, where dung is dung and angels are angels. The Bible a la King James, for example. Not the Bible of Wycliffe, not the Vulgate, not the Greek, not the Hebrew, but the glorious, death-dealing Bible that was created when the English language was in flower, when a vocabulary of twenty thousand words sufficed to build a monument for all time. A Bible written in Svenska or Tegalic, a Bible for the Hottentots or the Chinese, a Bible that has to meander through the trickling sands of French is no Bible-it is a counterfeit and a fraud. The King James Version was created by a race of bone-crushers. It revives the primitive mysteries, revives rape, murder, incest, revives epilepsy, sadism, megalomania, revives demons, angels, dragons, leviathans, revives magic, exorcism, contagion, incantation, revives fratricide, regicide, patricide, suicide, revives hypnotism, anarchism, somnambulism, revives the song, the dance, the act, revives the mantic, the chthonian, the arcane, the mysterious, revives the power, the evil, and the glory that is God. All brought into the open on a colossal scale, and so salted and spiced that it will last until the next Ice Age. A classic purity, then-and to hell with the Post Office authorities! For what is it enables the classics to live at all, if indeed they be living on and not dying as we and all about us are dying? What preserves them against the ravages of time if it be not the salt that is in them? When I read Petronius or Apuleius or Rabelais, how close they seem! That salty tang! That odor of the menagerie! The smell of horse piss and lion’s dung, of tiger’s breath and elephant’s hide. Obscenity, lust, cruelty, boredom, wit. Real eunuchs. Real hermaphrodites. Real pricks. Real cunts. Real banquets! Rabelais rebuilds the walls of Paris with human cunts. Trimalchio tickles his own throat, pukes up his own guts, wallows in his own swill. In the amphitheater, where a big, sleepy pervert of a Caesar lolls dejectedly, the lions and the jackals, the hyenas, the tigers, the spotted leopards are crunching real human boneswhilst the coming men, the martyrs and imbeciles, are walking up the golden stairs shouting Hallelujah!

In one sense, the dialogue between Job and his friends serves as one of the greatest worship examples in the Bible. Though the five men differed in their understanding of God and his ways, each stayed with the conversation, wrestling with his beliefs, and meanwhile repeatedly extolling God for his greatness, majesty, justice, and mercy. Each man revered him as Creator and ultimate Authority over all creation.

It is comic - but I used to believe that dying persons saw the vanity of things, the futility of fame, passion, art, and so forth. I believed that treasured memories in a dying man's mind dwindled to rainbow wisps; but now I feel just the contrary: my most trivial sentiments and those of all men have acquired gigantic proportions. The entire solar system is but a reflection in the crystal of my (or your) wrist watch. The more I shrivel the bigger I grow. I suppose this is an uncommon phenomenon. Total rejection of all religions ever dreamt up by man and total composure in the face of total death! If I could explain this triple totality in one big book, that book would become no doubt a new bible and its author the founder of a new creed. Fortunately for my self-esteem that book will not be written - not merely because a dying man cannot write books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately.

A pine cone cannot fall from a tree unless God is involved. A bumblebee cannot pollenate a flower or sting your arm apart from the will of God. Money cannot enter or exit your bank account apart from the sovereignty of God. Little Ernest cannot be born or be buried in that grave just a half-mile from my house apart from God’s will. Legislation cannot be passed in this country or in any other apart from God’s sovereignty. You hold this book in your hands because God sovereignly allows you to hold this book in your hands. Everything is under His sovereign rule. Some of us believe that God is a bit like the president. He has a lot of power and authority, but there are checks and balances to limit Him. He is limited by our human choices, the events of the future, the wrongs of the past, or by those who do not believe in Him. Some of His legislations could be vetoed. His popularity can ebb and flow. But God is not like that at all. There are no limits to His rule and power.

Sir Francis Bacon, believed by some to be the real author of the Shakespeare material as well as the person who masterminded and oversaw production of the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. Bacon was in charge of forty-five scholars who translated and collated the KJV, making him the forty-sixth. For a coded clue as to Bacon’s contributions, see Psalms 46—count forty-six letters from the beginning to get the word “shake” and forty-six words from the end to get the word “spear.” The number forty-six was Bacon’s cypher.

So I offer this personal apologia for those of you who perhaps are wondering why I quote Jesus so much. You might be saying, “Does it really matter?” or “Does it have to be in the Bible to be true?” Well, I quote Jesus because I still consider him to be the spiritual authority of the Western world, whether we follow him or not. He is always spot-on at the deeper levels and when we understand him in his own explosive context. One does not even need to believe in his divinity to realize that Jesus is seeing at a much higher level than most of us.

Layer upon layer it comes, dense and rich within the texts, echo upon echo, allusion and resonance tumbling over one another, so that for those with ears to hear it becomes un-missable, a crescendo of questions to which in the end there can be only one answer. Why are you speaking like this? Are you the one who is to come? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What sign can you show us? Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners? Where did this man get all this wisdom? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Who are you? Why do you not follow the traditions? Do the authorities think he’s the Messiah? Can the Messiah come from Galilee? Why are you behaving unlawfully? Who then is this? Aren’t we right to say that you’re a Samaritan and have a demon? What do you say about him? By what right are you doing these things? Who is this Son of Man? Should we pay tribute to Caesar? And climactically: Are you the king of the Jews? What is truth? Where are you from? Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One? Then finally, too late for answers, but not too late for irony: Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us! If you’re the Messiah, why don’t you come down from that cross? … And Jesus had his own questions. Who do you say I am? Do you believe in the Son of Man? Can you drink the cup I’m going to drink? How do the scribes say that the Messiah is David’s son? Couldn’t you keep watch with me for a single hour? And finally and horribly: My God, my God, why did you abandon me? … The reason there were so many questions, in both directions, was that–as historians have concluded for many years now–Jesus fitted no ready-made categories

Why should men in the name of religion try to harmonize the contradictions that exist between Nature and a book? Why should philosophers be denounced for placing more reliance upon what they know than upon what they have been told? If there is a God, it is reasonably certain that he made the world, but it is by no means certain that he is the author of the bible. Why then should we not place greater confidence in Nature than in a book? And even if this God made not only the world but the book besides, it does not follow that the book is the best part of Creation, and the only part that we will be eternally punished for denying. It seems to me that it is quite as important to know something of the solar system, something of the physical history of this globe, as it is to know the adventures of Jonah or the diet of Ezekiel. (...) It seems to me that a belief in the great truths of science are fully as essential to salvation, as the creed of any church. We are taught that a man may be perfectly acceptable to God even if he denies the rotundity of the earth,(...) and yet, for failing to believe in the „scheme of salvation” another may be eternally lost.

It was evangelicals' sense of rudderlessness - their desire for an authority to guide them in questions of dogma, life, and worship - that led them to rediscover liturgy and history in the first place. The irony was that in their smorgasbord approach to non-Protestant tradition, in their individualistic rejection of the rules of any one church in favor of a free run of the so-called church universal, in their repudiation of American nationalism in favor of cosmopolitanism, young evangelicals were being quintessentially evangelical and stereotypically American, doing as they pleased according to no authority but their own. The principle of sola scriptura was far clearer in theory than in practice. No matter evangelicals' faith that, with the 'illumination of the Holy Spirit,' 'Scripture could and should interpret itself,' too many illuminated believers came to different conclusions about what the Bible meant. Inerrantists who asserted their 'literal' interpretation with absolute certainty could do so only by covertly relying on modern, manmade assumptions. Other evangelicals were now searching for similar assurance in the authority of church history and the mystery of worship.

The first chapter of Matthew begins with giving a genealogy of Jesus Christ; and in the third chapter of Luke there is also given a genealogy of Jesus Christ. Did these two agree, it would not prove the genealogy to be true, because it might nevertheless be a fabrication; but as they contradict each other in every particular, it proves falsehood absolutely. If Matthew speaks truth, Luke speaks falsehood; and if Luke speaks truth, Matthew speaks falsehood: and as there is no authority for believing one more than the other, there is no authority for believing either; and if they cannot be believed even in the very first thing they say, and set out to prove, they are not entitled to be believed in any thing they say afterwards. Truth is an uniform thing; and as to inspiration and revelation, were we to admit it, it is impossible to suppose it can be contradictory. Either then the men called apostles were imposters, or the books ascribed to them have been written by other persons, and fathered upon them, as is the case in the Old Testament. Now, if these men, Matthew and Luke, set out with a falsehood between them (as these two accounts show they do) in the very commencement of their history of Jesus Christ, and of who, and of what he was, what authority (as I have before asked) is there left for believing the strange things they tell us afterwards? If they cannot be believed in their account of his natural genealogy, how are we to believe them when they tell us he was the son of God, begotten by a ghost; and that an angel announced this in secret to his mother? If they lied in one genealogy, why are we to believe them in the other? If his natural genealogy be manufactured, which it certainly is, why are we not to suppose that his celestial genealogy is manufactured also, and that the whole is fabulous? Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falsehood?

But this means that the teachings of the New Testament are no longer our final authority. Our authority now becomes our own ideas of the direction the New Testament was heading but never quite reached. This has not been the historic position of Bible-believing Protestant churches. In fact, they have opposed such a position. In order to guard against making our authority something other than the Bible, major confessions of faith have insisted that the words of God in Scripture are our authority, not some position arrived at after the Bible was finished. This is the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, or “the Bible alone,” as our ultimate authority for doctrine and life.

For strict fundamentalists of the Bible, the theory and what follows from it seal them off from unwanted information, and in that way their actions are invested with meaning, clarity, and, they believe, moral authority. Those who reject the Bible’s theory and who believe, let us say, in the theory of Science are also protected from unwanted information. Their theory, for example, instructs them to disregard information about astrology, dianetics, and creationism, which they usually label as medieval superstition or subjective opinion. Their theory fails to give any guidance about moral information and, by definition, gives little weight to information that falls outside the constraints of science.

The Bible is not a privileged possession of Protestants: all believers, absolutely, must be nourished on Scripture. ... We are constantly bombarded with messages of every kind. Only God's Word, passed on to us in a special way in Scripture, has the necessary depth, clarity, and authority to help us find our way. Only Scripture enables us to discover the truth, not as something abstract, but as God's presence in our lives and the very specific way he offers us day after day. ... This simple spiritual experience of discovering Holy Scripture as light, encouragement, and strength for our path today--for Scripture has an authority possessed by no human word, no human reasoning--is one all Christians can and should have.

What is the meaning of the phrase “shall be bound in heaven... shall be loosed in heaven?” Williams, the Bible translator, points out for us that the verb form is the perfect passive participle, so the reference is to things in a state of having been already forbidden (or permitted). This tells us that whatever is bound or loosed by the believer is done on the basis that it has already been done “in heaven,” i.e. by the Lord himself. What is it, then, that the Lord has already bound and which he has given us power to bind again? Jesus teaches us: Or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house. Matt. 12:29 The context of this passage finds Jesus casting out demons. His authority for thus doing is challenged by the religious authorities. They accuse him of doing it by the power of the devil himself. Jesus is explaining that he is able to control demon spirits and make them obey him because he has already bound the strong man — Satan. The fact that the demons obey Him is evidence of Satan being bound. Satan is already bound “in heaven” — by heaven’s power. His power is broken. The key is given to us. We have power over him, too. Amen! The Greek word for “bind” in the passage before us is deo. It means to fasten or tie — as with chains, as an animal tied to keep it from straying. This is glorious! When Satan is bound he is made inoperable. He loses his ability to act against us.

One of the most recent developments in comprehensive evangelical biblical interpretation was the “redemptive-movement hermeneutic” offered by William Webb.128 He called for evangelicals to move beyond what Scripture teaches and develop an ultimate ethic for the contemporary culture. Wayne Grudem argued that “Webb’s trajectory hermeneutic nullifies in principle the moral authority of the entire New Testament … creates an overly complex system of interpretation … [and] creates a system that is overly liable to subjective influence and therefore is indeterminate and will lead to significant misuse.”129 Indeed, Grudem concluded that Webb’s hermeneutical process was “entirely foreign to the way in which God intended the Bible to be read, understood, believed, and obeyed.”130

O guide my judgment and my taste, Sweet Spirit, author of the book Of wonders, told in language chaste And plainness, not to be mistook. O let me muse, and yet at sight The page admire, the page believe; "Let there be light, and there was light, Let there be Paradise and Eve!" Who his soul's rapture can refrain? At Joseph's ever pleasing tale Of marvels, the prodigious train, To Sinai's hill from Goshen's vale. The psalmist and proverbial seer, And all the prophets sons of song, Make all things precious, all things dear, And bear the brilliant word along. O take the book from off the shelf, And con it meekly on thy knees; Best panegyric on itself, And self-avouch'd to teach and please. Respect, adore it heart and mind. How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand, Who reads the most, is most refind'd, And polish'd by the Master's hand.

Easterners who embrace an authoritarian mindset need to be reminded that religious authorities are not all created equal; some are worth following, and some are not. If the credentials of the leaders are not scrutinized and their messages not weighed, how can one know which should be followed? The Bible encourages us to “test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21 ESV) and warns, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (1 John 4:1 ESV). The question is, Will Easterners have the courage and tenacity to apply the needed tests? This can be challenging because, as Nabeel reminds us, “When authority is derived from position rather than reason, the act of questioning leadership is dangerous because it has the potential to upset the system. Dissension is reprimanded and obedience is rewarded.

The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the individual has broken down. Instead, dogma is “believed”;4 it is hypostatized, as the Protestants hypostatize the Bible, illegitimately making it the supreme authority, regardless of its contradictions and controversial interpretations. (As we know, anything can be authorized out of the Bible.) Dogma no longer formulates anything, no longer expresses anything; it has become a tenet to be accepted in and for itself, with no basis in any experience that would demonstrate its truth.5 Indeed, faith has itself become that experience. The faith of a man like Paul, who had never seen our Lord in the flesh, could still appeal to the overwhelming apparition on the road to Damascus and to the revelation of the gospel in a kind of ecstasy. Similarly, the faith of the man of antiquity and of the medieval Christian never ran counter to the consensus omnium but was on the contrary supported by it. All this has completely changed in the last three hundred years. But what comparable change has kept pace with this in theological circles?

The people came to Samuel and said: Place a King over us, to guide us. And Samuel said to them: This is what a King will do if he reigns over you: he’ll take your sons and make them run with his chariots and horses. He’ll dispose them however he wants: he’ll make them commanders of thousands or captains of fifties, he’ll send them to plough, to reap, to forge his weapons and his chariots. He’ll take your daughters to make perfume for him, or cook his food or do his baking. He’ll take your fields and your vineyards and your olive groves – oh, he’ll take the very best of those and give them to his cronies. He’ll take much more. A tenth of your grain and your wine – those will go to his favourite aristocrats and faithful servants. Your manservants and your maidservants, your best men, your donkeys – yes, he’ll take those for his own use. He’ll take one tenth of your flocks “and you yourselves will become his slaves. On that day, believe me, you will cry out for relief from this King, the King you asked for, but the Lord will not answer you on that day. But the people would not listen to Samuel. They said: No. Give us a King over us. So that we can be like all the other nations. Give us a King to guide us and lead us into battle. When Samuel heard what the people said, he told it to the Lord. The Lord answered, Give them a King.

The aspiring child is often checked by the dull disciple who has learned his lessons so imperfectly that he has never got beyond his school-books. Full of fragmentary rules, he has perceived the principle of none of them. The child draws near to him with some outburst of unusual feeling, some scintillation of a lively hope, some wide-reaching imagination that draws into the circle of religious theory the world of nature, and the yet wider world of humanity, for to the child the doings of the Father fill the spaces; he has not yet learned to divide between God and nature, between Providence and grace, between love and benevolence;—the child comes, I say, with his heart full, and the answer he receives from the dull disciple is—" God has said nothing about that in his word, therefore we have no right to believe anything about it. It is better not to speculate on such matters. However desirable it may seem to us, we have nothing to do with it. It is not revealed." For such a man is incapable of suspecting, that what has remained hidden from him may have been revealed to the babe. With the authority, therefore, of years and ignorance, he forbids the child, for he believes in no revelation but the Bible, and in the word of that alone. For him all revelation has ceased with and been buried in the Bible, to be with difficulty exhumed, and, with much questioning of the decayed form, re-united into a rigid skeleton of metaphysical and legal contrivance for letting the love of God have its way unchecked by the other perfections of his being.

Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has become something of a scholarly industry. But the fact remains that the only Jesus we really know is the Jesus described in the New Testament, which was not interested in scientifically objective history. There are no other contemporary accounts of his mission and death. We cannot even be certain why he was crucified. The gospel accounts indicate that he was thought to be the king of the Jews. He was said to have predicted the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven, but also made it clear that it was not of this world. In the literature of the Late Second Temple period, there had been hints that a few people were expecting a righteous king of the House of David to establish an eternal kingdom, and this idea seems to have become more popular during the tense years leading up to the war. Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius all note the importance of revolutionary religiosity, both before and after the rebellion.2 There was now keen expectation in some circles of a meshiah (in Greek, christos), an ‘anointed’ king of the House of David, who would redeem Israel. We do not know whether Jesus claimed to be this messiah – the gospels are ambiguous on this point.3 Other people rather than Jesus himself may have made this claim on his behalf.4 But after his death some of his followers had seen him in visions that convinced them that he had been raised from the tomb – an event that heralded the general resurrection of all the righteous when God would inaugurate his rule on earth.5 Jesus and his disciples came from Galilee in northern Palestine. After his death they moved to Jerusalem, probably to be on hand when the kingdom arrived, since all the prophecies declared that the temple would be the pivot of the new world order.6 The leaders of their movement were known as ‘the Twelve’: in the kingdom, they would rule the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel.7 The members of the Jesus movement worshipped together every day in the temple,8 but they also met for communal meals, in which they affirmed their faith in the kingdom’s imminent arrival.9 They continued to live as devout, orthodox Jews. Like the Essenes, they had no private property, shared their goods equally, and dedicated their lives to the last days.10 It seems that Jesus had recommended voluntary poverty and special care for the poor; that loyalty to the group was to be valued more than family ties; and that evil should be met with non-violence and love.11 Christians should pay their taxes, respect the Roman authorities, and must not even contemplate armed struggle.12 Jesus’s followers continued to revere the Torah,13 keep the Sabbath,14 and the observance of the dietary laws was a matter of extreme importance to them.15 Like the great Pharisee Hillel, Jesus’s older contemporary, they taught a version of the Golden Rule, which they believed to be the bedrock of the Jewish faith: ‘So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.

JOHN 14  d“Let not your hearts be troubled.  eBelieve in God; [1] believe also in me. 2In  fmy Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that  gI go to prepare a place for you? [2] 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you  hto myself, that  iwhere I am you may be also. 4And you know the way to where I am going.” [3] 5 jThomas said to him, “Lord,  kwe do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am  lthe way, and  mthe truth, and  nthe life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 oIf you had known me, you would have  pknown my Father also. [4] From now on you do know him and  qhave seen him.” 8 rPhilip said to him, “Lord,  sshow us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?  tWhoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that  uI am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you  vI do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11Believe me that  uI am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else  wbelieve on account of the works themselves. 12“Truly, truly, I say to you,  xwhoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I  yam going to the Father. 13 zWhatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that  athe Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 zIf you ask me [5] anything in my name, I will do it.

I suggest that it is simply not possible for a modern Christian, even a fundamentalist, to believe the cosmos to have the exact physical structure that biblical authors believed it to have. By this I mean that it is not really possible, short of severe self-delusion, to believe that the earth is flat, that the sky is not a solid dome beyond the stars with waters of chaos above it, that beneath the ground is the world of the dead, that heaven is literally up, and that the stars are divine beings. I know that many Christians claim that the Bible is scientifically accurate on all matters on which it touches and that they are prepared to reject the findings of mainstream science to hold onto a seven-day creation that took place six to ten tousand years ago, but, as we have seen, this does not go nearly far enough. If fundamentalists really were to have the courage of their convictions then we would see membership of the Flat Earth Society boosted significantly. What happens instead is that this is a bridge too far, even for hard-line fundamentalists, and biblical texts are thus reinterpreted to fit with modern cosmology. For instance, Isaiah's phrase "the circle of the earth" (Isa 40:22) is taken as proof that the Bible authors actually believed in a planetary globe - proof, we are told, of its inerrancy. However, in this tour we have seen that such interpretations are implausible. So I really do not think we can inhabit the biblical cosmos in the same way that ancient Israelites or Second Temple Jews (including the authors of the New Testament) did. The world can never feel the same again after Copernicus. The cosmology of the Bible is ancient and we are not; it's as simple as that.

The early Church is no mystery, but I must say that, for me personally, it was a terrible challenge. I studied the writings of the four witnesses. I studied everything else I could find from the early Church. I looked and looked for something resembling my own faith, for something at least similar to the distinctives and practices of my own local church . . . and found only Catholicism. It was like something out of a dream, a nightmare. I had always believed, on the best authority I knew, that Roman Catholicism as it exists today is a rigid, clotted relic of the Middle Ages, the faded and fading memory of a Christianity distorted beyond all recognition by centuries of syncretism and superstition. Its organization and its officers were nothing but the christianized fossils of Emperor Constantine and his lieutenants; its transubstantiating Mass and its regenerating baptism, the ghosts of pagan mystery religion lingering over Vatican Hill. Catholicism represented to me the very opposite of primitive Christianity. The idea that anything remotely like it should be found in the first and second centuries was laughable, preposterous. I knew, like everyone else, that the early Church was a loose fraternity of simple, autonomous, spontaneous believers, with no rituals, no organization, who got their beliefs from the Bible only and who always, therefore, got it right . . . like me. I also knew that the object of the Christian game, here in the modern world, is to “put things back to the way they were in the early Church”. That, after all, was what our glorious Reformation had been all about. That, for crying out loud, was the whole meaning of Protestantism. So, as you might guess, finding apostolic succession in A.D. 96, or the Sacrifice of the Altar in 150, did my settled Evangelical way of life no good at all. Since that time I have learned that many other Evangelical Christians have experienced this same painful discovery.

The Big Picture: From Abraham to Armageddon Down through the ages, the sons of Jacob have survived trials, persecution, and thousands of years in exile from their homeland. The Scriptures foretold the dispersion of the Jews and also of their regathering toward the end of the age. After a long absence from a country left in desolation, the Jews have come home to the land that God promised to Abraham: “…a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate. They had been brought out from the nations, and now all of them live in safety.” (Ezekiel 38:8). The other branch of Abraham’s family—the sons of Ishmael— are the Islamic Arabs that inhabit the lands surrounding Israel. Ishmael’s descendants epitomize the spirit and temperament that the Bible predicted more than three millennia ago: “…his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (Genesis 16:12). The Prophet Ezekiel tells us that these same sons of Ishmael will be among the enemies who seek to destroy Israel in the end times: “And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land…” (Ezekiel 38:16). The day is soon coming when Ishmael’s descendants will unite as one: “…they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast.” Their ultimate purpose being the fulfillment of a long-held dream: the annihilation of Israel. Muslims have been taught for centuries that the Last Day will not come until they wage a final war against the Jews and rid the world of them once and for all. They believe that only after this is accomplished will Muslims enjoy a golden age of peace, justice, and worldwide Islamic rule. However, the Bible tells us that God has other plans: Before Israel can be destroyed He is going to intervene, and bring to ruin those who seek her destruction. On that day, multitudes of Jews will realize that Jesus is Messiah, and many Muslims will realize that they have made a fateful mistake. Though most are unaware, we, today, are witnessing the fruition of seeds that were planted nearly four thousand years ago with the birth of Abraham’s sons. God promised Abraham that He would make great nations of both Isaac and Ishmael. To be sure, one would be hard pressed to argue that He did not. The Jewish and Arabic peoples have had an immeasurable impact on the world and can now be found at center stage in the arena of world politics and conflict. Thus, the history of mankind will reach its pinnacle, essentially where it began, in a region literally located at the center of the globe; more specifically, Israel and the nations that surround her.

Romans 14 The Danger of Criticism 1 Accept other believers who are weak in faith, and don’t argue with them about what they think is right or wrong. 2 For instance, one person believes it’s all right to eat anything. But another believer with a sensitive conscience will eat only vegetables. 3 Those who feel free to eat anything must not look down on those who don’t. And those who don’t eat certain foods must not condemn those who do, for God has accepted them. 4 Who are you to condemn someone else’s servants? Their own master will judge whether they stand or fall. And with the Lord’s help, they will stand and receive his approval. 5 In the same way, some think one day is more holy than another day, while others think every day is alike. You should each be fully convinced that whichever day you choose is acceptable. 6 Those who worship the Lord on a special day do it to honor him. Those who eat any kind of food do so to honor the Lord, since they give thanks to God before eating. And those who refuse to eat certain foods also want to please the Lord and give thanks to God. 7 For we don’t live for ourselves or die for ourselves. 8 If we live, it’s to honor the Lord. And if we die, it’s to honor the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. 9 Christ died and rose again for this very purpose—to be Lord both of the living and of the dead. 10 So why do you condemn another believer[*]? Why do you look down on another believer? Remember, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. 11 For the Scriptures say,    “‘As surely as I live,’ says the LORD,    ‘every knee will bend to me,        and every tongue will declare allegiance to God.[*]’” 12 Yes, each of us will give a personal account to God. 13 So let’s stop condemning each other. Decide instead to live in such a way that you will not cause another believer to stumble and fall. 14 I know and am convinced on the authority of the Lord Jesus that no food, in and of itself, is wrong to eat. But if someone believes it is wrong, then for that person it is wrong. 15 And if another believer is distressed by what you eat, you are not acting in love if you eat it. Don’t let your eating ruin someone for whom Christ died. 16 Then you will not be criticized for doing something you believe is good. 17 For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 18 If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God, and others will approve of you, too. 19 So then, let us aim for harmony in the church and try to build each other up. 20 Don’t tear apart the work of God over what you eat. Remember, all foods are acceptable, but it is wrong to eat something if it makes another person stumble. 21 It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble.[*] 22 You may believe there’s nothing wrong with what you are doing, but keep it between yourself and God. Blessed are those who don’t feel guilty for doing something they have decided is right. 23 But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.[*]

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

I remember when I first became a believer in Jesus. I somehow thought it was my duty to change people for the sake of spreading the gospel. I would rejoice when people would find hope in Christ but would feel like a failure when someone would decline the invitation to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. It was a little discouraging. But that’s because my understanding of how God works in my life was off. I say this because I believe many of today’s Christians put too much pressure on themselves to bring people to Jesus. It’s our job to love people, not change them. Only the Holy Spirit has the power and authority to do such a thing. Our calling is to simply share the gospel in love and truth, showing the character of Jesus through our everyday lives. When you let yourself off the hook for being solely responsible for somebody’s soul, you will find a totally new sense of freedom: the freedom to love. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to know all the right things to say. You don’t have to have all the answers. And if your message is totally rejected . . . it’s not on you. It’s between that individual and God. Maybe you’ll get another opportunity to try, but it’s not your job to change him or her. Our job is to simply be available for those who are looking to know more about God, take opportunities to be vocal about our personal relationships with him, and continue to point people back to God with every question they may have. I didn’t understand this in the early years of my faith, and I put way too much pressure on myself when it came to people being transformed. Why? Because we live in a performance-based culture, and yes, even pastors have a tendency to fall captive to its pull. Like me, you probably feel pressured from multiple angles. We’re told by advertising that we need to be attractive, by parents that we need good jobs, by teachers that we need good grades, by friends that we need to give more time. Jesus isn’t like that. He doesn’t make irrational demands and point a finger at us for not living up to the expectation. The only thing Jesus wants from us is our love. And when we learn to offer him that love, we long to obey him and live in the better way he has for us as well. It’s a beautiful thing. As we learned from Jesus in Matthew 25, we can love God simply by loving others. Whether that love produces a change in their lives is up to God. We don’t have to stress about it. Only the Holy Spirit has the power and authority to change someone’s heart. Our calling is to simply share the gospel in love and truth, showing the character of Jesus through our everyday lives. This alone is the calling of a Christian. This alone is a weighty yet fulfilling purpose for all who choose to pick up their crosses daily. If we were to scour the Bible, we’d see there isn’t a single passage that states we are called to change people ourselves. Why? Because it’s not our job, and it was never intended to be. We must take a step back and realize that God’s job is to be God and our job is to lead people toward the door that is hope. Once we’ve done this, we must let go and allow the one who created the world to take care of the rest. If we had the power to change people, the transformative love of God wouldn’t be needed. Don’t waste your time trying to change people. Instead, focus on loving well.

Of course, the Bible speaks of many things—for instance, the creation of the world—that for the biblical authors themselves belong to the remote past. But there is undoubtedly much history in the Bible—accounts of events written by contemporaries or near-contemporaries. One is thus led to say that the Bible contains both “myth” and “history.” Yet this distinction is alien to the Bible; it is a special form of the Greek distinction between mythos and logos. From the point of view of the Bible, the “myths” are as true as the “histories”: what Israel “in fact” did or suffered cannot be understood except in the light of the “facts” of Creation and Election. What is now called “historical” are those deeds and speeches that are equally accessible to the believer and to the unbeliever. But from the point of view of the Bible, the unbeliever is the fool who has said in his heart “there is no God”.

My theological beliefs were based on the authority of Evangelical leaders. Of course, Evangelicals say the Bible is their authority, but it’s interpreted in thousands of different ways. When people say the Bible is their ultimate authority, each person has a different understanding of what the text means, which is largely shaped by the theologians and pastors they trust. I wasn’t aware that I was reading the Bible with an interpretive lens because Evangelicals claimed to have absolute, objective truth. They didn’t acknowledge their positionality, how their context shaped their understanding of the text, or how they read into the Bible just as much as they read from the Bible. In Protestant communities, the issue of authority ultimately falls back on the individual because we choose to believe the teachings of one theologian over another, one pastor over another.

In The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias' Family, Rembrandt leaves dirt on the shadowed soles of Raphael's feet as he flies off, illuminated in glory. Passing by the painting, one sees the dramatic action, the melodramatic emotions, and the re-created narrative events of the Bible. Slowed down a bit, the viewer sees light across a large muscular calf, a strong and sharply shaped ankle, and then dirty feet. The angel who tells us he only pretended to eat - this to explain away all traces of his apparent earthliness as a fallen creaturely being - is here on the canvas with dirty feet, carrying soil, the created, to the creator. Van Gogh had rightly said there are mysteries in these paintings. They are mysteries of device and design, not of messianic significance. They require a docent and not a priest, a creative critic to guide the view of specific images, not a guardian of mysteries and master of their enigmatic authority. Dirty feet on the soles of an archangel famous for his annunciations give the viewer a point of view on the inescapably human nature of the narrated God. Raphael may no eat. He may believe he creates an illusion to satisfy the religious desire for mythological consistency, but even archangels deceive themselves as well as others. Humans sometimes do the same in inventing the transcendence they need or think they want - creating a regime from which the priestly classes rule, even theorizing the alienation of the divine. Deceit is an essential device of cultural adaptation. It constructs needed beliefs that at high and low levels of thought or action complement their existence with modes of self-defense, which protect them from not only needed analysis but also the importance of failure.

A governmental authority is telling Christians what they can and cannot do in worship. They can still gather; they just cannot sing. Tragically, the typical response has been pastors saying, “Romans 13, Romans 13, the governor says that we must not sing so we will not sing.” Have we forgotten that we, and Governor Newsom, are people under the authority of Christ? When governors begin to dictate what the church can and cannot do, those of us who believe the Bible must come back and say, “Wait a minute, we already have dictates on what we can and cannot do in worship. Those orders are found in the Scripture.

Can we believe that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16)? Here is why I think we can. It is remarkable in composition. Composed over sixteen centuries by forty authors. Begun by Moses in Arabia and finished by John on Patmos. Penned by kings in palaces, shepherds in tents, and prisoners in prisons. Would it be possible for forty writers, writing in three different languages and several different countries, separated by as much as sixteen hundred years, to produce a book of singular theme unless behind them there was one mind and one designer? It is remarkable in durability. It is the single most published book in history. Translated into at least twelve hundred languages.17 Bibles have been burned by governments and banished from courtrooms, but God’s Word endures. The death knell has been sounded a hundred times, but God’s Word continues. It is remarkable in prophecy. More than three hundred fulfilled prophecies about the life of Christ,18 were all written at least four hundred years before he was born. Imagine if something similar occurred today. If we found a book written in 1900 that prophesied two world wars, a depression, an atomic bomb, and the assassinations of a president and a civil rights leader, wouldn’t we trust it? Glory Days

Often people say to me, “How is it that you seem to be able to communicate with these far-out people? You seem to be able to talk in such a way that they understand what you’re saying, even if they do not accept it.” There may be a number of reasons why this is so, but one is that I try to get them to consider the biblical system and its truth without an appeal to blind authority—that is, as though believing meant believing just because one’s family did or as though the intellect had no part in the matter. This is the way I became a Christian. I had gone to a “liberal” church for many years. I decided that the only answer, on the basis of what I was hearing, was agnosticism or atheism. On the basis of liberal theology I do not think I have ever made a more logical decision in my life. I became an agnostic, and then I began to read the Bible for the first time—in order to place it against some Greek philosophy I was reading. I did this as an act of honesty in so far as I had given up what I thought was Christianity but had never read the Bible through. Over a period of about six months I became a Christian because I was convinced that the full answer which the Bible presented was alone sufficient to the problems I then knew, and sufficient in a very exciting way.

But in the mid-nineteenth century, grasping for the certitude and authority the church was quickly losing in the face of rationalism and scientism, Catholics declared the Pope to be “infallible,” and Evangelicals decided the Bible was “inerrant,” despite the fact that we had gotten along for most of eighteen hundred years without either belief. In fact, these claims would have seemed idolatrous to most early Christians.

Research for this book has made me aware of aspects of Christianity I find disturbing. During the past several years, rereading the gospels, I was struck by how their vision of supernatural struggle both expresses conflict and raises it to cosmic dimensions. This research, then, reveals certain fault lines in Christian tradition that have allowed for the demonizing of others throughout Christian history—fault lines that go back nearly two thousand years to the origins of the Christian movement. While writing this book I often recalled a saying of Søren Kierkegaard: "An unconscious relationship is more powerful than a conscious one." For nearly two thousand years, for example, many Christians have taken for granted that Jews killed Jesus and the Romans were merely their reluctant agents, and that this implicates not only the perpetrators but (as Matthew insists) all their progeny in evil. Throughout the centuries, countless Christians listening to the gospels absorbed, along with the quite contrary sayings of Jesus, the association between the forces of evil and Jesus’ Jewish enemies. Whether illiterate or sophisticated, those who heard the gospel stories, or saw them illustrated in their churches, generally assumed both their historical accuracy and their religious validity. Especially since the nineteenth century, however, increasing numbers of scholars have applied literary and historical analysis to the gospels—the so-called higher criticism. Their critical analysis indicated that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source from which to construct their amplified gospels. Many scholars assumed that Mark was the most historically reliable because it was the simplest in style and was written closer to the time of Jesus than the others were. But historical accuracy may not have been the gospel writers’ first consideration. Further analysis demonstrated how passages from the prophetic writings and the psalms of the Hebrew Bible were woven into the gospel narratives. Barnabas Lindars and others suggested that Christian writers often expanded biblical passages into whole episodes that “proved,” to the satisfaction of many believers, that events predicted by the prophets found their fulfillment in Jesus’ coming.

devil. 12For we* are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. 13Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. 14Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. 15For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared.* 16In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil.* 17Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.* 19And pray for me, too. Ask God to give me the right words so I can boldly explain God’s mysterious plan that the Good News is for Jews and Gentiles alike.* 20I am in chains now, still preaching this message as God’s ambassador. So pray that I will keep on speaking boldly for him, as I should.

William Ryan and Walter Pitman, authors of Noah’s Flood: The New Scientific Discoveries About the Event That Changed History, had spent a half decade using core samples to try to prove that the Black Sea region had undergone a massive flood, which they believed to be the historical origin of the tale of Noah’s ark. The idea of a massive flood wasn’t unique to the Bible, they pointed out. The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the 18th century B.C., also described a flood that wiped out nearly all living things. The Bible even suggested the location for the flood, stating that the ark ultimately rested on the slopes of Mount Ararat, in northern Turkey, less than 200 miles from the shores of the Black Sea.

History tells lies. It is important to understand this to understand the ARCW. A particularly harmful lie is that the United States of America was founded as a Christian nation. The traitors truly believe this because it has been taught them since they colored pilgrims with crayons in church nursery school while their parents were in the sanctuary learning to be more judgmental. As the young bigots grew into adultery [sic], they accepted this teaching uncritically, just as they accepted that everything in the Bible is true, and that science is wrong, if not evil, when it proves that humans have evolved from non-human life forms. The traitors should, in fairness, be permitted to prove the intensity of this mental abuse in their defense at the ARCW war crimes trials.         America was not established as a Christian nation. To the contrary, it was intentionally set up as a godless nation. That’s why no god or religion of any kind is mentioned in our Constitution. This was so important that it was memorialized in the first words of the first amendment to our Constitution, to wit, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” The people who started this country knew what religious war and holy terror was, and they wanted to be very clear that America was a democracy set up under human law, not religious authority or rule. This was made exquisitely clear when, in a treaty with Tripoli, signed by President John Adams on June 10, 1797, the United States Senate unanimously declared, “...the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” That’s that, said the grammarian. People who don’t like the American way, and think church and state should not be separated, really ought to move to Serbia where they can kill and rape non-believers with impunity.

This is a wake up call. Don’t press the snooze alarm. The barbarians are at the gates, and, because they encourage breeding beyond the ability of the breeders to house, feed, and educate the breedees, violence and social disorganization continue. As the most Christian nation on earth watches its civilization dissolve like a Dove bar fallen off of that ark, attempts to enforce irrational superstitious solutions will accelerate. That Branch Davidian thing was a sample. Lots of other messiahs are waiting. Maybe we can have court-ordered Branch Davidian Social Services counseling for people who won’t share their wives with their god’s anointed. Maybe courts can acquit murderers if they believe a god’s finger was on their trigger. Maybe the barbarians will actually succeed in assuring that books, pictures, ideas, doctors, judges and military commanders share their vision. Then we will have a lot of interesting tribal warfare. One useful defense will be humanistic hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a fancy word for biblical interpretation. When religious types want to make something simple sound holy and mysterious, they often give it an important sounding high falutin’ name. This practice contrasts sharply with the usage of secular humanists, who, in explaining their views, employ simple words, that fall trippingly from the tongue, like ‘eupraxophy.’ Hermeneutics can be an important weapon to use against religious fanatics in the coming ARCW. The hard core nut cases—those who would control every aspect of our lives by forcing us to accept their understanding of the will of their god—tend to share certain operational assumptions. These include the belief that: (1) Every word of the Bible is true. (2) The English translation of the Bible authorized by King James the First of England, completed in 1611, Common Era, is the only fully acceptable, authoritative, and inspired-by-god translation of holy scripture. This translation is accurate in every respect, including punctuation marks. (3) The Bible is the basis of all morality. Without it there can be no morality. (4) The United States of America was established, and should be governed, according to biblical principles. (5) The Bible is without error. (6) No part of the Bible is in conflict with, or contradictory to, any other part. (7) Hermeneutics can be used to clarify and explain those truths of god in the Bible that might appear, to finite minds, to be in conflict. The goal of hermeneutics is to reconcile all portions of the ‘Word of God’ (the Bible) into a seamless, complete, infallible, and final statement of all past and future history (the latter is called prophecy), of divine law, and of how humans should behave and understand morality. The Bible, properly interpreted, is the final word on everything.

Tertullian (155 – 240 AD) was an African Christian theologian from the Roman province of Carthage. He was a prolific writer and his works are the foundation of Christian thought in the language of Latin. Outside of the Bible itself, he is the earliest believer on record to write about the concept of the trinity. On the Genesis 6 incursion he wrote: “We are instructed, moreover, by our sacred books how from certain angels, who fell of their own free-will, there sprang a more wicked demon-brood, condemned of God along with the authors of their race, and that chief we have referred to. It will for the present be enough, however, that some account is given of their work. Their great business is the ruin of mankind.

Believers hold that every word in the Bible has not only been inspired but also literally dictated by God. Thus we are to believe every verse and every story as spoken directly by God, and this creates some serious problems, including: Intellectual difficulty with overgeneralizations, conflicts with science, and contradictions. Moral difficulties where God is portrayed at times as partial, vengeful, and deceptive, while in other parts of the Bible universal love is taught; the history of the Hebrews in the Bible shows progress in moral concern rather than a static code; injustice in the Bible including the slaughter of innocent people and minor transgressors. Moral difficulty with concept of endless torture in hell. Problem with occasions of Jesus expressing vindictiveness, discourtesy, narrow-mindedness, and ethnic and religious intolerance. Intellectual difficulties with the human decision-making process for deciding the books of the Bible and questions of the value of other writings not included. Non-uniqueness of Judeo-Christian teachings and practices. Other religions have similar rituals and beliefs, including sacrifice and vicarious atonement through the death of a god, union of a god and a virgin, trinities, the mother Mary (Myrrha, Maya, Maia, and Maritala), a place for good people who die and a hell of fire, an apocalypse, the first man falling from the god’s favor by doing something forbidden or having been tempted by some evil animal, catastrophic floods in which the whole race is exterminated (with details analogous to the story of the flood), a man being swallowed by a fish and then spat out alive, miracles as proof of power and divine messengers. Moral difficulties with intolerance and oppression in today’s society, which are based on the Bible. Intellectual difficulties with New Testament authors’ interpretation of events as fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. There are a number of references to “scriptures” that simply don’t exist.

The other Blocks snicker at the Buddhist for believing that you can be reborn in another life, without realizing the idea of reincarnation was in the Bible for hundreds of years before it was removed. It turns out that allowing people to think they could be reincarnated, allowing them to make up for their sins in future lives, made it unnecessarily difficult to control them in their current life. So, Morgan wonders, were the original Christians wrong to believe in reincarnation, or are current Christians wrong to mock it? And who had the authority to remove that idea from the Bible if the Bible was God’s word? This is exactly why she’s glad she doesn’t have anything to believe in.

The Bible is the progressive Christian’s authority because in our engagement with it we are authored as Christians.

[Orson Pratt] argued that only God could administer curses and that they were specific to a given time and place. In his estimation, enslavers who suggested that biblical curses were still in force had taken it upon themselves 'to execute the curse of Almighty upon that race without being commanded to do it and they will have to be punished for rising up and inflicting this curse upon [the] descendants of Adam.' Even if God did curse Ham or Canaan or Cain in the Bible, Pratt did not believe that such curses passed down to anyone else. He rejected the notion that nineteenth-century enslavers, including Latter-Day Saints, had any authority from God to enslave Black people. 'Shall we assume the right without the voice of [the] Lord speaking to us and commanding us to [introduce] slavery into our territory?' Pratt queried. He was dismayed by such a prospect... People of African descent were not guilty of some premortal sin for which slavery was the penalty, Pratt said. 'Shall we take then the innocent African that has committed no sin and damn him to slavery and bondage without receiving any authority from heaven to do [so]? That they and their children shall be servants to us and our children? The idea is preposterous in my mind,' he demanded. 'For us to bind the African because he is different from us in color [is] enough to cause the angels in heaven to blush![']... 'We have no proof that the Africans are the descendants of old Cain who was cursed, and even if we had that evidence we have not been ordered to inflict that [curse] upon that race.

David Pawson, a prominent Bible teacher and author from England, recalls the experience of one of his friends: A Christian friend of mine is a counselor in a state school. He was delighted when a boy he was trying to help find a purpose in life told him he had become convinced that there was a personal God in whom he could believe. To his surprise and disappointment this English boy told him some weeks later that he had become a Muslim. He was one of many thousands who had made the same choice.15 As Islam grows in the West, this story is sure to be repeated many times.

the further we got into our research, the clearer it became that we wouldn’t find many people in the deconstruction explosion who still believed in Scripture as their absolute authority. It seemed the only people who were using the word that way were Christian pastors and apologists who were trying to keep people in the faith. For the majority of people from the broader culture in the deconstruction movement, the Bible is seen as a tool of oppression to be rejected, not a standard of truth to be affirmed.

It is one thing for modern educated people to feel they must believe these old stories as factual when science proves otherwise. It is quite another for ancient people living before the dawn of scientific technology to venture clever but inevitably mistaken explanations. My guess is that many secular folks in our day take a dim view of biblical tales of a six-day creation, a universal flood, etc., blaming these stories for the oppressive use of them by religious leaders who ought to know better. But that’s not fair. Who, after all, scorns and ridicules the Greek or the Norse myths? No one, because no one catechizes us to believe these literally. They haven’t left a bad taste in our mouths. Nor should the myths of Genesis. If we could somehow visit the past and explain to the authors of Genesis the true origins of the earth and its life-forms, of languages, and of ethnicities, I suspect they would rejoice to learn the truth of the matter.

So, you don't go to church anymore?" she asks. I don't like the idea of Thistle thinking that I believe in God. I wonder what the Bible says about cannibalism. Eat this, for it is my body.

In a similar manner, all major world religions reject the deity of Christ: Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Muslims believe Jesus was just a great prophet, whereas Orthodox Judaism sees Jesus as a false prophet. It’s not only the world’s major religions that deny the deity of Christ, but so do all major cultic groups: Mormons, Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Inglesia ni Cristo, and Christadelphians. These cultic groups “claim” the Bible as their authority but each in their own way teach that Jesus is a created being.

To this day, I still do not believe, not for one minute, in the type of god who passes out diseases. What an awful, erratic god it would be! Nowhere in Scripture did Jesus once say, "If you don't straighten up and fly right, God's going to give you a disease." Read the Bible for yourself! Disease is exactly and only that - disease.

ONE OF THE MOST interesting features of the early Christian debates over orthodoxy and heresy is the fact that views that were originally [...] deemed orthodox came to be declared heretical. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of the first heretical view of Christ—the view that denies his divinity. [...] the very first Christians held to exaltation Christologies which maintained that the man Jesus (who was nothing more than a man) had been exalted to the status and authority of God. The earliest Christians thought that this happened at his resurrection; eventually, some Christians came to believe it happened at his baptism. Both views came to be regarded as heretical by the second century CE, [...] It is not that the second-century “heresy-hunters” among the Christian authors attacked the original Christians for these views. Instead, they attacked the people of their own day for holding them; and in their attacks they more or less “rewrote history,” by claiming that such views had never been held by the apostles at the beginning or by the majority of Christians ever.

so if an idea or quote interested me enough to include or expand on it, on these I credit the original author, or more so, give the name of the person who committed the offense, ESPECIALLY when I disagree or disapprove, for is it not on these disagreements that our own greatest thoughts are achieved? After all, if we agreed and believed and approved everything we read, we wouldn't evolve very far as a civilization, would we? And if we weren't allowed to disapprove (especially under the penalty of death) as was the case with the Christian bible for a thousand years, we wouldn't get anywhere.

9Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

The tension between autonomy and expertise had been, at a basic level, fundamental to the Protestant experience itself from the Reformation forward, as the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, increasing literacy, and vernacular translations of the Bible undermined the clerical caste's monopoly on spiritual authority. In the twentieth-century United States, professional specialization, the Progressive emphasis on technical expertise, and simply the ever more complex nature of modern urban life pulled readers toward greater reliance on literary guidance, while the logic of consumerism, rooted in the all-powerful choice to buy or not to buy, further reinforced the notion of reader autonomy.

We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God because it has proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with it."14 This was the unshakable foundation of Calvin's preaching-the authority of divinely inspired Scripture. He firmly believed that when the Bible speaks, God speaks.

In general, according to theologian Carolyn Custis James, egalitarians “believe that leadership is not determined by gender but by the gifting and calling of the Holy Spirit, and that God calls all believers to submit to one another.” In contrast, complementarians “believe the Bible establishes male authority over women, making male leadership the biblical standard.”5 Both sides can treat the Bible like a weapon. On both sides, there are extremists and dogmatists. We attempt to outdo each other with proof texts and apologetics, and I’ve heard it said that there is no more hateful person than a Christian who thinks you’ve got your theology wrong. In our hunger to be right, we memorize arguments, ready to spit them out at a moment’s notice. Sadly, we reduce each other, brothers and sisters, to straw men arguments, and brand each other “enemies of the gospel.

We now have in one book (the Gospel of John) FOUR references that define what TRUTH is; not one of them match what any child is being taught in any federal school in America or Europe. No. 1. One man is “THE TRUTH” (John 14:6). No. 2. This man was sent here to bear witness to “THE TRUTH.” 3. His Spirit (John 16:13) has the job of guiding and leading men into “ALL TRUTH” (John 16:13). No. 4. The “WORDS” Jesus Christ spoke are “LIFE” and “SPIRIT” (John 6:63) because He was speaking the WORDS of the Author of truth (John 17:17).

If we may believe so good an authority as Edward Moor (author of Moor's "Hindu Pantheon," and "Oriental Fragments"), both the name of Crishna, and the general outline of his history, were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, as very certain things, and probably extended to the time of Homer, nearly nine hundred years before Christ, or more than a hundred years before Isaiah lived and prophesied." [286:2]

Christians are not deists – we do not believe that this universe operates by a set of natural laws that are independent from God. The Bible shows us that God is now actively running the universe, so that nothing can happen or continue apart from his deliberate power and decree (Colossians 1:17; Hebrews 1:3). In reality, there are no natural laws. If we should use the term at all, what we call "natural laws" are only descriptions about how God regularly acts, although he is never bound to act in those ways.

Sola scriptura contends that Scripture is complete; it holds absolute authority over the believer.19 This position is of course far removed from the rabbinic principle that the Bible can only be understood through a tradition of interpretation, which is found in the Oral Law. Sola scriptura is closer to the literalist, Karaite position.

Kingdom In Biblical languages, the term translated into English as “kingdom” usually meant “reign,” “rule,” or “authority.” Jewish people recognized that God reigned as king over the world he created (Ps 22:28; 145:12–13; Da 4:3, 34). Some believed that they affirmed this whenever they recited the Shema, acknowledging that there was just one true God (Dt 6:4). But while Jewish people acknowledged God’s present rule, most looked for God’s unchallenged reign in the age to come (Da 2:44–45; 7:14, 27). Many prayed regularly for God’s future kingdom—for him to reign unopposed, to fulfill his purposes of justice and peace for the world. One familiar prayer that came to be prayed daily was the Kaddish, which in its ancient form began: “Exalted and hallowed be his great name . . . May he cause his kingdom to reign.

truly I tell you. Lit. “Amen, I tell you”; “amen” normally concluded a prayer, and most scholars believe that beginning a saying this way implied distinctive authority. smallest letter. The smallest Hebrew letter was a yod, formed by a single stroke of the pen. One Jewish story recounted that the yod removed from Sarai’s name (when it was changed to Sarah, Ge 17:15) protested to God from one generation to another, lamenting its removal from Scripture, until finally God put the yod back in the Bible. When Hoshea’s name was changed to Joshua (Nu 13:16), a yod was reinserted in Scripture. “So you see,” remarked Jewish teachers, “not a single yod can pass from God’s Word.” In a similar Jewish story, a yod protested that King Solomon was trying to remove it from Scripture; “A thousand Solomons shall be uprooted,” God declared, “but not a single yod will pass from my Word.” Such illustrations were merely graphic ways of emphasizing that all of God’s Word must be respected; no part was too small to matter.

sn Very few questions could have so completely revealed the wicked intentions of the religious leaders. Jesus’ question revealed the motivation of the religious leaders and exposed them for what they really were – hypocrites. They indicted themselves when they cited only two options and chose neither of them (“We do not know”). The point of Matt 21:23-27 is that no matter what Jesus said in response to their question, they were not going to believe it and would in the end use it against him. 40 sn Neither will I tell you. Though Jesus gave no answer, the analogy he used to their own question makes his view clear. His authority came from heaven.

After the capture of another place, La Minerve, about 140 believers were found, women in one house, men in another, engaged in prayer as they awaited their doom. De Montfort had a great pile of wood prepared, and told them to be converted to the Catholic faith or mount that pile. They answered that they owned no papal or priestly authority, only that of Christ and His Word. The fire was lighted and the confessors, without hesitation, entered the flames. It was near this spot, in the neighbourhood of Narbonne, that the Inquisition was established (1210), under the superintendence of Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order. When, at the Council of Toulouse (1229) it was made a permanent institution, the Bible, excepting only the Latin Psalter, was forbidden to the laity, and it was decreed that they might have no part of it translated into their own languages. The Inquisition finished what the crusade had left undone.

You want to know what gets on my nerves? When people say 'you can't be a Christian because you're LGBT+, or you used to be a Muslim/Hindu/atheist/pretty much anything else really'. The reason people say those things is because we believe doing so is sinning, but haven't we all sinned? Aren't we all in the same boat, at the mercy of the storm raging outside? If so, why keep to ourselves in what we think is the safest corner, but the whole boat sinks nonetheless? Every sin, whether it's stealing a cookie from the cookie jar to murdering and robbing an innocent child is sin. Even if you have never done any wrong, except did one thing, isn't your soul still poisoned, still doomed to being a sinner? Why must we separate ourself because we believe we are 'righteous', when in doing so we simply dirty ourselves in sinful dust even more so, yet continue to believe ourselves better then anyone else? If you don't think you are worthy, or can possibly be righteous, well, I'm afraid your not on track. The only reason we are even not-dead-yet is because a perfect soul died after never sinning, Jesus payed the price we so selfishly went into debt for because we wanted temporary satisfaction and worthless paper called money. If we have all been called to be clean, why must we refuse this and say others are dirty, when if that's true we are dirty as well ourselves? We sink the boat we are on to see others drown, yet in the process we drown ourselves. We have been selfish, lazy, prideful, and sinful, every one of is, and yet are so blind we cannot even see the great light that calls us to be clean and perfect. There is no such thing as too far gone, so why do we say others are too far gone yet set the bar lower for ourselves? Are we more perfect, more righteous, more forgiven then people who don't know God as well as we do? Surely not! If we know God, instead of keeping him to ourselves we are quite clearly instructed to give freely in the Bible, and yet we refuse to do so for the sake of our sinful pride. Why do we not reach down, and get our knees dirty to help the poor? What is stopping us from going that extra mile, from giving more then you have, from reaching out with the great news of the savior? We are too prideful, we don't want our silken robes to get muddy in someone else's sin even when they're already disgusting in ours. We tell ourselves we're are too tired to walk the extra mile, yet powerful enough to strike down the needy and ones in poverty. We are too greedy, we would rather keep the Savior to ourselves then give it, even though in giving you get even more. What right do we have to choose who should come with us into heaven? What heavenly authority gave us the power to say 'you sin, you cannot come to heaven', even though we sinners think we can when there is no difference between us? Any one can truly believe, there is no 'special requirement' to be a Christian other then to know God exists (well, duh you didn't need to tell us that) and to know you are a sinner and to try to not sin, even though we all fail miserably at that, and to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as much as God loves them. (No, autocorrect is not a human, I hate it too). There is no human on earth who is perfect, if you believe yourself to be so you are even more wrong then before. If there is anyone reading this, who is suicidal or LGBT+ and have been bullied or just don't know, trust me, there is nothing, NOTHING preventing you from believing except for your own will. I don't know if this is a quote or a rant ;;

During the writing of this book, I found myself questioning why the sixteenth-century history of the Irish-English conflict—“the Mother of All the Irish Rebellions”—has been utterly ignored or forgotten. This episode was by far the largest of Elizabeth’s wars and the last significant effort of her reign. It was also the most costly in English lives lost, both common and noble. By some estimates, the rebellion resulted in half the population of Ireland dying through battle, famine, and disease, and the countryside—through the burning of forestland—was changed forever. Yet almost no one studies it, writes of it, or discusses it, even as the impact of that revolt continues to make headlines across the world more than four hundred years later. Likewise, few people outside Ireland have ever heard of Grace O’Malley, surely one of the most outrageous and extraordinary personalities of her century—at least as fascinating a character as her contemporary and sparring partner Elizabeth I. Of course history is written by the victors, and England was, by all accounts, the winner of the Irish Rebellion of the sixteenth century. But the mystery only deepens when we learn that the only contemporary knowledge we have of Grace’s exploits—other than through Irish tradition and legend—is recorded not in Ireland’s histories, but by numerous references and documentation in England’s Calendar of State Papers, as well as numerous official dispatches sent by English captains and governors such as Lords Sidney, Maltby, and Bingham. As hard as it is to believe, Grace O’Malley’s name never once appears in the most important Irish history of the day, The Annals of the Four Masters. Even in the two best modern books on the Irish Rebellion—Cyril Fall’s Elizabeth’s Irish Wars and Richard Berleth’s The Twilight Lords—there is virtually no mention made of her. Tibbot Burke receives only slightly better treatment. Why is this? Anne Chambers, author of my two “bibles” on the lives of Grace O’Malley (Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley) and Tibbot Burke (Chieftain to Knight)—the only existing biographies of mother and son—suggests that as for the early historians, they might have had so little regard for women in general that Grace’s exclusion would be expected. As for the modern historians, it is troubling that in their otherwise highly detailed books, the authors should ignore such a major player in the history of the period. It

Years ago, I stumbled upon a small book entitled Peace of Mind. In it, the author wrote that he does not believe that God is omnipotent. He is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere at all times, but He does not control everything that occurs. He wrote that if he believed that God was omnipotent and controlled everything that happens—babies with cancer, innocent men and women slaughtered, innocent children raped—he would cease to believe and become an atheist on the spot. But he concluded that God is in fact not omnipotent but only omnipresent, meaning we do have free will and control our destinies. Yes, there are things encoded in us, perhaps through genetics, perhaps through faith, that we cannot control. Perhaps we are born for certain faiths. But within the parameters of these genetic or predetermined destinies, we have wide latitude. And that is why we need the guidebook called the Holy Bible.

We cannot convey heart inside written word alone. Words are one-dimensional, emotionless and heartless. We, as authors, search for ways to incorporate the missing emotion through descriptive words, but can never truly touch the depth of a sob, a sigh, or exhilaration expressed in a voice. Ironically, in 150 years, we created an icon of one-dimensional depth when we lifted the Bible high upon a pedestal. Personal communication with our Creator then became secondary. Though His voice was the force that carried faith since the beginning of time when Bibles were not available, we have, in modern times considered hearing the voice of God as mystical. But the written word is not where we receive Salvation. It's the voice of God that is heard in our heart when we read the Bible. Those words become spoken Word that our heart can hear. Sometimes I believe that people in the dark ages heard Father’s voice better than we do now. And that’s because it was their only source. They didn’t have Bibles. So, those who heard Him, let His voice guide them and touch their hearts. They relied on Him only. Mankind came into the enlightened age and created a book, a compilation of epistles that witness to Him. And we made it the foundation of our faith in place of Jesus. We leaned on it to prove our faith. But the real proof of our faith exists when we hear His voice.

Ultimately, what we can be sure of is that Matthew wrote especially to Jewish believers in Jesus in the eastern Mediterranean world. Whatever specific “core” audience he may have envisioned, as the author of a major literary work Matthew probably hoped that his Gospel would circulate as widely as possible.