One Voice

“I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars.” (Revelation 2:2 NKJV)

Is He speaking of you? Are you testing these people who profess to speak for, or about, God? A pastor, if he is called at all, is called to watch over his flock and to give godly counsel to them. Your job is to know the Word so well that red flags go up any time anything contrary to Scripture is said. Your pastor is to correctly know the Word inside and out, as God Himself has taught him. But his words and counsel are to be supplemental to the Bible and your time in it. In fact, God’s Word is pure food! Who needs supplements? It is your duty to God, and for your own self-preservation, to read and know His Word intimately. Otherwise, you run the very real risk of being led astray with the many. Blind allegiance to your church and church leaders is dangerous.

“O My people! Those who lead you cause you to err, and destroy the way of your paths.” (Isaiah 3:12 NKJV)

“For the leaders of this people cause them to err, and those who are led by them are destroyed.” (Isaiah 9:16 NKJV)

God is talking to us! What don’t you get? Again, this is a pattern that has, and will, repeat itself until the end of the age. For most of us, when we came to faith in Christ, before we could build a foundation for our own faith from the source of that foundation, the Bible, we were told by others what it was we were to believe and what doctrines we were to hold to. We have been inundated with those doctrines ever since. So, instead of Scripture forming our beliefs, Scripture is interpreted in light of the conclusions we were already told to come to. Many have no doubt come to faith in a false gospel to begin with. We have been biased by the words and teachings of mere men from the start. The church is filled with millions of sheep living their lives believing they can’t understand Scripture on their own. But the reason Scripture confuses them is that what the Word of God is plainly saying when they read it is not what they have grown up in the church believing. Or they are uncomfortable with what it clearly does teach. The Bible and the church’s teachings become at odds with one another, and the reader gets confused and trusts man’s conclusions over what God is telling them in Scripture. And they dare not question the shepherds and/or the majority.

So many Christians know what they believe, and no question they truly believe it, but they don’t know why they believe it. That is to say, they believe because they have always believed it. They believe that the passages teach a certain thing because they have always been told that that is what they teach. It is what they were told to believe since they were baby Christians. But if we are going to know what we know to be God’s truth, then we must, at some point in each of our walks, shut out all the bias we have come to know and come to the Word of God with new ears and fresh eyes and see what He alone says. It’s how we keep our faith in check. If we are not willing to test our own faith by Scripture alone, then we, of all people, are the most foolish! As individuals, our faith must be our own, and not the faith of others.

I hope by now we can all agree that Jesus is the Word of God from the beginning. That the Word of God is a gift. But then Jesus also died for us so that those who came to true faith in God through Jesus would be forgiven. This is also a gift, a grace. Christ was then resurrected and returned to the Father. But, grace upon grace, He didn’t leave us alone. He sent His Holy Spirit to indwell us and left His Holy Word to be completed by the apostles for us, which they did for the implanting of His law in us. All these things Christ did for us. Praise the Lord! But the one thing He did not do for us is live in our stead. This will be the topic of my next chapter.