When
I became a Christian in 1991, I started studying the Bible in depth. The more I
studied, the more aware I became of the deceit that abounds within religious
organizations of America today. Prior to becoming a Christian, I, like most
everyone else in the world, didn’t know which denomination I should become a
member of. My parents didn’t attend church, so I didn’t have the luxury of
accepting their beliefs simply because everyone in my family for the previous one
hundred years subscribed to a particular faith. I had no way of discerning the
truth from what some minister proclaimed to be the truth. My grandmother was a
member of the Pentecostal (Holy Roller) Church. I had, at one time or another,
been a member of the Baptist Church, the Christian Church and the Holiness
Church; my ex-wife
is a Catholic. So I had
experienced enough religion to know that, as different as they were, one or
more of them had to be wrong, at least in some areas of worship. None of them
could be all wrong, and none of them could be all right!
I attended church some
Sundays, with whatever denomination I happened to be a part of at the time, but
never seemed to get that warm, fuzzy feeling some people get from simply
attending church.
I
felt like something was missing and that I was being told only part of the
story the man in the pulpit wanted me to hear. One of my favorite passages
became Psalm 119, verse 105; “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light
unto my path.” I came across this passage by accident one day and decided
that I would let the scripture determine my direction, rather than what was
popular. I kept reading the Bible, all the while searching for the church that
most closely preached the Bible exactly as it was written . . . what better way
to do what God intended us to do and believe than to be part of a church that
taught straight from His book?
I
am not an ordained minister, a priest, a bishop, a deacon, an elder or a nun,
nor do I ever expect I will ever carry such a title. I simply profess to be a
Christian in that I believe the true Word of God cannot be preached by a single
denomination. I still believe there was a man named Jesus Christ, and that the
only way to practice Christianity to its fullest is to study, obey, and preach
the unadulterated words contained in the Bible. I now question everything
I hear come from the
mouth of any minister! Then I go directly to the Bible and confirm what is
preached to my ears. If I find scripture that contradicts what I heard, I
confront that minister with his own textbook. Even the Pope, the leader of the
Catholic church, cannot say without a doubt that there is a God; he can only
believe there is one . . . until death and whatever comes afterward proves
otherwise.
Just
because a man stands in the pulpit and wears fancy garments, it does not make
him an authority. Only the complete, straightforward scripture from the Bible
should be your authority. Fellowship with other believers is necessary for your
beliefs to grow. Sometimes we need ministers to interpret certain scripture for
us, based on what they perceive to be the correct interpretation; we ask this
of family and fellow employees everyday, so why not with
regard to religion? But
for the most part, anyone who reads the Bible in search of interpretation from
within can and will find it without help from an outside force. Men make
mistakes. If there was or is a God, his wishes and requirements are quite
plainly spelled out in His Book. The answers are already in there.
Let
me leave you with this one question; if you were standing before God right now,
taking an oral examination to gain entrance to a place called Heaven and
everlasting life, from where would you want to get your answers? God’s own Book
or the opinions of some preacher? Think about it!
