Hundreds of millions of people "profess Christ." But in poll after poll, these professing Christians freely admit that they do not really study the Bible. In fact, scarcely more than one-third of Americans can even name the four Gospels—let alone understand what they say.
Most of you reading this article do "believe" in the Bible. You hear it preached regularly, and you know it contains the Truth about who you are and the incredible future God has planned for you.
But how many of us really study the Instruction Manual for all true Christians—the Holy Bible? And what is our real attitude toward the Bible? Do we view the Bible as the real authority in our lives? Or do we feel free to "reason around" it when we find it saying something "inconvenient" to our lives?
Coming to understand and to live the right answer to these questions is a major key to attaining eternal life.
Without the Bible as their authority, men and women everywhere feel "free" to make up their own rules and religions as they go along. In past generations, some Roman Catholic leaders felt "free" to torture and burn nonconformists. Many Protestant Puritans felt free to burn those they labeled "witches." And without the guidance of God's word, the Nazis felt free to torture and finally exterminate millions of Jews and others they called "undesirables"—even during the lifetimes of many of you reading this article!
And, of course, in a society cut off from the understanding and authority of God's word, men and women feel "free" to commit adultery and practice all sorts of perversions— doing virtually anything that "feels good." If their sexual "freedom" brings unintended consequences, they do not hesitate to destroy the human life growing inside the mother's womb. They offer clever reasonings and "catch phrases" to make these abominable practices seem correct. They say: "A woman has the right to control her own body."
Sounds good?
Perhaps. But what about "controlling" her emotions and her body so that she does not become pregnant outside of marriage? And if she becomes pregnant in marriage, it should be done in a "controlled" manner, aware that she is responsible for the other human life within her body.
What about the countless millions of young people deprived of parents through the tragedy of divorce? Should people feel "free" to divorce for any reason, as so many do today? Jesus Christ clearly said: "But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery" (Matthew 5:32).
In the world around us, many people will say, "I think that is too strong! I don't agree with that!" Or they may say: "Jesus said that 2,000 years ago, so it doesn't apply today." But do we in God's Church ever use human reasoning to "get around" dozens and scores of plain and clear biblical teachings? What is our attitude toward the Bible?
Did Jesus MEAN What He Said?
Jesus Christ, the originator and founder of true Christianity, said: "If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments"! (Matthew 19:17). Even after His death and resurrection—after everything that was "nailed to the cross" was nailed there—Christ commanded His disciples: "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…. teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:19–20).
Was the Son of God misleading His own disciples with these final instructions? Was He confused when He told them to "keep the commandments" and then went on to name several of the Ten Commandments? Did Jesus not realize that Protestant ministers would later say that His Apostle Paul had done away with the need to keep the Ten Commandments?
What is going on here?
The plain Truth is that—under the influence of Satan the Devil (Revelation 12:9)—carnal human beings resent the idea of a real and authoritative God. The carnal mind does not want a real God who has power and authority over our lives! As the Apostle Paul was inspired to write, "the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be" (Romans 8:7).
Did you catch that? It is the spiritual law of God—the Ten Commandments— to which the carnal mind feels resentment or toward which it is "hostile"—as some translators render this passage of Scripture. The carnal mind resents the idea of a Creator God who has authority over their lives! Most human beings resent the idea of a Higher Power telling them what to do!
Very well-known and respected in his day as a writer and philosopher, English author Aldous Huxley admitted this basic hostility against a Higher Power which he and his fellow writers and the "intelligentsia" generally held: "For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom… There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: We could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever" (Ends and Means, p. 270; emphasis ours).
At least Huxley was honest. He admitted that—just like the intellectuals of our day—the "philosophers" of his day did not like the idea of a Higher Power telling them what to do. Acknowledging the God of the Bible would interfere with their philosophical reasonings about fornication, adultery and the various sexual perversions such "thinkers" like to promote.
Do you—in your heart of hearts—believe that the real God of creation has the authority to tell you what to do? Or do you have a sort of "hip pocket God" to whom you refer when convenient? Eventually, we each must face this question honestly! For, again, a correct understanding of this topic is vital to our ever coming into a genuine relationship with the true God—the Creator God—who gives us life and breath and who will give us eternal life if we will surrender our lives to obey Him and serve Him in the way He tells us to do!
Perhaps the most basic teaching in all of Christianity is Jesus Christ's instruction: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God" (Luke 4:4). Those who call themselves "Christian" but do not accept the authority of the inspired word of God even feel free to "make up their own religion" as they go along. Regrettably, this approach is precisely what millions of professing Christians are doing right now!
This attitude is why Jesus Himself warned us: "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?" (Luke 6:46). And again: "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven" (Matthew 7:21).
God Himself tells us, through His servant Paul: "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Notice that religious doctrine or teaching ought to come from inspired scripture—not from the confused and often contradictory reasonings of modern theologians or philosophers, who generally refuse to acknowledge the Bible as their sole and supreme authority.
REVERENCE for the Bible?
In generations past, many men and women at least professed toward the Bible a reverence seldom found today. The publishers of a well-known religious journal, Banner of Truth, felt compelled to republish a solemn warning from Bishop J.C. Ryle's 1890 classic, Light From Old Times. Here is that warning:
"While we sleep, an onslaught is being mounted against us, an onslaught which the Protestant churches of our land were never less ready to sustain. Anglican and Nonconformist leaders alike have thrown away the only weapon that could defend us—'the sword of the Spirit,' the Infallible Word of God. The Word of God alone, the grace of God alone, the power of the Spirit alone, these were the watch cries which prevailed four hundred years ago. They are not the watch cries of our Protestant pulpits today."
The world today basically rejects that approach to the Bible. That rejection is leading to a degree of religious chaos never experienced before. On this cynical, rebellious, God-rejecting generation will fall the Great Tribulation which Jesus Christ predicted: "For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be" (Matthew 24:21).
So, what about you?
Have you genuinely proved to yourself, and truly accepted, the authority of the Bible? This is more than just "sitting" in Sabbath services. It requires your active cooperation with the Holy Spirit to reveal spiritual Truth to your converted mind (1 Corinthians 2:14). And it is certainly something you can do if you really want to. Two vital sources of information on this topic are our booklet The Bible: Fact or Fiction? and of course our Tomorrow's World Bible Study Course. Both give very specific information regarding actual proof of a real God and of the Holy Bible as His inspired word.
Brethren, do we really, deeply understand the degree to which mainstream "Christianity" has rejected the Bible as its sole authority? Author Thomas Reeves reminds us that one mainline denomination has been described as "an institution in free fall… with nothing to hold on to… no shared belief, no common assumptions, no agreed bottom line, no accepted definition" of what it means to belong to that church (The Empty Church, p. 10). A chaplain in that denomination even declared that he "is not in the business of dispensing dogmatic answers about anything" (ibid., p. 24). If we truly come to realize just how wrong this rejection of God's word actually is, then perhaps we will be even more eager to honestly and conscientiously face the issue of really looking to God and the Bible as the supreme authority in our lives.
With tears in his eyes, the Apostle Paul warned the Ephesian elders about a great falling away that would occur after his death: "For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore watch, and remember that for three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears" (Acts 20:29–31).
Then, near the end of his life, Paul wrote the evangelist Timothy: "I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables" (2 Timothy 4:1–4).
All around us in the modern Israelite nations, ministers and religious leaders have ceased basing their teachings honestly and directly on the Bible. They have indeed turned aside to "fables"—as Paul warned. If our American, Canadian and British ministers had been faithfully and forcefully teaching the pure word of God, then a whole range of modern problems in the family and in society would never have become as serious as they now are. The stability of marriage and the family would be inestimably stronger if people had been taught the binding quality of marriage. The juvenile crime rate would not even begin to be what it is, if strong families were the rule throughout our nations. Teenage use of illicit drugs would not even approach its present level, nor would teenage suicide and a host of other problems.
The "Fruit" of REJECTING the Bible
The vast majority of today's priests and ministers scrupulously avoid the subject of homosexuality. Yet if they would do what the Apostle Paul commanded and "preach the word," they would regularly and consistently teach that the only correct use of sex is between a man and woman within the bounds of holy matrimony. They would proclaim God's judgment on this sin—that God made one man and one woman for each other and that His word labels sexual relations between two men an abomination. "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22).
Do you really think that modern priests and ministers are somehow "unable" to read, or that they somehow have not read or do not understand the Bible's clear instruction that homosexuality is sinful and wrong?
Even for those who mistakenly believe that only the New Testament is the word of God, the Apostle Paul is very specific. Remember, the Bible was inspired of God to be the authority in all of our lives. Here is what Paul said about the homosexual practices of his day: "For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting" (Romans 1:26–28).
Then, Paul summarizes God's judgment on the sin of homosexuality itself, and on the licentious attitude that tolerates it and ignores "the righteous judgment of God" (v. 32), which condemns not just those who practice such sin, but even those who merely approve of it. So we can see that, if people are in any way interested in doing what the Bible actually says, they will abhor homosexuality, since it is directly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments as an "abomination" and as "vile." Paul states plainly in 1 Corinthians 6:9 that those who practice this sin will not inherit God's kingdom!
Yet more and more "mainstream" churches are not only condoning this practice, but even allowing those individuals to be ordained as ministers in some cases! Can you imagine a belief or practice more diametrically opposite everything proclaimed in the word of God?
So how dare these ministers and churches say they are preaching or teaching "the word of God"? Yes, they say that! And somehow, because the professing Christians of the Western world are mainly biblical illiterates, these false ministers get away with it, for most people do not really study the Bible or in any way understand it. They read little bits and pieces of "inspirational" passages in the Bible—and very little else. They do not get down on their knees and beseech God for genuine understanding, and they do not ask God for the faith and courage to do what He says no matter what the result may be. They have not learned to put their total faith and trust in the God of Creation. He is the invisible God and they do not really know Him or understand Him—even though they call themselves "Christian."
But we in God's Church are different—at least we should be! Those of us whom God has called should be opening our minds and hearts every day to seek the true God and to be willing to do what He says. We should be studying the Bible in a focused and consistent manner, so that we will not be deceived by false teachings. We must live by "every word" of God as found in the Bible—God's Instruction Manual for each of our lives.
God's prophecies are surely moving ahead, but He is giving each of us the opportunity to act now to genuinely prove these things to ourselves and implement them in our own lives, so that we may qualify to become "firstfruits" and, as part of His Family, help others in the Millennium and the Great White Throne Judgment. As our English-speaking nations continue to be brought down through the prophetic events specifically described by God in His word, may He help each of us to stay close to Him, through the tools of diligent Bible study, prayer, meditation and fasting.