Paul's Passing Thoughts

The constant Bible-speak among Churchians is laughable; there is no Bible in the church. “The Bible says in”…cite chapter and verse…this, that, and the other…is really what they hear from the pulpit on Sunday and nothing more or less.

At least Catholics are honest about it. On the other hand, it’s amazing to watch John MacArthur preach as mindless parishioners are told what the words they are looking at say. Again, I like the honesty of Catholicism; they don’t even bother bringing their Bibles to church, while Protestants mock God by doing so.

So, how did Biblicism become a lie in the Protestant church? Well, it always was a lie, but Protestants strayed away from the lie for awhile and a sort of half-pregnant Protestantism ensued for awhile. And during that time, the church was actually halfway decent, at least, some churches.

The Protestant Reformation was founded on a historical-redemptive interpretation of the Bible. What’s that? Well, since salvation is progressive according to Protestant orthodoxy, the Bible has one role and one role only: to aid the Christian in the progression of salvation. It’s a “redemptive” interpretation, get it? What does “redemptive” mean? Duh.

And how do we use the Bible for the progression of our salvation? Well, since we are still supposedly “sinners,” and as John Calvin and Martin Luther stated, present sin removes us from grace (read: salvation), we must return continually to the same gospel that saved us for re-justification. The sole purpose of the Bible is to “preach the gospel to ourselves every day.” Hence, every verse in the Bible is about the “saving works [note the plural] of Jesus.” The Bible is about “what Jesus did, not anything we do.” The Bible is the law that continually walks us back to the cross for more Jesus.

Thing is, most Protestants just wait for Sunday to hear a “gospel message” rather than to preach the gospel to themselves during the week. After all, that’s what we pay the preacher for, right?

Also, remember this: all of the quarreling about women pastors in the church boils down to the ability to re-condemn parishioners every week for purposes of leading them back to the cross. Seems to me that a woman can do that just as good as a man, if not better. Nagging in the pulpit by men every week in the church is rivaled by nothing.

Most pastors will claim they use the historical-grammatical interpretation method and they are either outright lying or don’t know what they are talking about. They may use a grammatical method to reach a redemptive conclusion regarding the text, but that’s not a true use of the historical-grammatical method.

It’s amazing to note the obvious: New Testament letters were read to the assemblies at large. The letters were not delivered to so-called pastors who then explained the letters to those assembled. Nor is there any indication in the Bible that such a format should be used in the assemblies moving forward.

Contemporary Christians know very little about the Bible because the knowledge of it is clearly doled out through the traditions of men. Christ said that makes the word of God void. There is no word of God in the church.

The Bible is about more than redemption. A free and collective study of the Bible by everyday Spirit indwelled Christians is the only way its treasures will be revealed.

paul