"Very good. I've almost come to believe your argument since encountering so many "experts" on the Bible with so many different ideas of what it is saying. Very frustrating to say the least."
Well, that's why in the Roman West and especially in the Orthodox East we have relied so heavily on the Holy Tradition or "what the Church has always and everywhere believed". Interpretation of the Sacred Scripture is the province of The Church, which is infallible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, not, at least for Orthodoxy, any individual believer, be he Pope, Patriarch, Bishop, priest, preacher or the guy down the street at the local C-store.