Replies

I appreciate your kind and courteous approach to this discussion as well. :-)

There have always been and I suppose always will be those who will twist the Scriptures. II Peter, Jude, Galatians, Colossians...All aimed at defending “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” against attacks by its enemies.

We have these writings. Is there something else we need?

Those who wish to justify their perversions of sexuality will pervert Scriptures to do it. But such perversions are easy enough to expose. I’ve seen all of those you cited, and have addressed many of them in conversations with friends and/or FRiends - and without appealing to any authority other than the Bible.

I won’t elaborate unless you’d like me to. Nor will I “expend any electrons telling you to stop supporting gay marriage.” :-) I know you don’t.

But I will digress and urge you to stop calling it “marriage” when it isn’t. When we call their pretense a “marriage”, we offer them ground from which to shout, “Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled” with conviction and persuasiveness. And before we know it, we’ll have to attach adjectives like “traditional” to distinguish what God created from what man pretends exists.

Albert Mohler might not know what the Scriptures say on this subject. But what’s that to me? Am I dependent on his knowledge of the truth in order to get to heaven? Am I dependent on his traditions? Your traditions? My Dad’s traditions?

Or can I just read the Bible for myself? Can you and I discuss these subjects (as we’re doing so profitably!) and learn from one another, testing ourselves and each other against the Holy Scriptures?

Paul was not dependent on anyone’s traditions - not Peter’s, nor James’s (Gal. 1). He learned from Jesus Himself, and he knew the truth. And when he saw Peter doing wrong, he “withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed” (Gal. 2). Peter’s tradition caused even Barnabas to be led astray.

Peter had strayed from the truth as it had been delivered to him in Acts 10, and confirmed in Acts 15. Paul brought him back to that original, non-evolving, Spirit-delivered “truth of the gospel” which he had been lured away from.

If Peter could be led so easily from the truth of the gospel, how much more so the rest of us! The preventative, the cure, the antidote is...what? In the words of Innigo Montoya from The Princess Bride: “Go back to the beginning!” :-)

That’s where Paul pointed Peter. That’s how John begins his first epistle. That’s the thesis statement for Luke’s history for Theophilus.

If Jesus’ kept His promise to His apostles, then the Holy Spirit did indeed guide them into all truth. If we stick with that, how can we go wrong?