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Christ is the one man I have full faith in his knowing the true meaning of Scripture so as to cite it to correct others. Who on this thread has Christ’s authority and understanding to teach Scripture with absolute truth?

Nobody.

Unfortunately, that is an unworkable solution. It's a kind of agnosticism. It puts us in the place of not being able to know anything about what God said. Yet Jesus, whom you say is the only trustworthy interpreter, often held individuals accountable for what had been written, as if they were expected to understand it. Nicodemus, for example. How can that be, if only Jesus could understand it? There were in fact those whom the Holy Spirit had enlightened, before Jesus was born, and after He rose to Heaven. So it really is not impossible to discover God's truth in God's word, by the example of Jesus and His followers as recorded in Scripture.

But then on to the problem of how one figures out the true claims from the false. Well, it is something we have to do. The fact that it may be difficult in some ways is no excuse to avoid our duty to feed, as Jesus said, on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

And that has to be one of the big clues. If Jesus, as you say the ultimately most reliable interpreter of God's word, is telling us we must feed on God's word, then when we find a system that gets that wrong, and is therefore inconsistent with obvious teachings of God's word, like Rome, we can and should drop them off our "valid teacher list." This is what the Bereans were up to. When Paul went teaching there, they didn't give him an automatic pass, not even as an apostle. They said, in effect, nice teaching Paul, but we're holding you accountable to Scripture. That's what everybody needs to do. It's a duty, not an option.

But someone will object, you'll get inconsistent results. Of course you will. Nothing could be more obvious. When a bunch of guys try out for the Navy Seals, most of them go home. Inconsistent results, yes, but there we think it's OK, because WE are in a position to judge and say, that guy had it right, but that other guy got it wrong.

But what if we're not the judge?

We aren't. God is the judge. He leads by His Spirit, and those who follow Him and hear His voice will teach the truth, and He knows who they are. And they will and they must refute error. It goes with the mission. But even Jesus, the most reliable interpreter of Scripture, said this wouldn't get sorted out in the realm of human understanding until judgment day, that until then, the wheats and the tares would grow up together and be almost indistinguishable to an outside observer, even angels not being able to reliably tell the difference.

But does that make the mission to tell the truth of the Gospel go away? No. Does that mean the Gospel is unknowable because Jesus is no longer on earth? No. He did give us the Holy Spirit. The mission goes on, and the word of God will have its foreordained effect on individual human hearts. Some will follow the truth, and others will reject it, in a multitude of ways. The fact that there are disagreements between us about who has it right doesn't matter a whit. It's what God thinks that matters. So we do our job, we stay faithful to His word according to the best light He has given us, even if that causes some friction on FR, and let God worry about sorting out the results. That is above our pay grade. Way above.

Peace,

SR