By Reese Currie, Compass Distributors

In the past three years, the Compass Distributors web site has published over 100,000 words worth of material on various topics. We’ve attempted to enforce the true and expose the false.

Nevertheless, the Scriptures speak the truth when they say, "And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12). After all of these words, are there any conclusions we can draw?

The underlying theme I see, from reviewing all of our articles, is that there are two points of contention in Christianity, the means of salvation and the prime source of revelation. With regard to salvation, the doctrines are either God-centered or man-centered. With regard to revelation, the prime source is either Scripture or a combination of experience and tradition that supercedes Scripture in primacy.

The ideal you must reach in your mind is God-centered salvation with Scripture as the prime source of revelation.

Taken to its logical conclusions, God-centered salvation doctrine necessarily includes the following elements:

1. Man is a sinner who cannot redeem himself by any means.
2. Jesus Christ died in order to provide redemption for man through His blood. Jesus was raised again from the dead, which is our guarantee that we who believe in Him will be raised also.
3. In order to forgive sins in this way, Jesus Christ must be God. No one else is authorized to forgive sin.
4. In order to receive this forgiveness, one must simply repent, which is to give up on sin as our way of getting through life, and turn to Jesus Christ as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
5. Because it is God who justifies (this is the total affirmation that Jesus Christ is God; since He pays for sin, He is certainly the justifier), nothing man does can cause him to lose his justification (salvation).

Think of repentance toward God in this way. A boy (Man) is tasked with changing a tire. His father (God) is just standing there, letting him give it a try.

The boy doesn’t know the safe places to put the jack, he’s not strong enough to loosen the nuts, he doesn’t know where the spare tire is located and if he did, he’s not strong enough to get the wheel off on his own. Each boy has an allotted time to change the tire. The average amount of time I suppose is around 90 minutes.

Some boys go the whole 90 minutes and never achieve it. Some boys do great damage to the car when they put the jack in the wrong place. Others strip the wheel nuts, others drop tires on their feet, but none of the boys gets through it successfully unless at some point, they turn to their father and say, "Dad, help me. I can’t do this on my own." When their dad shows them what to do, then, they must heed His advice and not disregard what he told them. When they need additional strength, their dad will be there to lend a helping hand.

Depending on when the boy turned to his father, there may be damage to the car. The jack may have been placed incorrectly and damage was done to the sheet metal. Well, the damage stays there, but when the boy turns to his dad for help, the mistake that caused the damage is forgiven. The important thing is that the boy turns to his father for help and thus changes the tire.

Maybe the boy runs out of time before the tire is changed even after he has turned to his father. Well, that really doesn’t matter, because the point of the exercise is to teach the boy that he needs his father. As long as he turned to his father for help, the lesson humans need has been learned.

The very nature of the original sin was man trying to get away from needing God. The reason we are here is there is a lesson all Mankind needs to learn: we need God. Once that lesson is learned, we are acceptable to Him, and we have changed from a context of risking non-acceptance to a context of gaining reward from pleasing our Father.

There is a phenomenon among the churches in which people think they need God for a time, and then decide they do not need Him after all and continue on about their own way. All churches say that person has fallen away; where they differ is in saying whether the person every really believed in the first place, or to put it another way, every really knew they needed God. It is my belief that anyone who thinks they no longer need God never truly believed they needed Him. They never knew it for a fact. They may have thought they might need him, but never truly believed that they did need Him. Just as we know we need food to live, so we should know we need God to live abundantly and eternally. When you attain that level of knowledge about food, that belief that we need food to live, you do not suddenly forget, or question whether you need food. Similarly, when you attain the level of knowledge that you know you need God, you cannot simply turn around and deny it.

Sometimes the boys get so busy doing something the wrong way they aren’t really listening to what their father is saying. They ask the father how to take off a wheel and while he’s trying to answer their question, they’re not listening but they are trying to get that wheel off in their own way. These ones are the ones who "accept" they need to give verbal acquiescence to God but do not act in the manner He suggests. This is another manifestation of man-centeredness. They ask for His help but will not receive it.

Our heavenly Father loves all the sons He has changing tires, but only the ones that love Him and trust Him enough to turn to Him for help will live with Him forever. Those boys who think they don’t need Him will get what they wish, and will spend eternity without Him.

We have only one certain source of revelation from God, the Bible. People have traditions and experiences and do not take the time to compare them to the Bible. In fact, many of them object vociferously to people examining their traditions and experiences in comparison with Biblical truth. But we have to base our understanding of God on the Bible, not on our experiences and not on traditions.

The reason we can trust the Bible is that the Bible has had no impact from humans. Yes, humans wrote down the words in the Bible, and in their own writing style, but the words came from God.

If you don’t believe that, I ask you to name two big religious names today that agree 100% on everything in doctrine. You can’t. For example, Billy Graham and his son Franklin are obviously very close to one another in their views, but even they can’t even agree on which denomination to attend and what mode of baptism is best (Billy is a Baptist and Franklin is a Presbyterian).

There is no possibility that even two humans could come up with something that agrees with itself doctrinally 100% like the Bible does. How much less the perhaps 40 people involved in the recording of the Bible over a period in excess of 1,500 years?

All sorts of people throw out the whole Bible because of minor inconsistencies like the number of times the rooster crowed before Peter denied the Lord (it differs in Mark). A few things should be understood: 1) The doctrinal consistency of the Bible is 100%; 2) Differences in minor details show there was no collusion between the witnesses.

One other thing I believe about this is that God is sovereign. God knew what books were going to be included in the Bible and He allowed the four gospels to remain, minor differences and all. Such differences in details are stumbling blocks only for those who want an excuse not to believe anyway.

While certain traditions and experiences may be correct, the fact is that traditions and experiences have the taint of humanity upon them. Even the good thoughts that come into our heads are subject to misinterpretation and twisting by our corrupt human nature. Traditions and experiences therefore cannot be viewed as self-validating. This is why we must compare absolutely every religious tradition or experience to the Bible to determine its acceptability.

Some people think because they receive a good feeling about something, it must be of God. However, what these people are really listening to is their own heart. Jeremiah 17:9 points out, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Another factor that comes into play is human reason, and this leads quickly to rationalism and disbelief. When Scripture is viewed through the modifiers of tradition, experience, and reason, we have used four potential sources of human error to corrupt the truth found in Scripture. Simply put, the Scripture has to be viewed as the absolute truth, and when tradition, experience or reason should disagree, the Scripture is still the absolute truth. I am not saying using reason is wrong when evaluating a teaching; I am saying reason is wrong when it validates a teaching without the validation of Scripture.

There are things in the Bible that cannot be interpreted in the light of man’s wisdom. As Paul wrote, "These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual" (1 Corinthians 2:13).

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13, KJV).

May the love of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you as you press onward toward the goal of trusting in Him only for salvation with the Bible as your inerrant rule of doctrine and faith.

Three Year Review, Copyright © 2000 by Compass Distributors
Scripture quotations marked KJV taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible
All other Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.), 1982