- Jul 3, 2014
- 5,268
- 1,707
Jeff has been doing some thinking again..................
I've always been taken aback by the gall and sheer audacity of cults and cult leaders who will openly make statements tantamount to "No one prior to us and our revelation had the truth. It has only been since the restoration of the true preaching of *insert doctrine here* that real, authentic Christianity has been preached!"
Statements like these appall me because of the sheer arrogance lacing their words. How can one think so highly of themselves to actually believe that prior to their understanding, no one had the truth?
As appalling and ridiculous as such statements are, the same thing is silently stated by many in the evangelical world when they make claims that one is not a true Christian unless they hold to a strict doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, or that unless one holds to the view of hell as eternal conscious torment they're a heretic, or that the penal substitution theory of the atonement (God kills God to satisfy God) is the only true view, and anything else is "another Gospel".
These views, and so many like them, are actually new kids on the theological block, and many of the ancient Church fathers would have never recognized them in their present forms. They would have been written off as extremes and never given another thought. However, since they've become the popular and standard views of the day, many make the mistake of thinking they've always been the standard. The uncomfortable fact of the matter, however, is that they haven't. So, when one states that it is only in the context of believing these doctrines that one is a true Christian, they've essentially taken the same position as cults like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose ideas appeared late in the game, and were then claimed as the exclusive truth.
Listen, anytime one claims that a belief in a strict view of Biblical inerrancy, penal substitution, eternal conscious torment (in its present, popular form), a pre-tribulation rapture, or any other recent doctrinal innovation is essential to one's Christianity, they are unwittingly behaving like the cults who claim that prior to them truth was absent, and such claims should never be taken seriously.
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, Church history is a vast and open field that is much larger than our denominations' several-centuries-existence, or our lifetime of experience. To say that truth began with us is to greatly err. The Kingdom is ancient and massive, and certainly did not start with us.
I've always been taken aback by the gall and sheer audacity of cults and cult leaders who will openly make statements tantamount to "No one prior to us and our revelation had the truth. It has only been since the restoration of the true preaching of *insert doctrine here* that real, authentic Christianity has been preached!"
Statements like these appall me because of the sheer arrogance lacing their words. How can one think so highly of themselves to actually believe that prior to their understanding, no one had the truth?
As appalling and ridiculous as such statements are, the same thing is silently stated by many in the evangelical world when they make claims that one is not a true Christian unless they hold to a strict doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, or that unless one holds to the view of hell as eternal conscious torment they're a heretic, or that the penal substitution theory of the atonement (God kills God to satisfy God) is the only true view, and anything else is "another Gospel".
These views, and so many like them, are actually new kids on the theological block, and many of the ancient Church fathers would have never recognized them in their present forms. They would have been written off as extremes and never given another thought. However, since they've become the popular and standard views of the day, many make the mistake of thinking they've always been the standard. The uncomfortable fact of the matter, however, is that they haven't. So, when one states that it is only in the context of believing these doctrines that one is a true Christian, they've essentially taken the same position as cults like the Mormons or the Jehovah's Witnesses, whose ideas appeared late in the game, and were then claimed as the exclusive truth.
Listen, anytime one claims that a belief in a strict view of Biblical inerrancy, penal substitution, eternal conscious torment (in its present, popular form), a pre-tribulation rapture, or any other recent doctrinal innovation is essential to one's Christianity, they are unwittingly behaving like the cults who claim that prior to them truth was absent, and such claims should never be taken seriously.
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, Church history is a vast and open field that is much larger than our denominations' several-centuries-existence, or our lifetime of experience. To say that truth began with us is to greatly err. The Kingdom is ancient and massive, and certainly did not start with us.
