What is the most devilish deception of all? Can I suggest it is the popular notion that believers can pick and choose what they like from the Bible and ignore the rest, when no-one, including God, has given them the right to do so?

To the law [i.e. the word of God] and the testimony: if they speak not according to this WORD, it is because there is no light in them (Isaiah 8:20).

Sadly, most who call themselves Christians ignore this verse’s injunction and put their trust only in personally selected portions of the word of God, ignoring both vital dispensational differences and the great divide between church DOGMA and true Bible DOCTRINE.

To explain: DOGMA is what religious institutions such as church denominations have chosen to believe as selected interpretations of what the Bible, the Word of God actually says. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church holds the DOGMA that it is the only valid universal “church”, blatantly denying what scripture says about others.

The Catholic Church also holds that it alone can “canonise” people, thus supposedly making them “saints”. Yet the Bible says that only those whom God has personally “quickened” and “saved” are saints (Eph. 1:1).

What’s more the Roman Church prays to Mary rather than to Jesus because its DOGMA holds that Mary, being the Lord’s mother, is better able to persuade him to bless than those who pray to Him direct.

The latter are three examples of DOGMAs. What is a DOGMA, you ask? It’s a stubbornly held, and insisted on, belief and practice in major church organisations that is not based on the Bible; and even denies and negates what the Bible says.

And Christendom at large is full of such DOGMAS which are clung to more dearly than very the words of Jesus Himself, let alone those He has spoken through his prophets and apostles. For example, nowhere in scripture is anyone found baptising a baby yet this is the standard DOGMA and practise of Catholic, Anglican and other major churches.

Another example is the DOGMA that at the “catching up” into the air (1 Thessalonians 4:17) resurrected and living saints will be taken to heaven, when the verse says no such thing. So we see DOGMA is the attempt to simplify the word of God by believing some parts of it but not others and constructing a “theology” based on such selection. Thus, inevitably, DOGMA denies and resists truth.

Often DOGMA is the result of refusing to “rightly divide the word of truth” as we are told to do in 2 Timothy 2:15, or failing to compare scripture with scripture (1 Corinthians 2:19 and to receive “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27,) not just part of it. Didn’t the Lord rebuke the disciples on the road to Emmaus calling them “fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken?” (Luke 24:25), not just some of it.  

Just as bad is the widespread Christian insistence on ignoring the differences in the different things God has said at different times to different peoples.  Fact is Bible students need to recognise that in each dispensation and age God unfolds fresh truth which is the particular salvation message for that time. And it is that “NOW” and “PRESENT TRUTH” message that He wants preached, heard and believed first of all, ahead of his truth He spoke yesterday.

It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every WORD that PROCEEDETH (present tense) out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

You see, in contrast to DOGMA, DOCTRINE, such as the rock solid pronouncement above, consist of plain, uncontradictable, statements of truth from God, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and spoken either directly by Himself as the WORD, or through all his prophets and apostles. DOCTRINE allows of no argument, dispute, or alternative interpretation. It is a plain statement of unadulterated and God pronounced truth. For example, in Ephesians 2:8-9 we are firmly told:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.

No ifs, buts or maybes. No questions that admit of different interpretations and so consequently, no DOGMAS that differ should ever be asserted against the plain truth of this doctrinal fiat. We are saved by GRACE through FAITH, which itself is the GIFT of God, and not of WORKS, and that’s the end of the matter.

Therefore none of us should ever BOAST. Yet sadly denominations do BOAST, asserting daily their DOGMA, their spin on the truth, and their church rituals are what really save, not the plain statement of fact in Ephesians 2:8-9.

I hope you see the difference?

John Dudley Aldworth

You’re welcome to contact me at the email address below.

Email: john.aldworth@hotmail.com

Website: https://www.dayofchristmnistries.com/rss/all.xml