God is always speaking; is anybody listening? Is anybody listening to God, and not the person who led us to Christ, or the guy who founded our denomination, or whoever’s yelling the loudest? As far as I can tell, many claim God has spoken to them recently, but are they right? Jehovah’s Witnesses, Adventists, Mormons, Eastern religions, new agers, and many more claim to have recent revelations of divine truth. Do they? Further, even among “orthodox” Christians, who’s worth listening to? Romans say one thing, Reformed say another, fundamentalists another, dispensationalists still another. What they disagree on are two points:
1) What has God done for us that we cannot do, and
2) What does God want us to do by way of response, that he will not do for us?
My contention is that nobody really understands what I call the mechanism of salvation: how a holy God redeems a sinful humanity. Why don’t they? Because they are careless in the way they read the Bible. To do good Biblical exegesis or interpretation, you have to take into account what the author said, assuming every word matters. Next, you have to remember whom the author was addressing, who was his audience? As you read, you will see that I believe two grave mistakes in Biblical exegesis have been made that have led to all the schisms, denominations, arguments, and violence in the Church, to say nothing of the ineffectiveness of that same Church. One, an act of commission, if you will, the other an act of omission. Read on!