There can be quite a number of differing beliefs among Christians about various things. Is it okay to dance? David Danced before the Lord. Further study indicates this was a leaping and skipping, like a happy excited kid on the playground. He was celebrating the Ark of God. Is it wrong to speak in tongues? Is it wrong not to speak in tongues? 1 Corinthians 14:39 says to forbid it not.
It matters, what is right and what isn’t.
Romans 14:5 says: One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. The Lord looketh upon the heart 1 Sam. 16:7
I believe God created all things, that God always was, He had no beginning, and will have no end. He is all powerful and all-knowing, and omnipresent. I believe in a triune Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. I believe Jesus, the took the form of a man, lived a sinless life, laid down his own life in death, shedding innocent blood to atone for the sins of you and me. I believe He rose up from the grave on the third day and is now in heaven at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come soon to remove the body of believers from this world and then a period of tribulation will occur such as the world has never seen.
God, His ways, His thoughts, are so above us, and beyond our comprehension, that even the most diligent student of Scripture will fall far short in this life, of ever understanding it all. Just like God gives different gifts to different believers, I believe often God gives different ones a greater grasp of some small portion of His Word, while giving more of a mastery of some other portion to another. Look at it like this: Medicine has become an enormous body of knowledge. Specialists must devote a great deal of time to learning the specifics that relate to their area of expertise, and must continually study and train to remain on the cutting edge of advances in his specialty. That doesn’t leave him time to know everything about every specialty. There is just too much “knowledge” for him to master. In the same way, a medicinal chemist is not likely to be also a foremost specialist in atomic energy.
We are limited by our own capacity. The Bible tells us that we see and understand only “in part”. The body of knowledge contained in Scripture alone, is so vast and enormous that one could spend a lifetime digging into it, and still be gaining new understanding in his 90′s and beyond, should he live that long.
I often use this description that I read someplace years back, which describes differing perspectives in general: A group of blind people who have never encountered an elephant, are brought to a village where an elephant is kept. They are assisted near the elephant, and allowed to feel the enormous animal, standing only where they have been led, not walking all the way around. Afterwards, they are asked to describe this foreign beast. One who had stood by the leg, described it like a large tree trunk, rough to the touch like bark. One who had felt the ear described it like a tent flap. One who felt the flank described it like a solid wall.
They were all perceiving only “in part”, not the whole. Even if they had been allowed to palpate all the way around this enormous animal, being blind they could still not have fully apprehended or appreciated the elephant in the fullest sense. Our “vision” and understanding are like that now. And that is why you can find differences in perspective among Christians who love the Lord and study His Word diligently. That does not mean “anything goes”. The Bible is clear in 2 Peter 1:20 that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation”. Prophecy either foretells, or forth-tells. So this principle applies to all scripture. It doesn’t mean whatever someone decides it means. It means what God meant when HE inspired its writing, and it is up to us, with the Holy Spirit’s help and our own diligence, to continue to study the scripture until we are “fully persuaded in our own minds”. Every passage in scripture has at least one other passage in scripture that helps explain it. Seek ye out of the book of the Lord, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them. Isaiah 34:16. One good way to study the Bible, is to use a program like e-Sword, (free to download online) and search out every instance of a certain word, looking at it in the context of various passages. E-sword also includes Strong’s Concordance, for the original languages.
The Bible says in Psalms 12:6 that The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.
Are there poor versions and perversions of the Bible floating around out there? Surely there are, however, I believe God knows how to (and has) preserved His Word intact, and that it will not return unto Him void (Isaiah 55:11) but will accomplish what He pleases, and prosper in the thing whereto He sent it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. (John 1:1). For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. 1 John 5:7. The Word is quick (living), and active (Hebrews 4:12) and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Do you realize what that means? That even as you “scan the Word” the Word is scanning you!
Do you know what is even more amazing? If you are in the Word regularly, it is not only scanning you and detecting what is wrong, but it is also “recalibrating” you, righting that which is wrong within you, and cleaning you up, because it washes like water (Ephesians 5:25-27), and if you are believing what you are reading, then you will become a doer (James 1:22) of what you read. If you do not become a doer, then you are deceiving yourself. The Bible was “interactive” long before there was an app for it!
So, we can trust that though our understanding now is incomplete, some day that which is “in part” will be made perfect (complete). (1 Cor. 13:9-12)
-S.T. Lloyd
All scripture from KJV
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