Some fifteen years ago, maybe more, before the seminaries really got rolling with womanist theology and Social Justice as a substitute for God, I interviewed a high official of the United Methodist Church. And this is what he said.
“The first thing I learned in seminary is that the Bible is not the word of God.” He seemed proud of it: too clever, he, to believe that the Bible is anything but a lot of old, cobwebby, made-up stories about things that never happened and people who never lived.
“Truth,” he said, “is determined by realpolitik.” (Maybe he thought he was Bismarck, or Henry Kissinger.) Whoever can round up the most votes, whoever can spend the most money, whoever can most successfully intimidate the opposition, gets to say what truth is.
This leaves us with no truth at all.
That was years ago. The flatline liberal churches were already carrying a heavy chain of hypocrisy; and, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, they have “labored on it ever since. It is a ponderous chain.”
But we do have the Bible, it is God’s word, and we have one another.
Which means we don’t need the flatline churches. And more and more Christians are coming to realize this.
I only have internet access intermittently art the moment, but I’ll chime in.
If the Bible isn’t the word of God then we’re all pretty much lost. The Bible explains more than any other book out there and it would seem that there are prophecies being fulfilled before our eyes. Zechariah 12 comes to mind. However, this sure explains the way the churches are headed.
Amen. And it seems all have a tendency toward this, so we need to be constantly on guard and self-aware. New wine in new wine skins, when the old skins start to crack.
Jesus told us there would be a great falling away before His return. It looks to me like we’re witnessing that very thing. How sad. The sheep have no earthly shepherd except the ones who lead them into the pit, happy in their blindness.
If you took all of my other books – and I have many – and just left me my Bibles, I’d be okay with that.