I've heard your Bible teaching and I noticed that you teach many things that I was taught growing up in the church. I wonder if you're teaching church traditions or the truth?
Anytime we teach from the Bible, we take great care to distinguish between the traditions of men and the doctrines of God as revealed in His word. Jesus Himself condemned those who would teach the traditions of men as Biblical truth. Jesus said:
Matt. 15:7 “You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you:
Matt. 15:8 ‘ THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
Matt. 15:9 ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’”
Any time a teacher presents the traditions of men in place of the doctrines of God, they are in teaching error and mishandling the word of God. These teachers are far from God, as Isaiah said. Our ministry works hard to teach the doctrines of God as presented in God's word, and we reject any teaching that is tradition only and not according to Scripture.
On the other hand, truth never changes, so we should expect sound Biblical teaching to repeat the same truths consistently. Such consistency does not mean the teaching is based on "tradition," but merely reflects the reality that truth never changes. Consequently, if after centuries of consistent teaching concerning a given point in Scripture a new and different intrerpretation emerges, we should evaluate this "new" interpretation skeptically, testing it against Scripture before accepting it in place of the time-honored interpretation.
Sometimes a new interpretation will be correct, reflecting the Spirit's work to open eyes and correct men's understanding (e.g., as the Spirit accomplished with Martin Luther during the Reformation), but other times these novel interpretations are deceptive shemes of the enemy to mislead the church into false views of Scripture, and therefore they should be rejected.
In our Bible lessons we support our interpretations with careful analysis and exegesis, cross referencing other Scripture and explaining how our view is consistent with the overall teaching of Scripture. We follow well-accepted rules for interpreting the text of Scripture, and we correct or amend our teaching frequently as we discover error or come to a better understanding. We hope our approach gives you confidence that our teaching is consistent with the truth of God's word.
