How do you know you have the truth?
How do you know that your version of Christianity is true? How do you know you’re interpreting the Scriptures correctly, and that you’re not a heretic?
This is the most important question a Christian could ask, but almost nobody ever bothers to ask it. Your salvation depends upon you answering this question correctly. You only have one shot at this, you know. Has God given us a method to know with certainty that we’ve arrived at the truth and aren’t being deceived by some false teacher, which the Scriptures repeatedly warn us to be on guard against?
2 Timothy 4:3-4 – For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to satisfy their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
How do you know that’s not you?
Try asking any protestant pastor, “How can I know FOR SURE that what you’re teaching is true?” and they’ll always respond, “Jesus promised us that the Holy Spirit would guide us into the truth.” But why should that give ME any confidence, since EVERY pastor in EVERY denomination would say they’re being led by the Holy Spirit, and they’re all contradicting each other! How is anyone supposed to know which of those pastors is teaching the truth?
If you ask a protestant pastor how he knows he’s teaching the truth, he’ll reply with some nonsense about how “Jesus said the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth, so that’s how I know I’ve got the truth.”
- John 16:13 – “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”
“He will declare to you the things that are to come.” Now, is this a promise for all Christians, or just the apostles? Did Jesus promise ALL people that “the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance everything I told you?” Or was that only for the apostles?
- John 14:26 – “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
Has Jesus personally taught ALL people like He did the apostles? No. How can you remember something you never heard? You can’t. Obviously Jesus was only speaking to the apostles when He said He would bring to their remembrance everything He told them,. This response you hear from pastors about how they’re being “led by the Holy Spirit” to define Christianity themselves is satanic delusion, meant to discourage anyone from challenging their teachings. It’s also caused a lot of protestants to become overconfident in themselves that they’re being led by the Holy Spirit in the same way as the apostles were, essentially making them view themselves as an infallible interpreter of the Scriptures.
Protestants are heretics because they all believe in this idea of a papacy, which is the idea that a single person is the sole infallible interpreter of Scripture. They believe every person is the pope and gets to define Christianity for themselves.
If you ask them if they’ve ever been wrong about a doctrine before, they’ll say, “Yes.” How did you find out you were wrong? “From studying harder and being corrected by people who are wiser than I am.” Ask them if they understand everything in the Scriptures, and they’ll say, “No.” Ask them if they at least understand all of Jesus’ parables, and they’ll say, “No.” I’ve asked them, “Do you even understand HALF of Jesus’ parables?” “No….” So what about this idea that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth? Why is it that you have seminaries to teach pastors, and pastors to teach congregations, if you truly believe the Holy Spirit is guaranteed to guide you into all truth, as it did with the apostles? Why even bother giving a sermon every Sunday if EVERYONE has already been guided into all truth? Why don’t you just read a passage and then say, “Well, I’m glad we all understood THAT! Have a good day, everybody!” In fact, if we’re to go all the way down this road, why would we even need the Scriptures at all, since the Holy Spirit is the one who guides us into all truth apparently, apart from anyone else? Or how about this other line they like to say: “The Scriptures interpret themselves!”
If that were true, then why do the Scriptures tell us that the Scriptures are hard to understand, and that they need a wise interpreter?
2 Peter 3:14-18 – Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
Acts 8:30-32: – So Philip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And he said, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning at this Scripture, preached Jesus to him.
Look at how Jesus had to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures in order for the apostles to understand them:
Luke 24:25-27 – And he said to them, ‘”O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
You see, what these pastors won’t tell you is that the Scriptures actually say that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for most people to understand spiritual teachings because they’re carnally minded!
- 1 Corinthians 2:12-14 – Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
If you read the Scriptures, you find in both the Old Testament and New Testament that God’s church is URGED again and again to seek out trustworthy interpreters of the Scriptures:
Ezra 9:48-49 – Jesus and Anniuth and Sarabias—along with Iadinus, Iacubus, Sabbataeus, Autaias, Maiannas, and Calitas—and Azarias, Iozabdus, Ananias, and Phalias: these Levites were teaching the Lord’s law. They read the law of the Lord to the crowd, explaining the meaning as they went.
Malachi 2:7 – The priest’s lips keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at his mouth.
Jeremiah 3:15 – “And I will give you shepherds after my heart, and they shall certainly tend you with knowledge.”
Sirach 7:30 – With all your might love your maker and do not forsake his priests.
Sirach 8:8-9 – Do not disregard the discourse of the elders, for they also learned from their fathers; because from them you will gain understanding and learn how to give an answer in time of need.
Deuteronomy 32:7 – Ask your fathers and they will tell you, your elders and they will declare unto you.
Proverbs 22:17: Bow down your ear to the words of the wise.
Sirach 9:15 – Let your conversation be with the wise, and all your discussion in the law of the Most High.
Sirach 6:36 – If you see an intelligent man, visit him early; let your foot wear out his doorstep.
Sirach 39:1-4 – He who devotes himself to the study of the law of the Most High will seek out the wisdom of all the ancients, and will be concerned with prophecies; he will preserve the discourse of notable men and penetrate the subtleties of parables; he will seek out the hidden meanings of proverbs and be at home with the obscurities of parables. He will serve among great men and appear before rulers.
Sirach 8:8-9 – Do not slight the discourse of the sages, but busy yourself with their sayings; because from them you will gain instruction and learn how to serve great men. Do not disregard the discourse of the elders, for they themselves learned from their fathers; because from them you will gain understanding and learn how to give an answer in time of need.
So how are we supposed to know who is a trustworthy interpreter of Scripture? How are we supposed to know WHO is a truly wise teacher of God’s law, when there are seminaries in EVERY denomination, churning out countless pastors telling you they are abiding by the Scriptures? They want you to believe this fairytale that the things they teach you aren’t their own ideas, but are coming straight from the Bible, even though there are many other people in the world reading the same Bible and coming to completely different conclusions about what it means.
So again I ask, how are we supposed to know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that a teaching is true? Did God give us any kind of test? Are we doomed to just keep on reading and reading throughout our lives, hoping we’re understanding everything correctly, but never really knowing? Only deluding ourselves? Because I’m sorry to break it to you, but there are many protestant pastors, old men who got their degrees from seminary, who think they’re really smart and expect you to listen to them, who will ADMIT that they were wrong about a lot of things they believed and taught (for years! Decades even!) before they finally figured out the truth on certain doctrines. And they only came to realize they were wrong after they had reached the end of their lives, and misled countless other people. Is this what YOU want to go through? Is that the only way to find the truth? We just stumble around in the dark for years and years, until we go through multiple embarrassing episodes of having to change all of our beliefs (and even then, we’re still in doubt about whether we’re on the right path), or else just become overconfident and arrogant enough to stop studying and just settle into whatever we’ve gotten used to believing, like most people do?
Well, I’m here to inform you guys that it’s not your responsibility, as a new convert to Christianity, coming along 2000 years after the fact, to authoritatively define what Christianity is. You can rest easy knowing that weighty responsibility has not been entrusted to you. Christianity was already defined 2,000 years ago. Jude says that the faith was once for all delivered to the Saints. Once for all, guys. The faith did not have to be delivered gradually over many hundreds of years. It was delivered all at once, and the whole church agreed on what that version of the faith was.
Christianity is a fully defined religion. It’s not your job to figure it all out from scratch and explain it using your own terms. That’s been done already. Your only job is to discover what it is and follow it.
The Church Fathers Have Authority
Does God require us to obey any pastor’s teaching?
Well, the Scriptures say that as the apostles traveled the world planting churches, they left behind bishops to rule the churches, exercising the authority to ordain successors to the episcopate who would continue to teach Christ’s doctrines:
2 Timothy 2:2: The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
These same men also possessed the authority to excommunicate anyone who contradicted their teachings:
The apostle Paul clearly commands us to OBEY the rulers of the church. So now the question is, how are we supposed to know who is a legitimate ruler of the church? Do we just pick a random church nearby and obey the guy we randomly chose? Well, that’s convenient! Is that how authority works? I pity that authority if you ever decide to dump him for the next guy! He must not have that much authority if WE’RE the ones who decide whether he has it, huh? So which is it: Do we choose our own authorities, or has God already told us who the authorities are?
Many people have lately learned that there was an established ancient church, and that we have records of what they believed all around the world. Most protestants will respond with, “Well, the church fathers contradict each other, so I don’t have to obey them!” Of course, the same protestants will also listen to the teachings of many pastors who contradict each other, and that never seems to bother them very much. But still, the claim that the church fathers all contradict each other implies that if the church fathers DIDN’T contradict each other, we SHOULD obey them.
The fundamental question is, do the church fathers have authority, and if they do, who are we supposed to obey if they ever contradict each other?
In the early church, a bishop was selected for every city, and if anyone doubted that his bishop was teaching the truth, they compared his teaching to the other bishops’ in the surrounding cities. That’s what God wants you to do. HOLD TO THE UNITY OF THE FAITH! You see, even the early church fathers would say that you should only obey the bishops who hold to the unity of the faith, and that you should FLEE from a heretical pastor who departs from the church’s teachings (quote Apostolic Constitutions and Cyprian and Athanasius).
Leave the video on a cliffhanger, saying that we must join whatever church holds to the original doctrines held by all the churches around the world.
Antiquity:
Do you see how the Scriptures stress learning from wise men who in turn learned from their fathers? The most ancient form of our religion is what we should be looking for:
Jeremiah 6:16 – Thus says the LORD: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
Universality:
1 Corinthians 11:16: But if anyone is inclined to be contentious, we have no such practice, nor do the churches of God.
Consensus: