Introduction - Where I Am Coming From

Growing older as a Biblical inerrantist (one who believes the original writing of the Bible was without errors) I have discovered that many of the things I had always believed were not in the Bible.

From birth I attended Sunday School, Sunday Worship, Sunday night youth meetings, Sunday night church, and Wednesday night adult Prayer Meeting each week. In addition to those meetings, I attended seven day Christian Service Camps beginning at age 8 and going through High School, fourteen day Vacation Bible Schools for as long as I can remember, and attending the fourteen nights (that’s right, fourteen times in a row!) of two week revivals.

The Sixth Avenue Church of Christ in Huntington, West Virginia produced about sixty people who entered church related vocations as preachers, missionaries, professors, and many specialized services to the church.

In the late 1940’s through the mid 1950’s my mother (Aleta), indoctrinated me. She would talk in my right ear about the meaning of the Lord’s Supper as it passed over me. My father (Ralph) would let me put his tithe in the offering plate. He was a journeyman printer who had to drop out of school in the sixth grade to work to support his crippled father, his mother, and three other children in the family.

As a boy I wore “hand-me-down” clothing and usually, I not only had holes in my jeans, but holes in the soles of my shoes, too. And every Sunday I checked dad’s offering. There was never less than a $20.00 bill enclosed in a $1.00 bill. I never thought twice about the way I was dressed and the money dad gave to the Lord that would have outfitted me quite nicely.

As a child I absorbed a lot of theology, not all of which was in the Bible. For example, when Paul wrote that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit I was taught, “Thou shalt not smoke cigarettes”. Anyone who did was in real danger of going to hell.

I was taught that the Lord’s Supper was to be taken every Sunday, no more often and certainly no less often, and only on Sunday. When Luke wrote, “On the first day of the week the disciples came together to break bread”, I was taught that meant every Sunday the first Christians had communion.

And alcohol. If there was anything that would cause one’s everlasting damnation it would be to drink an alcoholic beverage. I was sure Jesus turned the water to unfermented grape juice. And Paul’s admonition to Timothy to “drink a little wine for his stomach’s sake” – well, this wine was strictly for medicinal purposes. I was taught, “We don’t drink wine or any other alcoholic beverages today because we have more effective medicines than the ancients.”

I left home at age 17 to attend Kentucky Christian College. Most every professor “toed the same line” theologically.

But there was one professor, Dr. John Eggleton, who bugged me. I thought he might be a “liberal” because he told us that there were theologians who did not believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible; who believed there were four sources for these books identified as “J”, “E”, “D” and “P”. When we asked what he believed, he would not commit himself. If he wasn’t a liberal, why wouldn’t he tell us what he believed? And what else didn’t he believe? It was all very suspicious. We might have a heretic on our campus.

In 1967 I went to serve as the preacher at my first full-time church and have served five churches over the past thirty-eight years: Christian Church of Unionport, Unionport, Oh., First Christian Church, (associate) Dodge City, Ks., La Belle View Church of Christ, Steubenville, Oh., Sunbury Christian Church, Sunbury, Oh. and Fourth Avenue Christian Church, Columbus, Oh. All but Fourth Avenue were “independent” Christian churches. Fourth Avenue is “Disciples of Christ”.

I have prepared thousands of sermons, Sunday School lessons, radio broadcasts, Bible studies, small groups studies, articles for publication in national magazines, letters to editors, etc. I spent a lot of time studying the Scriptures. I have read the Bible through at least ten times. I read commentaries, topical books, handbooks, dictionaries, sermon books, lesson manuals, papers, popular books, and concordances. I have listened to countless hours of tapes about every conceivable subject.

With that as a brief biography, what follows is a summation of what I believe is the teaching of the Scripture. This is not about the practical application of Scripture to Christian living. Although, I believe, when we have a proper view of the teachings of the Bible (i.e., the right doctrine); 1) we will have most theological and practical application questions answered, 2) we will have a more accurate estimation of the nature of God and our relationship with Him, and 3) we will have a more reasonable expectation of God’s activity in the course of human history.

So here goes.