shadmans Musings  

I’ve written 6 blogs on Sola Scriptura and I have barely scratched the surface of the subject. What I’ve presented so far, and will continue to present, is a justification of the biblical and historical view of Sola Scriptura. Overall, too many in the Protestant church are sitting on the sidelines content to be ignorant of most biblical doctrines and historical topics. Who would know how to refute the Mormon? The Jehovah’s Witness? The Muslim? The Catholic? The secularist? Or does the Gospel of Jesus Christ no longer matter? Too many “christians” are too engrossed in the “flavor of the month” Christianity to realize how much of the Gospel they are conceding to the devil and the secular world around them, and Sola Scrptura is just one of the dozens of truths being surrendered. Too few Christians and churches know how to prepare and equip themselves and their people to engage in this battle for truth, so it is my hope that these blogs will do just that, equip believers to properly unders...

At its core, Christianity is a revealed belief system about the one true God who has shown Himself in the person and work of His Son, Jesus Christ. I say belief system because I just don’t like the word “religion” as a description of Christianity. Religion is about how man has endeavored to reconcile himself to God, but Christianity is just the opposite, it's about how God provided the way to reconcile mankind to Himself. And how does He do that? Through two types of revelation called general and special revelation. So when we talk about ‘revelation’ in this context, we mean the process or the way that God reveals or discloses Himself to mankind. General Revelation  What is “General Revelation”? A nice simple definition is that it is “God’s communication of Himself to all persons at all times and in all places.” [2] God has shown Himself in three ways: nature, history, and human beings. These three can be seen in the created physical order of the universe. ...

Sola Scriptura - means that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule  of faith for the Church . Since they are ‘ God-breathed ’ (Mat 22:31; 2 Tim 3:16-17; 2 Pet 1:20-21), they are ultimate in authority , for there can be no higher authority than God Himself . All other rules of faith, creeds, councils, or anything else produced by the Church herself, are subject to the ultimate correction of God’s Word . In Part 4 of Sola Scriptura on “ the Canon: Defining, Dating and Quoting ”, I defined some terms and showed why the NT Scriptures were written. I then attempted to show the dating of the NT Gospels, and finally I provided some information of how often the NT was quoted by the early church fathers. All of this was to show the importance of Scripture to the early church, and that they thought of the NT books written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Peter as “Holy and infallible Scripture” from the moment they were written. It wasn’t the gradual acceptance over 300 yr that w...

This blog entry is the result of research I did about 12 yr ago for a Bible study I taught on the book of Colossians. I am reposting it with a few enhancements because I will likely need to refer to it in some upcoming blogs. What was and is Gnosticism? The simplistic answer to that question is that Gnosticism taught, and still teaches, that salvation was achieved through a special knowledge (gnosis), but the philosophical concept is much deeper and broader than that. It is a radical dualistic cosmological belief system that held that the created world was evil and separated from, as well as in opposition to, the spiritual world. However, before beginning an investigation of this topic, the scope of the Gnosticism to be discussed needs to be defined. Any readings on the subject of Gnosticism will very quickly become confusing and overwhelming. The broader subject of Gnosticism began well before the time of Paul, and his Epistle to the Colossians. As is ...

I recently stumbled upon a debate between a Protestant apologist I’ve followed for years and a Catholic scholar, and I was surprised that this apologist would not defend one aspect of the Canon of Scripture in that debate. He made some good points, and overall I don’t believe the Catholic scholar made any serious headway in the debate, with the exception of the possible valid point that he was repeatedly denied. I knew where that Catholic scholar wanted to take the debate, but it surprised me that the Protestant apologist refused to ‘take the bait’, as they say. I have always believed and taught that Christians should never fear a debate; we have the truth on our side, always have and always will. It’s why I would always let the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons into the house and sit down with them and try to show them in Scripture their errors. None ever converted that I know of, but I never personally shied away from the encounters as most people do. And for this same reason, I am not...