That got me to wondering why and how all of these people
were coming up with partially or totally contrarian viewpoints and all sounding
biblically accurate. I set out to
collect all of the data I could get ahold of.
I wanted to study all of the various beliefs and the reasoning behind
those beliefs by some of the most vocal backers at the time. It is my belief that people tend to get a
small fragment of the truth and then extrapolate it out too far with their own
ideology and desires, so what I hoped to do is by analyzing each viewpoint’s
logical inconsistencies and failures and then removing them, I hoped to get a
better idea of what would happen by combining all of the pieces that people
truly got right.
This task, which I began over a decade ago, led me to a conclusion
I hadn’t looked for when I began my search.
We’re not getting biblical prophecy correct, for the most part, because
we’ve been wrong from the beginning.
I’d like to say that this shocked me, and that I was
stunned beyond belief, but it really didn’t and I really wasn't.
Much of what I had already studied from history and much of what I had
already experienced my entire life had already told me that something was very,
very wrong. I already knew that God
doesn’t desire to establish religion in our hearts, but rather relationship and yet the church was full of religion. I already knew that historically religion
generally has been supported by powerful governments and that anyone who
supported the truth of who God is in opposition to these views was generally
beheaded or worse. And most damning, I
already knew that although we Christians claim to have one God and He has one
body, we’ve got five hundred different denominations and eighty nine different
sects within each of those denominations who all think that they’ve got the
real truth of God and everyone else is messed up at best. We've got family strife at best, and at worst we have civil war already going on in a supposedly unified body.
Let’s face it people.
We are not unified. We might
smile politely at each other in the restaurant after church, but really we
think to ourselves that if they truly want to be loved and blessed by God then
they need to come to our church. WE'RE right and they're not. It's as simple as that. If they
don’t, then maybe, MAYBE, they’ll end up in Heaven, but they certainly won’t be
as blessed as they could be down here. They
could be saved, but their wrong ideas are hurting them and others right
now. Baptists think Catholics are
confused pagans. Catholics think
Lutherans are off the beaten path.
Lutherans think Pentecostals are mindless hippies. Pentecostals think that Baptists are apathetic
pagans. And so on, and so on, and so
on. The simple fact of the matter is that
we’re all wrong about something but we either don’t want to acknowledge that or
we honestly don’t see it. (And before
you say it, yes, I know that includes me.)
So why am I bringing this up here? Because our comic is diving into a spiritual
war that’s been going on for millennia. There
are a lot of questions about what really happens. Millions of people have asked Pontius Pilate’s
question to Jesus through the centuries, "What is truth?" By displaying this spiritual warfare, we’re
inevitably going to be offering opinions on what it is and other spiritual
truths.
And as we will be offering opinions on such matters, I
thought it only fair to give you some insight as to where I’m coming from. So for
a while, my posts are going to address a few things that I believe we’ve gotten wrong as
the body of Christ. My desire with this
blog, and indeed with this comic, is not to enrage the masses or bully those
that disagree with me, but to hopefully encourage those that have been
struggling with their faith walk. Sometimes things don't seem to make sense or you feel like you're looking for answers in the wrong place. You know you've got the right house, but there are so many rooms. You ask, "Am I supposed to be in this one? Where does this corridor lead? Why can't I find my way around?"
Someone told me once that Satan doesn’t have to turn your
gaze one hundred eighty degrees and get you going in the opposite
direction. He only has to get your gaze
off of God by one degree in order to make you miss the mark. But he’s so subtle and so clever that even if
you refuse to take your eyes off of God for your salvation, he has been
thoroughly successful through the ages at getting us to take our eyes off of
God in other areas, if not every other area of our lives. If he can’t drag you to hell with him, he’s
going to try to make sure that you do as little as possible while you’re here
to hurt his cause. If you won’t be a
victim, he’ll at least make sure you don’t factor in this battle. He knows that a house divided cannot stand
and he’s doing everything he can to divide God’s house in any way he can.
I've already begun to deal with some of our errors on a very basic level. I'm going to keep going deeper. My hope and prayer for you is that you’ll allow His truth
to replace whatever deception currently is keeping you from Him in some
way. And I hope that you’ll pray for me
in this area too. I say "our" errors and not "your" errors for a reason. I'm just as much in need of grace as you are.
Scott Snyder
