There is no book like the Bible.
Variation and diversities are not marks of error. But herein lies a potentially serious problem. The temptation of groups of serious conviction is to move ever further from the central pale of reason that C.S. Lewis calls "mere Christianity." Because of their emphasis, they begin declaring that "love is everything," or "history is all-important." They take some important but not critical emphasis of Scripture and move it to the exalted position of an imperative doctrine. They move their test of fellowship away from the person of Jesus Christ to some lesser point. Such a group may have started well, but, for want of proper attention to the whole counsel of God, they drift away from vital Christianity into a misplaced emphasis.
It is easy to see how a religious group can move from the true to the false by small steps of defection from the teaching of Holy Scripture. Too often, however, this special emphasis becomes the critical all-important point. When a theological eccentricity moves to the very center of the attention of a group of Christians, that group, often without sensing it, becomes eccentric and potentially heretical.
This "outward bound" direction must always be avoided by the biblical Christian. When a group develops a theological or doctrinal interpretation that touches only minimally on the proper biblical emphasis and lives for the most part outside of that circle, it becomes a cult.
By this we mean that, from a starting point of Scripture, it has moved away from the teaching of the Word of God so that its central emphasis has become a set of human philosophies, ideas, or revelations that can no longer be justified by the teaching of the Word of God. Its attention to an interesting portion of Scripture has been carried to the point where it has isolated this passage of the Word of God from the corrective modifications found in other portions of the Word. Its segmented biblical attention has cut it off from the body of divine truth.
Virtually every cult in existence today has followed the unwise course of segmented biblical attention out beyond the pale of reason into the production of a destructive heresy.
(Read Acts 19:1-6) The disciples of John the Baptist continued faithfully in their conviction of the truth of the message of this humble forerunner of Jesus Christ.
But herein was their problem. They were so taken with the preaching of John that they neglected his major emphasis: namely, that One was coming after him, who would guide them into all truth. They therefore missed the opportunity to hear the Word of Christ. They missed the chance to believe in Him and become true Christians, sharing in the gift of the Holy Spirit given to the Church on the day of Pentecost. Their own testimony was that they had not even heard of the Holy Spirit.
These people did not come to the place where they shared the life of God that comes to every person who is made a new creature in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul's question to these disciples, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" was a most appropriate way of asking whether they had become true Christians.
Realizing that they were not indeed believers, the Apostle Paul said unto them "that they should believe on Him who would come after him" [after John the Baptist, that is]; they should receive Jesus Christ. The happy conclusion of this story is they did indeed believe on Jesus Christ, were baptized in His name and received the gift of the Holy Spirit.
We may rejoice that Paul was given of God the opportunity to bring to these sincere seekers after truth the final revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is highly probable that they would otherwise have formed a religious group around the preaching of John the Baptist which, however sincere, would have prevented people from hearing the message of salvation by the grace of God made possible though Christ alone. Their sincere attention to a segmented, non-final revelation would have therefore been a most damnable thing. Their religious belief and practice would have been merely a cult rather than real and vital Christianity.
The lesson for all of us is very clear. While we may be fascinated with the words of one of the personalities of Scripture and with the emphasis of a given book of the Bible, we must not fail to pay attention to the message of the entire Word of God.
The Bible declares about itself that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness that the Man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16-17). It is therefore of great importance that the doctrine by which a Christian orients his faith and his life come from all Scripture. He must remember that the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, was given by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and is vital in its entirety to his understanding of the faith.
He remembers also that Revelation is "progressive!" God presented truth in a cumulative fashion, moving from the basic theistic concepts of the Old Testament to the final revelation of Himself in Jesus Christ. Christ brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:10); and His doctrine was explained to us by His apostles who wrote the letters of the New Testament.
We must also never forget that the proper interpretation of the Bible must be based on text, context, and greater context. The biblical interpreter must ask "What does this verse mean? In what setting is it given to us? How does it relate to the whole Bible?"
The major deficiency of the cults of our time is that they have neglected to base their faith on the Bible as a whole. One group denies the immortality of the soul because of a statement about death in Ecclesiastes 9:5. They ignore the fact that the final light on the subject of immortality was given to us by Jesus Christ. Paul explains that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (see 2 Corinthians 5:8).
Some find a verse in the Bible about God having given to some prophet a vision. They use this as the scriptural base for a notion that all sound religion is therefore conducted on the basis of God revealing Himself in visions and dreams. Such a notion can cause a person to drift away from the Word of God into a spiritual opium den of his own making. Another leader may greatly encourage Christians by his emphasis on a relaxed and positive mental attitude. While this message may be of value, if taken as ultimate truth, it can cause a naive person finally to deny physical reality. No mental attitude can take away the fact of death or deliver us from the necessity of living in the midst of physical dimensions.
The mature Christian will make none of these mistakes. He will avoid the dread pitfalls of spiritual lunacy that come from going off the deep end on the basis of any one verse from the Bible.
It is a grave temptation for any group to find a verse in the Bible about holiness, the kingdom, law, grace, works, faith, or something else and use it for a substitute for the whole counsel of God. Even zealous Christians have frequently fallen into the trap of segmented biblical interpretation, thereby creating a cultic influence in their system of doctrine.
Christian maturity will save us from all of this.
(from Know The Marks of Cults - The 12 basic errors of false religion by Dave Breese)
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