"Sola Scriptura" (scripture alone), was one of the battle cries of the Reformation. Unfortunately, like so many good things, it soon became a treasured sentiment rather than a hard and fast rule. In Romans 3:4, God and Paul tell us "...let God be true, and every man false." This sounds easier than it is. It is not easy to cross over to the ground where God, and God alone, is the authority for what we believe when most of us have lived for so long with man as our authority. It is the hardest thing that any believer can do. Most evangelicals will profess to hold the Bible as their sole authority in matters of faith and practice, but then, we have a tendency so often to say the things we want others to hear rather than to speak from conviction. If we believers were just naturally honest as a result of our new birth, God would not have to appeal to us to stop lying and start being honest. The truth of the matter is that the flesh of the believer is no more honest than the flesh of the unsaved..."You can’t make a Christian out of your old nature."

Underlying our dishonesty, where it touches the singular authority of Scripture, is our cowardice. It takes a great deal of courage to leave the perceived safety of the boat and walk out to meet Christ on the water. Protestants may laugh at Catholics for plugging their umbilical cords into some imagined "papal infallibility," but Protestants have more "popes" than Rome.

Have you ever presented some facet of truth to another believer only to have him retreat to the company of his colleagues in the boat rather than brave life with Christ supported only by the water of God’s Word? "But my denomination holds... My pastor teaches... I prefer to believe... I’ve always thought... Dr. So-and-so says in his book... My parents taught me... The experts will tell you... The consensus is... Grandfather always said..." This type of response to what you are presenting is a far cry from Sola Scriptura; it is a million miles away from "Let God be true!"

For years the Witnesses have come to my door to share with me what they have learned by rote from the faceless, anonymous voice of the Kingdom Hall emanating from the sixth floor of the Watch Tower Society in Brooklyn. When I show them from the Bible that their major tenets are seriously flawed, they ask to be excused long enough to consult with "someone who knows more than I do." Hundreds of them have promised to return with answers... not one has ever come back. They claim the Word of God as their sole authority, but their real authority is "someone who knows more" than they do, some nameless pope in Brooklyn. I have learned to expect this of all the cults; all cultists acquiesce to the demand of the cult to suspend all independent thought when they sign up. That’s essentially what every cult is all about. The hierarchy always demands supreme authority over mind and conscience, and the rank and flle willingly concede it. Cult leaders are always tyrannical leaders of the blind; their followers are always the willing-to-be-blind type. The cult leader is looking for obedient children, the cult follower is looking for an authoritative parent.

"My priest does my thinking for me," said a young factory worker, thinking to excuse himself from the responsibility of hearing, understanding, and obeying God for himself. "I let him worry about what is right and wrong." "What if you get a new priest," I asked, "one who teaches differently?" He had no answer. There is none. I reminded him, that one day he would have to stand before God in judgment without any priest as his advocate. The priest in whom he was trusting might be cast into the Lake of Fire before his very eyes. This is a serious matter, entrusting one’s soul to others rather than to hear and respond to the Word of God for oneself!

Letting God be true is the obverse, the positive side of the coin. It requires the reverse side, the negative, to be complete. Rejecting the authority of man would not necessarily eventuate in accepting the authority of God; one might reject the authority of both. However, accepting the authority of God requires the rejection of man as an authority. If I "Let God be true," I must "Let man be false." I have no alternative. There is a great contrast here between the authority of God’s Word and the imagined authority of man’s. God has called attention to the contrast, and we must heed what God considers important.

Years ago I began to experience a great conflict. I was beginning to grasp the Mystery communicated by God through Paul to the Body. Faintly at first, I started to see the uniqueness of Paul’s apostleship, the difference between life under Law and life under Grace, the distinction between God’s program and provision for Israel and that for the Body of Christ. It would be a long time before I would see Grace as a sphere...like most of us I saw it first in fragments...but the odyssey had begun. There was just one problem. I then belonged to the General Association of Regular Baptists and the pillars of that fellowship, Drs. Ketcham and Jackson were not teaching what I was discovering in the Word. I was terrified of the possibility that I might be leaving Orthodoxy for a cult experience. I would have rather died then, and I would rather die now, than to dishonor my Savior by becoming a cultist. For a brief time I fell back on the authority of man. These good doctors, these dear people could not be wrong; didn’t they love God and His Word?

Could the Regular Baptists, "Fundamentalists of the Fundamentalists," all be wrong? "Who are you to stand against a thousand years of Church history?" the Emperor Charles asked Luther. "Unless you can convince me by Scripture and reason, I can do nothing else!" responded the monk who would call an errant church back to the Bible.

I believe that I could show you the spot where I was sitting in that little Baptist Church in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, when I crossed the "great divide," the line that separates those who still cling to man as an authority from those who accept only God and His Word. It would be the most difficult decision I would make as a believer...incredibly hard! God has given teachers to the Body of Christ that we might profit from the results of their study of the Word, but the Bible is the only Vicar of Christ on earth!

I could not begin to tell you how much I benefit from reading the works and listening to the teaching of other people. While I learn many things from my own personal study of the Bible, the things that I have learned from others have been of inestimable worth. Some of the greatest truths that I have ever grasped have been shown to me by others, life changing truths, but in the final analysis, the Bible is the only authority and the Holy Spirit the ultimate Teacher for every believer.

How much of your faith is the result of conviction arising from an earnest study of God’s Word? Can you open your Bible and humbly, lovingly present Scripture in support of your beliefs when you discuss vital truths with others? It is a good thing to believe in the Trinity, but it is much better to believe because Scripture has convinced you of its truth than to believe because your pastor says it is so! It is infinitely better to believe in salvation by grace alone through faith alone as a matter of settled conviction born of objective Bible study than to blindly accept this great truth persuaded by man. Truths blindly accepted because of human persuasiveness can be easily lost the same way that they were gained. Truths that we embrace because we see them clearly taught by God in His Word form an anchor for the soul.