About SolaScripturaToday

The Scripture is a beautiful and powerful Book; it has never been matched in authority and elegance, nor ever will be. As the Bible says:

Psa 111.1-3
Praise the Lord!
I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart, in the company of the upright and in the assembly.
Great are the works of the Lord; they are studied by all who delight in them.
Splendid and majestic is His work, and His righteousness endures forever.

and

Psa 111.10
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
A good understanding have all those who do His commandments;
His praise endures forever.

These are truths that I began to learn from my father, a faithful Christian who maintained a consistent witness to me regarding the grace of Christ for six or seven years in the mid to late 1960s. As a result, the Lord was pleased to call me out of the death and darkness of the Roman Catholic religion in the spring of 1970. Literally everything changed after that.

I grew up in Colorado. I attended a Bible college in the early 1970s and was married in 1974 to a wonderful Christian woman I met there. During the course of our marriage, we've lived in several states including Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Arizona and Texas. Additionally, I spent quite a bit of time in Florida for a job in the mid-2000s.

In each place, whatever the duration of my/our stay, I've searched out "good" churches in order to spend the first day of the week with other believers. An accurate—and unflattering—summary of those experiences would be these:

Rev 3.1-2
“To the angel of the church in Sardis write:
He who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars, says this: ‘I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God.

Rev 2.4-5
But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place—unless you repent.

I'm willing to wager that some reading this will respond that this statement is too strong, too dark, too bleak, too judgmental. I can hear the retort "Certainly you should have been able to find a church in 54+ years of looking! You must be looking for the 'perfect church', something you'll never find!"

• A "perfect" church—no, of course not!
• A church that strives for Bible obedience with an active and healthy "fear of the Lord" and succeeds much/most of the time—this is my active hope.
• A church that is founded on the biblical principle of unity (not fellowship!) and singlemindedness to the Scripture—this I have not found.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion as I am to mine. The difference, though, is that within the biblical analysis, critiques and rebuttals I post on this site is found the Scriptural proof that the modern, so-called evangelical, conservative church in America is in serious, systemic trouble from its very foundation upward and from its leadership downward.

The Lord generally characterized those of Sardis as dead—though it was nevertheless true there were a few who actually hadn't yet died (spiritually speaking); there were still a few that remained true to the Lord Christ. He likewise told those in Ephesus that they had left their first love; they lost their passion for the Lord Christ, and that was nearly two millennia ago!

What must be the situation today?

It isn't a matter of trying to find the 'perfect church'; that objection is a semantic and intellectually lazy dodge to avoid the real issue. It is a matter of trying to find a church that is essentially faithful, God-fearing and Bible-believing, a church actively implementing the NT model for the assembly of believers, a church working each day to "grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Pet 3.18)

Such a church I have not found.

I have found many churches that implement conservative, evangelical tradition in place of biblical doctrine and obedience, and who have substituted "fellowship" in place of true, biblical unity. In short, the situation is no different than that which the Lord encountered in Jerusalem nearly two millennia ago with the religious leaders of His day, saturated in tradition but with no real fear of the Lord or His Word.

It has been my experience that within that which calls itself the "Christian church" that there are some—very few, actually—who are real, faithful, Bible-fearing believers. But like Sardis, Ephesus or Laodecia of long ago, the majority are lukewarm (at best) or dead (most likely). 

This observation is consistent with the way that the Lord works in His true people: it is always through the true and faithful remnant within the "professing" majority. This was true of OT Israel, and it is likewise true in our day for that which professes to be NT "Christian".

The Lord stated these both early and late in His ministry—and has never rescinded either:

Mat 7.13-14
Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Mat 25.41,45-46
Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels; ... Then He will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.
[The context here is that this is the Lord's response to those who claimed to serve Him when they stand before Him at the Judgment of the Nations (just before they are sent into the Outer Darkness).]

The purpose of this site is to identify and confront the distortions and errors of the current conservative "church" in America by shining the light of the Word of God on it. When appropriate I "name names" and cite articles by their authors (both obscure and well-known). And, sadly, I've found well-known "conservative" theologians, teachers and leaders who are just as careless with the Lord's Word as the Lord's avowed enemies.

The current situation in "Christian America" is desperate.

My purpose with this site is to be a true, biblical apologist within a so-called Christian culture that (barely!) gives lip service to the Scripture and pretends to be religious, but when examined closely reveals itself to be "white-washed tombs full of dead men's bones". (Mat 23.27)

I suspect that some of you reading this site will be just as inclined to ignore the warnings as the Pharisees of the Lord's day ignored him, to their own destruction:

Mat 23.34-36
Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

Instead of a "knee-jerk reaction" to simply abandon the content of this site, I ask you to stick with it. You may just gain an understanding of just how far that which professes to be "Christian" has fallen from the truth. And you might just learn some Scripture truths you never realized in the process. But, be warned: if that begins to happen, you'll never, ever look at that which professes to be "Christian" in America in the same way! If you would rather eliminate that possibility completely (going on in your ignorance), then close this page and never visit my site again!

Finally, the purpose of this site is to develop the most likely answer to the terrifying question asked by the Lord Christ long ago:

Luk 18.8
However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?

The biblical answer is, "Yes—but just barely."

SolaScriptura!