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NASB | 2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 2 Thessalonians 2:15 So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold [tightly] to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us. |
Subject: "Here I stand; I can do no other." |
Bible Note: The Bible doesn't speak, we read it and interpret it. Without a living human to read it the Bible is nothing more than a dead book, no more than lifeless ink and paper. A man picks up a Bible, reads it, or hears it, and comes to an understanding, a construal, an interpretation. By whatever means he reaches his understanding of the Bible, I contend he is wrong to call his own, or his denomination’s, interpretation simply ‘the Bible’ and another interpretation tradition. Historic Christianity, rather than your "Non-conformist" brands as we say in England believe the Church interprets the Bible and eschew private judgement following Peter’s admonition that ‘first of all, no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation’ (2 Peter 1:20). And look to the ‘church of the living God’ as the only dependable interpreter of biblical truth that Scripture assures us is ‘the pillar and support of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). The Bible does not say that the Bible is ‘the pillar and support of the truth’ but that the Church is. I can only state have studied the History of Theology at one of the world's foremost universities that the histories of the anti-Catholic polemicists are often fanciful. Not that people haven't been killed by Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans. I am hardly getting into some revisionist "Holocaust Denial" mode here, simply asking you to consider that the mainstream histories are truer and more reliable. |