Question: How can you be sure that your interpretation of the Scriptures is correct, especially when it comes to things that no one can really explain?

QUESTION: How can you be sure that your interpretation of the Scriptures is correct, especially when it comes to things that no one can really explain? In an article you wrote in June of 2006 titled "Cosmos and Creator" you made the following statement: "Carter claims to be a Christian. Yet the hope he holds out for earthlings is to 'join a community of Galactic Civilizations'? That's hardly what Jesus meant by His Father's house of 'many mansions' (Jn:14:2In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
See All...,3)! Carter's 'hope [and] determination' caused me to title a book, Whatever Happened To Heaven?"

You question Jimmy Carter's Christianity, yet you make decisive judgments about the interpretation of biblical quotes?! What gives you the right? Do you honestly believe that you are capable of deciding the intended meaning of the Holy Bible?

RESPONSE: This question troubles me. If by reading I cannot discern "the intended meaning of the Holy Bible," then who can? Was it written only for some elite? Must we trust a pastor, priest, denomination? The Roman Catholic pope and magisterium? How could I or you or anyone else today know to whom to look for the correct interpretation of the Bible? If you are suggesting that no one can know, then God has given us a worthless book.

The Council of Carthage, held in A.D. 397, was the first one to specify the New Testament scriptures that by consensus had already been recognized by the church. Had Christians been waiting for four centuries to know which books to read? Did they have no guidance individually from God's Word? Almost the entire New Testament can be reconstructed from individuals' private letters that have survived from the first and second centuries and from scriptures inscribed on broken pottery placed on hearths, or inscribed on tombstones, etc. It is clear that there was a consensus of which writings were Scripture and which were not. No official pronouncement was needed.

The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures indwells true believers, and that is how we know that the Bible is inspired of God and that the Qur'an or Book of Mormon, etc., are not. Paul writes, "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Cor:14:37If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.
See All...). It was upon this basis that the early church recognized genuine Scripture and rejected the rest. And so it must be for us today.