The Phantom
Verse(s) of Holy Scripture
that Thousands of People Follow
Religiously,
But Few Have Ever Seen...
But what has all of the aforementioned have to do with the theme of this writing that I titled, "The Phantom Verses"?
As a noun: Something that exists in perception
only.
As an adjective: Something apparently sensed but has no
physical reality.
Of all the sects that I have listed above and the tens
of thousands more that I mentioned, what verse or verses did
their founders
use as authorization to allow themselves to form their own churches, and to
speak in behalf of GOD?
There appears to be an anomaly here. Those
founders, as well as their followers believe in something called
"Sola Scriptura", or "Everything to be believed is in the
Bible only, and if I cannot find it there, then it simply does not exist, or is
false".
Therefore, in order for all of those founders to have any GOD
given authority to do what they did, then they had to have
the permission of
GOD, His authority for them to form churches other than the one that GOD Himself founded
in Matthew 16:18.
And
since the doctrine of Sola Scriptura teaches that everything is in the Bible,
then those verses must be found somewhere
within its covers as
well.
Please, anyone!
Show me those verses?
I have searched and
searched and I simply cannot find even one verse where GOD gave man the
authority to found
another church in which to speak in His behalf, other
than in the Church which Jesus Christ founded.
What verse(s) did the first
Protestant, Martin Luther use as his authority to found
the first Protestant church, the Lutherans?
Apparently he could not
find the verses either since he never mentioned them in his
writings.
Those verses simply are not to be found anywhere in Holy
Scripture.
That is why I called them, "The Phantom Verses".
However, Luther did
tell the world by whose authority he founded Lutherans. He did it on his own
authority.
Here is an example of his self-proclaimed 'authority':
Luther
had translated the New Testament into his version of the German Bible.
It is to be noted that Luther taught a false doctrine that man was saved by
faith alone, and upon his own recognizance
and
without any authority but his own, he added the word "alone" to Romans 3:28,
thereby ignoring all of the verses which
admonish anyone not to add
to or take away from, the Holy Word of GOD.
Then regarding this, he
displayed his inflated ego and total arrogance, when he wrote the following in
defense of his addition:
"If your Papist annoys you with the word
(alone), tell him straightway, Dr. Martin Luther will have it so:"
(I
bleeped a sentence after the above one because he used foul language against the
Papacy. Continue with the next sentence).
"Whoever will not have my
translation, let him give it the go-by: the devil's thanks to him who censures
it without my
will and knowledge. Luther will have it so, and he is a
doctor above all the doctors in Popedom."
Amic. Discussion, 1,
127.
In his pamphlet titled "The Papacy at Rome", of 1520, he
claimed his own authority by 'twisting' Holy Scripture in a
futile attempt
to justify himself. Here is one excerpt from that pamphlet:
"It is to this
church (Luther's), to the believers, that Jesus gave the keys."
Oh, was
Martin Luther there in Matthew 16:19?
Apparently all of the human
founders of those 'other churches' just followed the lead of Luther and founded
their own
churches without giving thought to finding those Biblical
"Phantom Verses" of GOD given authority for them to do so.
Eisegesis (as applied to those beholding the Bible):
Reading something into Holy Scripture that simply is not there.
I just had a thought:
If you could ask each one of the founders of their
own churches, "By whose authority did you do this?"
What do you think they
would have answered?
I know what I think they would have said. "GOD told me to".
That answer immediately brought this
reply to mind:
"Well, why then didn't GOD say, "You must join My one and only Church"?
You will have to think awhile
about these theoretical replies of GOD.
Could GOD really have told
them to found other churches?
Recall what you have already learned from
Holy Scripture. Put the pieces together.
Do you see an
insurmountable error if GOD had actually told them to found their own
church?
1. Jesus said He was the truth in John 14:6.
2. There
can be only one truth, just as there is only one Jesus Christ.
3. Jesus
prayed three times that we all be one in John
17:11,21-22.
4. GOD cannot contradict Himself. 2Timothy
2:13
5. How then could He pray in Scripture that we must be one, and
yet tell the founders that we may be many?
6. So if those
founders say that GOD told them to found other
churches,
then it would have been impossible
for GOD to have told them to do so.
7. Therefore it could not have
been GOD who gave them that message.
8. However, could
it have been GOD's adversary speaking to them, the great deceiver, the
father of lies (John 8:44)?
9. Hasn't the adversary been trying to destroy GOD's only Church ever since it was founded by
Jesus Christ?
10. What better way is there to do that other than by
using a process called 'Divide and Conquer'?
Oh! At the beginning of this page I said that few have ever seen the Phantom
Verses.
I was mistaken, since not one person has ever seen
them.
Written by Bob Stanley, April 30, 2011
Galations
4:16