MISCONCEPTION

Lately I’ve been thinking about several areas of church doctrine that are questionable in my mind, and are based more on “man-centered” theories rather than being “God centered”, based on the word of God. At first I started to use the word “deception” to describe how I felt we in the church had been led astray from the truth, but now I wonder if a better word to use might be “misconception”. The dictionary tells us that the word “conception” means the act or faculty of conceiving; that which is conceived; an idea; a notion; plan, or invention. And “concept” means an abstract general notion, or idea; also any notion combining elements into the idea of one object. Then of course when we add the prefix “mis” we have a word that means a wrong or false conception. I believe that is exactly what happened in the formulating of some of our more popular church doctrines.

For example we can take the teaching of a “secret rapture”, which is based on a vision given to a young lady back in 1832, in which she apparently saw Jesus coming in the clouds and “catching away” His bride, the church who was looking for Him to come at “any moment”. She was part of a group led by a man by the name of Irving, who had been put out of the organized church because of his questionable beliefs. This was a very “subjective” experience, and has no basis in scripture, but was received by many as the truth. This has become the core of the popular teaching known as the “Pretribulation Rapture”, which declares that Jesus will come back at any moment to take his church out of the world before the great tribulation under the Antichrist occurs. This teaching is in direct opposition to the plain teaching of Jesus, and others in the scriptures, and I suggest to you that it is a prime example of a case of “misconception”!

While a passage of scripture can have more than one application, it can only have one meaning, and that meaning was determined by the author at the time he penned those words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. (2 Tim 3:16) We cannot take a scripture out of context, or apply a meaning to it based on our 21^st century understanding of the English translations, or even worse, to use the scriptures to prove the meaning of some particular theory. This will result in a “misconception” every time, and lead to much unnecessary confusion and divisions in the body of Christ. If we could learn to ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand the real meaning of the scripture, whenever we read it, and not take what we have been told it means, I’m sure we would reach maturity in the Lord much quicker!

Sincerely submitted.

Gramp