It must seem odd that anyone would introduce a blog whose title lampoons one’s lack of Biblical credentials as some kind of “authority” on it, or as a source of valid information that is both useful and essential at this time in human history.  What makes me think that I understand the Bible better than the “experts” who have a formal training to understand scripture better than I do?

The first time I was introduced to the Bible, I was 12 years old, as a gift from my parents.  It was a condensed version of the Bible which included all of the New Testament and only Psalms and Proverbs from the Old Testament.  My family used to be Catholic, so that formed my earliest foundation of theology.  The first four years of my primary education were spent at a Catholic school until our family moved away from the city and the only school in the area was a public school.  A couple years later, something unexpected happened.

My parents began listening to a radio program called “The World Tomorrow“, featuring the voice of a man named Herbert W. Armstrong, the founder of the Worldwide Church of God.  He described how, in the 1930’s, he discovered something shocking about virtually all organized religions.  It seemed that none of them were actually teaching doctrine based strictly upon what the Bible actually says.  Rather, they were teaching things that their churches accepted as true and were passed down from generation to generation.  Armed with this knowledge, he started his own church and it grew dramatically for nearly half of the 20th century.

I began to read the Bible, not because I wanted to, but because I had to.  We began living our lives according to the instructions found in the Old Testament, which included observing the 7th day Sabbath and attending special services during the various holy days of the year, as identified in scripture.  We rejected every holiday that can trace its origin back to pagan beliefs.  These included Easter, Valentines Day, Halloween, Christmas and others.

The Worldwide Church of God had grown so large that they now had opened three separate college campuses, each called Ambassador College, located in California, Texas and England.  I attended the college in Pasadena, CA.  Even though I studied theology all four years that I was there, it was not my major.  Instead, I chose business management.  After graduation, many of my peers went into the ministry, but I did not.  Nothing in my earliest experiences with the Bible, theology or religion in general made me think that I would have been given a unique insight about Biblical truths a few years later.  And yet, it happened.

There was no “eureka!” moment, no life-altering tragedy, no near-death experiences that were the catalyst of this gift, but I fully understood that it WAS a gift and it’s not something that I take lightly, as I recognize that any understanding that I have about the Bible is a direct result of the holy spirit allowing me to understand.  Without that, it is impossible.

There have been many spiritual leaders whom I have respected over the years that laid the foundation of my understanding but even they grew in knowledge only up to a certain point then simply stopped.  It was as if they believed that they had now attained 100% of all the knowledge they needed and anything that would either add to it or or subtract from it would be “wrong” either way.

Some significant doctrinal disagreements marked a turbulent time in the mid-’70’s and early ’80’s in the Worldwide Church of God, and I withdrew, ready to begin my life apart from it.  They had abandoned one of their fundamental beliefs–that we should prove all things, and retain what we know to be true (paraphrasing 1 Thess. 5:21)–and had begun advancing the belief that the Bible is too deep and too mysterious for any one person or small group of people to fully understand correctly.  Therefore, the congregation needs the explanation of the ministry to properly understand difficult passages.

This flew in the face of Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, so sometime in the mid-’90s, I decided to do a deep dive into the Bible on my own.  Until that point, virtually everything I ever learned about the Bible, I learned from what someone else told me it said.  I would hear their words, read the passages they were citing and I would draw a logical conclusion that they were telling me the truth.  This meant that everything I “knew” to be true were never “my” beliefs.  They were the beliefs of someone else that I “validated” afterward, and adopted those beliefs as my own.

Another instruction that Paul gave us, found in 2 Tim. 2:15.  “Study to show yourself approved unto Yahweh, a workman that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”  That’s when it occurred to me.  Was I really being a “workman” if all I did was listen to the wise council of others, then make those thoughts my own?  I decided to start all over, from the very first verse in the Bible, Gen. 1:1, and dig into each and every word of scripture.  Also, I began to use an Interlinear Bible which allows the English speaking person to read, as closely as possible, the actual transliteration of scripture in its original Hebrew or Greek languages.  Reading scripture this way may cause the text to appear choppy, without a proper flow we’re accustomed to seeing, but it allows one to place yourself, as closely as possible, into the actual intent of the author of each book without looking through the filter of Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English along the way.  I began to discover that a great deal of what we know as “common knowledge” of the Bible is completely wrong.

Instead of rejecting what I began discovering, I kept digging deeper.  More and more Biblical truths jumped off the page and often it stopped me dead in my tracks.  After a lifetime of influences, every one of us has “bedrock” beliefs that we never imagine need to be visited, and I was no exception.  But I learned that those bedrock beliefs, which have their origins of almost 2,000 years ago, were already–at THAT TIME–being distorted, until eventually the truths of Yahshua’s ministry in the early 1st century A.D. had completely disappeared by the end of that same century.  What the world accepts today as the teachings of Yahshua Anointed our Messiah is a watered-down version of earlier pagan beliefs that had already been on earth prior to His arrival.

People have many beliefs, but there cannot be many versions of the truth.  In the near future, nearly all of us (depending on your current age) will become witnesses to many amazing prophecies being fulfilled.  At that time, when viewed through the prism of time, you’ll come to know whose explanation was accurate and whose was not.  So, I’m not here to do battle with other’s beliefs.  I’ll let the facts speak for themselves.

There is a reason that a few people on earth DO have this understanding as we approach the end of these latter days, as told by our Messiah, Yahshua, in John 16:33–“These things I have spoken to you, that in me you might have PEACE. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”