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One of the first questions that pops up when I explain to someone that Christmas is pagan, that the resurrection was not on Sunday morning, or that God doesn’t go to church on Sunday, is “But… can all these churches be wrong??”

And this question is imminently reasonable. After all, how can I disagree with practically all of the billions of Christians in the world, and be right? Hundreds of thousands of wise, learned men, men with more degrees after their name than a thermometer, thoroughly educated men who have devoted their lives to studying these things – how can I POSSIBLY be right? When I make these statements, I am disagreeing with the accumulated wisdom of THOUSANDS of years! How DARE I!

No, that wasn’t a rhetorical question; I’m actually going to answer it, and explain to you how I dare do that. If you look at Christianity as a whole from a great distance, it looks like it is in agreement; but the closer you get, the more divisions, controversy, disputed doctrines you see.

According to Oxford Christian Encyclopedia, there are 33,800 different sects of Christianity in the world today. Depending on who you ask and how you count, you may find a number anywhere from 20,000 to 50,000 denominations. Mind you, this isn’t individual congregations or regions – these are DISAGREEING, INDEPENDENT GROUPS!

And as you zoom in closer, you’ll find that individual church areas disagree with other areas, even in the same sect, and as you finally approach Christianity as individuals you will see that no two of them agree on any one point – even on major points of doctrine!

1 Corinthians 14:26 How is it then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation …

If you have ever darkened the doorway of any church in the world, you cannot have missed this experience! One man takes you aside and informs you that Big Brother is watching you. Another pulls you into a corner and whispers that HE believes that the Black race is the result of an unholy union between Eve and the Devil. Scarcely have you freed yourself from this conversation before a woman informs you that her dead Grandmother spoke to her last night in a dream!

Christianity isn’t the loving, agreeing union it would have you believe! Baptists believe in Baptism by immersion – Methodists believe in baptism by Sprinkling. Pentecostals believe in Baptism by the holy spirit. Catholics believe in infant baptism. Presbyterians don’t believe in Baptism, period.

Is this the unified Christianity we’ve been trained to believe in? I think not! Surely one of them is wrong. As a matter of fact, logic demands that all BUT one of them is wrong! But which is right? And how can they all disagree on such a simple, foundational point? Don’t they all have the same Bible? Where did this confusion come from?

Consider for a moment a college class on, say, Astronomy. The professor has a basic textbook from which he teaches his students about Quasars, Pulsars, Nebulae and such things. And he tells them all about how the stars orbit the center of the Galaxy, how the nearest star system to Earth is the Alpha-beta-proxima Centauri system. But how does he know these things? Did he discover them himself?

Certainly not! He knows them because he read them in his textbook! And he gives his students tests – tests based on the information in that same textbook. Now let us journey to another university which uses the same popular textbook in another state. A different professor teaches a different group of bored sophomores about the wonders of Astronomy. And she teaches them basically the same thing as our first professor did – no doubt, she teaches her lessons from a different angle – perhaps she concentrates more on the formation of the universe and solar systems, while our other professor preferred to deal with things as they are now. Still another lecturer may prefer discussing the future of the universe, BUT AS LONG AS THEY TEACH FROM THE SAME TEXTBOOK, THEIR FACTS WILL ALWAYS AGREE!

No professor with this textbook will teach that the Sun orbits the Earth! None will teach that the planets are made of cheese! They will all teach the SAME facts, and while some minor points may be interpreted differently by each, it will be easy for them to compare notes and find out who is right and who is misreading the facts!

ALL OF CHRISTIANITY HAS THE SAME TEXTBOOK! They ALL claim to revere and exalt the Bible as the inspired word of God! And YET THEY ALL DISAGREE ON VIRTUALLY EVERY MAJOR POINT OF DOCTRINE! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE??

How can all these churches be wrong?? When you think about it, how can all these churches be RIGHT!! Think about it; if I say the Earth is flat, you say it is round, and someone says it is square, another triangular, and still another insists it is a dodecahedron – It is not merely ONE of us that wrong. These ideas are all mutually exclusive – if one of them is right, the others are ALL wrong! So either four of them are wrong and one is right, or all five are wrong! Now that is basic logic that any third-grader could figure out!

When there are a dozen different schools of thought about Baptism, for instance, that means that 11 (or perhaps 12!) are wrong! Thus, I have explained how all these churches can be wrong. Now I must explain how I can be right, and how YOU can decide whether I am or not.

Let us return to the analogy of the Astronomical Textbook. That textbook was written by men – flawed, imperfect scientists. They meant well, and did the best they could, but they are fallible – it is certain that there are mistakes in that Textbook. Even they will admit that. Today’s Science is always overturning the “facts” of yesterday’s Science.

But the Bible is not a flawed Textbook written by human minds! It was written by human hands, but by divinely inspired human hands. So we can be confident that Today’s facts of the Bible will not be overturned by some new research next year, and we won’t have to take this year’s Bible to the campus bookstore and trade it in for an updated, corrected copy!

So how can I be right? Because I believe that, and they don’t! No, that isn’t arrogance. It is fact, and I can prove it. You see, the Protestant Christian world goes to church on Sunday because the Catholic Church they came out of kept Sunday. So why did the Catholics observe Sunday? Certainly not because the Bible commands it!

I encourage anyone to try find a place in the Bible, in either Old or New Testaments, where the Seventh-Day Sabbath was changed to Sunday. It will be a very educational search, and at the end of it you will have to admit that the Sabbath was commanded to be observed FOREVER on the seventh day, which we call Saturday. So where did the Catholics get it, if not from the Bible?

The Sunday/Saturday controversy was the cause of many martyrdoms in the 4^th century. The Roman church was demanding that Christians ONLY observe Sunday, and that they work on Saturday. They “moved” the Sabbath to Sunday, because the Pope was the Vicar of Christ and could change things like that if he felt like it. As the Catholic Encyclopedia says:

“we find St. Cæsarius of Arles in the sixth century teaching that the holy Doctors of the Church had decreed that the whole glory of the Jewish Sabbath had been transferred to the Sunday, and that Christians must keep the Sunday holy in the same way as the Jews had been commanded to keep holy the Sabbath Day.”

And so why does modern Christianity keep Sunday? Because the “holy” elders of the CHURCH DECREED that it should be changed! Because MEN decided it would be better that way! We decided that the inspired word of God wasn’t good enough for us, so we just up and changed it to suit what WE wanted!

I tell you, I would rather believe something that nobody else on earth believes, if it’s what the Bible says, than believe something that men, any number of men, changed against the word of God! Wouldn’t YOU?? Or would you rather believe what some MAN said, a man who had never met God, whom God never talked to and who, if truth were to be told, God didn’t like very much!

If you would rather believe a man than God, then you might as well just call it quits right now, because you are WASTING YOUR TIME!

Matthew 15:8-9 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But IN VAIN they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

You might worship Christ and call him “LORD”! BUT your WORSHIP is vain, A WASTE OF TIME, if your worship is based on the commandments of men! Almost the whole of Christianity today is based on the commandments of men – Sunday is just a small example. Christmas, Easter, Eucharist, the Trinity, the Law being nailed to the Cross – none of these can be proved from the Bible.

And if you didn’t get it from the Bible, where did you get it? Who gave it to you? Your grandmother? Where did she get it? Her church? Where did her church get it? The Catholic church. Where did they get it? Straight out of Paganism! And where did they get it? From the very mind of the Devil himself, the adversary and bitter enemy of God! God wants you to worship Him HIS way! Not the way that YOU might think is best! And certainly not the way that the Devil thinks is best!

Practically everyone today just worships God in their own way, and their Minister tells them this is exactly what God wants, but have you asked God what HE wants? Did you ever think that maybe HE CARES how He is worshiped?? You’ve heard that all you have to do is accept Jesus as your personal savior and call Him “Lord” to be saved, but is that what HE says?? It most certainly is NOT!

Matthew 7:21 NOT every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that DOETH the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Jesus Christ HIMSELF said that NOT everyone who says to him “LORD! LORD!” will be saved! You must DO something, yes, DO something else to be saved! You must DO THE WILL OF HIS FATHER! MANY people today believe they are saved, and Christ prophesies that those people will be in for a rude shock when they finally meet Him face-to-face!

Matthew 7:22-23 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? … and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

You will speak before God of their wonderful mercy missions to Africa, and of how you went to church EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY! And you will remind Him how diligently you set up a Nativity scene in your front yard EACH AND EVERY YEAR, and of the hundreds of dollars in electricity you poured into Christmas lights and Easter pageants!

And He will tell YOU that your “worship” was not based on what HE wanted, but on what MEN SAID! He will tell YOU that you weren’t doing the FATHER’S WILL – God never commanded you to keep Christmas! He never told you that you should go to Church on Sunday! And when you come before Him, you will be told to GET OUT OF HIS SIGHT, and that HE NEVER KNEW YOU because you never OBEYED HIM!

The BIBLE is our authority, yours and mine! God wrote it to US! He did not write it to be interpreted for us by committees of wise old sages! It is a LIVING BOOK, written for ALL OF MANKIND! Never have I written more important words than those I am about to write:

IF YOU CANNOT PROVE WHAT YOU BELIEVE FROM THE BIBLE, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO BELIEVE IT!

If the Bible is on your side, YOU CANNOT BE WRONG, though the combined wisdom of every man who ever lived is against you! If your Bible says that we must OBEY God’s commandments to be saved, and EVERY CHURCH ON EARTH DISAGREES, THEN THE BIBLE IS RIGHT AND THEY ARE WRONG!!

So am I right? Don’t take anyone’s word for it – especially mine! Open your Bible and decide for yourself.