Just a reminder to all -
The book of Acts is primarily a short-form history book, that also contains some theology and doctrinal statements. It is not all inclusive in either the history of the church, its major players, nor does it contain the complete teaching of Jesus Christ or that of all of His apostles and subsequent established prophets who brought additional revelation and instructions to the church. The book does not include the histories, ministries or doctrines of Peter, James and John, not to mention all of the other apostles, prophets, evangelists and teachers.
The epistles are rather skimpy on full doctrinal details, and generally contain responses to problems that have been transmitted to Paul from the different churches. Sometimes one cannot tell for certain which comments in the letters are quotes from the churches or Paul's own ideas. These differences are not always clear in classical Greek, as the language has no quotation marks in its grammatical structure - it just 'understood'. At any rate, unidentified quotes in a responding letter sent back to an originating church would be known and easily recognized by that church.
Consequently, we all need to be very careful about what is actually communicated in the NT scriptures. Over the centuries too many men have attempted to 'fill in the blanks' with their own good ideas of what God intended to communicate in these books. The result can be seen throughout the Christian world - division and contention, and when religious traditions clash, we even have our 2,000 year history of different groups killing those who profess a different belief in Jesus than the group currently in power.
On another thread I made the comment that even the OP movement is as fragmented as all of the rest of the Christian community. Out of all of this confusion, we join ourselves into little bands of religious warriors who fight one another (right/wrong games, spiritual one-upmanship contests, harsh accusations and judgments, etc.), while the true enemy sits on the sidelines and cheers us on.
Conclusion: We, as believers in Jesus Christ, are, for the most part, not His true disciples. We more readily follow after our own teaching and traditions or that of other men - before we give Jesus His rightful place in our lives.
We even give the Holy Spirit of God a higher position in our lives that what the scriptures assigned to Him (He is a 'Him', never an 'It'). We turn ourselves and the scriptures upside down, and then wonder why we no longer turn the world upside down. Think about it: Why is our culture and society in the shape that it is in? Why have we become ineffective in influencing the world?
The answer is simple. While we talk, look, and sometimes act differently than 'the world', in our own way we have become just a carnal as they are. Salt that looks like it did 2,000 years ago, but for all of its appearance, has lost its saltiness.
I apologize for the rambling, but this seemed like a good time and place to vent.
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