Those who never heard about Jesus?

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by mfblume

41000 denominations is not necessarily because of a faulty Bible. There are 1,041,000 reasons why there are different denominations. The more you excuse your concept the more you make grand leaps of assumption. Scary thing to do with your soul I think.

As I've always said, although the Bible is inerrant, our interpretations of it are not. This is where the Spirit comes into play. The Jesus said,

John 16:13 (KJV)
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth:

You see, it takes the Holy Spirit to illuminate the mind of man to truly understand the truths taught in the Bible. Without the Spirit, men guess and interpret as best they can with their limited human intellect. As a result, we have thousands of denominations.

I must also say that this is why even the Bible's revelation is progressive. If one examines Christian doctrine throughout the past 2,000 years many many changes have been made. For example, scholars used to embrace the notion that the Bible permits slavery. However, the Holy Spirit moved on men and women, showing them that the Bible only addressed slavery permissibly because it was a present social construct when the Scriptures were received. However, a thorough application of Christ's Gospel would preclude a Christian from participating in or supporting slavery if given the chance to resist it. There were interpretations about women and head coverings and even the roles of husband and wife. For example, for many centuries the roles of husband and wife were interpreted as being Patriarchal, placing the man in absolute authority of the home. However, the Spirit moved again and soon various men and women of God began to see a more "Complimentarian" view of the roles between husband and wife illustrating that their roles "compliment" one another, with both being of equal cooperative authority in the home. You have the Spirit revealing the reality of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and then even revealing Jesus name baptism in the early 1900's.

Even today... the Spirit is challenging many "traditional" interpretations of Scripture that we so often consider "settled" or as being "dogma". In the end, the church will be a glorious bride prepared for her groom, without spot or wrinkle. However, only those led of the Spirit will be able to embrace the progressive revelation of truth, those governed by intellect will be frozen in their traditional constructs denouncing the Spirit's work as "heresy". Ah, is it not interesting how the more things change, the more they stay the same? lol

Please understand, progressive revelation doesn't mean that the Scriptures are changed. They remain the same as they always have been. It is our understanding of those unchanging Scriptures that changes as the Spirit leads and guides us into all truth.