The story is told of a man who was walking along a highway one evening who saw the strangest thing. In a large field next to the highway was a large drove of hogs with their ears pricked up running first one way, and then another. They seemed to be terribly confused! The man observing this had no idea as to why this was happening.
The man kept walking and soon came to a farmhouse. He stopped and asked the old man on the porch, “Are those your hogs out there in that lot?” The old man replied, “Yes, they’re mine.”
“Well, there is something wrong with them. They’re acting crazy. They run in one direction for awhile and then they run in another direction with their heads and ears up. I’ve never seen anything like it,” the visitor replied.
The farmer then said, “Well, mister, I’ll tell you what’s wrong. You see. It’s about feeding time. Before I lost my voice, I would take a basket of corn up there and give a call or two, and they would come running to me. But since I have lost my voice, I just take my cane and knock on a nearby tree. When they hear me, they come running over to eat. But for the last week or two some woodpeckers have been coming to the trees in the field and when the hogs hear them, they think it is my knock and get confused.”
There is a lesson we can learn from this story. People are running around in different directions today religiously speaking. They are hearing people say all kinds of things about this religion is the right way, and you need to do this to be saved. They hear some people saying that God loves all and just want you to be happy while others are telling them that one sin will send you straight to hell. There is talk about grace, love, and forgiveness and then there are those they don’t even have these words in their religion. With all this talk it makes it really difficult for the average person to determine the best course of action. What is the solution? The solution is to look at the bible and follow an example we have in Acts 17:10-12
10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.
The Berean’s have it down. They searched the scriptures daily to see if Paul was teaching them the truth. They didn’t just trust their eternity to a man, even though he proclaimed to be this great apostle. They didn’t wait for Paul to tell them what they should believe but they figured it out themselves through studying the scriptures.
I have a feeling that if everyone did that today there would be less confusion with what it is God wants from us. So many times today we are reading our bibles through the mouths of our ministers and that is not how God wants us to learn his will. He didn’t hand the bible to each of us so that we could put it on the shelf.
Do yourself a favor that will last an eternity and learn what God’s position is on salvation. It’s his position that only truly matters. He will answer your entire questions through your studying of the bible.
In Him,
Joe
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