One day I rang the door bell of a home and when the two men who answered the door learned the reason for my visit, one said, “Just a moment please.” With that they briskly walked back down the hallway calling the name of another person inside. I distinctly heard the words, “There’s someone who wants to talk to you.”
I thought it very interesting that two people should turn and get someone else to talk with me, since it had usually been my practice to speak with whoever first came to the door. Immediately I thought to myself that God had a specific message for this next person regardless of how long we would talk.
When he came to the door he told me he was a businessman on a three week visit from Belgium, who was in fact, in a meeting at that very moment. Being conscious of limited time, I said to the man that God had a word for him – the word was, “that Jesus Christ is alive, He loves you and He wants you to know of His reality by way of experiencing Him.”
The man looked at me rather oddly but he did not scoff, get angry or tell me I was, “away with the fairies,” but rather, he told me he was a Catholic who at one time had spent four years in a seminary studying to be a priest. He didn’t say why he left his studies for a business career and I didn’t inquire. He asked me why I was so sure that God had a message for him, so I replied by saying that there are no coincidences in God, if there was no message for him, his colleagues would not have done what they did in, “sending you to the door.”
Could it have been otherwise? Could it have been that his two colleagues simply wanted, “the religious guy” to talk with me? Not at all. God’s appointment was with this man at that moment.
He asked me what my beliefs were regarding creation, Adam & Eve, the fall of man, the flood, Noah’s ark etc. and I gave all my answers to him based on what the book of Genesis declares to us from the Bible. He said to me, “Why do you always quote from the Bible?” I replied by saying that I believed it to be the Word of God to man and that God would use His word to confirm to him anything that he was hearing today.
We got talking about eternal life and he said, “How do you know that you are going to heaven?” Once again I replied by saying that we see the promise of this in the New Testament, both from Jesus in the gospels and from His apostles in the other writings – a promise each one of us can only receive by faith.
He then wanted to know what the difference of beliefs are between Protestants and Roman Catholics, telling me he believed he had Jesus in his heart but, “I’m not sure I’m going to heaven.”
I explained that the difference between us is one of authority, saying that as evangelical Protestants we appeal to the Bible alone as the final authority, believing that Scripture itself interprets Scripture. In other words, in the Bible we have the written word of God in which He speaks to His church and as such, it is finally authoritative for faith and life.
I said to him that the reason I was so confident in God was because after I had given my life to Christ, the Holy Spirit led me to study and learn the mind of God as He reveals Himself in the Bible and that it was there that I found the will of God, which is – a free gift of salvation for all who believe in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross on their behalf, and who will now simply entrust themselves to Him as their risen Lord and Savior.
On the other hand, explaining to him what he already knew, I said to him that the Roman Catholic church teaches that the Bible alone is not the final authority, therefore it has to be interpreted by official ecclesiastical sources – church authorities, plus extra-biblical traditional writings. Essentially, I said if he believed that to be true, then he would see his church as his authority – or more specifically, church leaders and their doctrines, “and that is why you are not sure if you have eternal life.”
He then asked about my authority, based on my earlier sharing with him that I was not an ordained church minister. So I cleared up his confusion by saying that although I was not ordained in the traditional sense, I was in fact ordained in the Biblical sense according my calling from 2 Timothy 4:1-5; not a calling that I had elevated myself to, but one by which my local church recognized by the Holy Spirit’s gifting upon me and as a result, with the laying on of hands by the elders, I was commissioned to this ministry.
This man was one among multitudes, both in the church and out of it, who have the concept that to be an effective Christian minister one must have official ordination papers. It is a very successful lie from the church’s adversary, Satan the devil, “the father of lies,” as Jesus called him. The eyes of too many people have been blinded by confusing positional authority with spiritual authority. Certainly there is a place for both, but the former without the latter is next to useless when doing the work of God. Whereas, the latter is optimally useful regardless of one’s position.
The other major difference between the two churches is, we believe in the autonomy of the local church and his denomination does not believe that.
By this time I sensed that our meeting was coming to a close so I brought a reinforcing word of encouragement to him, knowing that I would never see him again. I said, “God wants you to receive this message today and He will confirm the truths of it to you as you seek Him in prayer and the reading of the Scriptures.” Giving him a copy of the New Testament, he shook my hand, looked me in the eyes, thanked me kindly and said, “I will do that.” “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” Mark 13:31.