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Should we get the truth (including the Bible) from spiritual harlots (Rev 17:5) or faithful men of God?
In 2 Tim 2:2 Paul gives Timothy the following command: "And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also."
Notice that it says the truth of God must be committed "to faithful men." This is Paul's instruction on how the truth was to be passed on from generation to generation in the true church. It was to be preserved only by faithful men. I'm sure there is no example or instruction in the Bible for preserving the truth through Satan's men.
According to the Bible, the Father gave the truth to Jesus (John 12:49). Jesus gave it to Paul (Galations 1:11-12). Paul gave it to Timothy (2 Tim 2:2). Timothy was ordered to pass it on only to faithful men (2 Tim 2:2). These men in turn were supposed to teach others (2 Tim 2:2). This is the Bible pattern. So why would God break that pattern and use unfaithful men?
But where do the Sabbath-keeping Churches of God (COGs) get the Bible that they use? Did they get it from faithful men? Did they get it from earlier "eras" of the church of God? No, they got it from the Protestants; the very people the churches of God always regarded as Satan's churches, the harlots of the book of Revelation (Rev 17:1, 5).
According to the Bible, Jesus said he would build his church (Matthew 16:18). Who would build it? He would, not Satan. Not men of Satan. Satan was building a different church (2 Corinthians 11:13-15). Would Jesus use the Great Harlot or her daughters to build the true church? No. An indespensible part of building that church would be preserving the truth, that is, preserving the knowledge of which writings were inspired by God and what those books actually said.
According to the Bible, did God reveal the New Testament to sinful men or faithful men? Faithful men. Having started it with faithful men, why would he allow unfaithful men to determine which books were in the Bible? He wrote it through his church, for his church, and sent it to his church. Further, it could only be understood by his church. So would he preserve it using those outside his church? No.
Readers are strongly advised to study how we really got the Bible. The churches of God have not taught that subject accurately.
The New Testament shows that God would not use apostate ministers to determine any matter in his true church, and certainly not something as important as the canon of the Bible. The Bible says it is a shame if church members cannot settle even lesser matters like personal disputes among themselves and resort to going to outsiders to make those judgments.
In I Cor 6:1-6 we read: "[1] Does any one of you, when he has a case against his neighbor, dare to go to law before the unrighteous and not before the saints? [2] Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts? [3] Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life? [4] So if you have law courts dealing with matters of this life, do you appoint them as judges who are of no account in the church? [5] I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, [6] but brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers?" (NASB).
Since the church was ordered not to let outsiders act as judges in church matters or personal matters between church members, it would be even worse if the church relied on outsiders to determine the canon of the Bible itself. God would not allow that.
Quite frankly, there does not seem to be a true church anymore. If there ever was one, it must have died out long ago. The Churches of God are not it.
If God's true church still existed in this age, they would not need to get the scriptures they use from apostates. Does any Church of God member really think that Satan led his churches to get the correct Bible? Do they think that God would lead Satan's churches so they would get the correct Bible? God does not lead Satan's churches. God has no fellowship with Satan: "And what concord hath Christ with Belial [the devil, NLT]? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" (2 Cor 6:15).
Are we to assume that Satan's ministers just somehow happened to get it right on their own, with no inspiration from God, which happens to be lucky for us, because God had no other plan to preserve it through faithful men? Or are we to assume Satan's ministers got the right books from the true ministers even though they were writing their own false gospels and epistles?
None of these things make any sense.
Would God let Satan's churches, controlled by Satan, decide which books are the word of God? No. Would Satan do the job right? No. Would God allow his true church to be beaten down so small and scattered so widely he had to turn to Satan and Satan's church to preserve the holy scriptures? No.
Having started with faithful men, why would he not continue in that same fashion? God does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:7, NASB).
There were many false gospels and false epistles in circulation at the time of the early church. Ministers and members were falling away from the true church even in the time of Peter and Paul (Gal 1:6). In fact, some fell away even while Christ was still with them (John 6:66). False teachers were "working overtime" writing false gospels and epistles, and passing them off as the works of Peter, Paul, and other church leaders (2 Thessalonians 2:2). Of the many writings that were out there, which ones, if any, were written by true servants of God? Study the history of how we got the Bible, and it is clear that the decision of which gospels and epistles to accept were made by apostates, not by faithful men of the true church of God.
But, some will say, Jesus said he would be with his disciples until the "end of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Well, what age? Maybe that age ended a long time ago. What age he referred to is subject to interpretation. Don't assume the COG interpretation is correct.
In other words, either there never was a "true church of God", or the church age ended long ago, probably in the first century. In either case, the churches of God that exist today are merely another part of the system of Satan's false churches, because they are really just following apostate leaders whose teachings led to the founding of the Catholic and Protestant churches.
What about where Jesus said the gates of the grave would not prevail against his church (Matthew 16:18)? Well, maybe he just meant he would resurrect his followers from the grave. Perhaps that scripture has been misinterpreted. [In our article Did Herbert Armstrong Interpret The Bible? we show that Armstrong did not understand what "the gates of hell" means].
In any case, how do we know Jesus actually said those things if we got the Bible from the harlots? Maybe they altered more than we realize. Maybe we don't have any of the right books. After all, they were not faithful men.
Since the COGs have the Protestant Bible, does that perhaps make them Protestants?
One could look at it this way: the COGs are those who follow the Protestant Bible (keeping Saturday, etc), and the Protestants are those who have that Bible but don't really follow it (keeping Sunday, etc). But following the wrong teachings more dilligently than others does not make one the true church. The Protestant Bible is still the Protestant Bible. It did not come from faithful men.
This does not mean the Catholic Bible is any better. Catholic scholars are not faithful men either.
None of the COGs can prove that they got the Bible they use handed down to them from the previous "eras" of God's church, or that previous "eras" of the true church decided which books are in the Bible that the COGs use. The COGs don't even claim they got the Bible from the true church, and they have overlooked the scriptures that show that is the only proper place to get it. So they did not get it using the Bible method of perserving it through faithful men. Therefore, they really have no reason to think that they have the true Bible, or even that there is a true Bible. Every single New Testament book that they use to prove their points (including the preservation of the Bible) was selected by the harlots. When we recognize how many errors there are in the Bible, this is not surprising.
So where are the faithful men of God today? I cannot find them. There don't seem to be any. Nobody really knows much about what the early church actually taught because we cannot trust the sources of information.
The source of the Bible is not God, but the "harlot" churches and their deceitful harlot scholars. None of those scholars are men of God; many of them are "ministers of Satan". They were the dissidents that preached a different gospel and who were therefore under a divine curse (Gal 1:8-9).
According to the Bible itself, we must not trust those from whom we got the Bible. What does this mean? It means the Bible is not a valid source of God's truth. But if the Bible is not a valid source of God's truth, there appears to be no true source. There is no reliable evidence that God has left us with any holy books to guide our lives.
Now could someone please tell this to Rod Meredith, David Pack, Gerald Flurry, Larry Salyer, Ron Weinland, Fred Coulter, ...
Note 1: More Information
Readers who found the above material helpful might be interested in the following link as well.