Ultimate authority

What should be considered the ultimate authority, the church or the Bible?

Alan Brown

The ultimate authority is Jesus Christ. Short of having a one on one personal communication with him face to face, He has given us His word to follow. It should be inerrant, it is the Word of God. Multiple different Christian churches, Jewish, Muslim, etcetera churches shows that man has made imperfect what once was.

A tremendous scriptural giant, I love and admire, tells me that the essence of the true word of Jesus Christ is in the Bible, and he believes he understands it.

For lesser folk like me, the final source of truth and light is the Holy Ghost.

Ray Farmer

So, the owner of the company decides to move to a distant city for an unspecified space of time. He assigns a secretary to draft a memo regarding everything his employees will need to know to operate the company in the way he desired it to be. The secretary understood the executive and so could accurately and completely put down on paper the designs. The owner reviews the memo and is completely, 100%, satisfied that it was just what he required. the secretary distributes the memo company-wide.

Despite the utter completeness of the memo, employees began to leave messages on the executives phone with questions regarding company policy. He would text back reminding them of the existence of the memo. Sometimes he would direct these to the page and paragraph in the memo where the directions could be found. Most times he would just text "search the memo".

Some employees who were too lazy to read the memo would go about claiming that they knew what the executive really meant. Some claimed to be in some kind of psychic communication with the executive. Some would even declare that, regardless of the clear instructions in the memo, they could freely direct others in ways that actually contradict the memo because, they claimed, they knew the heart of the owner of the company. Some went so far as to claim that the owner is constantly updating the memo and that previous instructions must be ignored.

But the response was always the same from the owner and from those who wanted to follow the desires of the owner: "Search the memo. Read the memo as if it is reflective of my desires directly from me. Realize that the memo is the manner that I, the owner, chose to direct my employees. Much work and sacrifice went into the creation of the memo and it should not be trifled with. My faithful servant wrote the memo and I approved the memo. Consult the memo. Do not go beyond the memo. If someone claims to have further light and knowledge regarding policy, compare this person’s ideas with the memo. Reject anything that cannot be verified by the memo."

Further, the executive decisively said that if anyone in the company said anything contrary to the memo, after thorough study of the memo, the page and paragraph should be presented to the rebellious employee. If the employee continued to ignore the memo, there would be dire consequences when the owner returned.