By Hugh Fulford
Years ago, while teaching a Bible class, I mentioned that many people think the forbidden fruit that Eve ate was an apple, but the Bible does not actually identify the fruit.
An elderly lady spoke up and said that the Bible did say it was an apple. I suggested that we read Genesis 3. Of course, we saw that the fruit Eve (and later, Adam) ate is unidentified. Not to be outdone, she said, “Well, it could have been an apple!” We all had a good laugh, but the point was made that people often think the Bible says something, teaches a certain doctrine, or authorizes a practice when it is not actually found in the Scriptures.
Tradition says that three wise men came to visit the child Jesus, yet one does not find the number given (Matthew 2:1–12). The title “Reverend” is commonly applied to preachers, yet the word appears but once in our English translations (Psalm 111:9), and there it is applied to God’s name. While it is true the root of this word occurs often in Scripture of sacred things, Jesus forbade the wearing of religious titles of distinction (Matthew 23:8–9).
As a very young preacher, I stayed in the home of a leader of a congregation during a meeting. He was a good man who had raised a family of Christian children. How shocked I was when one evening he asked, “Hugh, how old was Jesus when He joined the church?” I thought he was being facetious, and came within a gnat’s whisker of laughing. I caught myself just in time.
Christ and the church enjoy an intimate relationship. The church is the body of which Christ is the head (Ephesians 1–3). But the church did not exist in historical reality during the earthly ministry of Christ, and Jesus never “joined” the church in the sense in which people today talk about “joining” the church. In fact, the whole concept of “joining” the church deserves deeper study, for the Bible speaks more in terms of a person being saved from his or her sins and being “added” to the church than it does of “joining” the church (Acts 2:41, 47).
We need to be diligent students of the Bible. People sometimes show ignorance of the Bible by speaking against things the Bible endorses. They oppose things the Bible commends. At the same time, not everything that is said to be taught in Scripture is actually taught in Scripture.
Of the Bereans it is said: “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11). Paul exhorted: “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). We need to be diligently engaged in such today.