I am amazed at how many different philosophies there are concerning Jesus' message of salvation.  You can pretty much decide what you want to believe, and choose a church accordingly.  The sad thing is that most people who are church members have never read the Bible, and don't have a clue what it really says.

As a result, people choose what church to attend--if they go at all--based on the people they are friends with.  And end up never really knowing what the Bible has to say, except for what they hear from the pulpit.  They go about their lives, trusting in what they hear on Sunday morning instead of reading the history for themselves.  That's scary.  Islam is based on that principle.

My brother Bill, who spent his life in China as a medical missionary doctor, would go into Afghanistan, as well as Viet Nam, Laos--and other middle eastern countries, doing surgery, looking for opportunities to share the gospel.  (He would  sometimes take an ophthalmologist  with him.  Removing cataracts would instantaneously get people's attention.  People had never seen such a thing.  One minute a person was blind; the next minute they could see.)

These countries were so far removed from the Muslim mosques that even though they identified themselves as Muslim, they had no idea what that meant.  They only knew what someone had told them, and since it was extremely rare to find someone who could read, they were held to their religion through fear.   When they heard about a God who loved them, and watched those doctors perform surgery without being paid, they listened.  They had never seen such a thing as that.

Reading is the door to knowledge.  But leaving Bibles with people who couldn't read was pointless.  They only knew what they saw, or what was told to them.

And here we are in a free country, with free education to teach us how to read, with Bibles available to anyone who wants one, and we don't read them.

I don't get it.