Detrich Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite authors. He was a true prophetic voice during the twentieth century. He stood against the greatest darkness of his time without compromise, and died because of it in a Nazi concentration camp. In one of his books, Life Together, he made a bold and shocking remark, stating simply: "God hates the visionary." The translation of this from the German language that he wrote in may be a little stronger than he intended, but there is some truth to this that we should understand.

The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah are two of the most important prophetic messages for our own time. They contain the story of how a remnant of God's people returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon to rebuild the temple of the Lord and the walls of the city. These faithful ones met with continuous opposition and criticism from the nations around them, and even from some of their own fellow Jews who had remained in the land. One of their most vehement enemies, Sanballat, said the following concerning them:

Though every believer should be rooted in all of the basic Christian doctrines, no one person, church, or movement, has all the truth. As we discussed earlier, the gravitational pull of all the different planets help keep the earth in its proper orbit. Likewise, all the spiritual heavenly bodies need each other's influence to stay in their proper orbits. What we have must be joined to what the Lord gives to the rest of His body if we are to have the whole truth. This is stated in the Lord's Prayer the night before He was crucified:

In John 10:35 Jesus said, "... the Scripture cannot be broken." None of God's truths are isolated. They are all interrelated and do not stand alone: As Psalm 119:160 states it: "The sum of Thy word is truth." All of Scripture fits together in the most intricate, beautiful, harmonious pattern, just like the balance of nature in the creation. Balance is an important word if we are to understand and walk in biblical truth.

As we pursue sinking our roots deeper into God's Word, we need to understand the basic biblical principles that lead to truth, and most of all, lead to Him who is the Truth. A fundamental requirement for discerning the truth is found in the remarkable statement made by the Lord in Matthew 11:25:

It was said of the Bereans, "Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so" (Acts 17:11). It is right to listen to new things with openness and eagerness. We are an old wineskin if we are not open to that which is new. However, as eager as we should be for the Lord's new wine, we must always take what we hear to the Scriptures to verify it.