HEB 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. 9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them.

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Recalling the lesson from last week, Dr Tong spoke about how in the Old Testament, when God first revealed Himself to Moses, He simple declared Himself as the "I am". The Chinese philosopher Lao Tze seemed to have similar understanding of what this is like, when he described the cycle of the world as 'man following after the earth, the earth after the heaven, the haven after Tao, and Tao after nature' (in Dao De Qin, the Taoist scripture). He sort of figured out that there must be an unchanging entity, and he termed it nature. But the unchanging entity, the one that can have consciousness of His own existence and cannot be influenced by the process of history that He has created, must surely be in-contingent to human events. Therefore, God revealed Himself to man; for without that revelation, we would not have known Him.

This was why the author of Hebrews declared in verse 8 that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today and forever, because He is the in-contingent one. Our faith is not simply one faith of many. It is built upon the eternal One Himself, the unshakable foundation for all eternity. Believers of other faith may say, "I believe in this", or "I believe in that". But in Christianity, we say "I KNOW whom I have believed" (2 Tim 1:12). We can be absolutely certain that we have not believed in the wrong thing because our faith is built upon the unchanging Jesus Christ.

We need to be certain then, and stand firm in our faith. The author therefore moved naturally to verse 9, since the consequences of such an unshakable faith would be in that we will not be carried away by all sorts of strange teachings. The unchanging nature of Christ enables us to be certain that our salvation will not change too. The eternal Christ enables us to share in His eternity as well. Jesus Christ said, "where I am, my servant also will be" (John 12:26) and "I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me" (John 6:57). So we should be confident that we are part of His eternity, and be bold and confident, that our faith is not wasted on the wrong direction.

Many people have problems understanding this, so they lose their faith after a short while. They never understood that their LORD is the same forever, and their faith to this LORD is shallow. They compare their faith with other religions via quantitative manners only. They cannot see that their faith is qualitatively unique, that Christ certainly cannot be compared with any other religious leader because He is of a different strata altogether. Thus, they get swayed easily by strange teachings.

But how do we know for certain what is orthodox faith? It would seem that everyone proclaims himself to be right, and relatively speaking, the wrong could have easily considered the right as wrong, because from where he is, anything that is different would have been wrong. Dr Tong related an illustration on how he used to travel by car from Surabaya to Malang in Indonesia. Parallel to the journey was a train track, and he used to observe the train traveling by. When it reaches the city of Lawang, the train will deviate and go apart from the car before joining back to the track after a long distance. When traveling via the car, Dr Tong used to think that the train is taking such a long detour, as he watched the train deviating away. Once he took the train, and his perspective naturally changed. Now he thought that it was the car that had deviated away from a parallel run!

But the truth does not change based on our ideas and behaviour. We are not right simply because we declared ourselves to be right. Just because I have believed in my heretical faith fervently does not make it the correct faith. Dr Tong said that he had thought long and hard to his issue, and he has found a master key that can help him distinguish between orthodox faith from heretical faith. This key is found in apply the overall principle of the Bible to ascertain orthodoxy. What one needs to do is to understand the Bible from the height of an overall understanding, and we will be able to stay the right course. Dr Tong said this is similar to his habit of always wanting to visit the tallest building in every city he visits, so that he can have a Birdseye's view of everything.

What then is the overall principle of the Bible? What is the central message of the Bible? Its all about how sinners need salvation, and how Jesus Christ came to save us and grant us salvation, and in the last day, the final judgment will segregate eternal life from eternal death. An orthodox and correct faith does not come from our choices, but is set by God in eternity. The greatest witness of God in human history is seen in His Son our LORD Jesus Christ. Therefore, we know and judge orthodoxy based on Christology. If we want to know if a certain organisation is orthodox, we see what it says about Jesus Christ.

When a person claims to be a Christian and yet does not know Christ as saviour, there is no question that his faith is not correct. Even when a person says he does know Jesus Christ, we ought to ask further what he knows about. If he says that he believes in Christ because Christ brings peace and healing, he is actually half-right, but apart from the overall principle of the Bible. The Bible describes a much more important reason for the incarnate Christ. John 3:16 says He came to bring eternal life, and many other verses affirm the same. The most important thing about Christ therefore is not cultural, not political, not medical, not intellectual. Christ is about salvation. This is the foundation of orthodox faith. Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) is the key to understanding the Christian faith.

The apostle Paul's understanding of Christology surpassed what one can read from the writings of other apostles in the Bible. From his writings, we can get a clear picture of Soteriology in Christ, and through this key, understand what the Christian faith is all about. Whenever a teaching is against this understanding, we say that it is not orthodox, or even heretical. The key therefore, is not whether a person can yell louder, or his followers numbered more. An orthodox faith is so because it has intrinsic value that cannot be changed by the circumstances, even if others reject it. A heretical faith is so because it is inherently heretical, and will never, ever become orthodox no matter how many years have passed. This was precisely why the author of Hebrews would link the admonishment for one not to be carried away by strange teaching together with the verse that proclaimed the immutability of Christ.

In theological studies, Symbolism refers to the manner through which we express our faith and belief system, a study of the history of orthodox doctrine. And the orthodox church uses confessions as her symbol. Historically speaking, confessions are very important because they summarise our declaration of faith and the relevant points of faith. Strangely, many churches today do not have any declarations or statements of faith. We like to refer to churches by their names. Churches are often named after geographical locations, along racial or language lines, or denominational affiliations. We should not simply ask for names of the churches when we want to find out about them; we should ask about the statement of faith.

Most Chinese evangelical churches would say that the Apostles' Creed is their statement of faith. Some believe that the Apostles' Creed is a creed that came about in the last gathering of the Twelve, before they dispersed to preach the gospel. Each apostle supposedly contributed one verse of the creed. Other than this creed, most people would say their church believes in the Bible. Dr Tong said that Satan also believes in the Bible. So our ignorance of proper symbols and creeds often create confusion in faith.

The Reformed Church affirms the Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed, Nicene Creed, Definition of Chalcedon, Westminster Confession of faith, Second Helvetic Confession, 39 articles of Religion (Anglican), the Canon of the Synod of Dordt. These are all doctrines that help us understand the Bible well. Those who understand these creeds would not be easily swayed by strange teachings. In this manner, our faith is not just a simple utterance of belief. Our Christ is not just a simple moral example for humanity, or a healer of all diseases, a giver to the needy.

When the author of Hebrews wrote these verses, there were three great sources of heresy. The first was from the teachers of the law, who had added to salvation of Christ the laws of Moses. Acts 15:1,2 tells us that these people demanded that new believers in Christ also go through the rite of circumcision to complete their salvation. The argument is that in this manner, the believer would have promises from both the Old and the New Testament, and so be complete. Although this matter seems to be minor, the apostle Paul and Barnabas debated with them fervently. While Paul is typically thought to be impulsive, we see here that Barnabas, the encouraging apostle, was also eager in disputing the heresy. Paul in Galatians 5:12 argued so strongly against this that he said that those who advocate this so strongly might as well get castrated. The apostles argued so strongly against this because this concerns the very nature of salvation. It assumed that the salvation of Christ is not enough, and more needed to be added to it. Dr Tong said that the charismatics today are making the same mistake, when they advocate that one needs to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit after receiving Christ. This denies the power of the cross of Christ, and the completeness of Christ's salvation.

Paul was indeed a very sensitive theologian, able to know when he should fight vigorously for the cause of the gospel.

The second group of heretics were the Gnostics. These were people who combined elements of philosophy and other religions together with Christianity, resulting in strange combinations. They considered the universe as dualistic, made up of the physical and the spiritual. They argue that since God is perfect, He could not have created an imperfect world. This world must have been created by a lesser god. This of course is illogical, for the lesser god who made the mistake of creating an imperfect world would have had to be created by the same perfect God. They also proclaim all physical things, including the human body, to be evil; while all spirits are good. The apostle John in particular, fought with these heretics. In 1 John 4:2, he declared that any spirit that does not recognise Christ incarnate is a evil spirit. In so doing, he declared that the concept that all flesh is evil is wrong, since Christ was in the flesh.

The third type of heretics would be those who would only rely on their reason, without accept the faith of mystery that God has revealed for us. They refuse to believe in the miracles of Christ, and His resurrection. The apostle Paul argued strongly in 1 Corinthians 15 against these people, proclaiming that if Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile. These people are still around today, telling us not to believe beyond the physical phenomena.

Dr Tong ended by saying that in Singapore, he saw many banners proclaiming that 'God said' this or that. If Christians are well-grounded in faith, they would recognise that these banners are proclaiming words of God not found in the scripture, and hence are taking the name of the LORD in vain. These are things that will subtly lure us away from orthodox faith. We are to know His WORD well, and be rooted and stand firm.

Disclaimer: This summary does NOT represent the official position of STEMI (Stephen Tong Evangelistic Ministry International), and is the personal opinion of the author, expressed without prejudice. Expressed opinions are meant for academic discussions only.