by Jay McMullan
© 2011

Man’s Tradition vs. The Word of God
Part 2

My life as a Christian, which began at the age of thirteen was quickly derailed by the things of the world and after a year or so, I was back to the same way of living as I had lived before. I soon stopped attending church and didn’t think much about prayer until five years later.

I graduated high school at the age of seventeen, not because I am overly brilliant or worked hard to get all my credits finished early but because I was enrolled into school a year earlier than all of my other classmates. I began school in Oklahoma and when I was in third grade, we moved to Texas where I finished high school. I would not turn eighteen until the end of October of the year that I graduated. I had applied for several jobs and one job that I really wanted was with General Telephone but due to their insurance I could not begin working for them until I was eighteen. So, on my birthday, I became an employee of the phone company and spent the next year living in motel rooms in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles working ten hour days, six days a week. We got to come back home every third weekend. After that year, I placed a bid for a cable splicer job with the same company and got it. While I was living on the road, I kept all my things at my mother and father’s house instead of wasting money on an apartment in which I would rarely reside. After getting the cable splicer job, things changed. I would be home every night so I found an apartment and moved twenty three miles from Spearman, Texas to Perryton, Texas.

As I would drive to work every morning, I would listen to a short three or four minute segment on the local radio station by one of the pastors in town. My older brother had just succumbed to cancer and all kinds of questions about God, healing, and everything spiritual were raging in my head. The pastor’s messages were very clear and thought provoking. One day, I picked up the phone and called him.

While my brother lay in a hospital bed dying of cancer, he and I talked about the “faith healers” we had seen on television and had often imitated and mocked. I began to think that there may actually be some substance, maybe not to all of them, but maybe, just maybe, some of them. Because of all of this, I began to read my Bible. Then I ran across a scripture that I had never heard a preacher speak about. James 5:14, 15 says that if any (Christians) are sick, they should call the elders of the church and when the pastor and elders pray and anoint that person with oil, they will be healed. I had an uncle that talked about healing but I never knew much more about it and I sure had never heard praying for the sick or anointing them with oil spoken about from the pulpit, much less see anyone get healed.

I was so excited when I read those two scriptures that I picked up the phone and dialed the church I had grown up in. I got the pastor on the line and I told him what I had just read and asked him if he would bring the elders and pray for my brother and anoint him with oil. To my utter dismay, he replied, “Well, we don’t really believe that.” Needless to say, I was dumbfounded. I always thought that Christians, especially ministers believed what their own book said!

At the age of eighteen, after meeting the new pastor in my new hometown, I had an incredible experience with Jesus! My life was completely changed forever at one very distinct moment. From that moment I began to earnestly seek God’s face and to study His Word! My belief that all Christians and especially their ministers believed their own book was turned to the harsh reality that many Christians and many ministers do not know anything more than just a few basics in their own book. I have even discovered that many of the things taught in our Sunday School classes and from our church pulpits are simply traditions that have been passed down from one unsuspecting and unlearned minister to another and then to the unsuspecting and unlearned lay people of the church.

Jesus had this very same problem with the scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders, in his day. Look what he had to say about tradition:

Mark 7:13 (Amplified Bible)
13Thus you are nullifying and making void and of no effect [the authority of] the Word of God through your tradition, which you [in turn] hand on. And many things of this kind you are doing.

Why does tradition make the Word of God, which is supposed to be full of wonder working power, null, void and of no effect? Because it is not the Word, it is what someone somewhere spoke as gospel when it wasn’t. How are you going to know if what you hear is scriptural if you don’t study the Word of God for yourself? The answer to that question is, “You won’t.” You will be led about by every wind of doctrine (Eph. 4:14). Let me give you an example of a traditional teaching that has absolutely no credence or validity from the Bible.

The Apostle Paul wrote approximately two-thirds of the New Testament. Paul, in writing his second letter to the Christians in the church at Corinth says that he had a “thorn in the flesh” and after praying about it three times, God would not heal him. The general consensus is that Paul had some kind of eye disease. I have even heard one minister say he thinks that Paul may have contracted malaria and it affected his eyes. They are just not sure what that thorn may have really been.

Well, why don’t we go to the scriptures and see if there is anything that might tip us off as to what Paul’s thorn might have been.

2 Corinthians 12:7
“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me,”

Yes, there it is in black and white, Paul’s thorn in the flesh but we still don’t know what it was. Unfortunately, because of man’s tradition, this is as far as most ministers go. They fail to read the rest of verse 7! Why? Perhaps because they were convinced by someone’s fancy preaching that Paul had a thorn in the flesh that was an eye problem and the preacher they heard was one of the best preachers they had ever heard. He might even be a preacher of great renown! But, guess what? When you put faith in man instead of God’s Word of God, Satan is going to lead you astray! Let’s examine the rest of verse 7 in chapter 12 of the book of Second Corinthians.

“a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.”

Do you see it? Paul tells exactly what the thorn in the flesh. The mystery is solved once and forever! The thorn in the flesh was a “messenger of Satan.” Why? He tells us earlier, “lest he be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations” and “lest I be exalted above measure.” Let’s look at the whole passage of scripture without breaking it up as so many well meaning believers have done.
“And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure.”

Read it very carefully and it is very clear that because of the abundance of revelations Paul received from our Lord, Paul was “given” a “messenger of Satan” to keep him from getting the big head and becoming of no effect which could have led to his destruction (Proverbs 16:18).  What is a “messenger of Satan?” First of all, there is no reason to believe that it might be an eye problem. Someone might as well say it was cancer, a broken leg, a cyst or anything else they can imagine. Taking a look at the Greek language will help us understand this more. The word translated “messenger” is “angelos” or angel. Paul was given an “angel of Satan”, or apparently, one of the fallen angels to buffet him. What does the word “buffet” mean in the Greek from which it was translated? “Kolaphizo” literally means to “rap with a fist.” It gives the meaning of constantly being hit and beat. So we see that instead of what tradition has taught us, that Paul had some kind of eye problem that God would not heal, he really was being buffeted and harassed by an evil angel.

Paul even gives us examples of what this buffeting entailed in 2 Corinthians 11:23-33. Paul talks of beatings, stoning, shipwreck and other horrible things that happened to him, undoubtedly because of the work of the “messenger of Satan.”

This is just one example of how even well meaning ministers and Christian lay people can be deceived. Now, if you have taught that Paul’s thorn was an eye problem, repent and make sure to study what the Bible says next time before you spread some of man’s tradition!
1 Timothy 4 (New Living Translation)
16 Keep a close watch on how you live and on your teaching. Stay true to what is right for the sake of your own salvation and the salvation of those who hear you.

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