What Could Have Been and What Was
I was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1967. My Scottish-English mother met my Greek father in Egypt at the tail end of 1966, after which they went to live in Athens where I would have been born had there not been a coup d’état in April 1967. They left Greece for Scotland and moved into my Scottish grandparents’ house in Inverkeithing, Fife.
Had I been born in Athens I would no doubt have been baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church, to which my father belonged. Instead, I was christened in St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Inverkeithing, the Scottish branch of the Anglican Church. My christening, however, was the end rather than the beginning of my relationship with church, something that was actually a great blessing as I was spared the lukewarm nature and false doctrine of Anglicanism and all the ensuing traditions. During my childhood in Scotland, a land prone to wet, grey days, I often lamented my parents’ decision to leave Athens, however, I’ve come to realise that, too, was a great blessing. Had my parents stayed in Greece I’d have been immersed in the false doctrines of Orthodoxy, including praying to saints.
Having been raised in a heathen household, I spent many years as a sheep gone astray, firmly believing my spiritual path was right. And although I neither knew Jesus nor why I needed him, I did believe in God as the creator of all things.
Finding the Narrow Path
Forty-seven years later — in the summer of 2015 while living in Austria, and a dozen or so hours following my husband Sean — I came to Christ through hearing a simple presentation of gospel. From that moment we immersed ourselves not in a church with a denominational bias but in the word of God. It was in those early days that Sean seized upon these two verses as guiding principles:
But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. (1 John 2:27 KJV)
[It is] better to trust in the Lord than to trust in man. (Psalm 118:8 BES)
And we have followed these principles ever since, with Sean often referring to Psalm 188:8 as his life-organising verse.
Over the past ten-plus years, Sean and I have spent countless hours actively listening to, reading, and studying the word of God. When listening, we would inevitably hit pause a number of times to talk about the specific portion of scripture that we were listening to. And on countless of those occasions we would both be given the same question, consideration or understanding in exactly the same moment — when Sean pressed pause I would know what he was going to say, and when I pressed pause he knew what I was going to say.
Over the years our understanding has grown, not through our own selves — although we did have to be consistent in listening, reading, and studying — but through the grace of God, revealing the truth of his word to each of us individually, as well as together. All praise, honour, and glory goes to the Lord God Almighty! ### The Greek Connection
In his mid-thirties Sean studied Ancient Greek (the precursor to Koine Greek, (in which the New Testament was written) as part of an intensive Master’s Degree at St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. And as someone of Scottish-Greek heritage, while not a Greek speaker, I’m also familiar with Greek.
This shared Greek language connection, combined with a shared general interest in language and the etymological roots of words, has been another blessed gift from our Father as it enables us to dig into the underlying Greek as we study the word of God — something that’s crucial if we are to avoid the false doctrines and traditions of man.
From the very beginning, we looked closely at the differences in the underlying manuscripts of the New Testament, concluding that the Byzantine or Majority Text was far more reliable than any of the Critical Texts, such as that of Westcott and Hort. However, in the case if the Old Testament it seemed there was only one text to consider, the so-called “Hebrew” Masoretic Text, which is used to translate virtually every English Bible from Tyndale onwards
Although we were aware of the existence of the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint or LXX), it wasn’t until 2020 that we gave it serious consideration. As we began reading the Brenton translation (BES), verses would shine with clarity as if a veil had been lifted and, oftentimes, certain verses or passages would jump out as being very different from what we knew from the King James translation, much of which we had laid to heart over the course of five years. Some of the differences are subtle (Satan’s preferred method of deception), while others are more immediately apparent.
And with our shared knowledge of Greek we didn’t stop at the translation level but often checked the underlying Greek, something we do to this day as, unfortunately, there’s no truly good translation of the LXX, as the two main translations — Brenton (BES) and Thomson (CTB) — both have issues. That said, the BES is the better of the two translations.
An Antidote to Denominational Myopia
And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. (Mark 3:25 KJV)
Denominational myopia is the rotten fruit of latching onto one small portion of scripture, building a doctrine around it and making it foundational to the denomination. Some examples are:
Baptist: defined by total immersion baptism. Pentecostal: defined by the infilling of God’s holy Spirit on the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus. Charismatic: defined by the gifts (charismata) of the spirit. Seventh Day Adventist: defined by the keeping of the sabbath on the seventh day of the week according to God’s definition. Jehovah’s Witness: defined by the emphasis on “Jehovah” rather than Jesus. Evangelical: defined by the emphasis on “Israel”, Zionism, and different plans of salvation for “Jews” and “the church”.
Jesus, of course, is the only foundation we need. If we are rooted in him and his words we will grow together in spirit and truth and will not be filled with skewed or false doctrine.
Beyond denominational particulars, there are doctrinal differences that don’t always define an entire denomination. For example, Baptists tend to be split between those who believe Jesus died only for the elect (limited atonement, the “L” in TULIP) and those who believe that Jesus died for all, even though only few are saved.
And so, although we never attached ourselves to a particular denomination or “theology”, Sean and I have spent time familiarising ourselves with the doctrines of the main denominations, as well as the main doctrinal dichotomies, checking the arguments for each position against scripture to make sure we weren’t holding an unquestioned belief.
Thus, my intention in writing this book is to help those caught in denominational myopia by focusing on foundational scriptural matters as well as taking a broader view of the entire sweep of the Bible, as is clear from the book title, “One Lord, One Book, One Story: God, the Bible and the Straight Path from Genesis to Revelation”.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
While I might be the one writing this book, everything within reflects both Sean’s and my understanding, some of which came first to Sean and some first to me, as well as that which came to both of us at the same time.
But credit where credit is due, which is to the Lord God Almighty who gave us both scriptural understanding and an ability to write and think clearly. And, of course, the Lord gave me the inspiration to write this book, without which this book would not exist.
In all things we praise the Lord, for he is good and his mercy endures for ever!