My Theology or Confessional Standpoint
My confessional standpoint is as follows. I am a conservative Christian, saved in a Southern Baptist Church over 20 years ago. Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life, and is the source of everything you see here. I have come to the inevitable conclusion that God is all that I need.
I have had some Seminary training at SouthEastern Baptist Seminary and had a concentration in Religion at Campbell University, a Southern-Baptist sponsored university.
I have approached the Word from both sides, first as a sinner needing repentance and salvation, and then as a scholar wishing to derive the ultimate understanding of the text and its impact. As such a person I believe and represent to all who care to hear me that it is only through this Word that man can and will hear the message of God's tremendous gift of salvation.
It is my staunch belief that Christians must have a good balance of milk (the basics of the Gospel) and meat to grow up healthily. Meat comprises the more profound layers of God's Word. Such things are the explorations of the character and persons of the Godhead, the fathomless depths of Grace, the precarnate existence of Christ, and so on. If one were to teach either side to the exclusion of the other (milk without meat or vice-versa), one would produce unhealthy Christians either without foundation or without substance!
I believe that it is only through repeated reading of the entire Bible that a person can understand the mind of God. It is amazing how a seasoned Christian can begin to tie God's Word together: what orignally seems like incoherent books containing chapters and verses of text, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, becomes a cohesive whole. I am afraid that we have become a generation of weak believers because we (as a collective group of Christians) do not spend the time letting God speak to us through His Word. We want to be entertained more than we want to study and pray.
God has taken great pains to put His words into the book that we call the Bible. Throughout the ages, He brought each part together and preserved it through times of persecution and purging so that we could benefit. It is in no small part due to the existence of the Bible that we are blessed in coming to know Christ (see John 21:28,29). Therefore, I believe that Bible reading and study is a key part of a believer's growth. Initially, a person learns through the milk of the gospel (the basics needed for salvation and for early Christian growth) but eventually must turn to the meat (God's holiness, grace, types and antetypes, eschatology, etc.). It is through deep study of God's Word, punctuated with intense prayer, that a Christian becomes strong in the Lord.