Welcome to Escape the Mustard Tree.
If you have ever walked out of a Bible study with more questions than you walked in with, you are in the right place.
A hard verse can leave you stuck, and two passages that seem to contradict each other can be even worse. Unfortunately, what usually happens is one verse gets bent to fit the other, and the hard verse quietly disappears.
Faith with works or faith alone? The kingdom is present or the kingdom is coming? Salvation is secure or salvation can be lost? Israel and the Church, one people group or two? We have wrestled with all of these supposed contradictions, and we have found that there are explanations that hold — every time — once you let Scripture explain itself instead of looking to traditions.
That is the whole of what you will find here. Not new doctrine. Just the text, read in order, here a little and there a little, letting one book back up another until the whole picture holds.
Below are ten questions every Christian runs into sooner or later. Pick whichever one you have wondered about and start reading.
10 Basic Questions for Christians
The following 10 questions are what we believe to be the foundational elements of the Christian faith. Every Christian should be able to answer these questions fairly easily, drawing only from the Scriptures.
This is a great place to start before exploring the rest of the website.
The answers to these questions are intentionally kept short here, but are expounded on throughout this website.
If you're looking for more easy-to-read topics, click here.
If you're looking for a deep dive into the Scriptures, we recommend you read the Bible study "The Word of the Kingdom" on our Bible Studies page. It covers the full scope of God's plans and purposes - from Genesis to Revelation - with many detailed Scripture references.
You can also go to our "Taught vs. Written" series, which is a deep dive into the differences between our way of viewing of the Scriptures and the different branches of Christianity.
Is There a Right Way to Read the Bible?
While most people say that you just need to look to the Scriptures to find the answers to all your questions, we would say that almost all Bible teachers say the same thing as they each promote opposing views. Therefore, if everyone is using the Bible to back up their beliefs, and most have disparate viewpoints, then how can the Bible be supporting everybody’s ideology? The answer is… it isn’t.
There is a right way to view Scripture, and there is a wrong way to view the very same passages and verses.
Didn’t the enemy of our soul initiate his deception to mankind by using God’s very own words against man? And didn’t this very same enemy again use God’s own words to suit his own purposes as he attempted to deceive Jesus into giving in to his will and not the Father’s? And in that instance, what transpired was a battle of what indeed God had said, with the outcome decided not only by what God had said, but what God actually meant by what He said. You see, on one hand we see Satan flinging God’s Words around to suit his own purposes; on the other hand we see the Son of God wielding the Scriptures in accordance with the will of God, and not according to His own will. Herein lies the distinction.
The Scriptures reveal the will of God through and through, and it is God’s intent, and pleasure, to make His will known to man. According to Amos 3:7, we can be sure that “the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets.” Can we know what God is doing and will still yet do? Absolutely. How will we know? By reading the prophets. And who are the prophets? Every single contributor to the Old Testament, up to and including the Chief Prophet, Jesus the Christ.
The New Testament is simply a retelling of everything that God had already said, unveiling that which was veiled in the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
And by reading the prophets we must begin with the first prophet, Moses, and begin where he begins…at the beginning, in Genesis. And we must continue from there, book by book, in order, so that we can see how God lays out His truth. Then, and only then, can we come into the New Testament where we meet Jesus - whose name literally means, “Jehovah saves” - and truly understand anything about what God is trying to tell us through Him.
Everything that follows on this site puts that method to work — you'll see it applied on every passage we take up. Take the method and apply it to what you find here. If something doesn't hold up under that scrutiny, disregard it. The desire of this website is to get every Christian fully invested in knowing exactly what they believe and why they believe it.
The Method at Work
We've just described our study method above. These papers are that method at work, in two forms.
The first walks straight through a book. Beyond the Romans Road takes six chapters of Romans in order — the chapters the Romans Road is built from — and reads them the way the method above describes: in sequence, in context, with every passage printed on the page. If you were ever handed the Romans Road, this is the place to begin.
The rest take a single subject each — such as what salvation secures, what the kingdom is, what the judgment seat is for — and works it out from Scripture. The passages go on the page in context, so you can check every step against your own Bible. They run in order and build on one another, though each will stand on its own if a title catches your eye.
These subject papers are short by design. Nothing has been softened and no conclusion has been held back. What's been left out is the machinery: the word studies, the source citations, and the long engagement with what is commonly taught on each subject.
That engagement is the other half of this work. Under Digging Deeper, a fuller series called "Taught vs. Written" sets each of these subjects beside the way it is usually taught and shows the comparison at length. Start here; go there when you want the whole case.
Taught vs Written: The Short Versions
The Mustard Tree and the Leaven
Paper 7
Faith and Works: James, Paul and the Gospels
Paper 8
Genealogy of Doctrine