Okay, let's move to the next question, which is dealing with the subject of letting the Spirit guide us. This is what the listener sent in. He said, or she the practice among spirit filled Christians differ a lot in this area. This means that even if one practice has more scriptural support than the other, it must not matter that much. If God cared, wouldn't He convict all these Christians on this topic?
This could be said in context of the head covering, of dress, of cosmetics, of accumulation of wealth, et cetera. Again, a very good question. And it's something I've been asked. I would say, once again, almost from the beginning. Well, David, the Holy Spirit is going to guide us to all truth. So we don't need the early Christian writings. Well, of course, if we take this argument to its logical conclusion, I mean, the truth of the matter, as the question points out, is no one can agree.
There's all these different views on every topic, whether it's theological or it's application of Bible teachings on lifestyle. There's no uniformity in agreement. I mean, there's a few things all Bible believing Christians believe in, like the incarnation, but boy, it's only a small handful of things. So the person is saying, well, then maybe the Holy Spirit just doesn't care whether we dress modestly or whether we wear a head covering.
Well, if you take that to its logical conclusion, then you'd have to say, God must not care much about anything, whether it's the Trinity or salvation or baptism or communion or eschatology, the two kingdoms, whether or not we keep the Sabbath, whether we practice war, divorce, modesty, wealth. I mean, you name it. You'd have to say that God just simply doesn't care. Whatever we do is fine because if he cared, he would give us unity in the Holy Spirit. And we don't have unity in the Holy Spirit. Okay.
So yeah, there's a flaw, obviously, in the reasoning. And Jude 1:3, written towards the end of the New Testament period, would indicate otherwise. It says, " Contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. " So there's two truths here. One is that the faith was once for all delivered to us. And number two, we're supposed to contend for it. So God does want us to be united.
He doesn't want this massive confusion that we have with everybody speaking so many different contradictory things about what the Scriptures say. And even worse, often when they speak in unity, they're speaking something that's false. And one of the things that we should notice is going to John 16, verses 12 through 13, where it talks about the Spirit guiding us to all truth, that Jesus did not say that to the crowds. He did not say that to the future generations. He was alone in the upper room with the 12.
And he said that to them. Let me just read those verses. That's John 16:12 and 13. Jesus said, " I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth, for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will tell you things to come. " Now, we know that was fulfilled in the 12 apostles because guess what? They all spoke the same thing. Here you have 12 leaders.
Peter acted as sort of the ad hoc head, but I mean, he didn't have some kind of magisterial authority over the other 11. You have 12 apostles. And if you had that situation today, you know what you'd end up with? 12 different denominations, all saying something different. But you had one united church. It stayed united from the day of Pentecost to the death of the Apostle John.
You had one church that shows that the apostles had the Holy Spirit, that He had guided the apostles to all truth because they all spoke the same thing. And then for the next couple of centuries, the church stuck to what the apostles had handed down, and they were able to stay united as one church. So the Spirit gave instructions primarily through the apostles. And as long as the church made a concerted effort to hold to those teachings that were handed down from the apostles.
And of course, to do that, they had to look at what was handed down. They would consult churches where the apostles had personally taught to ask them, what did the apostles say on this subject or this subject? Or what was the practice concerning this or that? They made, like I say, a concerted effort to stay close to what the apostles handed down. And so they had that unity. But now today, what's the situation? Well, it's everyone saying, " Oh, the Holy Spirit is going to guide us to all truth.
" Well, we can test that and look at this disunity that's out there with different teachings on just about every doctrinal subject and on almost every lifestyle subject. And I'd say it's obvious to anyone who's who's honest that, no, the Spirit is not guiding each individual Christian to all truth. And he's not guiding each church or each denomination into all truth because they're all in conflict.
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