For the past few days most of the posts on this blog have been articles that will find a place in a book I plan to call Wells Without Water, a title taken from 2 Peter 2:17. The book arises out of a concern that many people who are converted in their youth haven’t taken time to search the Scriptures to find the foundations of the things they are being taught. Many are being taught things that are true and right, nevertheless their foundation might be a little shaky. When someone comes along proclaiming a doctrine that appears to bring a light that they have not seen before, they may follow that light. But that light is a strange thing, it leads into darkness.

I was 28 when I became a Christian and I approached Christian doctrine with more of an enquiring mind than many who are converted in their teens. That attitude served me well as I was faced with many enticing doctrines during the first years of my Christian life. As I studied those doctrines, and searched the Scriptures to find evidence for or against them, I realized that many of them offered a modicum of intellectual satisfaction, but no soul-satisfying refreshment.

As I searched further, I found that such doctrines had no root in the Scriptures. They were imported into Christendom from other sources and furnished with support from Scriptures taken out of context. I look around me today and wonder why many Christians don’t understand this. They may be quite sound in the faith in most ways, but through reading supposedly Christian books of dubious value they have picked up bits and pieces of teachings that sound good, but are truly wells without water.

For this reason, I feel the time has come to share what I have found while I still have the ability to do so (I am now 82). I am writing these articles as narratives of what I have observed and discovered on my Christian journey. They are not meant to be an exhaustive theological tome; they are simply conversations about the faith. They are also an explanation of why I have concluded that the historic Anabaptist-Mennonite faith is the truest expression of the faith first taught by Jesus and the Apostles.