Aims and Objectives

 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Ephesians 4:12-13

Introduction
Even if partially, we are already living in an age about which the apostle Paul forewarns when people [in churches] “will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears” (2 Timothy 4:3). God’s prophesies never fail.  Truth is nowhere and irrational emotionalism reigns. The churches in India do not lack teachers and teachings, because the crisis is not of teachers and teachings, but of true teachers and true doctrine.

“But you exercise self-control in all things, endure evil, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.”

In light of a time when people in Churches will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, we can draw the conclusion from Paul’s command to Timothy to “Do the work of an evangelist”, that he must preach sound doctrine in the midst of a chaos and disaster of false doctrines.

Paul says, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

The faith which Paul kept is not some kind of a mystic element, but the set of propositional truth, a set of Doctrines which he believed, which, according to Jude, was once delivered unto the saints, for which every Christian must Contend (Jude. v.3), and the causes he sets forth for this Contending of faith is that because “there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation.”

So, according to Paul and Jude, the false teachers come from both, within and without the Church, and this crowd is welcomed by none other than the church members themselves who after their own lusts have heaped to themselves teachers in order to sooth their own itching ears (2 Timothy 4:3).

What Contents the itching ears Require for the soothing of ears?

It is often claimed, in present days, that we are living in an era which is called Post-truth era. The term is defined as a philosophical and political concept for “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth” and the “circuitous slippage between facts or alternative facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth.

As reported by BBC News, The Oxford Dictionary declared “post-truth” as its 2016 international word of the year, and defines as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” 

The Oxford editors through accompanying press release further explained as to why they chose the word post-truth, as the word of the year in following way, “Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event, as in post-war or post-match, the prefix in post-truth has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant.”

“A book, The Post- Truth Era, by Ralph Keyes, appeared in 2004, and in 2005 American come­dian Stephen Colbert popularized an informal word relating to the same concept: truthiness, defined by Ox­ford Dictionaries as “‘the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true.’ Post-truth extends that notion from an isolated quality of particular assertions to a general characteristic of our age.”

This “Post-Truth” concept resulted from multiversity of faiths and opinions. Churches are not exception or untouched by this Post-truth pandemic, because the affaires in the world are sure to infiltrate in Churches by the Devil through the lovers of this world within the churches. Just as in ancient Israel “every Man did what was Right in his Own Eyes”, so in this 21^st century so-called Post-Truth age every Man says and believes what is Right in his Own Eyes.

But the Christian faith is not multiversity (a university with many different faiths). The Truth of Christianity is not subjective or relative. It is objective revelation of God in the Bible, and it is one and unified, that is, without any slightest contradiction, by which all things are to be defined.

The Post- Truth Content is that every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God as revealed in the face of Christ (2 Cor 10:5; 4:6). A post-truth world is not one in which the truth has ceased to exist, because the truth can never ceased, but it is a world in which the truth no longer matters.

This is pervasive, this is not something which arises and dies in a particular piece of land, or country or even continent. It is contagious like any other deadly virus that ruins lives and societies. Christian Churches, in any continent, are not exception of this plague. Truth has become the matter of subjectivism, and relativism for a majority within the walls of Churches.

However, God is the greatest and mighty warrior, and He will always cause His truth to prevail, which is His revelation in Scriptures. He will always have his remnant, a reserved and preserved people which will not bow down to Baal and whose mouths will not kissed (welcome) him (Romans 11:4, 1 Kings 19:18).  These are the generations of a people in fulfilment of “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” These are the ones in obedience to the great commission of their Lord and of the apostolic charge so that the church must survive into future centuries just as she has been throughout the history when God raised faithful men time to time to confront and expose the lie of the devil through preaching of Biblical truth.

This apostolic charge “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” applies to every faithful pastor and elder of a local church of all centuries. Just as Paul transmitted the message of the Gospel, in fact the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27), to Timothy directly and orally when they were together, so was Timothy also to seek out intelligent young men who could take his place after his departure, who also could seek out intelligent young men of the following generation, and so on down through the centuries with equal faithfulness.

We, the believing Christians in 21^st century, have become the recipients of the apostolic truth only because of the system prescribed by Paul in ‎2 Timothy 2:2.

The local churches, therefore, in the apostolic spirit, are supposed to be the institutions of the learning in sound doctrines for the common believers (laymen and women) where they can grow in their understanding and knowledge of Biblical Doctrines without spending money at the expensive seminaries or expensive books, and thereby become able to contend for the faith (Jude v.3), and be always ready to give an answer to the interrogators who ask them a reason for the hope which they have in Christ (1 Pet 3:15).

Sadly, the church has lost the glorious prestige of being called the institution of the learning in sound doctrines for common people long ago. In most of the cases, Pastors and teachers in local churches lack the art of rightly dividing the word of truth, and good resources in native languages for their educational programs in congregations. Christian leaders are to be taught sound doctrine, and they are to teach the same.

But this needs a systematic and comprehensive Theological program which will seek to teach the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scriptures in languages of people.

The Five SOLAS India virtual Institution seeks to offer this systematic and comprehensive educational program to local Churches in India, by Indians and in Indian languages by providing educational course material in Indian languages, as God provides – in the languages of people so that they may take each and every word of Scriptures to their hearts by the enlightening work of our Lord (Luke 24:45)

The aims and objectives of Five SOLAS India Church Institution are therefore to provide free of cost educational resources in sound Doctrines and Theology in Indian languages in order to restore the lost apostolic prestige of local Churches as Institutions of Theological learning.

Solomon explained the purpose of education long ago:

To know wisdom and instruction,
To perceive the words of understanding,
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment, and equity:
To give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge and discretion, (a wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel),
To understand a proverb and an enigma, the words of the wise and their riddles.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. If you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her.

The end of all this theological education is so beautifully summarized by Apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:12-13

 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

To this end, we have designed a Course curriculum which will educate laymen and women in Apostolic-Protestant Christian Doctrines to enable them to grow “unto stature of the fullness of Christ”, to enable them to “Contend for the faith” and to “give a reason for their hope.”

We invite Pastors, Elders. Deacons to adopt our Course curriculum for the teaching of their Church-members in class, and we also invite individual Christians to take our online Courses. You may fill in the enrollment form on the top of this page. 

In Christ for the proclamation of His Gospel

The Board of Five SOLAS India