After reading Claude Mengel's letter titled "Changed Message," I felt compelled to provide an answer to his question: "In view of all the different religions of the present age telling people there are many ways to God, I wonder who changed the original message and why?"

In less than 600 years, according to the World Christian Encyclopedia, the world has gone from one Christian church to 33,820 Christian denominations. Here is the reason why!

The doctrine of Sola Scriptura was invented in the early 1500s. In general it states that the Holy Bible is the sole rule of faith for the Christian and it is up to each and every person to interpret for themselves what it says.

I will enumerate why this doctrine cannot be part of God's plan.

The canon of Holy Scripture was not approved until the early 5th century. Up until that time, there was no Holy Bible.

To make one copy of the Bible took a scribe 10 years of work.

A Bible was copied on vellum because parchment had a life span of only about 50 years. It required the hides of 500 to 1,000 animals to make one copy.

Because of this, to own a copy of the Holy Bible would cost about as much as your house in relative terms.

World literacy rates during the first 1,000 to 1,500 years of Christianity were about 5 percent to 10 percent.

For 400 years there was no Holy Bible and for the next 1,000 years, you could not afford to purchase a copy and probably would not be able to read it anyway. The early Christians would have had virtually no hope for salvation.

The invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in the year 1440 was the single event that enabled the development of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura, with its central tenet of private interpretation of the Holy Bible, is the clear answer to why the "message has changed."

Bernie Huff,

Lewisburg