Some Christians say they don’t need the Church. “All we need is the Bible, Sola Scriptura.” These souls ignore how the Church (those who gather for corporate worship “in spirit and in truth”) preceded the Bible, and under the guidance of the unerring Holy Spirit wrote, guarded and rightly interpreted the Bible. It is impossible for the Holy Spirit of Truth to inspire differing or conflicting interpretations of the Bible, which is why outside the Orthodox Church, all manner of strange ideas and false heresies have arisen. Different sects holding opposite doctrines appeal to the Bible equally because they ignore Holy Tradition and rely entirely on their own private interpretations, despite God’s clear warning which is recorded in the Bible: “No prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were prompted by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20). No one can interpret Scripture by himself, because we are one body, told to “be of one mind” (Phil. 1:27). “Be one in thought, one in heart, one in soul, one in mind” (Phil. 2:2). Thus, “I believe in the Bible,” must be balanced with, “I believe in One, Holy, Catholic (universal) and Apostolic Church,” which is the Orthodox Church.3 https://orthodoxreflections.com/the-orthodox-church-of-today-what-is-happening-and-why-part-i/