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"For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires. It exposes us for what we really are." The Bible, Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 |
Is the Bible really a special book? Is it of any use today? Can it really be relevant to our lives today? After all, the youngest part of it is nearly 2,000 years old. Did God really have anything to do with writing it? Is it accurate?
The Bible is the most influential collection of ancient literature which exists on this earth today. It has influenced mankind profoundly in every area of life: law, philosophy, religion, medicine, philanthropy - you name it and the Bible has influenced it. Dating from 1500 BC to 90 AD, it is unique, reliable, historically accurate and, above all, it records the actual, living words of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Surprised? So was I when I was "born again" more than 50 years ago. At that time I thought, as the majority of people do today, that the Bible was out-dated, mostly disproved by the Theory of Evolution and archaeology, inaccurate, no better than any other ancient writings, and simply a collection of myths and legends suitable only for musty old scholars, wimps without brains and people who believed in fairy stories.
One of the first things I had to do was examine the claims of the Bible as best I could. Having had no education along these lines, this was very difficult for me. In retrospect, this was a very good thing, because I had not been conditioned to disbelieve, as seems to be the case with so many "Bible Colleges" even today.
So I found myself floundering in deep waters with little help. I did receive limited help from the church I was attending, but not as regards the Theory of Evolution, something which I was particularly troubled about.
Thankfully, there is a wealth of material of this type available today. If anyone genuinely wants to evaluate the claims of the Bible to be the living word of God, there is now an abundance of accessible facts and research material.
For this reason, these particular subjects will not be considered here but the claims of the Bible will simply be accepted. Here is one book of many which I can thoroughly recommend:
"What If the Bible had Never Been Written?" by D James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe, Thomas Nelson ISBN 0785271546
The Bible is God's word to mankind and it applies to the past, the present and the future. It is the only totally reliable "Maker's Manual" we have. It records God's dealings with man and is as applicable today as when it was first written. It is our guidebook for life, for salvation and for death.
The Bible is a collection of many ancient writings, a library in fact, dating from 1500 BC to 90 AD. All of these writings, by different authors at different times, can be viewed as a consistent and coherent whole. They deal with revelation (things which we could not otherwise know), philosophy, poetry, law, morals, history, art and philanthropy.
The Bible has two major divisions, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These contain the old and new agreements between God and man. Both agreements were implemented by God and are to be adhered to by man.
The Old Testament has two major functions: to record the history of God's dealings with man up until the time of Jesus; and to serve us today as a source of God's unchanging principles from which we can still learn. The stories, poetry, songs and philosophical writings teach useful parallels with our lives today. For example, when I was first "converted," the book of Ecclesiastes was a great help to me.
The Old Testament contains many prophetic writings, some fulfilled, and some which still have a role to play in the future.
The New Testament enlarges on and fulfils the Old Testament. The first four books, the Gospels, tell the story of Jesus from the viewpoint of four different eye-witnesses. Many of the events which happened to Jesus were clearly prophesied in the Old Testament hundreds of years before He was born.
The rest of the New Testament is taken up with history and with letters of help and encouragement to various young Christian churches and individuals. The last book, Revelation, deals with prophecy and it is "sealed up" until the appropriate time.
The New Testament contains many prophetic statements, some fulfilled and some which still have a role to play in the future.
God created the world, the sun, the moon, the stars and everything else, out of nothing. This world was perfect and God said that everything he had made was "very good."
God then created man to be his companion and to be in charge of the earth. It was vital to God that man should have free will in choosing to obey God. This failed because man disobeyed God and sin entered the world, with all its ghastly results for the whole of creation. Satan now became the ruler of this world instead of man.
As time passed, man became progressively more evil, the inevitable result of continuing to choose to disobey God. God then destroyed mankind with a world-wide flood, except for Noah and his family. A new start was now possible but man continued to choose to disobey God.
God next selected righteous Abram to be the father of a special nation which would act as a nation of priests to teach mankind God's ways and to administer those ways to all the nations of the world. This too failed because God's chosen nation continued to choose to disobey God.
God's next move was to restrict this priestly function to one tribe, Levi. This too failed because God's chosen tribe became corrupt and continued to choose to disobey God.
God then sent prophets over a long period of time and to different generations of his chosen nation to tell them that they were doing it all wrong. God wanted man to see the error of his ways and to repent (which is simply turning from the wrong way and turning to the right way). This too failed because they continued to choose to disobey God.
Eventually, God sent his Only Son, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, to speak to them directly. This too failed. They killed Jesus and continued to choose to disobey God.
Of course, God knew that all of this was going to happen even before he created the world. When they killed Jesus, they were actually carrying out God's plan of defeating Satan and providing a remedy for all the sins which had been committed throughout the history of the world, even future sins. As his seal on all of this, God raised Jesus from the dead and the Gospel (good news) age began.
Under this "new testament" arrangement, anyone genuinely seeking and feeling after God would be forgiven and welcomed because of what Jesus had done. They would no longer be subject to spiritual death but would have eternal life and a future new body instead. What's more, the Holy Spirit took up residence within each individual believer, so that they now carried out the "priestly" function to others.
This Gospel was initially confined to God's chosen nation, now known as "Jews." This too failed because the Jews rejected it and continued to choose to disobey God.
At this point God revealed his master-plan, which was, to throw the offer open to the whole world, regardless of race, colour, education, status, whatever. There were to be no more restrictions to an elite group.
This is where we find ourselves today. We are still in the Gospel era and God still wants us to "repent" and to accept him and his ways. We can only come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, There is no other name by which we can be saved.
Guess what? This too fails from time to time as people continue to choose to disobey God and reject his ways. But in every generation and in every age, more and more people are choosing to turn to God and to do things his way.
The time will eventually come when God will call a halt to the present scheme of things. Ghastly events are still to take place, but those who "seek and feel" after God and who find him via Jesus will eventually live with God himself on a new earth in a new universe.
The above story is told in much greater detail throughout the Bible. I should mention that, at every period, there were always some people, such as King David (and there are many others) who chose to obey God. At such times, God would bless and prosper them abundantly, which was always his intention for mankind.
Israel still figures largely in the affairs of this world. The continuing existence of the nation of Israel, together with the existence of Jews in all nations, is sufficient proof for any right-thinking critic that God exists. If he did not, the oft-repeated attempts at exterminating the Jews would have been successful long ago.
I am not a Jew, nor, to the best of my knowledge do I have any Jewish ancestry. But because I am a Christian and I take the Bible seriously, I can plainly see that God has blessed the nations of this world through the Jews and we should be grateful to them for that. It was through the Jews that the main part of the Bible story was played out, and it is through them that we now have the "Christian" Bible.
It is also a fact that Jesus and the first apostles were all Jews. Paul was a Jew and the first Christian churches were Jewish.The Bible also indicates that the Jews are eventually going to play a major part in world affairs. God himself will appear on earth again as Jesus and he will rule the world from Jerusalem. If you don't like this idea, don't blame me - God wrote it, I didn't!
God's viewpoint of the Bible is that he himself caused it to be written by many people over many years. It is an authoritative handbook for living for mankind. If we take these claims seriously and try to understand what we read, God promises that his Holy Spirit will come to our assistance.
Home address of this page: http://www.johnw55.freeuk.com/
Page updated 11 May 2004