Monday, April 7

God's inspired Word....

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIV

So, if we realize that there is a God that is beyond our human concept, how do we know Him? What do we know of God, this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? We have a multitude of commentaries from religious giants of all faiths; whether truthful or with many errors. We have a dissimulation of information from pastors, reverends, and other church officials that we hear traditionally on Wednesdays and Sundays in most church settings. We are undulated with modern day translations, paraphrases, and both anti- and pro- religious literature. A multitude of information that is varied in its authenticity as to make it easy for anyone to find something that they can 'live' with.

What makes a God above human deception become known, when we know that the Bible was written by over 40 authors spanning 1,600 years who claim to have the authority and proper dissimulation of the Truth? After all, most religious movements--even the anti-Christian ones, claim to have the truth. Unique to the Bible, we can see that despite the personalities, cultures, environment, education, and on-going events in each of these authors' lives, there is an overwhelming agreement between each of them. If that isn't enough to convince us that Bible, the Word of God, is inspired and protected from His very lips to our ears, how can we prove it further?

After all, men wrote the books that comprise the Christian bible. And we all know what happens when man decides he knows what God would say; we see it in the religions of man that span the spiritual to the secular. Confusion, disagreement, and rewriting become relevant earmarks as one author's opinion clashes with another.

Soul Quest Ministries, led by Pastor Dave Bauer (www.soulquestministries.com), has started a study series entitled, "Discover Your Bible", on Sundays prior to the usual Sunday service. At the website are the MP3 downloads for the study, as well as other services. But Pastor Dave has sought to illuminate this question (which I won't rehash in its entirety here), although I will reference the material he gave in class on Sunday.

Most Evangelical Christians point to the Bible as the literal Word of God, which means that the story of a man being swallowed by a whale happened, and isn't just an allegorical or poetic waxing of an author's colorful description of the state of man's soul. The grammatical, contextual, and historical imprint that flows through the books as an imprint of the authors who wrote them under such Divine revelation doesn't affect such a view but further support it by showing why apparent 'disagreements' seem to exist as we realize authorial influence that doesn't affect the Truth that forms its structure.

The Divine act of communicating to mankind that which we would not know otherwise is the definition of revelation, which is the belief most Evangelicals have in regards to how the variety of authorship and time brought together such a powerful collection of books. God revealed Himself and His words to these men; through a host of ways that are still alive today.

According to Pastor Dave's notes, there were and are many ways God inspires us today as He did the authors of the Bible books; By the finger of God (Exodus 31:18), the voice of God (Exodus 33:11), dreams (Genesis 40-41), visions (Ezekiel 1:1), direct Holy Spirit movement (2 Peter 1:21), spiritual life experience (Psalm 51), types (Hebrews 7:1-10), history (1 Corinthians 10:6, 11), nature (Romans 1:20-21), and Angels (Daniel 10:1-21).

When we take the inspired Word of God and look at it through the grammatical, contextual, historical and literal viewfinder and seek God's revelation to each of us, we come to illumination….seeing and understanding the revelation that God has directed us to. Then we can apply the age-old question of "What does it mean in my modern world?"

Then the Bible truly comes alive with the inspired, written Word of God and we gain understanding like Job 32:8 "But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding. (WEB)"