The Bible
The Bible contains essential revelation from God that we need to understand spiritual things but is the Bible itself THE WORD OF GOD?! Believing that the Bible is the Word of God many believe that in the Bible they have all the revelation that is available to man about God and dismiss others who claim that God has spoken to them.
Through these articles prepare to have your thinking and assumptions challenged. It is by every word of God that man shall live eternally. Is owning and reading a bible sufficient to have that word? Very necessary understanding in this time where so many confidently claim to be standing on the Bible as the Word of God?
Holy Bible
Is it the word of God?
Holy Bible, Is it the word of God? examines the common belief that the bible is the word of God
what the Scripture says about itself. We need to have the Word of God to live but who has the word of God? Is claiming to have it just because we own a bible good enough? This book is available on-line and at cost price from our eBay store
. Check out the eBay store for other good gospel materials and music.Thought for Today
Apr. 19
WHAT THE BIBLE IS
The aged apostle Paul wrote Timothy (2Tim. 4:9-13) and asked him to come to him as soon as possible and to bring several things, "but especially the parchments". Paul loved the Scriptures that God gave to ancient Israel and described their value to man in that same letter to Timothy, saying that those precious Scriptures were "given by inspiration of God" and that they were "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works" (2Tim. 3:16).
THE WORD OF GOD
The Scriptures are precious and holy; they are from God to help us in our pilgrimage through this sin-scarred life; the Scriptures record accurately many of the times that God's Word came to certain men. But Paul did not say to Timothy, and never said to anyone else, that the Scriptures themselves are the Word of God. The Word of God is whatever God says, and He has never stopped talking to those who are willing to hear what He has to say. Moreover, since God communicates to man only through His Son Jesus, Jesus himself is called the Word of God (Jn. 1:1; Rev. 19:11-13). And because God reveals His thoughts and feelings to man only through the holy Spirit that Jesus' death purchased for us, the Spirit also is called the Word of God (Eph. 6:17).
Misguided Christians elevate the Bible far beyond what is reasonable and right by calling it the Word of God. The Bible is holy, but it is not the Word of God. The Bible is profitable for our spiritual growth, as Paul noted, but it is not the Word of God. The Word of God is alive (Heb. 4:12)! It is not a book. The Book tells about the Word of God coming to men, changing them, and revealing to them the will of their Creator, but the Book is not the Word.
The Book can be bought for money; I recently bought another one. The Word of God, however, cannot be purchased, except with the currency of faith.
THE GOSPEL
Nor did Paul ever say that the Bible is the gospel. The Bible tells us about the gospel. It tells us that the gospel of Christ "is the power of God unto salvation" (Rom. 1:16). The gospel is "not in word only", as the Bible is. The gospel comes in power (2Thess. 1:5). "When I came to you," Paul reminded the saints at Corinth, "I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God . . . and my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God" (1Cor. 2:1-5).
God's power can save you; repeating a few Scriptures cannot. God's power can heal you, just as the Bible says it can; but the Bible itself cannot. The power of God cleanses souls from sin; the Bible alone can only condemn and kill, as Paul taught: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."
The Bible is letter. The Spirit is life. Which do you trust to save you? Do you have only the Bible and a particular Christian doctrine to trust in, or do you have the Spirit that the Bible tells you Jesus gives?
It is superstitious to believe that any book, even God's Book, will save you. To Pharisees who thought they would be saved because they were authorities on the ancient Scriptures, Jesus made this arresting statement: "You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. But they [the Scriptures] are they that testify of me. But you will not come to me, that you might have life!"
This is the condition of many millions today who trust the Bible, virtually as a god, to save them. But it can do nothing. It is a dead letter that tells us about Jesus, who gives eternal life. Many Christian zealots who wave their Bibles high in the air, demanding that others submit to it as God's Word, will be condemned in the Judgment because they never went to Jesus to receive the eternal life that the Bible talks about. How sad! The religion that promotes the Bible as being God's holy Word is the thing that has deceived and brought into captivity the children of God. It looks good; it sounds good; but it is evil. It claims to be of God, the bearer of light to the whole earth, but it is full of darkness and vain promises. It cannot save.
Come out of Christianity, my dear brothers and sisters, and escape the wrath to come.