Category: bibliology / study of the Bible itself

Feast on Meat!

Saturday, July 18, 2015

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21 KJV).

Which is “good”—the bones or the meat?

A few days ago, I read a theology book that I had been interested in reading for sometime. Bearing in mind today’s Scripture, I always approach such a book with extreme caution. The vast majority of the book was a delightful read. It was very informative in its discussion of the history of a certain false religion. However, the last two or three chapters highlighted the author’s downfall. He himself praised (thereby admitting to agreeing with) two other false religious systems… two more deceptive than the one he was critiquing! What a disappointment, but I expected it because there were certain “hints” in his previous chapters. My suspicions were confirmed by book’s end!

It is important to remember not to get bogged down with the “bones” of any book authored by man. Pick the “meat” from the “bones” and benefit from the “meat.” Rather than choking on the “bones,” toss them out and feast on the “meat!” Be a discerning believer. Use the Word of God rightly divided to evaluate what information is good and what information is bad. (Dispensational Bible study would have salvaged that said author’s warped theology!) Use the sound information that the author taught you and then build on it.

Until the glorious day comes when Almighty God confines Satan’s policy of evil to the eternal lake of fire, and until Jesus Christ comes to take us home to heaven, we must live in this “present evil world” (Galatians 1:4), this current evil world system. The Bible talks about “the course of this world” and “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). These are sure references to Satan, “the spirit which now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Satan uses various avenues to corrupt the Church the Body of Christ, so we are thus exhorted to “prove all things.” Most beliefs, most systems, and many activities can do great damage to your soul. Christian friend, you would do well to arm yourself with the armor of God, your provisions He gave you in Christ. Learn and believe Paul’s epistles to wear that armor!

Noteworthy Ninth

Sunday, June 28, 2015

“I will delight myself in thy statutes: I will not forget thy word” (Psalm 119:16 KJV).

To God’s glory alone, it was nine years ago today that I entered the writing ministry!

Dear friends, it has been quite an exciting journey these last nine years in the Holy Bible. Long before we had these daily devotionals, decuple-monthly Bible Q&A articles, weekly newspaper columns, scores of tweets, and thousands of Facebook posts, there were brief notes and reflections on Bible passages. (Those writings have never been released.) Drafting them for many months “primed” me to get to where we are today. I had no idea what I was getting into!

When I entered the writing (teaching) ministry, I thought I had some Bible knowledge. Looking back on it all these years later, I now realize that I knew nothing! My writing style was crude, my theology was denominational, but in time that all straightened out. Over 2,000 completed written Bible studies later, and over 2,000 incomplete written Bible studies later, only by God’s grace we have come quite a long way. A handful of you have been with us from the very beginning. You have grown with us all these years. With each passing day, the Holy Bible is becoming more and more thrilling, is it not? What glorious Bible truths we have uncovered in these last nine years overall!

Being a Bible teacher, one learns more while teaching than those he teaches. Teaching the Bible is a constant reminder of what it says, and being taught the Bible is a constant reminder of what it says. We can delight in God’s Word because we are mindful of it and we understand it (today’s Scripture). It is not the burden or the mess that religion makes it out to be. The Holy Bible is the world’s most marvelous Book. Yes, our King James Bible is the greatest Book, and may we continue to read, study, believe, delight in, and teach it. There is still much more growing to be accomplished. There is still much more treasure to mine from God’s precious Word. It is with great delight that we thus begin our tenth year in the writing ministry! 🙂

If Thou Be

Thursday, June 4, 2015

“Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Matthew 4:5,6 KJV).

If Satan knew Jesus was God, why did Satan question Him, “If thou be the Son of God…?”

The very first words out of Satan’s lips recorded in Scripture are documented forever in Genesis 3:1: “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” What did Satan attack first and foremost? It was God’s Word! Satan questioned God’s Word, causing Eve to doubt it. Interestingly, people have been doing that ever since as well, ever trying to “reconstruct” the “original Bible” with all their perverted manuscripts, “‘older’ and ‘better’ variant readings,” and copyrighted modern English versions. After over a century of attempts, they still have not gotten it right. Until the Lord comes and destroys them all, they will fabricate, market, and $ell many new English Bible translations!

In today’s Scripture, we see Satan “up to his old tricks.” The Devil is tempting Jesus Christ, desperately trying to cause Jesus to doubt that He is the Son of God. “If thou be the Son of God….” Days earlier, God the Father from heaven had declared at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Satan, knowing what God the Father said, wanted Jesus to forget those precious divine words (as with poor Eve). The Devil knew he could destroy Jesus Christ once He had divorced His mind from Father God’s Word to Him. Without cognizance of His identity, Jesus was sure to fail, and Satan would win. Praise God that Jesus replied to Satan, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God” (Matthew 4:7). In other words, “Satan, I am the Lord! I am the Son of God! You do not deceive Me!” (Above all, Jesus Christ triumphed where Eve failed millennia earlier!)

Avid Ambassadors for Christ!

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

“I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8 KJV).

Do you “delight” in the will of the Lord?

Unless the New Testament Scriptures commented on today’s Scripture and its context, it would remain mysterious. Hebrews 10:5-9 reveals that today’s Scripture was Jesus Christ’s humble confession to follow Father God’s will. Jesus Christ had so filled His mind and heart with the “Old Testament” Scriptures, that He knew what had to be done. As a loving Shepherd tending His sheep, He would teach His people, the Jews, His Word (Isaiah 40:11). He would have a healing ministry to confirm that Word (Isaiah 35:3-6). Yes, He knew He would go the way of the Cross and die, too (Isaiah 53:3-12).

Hebrews 10:5-7: “[5] Wherefore when he [Jesus] cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou [Father God] wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: [6] In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. [7] Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God.” As Psalm 40:6-8 suggested, Father God gave His Son Jesus a physical body so that physical body could be offered for our sins. How did the Son react? He “delighted” to do His Father’s will (today’s Scripture)!

We should be so delighted and so passionate about preaching Jesus Christ and sharing His Word rightly divided. In fact, someone (a Christian, actually!) suggested that all of my intense ministry activity was due to some sort of medical, social, or mental “disorder” or “issue” that afflicted me! (Hahahaha) No, it is not that I have issues, I have the Holy Spirit and I submit to His working in me. There is nothing special about me. I am a nobody. We are all just common people with a heart desire to have Christ’s words dwell in our hearts richly. We have a heart desire that that Word then work in us so that it bursts forth from us in word and deed! 🙂

Our latest Bible Q&A: “What does ‘a land flowing with milk and honey’ mean?”

Learn the Books of the Bible

Friday, May 1, 2015

“I have chosen the way of truth: thy judgments have I laid before me” (Psalm 119:30 KJV).

We have chosen the Holy Bible, God’s judgments have we laid before us. But, can we name those Bible books in order?

Dear friends, as a Bible teacher, I speak on behalf of all church leaders who must wait for their students to waste minutes looking for certain Bible books. I remember one person who had attended church for years, sat next to me repeatedly flipping through a Bible from cover to cover, never finding the Bible book being used. I helped him find it, and the next references too, but he eventually gave up, and refused to look at all.

People who have been Christians for years (perhaps decades) and yet they still cannot locate specific books in the Bible. What a tragedy! Christians of bygone centuries quoted whole Bible passages as they were tied to the stake and burned alive; most Christians today could not successfully list the Bible books in order to save their lives! Muslims quote the entire Qur’an from memory (114 chapters!) but the average Christian has not yet memorized 66 Bible book names!

Dear saints, precious people, please memorize the Bible books in order. Yes, the Old Testament can be tricky, but you just keep reciting those book names until you know their order by heart. You will save pastors and teachers much time if you know where the books are. More time can be spent on reading the Bible books instead of searching for them.

The 39 “Old Testament” books—Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The 27 “New Testament” books—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1 & 2 Peter, 1 & 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.

And those are the 66 books of the Bible!

Our latest Bible Q&A: “Does ‘once saved, always saved’ entitle us to abuse God’s grace?”

The Lively Oracles

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

“This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us” (Acts 7:38 KJV).

To mess with the “lively oracles” is to deal with the “living God!”

The expression “the lively oracles” appears only once in our King James Bible. Stephen used it in today’s Scripture in his sermon to Israel’s national leadership. In that context, Stephen affirmed that Jesus Christ was the Prophet whom Moses predicted back some 1,500 years prior in Deuteronomy 18:15-18. That same Jesus Christ was with the angel that spoke to Moses in Mount Sinai, when Moses received the Ten Commandments from God (cf. Galatians 3:19).

While the Ten Commandments were written on cold, dead stone, they were the very words of God Himself: “And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables” (Exodus 32:16).

Those words were “lively oracles” because they were the words, not just the thoughts, of the living God. As Jesus declared, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). The word “quick” in older English means “living and life-giving” (“quick” in Hebrews 4:12 is the same Greek word, zao, translated “lively” in today’s Scripture).

God’s Word is not only living, it can impart life to its hearers and readers. Hence, Jesus’ spoken words raised Lazarus and others from the dead. His inspired words, the Gospel message we trusted, raised us out of spiritual death and gave us new life and a home in heaven. The same powerful words that God Himself wrote centuries ago, we have them preserved today in our language (the King James Bible). May we never let “scholarship” kill our faith in the living words of the living God! 🙂

Our latest Bible Q&A: “What does ‘kicking against the pricks’ mean?”

A Love Letter, Not a Dust Collector

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

“Till I come, give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (1 Timothy 4:13 KJV).

You are hereby exhorted to read the Scriptures and learn doctrine!

Earlier this week, I received an email reply from someone I had emailed nearly four years ago! My unopened message sat in her inbox for all those years until someone recently showed her how to finish setting up that account. Till she replied, I had forgotten all about it. Imagine my delight when we finally made contact!

Similarly, God wrote the King James Bible to us, a love letter, written in the blood of His Son Jesus Christ, transmitted through history with the blood of His saints. Yet, there it sits on people’s bookshelves as a dust collector for years! Occasionally, it is taken out to construct a family tree, or put on the coffee table to decorate the room, but it is rarely utilized for its intended purpose. Sadly, time is spent on everything but what matters most. Mainly, these distractions are televisions, computers, and cell phones. People do not put God’s eternal Word in their eternal souls, so out in eternity, what will they have? For the lost, it will be one great strike against them at the Great White Throne Judgment! For Christians, it will be a tremendous loss of reward at the Judgment Seat of Christ!

Oh, beloved, my dear readers, may we not spurn the wonderful Word of God and the wonderful grace of God! May we blow the dust off His Book’s cover and actually read it for once. Consider the lost people who spend their whole lives—70 or 80 years—pursuing vanity and worthlessness. Without Jesus Christ, they go to hell. They could have spent 30 minutes reading the first five chapters of Romans. In that half-hour, they could have learned how to be saved from their sins, and they could have believed the Gospel and gone to heaven. They had many decades to read God’s Word. Now all they have is time without the Bible—eternity in hell!

Whether saved or lost, let us take time today to read and believe Romans chapters 1-5. It will be well worth the 30 minutes! 🙂

Behind the Scenes #6

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

“The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11 KJV).

In the form of the Holy Bible, the Creator God has given us a “behind-the-scenes” look at creation! Will we humble ourselves to take a sneak-peak?

No greater Bible definition for “sin” exists than Isaiah 53:6ab: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” Jeremiah 44:16 supplements: “As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the LORD, we will not hearken unto thee.”

In the heart of every person is a sin nature, deceit and desperate wickedness (Jeremiah 17:9). This part of man rebels against the God of the Bible. Our sin nature causes us to live according to our own decisions. Sinners seek to be their own authority, their own god: in their minds, they are self-sufficient. They refuse to hear any counsel from the Creator God. They want no one to be accountable to, and they want no one to tell them what to do. Our sin nature is the origin of all the dastardly acts every human has committed. It is not God’s fault when sinners sin. May we never accuse God of wrongdoing when we choose to ignore His instructions!

How sad that a marvelous field of study such as science (the method whereby we benefit from medical research and technological advances) has been so manipulated that it is now used as a method to “turn every one to his own way.” We can simply invent an origin that does not involve a holy God (thus no accountability for our sins), take scientific data and force it to fit our imagination (thus replacing the Bible), and then call it “science” (“justifying” ourselves). When someone exposes the flaws in our reasoning, we just dismiss them as “religious bigots” and “superstitious Bible-toters.” No wonder in graduate school we scientists are urged to not falsify data (the implication is that, in science, the temptation is there to report only what we want!).

Still, if we just humble ourselves and believe the Bible record, we will have the “why” question answered for us….

Behind the Scenes #5

Monday, March 16, 2015

“The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11 KJV).

In the form of the Holy Bible, the Creator God has given us a “behind-the-scenes” look at creation! Will we humble ourselves to take a sneak-peak?

Imagine, if you will, an inventor has just given you a new product, the first of its kind. You are the first to use it. Apart from an instruction manual (which hopefully you get with the product!), you have no idea of its purpose. You could sit there and inspect the product, you could disassemble it, you could learn how it functions, and so on, but unless you have some written explanation as to its purpose, you are wasting your time guessing! The product will be meaningless to you if you cannot use it as the inventor intended.

This crude illustration epitomizes the flaws of the strict, rationalistic, empirical nature of the scientific method. We must observe a natural process before we can proceed to explaining it and testing our hypothesis (tentative explanation) with data gathered. That idea must then withstand scrutiny and future testing if it is to be elevated to a theory or model. Otherwise, the hypothesis is rejected and must be refined.

As you can see, science is limited to answering only the “how” question. Science is useful in discovering how something works. But, why does the something work? What is its purpose? Science cannot answer it and it will never be able to answer it. The “why” question cannot be answered because “why” is something immaterial; science, strictly speaking, is concerned only with the material (visible) world. Science has no authority in the invisible (spiritual) realm: it cannot be used to ascertain intention.

As Bible-believing creationists, it is not we who are closed-minded, for we admit the study of the natural world leads us to understand just how orderly-structured and fine-tuned our universe is (and exists so for a purpose!). The close-minded individuals are those who refuse to see and hear anything but what their eyes see and their ears hear. They can explain how the universe works, but why it works, to the “why” question they close their eyes, ears, minds, and hearts….

Our latest Bible Q&A: “The Son of man hath not where to lay his head?”

Behind the Scenes #4

Sunday, March 15, 2015

“The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11 KJV).

In the form of the Holy Bible, the Creator God has given us a “behind-the-scenes” look at creation! Will we humble ourselves to take a sneak-peak?

Today’s Scripture follows five verses (verses 6-10) that survey the Creation story of Genesis. Recall verse 6: “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3).

John 1:1-3 says: “[1] In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. [2] The same was in the beginning with God. [3] All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” Verse 14 explains that the “Word,” the Creator, was none other than Jesus Christ.

Today’s Scripture says, “The counsel of the LORD standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations.” The God of the Bible had a plan in creation, and Scripture calls that plan “the counsel of the LORD.” It “standeth for ever.” In spite of what will happen, that purpose will still be brought to fruition. This plan contains “the thoughts of [the LORD’S] heart,” and He has made those thoughts known to “all generations.” As Psalm 100:5 says, “His truth endureth to all generations.”

What was and is Father God’s purpose in creation, His “counsel,” the “thoughts of His heart?” In the form of the Holy Bible, we have the instruction manual of creation, “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). God’s Holy Spirit caused those precious inspired words to be written centuries ago in Hebrew and Greek, He preserved them through history via manuscript copies, and He translated them into English so that we could have them today (the Authorized King James Bible).

While we can study the material world through scientific analyses, unless we use the Creator’s Manual, it is we who will have closed minds….