RELIGION 101: ANSWERS

TRACING THE BIBLE

[I am beginning this with a repeat of an article that was posted some time ago.]

UNDERSTANDING SCRIPTURE

Proverbs 4:20,21
20 My son, give attention to my words; Incline your ear to my sayings,
21 Do not let them depart from your eyes; Keep them in the midst of your heart;

Joshua 1:8
8 “This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

One of our greatest failures is we think we know scripture. We don’t even begin to know scripture, until we have had our eyes opened. In some cases we have known a scripture and even said it for years. Comes the day in reading what we think we know, a light goes off, and finally the realization of what you are reading is suddenly before you as you have never seen it before.

There is a shell over scripture. A protective shell that the uncommitted cannot undo. They cannot get the true nectar of the word. Without an understanding from above we can read all we want. Nothing will be as it should until the veil from our eyes has been removed.

Say to yourself I am going to break the covering, I am going to meditate on God’s word, I am going to ask for an understanding on this one issue. Yes, one issue at a time. Picture the scripture, read it, pray over it. The freedom of understanding is not handed to just anyone. It is for those to seek to know, understand and have wisdom concerning the word of God.

It is for you, ask and you shall receive. Stay in the word, do not back down. The truth will come to you. But how can we know the truth when it comes to the Bible?

For this entire article I have done my best to not interject my feelings but at this point I will. I am generally an outspoken person and it was not easy. Bear with me.

We are going to trace the origins of the Bible. From the most recent findings to as far back as we can go. We are being like “Reader’s Digest” condenses, so we might miss a person or a place or two. But overall we think we condensed it pretty well. We did not and will not look into the “FINDINGS” of others.

On the whole there are some great books out there on what this and that mean, and there are also some that are not so good.

No, we prefer to stick with the Bible and its origins. In a past article we explained what Bibles we read and use. We also told you the reference books and Biblical dictionaries we use.

What I will not at this point tell you is which Bible we will use to refute some of the religious groups we are looking at. And I am using one certain Bible for a reason that I will explain in the end.

We prefer to take the Bible at what it says, nothing added, nothing taken away. We do use a concordance to look up scriptures, and we use a Biblical dictionary to look up the meaning of words in the Greek and Hebrew language.

That being said, we study the Bible and no other book as the infallible Word of God.

The Bible, written thousands of years ago and read around the world today. We look to the Bible for everything from a spiritual guide to a history to it as a storybook. It is also one of the biggest controversial issues of all mankind. Everyone from churches to politics have constituted Christian doctrine and scripture into the story of the editing and translation we have today.

With that we will end today.

God Bless
rECj/LJG