What is The Bible, really...............?

The Bible, as we now have it -- and very simply put -- appears to be a collection (canonization) of 66 different books written by 40 different authors from about 2000 B.C., to the first century A.D. Through those men whom God chose to record His Word, God reveals His OWN story of how He conceived creation; its fall, and His plan for saving the world from (our) fatal desire to ignore Him.

Most Bibles today have been translated from various surviving ancient texts, documents which can be authenticated to the first century A.D.  Some Hebrew texts in existence are even older than that, and support our current texts. With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the last century, however, and despite much prevailing skepticism as to the accuracy and efficacy of its many translations -- the Bible's currently authorized translations prove to be astonishingly faithful and true to currently held original ancient texts.

All that technical qualification aside, what I have learned from my own research is that the Bible appears to be the most substantiatible, most authenticated, most historically accurate, most legally perfect, most attested-to piece of literature in written history, and most beautiful love letter ever written to a stiff-necked, stubborn, unrepentant, unbelieving world -- that one Father could have ever written to His own children. It's all about how He created us, how we have continously tried to do things our own way, how that has ALWAYS gotten us into deep dookie, and how He plans to save us from ourselves and our slavery to screwing up.

Interested? Here's my quick cliff-notes-like summary:

The Old Testament:

!. God perfectly conceives creation.
2. Creation is not created perfect, but perfectly created -- complete with the ability to sin -- unlike God, who is perfect, holy, and cannot sin.
3. In The Garden, Adam and Eve are seduced by their irrevocable desire for personal gain; hence, they disobey God via an insatiable thirst for knowledge, lust for personal advancement, and the burning desire to control their own existence (hey, if they were perfect, they could have overcome those temptations -- Christ did!).
4. God subsequently punishes all of creation -- present and future -- for that primary act of disobedience, but He already has future redemption in sight as He pronounces His verdict.
5. God finely hones a specific imperfect Jewish lineage through which He will bring a Perfect Kinsman Redeemer to fulfill His own plan for salvation for His fallen creatures, a salvation made necessary by their continual disobedience.
6. God also creates other lineages for other purposes....
7. God wipes out most of the earth with a flood and starts over with Noah's family, continuing the line God plans to use for His Redeemer.
8. God tells Abraham to go: Abraham obeys, and obedience (as faith) is accounted to Abraham as righteousness by God.
9. God makes His covenant with Abraham and his descendents.
10. God chooses His "chosen" people; they do not choose Him.
11. God and a series of faithful but flawed representatives (Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Joshua....) attempt to set up a trusting relationship between God and His people.
12. His people do not believe Him.
13. They do not obey Him.
15. They forget God.
16. God tells Israel how He chose them to be His people, and how He would be their God ONLY if they live by His rules -- He would provide for their every need, removing them from bondage and bringing them into a Promised Land.
17. They do not believe Him.
18. They do not obey Him.
19. They forget God.
20. God gives Moses 10 commandments and 603 other laws for Israel to live by, along with an earthly temple/tent in which He deigns to commune with His chosen people, regularly.
21. God keeps all His promises to His people and is faithful to an unlikely people, helping them secure land and comfort, wealth and power. Israel grows from 12 sons, into 12 tribes, into 3 million people before four hundred years pass.
22. They do not believe Him.
23. They do not obey Him.
24. They forget God.
25. Soon as they cross the Red Sea, they turn to more pleasurable, more manageable idols.
26. God sends His wrath against them.
23. Moses intercedes and God delivers them from His wrath.
27. Peace reigns for ahwile. . .After forty years Moses dies, God fulfills His promise and brings them to the Promised Land where He increases their comfort, size, power, wealth and reputation. But Israel too soon forgets from whence they came; they do not believe God; they do not obey Him.
28. God appoints more representatives to warn them about the consequneces of disobedience and idolatry.
29. Israel repeatedly attempts to "shoot the messengers" and only temporarily repents.
30. God's messengers include prophets and kings who fortell of God's final wrath for Israel's continuous disobedience, and also tell of an amazing event to come whereby God will ultimately reclaim a small part of His people -- a remnant of the original number (those who admit their inability to turn away from sin without His help) providing for them a means to salvation from His wrath (which by this point was getting pretty hot over their persistent disobedience), yet also foretelling of A Great Redeemer who will bring victory to God's people.
31. Israel does not heed the warnings.
32. They do not believe Him.
33. They do not obey Him.
34. They forget God.
35. God again sends judgement on His stubborn, willful, disobedient Israel, as His messengers foretell of a greater future judgement to take place on all the earth.
36. Israel begs for mercy and God sends deliverance from His own wrath, warning against idolotry and disobedience, and threatening to give His mercy and offer of salvation to the Gentiles, instead, as well as the other nations.
37. God's messengers foretell of His Chosen One's emminent birth out of the tribe of Judah, of a star appearing over a tiny town in Judea, of Rachel weeping for her children, and of a broken man hanging on a tree, tortured for our sins and having known no sin himself, yet despised and disbelieved by almost everyone He comes to save, and of a cataclysmic end time for those who do not turn back to God.........
38. Israel does not heed God's warning, returning instead to disobedience and idolatry, each to his own way; they do not learn from their and their fathers' disobedience, but begin to look for salvation from oppression on their own, and to wait for a Messiah -- a deliverer, a King who will lead them from persecution -- failing to recognize their own sin, that they have actually begun to incur God's wrath, and have now become merely part of His greater plan for the whole world.
39. They do not believe Him.
40. They do not obey Him.
41. They forget God.
42. God is angry.
43. God plans to inspire a remnant of the Israelites to jealously and repentance, by offering the rest of the world what He promised Israel, defining His real remnant. For the time, however, their hearts further harden, and soon His Word becomes a stumbling stone to Israel, a Rock of Great Offense -- just as God had said it would --and the Almighty wheels of salvation, extended to the entire world -- not just His beloved Israel -- are now in motion.

The New Testament:

1. The genealogy of One Certain Man, born in a tiny stable in Judea, holding MAJOR significance to the Jews; but for the time they have been hardened, blinded by God, to such pertinent data.
2. Few of His countrymen believe that virgins can conceive; fewer still believe anything good can come from Nazareth (a poor hick town in the Hill Country of Jerusalem), even less believe that a "servant" who continuously dishonors Jewish law, can be God.
3. His own family doesn't believe.
4. He is constantly tempted by Satan who offers Him wealth, power, influence, Top 40 hits, Playboy bunnies, knowledge of the entire universe, personal advancement, and quotes the Bible to Him to persuade Him away from His unhappy mission on earth. (Sound familiar?)
5. He overcomes Satan's self-centered temptations, and eventually gets noticed for some of His miracles, signs, and wonders (but is not often remembered for washing his own disciples feet).....
6. He answers all "gotcha" questions from the Pharisees, Sadducees, and other skeptics, with confounding parables -- seeming insolent and imperious, further inflaming resentment and fear toward Himself.
7. He even tells one righteous Pharisee that in order to 'truly see the kingdom of heaven, one must be born again from above.'
8. He accuses the highest ruling body of religious leaders of hypocrisy, avarice, and sin.
9. He renounces the significance of formerly sacred bloodlines.
10. He revises God's Own commandments.
11. He forgives sinners on His Own authority.
12. He says He came to do the Father's work who sent Him, so that all who belive on Him could have eternal life; For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish...........
13. He threatens to destroy the holy temple of God and, more incredibly, rebuild it in just three days.
14. He talks openly to women, and has them for best friends.
15. He predicts His death and resurrection.
16. He is turned in to the religious authorities/police; sold out by one of His Own.
17. He is brought before a fearful Pharisee/Sadducee tribunal where many jobs, wardrobes, and comfortable seats in restaurants are at stake because He threatens the ruling body's very own significance.
18. He is lied about.
19. He says little in His own defense.
20. He is beaten with whips containing iron tips (a Roman 'flagrum'), until bloody, for His silence.
21. An example is made of Him before the Jews to discourage future 'messiahs'.
22. And they -- when given the chance to let Him go - demand His death by crucifixion.
23. Pilate passes the buck and secures his own place in history by granting the Jews their desire.
24. Jesus, dying on the cross, quotes Psalm 22.
25. He promises Paradise to a repentant thief also hanging next to Him on a cross, without baptizing him or offering communion, as proof of God's unmerited grace.
26. He begs forgiveness for His persecutors.
27. He finishes what He came for -- "It is finished."
28. He overcomes death and is first seen in His resurrected state by a WOMAN.
29. He eats, drinks, and stays with His disciples forty days, promising to send His Holy Spirit to comfort and help them to do in His absence, that which they have been previously unable to do on their own -- believe.
30. He gives them His great commission and ascends to The Father.
31. After his ascension, He converts Saul, devout Pharisee persecutor of Christians and murderer, to Paul, the most devoted apostle and servant.
32. Paul writes that even the ability to believe on (trust) Christ's finished work on the cross -- saving faith -- is God's own sovereign gift to us, given through His unmerited (undeserved, unearned) grace , made possible by His Own death and resurrection -- not secured by our deeds, but gifted to us in His mercy.  Sola fide..............hence, the only thing* we actually bring to our salvation is the sin which makes it necessary. (*This concept -- found throughout the Bible, and concisely drafted by Paul into the Book of Romans, forever changed Martin Luther's own life and theology -- i.e., faith ONLY in Christ, accounted as righteousness, to all who believe on Him).
33. Paul, Peter, James, John, Luke, Jude and the others, set up the first Christian churches under profound duress. All die for What they believe, but not before one of them writes what God tells him to, concerning His final judgement.


Amen, and amen.

-- Betty Elders
 (7/4/01)

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