September 9, 2020 (Wednesday)
Let’s take a look at the Bible.
It is a collection of 66 writings we call “books,” in which “..men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (1 Peter 1:21 NIV).” The 66 books of our Bible were not the only writings about our faith; there were other documents in existence. Gradually, the books now in our Bible were accepted as inspired, and other writings were rejected, because they contained errors or their teachings were inconsistent with accepted beliefs. Those writings considered inspired became part of the Bible and the uninspired books did not. Thirty-nine of the books in our Bible existed before Jesus was born and that collection is our “Old Testament.” Twenty-seven books became our “New Testament.”
For centuries, the ordinary person had little direct access to these writings, because they were copied by hand and in short supply. They were kept in churches. In addition, the masses of people could neither read nor write.
Five hundred years ago, there began a great upheaval in a period of history that we call the “Reformation.” When the dust settled, groups of believers emerged who insisted that people have direct access to God in all things spiritual, and the Protestant movement was born. To be sure, throughout the preceding centuries, there had been groups of Believers who held beliefs that the religious establishment considered heretical. The result of the Reformation was that people were now willing to come out into the open and state their true beliefs publicly.
The movement gained momentum with the invention of the printing press and the distribution of Bbles in the language of the people, which had been forbidden by law until the Reformation. The changes were gradual, but little by little people became better educated and owned their own copies of the Bible in their own language. The implications of this are tremendously important.
Without rehearsing the series of events which have led us to this day, let me say that the teachings of the Bible are bedrock and fundamental to what we Christians believe today. We stand committed to the teachings of the Bible, properly understood and interpreted. The last phrase explains why we have so many denominations of churches: we don’t all interpret and understand the Bible alike. We have learned to live with these differences, and to work together with Christians who have different shades of belief in the doctrines of our faith, because we are so much alike.
The situation today, however, is different from the past. New religions are gaining ground, and the most dangerous of these have cultic traits. Adherents of these new beliefs consider the Bible, Judaism and Christianity, in any form, relics of the past. People are slowly but surely being converted to belief systems that have no connection to the Bible. Some are Eastern religions that openly declare themselves and try to convert people without deception; they are open and honest about what they believe. Many are being converted to those religions today.
Another way of thinking, New Age, which picks and chooses among the doctrines of all faiths and establishes new doctrines based on erroneous popular philosophies, becomes more popular each day. It sometimes ushers people into cults, where they willingly turn their minds and possessions over to some charismatic leader. In some of these, the Bible itself, misunderstood and misinterpreted, becomes an integral part of the cult’s beliefs.
I guess I could go on and on about this, but let me close with words of a song many of us learned as little children: “The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that’s the Book for me; I stand alone on the Word of God, the B-I-B-L-E.”
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Quarantined – Forgot to shave – See my picture
