38. Conservatism and the Bible. Conservatism of Bible approach and understanding in the final analysis is the only acceptable to God and profitable for man {“all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect….Etc from II Timothy 3: 16,17); and it is questionable if any scholar or other searcher after Bible truth, even to teach, who makes a liberal approach to the Bible, or in this day and time of “God told me”, and approach of new revelations that ignores that in the Bible of 66 books the “faith was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude). Now, if you want to spiritually profit from your Bible study of the Word of God—which is divine in origin, absolute in authority, sufficient in message, and high fidelity in content {it communicates from God to you via the Spirit of God and the writing apostle and prophet}, if you are still in spite of the current Great Apostasy called the Falling Away…if you can still “endure sound doctrine” (II Timothy 4:4,5}, if you are susceptible to “reproof” in spite of your family, community, church, etc, and even more important than that to “correction”; and if you even care about seeking “first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”, then at each step in this progression toward more maturity you will also be more conservative on the Bible. Just look at the famous Jesus Seminar with their fifth gospel of Thomas, their denial of most of the Gospel of John, and the questioning of whether Jesus is and was the Son of God; and you will see the detrimental results of scholarship without conservatism on the Bible as the Word of God. You must be reminded that all such stumbling either in the name of scholarship, or liberalism, tolerance simply show evidence of a lack of the Holy Spirit in the inward life of the searcher as well as in the approach to Bible understanding, since “the word is spiritually discerned.” 39. Catholic Bible and Doctrine. Albeit the Catholic Douay Rheims edition of the Bible or any other catholic version or translation of the Bible or just plain any version like the Amplified, the New King James Version, Philips, the sad reality is that possession of the copy alone does not sanctify or make a conservative or man of God out of you as answered above in number 38. Even as the prime excuse for citizens today who ignore God and the communications that God has provided in the Bible “once for all” is that there are too many interpretations, versions, and denominations—obviously a cop out for lack of effort in the seeking “first the kingdom of God and His righteousness”, even so on the opposite end of the spectrum is that those who search the Word of God in any version or translation will find that speaks to them in ways they never thought possible; however it must be approached sincerely and with prayer for the help of the original author, the Holy Spirit. Like one translator in China said in working on the book of Romans, “This book speaks to me. The One who wrote this book is the One who made me.” Actually you are more fortunate than most of us if you own a Douay edition of the Old Testament, unless you have the New International version of some other special versions of the Old Testament in that you have some books of the Old Testament not found in the King James or New King James; and perhaps if you would spend more time on research in the Bible than excuses for living the way you want to live anyway, then you might help the rest of us find where the quote is located in the Old Testament of the New Testament book of James. As far as I know it is only the quote of the while NT, James 4: 5--"the spirit that dwelleth is us lusteth to envy", and is the real source of "wars and fightings" often blamed on religion--that we do not have a reference for in the OT listed in most of our Bibles. Pastor James only tells us that it is from OT Scripture. 40. God. Wow, this is the key subject about which humanity made in the image of God must think, for without respect for God there is nothing of religion, of eternity, of salvation, and of what God meant for any person to be when He created us in His image. Do I assume too much of belief in God as compared to your own? Yes, as one person said "God is the fundamental postulate of all rational thinking; and quite frankly even as I would resent anyone who tried to ignore or deny the existence of my wife, I also resent similar attitudes to my God, the God of the Bible and the LORD of Creation. You see this is not purely academic as my personal relationship to God is both personal and based on two objective and historical realities that can not be reasonable denied: (1) thanks to history and the creation and preservation of God we have a book of 66 books which claims over and over in its pages to be the Word of God {for example Paul's statement in II Timothy 3:16 of "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and the oft repeated phrases of "thus spake the Word of God" or "the Word of God came saying"}--an objective and pragmatic reality which must be accepted or denied as there is no middle ground like with any other scientific fact or phenomenon; (2) the historical Jesus and the Lord Jesus Christ of history actually lived, taught, and died on this earth, and like with the Bible since Jesus often claimed to be the Son of God {this is the reason from man's perspective and limited control that Israel killed Him}, and I think you can follow the inevitable logic that a Son of God demands a God the Father. Granted a more purely academic approach to faith in God can be made as for example Mosma does in his book "The Evidence of God in An Expanding Universe" where over 40 scientists in education, government, and business testify to evidences they see for the existence of God in their scientific disciplines like physics, anatomy, medicine, and so on and on. And if that is your interest you can find no shortage of such classical books in the fields of Christian Evidences and Apologetics such as my hero, the Nobel prize winning physicists R.A. Millikan; but it is doubtful that such purely intellectual evidence can lead you all the way to faith in God, although it can easily eliminate your intellectual hang-ups {if they are really intellectual instead of the sin of unbelief} to faith in God. If you must go that time consuming route to faith in God, so be it; and if I can help in the suggestion of more books or the finding of Mosma or Millikan, please let me know at SunGrist_Bible@netscape.com. I suppose there is a little jealousy in unbelief in that God through Christ has chosen to manifest Themselves to us and not to the world at large. "Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, 'Lord, how is it that You will manifest Yourself to us, and not to the world?' Jesus answered and said to him, 'If anyone loves Me {you see love goes beyond belief in existence and is personal to us who have experienced this selective manifestation to us and not to the rest of the world, and although we sympathize with your jealousy we also resent your denial of the God and Christ of our collective manifestations-- don't you have confidence in any of us}, he will keep My word {you see you may have a major problem if you don't believe in the Bible as the Word of God, for how can you keep what you don't believe in}; and My Father {yes, this is God the Father, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ} will love him {you see it is also personal to God the Father that you keep his word in order that according to His word and His character, even His demands, He will then love you}, and We will come to him {yes, this is something modern and contemporary not the historical coming of God on Mount Sinai nor the coming of Jesus on earth to Palestine 1 A.D.}, and make Our home with him. {And yes, it takes a lot of faith to believe this; but don't ask us to deny what we have received in this unique manifestation of God and Christ making a home in our internal heart and spirit and soul; nor should you expect us to respect your denial of our God and Christ.}." (John 14:22,23) You know lack of faith in a God of design and creation and who showed Himself through not only the works of nature, but also in the conscience of man, in the Bible and in Christ, is so foolish that it is like a heathen in Africa or South America finding a PCB {printed circuit board} from a Satellite that fell out of the sky and not assuming that this PCB had a designer--that all the components of capacitors, resistors, transistors, and circuits generated themselves up there in space. Now, I apologize if your faith has already gone beyond this point; and what you are really after is what does the Bible teach about this God. That is even a bigger question than the existence of God, because the Bible Itself is "a gradual revelation of God {by the way progressive and other thousands of years and through over 40 Apostles and Prophets} coming to an eternal climax in Christ. If that is discouraging as you look at many chapters in 66 books, and compare how little you have read and studied the Bible, then you can be encouraged by the fact that Revelation is over and complete in this book, and as Jude wrote "the faith has once and for all been delivered to the first century saints." I would suggest that a place to start besides the reading of your Bible, of course, is with the chapter on God in "Some Sounds of Sound Faith". You can read some shorts about God on the Product Page, or you can order it in either soft or hard copy. If finances are a problem, then email SunGrist_Bible at SunGrist_Bible@netscape.com, and we will in turn email you a free soft copy. Of course we always have somebody standing by to answer any other personal questions of faith, at jerrymac@live.com. |
Navigation Bar Placeholder |