Fighting the fight

An invisible war began in the Garden of Eden.  God had commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  A serpent inquired from Eve, 

”Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?'” Genesis 3:1

We know that serpents are not interested in the diet of human beings.  The Bible reveals that it was Satan who spoke through the serpent.  Revelation 12:9

That is where the war against God’s Word began.  It has never stopped.  Only when Satan is finally cast in hell will we be free from it.  On this side of the grave our ‘normal’ is the evil one’s attacks on our belief in God’s precious true Word.  He has only one goal: please don’t think God speaks the truth.  

The problem is, God does speak the truth.  It is a tragedy when people believe the devil’s lies, because it leads to destruction – eternal destruction.  That is why the devil is so persistent with his attacks on all God’s followers.  

Jesus teaches, 

‘Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’  Ephesians 6:12

Bad things happen because bad evil beings attack us.  However, God does not leave us powerless.  We can be victorious when we use His weapons and His authority.  See Ephesians 6:13-18; Luke 10:19

Jesus is the eternal Victor.  If we persevere and fight, we will, one day, be with Him in eternal peace and harmony.  There are no battles to fight.  We fight them here on earth.

Is the Bible God’s Book?

Luke ‘…carefully investigated everything from the beginning.’  Luke 1:3  

What did he investigate?  He investigated the claims about Jesus and the Kingdom.  Where do we start if we want to investigate it?  There is only one book that reveals the life and work of Jesus and the Kingdom of God.  So the investigation centers on Scripture, the Bible.  

However, we first need to know if we can trust the Bible?  Is it the Word of God?  Is it a human book by human writers with their opinions, or a book authored by God and written down by men?  Simply said, is it a product of God or of man?  The one big reason we know that it is not a human product is the ‘strange’ facts revealed in the Bible.   

Bible –  product of God or of man?   

Could human writers who according to our estimates are actually ‘primitive,’ with little knowledge of philosophy, science, et cetera, imagine the following:     

• • • A Triune, eternal, invisible God.  God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit is one in essence and three in Person.   
    • A God who created the universe in six twenty four hour days.  Moses, who wrote the book, Genesis, grew up in the palace of Pharaoh.  It took many years to build pyramids, temples, store cities, et cetera.  Yet he claims this invisible God did it in six days.  Wow!
    • A Garden in Eden with two ‘strange’ trees.  It was a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  The tree of life will be eternally in the New Jerusalem, 

‘On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.’  Revelation 22:2b

• • • Who has ever heard of a fruit tree that bears a crop every month?
    • The Bible claims that God will destroy this present heaven and earth and replace it with a creation of stupendous beauty which will last forever.  That new earth will have an unimaginably large capital city.  It is in the shape of a cube with a width, height and length of 2,200 kilometers or 1,400 miles.  It streets are of gold.  
    • Join me and be amazed that the Bible, with those fantastic revelations, is banned, banished, abolished, decried and detested.  Many claim it is a myth, yet they fight that ‘myth’ will all their might.  If one just looks what happens around the world you understand the war against the Word.    
    • Could ordinary writers imagine the following: the Creator God has a Son who became the Son of Man and was born as an ordinary human being?  Later, after a sinless life and a three year ministry of healing and hope, He was crucified in a horrible way as only slaves and the worst of criminals were.  However, He was resurrected on the third day and after forty days went back to His Father in heaven.  We have the promise that He will come again.     

Conclusion

The Bible is a product of God, not of man. 

The Pilgrim’s Treasure, Part 2 of 3

In Part 1, I pondered… if I was forced to leave my home and possessions and could only take one article along, what would it be?  Without a doubt, it was my Bible.  In this blog I want to continue with the reasons for the decision.

#  The Bible is unique in the history of mankind.  

• No book like it has or will ever be written.  It is remarkable, extraordinary, miraculous and unparalleled in history.
• There is only one edition of the Bible.  From the time it was ‘published’ there have been no updates, no corrections, no additions, no revisions.  It is a once for all book, never to be repeated.  

#  The Bible is a book for one’s lifetime.  

• It is like nature, the more you study it the more layers of complexity you discover.  The Bible is a case of minimum words and maximum information.
• It would keep one busy for a long time and feed you with the ‘food of heaven’ because all the information we need about God, and His plans for us, are in this one book.

#  The Bible and the Jews.

• I will have a heavenly perspective of the news broadcasts filled with denunciations of the Jews who live in Israel at present, because the whole Bible is the product of that tiny nation.  So why the hostility of the world against them? 
• Jesus is a Jew and where He sits at the right hand of God, as the Son of God, He is still the ‘Root and Offspring of David.’ ¹ 
• Israel is the only nation in the world with whom God made a covenant.  He  said, ‘Although the whole world is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ ²  God warned them, if they do not keep the Covenant He made with them, and which they declared they will obey, they will be exiled from their land.  It happened three times in history – under the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans. 
• Yet God also promised them that He will bring them back to their promised land.  That momentous event took place in 1948.  It was immediately followed by a war of the Arab nations against them.  More wars followed later on, plus the incessant hatred and attempts to destroy them as a nation.  
• It is interesting that Matthew 27:25 tells us that when Jesus was crucified, the Jews brought a curse on themselves.  They shouted, ‘Let His blood be on us and on our children!’  That curse is still on them, because they have never confessed and broken it. 
• The basis of the world’s aggression against Israel is in God’s promise that He will bring them back, sprinkle clean water on them and forgive them.  Then the end will come with the final arrival of Jesus.  The devil does not like that because it will mean the end of his rule of the world. ³ 

Conclusion

‘The law from Your mouth [the Bible, God’s Word] is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.’  Psalm 119:72

References

1. Revelation 22:16  
2. Exodus 19:5-6  
3. Revelation 20:10