Did You Read "What I Believe"?

 

I wrote that as a foundation, as do many websites that speak to faith in a deity. There are usually specific points. I spent a few days working through what I wrote to be certain I expressed my own deeply held faith. What bothered me when I published this, and still does every once  in a while, is leading with believing that the Bible is the divinely inspired and preserved Word of God, the final authority.

As I stated then, it certainly isn’t the most important. Faith is uppermost in mankind’s lives, even in the Bible:

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. {Ephesians 2:8-9 KJV)

But, it does not work separate from God’s grace. Thus our faith is based on our relationship with our Father in heaven. That phrase comes from the Bible, from the lips of a man who claimed to have become human to fulfill millennia of prophecy.

1) Why would people write about Him?

2) Why should we believe them?

There are four books called Gospels that include occurrences in Jesus’ life. If you need to know what Jesus I mean, read those four gospels – then continue into the fifth book, Acts of the Apostles. After Jesus’ death on the cross, people continued to write about Him, often to explain how they saw what He meant, and how He lived.

Not how He lived while in a human body on earth, but how He was resurrected and is eternally with God, whose presence is detailed in the Torah and Talmud. The Torah is the first five books of what is included in our Bible. The Talmud contains the history of the Jewish religion and does not contain all of the other books in the Bible’s Old Testament.

Jesus said:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. (Matthew 5:17 KJV)

And, He did as He said:

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. (Luke 4:16-21 KJV)

While the four gospels are not exact duplicates of each other, none of them deny Jesus words in any other. All at one time or another confirm that these four men considered Him to be the prophesied Messiah (or, in Greek, Christ) in the Torah and Talmud. We know that from an incident in Berea following Paul’s preaching:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few. (Acts 17:11-12 KJV)

It takes a seeking heart, though, for Paul studied those exact same scriptures that the Bereans and it still took Christ meeting him on the road to Damascus to open his heart. For me, it took several years in church before I understood that the Bible had a message that affected my life more than attending with my parents.  It’s a decision that each one of us must make on our own – we can’t do it for anyone else, no matter how much we love them.

I’ve heard many preachers who tell us being saved keeps us from going to hell. One of the saddest sermons I’ve heard was at a Youth night Revival meeting where the fears of hell were drawn in vivid detail, almost with apparent relish. I missed any of the words that convinced me what John “. . . God is love” (1 John 4:8, 4:16)

John 4 is a beautiful chapter for defining how God is love. Take time to read it. It will help understand why John earlier wrote:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16 KJV)

“Whosoever” means “the person or people who; any person who”, which leaves me with no doubt that my name, and your name, can be substituted in that verse: . . . that Phyllis believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Yes – believing on Jesus as the promised Messiah is personal.

What I believe is very personal to me and I pray that those reading this understand I totally pray they will understand the message and read the Bible with an open heart to a Creator who is love.

Well, this could go on and on. Thank you for spending some time with me - now, would you please spend some time with these scriptures?