Placing Your Faith In The Bible--Not Man

And they said unto Moses, 

speak thou with us, 

and we will hear;

but let not God speak

with us,

lest we die.

Exodus 20:19

     Due to the recent death of a superstar and wonderful singer I was forced to admit my sadness for such a loss. While the world focuses on her talent, her vibrant ability to not only to be a great vocalist, but also a mentor for so many singers and musicians. Then, while I was was watching with interest and being also impacted (For I did enjoy her singing), I was drawn to the fact that she had "demons" in her life. Furthermore, her life had become, maybe always, focused on herself and when life become a "slushy" bed of rotten lemons, she turned not to God, rather to drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs to placate her despair. This loss, this life that had so much going for it, money, fame, family, etc., caused me to examine my life, maybe this will cause you to examine your life. What is the source of my happiness, what is the source for my faith in God? We who believe that we are saved, saved by grace, that grace was given to us by the gift of faith, our hope of an eternal life after our death; what is this thing faith? Then the light appeared and there was a moment of sadness for I, and maybe you have never wanted to disobey God, I knew and do know that God forgives my sin(s), my failures, but that never seemed enough, just to not want to disobey God; so why? As has been mentioned in these blogs, our faith is not in faith, rather if we have faith then our faith must have an object. Often our object of faith is placed on the Bible, or more often it is placed upon our favorite pastor, teacher, author, but if that is so, then our faith has no foundation. When we fail to come to grips with the foundation, our foundation for our faith, even though we may come to know about faith from the Bible, if our faith is not placed upon the right foundation, no knowledge will be enough to give us the right understanding for our faith unless our faith is placed upon the proper foundation of our faith, the object of our faith: that object is Jesus Christ. Oh! We may not consciously disobey God, it is not always a willful disobedience to God; we simply do not heed Him. Why? Our willful disobedience arises in our lives because we do not pay attention to His commandments and this disobedience comes into our lives because we do not love and respect Him. Yes! We will listen to a sermon that pleases our ears, we will try to employ some admonition from our favorite author, we will allow these people who seem to have influence, to have some special connection with God, to speak with us, but we will not allow God to speak with us. We are no different than those Israelites in the day of Moses. We prefer, we desire to listen to personal testimonies, we give more credence to those who seem to be His servants, but we do not desire to listen to God. We may be humiliated due to our disobedience, have shame on us because we have not heeded God, we find our selves terrified to allow God to speak to us: why? Because we know that if God speaks to us, that which He speaks must be done. How does this play out in our life? If a person speaks, it is his voice that we hear, then we can justify our disobedience, our not heeding what is said by saying: 'Well, that is simply your own idea, it may the truth of God's word, that I may not deny, but it is still your opinion.' We let ourselves off the hook. What may be worse is that we come to believe what that person may be teaching as though it is Biblical, and our lives, our faith is not according to Scripture. This is why I am taking the time to address the Bible for it is when we have the knowledge that the Bible is truly the word of God, and that God does and is speaking to us from His Word, then we can align our lives according to Scripture and not to what someone may say; we have done our work, we have the arsenal that is needed to ward off those heretics, those opposers to God and to His Word. Those who will teach another form of faith, built upon experiences, or upon a stoic form of Christianity that is nothing more than legalism. "Do this, do that, believe this experience, don't do that, have faith in what I say, etc., and we fall for such garbage. God speaks to us, through His word, and through preachers, teachers, authors, that are teaching His word, not their own opinions. How do I know? I read, the Bible, read the ante-NIcene fathers, read, the reformers, Luther, Calvin, Whiterspoon, Whitefield, Edwards, read others, take time and you will learn as the Holy Spirit, with your prayers for Him to do so, will guide you into the truth. Yes, we may have become humiliated, but we have done worse, we have, if it be possible, humiliated God, the creator, the Savior. When we realize this we wonder; 'Why have I been so dull, why have I been so obstinate, what is the object of my faith? When we take the time to know, we we study God's word, then we do hear God. He speaks to us. Now we find real delight, delight for our life. Things are important in this life, but they are not the object that becomes the center of our life, they are not what we place our faith upon. Our joy is founded upon Jesus Christ, our devotion is to Him, all other things are as the old song "Until Then," states; "These things are just borrowed for awhile." 

     I will continue to teach about the Bible, the Apocrypha, cannonization of the Bible, in order to raise and deepen your faith. But, until our faith, our devotion, for us to come to God with a contrite heart, is founded upon the ground for our faith, the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, the Bible is nothing more than another religious book. Yes, God, speak to us, we will not die. As your child, you will teach us and have given to us a revelation of You. This we find in the Bible, where You have spoken and where we find our rule of life, where we come into an understanding of the object of our faith; Jesus Christ. We become humbled, but joy is to be found, our lives are to be with You for eternity. This all you have promised and more, for You know that we are feeble, we become misled, we place our obedience on things we should not, but You have done more, You have sent into the world You Son, that Son, Your Wisdom, an infinite and eternal source of salvation to us, and furthermore, You have sent Your Holy Spirit to dwell in us, teaching us, guiding us. We need nothing more, we need just you.

Wilt thou also disannul my judgment?

    Wilt thou condemn me, that thou

mayest be righteous? Has thou an arm

    like God? or canst thou thunder 

with a voice like him? Deck thyself now

   with majesty and excellency; and 

array thyself with glory and beauty.

                          Job 40: 8-10

Spend Time In God's Word

Richard L. Crumb

           

Knowledge Is Important--Knowledge Is Necessary--Knowledge Will Not Save You!

For we can do

nothing against 

the truth, 

but for the 

truth.

2Corinthians 13:8

     Knowledge is important, it is necessary, but even Satan has knowledge, knowledge of God, knowledge that he is in opposition to God, but that knowledge will not save him, and it will not save you. So, why, study? Why go to all this depth to teach about the Bible? What will this knowledge do for you and me if it will not save me? Paul gives the account of nature, it presence for all to see and acknowledge that it is empirical, it is there for all to see, yet many will only see the trees, see nature in the raw, but that knowledge has not and will not bring salvation to them. While the empirical evidence for all to see may bring a notion that there is a God, that there is something more, a greater something that caused all there is to be, they have not nor will not acknowledge that God is personal, can be known, but this truth does not manifest in them the righteousness of God: "Because that which may be know of God is manifest in them; for god has shewed it unto them. for the invisible things of him form the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Romans 1:19-20). Knowledge may cause a person to know that there is a God, but knowledge will not necessarily cause a man to acknowledge God and give to Him glory: "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations and their heart was darkened" (Romans 1:21).  Why? Paul writes: "As it is written, 'There is none righteous, no not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God" (Romans 3:10-11). Knowledge being not able to lead a person to the truth, to the knowledge of God, cannot save a person from their sins, then, why should we study and get to know about the Scriptures we hold as sacred, inspired, from God, given to Man? Because the Bible reveals to man God, to those that God had granted to him faith: "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day'.....And He said, 'Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father" (John 6:44,65). There, there, is the reason to study, for when God has granted you faith, has drawn you to Him, then we desire to know Him, to get to know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, our thirst is for the truth, and the truth is to be found in the Bible. Yet, there are those even after having read and studied the Bible will choose a path that is not Scriptural, misleading those who desire to know and worship God. Also, when a person is saved because God has elected you to salvation, then our hearts are quickened and we become devoted to Him, and that devotion is demonstrated by our search to know Him, and He is revealed to us in Scripture. Knowledge of His word will deepen our faith, make us more assured of what we believe, that we have not been mislead, and we become ambassadors for Him: "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God" (2Corinthians 5:20). If then we are ambassadors and as ambassadors we are used by God to witness for Him in order that the Word of God is distributed throughout the world so that those who God has enabled will hear the Word of God and turn their hearts to Him, just as Paul stated, that those who have come to believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior came to this knowledge through his ambassadorship. We need the knowledge of God, but we need to the truth, not some watered down simulation of the truth, that which many Churches have done, dumbing down the congregants. True seekers of God, true individuals who desire to know God, those God has called to be righteous will study His word, will speak His word in truth: "But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of god, in much patience,in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left" (2Corinthians 6:4-7). This is why we study!

      I will give to you some food for thought, some academia: remember when God spoke to man, all He spoke was given to man as truth, as inspiration, then man wrote under that inspiration. Some comparisons are eye-opening: 

Work   When written  Earliest Copy Time Span No. Copies Accuracy of Copy

Homer

(Iliad)      

            900 B.C.      400 B.C.      500 Years      643                  95%

New Testament

        40-100 A.D.     125 A.D.        25 Years        5,000             99+%

Caesar Gallic Wars    

        100-44 B.C.    900 A.D.       1000 years            10         

Livy Roman History

   59 B.C.-17 A.D.                                                   20

Plato Teratalogies

       427-347 B.C.    900 A.D.          1200 years           7

Tacitus Annals

             100 A.D.     1100 A.D.          1000 years        20

Pliny the Younger History

       61 –113 A.D.      850 A.D.           750 years          7

Thucydides History

       460-400 B.C       900 A.D.         1300 years           8

Aristotle

      384-322 B.C.     1100 A.D.         1400 years           49

 

     This chart above is given to demonstrate that the Bible is not just numerically larger in the amount of manuscripts we have but that we have manuscripts that are closer in time to the original writings and to the event of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, scholastic studies have determined the almost complete accuracy of those manuscripts, one to the other. God does and has preserved His Word. Much more will be outlined and given in order to have the ammunition to use against those who will attempt to cause confusion and distrust, who themselves have not and will not believe that the Bible the book that Christians admit as the Word of God above all other religious books, we will be able to defend our faith.

 

And the Spirit and the bride say,

     Come. And let him that heareth 

say, Come. And let him that is athirst

     Come. and whoseover will, let him 

take the water of life freely.

                        Revelation 22:17

 

Be Glad, Rejoice, Give Honor To God

 

Richard L. Crumb 

 

Must We Know Biblical History To Find Salvation?

For I am not ashamed

of the gospel of Christ;

for it is the power of God

unto salvation to every one

that believeth; to the Jew first,

and also to the Greek. For therein

is the righteousness of God

revealed from faith to faith: 

as it is written, the just

shall live by faith.

Romans 1:16-17

      It is by faith that we have the righteousness of God, it starts with faith and it ends with faith: the Greek is very clear on this subject: "ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν"; the literal translation is "out of faith into faith" and it is by this faith that we live. But must we know Biblical history to find this faith? No! Some may ask: "Can we not find a salvation that is independent of history, a salvation that depends only on what is with us here and now? This objection does have weight but it ignores one of the evidences that is primary for the truth of the Gospel record. The evidence that we need to fully understand that history is an important aspect of our faith and understanding is to be found in the Christian experience. No, our experience of salvation does not depend upon what happened some 2,000 years ago, but that event has had effects that continue even today. That event as told to us by the Bible is the occurrence in Palestine when Jesus Christ died upon a cross as an innocent man for the sins of men and  we are to believe upon Him and His sacrifice. This is the record and we must examine that record and when we do we find that it is true. Yet, when we examine that historical event we find that this event in history is truly a living Savior today. 

     Caution is necessary when we examine this event there is a fatal error waiting to expose itself. It is an error that is at the root of liberalism. When I have spoke of a Christian experience I do not mean what many Churches teach in regards to having an "experience." Many have determined that this "experience" is all that is necessary. This experience that I write about is useful as to confirm the Gospel message: it is the event of history as recorded in God's Word. Some may admit to that experience as a true event in history yet place a great importance on a present experience of Christ in the heart, and that we are to hold that experience no matter what history has told us about the event of the crucifixion, or about Jesus Christ. They cavil at the results of Biblical criticism so that no matter what is told to us by our examination , no matter what history has to say about Jesus Christ, His death, His story of His resurrection, it is more acceptable to continue in the experience of Christ in our souls? Sounds reasonable, does it not? 

     There is a serious problem associated with the above statement; that of this experience as believed by many for that experience is not Christian experience. It may be a religious experience, but is not a Christian experience. Why? Because the Christian experience depends solely upon an event. Many Christians says to themselves: "I have meditated upon this problem, I have come to believe that I have sinned, I have been caught in my sin and I do not want to be caught in this or any sin, that is how to become right with God, I came forward when the pastor gave the invitation, I made a decision to be saved, and I have attempted to produce a righteousness that will be approved by God." But, when one examines the Bible, the Gospel that is recorded in the Bible, personal experience is downtrodden by the truth that is recorded in the Bible. It is not what I have done to be righteous, it is not my making a decision for Christ, (A teaching that is not to be found in the Bible), my righteousness does not depend on my efforts. What is to be found in our examination of this historical event that took place in Jerusalem is that what I had been striving for has already been accomplished by Jesus Christ when He died for me on the cross, when He shouted, 'It is finished." His redeeming work that was accomplished by His resurrection for without that event, that accomplishment by Jesus Christ, if it had not been done, all a person would have is an idea of an accomplishment, this would leave men in their sins. The Christian life depends altogether upon the truth of the New Testament record. 

     Christian experience, not some euphoric experience as demonstrated by those who are seeking some supernatural revelation to confirm their beliefs, attempting to provide proof that they are acceptable to God, this being done by their works, i.e., visions, revelations, gibberish tongue speaking, healing, and emptying themselves so to bring down to earth the kingdom of God, etc., yet, this form of religious experience can never possibly provide a substitute for the documentary evidence, rather the experience for the Christian when rightly used confirms the evidence as recorded in the Bible. We we research and examine the Biblical record we find that the evidence in the Gospel, the Bible is true, by the early date of the manuscripts, the internal evidence of their truth, the impossibility that this evidence is based upon a myth. It it when the Christian experience, based upon the truth or evidence in the Bible is rightly used that helps us and convinces us that the events of the Biblical record are true and did actually occur, but this evidence, while presenting truth, will not enable us to be a Christian, whether that event occurred or not. Why? Because to be a Christian is not by any means which a person causes of himself, rather it is a gift of God. 

     Now, we need to know something more about the Bible, that is, how and by what evidence did the Bible, a book, a book revered by Christians come to be compiled; why this letter, and not another, why this narrative and not another; and why did it take so many years to decide upon the 66 books we now have and are the inspired words of God. What about corruptions, variants, and those Apocryphal books? I shall next address those questions in the next following blogs. 

Whosoever therefore shall break 

     one of these least commandments,

and shall teach men so, he shall be 

    called the least in the kingdom

of heaven: but whosoever shall do

    them, the same shall be called

great in the kingdom of heaven.

                                  Matthew 5:19

May This Day Be Blessed For You

Richard L. Crumb