You Can Know You Have Eternal Life
#652
Man's Search for Inner Peace (66)
Can you trust the Bible for your eternal life? (cont.)
by Jim Mettenbrink
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Last week we considered the origin
of the Bible - from the inner most part of God Himself. No
part of it came from man. knowing this first, that no prophecy
of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never
came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were
moved by the Holy Spirit
(2 Peter 1:20-21). Over
1500 verses remind us via such phrases as Thus says
the Lord exclaim it is from God. Those
verses also serve as a subtly implicit warning it would be sinful
to change them (edit the Bible) or reinterpret them.
Yet that is the arrogant audacity
of mankind - change Gods word to suit himself.
Decades ago, an old preacher told
of a lady with whom he was studying. Any
passage in the Bible which did not agree with her, she cut out
with a scissors. She
had made herself the critic of God. She
knew better than He. Recently,
in a discussion with a person who did not like the instruction
of a Bible passage, said, They need to change that.
Who is they?
That this is not rare, was
recently revealed when a person in a Bible class propounded the
New Testament should be changed to include homosexual marriage.
Obviously these folks think
the Bible is authored by humans and subject to editing spurred
by mere whims of personal preference! Self-made
gods! Humanists!
(Judges 21:25).
If homosexuals were born with a
homosexual gene, then God is a deceiver because He calls it sin
which prevents folks from going to heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9,10)!
How could God who sent Jesus
to offer salvation to everyone (Acts 17:30; 2 Peter 3:9)
create a person as a sinner unable to repent of sin, simply to
send them to hell? The
ultimate assertion is the Bible is open to any interpretation
as long as you pray about it then the desired interpretation
is acceptable. Such
confusion! What does
God say about this implicit altering of His word?
Around 600BC, Gods prophet
Jeremiah wrote, this
word came from the Lord, saying, Thus says the Lord: Stand in the
court of the Lords house, and speak to all the cities of
Judah, which come to worship in the Lords house, all the
words that I command you to speak to them.
Do
not diminish a word (Jeremiah 26:1, 2).
Dont change one word!
When Jesus walked the earth,
He emphasized the unchangeability of Gods word, And it is easier for
heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law
to fail (Luke
16:17). Paraphrased
- It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for even
one letter of Gods word to change.
Mans pride to have, yea demand,
his way is not new. Shortly,
after Israel was taken into Assyrian captivity in 722BC, the
people in Judah did not learn from observing 90% of rebellious
Israels population removed from their homeland just north
of Judah (Amos 5:3). Isaiah
called Judah a rebellious people, whose attitude was Do not prophesy to us
right things; Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits (Isaiah 30:10).
Isnt that the attitude
so many have today, who want to change Gods word to suit
their rebellious desires? Shouldnt
Gods word be sweet rather than sour to our taste (Psalm
119:103)? How does
it taste to you?
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