Firstly, the Bible is the book of God which He gave to the world through men chosen by Him for that purpose. It is divided into two parts, The Old Testament, or covenant and the New Testament, or covenant. The Bible was written by approximately forty writers over a period of approximately fifteen hundred years. The New Testament, was written over a period of fifty years by nine authors and was completed with the Gospel, the Epistles and the final book, ‘Revelation’ written by the apostle John between eighty-five and ninety AD. The Bible is a record of who God is and all that He has created and done by the power of His word. The Bible reveals the plan of God for the world which includes the salvation of man, this salvation Jesus-Christ made possible with the Covenant of grace which He sealed it with His own blood, shed on the Cross.

The Bible claims that God is the source of what is recorded in it, and says: “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the Universe.” (Hebrews 1:1-2) To these writings there is given the following authority: “All Scripture (meaning the whole Bible) Is God-breathed (inspired) and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correction, and TRAINING IN RIGHTEOUSNESS, SO THAT THE MAN OF GOD may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (1Timothy 3:16.) To these words are added the following: “And we have the word made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy Of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along (inspired) by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1: 19-21.)

There are many other references in the Bible to support the statements made above, but these have to suffice, since this is not meant to be a precise study on Bible Inspiration. Nevertheless, it is important to declare it, many men spoke over a long period of time, as stated, but it is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that creates the unity of the scriptural subject which runs right through it, which is Jesus-Christ who came into the world with a specific mission, an important part of that Mission was to destroy the works of the devil: ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’ (1 John 3:8) another important part of His mission was to save man from the dark eternity that awaits him, by making of him a new man, born anew by the Holy Spirit. Jesus said: ‘I am come to seek and to save that which was lost.’. Before God cast out Adam from the Garden of Eden, He promised to send a deliverer, Jesus Christ is the promised deliverer. (Genesis 3:15.)

Many believe that Jesus came mainly so that man may be forgiven of His sins! Of course, to deal with the question of sin, is one of the things Jesus came for. Sin has created a huge wall between man and God, and Jesus came to destroy that wall and reconcile man with God.  He did that, but if that is all that He came to do then, those who believe that are deluded and are not saved, because salvation starts with a new creation. Jesus said plainly to Nicodemus, an enlightened Pharisee, who made an important confession concerning Jesus Christ saying: ‘Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who came from God. For no-one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with Him. In reply Jesus declared: I tell you the truth, no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.’ (John 3: 3-2) There has to be an act of God, to be born again is the creation of a New spirit, the part that died in Adam when he sinned is recreated, only God can create, all that He creates is through the power of His word. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a member of a Jewish religious sect, they were strong believers in the circumcision of the flesh, nothing seemed more important to them than to be circumcised, a rite instituted since Abraham by the will of God. All gentiles embracing the Jewish religion, had to be circumcised, even then such a convert was never a Jew, he was but a proselyte. The apostle Paul writing to the Galatians, who before his conversion was a staunch Pharisee, understood that: ‘Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule, even to the Israel of God’ (Galatians 6: 15-16) That’s what happens to a man that is truly converted, just as Paul was, by the grace of God. ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in (or through) Jesus Christ our Lord.’ (Romans 6:23)

Firstly, the New Testament teaches that a man who has known a true conversion, becomes a new creation, he is born again of the Holy Spirit. He is saved when he believes that Jesus Christ is Lord meaning Yahve, (Jehovah), this conversion follows a conviction created by the Holy Spirit, and believing that Christ died for his sins he is forgiven and receives eternal life!  Eternal life is not earned, one does not receive it as a reward, it is free gift, free for those that believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins and rose again for their justification. It all happens on earth, at the moment one experiences this New Birth, a new life to be lived on here for the glory of God! I say a lot more concerning this subject in other chapters. The main purpose of my work is to introduce you and others to this ‘New life’ which I also named the: ‘The better life’. It can only be a better life if it is NEW! If you are not sure that you are saved then you are not a Christian! Eternal life is the greatest GIFT God can give to an unworthy man, it is a most amazing gift! Jesus-Christ Himself makes mention continually to the purpose for his coming on earth, saying: “I am the gate; whosoever enters though me will be saved. I am come that my sheep may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:9-12.)  And, “Whosoever believes in the Son of God has everlasting life”. (John 3:36.) One can only find this in the Bible, God’s Book, He has chosen to reveal Himself in it, through the written Word and the living Word, none else but Jesus Christ our Lord!

Secondly, since God is the author of the Bible we can trust Him to do what is written in the Bible, and what he says is an excellent truth for you as it is to me, for it alone can renew our whole being and make Him real to us WHICH IS the greatest thing ever. Because in sending Jesus God did something amazing for those that would believe in Jesus-Christ: saying: “if you believe in the Son of God you will have everlasting life!” In His priestly prayer, which is the real Prayer of the Lord, the only prayer he prayed audibly, He did it for the purpose of declaring some very precious points of Christian Doctrine, Jesus says to His father: ‘Father the time has come, (the concluding time of His presence on earth, the time of His death for the redemption of all those the Father gave to Him,) glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you have granted Him authority over all the people that He might give eternal life to all those you have given Him. Now this is Eternal Life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:2-3) 

Eternal life is free gift but given if you surrender your life and all you have to Christ as Lord and Master! A gift cost something to the giver, but it costs nothing to the receiver, Jesus paid with His lifeon a cruel CROSS through excruciating suffering, on it He shed His blood to the last drop, this is why eternal life is in Him, and He alone can give it to all those that believe that on that CROSS He died for them, bearing the full weight of their sins. Most Christians believe that they will go to heaven when they die; but others believe that it is presumptuous to say so, and out of order, in their estimation it is only when we die that man knows, after he is judged where he will spend eternity, heaven or hell! Such a belief makes the work of Christ ineffective, I have discovered that most Christians believe this erroneous teaching, if man’s eternity will only be decided on judgment day, according to how he lived it during his lifetime! That belief is not the Gospel and Christ and Jesus died in vain; there was no reason whatsoever for Him to come on earth and do what He did; In that case, eternal life is not a gift it is a reward, it is not by grace without merits, but through works of the flesh, for which there is no reward whatsoever! This is not what Jesus taught nor His apostle, it is written: ‘ “Whosoever believes in the Son of God has everlasting life” right now not later. So, will go to heaven, all those that have eternal life down here and now by faith in Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice. Time does not allow me to mention them all, but it will suffice for now to state that eternal life is a free gift from God, given by grace alone without merits to all that have believed that when Jesus-Christ died on the cross, He died for their sins and saves for ever those that accept Him as their Lord and Saviour; such is the power of grace, one can be saved right now! 

In the heart of God, it was decided before the world was made, who He would save, and He gave them to Jesus Christ, the elects are the true Church, which He redeemed by His blood. The Bible states: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Corinthians 15:23.) We hall cover this more amply in our future studies. Since Eternal life is a gift it must be free, there is no price tag on a gift. When you receive a gift, you do not ask the giver: “How much do I owe you?” So, one does not have to earn ‘Eternal Life’ or wait for it, therefore the believer in Christ has eternal life as soon as he accepts Jesus-Christ as Saviour! 

If you ask Him sincerely to save you right now He will do it. The Bible is a unique book, no other religious book gives such assurance no other book on earth can equal such an amazing thing: ‘that this actual life is received down here on earth and that it can never be lost once a person becomes a true disciple of Jesus-Christ. He is forever in Him, and inherits all that Jesus is.’ ’ Eternal life is not dispensed by an organisation, such as a Church, and the clergy has nothing to do with it, not even the Pope, it is between a man and God, God grants eternal life personally, and faith is given to a lost sinner by the Holy Spirit through the preaching or reading of the Gospel! Therefore, the Bible is the Book of books, God reveals Himself in it and he speaks in it to mortal man and tells him how he can become immortal like Him, because Eternal life is God’s life, of Him is born every believer, as it is written: “Jesus was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him. He came to what was His own, (people- the Jews) but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all that received Him, to those that believe in His name (Jesus means Saviour) He gave the right to become children of God ~ children born not of natural descent, not of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (of His own will)”. (John 1:10-13.) So, a true Christian is a completely different being not because he wanted to be one, but because God chose him to be one of His children. No child comes into the world by asking to come; it is born by the will of the parents. So, every born-again believer, and he alone, can claim that God is His Father, and he must believe that God willed him into His family and that He will never repudiate him, but will love him dearly forever. It is written: 

‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blest us in the heavenly realms, with every spiritual blessing in Jesus Christ. For he chose us before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us to be adopted us as His sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.’ (Ephesians 1:3-5)

It is in the Bible alone that that God introduces, to the world, Jesus-Christ His Only Son; hence, this Holy Book is a gift from Him to the World! Every utterance is inspired by the Holy Spirit, it is in the New Testament that God reveals Himself in three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Right from the book of Genesis, which is the first book in the Bible, God addresses all his promises to the sons of Adam, the first promise being Genesis 3:15. Adam, the first man, was created perfect out of the dust of the earth, (We shall speak more amply about him, later in our studies.) We read in the third chapter how Adam disobeyed God’s commandment and became a slave of the devil. But it is right there, that, we find the first reference to the coming of a liberator, a deliverer who, according to God’s promise would deliver men from the power of sin. Speaking to Satan, who embodied a serpent to approach Eve in the Garden of Eden and tempt her, God says to the devil: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring (or seed) and hers; He will crush your headand you will strike His heel.” (Genesis 3:15.) This prophecy was fulfilled on Calvary where Jesus died, and by His death destroyed the power of sin, of death and of the devil. So, the Bible is a book, the only book, in which God reveals His plan for the world and how in Christ and through Him, He will save the elects and bring this world to a sudden end to create a new heaven and a new earth. (Revelation 21:1) 

God gave the Bible through His chosen people the Hebrews, Moses, a Hebrew was the first man that contributed to it, and wrote the first five books of the Bible, called the ‘Pentateuch’. Much of the Book of Genesis Moses wrote from direct relations given by God. The Old Testament was regarded, and still is by the Nation of Israel, as the book of God that He entrusted to them! It is to the descendant of Abraham, whom God called out to walk before Him, that He chose to reveal Himself to him after calling him out of ‘Chaldea’, by faith he left not knowing where he was going. God chose to bring out of his loins a people through which was destined to the world, His Son, Jesus-Christ, to be the Saviour, who would bring out from all the nation upon earth the elect, His ‘CHURCH’, thus fulfilling the promise that in him, (Abraham) God will bless all the nations of the world! God said to Abraham when he called Him: “And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.  Who Curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:2-3) The world would now be a better place had the Israelites understood God’s purposes.

Thus, the first portion of the Bible, the Old Testament, shows how the Lord brought into being the people of Israel and contains the basis of their religion! It is to them that, through His servant Moses, God gave the Ten Commandments. It is in the New Testament that we learn how, through Jesus Christ His Son, all the promises of the Old Testament are shared with all the nations of the world, for He sent Him to save Jews and Gentiles that would believe in Him! Nevertheless, the first eleven chapters of Genesis contains a concise history of two thousand years of man on earth, but their importance is majestic and reveals a lot concerning God, His power, patience and all His attributes! These chapters describe what happened centuries after Adam’s exit from Eden, when in Mesopotamia God confused the tongues, after He destroyed the Tower of Babel, which was built by a sinful and rebellious people, as a challenge to God’s sovereignty, but they quickly realised that one cannot overrule God, and worship idols at will and not be judged for it. God is the Sovereign ruler and King of the Earth, which He created and which He has never abandoned to this day, His will is paramount. It would be wise for all to remember it. In the present situation, the Bible is regarded as the book of the Christians, in par with any other religious books. It is tragedy, from what is called ‘The Church’ for much of it does not believe all that the Gospel teaches, and much of the modern Church teaching centres on morals and ethics, naturally, as such, it does not differ much from other religions. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that, in it, God speaks to the world, for through the Gospel, which is a record of the life and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, God offers eternal life only to those that believe in Jesus is His Son! For it is written: ‘In Him (Jesus Christ) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment ~ to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.’ (Ephesians 1:7-10) 

It is by reading these words and meditating on them, for they are too important to skip over them, that we realise how impoverished are people that follow teachers that disregard the richness of the Christian doctrine, and the scope of its declarations. There is no limit to the grace through which God reveals His full plan of redemption for those that be in Christ! There is no importance to what Christian confession one belongs, if it being Christ’s disciple that guaranties, forgiveness of sins, life eternal and every blessing needed while Christians, as pilgrims, live their life on earth! It is written: ‘In Christ we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace, that He lavished on us (true believers) with all wisdom and understanding.’ (Ephesians 1: 7-8) In fact belonging to a wrong confession is deadly!

Thirdly, since in this Book, God is speaking to men, no-one should think that it does not apply to him and that somehow, one can stay neutral and like an ostrich, hide its head in the sand! There is not such a thing as ‘no man’s land’ in the Word of God; many people believe, that if one doesn’t believe the Bible and does not obey God’s commandments, that somehow one is exempt from his responsibility to God. How foolish! To obey God and live according to the teachings of the Lord Jesus-Christ and that of His apostles, applies to every person under the sun. It is true that many choose not to believe them, but their future is bleak, for faith in Christ divides the world into two distinct entities, the saved and the lost. Those that have surrendered and believed in Christ, through the grace of God, are destined for heaven, the home of the redeemed, whereas, the lake of fire, which is the second death, (Revelation 20) is destined for all those that did not surrender to the Lord, and have lived as rebels to God and have rejected His grace! The prophesy concerning this last dealing of God to unbelievers says this. ‘The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and the Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person (Except those that are disciples of Christ) was judged according to what he had done. Then death and Hades were thrown in the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was found written in the book of life, he was thrown in the lake of fire, the lake of fire is the second death!’ (Revelation 20:13-15) 

The book of life is the book that contained the name of those, that by faith in Christ, have been born again to eternal life, through the grace of God they came out of darkness into light, from Satan to God. The dead are sons of Adam, as the Bible says in Adam all men die. All men are born spiritually dead, the only way out of this spiritual state, which means that one is cut off from God through Adam’s sin. Christ has come to reconcile man with God by giving new life to those that accept Him. Jesus Christ says that He is the door, the difference between the saved and the lost, the dead and the living depends on what side of the door one is. Outside of Him one is dead, cut off from God. Inside that door are the living, the redeemed people in Christ, they share His life forever and forever. Make sure on what side of the door you are, for by it, humanity is divided into two camps, the children of God or children of the devil! 

You may believe what you like, God gives everyone that right, you may live without law and without God, but it will not help you one iota when you stand before your Creator! We all live as tenants in God’s world and we cannot live in it as we please, there are the same rules for all. Everybody will be judged by God according to the things written in the Bible, so it is time for you to investigate what God says to you and about you. This international flavour of the Bible is plainly proved in the second part of the Bible, which is the New Testament. By the grace of God, Christians are those who have accepted the Bible as the Word of God and they have believed in Jesus as Saviour. Jesus is the central subject from the Book of Genesis to Revelation, but sadly not even all Christians really believe in the Bible, many have abandoned the truth, and many in clerical habits, spread it and deceive the people, and have set up their own ideas, by which they live their life, and whoever lives that way is an idolater, but their religion will lead them into hell for which they are condemned already! This is the message of the Bible to the World!

God says in His book how we, humans, have come in the world, who we are, and where we are all going. It begins with the creation of our planet and it ends with the creation of a new world, to which is destined the new humanity which God is creating, by faith in Jesus-Christ, his Son. The world is very old, but God created Adam only six thousand years ago or there about! The Bible dignifies man above the animal creation and shows that God spent a special time and a lot of care in creating the first man Adam, moulding him out of the dust of the earth; God did not do this with the rest of His creation. No animal was ever told that he would be able to call God his Father in heaven. In the Bible, God does not seek to prove anything to man, especially those who would want him to dialogue with Him and satisfy their foolish and ridiculous whims! He does not give, in the Bible, details to satisfy and gratify such men’s unbelief; men, they find time to criticize Him and try to prove that they are bigger than their Creator, with every action, dig their whole even deeper by ridiculing Him, His Word, and those that believe in Him record. God does not give scientific facts or analysis for the satisfaction of unbelieving morons, whether they are scientists or plain stupid; The Almighty just makes statements, clear and plain, so uncomplicated that a child can believe and yet the wisest of men cannot fathom out what He is saying and what He can do! You either believe what God says in the Bible or you don’t; it changes nothing to the truth, but the difference it makes to you will be atrocious; if you do not believe in Jesus His Son, and accept Him as your Lord and Saviour, you are already doomed for hell, just as much as I was until I was, by the grace of God brought to believe and accept Jesus Chris as my Lord and Saviour. God alone, being God, gives one that choice! Mind you, the Bible does say that: “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1.) If that is true, then the rest is true as well! 

The Bible alone states that this earth will not last forever. It begins with facts concerning its beginning (In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1) and it alone foretells how it will end.  All traces of sin will be done away with. Too much wrong has been done on this planet, for God not to end its existence. The stains of sin run very deep, sufferings, injustices, pride that digs ditches between rich and poor, blacks and white, yellows and reds, and all wars will be no more; that must be heaven! So, this fabulous planet will disappear as lightning, a better one is promised in the Holy Book. We read in it: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons (Christians awake!) ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness”. (2 Peter 3:9-11) It is wise; therefore, to prepare for such an awesome moment, because whatever we acquire down here is temporary, whereas the new world will last forever. There are many very rich people in the world today. They have amassed great fortune God alone knows how, by divine decree their days are counted, just as those of all other men. When the bell tolls they will have to go and they will not take one sou with them. They came naked in the world and naked they will leave it! That is true righteousness, unavoidable. Therefore, this world will be replaced by a new one, which will be created for the new humanity that Jesus-Christ, through the preaching of the gospel, is gathering from among all nations,  

Fourthly, the preaching of the Bible, inspired by the Holy-Spirit, preached by anointed Men, becomes a creative word, powerful, it alone, being the Word of God, is capable to create a new life in those that God chose unto himself before the world began. We read in the Bible words spoken by Jesus: ‘All (those) that the Father (His Father, God Almighty) gives me will come to me, and whosoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him at the last day. No-one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:37-46). 

This is where the spirit of the New Covenant is totally different to the Old Covenant.  Under the Law, all depended on what man did, it is doing completely what the Law said that one could live, every disobedience had to be dealt with and a sacrifice had to be offered, to blot out the transgression, finally, it proved to be impossible to follow, and no-one could do it, until Jesus came, and by fulfilling it He eradicated the old law and put it out of the way. The New Covenant, could therefore, be established, which works positively. Since Jesus died and rose again, all the demands of God have been fulfilled, hence all that believe in Him, are just as He ism ‘Christ in you the hope of Glory.’ One cannot boast of achieving anything by the works of the Law, for it is written: ‘Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the Law? No, but on that of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith, apart from observing the Law.’ (The Ten Commandments) - (Romans 3:27-28) 

Much of Christianity, so called, is controlled by the spirit of the Old Covenant, the Clergy in most cases is based on the Jewish Priesthood, and everything depends on obedience to the Ten Commandments, plus all the other precepts of man’s imagination, to such people Christ died in vain. It is a desperate situation because no-one will attain righteousness by obedience to the Ten Commandments, those that believe in Jesus Christ are freely justified by faith: ‘For those that God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those that He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, he also glorified.’ (Romans 8:29-30)

There is not a man on earth that can, by a natural birth, bring another Christian into the world. A true Christian is a man who has, after a calling from God, believed in Jesus-Christ and through Him, by a mighty action of the Holy-Spirit was created anew. There is not a Church in the world that can guaranty to make a Christian from any one that joins it. Going to Church is good, but just going there will not turn anyone into a Christian; if one goes to church, for the sake of it, such a person is wasting its time and deludes itself. The true Church is a gathering of people that have become righteous by faith in Jesus Christ, which means that God sees them as if they had never committed a sin! Unless one hears the Gospel, repents from one’s sins and accepts Christ as Saviour, just going to a Church will do nothing! Having said that, true Christians love going to Church, it is an important part of their service, but it is at home and in the place of work, in times of pleasure and leisure, in every sort of human relationships that a Christian, lives his new life, as revealed and taught by the Gospel, with the constant help of the Holy-Spirit. He will still do things that are wrong, he will still sin, but by the work of God in Him, he will eventually be delivered as an overcomer. We shall enlarge on that truth later, in the development of this study.

Lastly, if you have reached this paragraph, and by the Word of God you desire to continue in the quest for this life eternal, if you still don’t have, what can you do? You must be prepared to leave all the prejudices you may have concerning God and His SON Jesus-Christ, and be prepared to reject all the negative statements you may have heard about the Bible, in which God reveals His will for all men. You must accept That Jesus Christ died for your sins, by repentance and faith in the LORD Jesus-Christ. If you have not got a Bible you should try to get one as soon as possible, in your own language if you can, or in English. The NIV is a good version, it is written in modern English. I believe that the King’s James version is still the best translation, but the Old English language, used in it, may cause you some problems. In all my quotations I use the NIV, simply because it is written in modern English spoken worldwide. For my personal reading I still prefer the old translation. Once you get a Bible, read it daily until the Holy-Spirit shows to you how much you need Jesus every day, who alone gives us access to God and life eternal.

What is the Bible? The Bible is exclusively a spiritual book. The message, inspired by the Holy- Spirit, can only be truly understood and appreciated by men whose lives have been changed, by a new spiritual birth, concerning which the Bible says: “We have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy-Spirit.” (2 Peter 1: 19-20.)  I never tireto read and quote this portion of the Bible, it reminds me that God speaks to me and that the Bible reveals Him to me, insignificant as I am!

The KJV (King James’ Version) says that these prophecies came by the inspiration of the Holy-Spirit, which means that men wrote it but the Holy-Spirit is its author. Written by around forty men over a period of fifteen centuries, it concerns one central figure as stated: Jesus, the eternal Son of God.Men have fought it, burned it in public places of many capitals and towns of the world, especially in Europe; but it still is the best-seller. That the Bible still exists, translated into hundreds of languages and dialects, proves that it is the Word of God, for He alone could have protected it against the wrath of men, and inspired so many people to translate it! It proves that God wants all people to know about the only way of Salvation and shows how one receives Eternal Life! Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6.) The following verse gives us the reason why Jesus-Christ, The Son of the living God, is the Only way to God. I could say it is because He is God, or that He is now at the right Hand of God, but the following verse says it better: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence ~ Jesus-Christ ~ the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sin, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” He is the only one who can and does turn aside God’s wrath, taking away our sins.” (1 John 2:1-2.) And: “The blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7.)  

In the Bible, we can read the following: “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the Word of God, which is at work in you who believe.” (1 Thessalonians 2: 13.) The Word of God has great power and when one believes in it as such, God’s power begins to work mightily and changes the outlook to life and reconciles man with Him! Sin by its very nature produces enmity, firstly between God and himself. When Adam sinned, He was put out of the Garden of Eden, where God and him fellowshipped together, worked together, spoke together, then came Satan and beguiled him and by obeying Satan, to rebel against God, he sinned and spoiled it! Adam found that God would not tolerate sin and, contrary to the devil’s insinuations, he was cast out from God’s presence, an angel, with a flaming sword, stood at the gate of the Garden to forbid him to return and partake of the tree of life. 

Since then men are outcasts and there is no way of return to God to commune with Him. Sin has put enmity between man and God to this very day! Then, sin created enmity between man and man. The first human family was marred by the first son of Adam, Cain, who though warned of God, for no reason at all, hated Abel his brother and killed him. God saw it and warned Cain and said: ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face down cast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it. Then Cain said to his brother Abel: Let’s go out to the field. And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel, and killed him!’ (Genesis 4:6-7) God sent Cain away from his community into wondering being bereft from the blessing of the Covenant! Sin is like a fire, burning inside the heart of man, and unless it is quenched, it will tear, destroy, and burn anything that stands in its way, and finally send man to hell. God forewarned Cain as to the fact that man does not have to give in to temptation, but he did not, and as the Bible says, ‘Sin when it is finished it brings forth death.’

With Christ God sent the answer and Jesus said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh to the Father but by me. (John 14:7) The deliverer, promised to Adam and Eve, (Genesis 3:15) has come and through faith in Christ God has made a way for man. The apostle Paul established the church in Thessalonica, by being true to the gospel and faithful to his Master. His contribution to the Christian doctrine is massive, his writings form the best part of the New Testament. The Gospel he preached he did not learn it from the mouth of the apostles but directly by revelation from Christ,who appeared to him on few occasions. Through him, thousands of sinners were brought to the Lord, firstly, because his preaching was anointed by the Holy Spirit and secondly by the power of the Holy-Spirit they accepted his words as God’s words. 

These two things are absolutely essential to lead people to Christ. If the preaching you hear in your church, if you have a church, is the Gospel that Paul preached, then the Holy Spirit can convict you and lead you to accept Jesus Christ as your Saviour, such is the power of The Gospel. From the moment that you accept Him you are saved and as you go on He will make Himself real to you; but as I have said before, you really need to get a Bible and read it. As you read it certain passages will become real to you and feed your faith, other passages will do the same, because they will contain what you need at that stage of your experience. So, do not give up, God has great things in store for you! If you are a Christian then you will agree with what I have just written. It is so important because if you cannot discern the power of God in what you hear, or read, you will never be saved! If the preacher is not faithful to this Gospel, he may be a powerful man, appealing and good with words, moral and upright, he may even be pastor, or a bishop even a Cardinal, yet his influence will do nothing to lead you to Christ. What can be perplexing to the human mind is that the same words, preached in the same venue, with the anointing of the Holy Spirit do not touch everybody in the same way, although they heard the same preacher, the same message about the Lord, some believe and are saved, others are not. It is a great mystery! But faith is only born in the heart of those that receive faith from God; their hearts, touched by the Holy-Spirit, are convicted of sins and He leads them to Jesus. 

The Bible confirms this and says: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith ~ and this is not from yourselves it is the gift from God. ~ not by works, so that no-one can boast. For we are (we, means all who have believed in Christ) God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:8-10.) One cannot read such words and not believe that salvation is purely and totally God working out working it out in people that He chose before the foundation of the world! This is why the Bible is such a ‘must-have’ for in it we find amazing revelations of God and what He is doing in Christ and through Him now in lives of people and the world, His word is not only for those that believe in Him, His Only Son, but it applies to the whole future of men on this planet, to miss it is a tragedy! He alone changes hearts when, how and in whom He wants. No one can make himself believe, nobody can save himself, nor keep himself saved. No-one will find in any other book, religious or not, the truths that are written in the Bible, it is a UNIQUE BOOK, dealing with unique subjects, it surpasses by far the wisdom of men and is miraculously written, miraculously preserved throughout centuries of satanic opposition, and ever true to Christ’s mission, for Jesus is still saving men today! The Good Shepherd will not rest until the last of his sheep is brought into the fold!

Every believer in Christ has believed in Him because of what he heard by the preaching of the Gospel! God’s word sown in the heart of an unbeliever by the Holy Spirit creates faith and leads the listener to Christ, then only, is man’s will, freed from bondage to Satan, and touched by God, the Holy Spirit, can he trust fully in what Jesus Christ did for him on the CROSS. A true Christian is the greatest miracle of God, he is born of God, shares the same eternal life, a life that he shall never lose because the new life in him is eternal , as eternal as God. Halleluiah a million times! All mysteries are taken away; the word of God alone creates life. Paul reminds these Ephesian Christians, that they are his workmanship; they have been created in Christ. There are many other passages from the Bible we could quote, yet I must finish with the following: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (such a statement raises questions) How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach except they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news! Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:13-17.) I often think of our Pastor, a converted coal Minor, who, in obedience to the call of God, came from Poland to Norther France, to evangelise the polish coal miner that were working in the northern coal fields, and by His simple faith in Christ through Him, God has drawn my Parents to believe in Christ with many others of their mining friends and neighbours. As a child I have seen miracles taking place, bodies being healed, and amazing conversions taking place. The testimonies of many of these simple folks still burn in my heart; I feel I have been very privileged to meet them and grow in Christ among them!

Unless you open yourself, mind body and soul, to the word of God, unless you humbly listen to it, or read it, and obey it, you will never receive this eternal, spiritual, all enthralling life; GOD’S LIFE! Can you continue to live the life you are living in the light of eternity and be lost forever? Jesus-Christ is not just a prophet speaking divine words; as many believe Him to be, He is God,  He actually is divine, God-man, and Man-God and so are his words, because He is the Word, incarnate!  As it is written: “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made (Created) that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. --- The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen Him, the glory of the One and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1-14.) Therefore, Jesus alone changes the natural man into a spiritual man through a new birth, having received a new spirit man becomes capable of understanding what God says! Not at once of course, but has he reads the Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he begins to grasp the plan of God and His will for his life, which was decided before the world began, he becomes a child of God according to His will, part of the elects, those that God calls to salvation by Faith In Jesus-Christ, His Only Son! 

So what is the Bible? It is the book that also reveals the little I have written and declared with deep conviction and love for God and Jesus Christ. It is the Bible alone that reveals the existence of a cruel, violent being, called Satan. The very one that embodied a serpent and entered the Garden of Eden as declared in Genesis. In the form of a serpent he beguiled Adam and Eve, from which we are all their descendants. As men are born into the world they all bear the same curse, rejected from God living this spiritual death, which is the life of all unbelievers, a life without God! The natural man is a victim of the devil. Satan is a real being, a fallen archangel, and slave under his power man cannot understand the Bible and its teachings being the Word sent by God, His Son Jesus-Christ. The Bible teaches that true ministers of Christ are those that: “Have renounced secret and shameful ways; they do not use deception, nor do they distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly theycommend themselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if the gospel is veiled, it is veiled (hidden from view) to those who are perishing. Satan, the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4: 2-4.) What a deception! What a cruelty! How can one being, with the help of countless fallen angels hate men so much so as to keep them blinded to all the truth, and the love of God, just for the pleasure of taking them into hell with him? Yet, if you hear the call of God, no power can keep you from being saved!

 There are other references to this fact, but we cannot mention them all; although we shall mention some later on! As long as man stays in his natural state he will never understand what the Bible really says, because its message is totally spiritual. We shall be saying more about this plight of men who are trying to understand spiritual statements, with a mind unable to grasp the ABC of Holy Scriptures. The Bible says: “The man without the Holy Spirit does not accept the things that come from Him, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” It is written: “The Spirit (Holy Spirit) searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We (true Christians) have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:10-14.) This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, a teacher in Israel: “I tell you the truth no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again… Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” (John 3:3-6.) When the Bible mentions ‘the world’in almost all cases it speaks of unbelieving men, who take pleasure, through satanic pride, to rebel against God, and hate Him, His Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and every man that belongs to Christ, through faith in Him! 

The Bible alone introduces Jesus-Christ to the world just as he is, its Saviour! He has now become a historic reality, and whatever learned men have tried to do to discredit Him and His message, it has not sufficed to efface Him from history, nor have they hindered God to save whom He has planned to save! The preaching of the Gospel has never ceased to draw people to CHRIST, because He alone offers this eternal life, by a new spiritual birth, to all who believe in him. If God works in your heart and you feel his call to believe; do it, respond immediately. Neither Satan nor all his armies of demons can stop you to pray to Jesus and accept Him as your Saviour and receive eternal life. 

The ninetieth and twentieth centuries have seen a growth, in the number of his disciples, unequalled in all the rest of history. I choose here the word “disciples”, because all those calling themselves “Christians” are not necessarily all disciples of Christ, because they have never believed in the true message of the Gospel, and they have not made Christ their Saviour and Lord.  Many, although they call themselves Christians, oppose Him and the Gospel of grace; because of it they cannot receive anything from God. They are, in fact an offence and a stumbling block to true Christianity. This will become clearer as we continue with our subject. Having said that, we will not stop to use the word “Christian” as and when it is necessary, because a lot of Christians are His true disciples.

Since Jesus, the son of God, entered the public domain, people of Israel, to which hewas sent, primarily Jews who, led by their religious rulers, were antagonistic to Him and His message, sadly they still are so today, because they found Him to be outside the scope of their political interpretation of the Mosaic Law, which He alone actually fulfilled to the letter. The basic reason for their attitude to the Gospel, which Jesus introduced into the religious arena, was due to the fact that He did not contribute to the furtherance of their dream of ruling the world. But Jesus did not come to further their cause, nor did he come to establish a new religion. He did not come to teach the Law but as I said He came to fulfil it. His message was not to better the religious way of the Israelites, but to bring them into a new life altogether. Having said that, Jesus respected the Law, it was given by his Father, it is and always will be Holy, therefore Jesus knew more than anyone that it is Holy, having submitted himself fully to it, he fulfilled it by His death.

God has been drawing men to Jesus since the call of Abraham, who appears very soon in the Bible, in the 12^th chapter of Genesis. With his calling, God began to create a new people destined for a new world. Two thousand years of the presence of man upon the earth are written in only eleven chapters of the Bible. (Genesis 1 to 11.) This shows that God is not interested in specific details that some men would like to find for their own pleasure, most probably to have more reasons to dig out some materiel to find all sorts of errors and add them to their folly. In spite of massive opposition to him, mostly by learned men, the Almighty, undeterred, continues with his programme concerning the earth; every major event, past or future, has been planned by him before He even created it.

So, ‘WHAT IS THE BIBLE’? It is GOD speaking to YOU! God always deals with individuals. You cannot afford to ignore Him, because He will have the last word! If you wish to continue and learn more about your future, turn to the next chapter: “WHY THE BIBLE?”