Can you trust the bible, is it the inspired word of God?

Can you trust the bible? Is it the inspired word of God?

There has been some things going on in some of the churches of today that I feel we need to talk about. I don’t like to talk about other churches, but when they are teaching things that are directly opposed to the word of God I feel that God wants me to bring it to your attention.

There are churches today who are encouraging their members to “rediscover” what the bible says. They are telling their members that they should have a renewed appreciation for the *symbolic and spiritual interpretation to better meet the needs of today’s loving society. *I want to share with you the dictionary’s definition of symbolism, it says, The artistic imitation or invention that is a method of revealing or suggesting immaterial, ideal, or otherwise intangible truth. There is no symbolic teaching in the Word of God. Such teachings or interpretations are directly opposed to the scriptures themselves.

This is a direct attack on all of us who believe that the bible is the inerrant, literal and inspired word of Almighty God. God says that he is the same yesterday, today and forever, and his word will stand forever. Look at what God says about his word in Revelation 22: 18-19 “For I testify unto every man that hearth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the Holy City, and from the things which are written in this book.” The bible clearly declares, first and foremost, in 2nd Peter 1:20"knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.”

Satan can always quote scripture to his own advantage, and there has always been and will always be false teachers who themselves indulge in private interpretation of the scriptures. The apostle Peter says that any private interpretation of the scriptures is illegitimate.

The bible also tells us in 2nd Timothy 3:16 “all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” There are no instructions in this scripture telling us that we are to resort to any symbolic or spiritual interpretation of the word of God in order to justify the sinful lifestyle of today’s society. Jesus Christ himself, plainly states in John 10:35 that the scripture cannot be broken. The bible does not contradict itself! There is only one power that can unlock the plain, straightforward and truthful interpretation of the scriptures. That is the power of our Almighty God alone, through his influence on the mind of us as individuals by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ, who is the word of God, declared that when the Holy Spirit comes into the mind of an individual, it reveals all things. In John 14: 17 “ Even the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”

In John 16:7 Jesus, called the Holy Spirit the “Comforter.” The Holy Spirit is a revelatory spirit, the spirit of truth. The Holy Spirit is actually a portion of God’s own infinite mind embedded in the mind of a lost sinner who has repented of his sins and accepted Christ as his savior. Jesus declared that when the Holy Spirit is given by the father to a servant of God, it will guide him into all truth and will show him things to come.

God tells us that he will reveal things to us through his word, THE BIBLE, and if we continue in his word we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. Listen to the experience of the apostles as they walked with Jesus after his resurrection Their words were,Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened the scriptures to us.
It is only the living Jesus Christ, the true head of his one true Church, who can open up the word of God to us by the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Not through anyone’s, or any churches private interpretation.

It takes dedicated study to grow in understanding what God wants you to know about his word. 2 Timothy 2:15 “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” Dividing what word? The bible, the infallible word of God.

Why do men insist on trying to interpret the bible? Here is the answer, the bible says that the scriptures are profitable for the purpose of reproving and correcting us. But man resents being reproved and corrected. How many people do you know that like to be corrected when they are in error or to be reproved for the wrong things they do? People do not like to be reproved or corrected. They like praise and flattery, but reproof and correction I can assure you, they do not like. That is why it is so hard for many people to understand the bible and to agree on what it says. The bible is God’s great spiritual mirror. It shows up every flaw in our thinking and reveals every spot on our character. It pictures us as we really are, as God sees us, not as we like to think we are. That is the plain and simple truth. Hebrews 4:12 reads, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.“ The bible my friends, is a powerful weapon that cuts both ways, opening up and laying bare the inner man. This is not a comfortable process and too often, men simply won’t subject themselves to what this scripture is saying, it makes them uncomfortable. Too often men have applied some different meanings to the scriptures that reprove and correct them. They pass right over those scriptures that correct and rebuke them. Instead they study to try and find some other interpretation of the scripture into which they can read a meaning that would justify their lifestyle.

Man begin many years ago to try and interpret the bible to say what they wanted it to say. That is the reason that God’s word has become so perverted, twisted and distorted. Today we have hundreds of interpretations of the bible. But you never hear of hundreds of interpretations of a biology textbook. Why do you think this is? Because biology textbooks do not rebuke and correct men.

Instead of acknowledging that the bible is the book of truth that does not lie, admitting that all are sinners and fall short of the Glory of God, repenting of their sin, and being legally justified by the blood of Jesus Christ, men seek to justify their own sinful ways by perverting the sacred and Holy Word Of God.

As Ihave said, I am not trying to put down any church however when they are teaching something that directly opposes the word of God, all of us who take the word of God literally need to be aware of the fact and be constantly aware that Satan is around us and would love for all of us to believe this false teaching. Why are they doing this? Do you have the answer? Possibly they want everyone to believe that only they can interpret the scriptures, so that the scriptures can be twisted to suit the will of many people today.

In closing let me share with you (from the NLT) 2nd Peter 3: 16 “speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction. 17 I am warning you ahead of time, dear friends. Be on guard so that you will not be carried away by the errors of these wicked people and lose your own secure footing. 18 Rather, you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. All glory to him, both now and forever! Amen.”

I urge you to study the bible and let it interpret itself on this question and any other questions you may have.

Daniella

It was probably in 2003 when we first met Daniella, her sister, Elda, and her parents, Tony and Lili. When Brother Nestor first came to Alamos and began to establish his work for Christ, we remember noticing Lili, Elda and Daniella at some of those first services. Their casa was near the church. Daniella was about 4 years old. Elda was in her early 20's. We found out later that Elda didn't know how old she was or when her birthday was. We could see this was a family who was destitute in every respect. We added the family to our food despensa (food box) program. At that time we began to minister to them. They had no income other than a bit of work that the father did repairing bicycles at his home. The people he was repairing the bikes for was as poor as he was and usually didn't have money to pay him but very little.

The photo below was taken at a later date but shows how the family always looked. Occasionally the church serves food and sells it for a very nominal price. They are always there and Brother Nestor sees that they are fed.

As with many of our poor families we rapidly became family. If there was a problem we were expected to solve it. If there was a need we were expected to fill it. And this family had plenty of problems. The father was extremely illiterate, the mother, Lili and the sister, Elda were very slow mentally. We were told that Daniella seemed to be of normal intelligence, other than environmentally slow. She was very shy; there was no interaction with anyone and never with other children. Elda regarded her as a doll and talked and acted toward her as small child would treat their doll.

In 2004 Brother Nestor and his wife, Lili told us it was time for Daniella to be enrolled in kindergarten. However, there was a problem to be solved. Daniella had no birth certificate (I suspect she had been born at home). The father said she didn’t need to go to school and he was refusing to help obtain a birth certificate for her. We were enlisted to solve this issue for them. John talked with the father but to no avail, he was not going to assist in getting this child a birth certificate. Fortunately John had a friend whom we had met shortly after coming to Alamos. He was a wonderful man, spoke excellent English and at that time happened to be firmly established in a local government office that dealt with civil issues such as this. A side note; Mexico is the same as the US in that when new politicos are swept into office the staff changes, regardless of how well someone does their job in the old administration. New politicos are now in office. This fellow is no longer in that position.

With the understanding help of this man a birth certificate for Daniella was obtained. She was ready to go to school. But wait there is another problem - she had no uniforms. The school children in Mexico wear uniforms, none of this status stuff as to who has the best clothes. However for a family who can’t put food on the table it can become a major issue. This is where Daniella became a neighborhood project. Each school has different colors of material and patterns, and the outfits were to be made up as jumpers with corresponding blouses. We purchased the correct material and took it to our neighbor who was a seamstress, no patterns needed. This gal was a whiz, she whipped out three jumpers and blouses in record time. Side purchases such as the appropriate type socks and etc was rounded up with the help of another neighbor.

Now, we're ready for school, right? There was just one problem, Daniella didn’t want to go to school. She went one day and refused to go back. The family wasn’t any support as Mom and Dad didn’t grasp the necessity of school and Elda would lose her “doll.” John and I decided that old proverbial, come hell or high water, Daniella was going to school. This family needed a lot of parenting and we were just the folks to lead the charge. It was decided that John would go every morning and pick Daniella up and take her to school and pick her up afterwards. Elda would tag along on her bicycle and hang onto the chain link fence that was around the school. Any one who has lived in Mexico knows being on time is not a requirement in that culture. For this reason when it was time for school to begin the gates were locked so there was no late entries. Solves the tardy issue very well. We are sure Elda would have been in the classroom had that not been prevented. John soon realized that Elda could pick up Daniella after school as she always managed to be there when school was out. That removed part of his duties. But now comes all the other issues with being a parent of a child in “kinder." There were many fun days with costumes, pesos for parties and etc. The teacher would write John a note with all the proper requests (sometimes the notes said that Daniella wasn‘t cooperating and John had to deal with that issue). God love him, John was the parent. And may God bless, our precious neighbor, Eloisa having had “kinders” before us, knew all the ropes about the costuming & etc. The seamstress would go to the local Mercado and purchase necessary materials and trimmings. Daniella always had the required items.

Another parenting issue, the Mama notified us when Daniella’s cumpleanos (birthday) was approaching. She needed a cake!

For two years we parented this family same as you would any child. John took Daniella to school for those two years. She had some rocky times and cried every day because she didn’t want to be there. The flood came and we got the message from our heavenly father that our lives as we knew them in Alamos was ending. However we are happy to report that things have worked out and Daniella now goes to school, mixes with the other children in church and in play time after church. We thank God that we were allowed to be there for her in the days when she needed someone. Today Lili and the girls never miss a church service. And are so delighted when we visit there.