Chapter 3
The Bible and the Word of God

If you go to just about any Christian church that uses the Bible you may hear the Bible referred to as the word of God.  It might be called the written word of God or just the word of God.  Some say it is infallible and is the only word God has given to us.  There are many places in the Bible where God is speaking to men.  He even spoke with Satan as in the book of Job.

Job 1:7
And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

Sometimes men are speaking to God as in prayers and petitions.  There are 727,993 words in the King James Version and most of them are not God speaking; they are not the words of God.

Reading the Bible can be very inspirational and can be food for your spirit.  However, when we call it the Word of God it can put the Bible on a pedestal and even turn it into an idol.  I won’t mention any names but there is a preacher/teacher that says he believes the Bible, even if he doesn’t understand it.  He puts the Bible above anything else which makes it an idol to him.  One time, in a Bible teaching meeting with a very large audience he said “You have everything God ever said in your lap.”  Sorry, but God is much bigger than that. 

John 21:25
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.

Another well known preacher says that there is only one author of the Bible, God, and about 40 penman that wrote the words down.  When we say that the Bible is the only, infallible Word of God we are making an idol of the book. 

One danger of idolizing the Bible is that people tend to pick the verses to fit their beliefs and act on them.  For example there are many Christians that believe that homosexuality is a big sin and God hates it. Therefore they look at LGBTQ people as less than human.  They justify it with verses like these:

Leviticus 18:22
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.

Romans 1:26
…also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly…

1 Timothy 1:10
…For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers,…

But they ignore verses like these:

James 4:12
There is one only is the lawgiver and judge, even he who is able to save and to destroy: but who art thou that judgest thy neighbor?

Matthew 7:1
Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Romans 14:13
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

 1 Corinthians 4:5
Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.

 Jesus made it clear that we are not to judge others with the story about the woman caught in the act of adultery.  At that time the penalty was for her to be stoned to death.  The scribes and Pharisees brought her to Jesus to ask him what to do.  They were trying to test him.  Jesus replied:

John 8:7
He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Of course none of them were that pure so they all walked away.  After they had all left Jesus asked the woman where are those who were condemning her?

John 8:10-11
Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?  She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Jesus didn’t condemn her or accuse her or lecture her.  He just told her that he was not going to judge her and suggested that she should take more care of her behavior.

God is Love.  Christ is Love.  When we are acting like Christians we reflect that Love of God.  We don’t judge or condemn others, we just love them.  We overlook their behavior that goes against our morals and beliefs.  We don’t start or join groups to condemn others.  We can offer others a better way but we can’t force them or push them into behaving the way we think is right.  God doesn’t even do that.  His mercy endures forever.  He doesn’t condemn, He forgives.

Our human nature makes us want to think we are right.  When we hold the Bible up as The Word of God what we are really doing is selecting verses that support our opinion and claim that we are right because it’s in the Bible.  Two people can read the same verse and get a different meaning from it, then build a strong belief base on their interpretation.

For example, two men were discussing the concept of reincarnation.  One believed that we are born into this life and if we live right or believe right we will go to Heaven and live happily ever after.  But if he didn’t live right and believe right then at the end of life he would be condemned to a terrible existence in hell.  The other believed that we lived before this lifetime and when it is over we will live in a spiritual world for a while and then come back and be reborn into a brand new body.  They both used the same verse to prove their points.

Matthew 11:14-15
And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.

The one that believed in reincarnation believed that John the Baptist was the same soul or spirit as Elias.  He believed that Elias came back and was born in the body that was John the Baptist.  He believed that he had ears to hear that but the other man did not. The other believed that John came in the spirit of Elias but was not the same soul or spirit.  Who do you think was right?

We have enough trouble interpreting what we read in the Bible.  Not everyone sees the same things in the verses they read.  On top of that is the question rarely asked; who actually wrote the verse in question?  Did God write it?  Did a man write it?  Did God inspire a man to write it?  And here is one that is rarely spoken or thought of, did Satan write it?  When we read it, does God inspire us with the interpretation, or does Satan twist it to mean something else?  Depending on the verse the answer to all of these questions is yes.

Jesus was speaking with some Pharisees that didn’t believe that he was from God and he suggested that they were children of the devil.

 John 8:44
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.

These were the religious leader of the Jewish people.  They were the keepers of the law and leaders of the temples.  They believed that their teachings came from God.  They considered themselves as disciples of Moses and they didn’t trust Jesus.

John 9:28-29
Then they reviled him, and said, Thou art his disciple; but we are Moses' disciples.  We know that God spake unto Moses: as for this fellow, we know not from whence he is.

 We can say the same thing about the religious leaders today, especially Christian leaders who hold the Bible in the highest esteem as The Word of God.  But did God really write the Bible?

To answer that let’s go back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve lived and had a relationship with God.  God gave them dominion over the earth.  They were in charge of everything.

Geneses 1:26 
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

God gave the one rule to follow. Do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Geneses 2:17
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

When God said they would die if they ate of the tree He didn’t mean their physical body would die.  He was speaking of spiritual death.  If they disobeyed they would die to, or be separated from God.  Since God is Love that means that they would be separated from God’s Love.

The story goes that the serpent, Satan, tempted Eve and she took the bait, partook of the tree and then offered it to Adam too. 

Geneses 3:4-6
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.

When they disobeyed God and did what Satan suggested they turned their dominion of the earth over to Satan.  There are a couple of verses that might help us understand who and what Satan, or the serpent or the devil is.  What it really means is to be separated from God and God’s Love.  In the story of when King David decided to take a census.  There are times in the Bible when God says to take a census, but this time it wasn’t God’s idea, it was David’s and God did not approve.  It showed a lack of faith in David.

1 Chronicles 21-1
And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

2 Samuel 24:1
And again the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.

In Chronicles it is Satan that got David to take the census and in Samuel it is the anger of God.  Since God is Love He cannot also be anger.  The anger of God is separation from God.  Satan is separate from God. 

Luke 10:18
And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

Satan, AKA Lucifer, wanted to be like God and he was cast out of heaven for it.

Isaiah 14:13-14
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. 

He used his crafty ability to deceive Eve, and therefore Adam to disobey God so he could steal the dominion over the earth that God had given to Adam. Then he used his crafty skills to deceive the whole world.  He wanted to be like God so he acted like God.  He inspired men to do and write things that are not from the Love of God.  It may be a hard pill to swallow if you have been under the impression that the Bible is the Word of God, but when you put the pieces of the puzzle together it becomes obvious.  That doesn’t mean that all of the prophases are from Satan.  Some profits got through the maze of Satan’s lies to really hear the Word of God. 

In Chapter 1 we showed that God is Love and Love is not jealous.  We questioned how the Old Testament says that God is jealous if He is Love.  Now we can see that it wasn’t God saying He is a jealous God, it was the counterfeit, Satan. 

So if the Bible can’t be trusted as the Word of God, what is the Word of God and where can we find it.  The Bible actually answers that question.

Jeremiah 31:33
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Romans 2:15
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another; 

Hebrews 8:10
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel After those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their heart.

God has done His part.  He wrote His laws into your mind and your heart.  It’s up to you to attune to it.  This doesn’t mean that you should throw your Bible away or even stop reading it.  Just don’t make it into an idol.

Anything that does not come from Love is separate from God.  But God is omnipresent, how can anyone or anything be separate from God?  This is a paradox that may be difficult to understand, but let’s give it a try.

One way to look at it is through the concept of vibrations.  Everything exists through vibrations, but we don’t know of those vibrations unless we attune to them.  Take a radio for example.  It has a dial to tune into different stations and listen to their broadcast.  All of the radio stations are broadcasting their programming at the frequency designated to them by the FCC.  Those signals are in your home, in your car, at the park, in the grocery store and anywhere in their broadcast range.  You don’t know of them until you tune your radio to their frequency.  You don’t know, or even know of God unless you tune into Him with your words, thoughts, feelings and deeds.  The same is true of Satan or the anger of God or anything that is not of God’s Love.  If you attune to it you experience it.  If you don’t attune to it you don’t realize it.

God’s Word is in you. 

And so it is.