The Authority of the Holy Bible.

Selections from The Holy Bible and personal essays and commentary

The KJV, HNV and other versions of the Holy Bible, quoted in the passages on this page, are in the public domain.


except where noted, all text authored and edited
Copyright © 1980-2010 by God's Peace Ministry

If you do not choose to believe in God or if you believe that you are free to believe, think and do whatever you choose or that you can pick and choose what you wish to believe and do from the pages of scripture - you are living and believing that which is contrary to the Word and will of God. See the links to the pages on atheism, the authority of scripture, the da Vinci code and other related links at the bottom of this page.
First, a description of the Bible - which is an ancient collection of writings inspired by God. TheOld Testamentis known as the Tanakh by those who practice Judaism and by Messianic Christians. The Torah is the first five books of theOld Testamentwhich were written down by Moses. The book of Genesis described the creation of the universe, the creation of the earth, the creation of man and woman and describes the fall from grace because of the willful sin of Eve and Adam. The history and genealogy of the Hebrews is detailed from the children of Adam and Eve to Abraham to Noah and the flood and ends with the death of Joseph, son of Jacob, in Egypt. Exodus provides the historical record of the hand of God on the Hebrews - delivering them out of slavery in Egypt, through the wilderness and into the land of Midian to Mount Sinai where Moses receives the ten commandments written by the hand of God on stone tablets. Numbers continues the journey and the genealogy of the tribes of Israel are detailed. In Deuteronomy, the law and the commandments are recalled and Moses turns leadership over to Joshua who leads the nation of Israel into the promised land. Moses sees all the land from the top of Mount Pisgah in the land of Moab and dies there.

The Prophets or the Nevi`im include the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah and Malachi. These books are the word of God as presented to His people through chosen prophets. They are also historical and detail the continuing story of the Jewish nation.

The writings or the Ketuvim include the wisdom books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job; the Megillot books - Song of Songs (Song of Solomon,) Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther; and the histories of Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles.
The order of the books in the Hebrew Bible or Kitvei HaKodesh are different than the canonizedOld Testament of the Christian Bible. Some of theOld Testament books were sub-divided as in 1st and 2nd Kings. Some of the chapter and verse references are different but the content is the same.

The books of the New Testament or B'rit Chadashah (new covenant) were not all necessarily written down by their authors but they were written by scribes who were either writing what the authors dictated to them or by the close associates of the authors. They are all written by close disciples of Jesus who sat under his teaching during His ministry or by Paul, who encountered the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus.

The first group of 5 books are the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the Acts of the Apostles. These books are known as the Good News of Redemption or Besorat HaGe'ulah. The gospels were told and retold by four of the apostles or close disciples and followers of Jesus or Yeshua. Although some of the details are seen from a slightly different point of view due to the eye witness accounts of four different men, there is a harmony of the Gospels as they tell the same story in agreement - the life, ministry, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
The Acts of the Apostles, written by Luke, describes the Holy Spirit coming down from Heaven on the Apostles, as Jesus foretold them, and the early days of the church as people are miraculously healed and many come to know Jesus and accept Him as their Lord and Savior. Sha'ul of Tarshish or Saul of Tarsus was a tentmaker and member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who persecuted Christians until he was confronted by the spirit of God on the road to Damascus. Saul saw a blinding vision of Jesus who asked him why he was persecuting him. Saul, temporarily blinded, was taken to Damascus where he was visited by Ananias, a follower of Jesus. In a vision from God, Ananias was told where to go to find Saul and what to do. When he arrived, he laid his hands on Saul and his sight was restored. The Holy Spirit came upon him and he began to preach the good news of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus wherever he went.

The next group of 21 books is known as the Letters - 14 of which were written by Saul or Sha'ul. He would come to be known as Paul, the Apostle who would take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to many gentile nations from Asia Minor (Turkey) to Rome. He suffered great persecution because he did not stop from preaching Jesus in the Jewish synagogues and in places where pagan idols were worshipped. Paul wrote 13 letters or iggerot to the churches that he had helped to establish in many cities where he had travelled - Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Phillipians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon

The book named Hebrews, written by Paul, was more than just a letter. It was an intellectual discussion or an apologetic written to the Jews in Jerusalem and in the rest of the world. It was an appeal to Hebrews from a Hebrew - quoting scripture from the Torah, the Nevi`im (Prophets) and the Ketuvim (Writings) - the Old Testament - attempting to reach Jews with the Good News of Jesus.
Sha'ul described how the law reveals sin in our lives and how Yeshua fulfilled the law by living a sinless life. Jesus delivered us from sin as the Paschal Lamb of God, sacrificed once and for all. The book of Hebrews and the remaining books in the Letters group are called the Messianic letters. They were written by those who knew Jesus personally - his brother and his apostles. James, the brother of Jesus, who was a leader of the church in Jerusalem, shows that he still is a strong observer of the law of Moses while writing a very instructional teaching on many subjects. Peter contributes two relatively short but astonishingly wise instructionals. John contributes three short letters to followers of the way of Christ; Jude - another brother of Jesus, writes another.

The final book of the new testament is the recording of a vision - one given by God to the disciple he loved, the apostle John. John (Yochanan) was a prisoner on the island of Patmos for preaching the gospel. He was to live out his days there. Late in life, God gave him the vision of a future time, when God would bring judgment on the earth and on the evil one and his followers. It would be a time of great tribulation for the Jews who would call for Messiah to come and save them - blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Jesus returns in great glory to once and for all defeat the forces of evil and to establish the Kingdom of God in Jerusalem and to rule and reign for a thousand years on the earth. The Revelation (Hitgallut) of Yeshua ha Mashiach or Jesus the Messiah is the final book of the New Testament.

Second, a defense of the trust-worthiness of the Bible. The Bible, the Word of God, the Holy Scripture was written down by men under the direction, guidance and inspiration of God through the Holy Spirit. The original manuscripts are multi-sourced. The New Testament of the Bible is perhaps the best supported ancient writing in terms of the existence of multiple, confirming manuscripts numbering over 5000.
Moses, credited with writing down the first five books of theOld Testament, the pentateuch, was spoken to directly by God, as were many of the prophets who wrote down many of theOld Testament books. OtherOld Testament books such as the Psalms, Proverbs, Kings, Chronicles and others are songs, wisdom writings and historical records of the Hebrew peoples.
The New Testament gospels are narratives told by those who lived with and learned from Jesus. Being told by four different writers, each one has a slightly different point of view. Paul, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin who was appointed to persecute members of the Christian sect, became the apostle to the Gentiles after an encounter with God on the road to Damascus. Biblical historians say that Paul, who was known as Saul of Tarsus, was chosen by Jesus from Heaven to become the 12th apostle to replace Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus. In the book of Acts, the remaining 11 apostles voted to select a replacement for Judas - some say hurriedly without waiting for the confirmation of God. The apostle John, who refers to himself in the gospel of John as the disciple who Jesus loved, was given the Revelation of Jesus Christ while in exile on the isle of Patmos.
The Apocryphal books or the Gnostic gospels are part of the Catholic Bible but were left out of the canonized King James Bible and other editions because the evidence for their accuracy, authorship and scholarship were questionable. It is an interesting contradiction that these books were included in the Catholic Bible. The gnostic gospels were written at the time of the founding of the Roman Catholic religion and were intended to undermine or confuse the spiritual and historical validity of Jesus and the Jewish roots of the early church. Why would the founders of Roman Catholicm include these books unless they too wished to undermine the foundation of truth concerning Jesus as the Christ or that Jesus was born a Jew? The very fact that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is deified in Roman Catholicism proves that "goddess worship" has found a place in this false religion.

There is no credible evidence supporting the claim that the early church was struggling with or trying to suppress a number of competing gospels in the first century. Only 4 gospels existed in the first century, those actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the disciples and apostles that knew and followed Jesus. The pseudo gospels or Gnostic gospels (gospel of Philip, gospel of Thomas, gospel of Mary Magdalene, gospel of Judas, etc.) according to credible scholars and historians, were written in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries by heretical authors and their content and intent was spurious and fraudulent. They were not written by the authors who are named in their titles because they were not written during the lifetime of their supposed authors. Some have suggested that they were written by the Essenes or other early Christian groups who disagreed with the mainstream of the new faith. Passages in the original four gospels are omitted or altered in the pseudo or Gnostic gospels. The argument has also been made that they were written by their named authors but suppressed by the ecumenical councils because of the secret knowledge they contained. Biblical history and scholarship simply refutes this. The original four gospels were written around 75-90 A.D. and written by the apostles who walked with, learned from and saw the works and miracles of Jesus Christ.

The early church fathers and early, first-century writings attest to the deity of Jesus and to the fact that the early church, as a whole, supported and believed that. At the first council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. representatives of the early church voted 316 to 2 to support the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ. One of the chief concerns of the early Ecumenical Councils was to define dogmatically the orthodox Christology of the Church. That first meeting was convened for the specific purpose of stamping out the Arian heresy. The Arian heresy taught that Christ was not indeed divine, but rather was the highest and most perfect of all of God the Father's creatures. This heresy, however, which had become prominent even among bishops by the early 320's, contradicted the constant Christological teachings of the Church up to that point.

The gift of eternal life is freely given to those who trust in Jesus as their savior. Those who believe, pray, read the Bible and allow themselves to grow in spirit and truth by trusting in Jesus and in the guidance of the Holy Spirit are brought into the family of God and will spend eternity with Him. You can read more about Jesus in the Gospel of John.

Topics.
The Good News - the Gospel of John.
The Sermon on the Mount
The Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paley's Evidences of Christianity
Sherlock's The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
Words of wisdom and warning.
The Authority of the Holy Scriptures - the Bible.
The Sign of Jonah.
The Two Babylons.
Thoughts.
Thoughts for today and every day.
...a refiner and purifier of silver.
Prophecies confirming Jesus as the Messiah.
To the Jew first and to the Gentile - Come let us reason together.
The Way.
Spirit.
Atheism.
Belief in God or science?
Old fossils?
Evolution or devolution?
The Shroud and The Sudarium.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ.
Blood and Flesh.
Christmas.
Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
How should followers of Jesus live?
A praise and worship leader gone astray?
St. Valentine's Day.
The influence of feminism, new-age and pagan philosophy in the church.
God, the Father.
Marriage is for one man and one woman.
Touchy subjects.
The apostate church.
The last days.
Ancient conflict - Isaac vs. Ishmael.
A Tale of Two Films - The da Vinci code and The Passion of The Christ.
Current events and topics.
Fascism.
To veterans and to those who serve in the armed forces.
The world.


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