TheSimpleAnswers.com

How can you know WHICH Bible is correct? We have all sorts of versions out there - KJV, NIV, ASV, RSV, and quite literally hundreds of others - but which should you read? Does it matter? What’s the difference? Setting aside for the moment ease of use for the modern reader, which version is MOST TRUSTWORTHY? Are any inspired by God? Some would tell you that the King James Version of the Bible is “the word of God, from cover to cover includin’ the cover!” - is that true? Should you use the Septuagint? What about the Apocryphal books like the books of the Maccabees, Judith, Jubilees, and Enoch? Or the dead sea scrolls?

I will address these questions a bit later on, but for now I want to lay the groundwork of the philosophy of how you SHOULD approach this question. If there is a God - and you must believe there is, if you’re wanting to read the book He wrote - then God, if He is powerful enough to be worthy of being CALLED a God, can take care of Himself. He can protect Himself. And He can protect His word.

Does God need YOUR help to protect the Bible? If He does, He’s a pretty useless God if He can’t even keep His own inspired writings from getting burned or wet or lost! The point of this is that GOD is ABLE to save His word; God WANTED to save His word, and God DID save His word. If you don’t approach this question with that in mind, you will certainly come to the wrong conclusion and walk away in frustration.

Religious scholars tend to get caught up in the details and forget that this is a book written by God, not Hebrews; it was the words of God, not Jews, that were written down; it was the thoughts of the Creator, not the created, that we find in the pages of the Bible. All too often they’re too busy looking at the words under a microscope to read what they say…. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has ever kept the passover has asked “what does footwashing represent?”. We drink the wine and eat the bread, and those symbols are well defined. But footwashing? It isn’t mentioned in Matthew, Mark or Luke, and John doesn’t tell us a lot about it, just the command to do it; so true Christians everywhere wash each other’s feet and either don’t know what it means, or make up something. And if you must obey God in ignorance of why you’re doing what you’re doing, then by all means obey Him in ignorance; but if we can KNOW what it symbolizes, why we go through this ritual year by year, then we certainly should.

John 13:2 And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him;

First let’s set the stage; this happened after the “supper”. We know from harmonizing this with the other gospels that the old testament lamb had already been prepared and eaten this night to fulfill the old testament passover first. The old testament passover was to be killed and eaten between the two evenings, the period of twilight between sundown and complete darkness. So since supper was finished the sun’s light was probably about completely gone; most likely the footwashing took place about an hour and a half after sundown when supper was finished.

After that ceremony Jesus set into place the new symbols which would, from now on, be the new passover service. But before He did that, in the space between the old and new testament passovers that night, Jesus washed the disciples feet.

Before going into that further, let’s make a few facts clear:

1. No one washed Jesus’ feet that night
2. The disciples did not wash one another’s feet that night
3. Peter was not the first one washed
4. Jesus specifically changed his clothes for this ceremony, then changed back when it was finished before going on with the passover service

Those facts tend to challenge what we’ve always believed, but read through John 13 and no mention is made of anyone washing anyone except Jesus washing the disciples. This is important, so remember it… Read the rest of this entry »

The world today has a completely skewed picture of justice. Even the churches, who are supposed to teach the law, have largely done away with it. But even those churches who teach that there is no obligation to keep any divine law still understand that some things are bad. Some things shouldn’t be done.They all have a list of sins, arranged by their personal prejudices and opinions, from greatest to least. Usually subconscious, but the list is always present. They react with greater horror to one sin than to another. From my observation, it seems that your average list of cardinal sins in a conservative area would go something like this:

1. Child molesting
2. Murder
3. Homosexuality
4. Adultery
5. Judging
6. Fornication
7. Greed
8. Bigotry
9. Stealing
10. Cussing

And so on. Some churches would include dancing, singing, card-playing, reading literature from another denomination, and so on. Of course everyone’s list is a bit different, but if you listen to sermons you’ll see this common thread; yeah, they all tacitly admit that killing is really bad, but after that adultery is the next biggest thing you hear about. It is the one primary sin you hear pounded on, from every pulpit in the land.

But is it the most important commandment? Is it what every preacher SHOULD be talking about, day in, day out? God gave us ten commandments, and He gave them in order. But what is their relative gravity? How serious is, say, fornication compared to, say, owning a dreamcatcher?

If you had to judge a situation and determine who should be punished worse, would you punish a sabbath-breaker or a liar more seriously? Is a doctor who performs abortions is a better person in the eyes of God than a Vegas hooker? And would you say that Charles Manson deserves more or less punishment than someone who owns a statue of Buddha?

These are questions that, to live and reign with Christ, you MUST understand. These are fundamental questions that explain how God looks at sin, which sin is more harmful, and which must be corrected first, and which deserves the most punishment. Which deserves the most “sermon time”, and which is so far down the list that it’s not even worth talking about for now. You MUST learn to look at these things as God does, and put these sins in their relative place.

So which IS the greatest commandment? (and the second, third, and fourth?) Read the rest of this entry »