CHRISTAINTY FOR DUMMIES

 INTRODUCTION

 

There is nothing difficult about Christianity, but there is difficulty because of differences in languages.

The Bible was not written in the King James English. It is just one of the many English versions of the original languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.

Jesus spoke the Greek language. Since ‘God” spoke to the people in Greek, that is the received inspired word of God. Unfortunately, because of sin, few speak the Greek.

The original language of the Old Testament is unknown but may have been an ancient form of Hebrew. Few people speak Hebrew, and even fewer speak ancient Hebrew.

The ‘Word’ of God in the beginning, before Jesus, is called the ‘Old Testament,’ not that it is not testament but that it is more ancient than the New Testament. Both are ‘Bible’ because Bible is merely the paper or other material on which the Word of God is written.

Versions are updated and changed according to the times. Manuscripts, early copies of the original have found to be near perfect copies, especially if they are in the original languages. Even in ancient times, scribes made hand transcribed copies in their own languages, so the most reliable are the Greek and Hebrew texts,

Unlike mathematics, languages are imprecise and depend to a great degree on the vernacular of the era in which it was written and the context. The Bible is internally consistent, meaning that it never changes nor disagrees with itself.

The Old Testament is the ‘Will of God’ and the New Testament is the updated version of the Will of God. In legal terms, the original Testament is the Will, and the updated Testament is the codicil, meaning that it modifies the original Will. Basically, the heirs of God in the Old Testament were the Jewish people alone. The New Testament did not replace the original, but added to the heirs, the Gentiles, making all people qualified to be heirs of God, regardless of race.

The commands of both Testaments are the same, but the New Testament has more clarity, Basically, the commands of the Old are the same as the Beatitudes of the New except expressed differently. Both the commands of the Old and New remain the very Will of God! As such, the Old and New Testaments are in harmony with each other but sung to a different tune, so to speak.

Because few understood ancient languages, the Old Testament Hebrew and Aramaic seems hard to grasp. The Greek if the New Testament is an improvement but for most of the world, the various languages are not the precise thoughts of God. Versions of the Bible change, but the Word of God never changes. The Bible has always been the ‘Bible,’ and what God said is the Truth.

Except for the Ten Commandments, God never wrote anything. Neither did God write anything for the New Testament. Various saints were used to perceive the Word of God and write it down, thus the authors of the Bible are many, but the recorded thoughts of the many are the consistent and reliable Word of God.

The ‘Word’ of the Old Testament has the same spokesman as the Word of the New Testament:

 ¹ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… ³ All things were made by Him… ¹⁴ And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1,3,14)

 

Those words, written by John, were the revealed Word of God who identified to him that Jesus is God. Later in scripture, Jesus identifies Himself as God. Jesus told Philip, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). Therefore, Jesus is the visible substance of the Invisible God of the Old Testament. In modern legal terms, it seems that Jesus showed Himself so that God could die, and the Will of God be probated; that a means of finding the legitimate heirs of God would proceed. As it turns out, all that have the genes of Jesus are worthy heirs of the Father.

Paul wrote of the ‘Mystery of God.’ Jesus had revealed to Paul, the mystery… “which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ” (Ephes 3:9). The Mystery of God is that Jesus was the Creator of all things just as John wrote. Jesus revealed that to both John and Paul.

That is indeed difficult to understand, but it shall be revealed in this book, how true that claim is.

This book is entitled, Christianity for Dummies, not because the readers are stupid, but because God is complex. In these pages, the different substances of God will be revealed! Of primary importance to understand is the saying of “Jesus and God” is redundant and so is the saying of “Jesus and the Holy Ghost.” God is all three in one; not that He is three gods, but One God of three different substances.

Theologians make things even harder to understand. They say, ‘three persons of the Holy Trinity’ and that God is three substances in ‘homeostasis.’ Forget much of what you have been taught because you have indeed become confused. The author herein will attempt to make the understanding of God much easier. If technical words are used, the meanings of them will be explained. God desires that His people not be fools, and the Word is to make them wise.

In modern times, admit it; most Christians are ‘dummies’ in the sense that they can read the Word of God but seldom understand it. The words herein is the author’s attempt to reveal God to a confused world and to show that the readers certainly are not dummies, only confused by even the preachers who seem to preach only what they were taught.

(picture credit; Dreamstime)