Saturday, January 3, 2026
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 11: The Textbook of Righteousness

Our teacher in life is Jesus. Our classroom is our home. Our lab is home and wherever else we go that day. And our textbook is the Bible – the book that came together in Jesus Christ.

The Obsolescence of Church

You may be thinking: “But isn’t church the institution God has chosen to teach Christ to the world?” Not anymore. The churches we read about in the New Testament were led by the apostles of Jesus to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ, which was the then imminent coming of the long-awaited kingdom of God. If the kingdom of God came when Jesus and His apostles said it would, why should we act as if it hasn’t?

Even after the kingdom of God came, you could make the argument that churches still had a role to play in preserving the apostles’ writings and teaching from those writings about Christ. But the printing press in the 15th century and the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century made the Bible accessible and affordable around the world. And 21st-century technology has put it on smartphones that we take with us everywhere we go. A man who can read has no excuse for outsourcing his responsibility to keep himself and his family following Christ.

I pastored a church for 15 years. I know how they work. I did my very best to follow the Bible in the church world. It cannot be done for the same reason that Solomon’s temple cannot be reconstituted. Church’s time has past because something greater is here. The kingdom of God is greater than the church by just so much as the church was greater than ancient Israel. Jesus is now king of the entire human race – not a subset of it. He came to bring us Christianity, not churchianity.

The Bible is a book you can and should read for yourself.

The Word of the Lord

In Chapter 8, I described how the Bible came together through Jesus Christ – the Old Testament prophesying of Him and the New Testament describing how those prophecies were fulfilled. Thus the Bible can be called the word of the Lord. But it is much more than just a compilation of prophecies and fulfillments. Among other things it is the textbook of righteousness from which He teaches us how to live as He did.

There are an untold number of books you can read about Jesus and His ways. I have written a few myself. But no book compares to the Bible. The word “bible” means “book” and it is indeed THE Book. It hold the exclusive franchise of firsthand testimony about the Son of God sanctioned by the Son of God Himself.

If we’re going to read the Bible – and we must – we have to come to grips with its scale and scope. Although the 66 books that comprise the Bible do not each compare to an average book in size, the total collection is the equivalent about about 10-15 average-sized nonfiction books published today. Roughly three dozen authors produced this content over a span of about 1,500 years. Not only that, but the individuals texts that make up the collection consistent of multiple genres and styles. Therefore, the Bible doesn’t lend itself to straight-through reading like a normal book. Many a reader has started Genesis with gusto only to give up in the minutia of animal sacrifice that populates Leviticus. You’ll get more out of the Bible by approaching it as the library it is than as you would normally approach a book.

Reading and Re-Reading the Bible

Speaking of being Christ centered, Jesus said we should “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” You know from the two preceding chapters that righteousness is love built on a foundation of faith. Wherever we live becomes the classroom where the Lord Jesus teaches us from His textbook of righteousness: The Bible.

Because the Bible is an ancient text, and because it consists of the word of God brought to us by prophets (in the Old Testament) and apostles (in the New Testament), a lifetime of reading and re-reading it will not be enough to digest all the knowledge and wisdom it offers. If our Creator and Redeemer has spoken, and provided documentation, is it not our duty to devote ourselves to reading and understanding it in order to be able to respond knowledgeably to His instruction and commands?

Summing Up the Duty of a Human Being

Thus we have now defined the duty of every human being – male and female, young and old. It is to live life according to the direction of Jesus Christ as communicated through the Bible – in other words, “to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” This is creatures living life according to their Creator’s wishes…and it’s a beautiful thing.

We will now be able to spend the last chapter of this book defining the specific duty of an adult male.

***

Friday, January 2, 2026
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 10: Righteousness Is Faith That Loves

The righteousness God expects from humans begins with faith and ends with love. That is, faith is its foundation and love is its capstone. Put another way, faith is the budding of righteousness and love is its full blossoming. In between those two virtues will grow all other virtues. Therefore, let us begin our study of righteousness by explaining faith.

The Nature of Faith

Faith does not stand alone. It is a response to something else. The Bible says that faith is the righteous human reaction to the word of God. The gospel of Jesus Christ is the primary, eternal word of God. To believe it, is righteous; to not believe (or to doubt) it, is unrighteous. I hear people talk about having faith as if it was some nebulous stand-alone force. You can’t have faith (trust) without having it in someone or something.

The Focus of Faith

The proper focus of faith is Jesus Christ. God came to the earth as Jesus so that we would have sufficient reason to believe in His great love for us. If Jesus’ resurrection is not historical, faith is not warranted; if Jesus is historical, faith is demanded. In neither case is faith optional.

The Feeding of Faith

Faith resides in our souls and is fed by continuing to hear the word of Christ just as faith was formed in us in the first place by hearing the word of Christ. And just like our physical feeding, this spiritual feeding of faith must be engaged in daily – even more than once a day. Who eats only one physical meal a day? Why then should we only hear the word of God once a day?

The Practice of Faith

Eating physical food without getting the proper exercise doesn’t lead to health but rather to obesity. Likewise, reading about Jesus every day without practicing what we’ve read leads to poorer – not better – spiritual health. More than anything else, what we practice must be love.

The Supremacy of Love

All other virtues, built upon faith, roll up into love. Thus, love is patient, love is kind, love is peaceful, love is gentle, and so on. Love does the right thing for the right reason at the right time and in the right way. Love is the one virtue that the Bible personifies as God – the apostle John writing, “God is love.”

The Meaning of Love

Love is so sublime a thing that we should not be surprised if words seem inadequate to fully describe it. And we only confuse matters when we try to make the one word “love” do way too much work. For example, saying “I love my wife” and “I love ice cream” is either saying too little about your love for your wife or too much about your love for ice cream. In any case, the word “love” is way over-used and stretched to mean too many things.

Confusion about the word “love” gets serious and problematic when people use the word “love” to describe lust. Isn’t a “love affair” really a “lust affair”? The word “love” in that context is just trying to cover up the sad truth with euphemism. But then we really descend into madness when we say something like “Love is love is love.” Such a statement cannot mean what it says because it doesn’t say anything.

Summing up, can there be any English word that has been more misunderstood, abused, and corrupted than the word “love”? We need a reliable definition. And that can only come from someone with sufficient authority to define such a word. An innocent man who gave Himself to be crucified for the sins of the world is the only one who qualifies.

Love Is What God Did in Christ

Jesus defined love in this way: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” This is just what He did. It is the path to which God committed Himself when He became Jesus. This love can be contrasted with the normal way that people live, which is for self. In this context, the meaning of the word “love” is profoundly simple. It is living for another instead of for self, which starts with living for Christ…just as Christ lived for us. When we live for Christ above everyone else, He takes all our devotion to Him and distributes its benefits to those nearest to us…by telling us to love our neighbors.

It is easier to love when you first know that you yourself are loved. We are not initiating love on our own; we are merely reciprocating the love God has shown us in Jesus Christ.”We love because He first loved us.”

***

Thursday, January 1, 2026
New Year’s Day
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

The first quarter of the 21st century expired a few hours ago. What will we do with the three quarters of this century that remain?

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 9: Repentance from Sin to Righteousness

If Jesus is Lord and the Bible is the word of God, where and how are we to begin our submission to His lordship?

Repentance

We are all called to repent. To repent is to change your mind or purpose. Both John the Baptist and Jesus came preaching that everyone needs to repent – that is, we all need to change. And what we need to change is our mind and our purpose – that is, our thinking and our goals in life. But from what…and to what?

From Sin

We need to change from sin. We’re all sinners. That’s our starting point in life. We’re born innately selfish and have to be trained out of it. Selfishness begets sin. Sin means “missing the mark.” It’s doing something we’re not supposed to do…or not doing something we are supposed to do.

Modern Americans haven’t abandoned the idea of sin – just this three-letter biblical word for it. Secularism wants to define good and evil by its own standards – not the standards of the biblical God. “Sin” in a secular context is doing what’s politically incorrect, or not doing what’s politically correct. And a “sinner” in a secular context is a “racist,” “homophobe,” “fascist,” “extremist,” etc. Secularism defines what is evil and metes out the punishments. Having ostracized God, secularism rushes to fill the vacuum.

Getting back to God, sin actually does bring negative consequences. That’s the very reason God wants us to repent from it. But from sin to what?

To Righteousness

I know it sounds simplistic, but the opposite of sin is righteousness. In fact, it’s the word “righteousness” that gives the word “sin” its meaning. Righteousness is “the mark” that sin is “missing.” Like the words “repent” and “sin,” “righteousness” has been replaced in our secular age; we usually see “morality” or “virtue” instead. That is, when someone today is considered “moral” or “virtuous,” the most appropriate biblical word for that would be “righteous.” But that raises the question of “righteous according to whose standard?”

Becoming like Jesus

For a human being, to become righteous is to become like Jesus…because the Bible says that Jesus is the only truly righteous man who ever lived. We may think that this is too lofty a goal for us, but Jesus actually commands it! Whether Jesus calls us to repent or calls us to imitate Him, He’s calling for the same thing. He became a human being to give us an example to follow. Therefore, whenever we “miss the mark,” we are missing the opportunity to be like Him. And, therefore, we are to repent from being unlike Jesus to being like Him – to love as he loved, to be selfless as He was selfless.

Spirit, Soul, Body

God made human beings by putting spirit into flesh – the result being a living soul. The soul is the place inside us where our thoughts and feelings come together – where life is experienced. It’s the place we experience happiness or sadness, hope or discouragement, health or sickness, excitement or the blahs. Jesus came to save our souls – because it’s our souls that sin captures and destroys.

Conscience

A key element of the soul is conscience. Conscience is, of course, our inner sense of discerning good from evil, right from wrong. Conscience, while necessary to live a righteous life is not sufficient by itself. Surely you’ve noticed that there are people who can harm you without their conscience bothering them one bit. The remedy for the inadequacies of conscience is the word of God.

By the word of God, my conscience and your conscience become informed of God’s conscience – allowing you and I to have our consciences brought to a place of greater accuracy about what is right and wrong. An individual conscience must be regularly calibrated just as scales, in order to give the correct weight, must be regularly calibrated. Conscience is calibrated by the word of God. Repentance from sin to righteousness is a trial-and-error process. The soul and its conscience must be mended daily from sin’s effects which distort its judgments.

Daily

God has designed life to be lived one day at a time. This requires discipline, which includes building righteous routines into our daily lives. If variety is the spice of life, then routines are its meat and potatoes.

Every human being needs to repent from sin to righteousness and hear the word of God every day. A daily routine of Bible reading needs to be built into a person’s life as soon as there’s an ability to read. It’s daily bread for those who seek righteousness.

A Lifestyle

Repentance from sinfulness to being like Jesus is not a once-and-done process. Rather, it is a lifestyle – a way of living, a lifelong posture. No one is going to become like Jesus in a day. It’s going to take a lot of days…strung together. The duty of every human being is to live for – and like – Jesus. This can only be achieved by regularly feeding on the word of God – reading and practicing it daily. What does a positive trend line of righteousness look like? That’s the next chapter.

***

Wednesday, December 31, 2025
New Year’s Eve
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 8: In Jesus Christ the Bible Came Together

In the previous three chapters, I spoke to you about the New Testament from a strictly historical perspective – that is, as the word of men. And it is that. But because we reached the conclusion to which it led us – that Jesus is Lord – we now need to see how the entire Bible – both Old Testament and New Testament – must be understood as the word of God as well as the word of men.

The Old Testament

During His earthly life, Jesus confined His ministry to His fellow Jews in Israel. At that time, the Bible consisted only of what we call the Old Testament. Because books as we know them did not exist, its contents were handwritten on scrolls and kept by the priests and scribes of Israel. This collection began when Moses wrote the first five books, starting with Genesis, roughly 1,500 years before Christ. What the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are for America, Moses’ books were for Israel – founding documents. Given the series of miracles God had performed through Moses to get the Israelites out of Egypt, and given that God had instructed Moses to write what he wrote, these texts were considered by Israel to be not merely the nation’s founding documents, but also the word of God.

In the generations after Moses, God spoke through other men from time to time. Men who spoke for God were called prophets. Like Moses, they were inspired by the Holy Spirit – that is, God’s Spirit – to say and write what they did. While retaining their individual personalities, they were speaking the thoughts God gave them. Their writings were preserved and added to those of Moses. Thus the Scriptures grew in size for about a thousand years. Then such prophecy ceased for about 400 years before the time of John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus and His religious opponents in Israel never fought about which writings did or didn’t belong in the Scriptures. They accepted without question what had been handed down by the generations before them.

While Jesus and the ruling Jewish teachers agreed about what the Scriptures were and what they said, they disagreed greatly about what the Scriptures meant. Jesus attributed this to two factors: 1) He believed the Scriptures while His opponents only said they believed them, and 2) He was the Messiah who had been promised by Moses and all the prophets, and therefore He had come to teach people a new way to act on the Scriptures. Thus Jesus never sought to challenge or change a single word of the Old Testament; He just applied it fully to the heart and thereby demonstrated how it could instruct all the nations and not just Israel. Thus Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Old Testament, but rather to give it new life. That Jesus was raised from the dead and made Lord of all creation ratifies His faith in the Old Testament as not just the word of men, but of God as well.

The New Testament

The New Testament is not just the unique historical record for firsthand knowledge of Jesus, it’s an interpretive lens for the Old Testament. We want – and need – to understand the Old Testament as Jesus understood it. The New Testament is constantly quoting and explaining the Old Testament…from Jesus’ point of view. Both testaments are the word of God…and in Jesus Christ they come together and speak in unison. As the OT is the prophets speaking for God, so the NT is the apostles speaking for Jesus.

Jesus Christ and the Bible

Devotion to Jesus Christ as Lord is impossible without the Bible, for the Bible is the foundational means through which He speaks to the world today. If we don’t know what Jesus has said, calling Him “Lord” is meaningless. Conversely, devotion to the Bible alone is useless without greater devotion to Jesus Christ for He is the main point of the Bible. If we’re not rightly relating to Him, we’ll misunderstand what the Bible is saying. The Bible is the treasure map and Jesus is the treasure.

The same Holy Spirit given to the prophets who wrote the OT and the apostles who wrote the NT is given to every human being today – even though it’s clear not all human beings are heeding that voice. The Holy Spirit has more to say than just what’s written in the Bible; but what’s written in the Bible gives us a standard we can use to judge any thought or word that purports to be coming from the Holy Spirit today. God never contradicts Himself.

Even though we can hear God today just as people heard Him in the biblical age, there is never going to be another Bible, nor is this one going to be expanded. When the kingdom of God came late in the 1st century, the biblical age ended. Therefore, let no one add to the Bible; neither let anyone take away from it. It is the ancient foundation of all that God is saying in modern times.

***

Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 7: The Man

In the previous two chapters, we learned what the New Testament is. In this chapter, we’ll examine what it says. What follows is a representative sample of things the eight men wrote about the man in question. I’ve copied them verbatim from a Bible that prints the words of Jesus in red.

Things Jesus Did

• Jesus was going throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness among the people. The news about Him spread throughout all Syria; and they brought to Him all who were ill, those suffering with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, paralytics; and He healed them. Large crowds followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan. (Matthew 4:23-25)

• When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue; and the many listeners were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?” (Mark 6:2)
• And He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. (Luke 9:1-2)
• And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:25)
• But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him…Nevertheless many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God. (John 12:37, 42-43)

Things Jesus Said

• “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart…” (Matthew 11:29)
• The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4:25-26)
• …Again the high priest was questioning Him, and saying to Him, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” And Jesus said, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14:61-62)
• And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?” (Luke 9:23-25)
• Then Jesus again spoke to them, saying, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12)
• Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)
• Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)

Major Things That Happened to Jesus

Death by Crucifixion

• “Let this Christ, the King of Israel, now come down from the cross, so that we may see and believe!” Those who were crucified with Him were also insulting Him. (Mark 15:32)
• For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:3)

Resurrection from the Dead

• and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. (1 Corinthians 15:4-8)

Ascension into Heaven

• And He led them out as far as Bethany, and He lifted up His hands and blessed them. While He was blessing them, He parted from them and was carried up into heaven. (Luke 24:50-51)

Our Only Reasonable Conclusion

It has been rightly said by many that, logically speaking, Jesus must be one of the following: liar, lunatic, or Lord. Which of those three conclusions is reasonable?

Many people have tried to wriggle out of this trilemma by introducing a fourth “L” – “legend.” Their claim is that the 27 New Testament texts are not historically reliable – that the authorship ascriptions are not reliable and/or that the original texts have been corrupted by legendary embellishments or scribal editing. Chapters 5 and 6 of this book showed why these two claims are unreasonable. And what the eight men wrote on the main points of history is so consistent that we must conclude that either they wrote factually or else they conspired to produce a pack of lies which would qualify as the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humanity. There is no evidence to support a fourth L.

Reasonably and historically speaking, Jesus cannot be liar nor lunatic nor legend. He can only be Lord.

***

Monday, December 29, 2025
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 6: The Primary Historical Sources

Keep in mind that in this chapter, the previous one, and the next, we’re still just talking about history – not theology or philosophy. Neither, for the time being, are we treating the apostolic texts as the word of God – only as the word of men about a man.

The 8 authors

• APOSTLES: These men were appointed personally by Jesus to represent Him. He appointed 12 of them at the beginning of his ministry, and others as time went on.
  • Peter, a commercial fisherman, was one of the original 12 apostles and wrote two of the letters.
  • John, a commercial fisherman, was one of the original 12 apostles; he wrote one of the four Gospels, and four of the letters (including Revelation).
  • Matthew, a tax collector, was one of the original 12 apostles and wrote one of the Gospels.
  • Paul was not one of the original 12 apostles, but he made up for lost time. Known also as Saul of Tarsus, he was a tent-maker by trade, and a Pharisee fiercely-opposed to Jesus and his followers. Through a dramatic conversion experience, Paul began following the man he had hated. He wrote 14 letters.
• APOSTOLIC ASSISTANTS: These men worked under the direct supervision of an apostle.
  • Mark wrote one of the Gospels. He worked alternately under Paul and Peter.
  • Luke, a physician, wrote one of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Luke worked under Paul.
• JESUS’ BROTHERS: Jesus’ siblings were initially skeptical of his ministry, but, like Paul, were converted into believers…and treated as apostles.
  • James was the eldest of Mary’s and Joseph’s other sons. He wrote one letter.
  • Jude was a younger brother of James, and also wrote one letter.

Did These Men Get the Facts about Jesus Right?

Clearly, not all of Jesus’ apostles wrote – only a subset of them. We needn’t think the eight men all wrote alone. In fact, in some cases we know they had help – even scribes to do the actual writing. But each text is traced to one man – either as the solo or primary author.

All eight men, with the possible exceptions of Paul and Luke, were Jews based in Israel – just like Jesus. Each of the eight is mentioned, however briefly, in at least two texts that he himself did not write. Clearly, these men were contemporaries of Jesus, were in a position to know the things they wrote about, and were all writing in the 1st century.

These eight men were not writing for us, nor were they seeking to bear witness to each other – but their writings do speak to us, and by their references to each other they do buttress each other’s testimony. They gave their own eyewitness testimony and they reported the eyewitness testimony of others. They were writing to congregations of people who had believed what had been preached to them about Jesus.

These eight men did not always agree about everything. Some of them were initially skeptical – even hostile – to Jesus. But the uniform theme of their 27 writings was that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah promised by God in Jewish Scriptures – what we call the Old Testament – and that this was confirmed, most notably, by his resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven.

Common Objections to the Primary Historical Sources

• “Miracles don’t happen!” – If there’s no God, then it’s probably okay to say there are no miracles. But if God is, don’t miracles, by definition, become possible?
• “The authors are lying!” – All eight of them? And what about the people who received their writings as truthful – do you think every ancient believer was a gullible doofus?
• “The authors were deluded!” – This statement concedes that the authors weren’t intentionally lying, but were hallucinating or otherwise under some sort of delusion. The only way you can honestly and reasonably believe this about the New Testament is if you avoid reading it.
• “Historians don’t take the New Testament seriously – they’re not even sure if Jesus lived!” – This objection is mindless, but in the age of the internet, lots of mindless ideas gain traction. Professional historians of ancient history – regardless of their perspective on religion – unite around the fact that Jesus of Nazareth lived, was a Jewish teacher popular with Jewish crowds but unpopular with Jewish rulers, and was crucified by Roman authorities in the early 30’s AD.

Factual or a Pack of Lies?

These eight men suffered great persecution – to the point of imprisonment, torture, and death. What motive did they have to lie? And since they were spread all over the Roman Empire when they wrote, what means or opportunity did they have to coordinate their stories and pull off what would have been a conspiracy for the ages? And how were legends or any other falsehoods inserted in their writings since all the copies we have are consistent with each other? The simplest explanation for the testimony of the eight men is that they were sensible and sincere. Therefore, the only question left to ask is, “Were these eyewitnesses too dumb to know the difference between a dead man and a living one?”

***

Saturday, December 27, 2025
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

***

(Book Installment)

The Duty of a Man:
Keeping a Family in Jesus Christ and the Bible

Chapter 4: The Rest of the Story

Renowned newscaster Paul Harvey had a recurring radio feature called “The Rest of the Story” in which he brought to light little-known aspects of well-known stories. I’m reminded of this because there are little-known aspects of the gospel of Jesus Christ which greatly deserve the light of day. That is, in addition to the gospel of Jesus Christ that has been largely forgotten by an increasingly secular world, there are important aspects of that gospel that have never fully come to light. In this chapter, I’ll take the 2,000-year-old gospel I described in the previous chapter and give it “the Paul Harvey treatment.”

A Cliffhanger

Christianity’s gospel has been traditionally presented as an unfinished story. Recall from the previous chapter that Jesus “would come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom would have no end.” This second coming of Christ was to be the long-promised coming of the kingdom of God – also known as the kingdom of heaven. This coming eternal kingdom had been the central theme of Jesus’ teaching. Therefore, this cliffhanger is not a minor aspect of Jesus’ gospel.

A Conundrum

Having a cliffhanger in the gospel is not a problem per se, but there IS a problem when a cliffhanger hangs too long. This one’s been hanging for 2,000 years! What compounds this problem is that Jesus and His apostles spoke of the coming as imminent in their day. Specifically, Jesus said it would occur before their generation passed away. It’s one thing to imagine Jesus sitting patiently at the right hand of God for the remainder of a single generation in anticipation of this kingdom; it’s quite another to imagine Him still sitting on the edge of his seat twenty centuries later!

The pages of the New Testament throb with expectation of the coming kingdom, practically every other page making some reference, direct or indirect, to this impending cosmic cataclysm. And this intensity increased with the later writings – most notably, the book of Revelation which states clearly in its opening and its closing that “the time was near” and that Jesus was “coming soon.” The apparent nonfulfillment creates a major dilemma because it calls into question Jesus’ credibility as a prophet of God.

A Conclusion

The “delay” is rooted in a misunderstanding. Most church leaders since the apostles’ generation have interpreted the Second Coming to be a physical event instead of a spiritual event. Therefore, because no generation has yet physically seen it, they assume it must not have occurred. They should’ve listened more closely to Jesus.

Jesus warned that His kingdom’s coming would not be observed in a physical way; rather, He said it would come like a thief in the night. He did specify that certain visible signs would precede the coming of His kingdom: wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, lawlessness, and apostasy. He even predicted that Jerusalem and its temple would be destroyed – and history records that the Roman army did this in 70 AD. But the kingdom itself was the kingdom of heaven. As such, it would come, per Old Testament prophecy, “in the clouds.” No one physically saw Jesus sit down at the right hand of God – why then would they expect to physically see Him coming from the right hand of God?

Jesus Christ came in His kingdom exactly when He and His apostles said He would, which was in the late 1st century. That’s when Jesus inherited heaven and earth, that’s when He became King of the nations, and that’s when the eternal age began. All remaining biblical prophecy was fulfilled in that moment. The eternal age began then…and will never end. In that twinkling of an eye, every human being was adopted to be a child of God through the reign of Jesus Christ. Thus they – and all their descendants, including us – are going to heaven. Temptation, sin, and death are still realities – and so are the judgments and wrath of God. However, Jesus Christ has given us the tools we need to successfully navigate these realities. His kingdom is not in waiting; it rules us now! He has been revealed as our God and Father, and we will continue learning about Him for the rest of eternity. Therefore, as Paul Harvey would say at the end of each program, “And now you know…the rest of the story.”

Who Am I?

Who am I to tell you such wonderful things? A man…just like you. As you’ll recall from the first chapter, I was steeped in Roman Catholicism as a child, but quickly became and remained an agnostic secularist throughout adolescence and early adulthood. It was an evangelical Protestant who provoked me to read the Bible for myself. Once I realized Jesus was real, I began pursuing the knowledge of Him. I started going to church. I soon thereafter left my business career to pursue a seminary degree. I received it and became a pastor, and later received another seminary degree. But it was in the midst of all that church work that my continued study of the Bible convinced me that the kingdom of God must have already come. And I realized that I was distracting from that kingdom by trying to get people to join my church, because church had become thoroughly obsolete by the 21st century. The kingdom of God is everywhere – not limited to some building or some group of people.

I know this is a lot to take in; your head may be swirling. I didn’t learn these things all at once. They’ve come to me over years of reading, studying, and practicing the Bible – hesitating and stumbling much of the way. My goal is to help you learn what I’ve learned – but in a fraction of the time it took me. Our next step is to delve into the ancient past to confirm the historical truth about Jesus.

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Thursday, December 25, 2025
Christmas Day
Bible Reading

• Plan One: New Testament Only
• Plan Two: New Testament + Psalms
• Plan Three: New Testament + History
• Plan Four: The Entire Bible – Year 1 of 3, Year 2 of 3, Year 3 of 3

Don’t know which plan? Go to A Christ-Centered Bible Reading Plan: Quick Start.

Extras

Verse of the Day, Audio Capsule, and Video Minute

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