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Old and New Commandments

The law of Moses (found in the Old Testament) was obviously intended to be temporary, while the law of Jesus (found in the New Testament) is timeless. I say “obvious” because just as “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing” is clearly a commandment with a limited shelf life, “love one another even as I have loved you” is just as clearly timeless. Why then didn’t God just go ahead give us the permanent law to start with instead of a temporary one? Because we first had to learn what “as I have loved you” looked like before we could adequately understand what the eternal commandment meant.

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Get Baptized in the Bible Rather than Water

Baptism in water was already being de-emphasized once Gentiles were invited to join the Jewish faith in Messiah. Read the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth and see the way Paul speaks of it, especially when comparing its importance to that of preaching the gospel (1 Cor 1:13-17). John the Baptist himself had prophesied the eventual obsolescence of water baptism when he said that he baptized in water but that Messiah would baptize in the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8). The Bible is the work of the Holy Spirit – that is, the prophets (OT) and the apostles (NT) were motivated by the Holy Spirit to write what they wrote. Being baptized in the Bible is therefore our foundational way of being baptized in Spirit. Through the word of God we can know His will and do it. That’s how we get real traction in life – not by getting dunked or doused in water. Be a spiritual man, not a soggy secular man.

Through this website I am baptizing you in the Bible.

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The Bible claims to be the word of God. Therefore, men ought to either love it or hate it. That is, men ought to love it if the claim is true, or hate it if the claim is false. But to be indifferent toward the Bible is to be completely irrational about it. There’s nothing innocent about making a false claim to be the word of God. If the Bible is not what it claims to be, it deserves to be condemned – not tolerated.

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When I survey quotes about the Bible from the US presidents from Washington until now, it is amazing how consistently reverent they have been – up until the post-WW II period. Beginning with Kennedy, presidential quotes about the Bible have been decreasing in reverential deference – with but a few exceptions here or there. In other words, using presidential quotes as a way to measure the degree of respect that America has had toward the Bible throughout its history, that respect was consistently strong for almost 200 years, but has been decreasing in strength for the last 60. It’s as if America becoming the strongest nation in the world, and especially since it became “the world’s only remaining superpower” with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, has been its downfall.

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“According to Lifeway Research, published in 2017, only 11% of Americans have ever read the Bible. Only 9% have read it more than once.”

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The purpose of the Bible is to help us achieve and maintain a consciousness of Christ.

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The Treasure Map Is Not the Treasure

We treasure the treasure map, and with good reason! For without the treasure map, we cannot find the treasure. But the treasure map is not the treasure, and we must never forget that. For if we forget it, the treasure map is doing us no real good and we are wasting our time.

_{(The treasure map is the Bible, and the treasure is Jesus Christ.)}

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The human race has produced many great men, and biographies have been written about the lives they lived. But which of these great men had his definitive and authorized biography written before He was born? (Hint: There has been only one such case.)

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The Old Testament documents the Christ of prophecy.

The New Testament documents the Christ of history.

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Improving your Bible literacy will, as a byproduct, improve your general literacy. You’ll read more productively, think more clearly, and write more understandably. Reading the Bible sincerely and regularly will make you better educated. You’ll also become a more alert and effective communicator – listening and speaking with increasing skill. You’ll even spell better. And these are just the byproducts of an increasing biblical literacy!

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If the Bible is not the word of God then it is a pack of lies. Over and over it says, “Thus saith the Lord.” Every time that statement occurs, it’s either true or false. There’s no room for equivocation.

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The Bible is the book of Jesus Christ. It is by Him…and about Him.

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The National Testament and the Multinational Testament

It was not given to Adam to write the first book of the collection of writings called the Old Testament. Neither was it given to Abraham. Instead, it was given to Moses. This was not a statement that Moses was more worthy of this honor than Adam or Abraham. Rather, this role was given to Moses because he was the one who had a nation of several million people to witness and care for the collection of writings he was to begin.

As the Old Testament was begun and maintained on a national stage, so the New Testament was begun and maintained on a multinational stage. The various authors wrote from various points across the Roman Empire; their writings were copied and shared across churches in innumerable locations in many nations.

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How the Testaments Were Secured

Every nation secures and protects its national documents – especially any founding documents it has. Thus did the nation of Israel secure and protect the writings of Moses and all the prophets who followed him. That’s what we call the Old Testament.

When it came time for the New Testament, since the message was going not just to Israel but to the all the nations, then all the nations were involved in securing and protecting the founding documents. It wasn’t that national governments guarded the writings, but rather congregations of believers in every nation. Of course, churches don’t have the power to protect like governments do, but this arrangement was like blockchain technology in that records were maintained across multiple locations linked in a peer-to-peer network of communications. Stealing or destroying the texts in one location does no good because they exist in other locations as well.

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“Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus”?

The name “Jesus Christ” is the combination of a name and a title. The name is “Jesus” and the title is “Christ.” This combination name-title appears over 200 times in the New Testament. Most of the time, it appears as “Jesus Christ” (133 times); the rest of the time it appears as “Christ Jesus” (87 times). These two ways of identifying Him carry no difference of meaning in the same way that saying “Augustus Caesar” and “Caesar Augustus” are just different ways of referring to the same person. (He was Rome’s first emperor and lived from 63 BC to 14 AD, having begun his reign in 27 BC; Jesus, of course, lived from 0 to 33 AD, having begun His public ministry in 30 AD. ) Both were great rulers, though one infinitely more so than the other.

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The First Mention of the Name “Jesus Christ”

When Jesus spoke this two-word combination name-title for Himself in a prayer the night before He died (John 17:3), it was – so far as we know – the first time it had ever been uttered. In fact, as far as the four Gospels tell us, it was the only time the two words were spoken aloud in combination during Jesus’ earthly lifetime. All those other more than 200 occurrences came after His resurrection from the dead.

What I think we can take from this is that the disciples did not come up with this way to refer to Jesus. Rather, it’s a name He gave them to use for Him, and He explained how it was to be used during those 40 days He had on earth between His resurrection and ascension when He was explaining to them all those things about Himself from the Scriptures (Luke 24:25-27, 32, 44-48). You’ve heard the expression, “So-and-so really made a name for himself.” Well, it certainly applies in this case. Thus did God really make a name for Himself. and that name is Jesus Christ.

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