A coworker excitedly told me
that she had come to know the Lord Jesus, was participating in a church, and
was starting to read the Bible. Then she said, “There is a Christian bookstore
around me and I’m going to go there and find some books that tell me what the
Bible is about.”
I replied, “Well, the best way
to learn what the Bible is about is to read the Bible. After you’ve read the
Bible then you might want to read a book or two on the Bible, but the only way
to learn what the Bible is about is to read the Bible; the only way to know the
Bible is to read the Bible.”
Knowing that she is engaged to
be married I said, “Suppose you hadn’t met Bill yet and I said to you, ‘I know
a great guy named Bill, I think you two might hit it off.’ But then, instead of
introducing you to Bill I simply talked about Bill. Then I said, ‘Hey, my
friend Susan knows Bill too, let her tell you about him.’ And then I said, ‘My
friend Mark has written a book about Bill, why don’t you read it?’ And so on
and so forth and weeks and years go by but you never actually meet Bill.
“Well, that’s the way it is
with many Christians. We go to church for years and we say we believe the
Bible, but we never really get to know the Bible because we never read it. So
the best way to learn what the Bible says, the best way to learn the Bible…is
to read the Bible.”
Then we talked about some ways
to read the Bible.
Folks say that the best way to
learn a foreign language is immersion in that language; I think the best way to
learn the Bible is immersion in the Bible – to read it to learn its scope, to
read it to study it, to read it to meditate on it, to read it to pray it, and
to read it to memorize passages of it.
When we know what the Bible
says we have a grid and filter through which to read what other people say
about the Bible and what other people say about Jesus; the best testimony about
the Bible is the Bible; the best testimony about Jesus Christ is what Jesus
Himself says about Himself, and what those who knew Him and who knew those who
knew Him say about Him.
Legal systems through the ages
have valued eyewitness testimony – the people who write fiction are not those
who wrote the Bible, but rather those who in their presumption and arrogance
think they know more (2,000 years and more removed from Biblical events) than
those who were eyewitnesses and those who knew the eyewitnesses. Which group of
witnesses would an unbiased court of law believe?
The public nature of the
Gospel events was appealed to by Paul when he stood before Festus (Acts 26:26),
“For the king, before whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am
convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing was
not done in a corner.”
Luke begins his Gospel with, “Inasmuch
as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which
are most surely believed among us, just as those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and minsters of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to
me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to
write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know
the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.”
The only way to know the Bible
is to read the Bible, and the testimony of eyewitnesses is far superior to the testimony
of those far removed in both time and space from the Biblical events.
