Well, you folks who feel your faith slipping are not alone. The great people of faith in Scripture had their dark, dark hours, lost faith at times, backslid, made a mess of things, and repented.
Israel's God has made no effort to hide this from us or to sugar-coat it. This lends extreme credibility to Scripture. In other words, He lets the good and the bad of His people's actions and character to be put on vivid display, without any phoniness or cover-up to make them appear as something they were not. They were mere humans who were given extraordinary powers from an indefatiguable Eternal God, to fulfill His purposes.
First off, let me state my case for which Bible IS the Bible.The 1611 King James Bible is the only reliable text. If there is the Word of God on this planet, or if the truth is absolute, and an Oracle of the Great I Am exists, it can only be the 1611 King James Bible. Let me expound.
When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, along with various fragments of papyri, the "Great Isaiah' text was found in its entirety and matches the Book of Isaiah in the English KJB to a "T". This is no coincidence. The Masorites (a Jewish sect) who hid these particular scrolls in the caves of Qumran preserved the exact Hebrew words of the Jewish prophets by copying them meticulously. This copying and re-copying, word for word from the original papyrus scrolls of the prophets, had been going on all along, from the Hand of Israel's God, as He directed chosen men to place His Word onto paper. He did this so we would have a Guidebook for Life. His first scribe was Moses. Imagine Moses sitting down and writing the Torah, the first five books of the O.T., as the Lord personally dictates. Wow. Imagine David,, running for His life and at the same time catching Jehovah's words in a cave, and penning the Psalms. The Psalms contain an incredible amount of Messianic prophecy, btw.
Side Note: The Great I AM showed Moses the past, i.e. how He dealt with Job, how He created the heavens and the earth, what happened in the Garden, etc. Moses must have been exhausted and at times overwhelmed. Then Moses goes on to become the guy who comes down from the mount with the 10 Commandments. He watched God's Hand blaze these into stone tablets. I am mind-boggled at the tasks Moses performed for the Most High, the least of which was mentoring the Hebrews through the desert. I am a Hebrew myself and can tell you, they drove Moses crazy, irked God to wrath, and got quite a few of themselves killed in the process. "I AM" is God's most cherished moniker. It has a special ring to it because it's an impenetrable fortress of a name!
Back to the King James Bible:The New Testament Greek that was translated into English for the 1611 King James Bible is from the inviolate Textus Receptus. Textus Receptus means 'received text'.
Received from who?
From Israel's God as spoken directly to His apostles, Christ's disciples, who also were His scribes. Paul stands out as having the most epistles in the New Testament. These holy words were entrusted to mortal men, and you can bet your soul on them.
Now ....why so many other 'Bibles"? Logic gives us an easy answer. The devil has sought to dishonor, discredit, usurp, defame and vilify Israel's God straight away from the Garden to this day. The devil, apart from being a murderer and liar, is a master counterfeiter.
What better way to confuse God's Word to the masses than by creating endless 'versions', and counterfeits? I never say King James VERSION because it is the Bible, not a version. All of the other Bibles are versions and paraphrases. They distort, twist, confuse, delete and add to the original tenets of the faith. They are originated from corrupt texts called Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandria manuscripts. These are false and apostate texts. Here I will point a direct finger at the Roman counterfeit of Christianity known as Catholicism for the dissemination of these satanic, tainted manuscripts. As we near the end of time, false Bibles and their doctrines of devils proliferate. Hey guys, we have lots of unseen enemies, so get used to it.
To really hold steady in the faith, you need the right tools. Satan wants to rob our faith and render us powerless. I have been saved for 38 years and he never lets up on this DOUBT strategy with me. That it still works on me must have the devil laughing and my Saviour crying.
Yet Jesus' mercies are so enduring, I can always come back like a silly puppy and He loves on me.
I have fallen on my face, my heart bleeding in agony. Yet when I open the King James (where the word of a king is, there is POWER!... Ecclesiastes 8:4....I recover. It is an elixir of mental and spiritual healing, the well of nourishing truth that permeates even he blackest moments of my life. All my troubles, fears and trepidations seem to float away as I read these words of eternal life, and drink from the fountain of living water. This is why He gave a born-again Christian KING the great honor of translating His exact words into English. All for you and me. But I digress.
It stands to reason that the Great I Am would preserve His exact words to the prophets, as He promised to do, in ONE PLACE.
You can read up on why the 1611 King James Bible is the ONLY genuine Word of God on planet earth. I am just giving you a foundation from which to build. Once you read the real Word, your life will change. You will receive direct prophecy about your life, along with instruction and guidance. What you decide to do with this wellspring is your choice.
Let's address this thing called doubt. I personally believe that if a Christian never doubts, he never had faith. Christ Jesus had his moment of doubt and fear in Gethsemane. I do not espouse doubt as a way to achieve shining faith. I am merely saying IT HAPPENS and how you ride the tide of it determines how thou shalt fare in the battle.
Knowing you are in a BATTLE is half the battle won. Most believers are naive in the area of spiritual warfare and you must, must, must understand and recognize the strategies of your adversary, the devil. I have done my homework. Please do yours. Please commit thine heart to knowing the Great I AM by reading what He has to say to you.
When you doubt, grab the REAL Word, open it and ask Him to guide you to what He wants to say to you. His word is a refuge and a fortress. It does not contradict itself. It must be read and interpreted IN CONTEXT. An advanced, mature Christian often receives out of context words of prophecy for his life or other guidance, but this takes time to master and recognize.If you are new in the faith, just stick to staying in context. In due season, the Holy Spirit will show you deeper and more personal applications of the Word for your individual life.
Admittedly, I still find passages that confound me. No small wonder. This is the Oracle of He who inhabits eternity. His thoughts and ways surpass mine by leaps and bounds. I have a very high IQ but it pales in comparison to the vast Mind of God. How can we expect to understand everything? We can't.
He showed me something very rich the other day. He is a surgeon cutting out a life-threatening disease....sin. As I pondered the victories of my Hebrew ancestors in battle, and how He ordered them to KILL everything PAGAN down to the last animal of the enemies, it became obvious that this was the work of a skilled surgeon removing sin from around His chosen people, so they would not fall ill from it. Do you understand this now? His anger toward them was that even though they saw His mighty deliverances and miracles, they still hankered after the disease instead of taking His prescriptions.
What we perceive as a 'meanie' God in the O.T. is really a very precise and jealous God. He has these assets, the Hebrews, a tribe He created to bring the light of His word and His Messiah into a very satanic and bleak world. Does He not have the right to judge? Does He not have the wisdom to know exactly for what and why He uses these methods? Of course He does.
Remember, we are dealing with GOD, folks, and let's forsake bringing Him down to our level. And Jesus the Christ, while in the FORM of man, was no ordinary man. He had to be God. No MAN could keep the law perfectly (because you and I never could) and then be the perfect sinless lamb to buy our redemption. What a marvel. He died so that eternal death would PASS OVER those who were bought with His blood. Study the Jewish Passover,its origins, etc., so you can see exactly what Christ did at Calvary and why. I did my homework; do yours. You'll be the richer for it.
Abraham, David, Joseph, et al. Ordinary men transformed into heroes of faith but still, the Bible shows us their abject failures, sins, and loss of faith. They received promises from God that were IMPOSSIBLE and they were required to WAIT in faith to see these come to pass. Circumstances were in such contradiction to what God had spoken to them, promised them, that they were sore vexed to hang in there. If I AM says it will happen, it will happen. Promises can take the long way home so don't stray off the path....keep on trucking. I'm writing to myself as well as to whoever falls upon this letter.
Please don't tell me Abraham had perfect faith. I have stilled many a tongue by saying the following: Was it FAITH that propelled him into Hagar's bed? No, it was DOUBT. Did the Lord still come through and make him the father of many nations? Yes, He kept His promise even though Abraham defied Him. Did reaping and sowing come into play here? Ask any modern day Hebrew, and they will point to Hagar's son Ishmael, the father of the Arab nation, and their current nemesis.
However, the Grand Plan will still come to pass. Where am I in all of this, and why am I writing to you? Hmmmmm..... God has promised me a preposterously impossible thing, and I am still WAITING, over a year now. At the moment, the ways and means of this ever happening in the natural are stone, cold DEAD. Just like Jesus was before He rolled away the stone. OUR FAITH IS BASED ON THE RESURRECTION, THE HISTORICAL FACT, THAT THE GOD MAN CHRIST JESUS WALKED OUT OF THAT TOMB, ALIVE AND READY FOR BATTLE. So, become a warrior in His army!
Have I screamed, cried, doubted? Oh yes. He informed me that He has been trying me in the furnace of affliction for quite some time. This is not really what I want to hear, but His plan is the best plan, even if we buck like a charley horse under it. Better to relax and let Him have His way with you. He tests faith, tests it hard, very hard. He wants you to pass!
Maybe this is where some of you are feeling the heat. But gold only becomes pure bullion when it's subjected to extreme heat. All of the impurities are burned away. Our God is a consuming fire. Can you handle it? When he has tested you, you shall come forth as gold. It says this in the Book of Job. It is my personal verse and my name.....Gold.
Google: Youtube The Death of a Promise by David Wilkerson. I think this three part video series will help some of you. It really helped me even though 'the vison is yet for an appointed time' and today I cried and wept and doubted.
Hang on. He is never late.
Secret: The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. Study to show yourself approved. An ignorant Christian should be an oxymoron, shouldn't it?
And don't let Him catch you doing this:
