The Field Manual Series

The Bible is a unique book.

Actually it’s a collection of 66 books written over a period of 1500 years by 40 authors who were from 13 countries on 3 separate continents (Asia, Europe, Africa).

It claims to be the Word of God over 2700 times.

And it has been translated into about 1500 languages.

From this book comes all the information that we have about God, Jesus, heaven, hell, salvation and eternity.

It also contains numerous fulfilled prophecies about various men and nations down thru the ages, and (more importantly) it contains over 300 prophecies that declared that the Messiah was going to come to earth to live, die and rise form the dead.

It is truly one of the most powerful works of literature ever written.

And Satan hates it!

If it were just a history book, or a collection of rules and regulations Satan probably wouldn’t be too bothered by it, but this is God’s book. This is God’s truth. And this truth of God has the power within its pages to change us.

Now, of course, not everybody believes that.

ILLUS: When I was 12 years old I was deeply impressed by a great preacher named Ken Mathis. He was the embodiment of everything I wanted to be when I grew up, and even before he baptized me into Christ I determined I was going to be a preacher just like him.

But when I graduated high school my brother Jack convinced me to go to a secular college for a couple of years. Since I respected my brother – and my dad was willing to foot the bill – I went. And my brother was right, it was a great experience. I learned a lot while I was there. And one of the most important things I learned concerned the Bible.

You see, when I was a young man, I grew up in college town. I really loved – and still love - that town, but being a college town it had its share of people who were more impressed with the wisdom of men than they were with the wisdom of God.

Without realizing it, I picked up some very worldly attitudes towards Scripture:

1. I had heard & had come to believe that the Bible was a boring book.

2. AND I had heard, and believed that it was filled with errors.

So here I was at a secular college – far away from mom and dad and my home church - and I had to face the fact that those beliefs were not consistent with being a preacher. I also had to face the fact that I had never really determined for myself if those secular attitudes towards God’s Word were true.

My first objective was to see if the Bible was, indeed, a boring book. (I figured if I was going to be a preacher the least I could do is read the thing). I set the Bible, a Bible Dictionary and a Commentary out on coffee table and made a deal with God. I’d read it if and when He would give me the desire to do so. I also told Him I wasn’t going to read the prophecies, poetry or the who begat who’s.

Now, trying to make "a deal" with God can be a dangerous thing, but I believe God overlooked my ignorance and had mercy on me in this instance.

In less than a month I had read it all the way thru (with the exceptions of the poetry and prophecy and such) and I found that the Bible was NOT boring. In fact it was quite exciting! It was filled with people and situations that I could understand and identify with.

(Pause…)

But then I had to confront the more serious question–was the Bible filled with errors like the people I once had listened to had said?

Well, I was at a secular college.

There had to be somebody there who rejected Scripture and would have a few “inaccuracies” that they knew of. So I went looking. And I found there were a whole bunch of people - many of them were professors - who were more than willing to share with me their disdain for the Bible.

But most of the “mistakes” they believed were in Scripture turned out to be just empty accusations, based more upon personal prejudices and preferences than true inaccuracies.

Most of what I heard felt like a man throwing mud up on a wall to see how much would stick.

It was like someone seeing the mayor of town walking down the street with a pretty girl and accusing him of “fooling around” when in reality it was his cousin from out of town and he was simply showing her the sights of the city.