Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The School of Prayer, ( part 1)

It’s OK that our opinions differ on some of these matters. We disagree on some of the non-essential beliefs; but I think we agree on the essential beliefs.

To me, Jesus came to establish something brand new to the world. He came to replace what had been in place since the time of Moses. He didn’t come to extend ancient Judaism; He didn’t come to establish Judaism 2.0; He created something brand new...a totally different way of approaching life, within the context of a brand new covenant that says "Your sin is paid for, now live a life that reflects the love and forgiveness of God as you mirror that in your love and forgiveness of the people around you." A better covenant, a broader covenant. A personal relationship with Him. No need for ANY mediators.

The entire Jewish scripture is organized around a covenant between God and His ancient people Israel. Apostle Paul was from the tribe of Benjamin, but he made it crystal clear with the coming of Jesus, there is a brand new covenant. Jesus made it crystal clear too, that there is a brand new covenant…and as a Gentile, modern Christians, even Jewish modern Christians, all are a part of this brand new covenant. And it is a better covenant with better promises.

The story of the Bible begins on Easter. The reason we have the Bible is because Jesus’ followers discovered that His tomb was empty, and they initially thought that someone had stolen the body; none of them assumed a resurrection. But later that same day, the women and His closest male followers saw Jesus and suddenly there were Jesus sightings all around Jerusalem, the very city in which He had been arrested and tried and eventually crucified.

When it was discovered that Jesus had risen from the dead, suddenly there was much more interest in the life of Jesus and Luke, a 1st century doctor, said that many people actually set out to give a documented account of the life of Jesus. Four of those documents that survived antiquity are the Gospels that are in the Bible today.

Gentiles began to embrace the message of Jesus because they became enamored with Jesus. And then they became enamored with the ancient sacred text of the Hebrews that told of His coming. So the early church got really interested in the Hebrew Scriptures, not because they were interested in Judaism, but because they were interested in Jesus.

They eventually embraced the Hebrew texts as sacred Scripture, but they didn’t embrace it as Jewish Scripture. They eventually embraced it as Christian Scripture, and somewhere toward the late 4th century, the Hebrew texts and the New Testament Christian texts were combined together and eventually called the Bible.

The Bible, as important as it is, did not create Christianity. Christianity is the result of an event that launched a movement, that produced texts, that were collected and protected and bound into a book that we call the Bible. If there had been no resurrection, there would be no Christianity, and there would be no ‘the Bible.’ Because the story of Jesus would not have been worth telling had there been no resurrection.