"The Spirit Within"

Christianity, in its origin, is not a book-religion, as many have asserted; in fact, true Christianity has never been a religion but a personal relation with the Lord Jesus-Christ through the revelation of His Word, spoken or written, and His indwelling Spirit.  Only apostate Christianity took on a form to become a religion with its rituals and rules of conduct.  Later there came a period in which Christians became the "People of the Book".  But originally, it was not so. The Book, the New Testament, is really the result of Christianity.  It is true that Jesus and His followers honored a book, the inspired old Bible of the people of Israel, as a divine authority.  But the fact that it owned the Old Testament does not distinguish early Christianity from Judaism.  What distinguished early Christianity from Judaism was, not the possession of a book, but rather the possession of the personality of Jesus of Nazareth who is the fulfillment of the words in the Book.  With Jesus everything depends on the vitality of the Word, on deep thinking, on a living winged Spirit, on the simple, triumphant Truth.  In the beginning was, not the book, in the beginning was the Word which had become flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, and the Word was God.  Thereafter, the words of Jesus, who are "spirit and life" (John 6: 63) where written and included in a Book with other letters or Epistles along with the Old Testament.  This is the Book of Life and the Sword of Glory, the living Word of God known as the Bible.

If Jesus wrote He certainly wrote no book, still less a sacred book for future generations. Jesus was not a man of literature, and in that respect He differs from many of His famous contemporaries. Neither was Jesus the author of a sacred book, although His Spirit is the author of the Book of Life.  In this respect He differs from other prophets, and from many of the great founders of religions.  It is part of the greatness of the historical Jesus that He did not come forward as a lawgiver with sections and paragraphs, but rather as a sower of the living Word who scattered with blessing hands the divine seed over the field.

The Holy Scriptures (Genesis - Revelation) must be the Believer's final basis for faith and practice. In this secular age, it is imperative that we hold fast to the fundamental truths that have been recorded for us for almost 3,500 years. The Psalmist tells us "Thy word is a lamp to my feet, And a light to my path" (Psalms 119:105).

The Bible is increasingly coming under attack on all fronts, both inside and outside of Christianity. Many insist that the Scriptures are mere "fairy tales" or myths, while other accept its general message, but deny its inspiration and its preservation in the present. The later prefer to believe in the inspiration of an original manuscript that doesn't exist no more, a phantom Bible that they have never seen and is of no authority.   For them the Bible of today is not inspired, neither is it free from errors.  How can those truly in the faith permit such claims to go unchallenged?  

What good is it to say you believe the Bible is the Word of God in the "original manuscripts" when no one has them? If God did not preserve His Word for us today, then all we have is a Book which claims to be the Word of God but is something less.

Indeed, the true member of the Body of Christ must be ready "to give an account for the hope that is in you" (1 Peter 3:15), and that includes being able to defend the inerrancy of the Word.  For example: Where did the Holy Scriptures come from?  Which English Bible version is the living Word of God?  Is God the Author of ONE BIBLE in the English as well as in other tongues like French or Spanish, or did He authorize several which are not in agreement on key points and so become the Author of confusion?  This is one of the most important questions confronting Christians today (see Galatian 1: 6-12; 1 Cor. 14: 33).  As there is ONE GOD, and ONE FAITH, there is also ONE BIBLE.  The King James Bible of 1611 is the chosen and inspired Bible of God for the English people, like the Martin and the Ostervald Bibles are for the French, and the Reina-Valera for the Spanish.  The fact that these Bibles are all translated from the Received Text, known also as the Majority Text, is what makes them unique.  Are modern versions who dont follow the Hebrew Massoretic Text and the Greek Textus Receptus inspired?  What do we do with the Dead sea Scrolls, the Apocrypha, the Book of Enoch, the Book of Jasher, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Gospel of Thomas and other non-canonical works?  How is the Believer supposed to treat the Talmud, Mishnah, or Pseudopygrapha?  And what of the Koran, the Zend Avesta, the Book of the Dead, the Popul Vuh or Book of the Dawn of Life, and the Book of Mormon?  Truly, these are important questions that today's Christian must answer.

Most Christians today pride themselves in being the People of the Book (namely the Bible); yet they have no notion as to which Bible is the Word of God.  In recent years, the great majority of Christians have been led to believe by apostate biblical scholars and pastors that the "family" of new Bible versions which have flooded the market are simply updatings or revisions of the Authorized King James Version so that people can have the Word of God in more modern, more reliable and therefore more easily understood English.  The same is true in French, Spanish and other languages into which the Received Text of the Reformers was translated.  They have also been told that minor changes to the text have been made in the interests of a more accurate presentation based on more ancient authorities and spectacular new evidence which constitutes better material than the Christian scholars had at the time the Authorized Version was produced.  If this were the case, pure and simple, there would be no need for this web site or others like it.  But my desire contends for the pur Word of God in each hand that the truths it contains might live in each heart.  In that aspect, the People of the Book are also the People of the Spirit.  For ''People of the book,'' God is first and foremost a revelation given by the Holy Spirit through the Book of books;  for ''People of the Spirit,'' this revelation of God becomes known as a direct experience in the heart; and so the Book Without becomes the Book Within, yet the two are one and living Word.  The Sacred Book of Life thus pronounces an authoritative demand, and those who receive that demand must undergo a profound internal transformation.  God writes his Book within the redeemed sinner. Such transformation, however, can never be complete in this world; as sinners we all remain, to one degree or another, "willful readers," struggling to submit our rebellious will to the will of God as expressed in his Word.  Among literary scholars and cultural historians the power of the Bible is an unfortunate historical accident they would prefer to neglect or forget; and so Scripture begins to be comprehensible to pagan culture, which means that it begins to be recognized for what it is, a scandal and a stumbling block.  The centrality of the Christian paradox is that the Word of God is recognized in the same way by most modern biblical scholars, poets, pastors and translators who labor to produce new Bibles from defective and corrupted texts that glorify the illusionary free will of sinful man above the Sovereignty of God and the Kingship of Christ.  For the People of the Book, as true Christians are known, the publication of modern versions of the Bible is always a cause for concern, as they present a watered down Gospel and a plan of Salvation that depends entirely on the will of man and his deluded choice to believe or not, and a eternal security that his based on the efforts and obedience of the individual.  A false Gospel need not be another Gospel, it may be the real Gospel perverted.  Indeed, we see this perverted Gospel proclaimed by Armenians who opposed themselves to the Five Points of Calvinism known as T.U.L.I.P. 

John LeDuc