A Five Minute Explanation of The Bible

        The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by 40 authors over 1500 years. It was compiled in the 4th century in a complete form under the direction and leading of God and contains everything that God intended for us to know while on Earth. The authors were divinely inspired by God to write complete truth that agrees with all the other books and is outside of time - that is there are past and future events recorded and it speaks to believers through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the present in a timeless manner.

        The Bible starts with Genesis which explains that God created mankind to live in a perfect place and He walked among them and loved them and they loved Him. But for love to be genuine, there must be a choice. Therefore God put a tree in the garden and said don't eat from it if you love me and trust me. God warned them that the penalty for eating from this tree would be death. Satan, whom God created as the chief of the angels had prior to this time wanted to be equal with God and he and one third of the angels (now called demons) who followed him were thrown out of Heaven - enticed Adam and Eve to disobey God. Suddenly everything changed. Death, disease, disasters, pain, decay all resulted from sin. But worst of all, they could no longer come into God's presence. God is Holy and perfect and can't come into the presence of sin.

       The rest of the Bible, from then on, is God's plan to deal with the sin that separates mankind from God and reverse the curse of sin. God instituted a sacrificial system where an animal's death symbolized by its blood would be the substitute for their death. This had to be repeated on a regular basis and would cover over their sins so they could be in a relationship with God until the perfect sacrifice, God's son, Jesus would come to Earth and live a sinless life and not just cover over the sins but take them on Himself by dying in our place. Paul says that just as by one man's sin, Adam, sin came to all of us, by one Man's obedience, Jesus, it can be removed. The remainder of the Old Testament is about the preparation of His coming. God chooses a nation through which the Messiah would come and demonstrates His power through them and His righteousness and judgement. Unfortunately, they don't represent His righteousness well and they fall into sin continually. God demonstrates his forgiveness and mercy time after time as when they cry out to Him, primarily because God has turned them over to other nations to show them where sin leads, He forgives them and delivers them.

       This brings us to the New Testament where Jesus comes as a baby and when the time is right, John the Baptist introduces Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. All those lamb sacrifices were like swiping a credit card. They temporarily paid for sin but the debt was building and Christ came to pay it. He lived the life we couldn't live and died the death we deserved to die, in our place. He proved He was God through His sinless life and miracles and finally by predicting He would rise from the dead in three days and did it declaring victory over sin and death. He picked twelve ordinary men called disciples and trained them so that when He returned to Heaven, shortly after He rose from the dead, they would take over the work of spending the good news of forgiveness of sins and a restored relationship with God to the whole world. They were still totally unfit for the task until shortly after Christ ascended to Heaven the culmination of God's plan surprised everyone. Yes, Christ had forgiven sins and defeated death but now He sent the Holy Spirit to live inside of all those who repented of their sins and by faith trusted in Jesus for forgiveness.

         The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples and they could finally understand the scriptures and God's plan. They had supernaturally bold and effective witness and their lives changed to become more like Jesus. They penned the books of the New Testament and ended up dying horrific deaths because they couldn't deny the truth of what they were preaching. Not only did they write eyewitness accounts of Christ's life but they wrote letters to the newly formed fellowships of believers not only encouraging them during persecution and doubt and false teachings but also teaching them to let the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling their lives, conform them into the image of Christ. One of the disciples, John, was given prophetic visions of the end times and confirmed what Jesus had said and the Old Testament had prophesied that Jesus would come again a second time and this time it would be to put an end to sin and death and to judge Satan and all those who have followed his lie and had not accepted Christ's gracious gift of forgiveness. The curse of sin will be lifted from the Earth as a new Heaven and new Earth will descend and believers will live in a renewed restored forever relationship with God just like God had originally intended.