Word up

An online article posted today by London's Daily Mail: "The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all technically anonymous, and were attributed in very early stages to these four evangelists by Church Fathers," Professor Schrader Polczer said. "It's difficult to know how much of that attribution is real history, and how much of it was legendary.

"For example, attributing to Matthew and John is convenient and credible since they were Jesus's direct disciples, but historical factors seem to undermine these attributions. 

"Meanwhile, other books purport to have been written by a famous author – such as Solomon ('Song of Solomon') or Paul the Apostle ('The First Epistle to Timothy'). 

"But most scholars agree these attributions are falsely attributed or spurious, according to the academic."

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The Bible is the Word of God written by God Himself ("All scripture is given by inspiration of God") and yet He used holy men of old. He used men as pen men, confirms Richard Jordan.

What I’m trying to say to you is that when you’re dealing with the scripture, the written Word of God, you’re really dealing with God Himself, and if you’re going to deal with God Himself, you’re going to have to do it by dealing with His Word. You can’t separate the two.

Abraham didn’t have a Bible. He didn’t have scripture. The word "script" means writing. Abraham didn’t have anything written down as a message from God. In fact, the Book of Genesis wasn’t written until after Israel’s Exodus out of Egypt, and it’s written by Moses. So, what you’ve got here is something being said that can’t happen unless you recognize that, in the Bible, God makes His Word equal to Himself.

In Paul’s mind, when the Scripture did it, it was God doing it, and when God did it, the Scripture said it. The psalmist says about God "that thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name."

In the Bible, God equals/equates His Word with Himself. I don’t know any other way of saying it. When you deal with God’s Word, you’re dealing with God Himself and conversely, if you’re going to deal with God, you have to deal with His Word. Every contact you have with God OUTSIDE of the objective pages of a Bible is on an inner, subjective level.

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You see, God, when He speaks it and He writes it down, that’s Him talking. Hebrews 4:12 says, [12] For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

He starts out talking about the Word of God and ends up talking about the Word of God personified as a "his," and He says, "It’s a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That’s talking about God. He takes His Word and describes His Word as though He’s describing Himself. He gives God’s attributes to His Word.

Romans 9:17 says, [17] For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

That’s a quote out of Exodus 9:16. Back there it says Jehovah said: "I Jehovah." Here it says "the scripture saith." Once again, He uses the Scripture interchangeably with Himself.

Romans 9:17 is God the Spirit’s commentary through Paul and He interchanges the two. God Himself isn’t shy about saying that His Word is equal to Himself. The connection between the written Word and the LIVING Word is astounding. In the Bible, they are absolutely inseparable! Jesus Christ is called "the Word."  "In the beginning was the Word." Capital W. It’s a title. It’s a proper noun.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word WAS God." That’s interesting. He’s WITH God; He and the Father are there. They’re separate people but He’s with Him. ‘"And the Word was God." He was equally God but separate in His person. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." He’s the Creator God. He’s the speaker of the godhead.

Then He says in John 1:17, "The Word became flesh." So, we know who the Word is. The Word is the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the godhead. But the Bible is called the Word of God.

Revelation 19 says that when Jesus Christ comes back, "he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood and his name is called The Word of God." He is the living Word of God, but the Bible is the written Word of God, and the connections between the two are so astounding that you can’t really separate them. When you deal with one you deal with the other.

Both have two natures. Jesus Christ is God but He’s also man. He’s the man Christ Jesus and yet He’s God. ‘Thy throne O God,’ the Father says to Him in Hebrews 1:8. So, God the Father thinks Jesus is God and He thinks He’s the man: "The Word became flesh."

Both the LIVING Word and the WRITTEN word can save you. Jesus Christ, Hebrews says, can save to the uttermost those that come to God by Him. James 1 says it’s the "engrafted word" that is able to save your soul.

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A book I came to appreciate after hearing Jordan once refer to it as one of “the great books written outside of the Bible,” is Alexander Hyslop’s 1858 classic The Two Babylons.

It is truly unreal how jam-packed it is with amazing facts, revelations, insights, analogies, etc., regarding history’s pagan-satanic underpinnings and origins from Nimrod on. It’s such a complex read I feel I will never complete its 323 pages!

Here’s just a taste of Hyslop’s extraordinary ability evident from his first introductory paragraphs:

“There is this great difference between the works of men and the works of God, that the same minute and searching investigation, which displays the defects and imperfections of the one, brings out also the beauty of the others.

“If the most finely polished needle on which the art of man has been expended be subjected to a microscope, many inequalities, much roughness and clumsiness, will be seen.

“But if the microscope be brought to bear on the flowers of the field, no such result appears. Instead of their beauty diminishing, new beauties and still more delicate, that have escaped the naked eye, are forthwith discovered; beauties that make us appreciate, in a way which otherwise we could have had little conception of, the full force of the Lord’s saying, ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.’

“The same law appears also in comparing the Word of God and the most finished productions of men. There are spots and blemishes in the most admired productions of human genius. But the more the Scriptures are searched, the more minutely they are studied, the more their perfection appears; new beauties are brought into light every day; and the discoveries of science, the researches of the learned, and the labours of infidels, all alike to conspire to illustrate the wonderful harmony of all the parts, and the Divine beauty that clothes the whole.”