Grace Has Taught Our Hearts to Fear
18 hours ago
We need to live EVERY DAY like we are the children HE loves, the objects of His miracle mercy! That should change the way we look at every day, no matter how bad work sucks, no matter how poor we are, no matter how hard life is... we are the children he loves!
Some of you were locked in a dark cell, cruelly confined behind bars,
Punished for defying God's word, for turning your back on the High God's
counsel--
A hard sentence, and your hearts so heavy, and not a soul in sight
to help.
Then you called out to God in your desperate condition; he got you
out in the nick of time.
He led you out of your dark, dark cell, broke open
the jail and led you out.
So thank God for his marvelous love, for his
miracle mercy to the children he loves;
He shatterd the heavy jailhouse
doors, he snapped the prison bars like matchsticks!
I really like the statistic in bold (found in 3 places above). Gives a great perspective of the vastness of the work, effort, and study that went into JUST the writing of the books (inspired, of course), not to mention the immense work that took place to fastidiously copy them and translate and transmit them down to us. Incredible how God has created and protected this precious love-letter to us!
"While the major works of the New Testament were immediately seen as
authentic by these early church fathers, most of the New Testament was accepted
before A.D. 200, and all of it was officially and finally recognized as
authentic by the Council of Hippo in 393. (p. 368) (From Geisler and Nix,
General Introduction to the Bible, 294)
"...of about 40 authors over nearly 1,500 years to get his message across."
(p. 372)
In fact, our conclusion on inerrancy would be falsified if someone could
trace a real error back to an original scroll. (17) But to this day, after
nearly 2,000 years of looking, no one has found such an irreconcilable problem.
(This is truly amazing when you consider that the Bible is really a
collection of documents written by about 40 authors over a 1,500-year
period. Where could you find such agreement on a variety of issues from
40 authors who all live today, much less over a 1,500-year period?)(17): Copyist
errors have been found in manuscripts, but they are easily identified and known
not to be in the original by comparing the many manuscripts in existence (see
chapter 9). While no Bible originals have yet been found, earlier manuscripts of
other works have survived. So it is possible that a Bible original may someday
be discovered.