AV Bible Believers Fellowship

I give you my word that it isn't.

To which you reply, "who are you again, and how can I trust your word?"

Well, there was a time not so long ago that a man's word was his honour; a man's word was his bond. When a man gave you his word on something, it was as good as done. It meant something.

I started reading in Jeremiah today and when I get into the Prophets, the thing that always gets my attention is the number of times I read the phrase, "the word of the Lord." So I looked up the phrase in my Bible software, just for curiosity's sake.

Did you realize that the phrase, "the word of the Lord" appears 255 times throughout the Bible? Yep, 242 times throughout the OT and thirteen times in the NT (Luke, Acts, 1&2 Thessalonians, and 1 Peter).

The phrase, "the word of God" appears four times in the OT and 44 times in the NT and the phrase, "the burden of the word of the Lord" appears three times, in the OT.

And if that's not enough, the phrase, "thus saith the Lord" appears 413 times!

I challenge you to look at the context in which each phrase is used in each verse and tell me, if a person could once place such value in a man's word and take it at face value as truth (without the handshake, no less), then shouldn't we place that much more value in God's word and begin by believing at face value that "the word of the Lord" is indeed referring to the word of the Lord: words that God has said?

Yes, the Bible is the word of the Lord and because of the very nature of Who God is, it is truth.

That's terrific, sister! There's an awful lot to think about there.

I don't have as much use for C. S. Lewis as I once did, but I'll never forget an essay he wrote on the subject of the Bible and myth (or fable). Myth was his specialty: he was the expert on myth, as a literary genre, of his generation.

And he said that the Bible couldn't possibly be full of myths; it's not written like myths are written. He gave examples, which I won't get into here; but the point is that anyone who knows myth, or the nature of fables, would never get them mixed up with the Bible.

The evangelicals and too many fundamentalists accuse us of being "Bibliolaters," and say that we worship the Book, rather than Christ. That's an outrageous slander. But none of us could possibly exalt God's word more than He Himself exalts it: I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name (Psalm 138:2).

Thank you, sister.