Is the Bible the Inspired Word of God? Is it literally true? How so?

I find the scriptures to be an anchor for our faith and encourage all to sudy them with great seriousness. We must read scriptures meditatively and with holy reflection and prayer seeking God’s understanding and guidance. We can do this by prayer for guidance before and after we read and meditatively listening for that guidance in our lives.

People often say there is not “owner’s manual” for how to live our life, but this is not entirely true. The Bible is full of Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, the teaching of Jesus, Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms and prophets were Wisdom Teachers,) and that is exactly what Wisdom Literature is. An owner’s manual for life.

Besides the Wisdom Literature in the Bible the Bible is also the account of the people of Israel over thousands and thousands of years and the Christians of the 1^st and 2^nd Century AD and their experiences of the Living God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Our technology and culture may change but humanity is the same as when we were created (as science defines it the ACH – Anatomically Correct Human appeared over 400,000 years ago and our internal hardware and operating system has not changed since.)

If we honestly believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God then we need to treat every word with the seriousness and integrity to explore what Jesus, the Apostles, and the Prophets actually meant with the words they wrote and be aware that of the thousands of translators writing over thousands of years human errors in perception may have crept in. This does not invalidate the Bible, it makes it human. [For more on Bible differences see: What is a Good Bible? – ofNaturesGod.com ]

I have told my parishioners that the book you hold is not in itself holy. They are just dead words on paper until you are inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit that Jesus sent to us to guide us in his absence. This is why people can use the Bible to justify horrible things. They are not guided by the Holy Spirit. As Jesus said to Peter (and would quite possibly say to far too many churches today,) “you do not know by what Spirit you speak.”

This article is an attempt to address the limitation of our culture and how it affects our understanding of our faith and the Bible. Let us hear the warning given in the Book of Timothy about the false religion that will permeate the last days, for I fear we are seeing it all around us.

“You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, without love, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! – 2 Tim 3:1-5 NRSV

Please understand, it is not my intention to cast shade on anyone’s denomination, religion, or practice f faith. Instead, I hope to help you develop a living faith and spirituality that brings you fulfilment and brings you into the presence of the Living God. As Jesus said, “the Kingdom of God is here now. Let those who have ears to hear let them hear.” The Bible itself, Jesus himself, said that many will come to him on the day of judgment and he will say “get away from me you doers of iniquity, I never knew you.” Considering these people, in this story, ran to him thinking they were faithful followers only to be rejected, I feel it is a cautionary for tale for all of us to, as the Bible says, “work out our own salvation with awe and reverence.”

We are in these last days where far too many people and churches embrace the form of religion and deny the power of it. I am regularly disgusted at accounts of people who went to the church for help with some unseen malevolent spiritual presence and were brushed away as if it was their imagination. Jesus would not have done that. It is a product of modernity. A mindset which has stolen the real power from our faith and contaminates religion today. No wonder people are falling away it is as Jesus said. People have the form of religion and deny its power…its reality.

“He turned and rebuked them and said, You do not know of what spirit you are.” Luke 9:55 Lamsa Aramaic translation

When people who don’t feel the truth of the scriptures in the depths of their heart and are trying to simply understand it with their head then they will miss much of the message that Jesus and the prophets had for us. The Bible IS the inspired word of God but over the last 2000 years these words of the mystics (like Jesus,) have been translated and recorded by those who think more with their head than their heart. Anyone who has had a real religious experience knows how hard it is to put it into words. The Bible does its best but what is there is sometimes but a pale reflection of what the prophet or disciple experienced. Anyone who has had a deeply emotional “religious experience” and tried to communicate this to someone else understands the poor medium that language can sometimes be and its limitations.

“Yet Scripture, as the monks of old who chanted daily have attested, must be experienced with the heart and not just studied with the head. So much biblical training in our times tests young scholars for the latter but does little to foster the former. Mysticism – banished from our academic life for three centuries – rarely emerges on the printed page of translators who become steeped in the words but not necessarily the music of the author’s spirit and intention. When scriptural passages become overly familiar, matters of rote, memorized prayers instead of living words, religion is paralyzed and loses the capacity for transformation. Scripture then becomes the property of specialists.”

Matthew Fox from the foreward to prayers of the cosmos, meditations on the aramaic words of jesus by neil douglas-klotz

The passages of the Bible were meant to speak to your heart, your head, and simultaneously hold universal truth, they were NEVER intended to be merely literally true. In Hebrew and Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus and many of the Jews of his day,) the meaning is different. The understanding of the universe is different from Greek, Latin, English, French, or whatever Western Language we may read it in. This leads to problems in our understanding.

What we in the West seem to believe is the MOST important, scientific or historical fact Jesus quite possibly might have found to be the LEAST important being more concerned with your ability to understand the meaning behind the words.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” – Matthew 11:15 – Lamsa Bible (Aramaic translation)

For instance, in Aramaic or Hebrew if you read the word we translate as “believe.” We understand that to mean with your head (or maybe to believe with your heart,) a certain tenet of faith. However, in Aramaic or Hebrew that is an empty understanding. In Hebrew and Aramaic if you believe you feel something is totally real simultaneously in your mind, your heart, your soul, and the universe. In fact, these very divisions come from the Western Minds of the Greeks and Romans and their traditions as they passed them down to us. The Roman Empire and the churches that grew out of Western countries don’t view “belief” in the same way Jesus or the disciples did. They did not divide the universe into mental, physical, or spiritual realms. It was all one. Literally a UNI-verse. Unfortunately, when we read the Bible in English, German, Latin, or Greek, or whatever Western Language this division is imprinted on a belief by the limitations of the language. It is a division that did not exist in the original texts for Jesus, the prophets, or the disciples. Our very language and culture mislead us when we try to believe what Jesus came to teach us and in our understanding of the warnings of the prophets.

So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence,

Philipians 2:12 NET Bible

I watched a YouTube video by an African where he was talking to young Africans about why Africa was “behind” he pointed out the only reason African’s believe themselves to be behind is they compare themselves to Western achievements. He asked why African nations cannot maintain the technology and infrastructure of the West? They tried to give reasons “we are betrayed by our leaders” seemed to be the most common. He said “No, you have betrayed your leaders by wanting them to do something foreign to their culture.” He went on to ask, “What is the Ebu word for “maintenance”? Or the Tutsi word, or any other African language? There is none. If there is no word for something then there is no concept for that belief, action, or behavior in the thousands of years of culture that represent that people. Just as the African culture lacks the concepts of maintenance and other aspects necessary to make Western Civilization work for them so do, we in Western Civilization lack some of the concepts that Jesus and the Hebrews assumed “went without saying” in their own world view.

In addition, it would be impossible, in Hebrew or Aramaic, for someone to believe if they did not live out in their actions that belief. They would simply understand that the person used empty words and did not believe anything. Because belief and living out that belief in your daily life was one and the same.

When I was in seminary the oldest version of the Bible that we had was not in Hebrew (although that was the original language of most of the Bible,) it was in Greek. Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East and Northern Africa in the 4^th Century BC and brought Greek to the area as a unifying language of scholars. The oldest version of the Bible we have (that may have changed as we are always making new discoveries,) was from around this time and written in Greek translated by 70 scholars for the library in Alexandria called the Septuagint (basically “of the seventy.”) The keepers of the Library of Alexandria recognized the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures (what we call the Old Testament,) and translated them into the Lingua Franca (common language) of the age which was Greek.

The languages of the Bible – Hebrew (the language of the Temple,) and Aramaic (the language of Jesus and the disciples,) do not draw sharp lines between means and ends, or between inner or outer, or between mind, body, and spirit. This is very much different from Greek and the Western Language that most of us learned th Bible in (languages like English or even Latin,) where these distinctions are extremely important. These lines of separation are ‘Western’ in their thinking and are responsible for much of our modern misunderstanding of scripture. [For more on the differences of World View between Us and Jesus see: https://ofnaturesgod.com/we-are-too-often-blind-you-must-unlearn-all-that-you-have-learned ]

“Unlike Greek, Aramaic presents a fluid and holistic view of the cosmos. The arbitrary borders found in Greek between “mind,” “body,” and “spirit,” fall away.” “In addition, the Aramaic language is close to the earth, rich in images of planting and harvesting, full of views of the natural wonder of the cosmos. “Heaven” in Aramaic ceases to be a metaphysical concept and presents the image of “light and sound shining through all creation.”

neil douglas-klotz, prayers of the cosmos; meditations on the aramaic words of jesus

It is the duty of pastors, teachers, and other spiritual leaders to help us understand the Biblical World view so we can live it in our own lives. The Bible is clear. Spiritual leaders will be judged more harshly than those they teach, but that still does not excuse us from seeking the truth ourselves.

So then, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, continue working out your salvation with awe and reverence, Phillipians 2:12 NET Bible

One advantage the Koran does have is that it insists that it be read in the original language. My understanding of the Bible completely changed after I took Hebrew and, almost universally, all the questions, misunderstandings, and contradictions of the English and Latin Bibles I had read evaporated. It then raised entirely new understandings of scriptures that I had earnestly believed that I had understood.

I say this idea that of the Koranic faith that insists it be read in the original language. However, I have often noted that a strength, in a different context, becomes a weakness. Just as African culture when it tries to apply Western Values…there is a disconnect. But, because of the insistence on learning the Koran in the original not as many people learn it, except by rote memorization. Where, with the Bible translated in so many languages it is accessible to many more people. But at the risk of variation.

The Holy Bible, while an indispensable anchor of our faith, has too often become a work of idolatry. People worship the words of the Bible more than they try to develop a living relationship with the Divine One. They refuse to let God speak to them, except through their pastor or their own understanding of the Bible. Some even say we live in a different “dispensation” where God doesn’t speak to us as he did to the prophets. II believe this is a deeply heretical belief peculiar to Western Enlightenment Christianity that would be foreign to a living Biblical inspired faith in a God who is the same “yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”

As John Wesley once said, “the Bible contains everything necessary for our salvation.” This is a very different statement than saying, “everything is in the Bible.” The Bible is not science and trying to scientifically understand what God has done is not an act of faithlessness. However, Science is NOT God, not even close. And the failings of modernity and Enlightenment dogma which has ruled for 300 years in the West is become more apparent with each passing day.

The problem is that today most pastors and consequently most Christian do not understand the Bible and the message of Jesus because they think in English or French, or some other language and don’t do the extra work to think how the words would have been different in Jesus’ understanding. This is the responsibilities of pastors and teachers to communicate to believers but since they are doing so poorly at it, I encourage you to find a teacher who can help you.

Even pastors today often seem to first worship the Enlightenment and Reason and only if passages in the Bible meet the approval of the God of Reason and the God of the Enlightenment do Christians choose to believe it. Otherwise, the passages are explained away as “historical context,” “superstition,” or worse. Now, don’t get me wrong. Understanding historical context can enrich our understanding of scripture just as science can enrich our understanding of the natural laws which God has in place.

We cease to be true to our faith – we cease to believe Biblically – when we worship the words of the Bible or the powers of reason over the presence and experience in our life of the Living God and His messengers.

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am genial and meek in my heart, and you will find rest to your souls. – Matthew 11:29 – Lamsa Bible (Aramaic translation)

Reading in the “presence of the Divine” can equalize the variations of language and culture because it frees us up to listen directly to God. [See also https://ofnaturesgod.com/auscula-listen-with-the-ears-of-your-heart ]

All of this asks us to take the existence of the Divine seriously. As in believe there really is a God that wants to interact with you on a personal level. Clean the area where you read your Bible daily, maybe light a candle, and as you do so pray something like “may the light of God fill this place, my soul, and my understanding.” Center yourself and ask God to guide you and help you to understand. Only then begin reading. 1^st read just the text and think about it. Only after you have done that should you read any notes, or any interpretation of the scriptures or meditations based on it. Let the Bible speak to you before you ask how it spoke to someone else. And expect God to be with you as you read.

I set aside an hour each day for prayer and meditation. It is my time with God. I don’t expect everyone to do so, in fact I started with only 15 minutes a day carved out begrudgingly in my busy schedule before work. It began to grow as I found out, from my own learned experience, that I couldn’t afford to give God only 15 minutes a day if I wanted to be serious about my faith and living according to how the Divine intended my life to unfold.

Let me give you an example that may blow your mind as much as it blew mine. I believed God was real an he would speak to anyone who carved out the time to listen (and banished all evil and darkness from their prayer time and reading – God and his angels, if you believe the Bible, are not the only forces out there.) I was struggling with an issue. The issue was dealing with demonic presence. I had an encounter blessing my wife’s church where I thought I was just banishing some “bad vibes” that lingered from some particularly negative parishioners. My wife had said “When I try to preach at that church it is as if I am cut off from God. It is very different from preaching at my other church.” I had been to her chuch and not noticed anything but, as many people who God made empathic do, I learned to “cut myself off” from it to keep from being bombarded by the negative emotions that fill our world today. I had prepared a prayer to bless and reconscecrate the church ground and make it holy again. Before I went I took a shower and spent time in prayer so I would be “clean” inside and out.

I went with her to her church in the middle of the night so we wouldn’t have curious parishioners stopping by and interrupting our prayers. I walked into the vestibule of the church and prayed for God’s assistance an then, for what I would later realize was the first time in that church, I lowered my defenses to sense what was present. It was like I was slapped in the face with a power and presence of malevolence such as I had never experienced. I literally staggered backwards and my wife had to study me from a sudden wave of dizziness. I looked at her and said, “this is not just bad vibes or negative feelings.” I started to read the prayer (I was a US Army Drill Sergeant so I can read with a strong and commanding voice,) but it was like something had me by the throat and as I got to the part of the prayer that was the “power phrase” or “banishing” I couldn’t speak aubibly at all. I read it but couldn’t say it. I went through blessing and praying in every room, at every doorway, and every window. I prayed at the pulpit and the lectern, the table and the choir loft. At some point it was as if someone whispered in my ear “You now have the power to read the whole prayer…only the presence that is here does not know that you can read the whole prayer.” With some idea of military tactics I kept that to myself and continued as if I didn’t have the power to read the banishing command, blessing and calling for God’s power but stopping before then. Only when I got to the Sunday School room where the person taught that we believed had invited in all the negativity to the church did I raise my voice and powerfully banish the presence. At those words we heard a shout and a door slam. We thought someone had come into the church and left suddenly. We went back through. I had opened every door so the spirit of God could flow freely like a fresh breeze through the church. We now when through every door to see which door had slammed shut but all doors were still open an all external doors were still locked and sealed. It ws at that point I remembered that in exorcisms the exocist often reported a sound like a door slammng shut when the demonic influence was banished.

OK, back to my prayer time. I felt God wanted me to be active in that ministry. I am not a coward. I stood on the border of East Germany with live ammunitiion during the Cold War and looked across at th communist soldiers with their guns in the opposite tower, knowing that if war broke out these towers would be the first targets. But I had never encountered ANYTHING as malevolent and powerful as that entity. And it was not the first entity I had banished. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that as my regular ministry and that is what I was praying about. Essentially, I was arguing with God. I told him all the reasons he had the wrong guy. After all, an exorcist is supposed to be Holy and a man who has lived a sinless life, I on the other hand was a soldier and the hero of the Bible I related to most clearly was King David (who my supervising pastor described as “as stinker.”) But he was described as a favorite of God because he loved God with his whole heart.

I had a sign up that clearly stated when my prayer time was and that I would not answer the door during that time. Solicitors and visitors were to come back later. But the door bell rang. Usually, I wouldn’t answer but God can be very stubborn and I was getting nowhere with him so I welcomed the escape from my prayer time and this unrelenting God I was arguing with.

A young woman stood there. She looked uncomfortable. “Hi pastor,” she said when I opened the door, “I am Lili’s sister [not her real name but she was a parishioner at one of my churches,] and she invited me to come hear you once…you probably don’t remember.”

“You do look familiar but I would never have placed who you were. What can I do for you?” [I was after all hoping that God would give up and be gone by the time I got back.]

“Well pastor, I don’t know what you believe, but my church believes that God can really talk to us if we are willing to listen.”

“Yes, I believe that too.” She looked a little relieved.

“Well, I was praying and God gave me a message for you and wouldn’t leave me alone until I got in the car and came directly over and told you.” I thought, well, this has never happened before and I expected some generic message that was very un-specific (did I really believe as firmly that God speaks to us as I professed?)

“What did he want you to tell me?”

“God told me to tell you this phrase ‘You need to accept the power and responsibility God wants to give you.’ Does that make any sense to you pastor?”

“Yes it does.” I said, surprised and somewhat chastened. “In fact it is just what I was praying about. Thank you for following God’s direction. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ May God be go with you. Thank you again.”

I have told this to people who said, “God never spoke to me like that.” As if that invalidates my own lived experience. “Oh, do you spend an hour a day trying to communicate with God and listening for what he might have for you?” At which point they usually stomp off. [See Auscula]

John Wesley and his brother Charles together their preaching and songs inspired the formation of over 175 Christian denominations. Unlike modern Methodists who seem to worship the God of Reason and have now become totally woke causing the collapse and fragmenting of their church John Wesley wholeheartedly believed in the spiritual world and the miraculous. Beliefs that at the time were distrusted as being counter to the Enlightenment and Reason.

“Throughout his lifetime [Wesley] unabashedly embraced a belief in the supernatural and was convinced that an affirmation of the invisible world was an important component in the mission and ministry of Christianity in general and his Methodist societies in particular.”

Belief and expectation of the supernatural, Webster maintains, was an essential strand in original Methodist DNA.

methodism and the miraculous by robert webster

Please understand. You do not need to have an hour of prayer time for God to speak to you. You simply need to have an open heart and listen. But you also need to test the spirits. For the Elohim of Light are not the only beings out there and not all spiritual entities are sent by God. The Bible is a useful anchor for our faith and one way to “test the spirits” and what we feel God is telling us.

The Bible is the best resource we have for the ancient scriptures. Wisdom that in some cases could trace their origin back 3000 years in ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian writings are in that one book which can be bought by anyone in any city in America. In the Bible you have history, personal experience, prophecy, and what is called Wisdom Literature, and it is all available to you at your fingertips. Many people reject it with no knowledge of what is in it. They simply know a Christian who was a singular jerk and they want nothing to do with the religion that fool claimed to belong to.

If you had a bad experience with Christians don’t take it out on God. It is like cutting off your nose to spite your face. Pick up a Bible and start with the Wisdom Literature. Wisdom literature is the wisdom of sages who have studied life and wrapped their observations into short stories or sentences that contain a truth about life and its pitfalls and how to avoid them.

You can find these verses in the Book of Proverbs and in the Book of Ecclesiastes, and many of the Psalms. Jesus teachings by proverbs and parables is a mark of a wisdom teacher. The Bible says that God has revealed himself through his creation so everyone has encountered the Living God. For this reason Wisdom literature is the same whether it is African, Norse, Celtic, Chinese, Pagan, or Native American. The cultural context may vary but you can take Viking proverbs from the Havamal, ancient Egyptian wisdom of the sages of Egypt, writings of ancient Sumer, Africa, or China and translate them into English and over 50% of them would be impossible to place in one religion or another. That is because Wisdom Literature is drawn from observing God’s Creation…from observing life…and we all live in the same world created by the same creator, whatever we may call that Entity. So if you are seeking Nature’s God, it is THE GOD. Because nature doesn’t have to think about it or believe. Like Jesus and the ancient Hebrew words for faith and belief those words include living in the presence of God every day. And nature does that.

To truly be Christian and to understand the message of the Bible we need to do some work to try to understand the scriptures in the way Jesus and the prophets understood the world. If we don’t we run the danger of becoming modern day pharisees who let our other beliefs over-ride the message of God.

They have become the Pharisees of the modern world (Jesus described the Pharisees of his day as being “whitewashed sepulchres” whitewashed (painted and well groomed on the outside), and dead inside (dead, stinking, and rotting corpses,) on the inside.

It is not my intention to cast shade on anyone’s denomination, religion, or practice of faith. Instead, I hope to get you to think so that when you finally die and meet Jesus you will recognize him and he you. Unfortunately, Jesus own description of that day is as follows:

I don’t want you to be among those who never knew God and whom God never knew.