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Part 8: God and His Delivery of the Bible

One can find a great many contradictory words about the Bible. Some people spend many thousands of hours explaining how the Bible is absolutely and entirely provable by human sinful court of law, as if human sinful court of law were any true and worthy standard of truth and righteousness. Yet others proclaim that it was completely written by human eyewitnesses to events described. Apparently these do not consider the Book of Genesis; and there is also the Book of Revelation, and much of Isaiah and a number of others, in which events yet to come are discussed. There are also those who suggest that apart from those books which are part of the modern sixty-six of the Bible, God has never motivated anyone to consider writing as authoritative in His sense.

Here are things which anyone with the ability to search the web, can verify for himself or herself, in this day, March 26, 2019:

There are indeed non-canonical Old Testament books. The Book of Enoch, the Book of Noah, and others.
In the Book of Jude in our Bibles, we have two quotations of the Book of Enoch as authoritative source for conclusion.
The Roman and trans-Roman churches maintained the Apocrypha, in every Bible considered complete, until times in the nineteenth century C.E. This includes the Bible which Mr. John Calvin used (the Geneva), the King James, and others. Both the Wisdom of Solomon of the Old Testament, and Judith of the New, and others, were included.
The Coptic and Ethiopian churches both maintain a considerably larger Old and New Testament canon than even the Roman church, and both of those churches are at least as old as the Roman.

It is true that many will identify statements in the other books whose consistency with the 66 are questionable. But the many in that statement, are human. And we have Enoch quoted within Jude. Therefore there still remains a soft spot of authority, a question of consideration, of quality and value and truth.

We will suggest that we need to rely on God himself to deliver for us. We will suggest that true faith does not arrive because of winning debate or other war between sinful human beings.

True faith comes as act of God, not woman or man. True faith exists because God first writes His truth on the hearts of men and women, and then, second, those men and women believe and serve. We shall therefore suggest that the canon of the Word of God is given by the Lord, and we may know this, in spirit and in truth, by faith alone. We are given this faith by the acts of God. The progression of His churches is His tool, not His provenance. We cannot justify God by the goodness of His churches: If you read either the first three chapters of the Word of God of the Revelation to John, or so much of the world history written by faithful church-folk, you will see why not the provenance, why no proud church!

In Spirit and in truth, we know His Holy Scripture as such, only by acts of God upon our hearts. Or as the Lord Jesus said it to all forever: the only one who is good, is God alone.

Jonathan Brickman
Please do email me!
jeb@christian-oneness.org