PEOPLE OF THE BOOK
Scripture reads us, not vice-versa
THANK YOU FOR JOINING “THE THREE TAVERNS”
This is only my third posting from this newsletter. So far, our open rate has averaged 85.09%. That is amazing! We are growing little by little, too. If you think the messages here would encourage someone you know please invite them to join up.
My goal is to connect around timeless truth and allow that truth to impact every area of life. Truth is a PERSON. I was hoping to post a piece I have been working on called “IS GOD POLITICAL?” but I was not able to get it completed by this posting. I hope to get it out next week, and I hope you will be surprised at what I have to say.
For now enjoy these thoughts…
BIBLE BRUSH-UP
The Bible is an amazing book. After daily study and reading for many years it is still new and fresh because it speaks of ULTIMATE things, FOUNDATIONAL things, not surface. It makes me dive deep into my heart and look, and grow, and become.
The Spirit speaks to me inwardly as the words on the page prompt outward attention and I think I see things more clearly in the outward circumstances and happenings of life around me.
I have read many religious books, many “scriptures” foundational to other religions. I have been deepened by spiritual truths from many other places in my travels. All truth is God’s truth. But there is no book that has ever spoken to me like the library of 66 books we call The Holy Bible.
I find reading it in whole sections, such as the entire letter to the Hebrews, or Galatians, or Ephesians, Romans, or the Gospel of Luke, or large chunks of Deuteronomy or meditating on Psalm 1 or Psalm 112 for several days gives me a much broader perspective on the message and I don't get as lost in the weeds that can choke out insight.
One way I do this is if one of the letters of the New Testament has six chapters, then I read the whole thing six days in a row. Believe me, the message speaks very differently when you don't cut it up into small pieces.
I find that spending a lot more time in scripture and much less time on Netflix or reading the news is desperately needed these days.
WHY IT MATTERS…
Here’s why it matters that we keep going back to basics, “to the word and to the testimony!” (Isaiah 8:20).
Deception is only increasing, folks, and we have not seen anything yet. Every direction we look we are being lied to and the worst purveyors of these lies are those we are supposed to be able to trust: religious leaders, political leaders, business leaders, financial leaders, entertainment leaders, journalists, etc.
The depths of perjury to which these so-called “leaders” will go is only getting worse. And the tools, like AI, they have to work with are more destructive. They who are the “experts” and smarter than the rest of us work to gain or maintain power, to eliminate dissension, to push a manipulative agenda, and still be called “the friends of the people” as Jesus said (Luke 22:25). The upright are the targets because the prince of darkness hates the people of the Book. We must know the Truth. We must listen to Spirit and not be led into darkness.
The Master told his followers that everything they had trusted in, everything they had built their lives upon, was going to crumble (see Mark 13:2 for example). A central message of God’s Book is that all natural religion and trust in the material will be dismantled. In fact, it has been a central message from the UNLIMITED since the earliest scripture writings (see Job 24 for example. Job is the oldest dated writing in the Old Testament) to the Psalms (see Ps. 11) to the Prophets to Jesus and the apostles.
Liars lie. It is their nature to do so. And they will FIRST say something is definitely not happening. Then they will say it might be happening but only in very rare cases. Then when the evidence is too great they will admit it but then tell you why it’s a great thing and that YOU are a bigot if you want to eliminate it.
Take the example of the COVID deception. This entire sorry episode was built on a house of lies. But you, dear reader, were a “conspiracy theorist” or a “right-wing fanatic” if you questioned the bogus information we were being fed day after day.
UNTIL YOU WERE PROVEN RIGHT! Now the “experts” who lied about this want you to forget, to grant to them that we were doing the “best we could” with the available information. But how is it that people like me, not a doctor or a scientist, read right through the smoke and mirrors by MARCH 2020 and began calling it out! Did I have access to better information than the so-called “experts”?
No. I had Truth. I had the word, the Spirit and logic.
“Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict his word are completely in the dark.” (Isaiah 8:20, NLT)
Here’s the simple outline of the Master’s warning to us in the last days (Mark 13):
Don’t panic!
Be alert because deception is increasing!
Don’t follow false prophets who practice deception!
Stick together, eyes on Jesus, shoulders back, chin up, hands out to others, foot down!
Thanks for being a free subscriber to The Three Taverns!
Looking up,
Tod Bell
Chief Tavern Host
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