In planning my upcoming live Bible-teaching lessons and the material for Bible805, I felt the Lord was telling me to go back to the basics of the Christian faith, to the most important messages of our faith.
As I prayed I realized this means #1 to clarify the meaning of salvation in Jesus. If we aren’t clear about that in our own hearts first of all, if we don’t have a saving, eternal, personal relationship with Jesus, nothing else ultimately matters. I was reminded that Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
Again, first we must make certain of our relationship to Jesus. We need to KNOW we are saved through faith alone in Christ alone by grace alone. Our salvation is not dependent on what we do for the Lord.
Yet having said that, once we are the recipient of God’s grace, He gives us work to do and regarding the Bible805 ministry the Lord gave me, He reminded me that even if I help you understand the content of every book in the Bible from the lessons, if you can have the Prophet and Kings timelines understood and in order and if my books help you read the Bible chronologically, if you learn all that, but if I haven’t clarified the meaning of salvation in Jesus and helped you find it, I’ve failed at the most important issue in your Christian life and in my calling.
I decided to do something about it and in researching how I should respond to this conviction, I decided to see what other churches were doing to explain the basics of salvation to their congregations and visitors, so I asked CoPilot to pick out 20 local churches and link to their content on these topics, or even close approximations to the wording on these topics:
“How to Become a Christian”
“What is Christian Salvation?”
If the site did not explain these topics, I asked it to give me the reply: “No content found.”
In reading church history, I came across the question in early Puritan writings, “have you closed with Jesus?”
How you respond to the answer to the questions in the title is the most important answer to any question you will ever make. It will literally decide your eternal destiny. There are many ways to answer this question and here are some:
This lesson challenges us to see the Bible not as a scattered collection of loosely related writings, but as one coherent story with God as its primary Author. Its structure follows the movement of a great story—from creation and humanity’s rebellion, through God’s preparation for redemption, to the climax of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and finally to Christ’s return and the New Heaven and New Earth. The lesson also explores how true history, predictive prophecy, and progressive revelation support the unity of the Bible. Because God is outside of time, He can reveal His plan across centuries while working through many human writers. The lesson concludes by asking where each of us fits in God’s great story and urges us to know the Bible well, obey it, and faithfully live the part God has given us.