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How We Got the Old Testament, and why we can trust it as the Word of God

September 18, 2022 by bible805

The Old Testament makes up a large section of our Bibles, but though many people are familiar with the first part of it with the stories of Creation and the early characters in Biblical history, many people stop there.

Unfortunately also is the idea many people have of the Old Testament is that it is a collection of ancient stories and fables and not something based on true history that can be objectively verified. This idea is unfortunate because nothing could be further from the truth!

The Old Testament can be proven to be historically valid and an essential foundation for the Christian faith. This lesson will demonstrate how it was put together and the sources for it including both oral history (including such interesting facts including that Adam was still alive when Noah’s grandfather was alive—and you think your grandpa has great stories to tell!) and written texts, plus the archeological basis for it that includes a fascinating overview of Ur of the Chaldees, the birthplace of Abraham. You’ll have a very different view of what Abraham was called out of and how that influenced his life after this lesson.

This lesson is part of a series on How We Got Our Bibles. It is not only a fascinating study, filled with images, archeological discoveries and ancient stories, but included are extensive charts, maps, and notes that will give you confidence in your Bibles—that you can trust them to contain the Words of God essential for our eternal salvation and instruction on how to live lives that are pleasing to God today.

Below are the notes, charts, podcast, and video on this lesson:

Chart of Long Lives of Old Testament Characters — Click on the chart to download a copy of it.

Comments on Incorrect Dating of Old Testament Prophets — Click on the image for a download of it.

Long lives of Old Testament characters Incorrect Dating of OT Prophets, et al

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The Trinity—it isn’t that difficult to understand! Three lessons to help you do that!

September 18, 2022 by bible805

Illustrated chart of the Trinity — This chart was inspired by Tertullian’s description of the Trinity and is explained in the Bible805 series on the Trinity. Far from a difficult topic to understand, the teachings about the Trinity in the Bible are clear and easy to understand when you take the time to look at them. These lessons will help.

Many people believe that the idea of the Trinity is one of the most difficult to understand in the Christian faith. I very much disagree!

God does not intentionally confuse us as to who He is; He desires a relationship with us. He gave us Creation, His Word, and ultimately sent Jesus to earth as God in human flesh so we could know Him. With all of that, the question comes up of why then do people think that understanding the Trinity is difficult?

The challenge to understanding the Trinity is the same challenge of understanding everything else about our faith—We need to look at what God’s Word says about it!—and many people don’t want to take the time to look at what it says about the Trinity.

Granted, this is not one of the easiest topics to understand, but it really isn’t terribly difficult either when you take the time to study it, and I’ve broken an overview of the Trinity into 3 manageable lessons to help you understand it.

The lessons are based on the description of the Trinity that Tertullian (an early church father) used when he said the Trinity is One God, made up of Three Persons with One Substance.

I created a Chart that illustrates this, which you can download HERE. The chart is further explained in the three lessons that follow. The first deals with the Persons of the Trinity, the next with the Substance or attributes of the Trinity, and the third with how they are described throughout the Bible.

Here are each of the lessons, click on each one to go to a podcast, notes, a video, charts, and related materials on that lesson.

· Understanding the Trinity, part One, The Three Persons of the Trinity, how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are uncreated, co-equal, and eternal persons.

· Understanding the Trinity, part Two, The One Substance of the Trinity, the attributes shared by the members of the Trinity, and what that means to us.

· Understanding the Trinity, part Three, The Trinity Throughout the Bible, descriptions of the Trinity and roles of each member in the Old and New Testaments.

Here is a video that will give you an overview of the lessons:

Expanded Lessons are available for download and for your use in teaching

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The Bible, Novel or Short Story and why it matters tremendously, now and forever

September 17, 2022 by bible805

To convince you that the Bible is indeed the very words of God given to us for our eternal salvation and how to live our earthly lives, is the purpose of this lesson. We begin by talking about the importance of our presuppositions when we approach the Bible and then we go into these four areas:

#1 Evidence for God as the One Author of the entire book, emphasizing his view outside of time

#2 The unity of the plot of the entire book follows the traditional structure of a novel of Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement

#3 The use of Progressive Revelation in the entire book

#4 The voice of the One Author in the entire book

This lesson is a little longer and more complex than some, but the issues discussed in it are tremendously important, worth your time, and foundational to your understanding of the Bible and your confidence that God is the ONE author of it.

When you see the Bible as one book by one author, our Sovereign God, it can make a tremendous difference not only in how you read it but in many ways and more importantly how you respond to it.

In contrast to seeing the Bible as one book by one author, if we believe the Bible is the creation of human authors, what I call the “short story view of the Bible,” though we feel it might have some inspiring and morally valid advice, it is our choice as a fellow human to pick and choose what we believe or obey.

If on the other hand, we truly believe the Bible is written by God Himself, our Creator and the One to whom we will one day give account, in what I refer to as the “Novel view of the Bible” above all else we should work to understand and obey it.

This lesson will give you the confidence to do that.

To access the lesson: all the links here and content here are free.

In addition, a paid version of the lesson is available for $4.99; $36 for a yearly subscription to all the lessons. It was designed for you to share in small groups, Sunday School classes, Bible classes, Home Schooling, and your personal study. The paid version is available on the Bible805 Academy and includes an ad-free, legal for you to show 1080p video, the PowerPoint file, reproducible files of Notes, Questions, PR description, images to share, and the audio file. It is available at this link: https://payhip.com/b/Ryipz

Below are links to the podcast, video, and charts talked about in the lesson and the notes are below them.

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The Trinity Throughout the Bible, Understanding the Trinity, part Three

September 8, 2022 by bible805

To many, the Trinity is especially hard to understand in the Old Testament, particularly when we look at the Shema, which says “our God is One.” How can that key belief support the idea of the Trinity?

In this lesson you’ll see how the very words themselves support it fully in that in Hebrew, both “God” and the word “One” are plural nouns, and not only is the word “God, Elohim” the plural noun used here but it is used 2600 times in the Old Testament. In addition to showing this important word study, we’ll also show how the clear Biblical statement that God the Father cannot be seen with the contrasting statements that people saw and talked to God is explained by the Trinity (see the lesson for the full explanation). The lesson also covers the different ways the Holy Spirit was/is involved with believers.

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The One Substance of the Trinity, Understanding the Trinity, part Two

September 8, 2022 by bible805

In the first lesson, on the Trinity, we looked at how the members of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are uncreated, co-equal, and eternal persons. In this lesson we look at what makes them ONE God and that is their attributes or substance. This is what all members of the Trinity have in common and what makes them unique. We will look at the attributes of justice, holiness, love, omnipotence, omnipresence, mercy, and others. After defining the characteristic, we’ll then look at how it relates to us and how we should respond because of it.

Below are links to the charts, podcast, video, and printable related to the lesson. You can click on the charts to download them and you have permission to use them and make copies of them however you want.

Charts that illustrate truths about the Trinity

Following is an image of the Printable related to the lesson, it is available in numerous sizes for social media and printing. CLick on the image to go to it.

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