Community

Amen ! I have found this truth from reading Scripture and am grateful that God used Paul to introduce all believers like myself to following Christ's Way in our walk with God.

that we need the scriptures for they give us the strength to be the kind of human beings God wants us to be and the Lord Christ died for our sins. We need to study, stay devoted and share the word.

This verse is so refreshing to me after reading the previous verses. We have God's Word so we can be equipped to go and do. So many times we sit around "waiting on God " to show us what we are to do and He already has. If we are in His Word. He has given us all we need to do what we need to do.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. John 1 says, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and came to dwell among us full of grace and truth. The word, Word, is Jesus who was with God, WAS God, zipped up a human suit and came down here to dwell among us full of grace and truth. When we read the bible, that is Jesus, the ultimate God-man, on paper as Gods love letter, Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. It gives us our doctrine, and I'm not talking denominational teaching which usually comes from someone picking and choosing Scriptures to suit their own evil heart and fracturing up the body of Christ with stupid arguments that take the focus off of Jesus. If you exegetically study the bible chapter by chapter, verse by verse, you can't "cherry pick" the verses that please you and skip the ones that don't. In Acts 17, Paul talks about the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures to see if what he was saying lined up with them, and he praised them for it. That's what we should be doing. I have a program on my android called mysword, it's free from the play store. There's one for Apple called esword available from their store. These apps are great because you download them, and you don't need to have access to the Internet to use them. The app has several translations of the bible, including a KJV with Strong's #'s. When I'm in church, and I listen to my pastor, if he says something that I'm not sure about, I go straight there and look it up. I don't sit under ANYONE'S teaching and just take it in as gospel truth. There are denominations that discourage people from reading the bible. During the dark ages, the church kept the bible, which was in Latin, and no one spoke anyway, chained to the altar and no one was allowed to read it. False doctrine can't prevail for long if people are reading and studying their bibles. Error only comes when people stop studying their bibles and sit to be spoon fed from a person. Any church that doesn't encourage the reading of the bible should be fled. There have been people, including some cults that say the Bible has been translated so many times that we can't trust it. But when they found the dead sea scrolls, and compared them to what we have now, it came up 99.9% accurate. The Bible was written over a period of 1600 years over 60 generations by 40 different authors on 3 continents. This included varied personalities, circumstances, places, moods, all speaking with one united voice, pointing to Jesus. It's the most published book ever written, has been translated into more languages, as a matter of fact, it was the FIRST book to be translated and mass printed by Gutenberg on his printing press. According to bookstores, it's the most stolen book they carry, go figure. It's unique in that it shows the successes and failures of its heroes. It's had more influence on culture and society than any other book, as a matter of fact, just about any holy book from any cult gets its info from the bible. All those things are great, but the thing that sets it apart from all other books the most, is prophecy. There were over 300 prophecies alone that Jesus fulfilled. The probability of any one man fulfilling just eight of these prophesies is one in 100,000,000,000,000,000, that's a lot of zeros, it's10 to the 17th power. If you took that many quarters, it would cover the state of Texas two feet deep. If you took one of those quarters, marked it and shuffled them all up, this probability would be like blind folding you, and dropping you off, and you reaching down one time and picking up that marked quarter. The Bible is indeed a living document, not that it changes, but that it never comes back void and anyways accomplishes what God intended: Hebrews 4:12 says that it's living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. If someone hears it and rejects it, or gets angry, that in itself proves and discerns the receivers heart. It goes beyond our intellect and straight into our spirit. It shows us how to live victoriously here on planet earth, overcoming the evil Eph 6 kingdom, to receive cleansing and forgiveness from sin, heal our bodies, receive comfort and strength, build our faith and most of all how to spend eternity with God. Thank You, Papa God that we have a book that's withstood the test of time and we can stand on it with all our weight and trust that in the last chapter, Jesus and all His followers win, Hallelujah!

This chapter has so much valuable information for the believer in Christ, htat I could have chosen several verses. I chose v.16 because some people try to say that the Bible is just written by man, and, yes it was written by man but God inspired those men as to what they should write. On top of that it was written by about 40 men over a period of about 1500 years, and there are so many interlocking truths that it would be impossible for that many men, over such a long period of time, to have so many truths agreeing. Here it is stated that ALL Scripture is God inspired. Some say that there are differences in the reporting of certain events. Well, if there was an event witnessed in a local park and you asked four people who witnessed the event, would those four witnesses tell the exact same story? Of course not, each would express the part that struck them, even though there was only one event. God bless and "Happy New Year" to all. Let's promote the truth of Christ in 2016...!!!

Need to believe in scriptures every day. p

God is telling us to spend time studying the Bible. Father God thank you for the Bible, please give me a strong desire to study your word more.

This is our only hope, that we study the Scriptures to keep ourselves aware of what is happening around us. This chapter is so markedly accurate as to what we are seeing in the world right now. The first 7 verses paint such a perfect picture of the majority of the world. Lord, I pray, as I know the others in this study do too, that You will awaken the multitudes in every nation that do not have a relationship with Jesus. Help us too, Lord, to stand firm in our faith as Paul did, and proclaim and act the gospel truths at every opportunity. Amen.

Scripture, God's word is useful in all. Why need anything else.