INTRODUCTION to "Basic Bible"           RELIGION Art Posters 

296 pages long, containing over 2,000 Stimulating Questions.   Arranged as logical sequences of highly organized Bible references and topics which stretch across the entire Bible, culminating with an in-depth study of what it really means to be a Christian.

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Basic Bible Art Posters

Prologue:  Why study the Bible?

                Gain awareness of:                        -Man and God-        -Man and Satan-

1.        General view of the Bible.

2.        Old Law as related to New Law.

3.        God in the Old Testament.

4.        Life of Christ.

        a.        Prophecies of his coming.

        b.        Birth and early life.

        c.        Some of his teachings.                -OUTLINE and EXAMPLES-

        d.        Healings and miracles.

        e.        Death and resurrection.

5.        Importance of Christ.

6.        Establishment of Christ's Church.

7.        Characteristics of the New Testament Church.

8.        How does man become acceptable to God?

9.        Eternal life.

10.        The Christian life.                -OUTLINE and EXAMPLE-

Epilogue:        Study questions on each section.

Isaiah 40:3-8

"The voice of him that cries in the wilderness:

'Prepare the way of the Lord!  Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.'

The voice said 'Cry!'  And he said 'What shall I cry?'

'That all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.

The grass withers, the flower fades;  because the spirit of the Lord blows upon it;  surely the people is grass.

The grass withers, the flower fades;  but the word of our God shall stand for ever."

The years move on, one after another.  If we survive, we live to see the cute young female icons of our youth wrinkled, crippled, faded away, sitting in their wheel chairs waiting on death.  Where yesterday there was an esteemed politician, head of his country, now there is a grave.  Where yesterday we were strong and fleet, today we have gray hair and aching backs.

Time that had seemed an eternity looking forwards now seems but a moment looking back.  The gloriously-beautiful flower is crinkled and decaying.  The blowing fields of green grass are yellow and stunted.  Spring becomes summer, summer fall, and fall winter.  So fast!

So where are we?  Where are you?

I'm not there, I'm here.  I could dwell on all the yesterdays, sad that I didn't do this or that, concentrating on past mistakes and wrong turns.  But that changes nothing.  The past is gone.  I can't go back.  I could dwell on all the tomorrows, looking forwards to that cold grave, but that will come soon enough.  I'm not there.  I'm here.  I have always been here and always will be here.  There is no time but the present, falling rapidly into the future.

Right now, today, how will I strive for Significance?  Soon, should I survive even that long, I'll be the one in the wheel chair, helpless, perhaps in great pain, wondering where all the days went, looking back.  Did my life mean anything?  Did I achieve Significance?  Or was it all just a trivial blur?

The Bible faces the fading flower, the withering grass, head-on.  Clear-eyed.  Realistic.  Not ignoring it.  Not captured by it.  Rather, transcending it---looking for an anchor in the time-trapped Universe to the Creator of the Universe, He that rides above it all.  In a Universe where even galaxies grow old and fade away...the Bible reaches beyond to an over-riding permanence:  God.

Jesus said he was the way, the door, to God.  Jesus came to bring mankind to God.  In an existence where we are fortunate to survive one hundred years, Jesus preached eternity and immortality---linked-in to the One that made and sustains it all.

-Outline-

II Timothy 2:24-26

"And the servant of the Lord must not strive;  but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient.

In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves;  if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;

And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will."

It's so sad what we do to ourselves.  Looking for pleasure, we immerse ourselves in pain.  Looking for love we find hate.  Looking for heaven, we live in hell.  Why is this?

Why does the happy young couple who get married, pledging endless devotion, unable to live apart---end up hating each other, unable to live together?   In pursuit of the ultimate pleasure, heroin addicts are willing to live in wretched, nightmarish, hellish conditions!  Does that make any sense?  Looking for relief from the pressures of life, smokers destroy their own bodies and end up prematurely wracked with cancer, heart problems, and corroded lungs.

One of the most amazing things I've ever seen was when I and some others from a small congregation for whom I was a volunteer preacher went to the home of a dying man to serve him the Communion.  He could hardly breathe, was dying of emphysema, and had on an oxygen mask.  Emphysema is where the person drowns in his own fluids.  Each breathe the man took was torture.  He was just skin and bones, a living skeleton.  Very terrible death.  After we'd finished praying and serving him the communion he calmly reached over, picked up a cigarette, lit it, and put it in his mouth to smoke.  Even though it was killing him, he couldn't stop.

The Bible describes Satan as the embodiment of all that is evil---that which derives pleasure from the pain of others.  Satan laughs with glee while us little stupid humans destroy our own selves!  Why on earth would we do something that's going to cause us more pain than pleasure?  As Mister Spock would say on the original Star Trek show:  "That's not logical!"  

But it gives pleasure right now.  It moves back the pain right now.  It's a quick and easy way to feel good even when I feel bad right now.  No matter that tomorrow the pain will be back, worse than ever before, and will be many times greater than the pleasure I gain now.  Marrying for all the wrong reasons to the wrong person, might help me escape from what was before---but then I have to sleep with that person, be around that person, live with that person constantly.  The quick escape can become a nightmarish prison.  It might feel good for a husband or wife to behave in unChrist-like, hurtful ways to each other---but the revenge gained is swamped by the conflict created.

And then the action/drug/behavior pushes out good things (such as the normal "feel good" chemicals in the brain) at the same time as eating-away at our body:  so that we feel worse when we're off the drug!  It's a negative reinforcing cycle.  The action/drug/behavior makes us feel worse and worse so that we do it more and more,  thinking we're seeking pleasure when in reality we're only striving to feel normal.

And so we "oppose ourselves," and sink into our own dark, nightmarish, trap.  Satan is delighted.  We are destroyed.  Destroyed by our own selves.

The Bible does not describe different actions/drugs/behaviors as sin just to keep us from having fun!  A "sin" is that which will cause us more pain than pleasure, more harm than help, more bad than good, more destruction than construction.  Yet it's not easy to avoid those sins.  They come with a lot of pleasure up-front, seemingly the very thing we need when times are hard and we're in pain.  But we always have a choice.  We can turn to Satan---or we can turn to God.

The Bible teaches us that through turning to God we can defeat Satan.  

Christ and His Church are a powerful way for us to constructively, positively find lasting pleasure in the face of the pains of physical life.  Lasting pleasure does not come from defeating pain, it comes from learning and growing out of pain.  Pain is not the enemy.  Satan is the enemy.  It's a test, a challenge, a puzzle each of us must unravel.  Pleasure does not come from rejecting pain.  Pleasure comes from embracing and learning from pain.

Did you ever wonder why the body has pain receptors?  Yes, there are particular cells in the body whose job it is to register pain, that's then transmitted up to our brains.  Wouldn't it be great if all those pain cells were to just go away?

When I was young, I read in a newspaper about a baby that was born with no pain receptors.  It crawled out on a hot floor grill where hot furnace air came up into a house.  The child was scarred for life---because it didn't know it should move, that its flesh was burning!  Pain is not our enemy.  In most cases, pain is our friend.  The beckoning "quick-fix" is our enemy.  In seeking to save ourselves in cheap, easy ways---we are the authors of our own destruction.

The Bible is a guide to the greatest pleasure of all:  the deep, lasting enjoyment which is based on creating wonderful things that we are proud of---both in ourselves, and in the lives of those we love.

INTRODUCTION: to "Basic Bible, Christ and His Church"          Basic Bible Art Posters        -Outline-

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