The Road Map

Suppose you loved someone in another city and you desperately wanted to see them so you sent them tickets to come. But suppose you never told them how to pick up the tickets, what transportation they were for, or generally anything about how to use them? That would be kind of dumb and a waste of your money, wouldn't it?

Now suppose you had such a friend who sent you tickets to see them and paid for the tickets in full. Then they sent them to you through another person, along with directions and everything you needed to use them. Much more sensible, isn't it! Now if someone did do that for you, would you reject it because you didn't trust the delivery person? That wouldn't make sense, would it? After all, you had the tickets and directions in your hands! And even if you suspected that the delivery person had altered the directions to fool you, wouldn't you just call your friend and clarify the directions?

So why do things that make sense to us in other people suddenly look rediculous when we think of God?

God loves us but is separated from us by the gulf of our own sin. So God desparately wanted to send us the spiritual tickets we need to see Him in eternity. So He sent His own son Jesus to die for those sins that separate us from God. The price of those tickets is perfection, and since we couldn't be perfect, then perfect Jesus had to pay that price for us and take our wages of our own sins -- death. Death is the ticket that we paid for by not being perfect. Our tickets to Heaven are paid in full for those who choose to accept them.

Now, there was one more problem. How could we know how to get and use those tickets? He wasn't about to leave us to guess the way on our own! He's too smart for that! God had to send us the directions.

That's where the Bible comes in. Before God bought the tickets he already let us know for generations that the price would be paid for us. First He sent the Law which showed us just how far away from Him we are -- so we would know that the tickets were needed. After that He told us how they would be paid for through the prophets of the Old Testament. Then He paid for them with Jesus' blood. He began to tell us how to get the tickets while Jesus was here on earth, then continued through the disciples after Jesus' death on the cross.

The disciples and the people who translated the Bible are the messengers. You don't trust them? You have heard the lies that the Bible was changed many times or that there are so many translations that they couldn't possibly all be right? First of all, you need to ask the person sending the directions if they are the right ones. How? Through prayer and LISTENING! You won't hear God answer if you don't listen!

Also, think it through. The early scribes would never have dreamed of changing the scriptures. These people didn't copy the scriptures WORD by WORD, they copied them LETTER by LETTER! They didn't want to take any chances of spelling mistakes, so they looked at a letter, copied it, then looked at the next letter, copied it, and so on. If they made a mistake, they stopped writing, washed their hands, corrected the mistake, then continued. If they made 3 mistakes in one document, they considered it corrupted and burned it. This doesn't sound like someone who would change scripture to me!

When scrolls got old, they were not destroyed. Some were put into a cave by the Dead Sea and forgotten (The "Dead Sea Scrolls"). This would prove to be important thousands of years later.

Long after these scrolls were put into the cave, people began to accuse early church leaders of changing the Bible. Then the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Did they confirm that the early church leaders had changed the Bible? No. They proved that they HADN'T. The scrolls were identical in content to the Bible of today! Yet they were hidden a thousand years before the early church leaders existed!

And what about the many translations? They are just that -- translations of the exact same thing! All of the many versions say the same thing, just with different words! Does it matter if I say, "I have 4 kids," or "Four is the number of kids I have"? No, it doesn't. It's the same thing in different words, just as the different translations of the Bible are.

God promised to keep His Word intact. He did that by keeping an eye on It. He did not allow changes to take place. And anyone who has ever tried to discredit it or claim to have "extra-Biblical scripture" eventually is exposed for the liar they are. Several books have been written about the "Lost books of the Bible", but when you look into them deeply you find flaws in the claims. God has preserved His Word like He promised. He kept His road map to Heaven intact for all to use His tickets to Heaven.