SIMPLE MINDED

That's me! Simple minded...sometimes a downright simpleton. Well, not really; but there are times I can be pretty dense! Spiritually speaking though, I am content to be simple minded. I have no problem accepting the Bible as the infallible Word of God, given to chosen men to be recorded as they were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I do not feel the need to come up with "logical" explanations for where Cain got his wife and how people could have lived for more than 900 years (in light of the fact that when God created man He originally intended him to live forever, 900 years is a drop in the bucket!). Whether or not the Egyptian plagues were an intensification of natural events taking place in less than a year and coming at God's bidding and timing, they still were miraculous and glorified the one true God to a polytheistic culture. Pharoah, the Egyptians and all Israel saw the power of God. The Creation taking place in seven days by God's spoken Word, the Ark and the Flood, the parting of the Red Sea, Jonah surviving three days in the belly of a whale, David's defeat of Goliath; none of these are stumbling blocks for me. They are all examples of when a person answers God's call to trust Him and obey, God is faithful to respond in awesome and mighty ways.

It amazes me how readily the world accepts the works of ancient authors, like Homer, Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato and Caesar, etc., as authentic to the original manuscripts. How many manuscript copies of ancient works are available for study today? The 643 manuscript copies that exist of Homer's Iliad is the most for any ancient work. There are only about 10 manuscripts found of Caesar's War Commentaries, seven for Plato's Tetralogies, 20 for Livy's History of Rome. How about the New Testament? There are 5,309 known manuscripts in the original Greek language. There are also more than 19,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts in other languages such as Latin, Syriac and Armenian. For a total of 24,633. The time interval between the date of the original writing and the earliest known manuscript copies of the New Testament compared to other ancient works is astonishing. Caesar's War Commentaries was written about 50 B.C., but no copies are available for study which were written before the 9th century -- a gap of over 900 years. Most of the Greek writings have even greater gaps (1000-1500 years), the Latin writings somewhat less. The shortest span of any ancient work is that of Virgil, about 300 years between the original writing and the oldest known copy. The New Testament was written over a period of about 50 years, beginning around A.D. 47. Using the year A.D. 100 as the latest possible date for their completion, the John Rylands papyrus, a fragment containing a few verses of the Gospel of John, dates about A.D. 125 -- only some 35 years after the original writing by the apostle. The Bodmer and Chester Beatty papyri, a find consisting of a majority of the New Testament, dates from about A.D. 175-250. Major copies within 100-150 years of the originals. Bible scholar, Frederic Kenyon, in his commentary The Bible and Modern Scholarship, writes: "No other ancient book has anything like such early and plentiful testimony to its text, and no unbiased scholar would deny that the text that has come down to us is substantially sound."

All of this information just reaffirms my belief in the Bible as the literal Word of God but I am thankful I did not need to know all this before I believed. Trying to seek God through one's intellect just does not work. It's a matter of the heart. Jesus says, "I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the Kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." (Mark 10:15) The point He's making by this comparison is the openness and receptivity of children. The Kingdom of God must be received as a gift; it cannot be achieved by any of our efforts.

"For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." (1 Corinthians 1:18-25)

So call me a simple-minded fool.