Christians Must Rediscover the Bible

I feel deep sadness that so many Christians in North America and the west have such a shallow understanding of the Bible. It should be our utmost desire to study and apply the scriptures to our daily lives. Yet there are many people who just go to the Sunday service and have little interest in  even reading God's word. At best, they read a devotional before madly dashing off each morning.

Israel certainly had their times of neglecting the scriptures. But one notable revival occurred in 2 Kings 22:10 and 11 (BBE) which reads, "Then Shaphan the scribe said to the king, 'Hilkiah the priest has given me a book;' and he was reading it before the king. And the king, hearing the words of the book of the law, took his robe in his hands, violently parting it as a sign of his grief;"

But it didn't end there. We find that the King did something about what he read in 2 kings 22:12 and 13 (BBE). "And he gave orders to Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, the son of Shaphan, and Achbor, the son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king's servant, saying, 'Go and get directions from the Lord for me and for the people and for all Judah, about the words of this book which has come to light; for great is the wrath of the Lord which is burning against us, because our fathers have not given ear to the words of this book, to do all the things which are recorded in it."

Later in Israel's history, we read where the Book of the Law was read aloud to the people. They listened from early in the morning until noon on that day.

Nehemiah 8:7 and 8 (BBE) tells how this happened. "And Jeshua and Bani and Sherebiah and Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites made the law clear to the people: and the people kept in their places. And they gave out the words of the book the law of God, clearly, and gave the sense of it, so that their minds were able to take it in."

The Bible isn't a book we should put away and let dust collect on it. We need to open and read it daily. With help from all the good Bible teaching ministries and commentary web sites online, we can learn so many wondrous facts about our Lord.

I'll be dealing with this lamentable lack of interest in God's Word in my next book called You Think You're Going to Heaven? If everybody who professes to be a Christian would study the scriptures, no churchgoers would find themselves hellward bound on Judgement Day. But we know that far too many people never surrender their lives to Christ.

On Thursday, I'll be posting about the book of Ecclesiastes and what's good about it.