BASIC BIBLE
1/1/85
DO 1884
1. I WANT TO FIND OUT A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW, & THAT'LL SAVE ME HAVING TO TEACH IT TO YOU. Because if you don't know anything about the Future anyhow & you don't know the order of events, what good does it do me to go into details about one particular period if you don't even know what period goes before, what period comes after or what pearl goes here or there on the string!
2. IF YOU THINK THAT I'M THROUGH WITH THE BIBLE & YOU CAN THROW IT AWAY, FORGET IT, YOU'RE MISTAKEN! If you thought I meant by some of my remarks about not having time nowadays for some of this Old Testament formal traditional Bible History study of all the shenannigans of the wicked Jews & everything, that we were just to throw away our Bibles & forget'm & all you have to do is read GNs, WNDs, FNs, FSMs etc. & all the things we publish, then you're mistaken!
3. WHY DO WE STILL NEED TO USE THE BIBLE? THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION! YOU SAY, "SO WHAT? WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO USE THE BIBLE ANY MORE, WE'RE JUST SUPPOSED TO USE THE MO LETTERS!"--WHO SAID SO? I may have said you don't have much time to read the Bible any more & you've got to read the MO Letters because you've got to know about what's happening now & tomorrow & the next day & the future, & if you didn't take time to read the Bible when you had it, then your time is just almost past. But that doesn't mean that you're not supposed to read the Bible any more. In fact, it's very important that you study the Bible, particularly regarding Bible Prophecy which pertains especially to our day & our generation. Amen?
4. SO WE NEED TO KNOW AT LEAST SOMETHING ABOUT THE BIBLE & WE NEED TO KNOW SOME SCRIPTURE VERSES. Are you still memorising Scripture verses?--Why? (Davida: So we'll know the order of events which the Bible tells us.) We've told you that in the Letters too & all that, but you need to know that the Bible says so too! Some of you think all you need to know is MO & all you need to know is what I said or what the Lord said through me. And sometimes I've told you, well, that's true, that may be all you need to know. But there are times that you need to know the Bible & be able to quote it & at least find the references. And the principal occasion in which you need to know the Scriptures, where to find'm & how to read'm, is in witnessing, believe it or not!
5. DESPITE THE FACT THAT MANY PEOPLE CLAIM THEY DON'T BELIEVE THE BIBLE, & many religions in the area in which you & I are now living know little or nothing about the Bible, just like you know that the Koran is the Bible of the Muslims, they know that this book is the Bible of the Christians. You respect their faith in their holy book & you know that it's serious & has great meaning to them. If they would quote you the Koran, wouldn't you listen? You'd know it's a very very famous book that hundreds of millions of people believe in, so it must have something to say. It would be interesting if nothing else, even if you didn't believe it.
6. I THINK YOU OUGHT TO KNOW YOUR BIBLES! That's your major Holy Scriptures, the original Word of God that man has had for thousands of years. Part of that Bible we've had for nearly 4000 years, think of that, at least 3500 years since the days of Moses. You don't want to be an ignoramus about your own Bible like some Moslems & the Jews are about theirs. They could really catch you & trip you up if they know it better than you do!--Especially the Old Testament like the Jews know it, their history & the chronology etc.
7. AND IT WOULD CERTAINLY BE A SHAME IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW YOUR BIBLE PASSAGES & SCRIPTURES & REFERENCES ABOUT OUR SPECIALTY! Who remembers that scientific word for our scientific specialty that all of you are experts in?--Eschatology! And it's a good thing to know, because some time somebody might ask you what your business is & you can say, Eschatology!
8. I DON'T KNOW WHETHER YOU'VE EVEN GOT TIME TO LEARN ALL ABOUT THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE BIBLE ETC., but my students should be able to tell you about how many thousand years ago the Earth was created. It was about six thousand years ago.--Roughly speaking, in round numbers, about 4000 B.C. As long as you even hit the round numbers you're doing pretty good. I didn't try to make'm learn exact dates because that's too hard to remember. I taught'm to learn in 500-year periods. About every 500 years something major happened, not exactly, but about. See, if you can at least pinpoint those major milestones of the Bible, you can get your chronology straightened out!
9. SO IT'S IMPORTANT THAT YOU KNOW YOUR BIBLE TO USE IT AS A TOOL, FIRST OF ALL FOR YOUR OWN BENEFIT!--So you know where to find what you're lookin' for & what you want to study & what you want to read etc. If you want to read something beautifully devotional for morning devotions, what would you probably pick? What are the devotional books? (Fam: Psalms & Proverbs.) Psalms & Proverbs are beautiful, devotional, poetic books, they're beautiful to read at your devotional times. Psalms, of course, is also a tremendous prophetic book full of Messianic prophecies, because the greatest Messianic Prophet in the Bible aside from Isaiah was David! Psalms is largely Messianic prophecy, beautiful! So if you want to know something about Bible Prophecy, you'd better know Isaiah, but not only the Prophets, but also the Psalms of David in which there is much great Bible Prophecy.
10. WELL, WE'RE SORT OF REVIEWING YOU HERE AS A STARTER TODAY & I MAY NOT GET AROUND TO EVERYTHING. In fact, I realised as I was looking through this that we couldn't possibly cover all of this in one morning. If you don't even know the events of Bible Prophecy, what difference does it make whether you know one finite little shibboleth or not?--One little tiny detail or not? Well, it might help to know that detail, but you sure ought to know all of it, right? That's one thing I've tried to do, is trim all of this down & make it simple so even a child can understand & remember.
11. WHAT'S THE USE OF GOING INTO ALL THE DETAILS WHEN YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE BASICS? SO YOU NEED TO KNOW THE BIBLE! YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE BIBLE! Don't be an ignoramus! Good night, college students who study it as literature probably know more about it than you do, technically, the parts & all that sort of thing. It's one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written & they still study it in secular colleges & anti-Christ schools, etc. just as English literature! So you certainly ought to know at least as much about it basically as some of these students at anti-Christ college do. That's who we're going after nowadays, isn't it? We're going to college campuses & universities! You don't want to try to witness to them & find out some guy that's studying the Bible there knows more about it than you do or you're going to be like that little newsboy that Billy Sunday asked the way to the post office, & afterward he said, "Come out to my meeting tonight & I'll tell you the way to Heaven!" The tough little newsboy said, "Huh! How can you show me the way to Heaven? You don't even know the way to the post office!"
12. HOW CAN YOU SHOW THEM ANYTHING ABOUT BIBLE PROPHECY WHEN YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW THE BASICS OF THE BIBLE ITSELF? They can get you all twisted up because you don't even know your own Bible! All you know are certain specific Bible Prophecy passages & on those you can shine, you can tell'm more than they ever heard of before! But you can't tell'm a thing about Genesis or anything about Old Testament history. Well, we don't have time to study that now. But of all the things you need to know, you need to know what's going to happen next!