Wednesday February 5th, 2014

Lesson 6 

God's Amazing Book

Is God Really the Author of this Book?

The Witness of Scripture

Eye Witness Testimony - What is it and why is it important when we are talking about the Bible?
When we pick up our Bible, we think of it as a big book.  I think of it as a HUGE book - daunting, sometimes overwhelming, but always, always teaching.  But it is more than that.  We've talked before, in our class, about how it is actually a library.  But that library isn't just one filled with all different kinds of mini-books.  That library actually contains documents, records, and letters.  Many of the documents are what we consider "eye witness testimony" accounts.

So for today's class, we wanted to get everyone thinking about what it means that the Gospels are eye witness accounts.

They tell us what the writers saw, experienced, and witnessed.

In a judicial court, eye witness testimony can be the most powerful aspect of a case.  Calling an eye witness to the stand carries great ramifications for any courtroom trial.

And as we read the Bible, we must consider the Gospels to be just that - eye witness testimony.

This truly can revolutionize the way we understand the Gospel stories.  If you doubt that they represent eye witness testimony, I encourage you to read any of the literature which details the reasons it can be nothing less....

Here are just a few titles to recommend:
Letters to a Skeptic (Boyd)
The Case for Christ (Strobel)
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Bauckham)
Mere Christianity (CS Lewis)

The arguments take up volumes and volumes of literature.
Get one of those books and read it for yourself.

But never, ever forget:  when we are reading the Bible, we should imagine reading hand-written letters, by people who lived with Jesus, people whose contemporaries were there when the writings first appeared, as the story first circulated, as the Good News spread.  The writings that changed the world.

We will NOT have class on the 19th of February because of the school calendar half-term break.
For next week: Study 7
See you then!















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