In the preface, we mentioned that Jesus said that the purpose of reading the Bible is to have life, and that Paul said that life can only come from God. Now we can only have life if we are guided by the Holy Spirit in the Triune God. So here we have always emphasized that our sharing is at most at the level of knowledge, hoping that through it we can bring everyone to God and have life. For example, we have seen that when we are truly willing to open our hearts, He will definitely work in us, but He does not say when. In the second part, we mentioned a method used by the Holy Spirit to enable us to keep God’s word in our hearts. This is a prelude to the Holy Spirit leading us in Bible study. Because the Holy Spirit has absolute sovereignty, all we can do is to know that the Holy Spirit is leading us in Bible study and wants us to work with Him. Also because of His absolute sovereignty, we can only give some examples in the third part to illustrate how to know that God is leading us in Bible study. Among them, we also saw Balaam in the Old Testament, who was a fallen prophet and refused to repent. Finally, we saw that the writing style of part of the Bible is similar to coding theory, which explains the basic principle of the automatic error correction ability, and then mentioned why that part of the Bible also has the ability to automatically correct errors by analogy.
1. Preface
We said last time that Christians believe that both the Old and New Testaments are inspired by God, and therefore know that “what God tells us through the Bible is consistent” and “does not discount the words of the Bible.” When we use these two as logical axioms, we will find how logical the Bible is. As long as non-Christians can make the same assumptions as logical axioms, they will reach the same conclusion. In “1140 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth – Genesis(1)1”, we explained this concept using the first sentence of the Bible. Please go to the website “https://a-christian-voice.com/” and click “Understanding of Spiritual Life” to find this article. Today we’re going to look at how this can actually be done.
Jesus said that the purpose of reading the Bible is to have life, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life.”(John 5:39-40) We know that life can only come from God, “I (Paul) planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.”(1 Corinthians 3:6-7) In today’s world, “…Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.”(Romans 8:34) Jesus said, “When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.”(John 15:26) The Holy Spirit not only bears witness, but also “…when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; …”(John 16:13)
In short, the only existence for us in this world today is the Holy Spirit, as Jesus promised in the Great Commission, “…and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”(Matthew 28:20) It is accomplished by the indwelling Holy Spirit, for the Bible says, “…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, …”(1 Corinthians 6:19) The Bible does not lie to us. Whether we feel it or not, the Holy Spirit lives in Christians. At this point, when I hear others praying for the Holy Spirit to be with us during meetings, such people are clearly discounting the words of the Bible, because Jesus said very clearly, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”(Matthew 18:20) There is really no need to pray for the Holy Spirit to be with us. If we do pray, we should ask the Holy Spirit to work among us.
Peter said, “…our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.”(2 Peter 3:15-16) If we want to avoid distorting the Bible to as Peter said, we can only let the Holy Spirit lead us in Bible study. In fact, we can only understand what the Holy Spirit wants us to know, which is what Paul said, “If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know.”(1 Corinthians 8:2)
We also know that the Holy Spirit is one of the Trinity and has absolute sovereignty, because “…one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.”(1 Corinthians 12:11) Obviously, it means to do ‘as He wills.’ In this case, the Triune God has the full authority to decide whether or not to lead us in Bible study. What can we do then? It is not about lying down and doing nothing, but about working together with God. We will see how to work together with God shortly.
In fact, as long as we are truly willing to open our hearts, He will definitely work, because this is Jesus’ promise. The church in Laodicea in the Book of Revelation shut Jesus out, but He still said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”(Revelation 3:20) Here it only says to dine with me; it does not say that He will definitely work. But He will definitely work, otherwise how could it be possible, “He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”(Revelation 3:21) The only thing it doesn’t say is when that will happen, so He still has absolute sovereignty. This is another example regarding what God tells us through the Bible is consistent.
What we want to emphasize here is that we must truly open the door of our hearts, because ““The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it?”(Jeremiah 17:9) One can deceive himself! Only when we act can we be sure of our true thoughts. No wonder James said, “…faith without works is useless?”(James 2:20) This is the first step we can take, to act in accordance with His will, that is, to keep His words in our hearts. The second step is that sovereignty lies with Him. When His time comes, He will naturally lead us in Bible study. What we can do is to know that God is leading us in Bible study and to work with Him.
2. Keep God’s Word in your heart
A definite way in the Bible writing is to use a little here and a little there, because the Old Testament clearly states, “So the word of the LORD to them will be, “Order on order, order on order, Line on line, line on line, A little here, a little there,” …”(Isaiah 28:13) Therefore, we must read the entire Bible in order to keep God’s words in our hearts and understand the Bible’s ideas. This is exactly the first step that the Triune God took to teach me to read the Bible through a brother! Why can I be so sure that it is the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Because the brother did something in me that was foreknowledge that only the Holy Spirit could do. In the YouTube video “201011 Creating a God Not Said in the Bible from Two Miracles”, we start describing this incident in detail in Chinese about 7:15, and the link is “https://youtu.be/_ZdullOIWTA?si=mgg3Gxb7uhZ6CnK7“.
To be sure that we have not missed any words of the Bible, we can start from the first verse of the first chapter of the Old Testament until the end of the Old Testament, and then start from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament until the last verse of the Book of Revelation. This is counted as one time reading. Then repeat until God thinks we have His Word in our hearts. He is sovereign and decides when to lead us in Bible study. Once we know that God is leading us in Bible study, we should work with Him.
Because it is repetitive, we can also start with the New Testament which is easier to read. In this way, there will be differences only in the first time. Once you finish reading the New Testament, it will be the same as what was described in the previous one. One point we want to mention is that if you feel that you don’t understand the Bible when you are reading it like this, it doesn’t matter. Just read it forwards. You must know that the purpose is to keep God’s words in your heart. In the second step, when the Holy Spirit leads us to study the Bible, we will naturally understand some of the scriptures that He wants us to understand. This kind of reading of the Bible must be done with faith, and even if you don’t understand it, you must continue moving forward.
If we read the Bible in this way, spending about an hour a day, we can read the entire Bible about three times a year. This does not mean that you can divide the number of chapters in the Bible by three, then divide that by the number of days in a year, and then read that fixed number of chapters every day, so you can read the Bible three times a year. This is the law. It is impossible to read the Bible willingly just to obey such a law. At most, one can only reluctantly fulfill this law, let alone learn to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
If you are willing to spend about an hour every day, you cannot know in advance which chapter you will start and end with. This is just like when the Israelites left Egypt, “Now on the day that the tabernacle was erected the cloud covered the tabernacle, the tent of the testimony, and in the evening it was like the appearance of fire over the tabernacle, until morning. So it was continuously; the cloud would cover it by day, and the appearance of fire by night. Whenever the cloud was lifted from over the tent, afterward the sons of Israel would then set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the sons of Israel would camp.”(Numbers 9:15-17) They were following God’s guidance. When we read the Bible in this way, we are also learning to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
One point that needs to be emphasized is that when we read the Bible willingly in this way, the enemy will not let us go. The closer we are to God, the more temptations we will experience, because “Truly, truly, I (Jesus) say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.”(John 13:16) When Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted after his baptism, “When the devil (Satan) had finished every temptation, he left Him until an opportune time.”(Luke 4:13) It was only a temporary departure, and then the book of Hebrews clearly stated, “…we do not have a high priest (Jesus) who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”(Hebrews 4:15) So we should not be surprised when we are tempted, but we should deeply believe the words of the Bible, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”(1 Corinthians 10:13)
For a normal person, seeing and hearing are different. In the process of reading the scriptures, you may find that it is not enough to just hear, you must see, because this is related to the structure of the human body. Hearing and seeing have different mechanisms. Hearing cannot achieve the same purpose as seeing, so we will briefly explain what seeing can achieve.
A person’s brain is like a biological computer, but current technology does not know where the program is stored. The human body is so complex that it is most likely that we will never know. If we take human vision as an example, to put it simply, the eye is like a camera, taking a picture of what it sees, which is then converted into electrical signals through the retina and finally stored in the memory. If this process is really like a computer, you only need to watch it once to store exactly what you have seen. But in fact, we are different because our nerves are not all connected together. The signal transmission between nerves in the neural network is through ions. Such transmission will cause uncertainty, so we must read it many times before we can store God’s words in our hearts.
I don’t know how many times each person should read it. Some people say that it should be read at least ten times. This is just encouragement without an upper limit. My own experience is that it needs to be read more times than this. But I don’t know how many times I read it in the end. I just remember telling my sister one day that I couldn’t understand the Bible and could only know whether what others said was in the Bible. It was a long time later that I truly discovered that if God allowed, I could indeed know whether what others said was mentioned in the Bible.
Let’s look at how computers retrieve data. Basically, data is stored in a hierarchical manner. If we need to retrieve certain data, we must know where the data is stored. That is, we must know the path where the data is stored, that is, the file name of each level, until we finally find the data. So unless we know the path to the data, we won’t be able to find it even if it exists there.
If the brain’s storage system is similar to this, then we need to know the path in order to find the information. When we have the words of the Bible stored in our hearts, the Holy Spirit only needs to tell us the path, and we can find the corresponding information. If our heads are empty and we have nothing, how can the Holy Spirit lead us to study the Bible? Please note that I did not say that it is like this exactly, it is just the best explanation I can give based on what I know so far!
As for how the Holy Spirit began to lead me in Bible study, it was only after a very long time after it started. I realized that it was related to the second miracle mentioned in the “201011” mentioned earlier at about 11:50. In 2018, I was still suffering from depression. That was the year my mother-in-law passed away and my sister was in Taiwan. At that time, I thought I was not yet able to read the Bible. Spiritual life without spiritual food would die one day, just like worldly life without food. By
When another sister knew that my sister was not at home and thought that I needed food due to depression, she insisted on sending me food out of brother’s love. After delivering the meal, we had a very brief fellowship. At the end I said that I still couldn’t read the Bible from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation as I did before. Then I suddenly realized that I was reading the Bible in a thematic way, sometimes looking at an event, sometimes looking at a person, and so on. From then on, I no longer read the Bible from the beginning to the end. After a long time, I realized that this was the work of the Holy Spirit and that it was definitely the Holy Spirit who was leading me in reading the Bible.
3. How do we know God is leading us to study the Bible?
Since He is sovereign, He will lead us in Bible study only when His time comes. All we can do is to know that He is leading us in Bible study and wants us to work with Him. Even if we cannot see the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we must stand on His side and work with Him, because His guidance includes us taking the first step. For example, as we have shared before, in Acts 16, the Holy Spirit forbade Paul and Silas to preach in Asia and to go to Bithynia, and then appeared to Paul in a vision and went to Macedonia. Wasn’t this to correct them after they took the first wrong step? Also because He has absolute sovereignty, we can only cite some examples of what He has done, but cannot talk about rules that limit His sovereignty. In “1133 Examples about if it is God’s words and actions that God wants,” we gave three examples of the Holy Spirit leading us, and attached the time when they happened, so you know that this happened recently. You can find this article as before. Please note that I emphasize here that these are recent events because some people teach about things that happen have to wait for a while before they can be witnessed. It is not right. God is a true and living God. As long as our motive is not to deceive ourselves for our own glory, but for His glory, He will lead us to bear witness.
Sometimes the Holy Spirit’s guidance is divided into more than one step. Let me give you an example that happened not long ago to illustrate this point. One of the two criminals crucified with Jesus “was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.””(Luke 23:42-43) Some people see this verse and think that all Christians will go to paradise after they die. At that time, I saw that the criminal was just a special case who was not baptized, and it took great faith to speak like that, so Jesus directly told him that he would be with Him in paradise after he died. The Bible definitely does not say that all Christians will go to paradise after they die. We need to distinguish between special cases and general situations, and this was also shared at that time. In “7. True faith before death is absolutely valid, but you should be baptized when you have the opportunity” of “1063 Introduction to the Christian Faith,” we look at this matter from the perspective of baptism.
Not long ago, I realized that the prisoner had greater faith than I thought! Jesus was not far from death at that time, and the criminal said to Him that when You come into your kingdom, dead people cannot do that, so he believed that the Lord would die and be resurrected, and would come again, and only God could do that. No wonder Jesus said to him, “today you shall be with Me in Paradise.” We also noticed that the second sight was just an addition to the first sight, as if this example was specially created for this sharing! I am very clear that this is the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but like any other testimony, some parts cannot be shown to others. So far, the only testimony that can be shown to others is the objective facts recorded in the medical system, which is shared in “1123 God reveals His existence through objective facts that are visible to others.”
We need to discern that even those who once had a close relationship with God may not necessarily avoid falling. There is an obvious example in the Old Testament, that is, the fallen prophet Balaam, the son of Beor. We say he is a prophet because the New Testament says, “…Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but he received a rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a man, restrained the madness of the prophet (G4396).”(2 Peter 2:15-16)
We do not know when he completely fell. Before his fall, he was very close to God. We can see this when Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab, asked him to curse the Israelites. The Bible clearly says, “And Balaam lifted up his eyes and saw Israel camping tribe by tribe; and the Spirit of God came upon him.”(Numbers 24:2) After he finally refrained from cursing the Israelites, “Then Balaam arose and departed and returned to his place, and Balak also went his way.”(Numbers 24:25)
After his complete depravity, he returned to the kingdom of Sihon king of the Amorites at some point, and among those killed at that time “The sons of Israel also killed Balaam the son of Beor, the diviner (H7080), with the sword among the rest of their slain.”(Joshua 13:22) So even a prophet who was once very close to God could fall. We must repent. The New Testament clearly says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”(1 John 1:9) Don’t be like Balaam, who refused to repent! Therefore, once you realize that you have committed a sin, you should at least repent before God. More likely, you should also repent in front of everyone like David did. After David had sex with Bathsheba, Nathan came to him and made him realize that he had committed a serious sin. David then wrote Psalm 51, not only completely repenting before God but also handing it over to the choir director and not hiding his faults.
4. A possible way to write the Bible: with the ability to automatically correct errors
Christians believe that the Bible is inspired by God. The Triune God knew long ago that it was impossible for the Bible to be passed down to the present day in its original form. He must take this into consideration when He inspired the Bible, so that people who do not force their interpretations of the Bible can see that the Bible has the ability to automatically correct errors. What I want to share now is such a method, which is seen from at least part of the Bible, to deal with this problem. I want to emphasize that I am not saying that the Bible is written this way, I am just sharing that if a person can come up with a method that has auto-correction capabilities, God will surely do a better job.
This method can be described more clearly based on coding theory. For those who do not understand coding theory, we will first describe its basic principles and then use analogies to illustrate how a Bible may be written.
We will now use the communication between the Earth and a distant spacecraft to illustrate the basic principles of coding theory. In this case, due to the long distance, it takes a considerable amount of time to send a command from the Earth to the spacecraft. In other words, basically there is no chance to send a command a second time, it must be correct the first time, and when some (not all) errors are found, they must be able to be corrected automatically. Isn’t this similar to the Bible having only one chance to be inspired? The difference is that printing had not yet been invented when the original Bible was available, so it could only be copied by hands. Especially when copying the original Old Testament, the copying was very strict, and the chance of error was very small. However, communication channels would definitely have a higher possibility of producing multiple errors, so the two are at most similar, not identical.
Now let us illustrate the basic principles of coding theory with a simple example. In a computer, any message is represented by a long string of zeros and ones. To send a message, if there is no error in the transmission of zero or one, then there will be no error in the transmission of the message. Therefore, the simplest message to be transmitted is zero or one. We will use the transmission of zero or one as an example to see the basic principles of how coding theory can automatically correct certain errors.
When zero is to be transmitted, three zeros are transmitted continuously, which is the transmission signal. Similarly, when you need to deliver a one, deliver three ones in succession. That is to say, to transmit such a message, the signal actually transmitted is three times slower than the original message transmitted only once. Let’s see how a received signal with errors can automatically correct certain errors.
When a zero passes through the transmission pipeline to the receiver, it may cause an error and become a one. Similarly, a one may cause an error and become a zero. If zero is transmitted and the received signal has only one error, there will be two zeros and only a one, and we will know that the original message was zero, which means that one error was automatically corrected. Of course, the same is true for transmitting one, which can only correct one error. To correct two errors in this way would be five times slower. By this way, the slower the transmitted signal, the more errors can be corrected, which means that time is exchanged for a reduction in errors.
In the Bible, some concepts appear repeatedly in different ways, so the text will be much longer than if it were only mentioned once, but the errors will be automatically corrected. Using coding theory as an analogy, coding theory trades time for fewer errors, while the Bible achieves the same effect by being longer. I want to emphasize again that the entire Bible is not necessarily written in the form of coding theory. We are just sharing a method that people can come up with. God will definitely do it better.
(Verses refer to those in NASB95 unless otherwise specified.)
(You can get all articles in “https://a-christian-voice.com/” under “On spiritual understanding about life.”)
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