What Does the Bible Mean? Jesus Wants You to Know for Yourself. You Must Answer to Him on Final Exam Day. Everyone acquainted with it believes something about the Bible. Jesus gave his Book to the world so people could know and love him by means of it. Jesus wants you to know the Bible for yourself. But how to figure out what it means?

1. You could go it alone. Just you, the Lord and his Book. Prayer, study, diligence, willingness to learn, humility, determination. It’s possible and has happened.
2. Find a friend or small group and learn with prayer, study, diligence, etc. It’s possible and has happened.
3. Find a resource to help. Reputable and reliable books, websites, study aids, podcasts, etc. It’s possible and has happened.
4. Find a parachurch ministry. Reputable and reliable teaching, integrity, honesty, and accuracy. It’s possible and has happened.
5. Find a church. Reputable and reliable teaching, integrity, honesty, and accuracy. It’s possible and has happened.

But there’s one problem. The Bible is perfect like its Author is perfect. Everything and everybody else is imperfect.

How can imperfect you come to learn the truest truth about God’s perfect Book? Especially just the right amount of Gospel-truth to be saved by Jesus?

1. Jesus wants to save you more than you want to be saved if you are willing to trust him.
2. Jesus made sure there’s more than enough in the Bible to reveal his salvation to those with believing faith.
3. Jesus has provided the Holy Spirit of God, believing friends, solid resources, faithful parachurch ministries and Gospel-churches to guide and guard you to him.
4. Beware! Some friends lead you astray. Many resources are popular and reputable but not Bible-reliable. Some parachurches are not worth following.
5. Choose your church wisely.

Jesus wants you to choose the best church closest to his Bible and Gospel to help guide and guard you to salvation in him alone.

1. The more God’s Word (Bible and Gospel) and the less man’s words (no matter how holy or popular or saintly or reputable), the better.
2. Do the officials and leaders and teachers wear things and recite things and perform things that Jesus himself or his apostles didn’t in the Bible? Look elsewhere.
3. Do you see ornateness, heavy ceremony, mandatory observance of rituals, top-heavy leaders controlling authority and officials with fancy titles? Look elsewhere.
4. Do you see too much casualness, disrespect for God and the holy, worldliness vs. heavenliness in atmosphere? Look elsewhere.
5. Do you hear a lot about Jesus and his Gospel of salvation, a little or not so much? The more the better.
6. Do you hear messages from the Bible as God’s Word or from other sources, texts, authors, historic figures, modern thinkers? The more Bible the better.

Remember the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Indy overcomes the three deadly challenges and enters the secret cave of the Guardian of the Holy Grail. Just then the bad guy comes in and chooses among dozens of chalices: ‘That’s the cup of the King of Kings’. Solid gold, bejeweled, ornate. He drinks from it and dies. The Guardian remarks, ‘He chose poorly’. Then Indy looks at the remaining ones. ‘That’s the cup of a carpenter’. Humble, unassuming, ordinary, made of simple clay. He drinks from it and survives. The Guardian commends him, ‘You have chosen wisely.’

If your church has officials and leaders wearing crowns, vestments, regalia garb, using incense and relics to replicate ancient Jewish worship methods and claiming authority over your soul and control of your Bible, Gospel, Salvation and what they mean and how to get just enough just their right way, BEWARE!

• Did Jesus wear anything similar to your church officials except a simple garment and a crown of thorns?
• Did the apostles Peter or Paul or John in their letters or Book of Acts do house church or meet publicly in Jerusalem or Antioch or Corinth or Ephesus or anywhere between Easter and 95 A.D. wearing and saying and reciting and performing what your church wears or says or recites or performs?
• Did Peter wear some apostolic crown or Paul an ecclesial gown and adornments?
• Did any of them wear gold or silver crosses, perform the rituals and rites and customs and mandatory feasts, calendar holydays, religious observances?
• Did they pray to or invoke St. John Baptizer, St. Stephen, St. James (first church martyrs) or angels (St. Gabriel, St. Michael) or Old Testament St. Adam, St. Eve, St. Noah, St. Lot, St. Melchizedek, St. Solomon or any patriarchs or matriarchs or prophets in their services or personal devotions?
• When you see icons or images in your church of Greek or Latin Mediterranean saints nobody knows what they really look like but symbolized in imaginary stylized dramatized portraits, how can they possibly be accurately portrayed?
• Why should they be portrayed at all if the original house churches had no similar icons or images of St. Moses, St. David, St. Abraham, St. Deborah, St. Elisha or even of the Lord Jesus himself?
• Where O where in your Bible is any or all of this church behavior and custom and ceremony and artwork and imaginary veneration as essential or necessary or strongly commended or commanded by the Lord or his apostles for us today to aid our gospel salvation?
• Can those on earth have contact, communications, relations with the dearly departed other than only Jesus Himself?
• Would any have earthly friendships with heaven-dwelling souls by interacting with iconography or church artwork (reproduction of the saints and relics in marble, paint, wood, clay, plaster, gold, silver and jewels akin to what Isaiah and Jeremiah and prophets warned ancient Israelites were doing in their shrine worship)?

Cornelius knelt down before Peter. Peter told him to stand up because he was only a man. Would anyone today kneel before a stone statue of Peter or kiss his portrait?

What do you look for in Jesus’ true Church? Bible, Gospel, Salvation, Sole Supreme Perfect Authority – the more the better. The simpler and plainer and humbler the better.

Yourself, friends, resources, parachurch, church are all imperfect secondary sub-authorities. Use and choose carefully and biblically.

Be like Indiana Jones – pick the cup of a carpenter, not the goblet of pomp and circumstance. Jesus was More than a Carpenter. But he didn’t show off flashy or fancy. Neither did his apostles and disciples. Neither should you or your church if it is truly of Jesus and his Apostles and Disciples as found in Christ’s Book.

Beware, beware, of Dark Persuasion. Seek only to be led by the Light of Jesus from the Written Word of Jesus. Seek the Bible-Jesus in the Jesus-Bible. Period. No more. No less.

His Majesty King Jesus (I) the First is perfect head of an imperfect body. Someday the true believing church – Christ’s bride – will be perfected and glorified.

Meanwhile the infallible Lord governs his fallible church of believing saints by his infallible Holy Spirit through his infallible Book. Rely in hope only upon it for his eternal life.

Jesus on Judgment Day will hold you personally accountable for knowing the Bible and what it means for yourself. Not what your friends thought. Not what resources and books and experts told you. Not what parachurches say. Not even what a flawed imperfect sinful church expects or insists or demands or requires or compels or persuades or pulls rank on you. You will have to answer for nobody but your own self and soul. ‘Did YOU hear, have YOU read what I wrote, all I said?’

Remember the person who asked Jesus, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ How did the Lord answer? ‘What is written in the Law (Scripture)? How do YOU read it?’