A thorough education

All Scripture comes from God’s mouth, and is useful for teaching, warning, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2nd Timothy 3:16-17).

Many years ago, writer and Yale University Doctor William Lyon Phelps wrote: “I thoroughly believe in a university education for both men and women, but I believe a knowledge of the Bible without a college course is more valuable than a college course without the Bible. Every one who has a thorough knowledge of the Bible may truly be called educated, and no other learning or culture, no matter how extensive or elegant, can form a proper substitute."

What do you suppose is the most important field of study? Physics? Biology? Mathematics? Political Science? These fields of study are highly prized in our modern world, and a person who is an expert in one of them can make a comfortable living.

But will a Ph.D. in molecular biology save a troubled marriage? Will a Nobel Prize in mathematics enable you to avoid death and live forever? When it comes to matters of life and death, only one field of knowledge is truly worth mastering—the knowledge of the Word of God given to us through Jesus Christ. Only the Word of God can properly equip us for life’s most urgent problems—how to love unselfishly, how to forgive and be forgiven, how to find peace and purpose in life, how to survive the grave and live forever.

The Bible is God’s Word given to us. Every teaching of the Holy Scriptures comes from God’s own lips. Peter tells us prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2nd Peter 1:21). The Bible is not an anthology of myths made up by men, it is the authentic message of God dictated to men who willingly set God’s words down in writing so that you and I could have our own copy of the Lord’s message in our own homes! No library in the world can replace the Bible as the one indispensable resource to living life and facing death. Everything that you need is given by God to you in its pages—all you need do is open the cover and start reading. Please join me in praying:

Thank you, Holy Spirit, for taking the Words of heaven and placing them in our hands. Forgive us when we allow this wonderful gift to collect dust on our shelves. Move us to open our Bibles and read from them every day, and help us to clearly understand the wonderful things You have caused to be written there. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.