Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: We're back. We're talking with Sunder and Shamala. We've just had some folks from India and some folks from Pakistan that have just accepted the Lord, and they're just filled with joy. They're just so happy. And they're asking questions about what's next.

They know the Bible is important, but Sunder, they want to know, where should I start? What is the Old Testament? What's the New Testament? Give some practical advice to Christians that have just accepted the Lord and want to know, what is the Bible and what's the best way to start?

Sunder Krishnan: The first thing is to understand what the Bible is all about. The most important thing to understand about it is, and we've been saying this over and over again, it's not a bunch of disconnected rules that we have to obey to keep some angry God happy with us, and that somehow we might make it into heaven. It is a story.

It's a story of God. It's a story of God at work in this world that He created. The portion that we call the Old Testament has the first three acts of this story. The first act is creation, when God created this amazing world around us, and the Bible tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God in Psalm 19, verse one.

Glory is a word that we would have no way to understand if we had never seen a beautiful sunset or a magnificent storm with the lightning crashing from left to right. That's glory. And then it gives us a little bit of an idea what God's awesome beauty and glory must be like. So He created this world as a vehicle to make His glory visible.

Then He created human beings in His own image. That means that we above all have the unique ability to function as God's vice-regents in this world, to rule this creation in such a way as to glorify God and benefit humanity. Those are the opening movements of the story.

The second part of the story is called the Fall. These amazing human beings made in God's own image with faculties to rule this creation on His behalf decided that they wanted to become their own bosses, and they would use their free will to rebel against God. That was the essence of sin.

The entire world has been thrown into a mess because of that. There is relational chaos, there is spiritual alienation, there is psychological alienation, there is vocational alienation and physical degradation. The third chapter of the Bible describes all that resulting from our rebellion against God.

The rest of the Old Testament is a story of how God prepared one nation called Israel for the coming of Jesus into this world because He was the one that was going to set this mess all right. So the creation, Fall and Israel, which is a relentless story of God pursuing human beings, setting them up for His Son to come into this world, is the Old Testament.

We come to the apex of the story, which is the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Dr. John Ankerberg: In the New Testament.

Sunder Krishnan: In the New Testament. They are four different takes on the story of Jesus. They are not four contradictory stories, but they're stories told from four different perspectives. I'll come back to that in a moment. And that's the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the apex.

We've talked about how His death on the cross brings about our forgiveness and how the fact that He's risen from the dead makes Him a living God that we can follow. Then follows the rest of the New Testament, which is the story of how Jesus empowered His disciples to go into all the world and proclaim this gospel, and how He established the church where people worship the Lord Jesus Christ.

The last one is the Book of Revelation, where this Jesus is coming back again in visible reign and power. This is the whole story of the Bible, and we all are born into this world loving stories. Children love stories, and the reason they love stories is they see themselves in that story. They connect to that story.

I would encourage people to start reading the Bible, first of all, not as rules, but as this amazing story from creation to the first coming of Jesus to the second coming of Jesus and say, where does my story connect with that? That would be the mindset in which they would approach it. My suggestion is that they start in the Gospels, the four Gospels.

Each one of them was written for a slightly different audience, which means everyone, no matter where you are, what religious background you're in, what socioeconomic background you're in, you're going to connect somewhere. Matthew wrote his Gospel particularly to people from a Jewish background to help them understand how Jesus was the fulfillment of thousands of years of prophecy. Jesus Himself in His life kept on saying, "so that Scriptures might be fulfilled, so that Scriptures might be fulfilled."

Dr. John Ankerberg: So the stuff they read in the Old Testament, Matthew is saying this is the person.

Sunder Krishnan: It's all becoming alive in the person of Jesus. That's why they need to know the whole story. Mark wrote primarily from the perspective of Rome. He wrote probably to a small church that was in Rome, and Rome was the power at that time. Rome had military power. Mark presented Jesus not as King, but as servant.

He said Jesus is calling us to serve, not to fight, but to serve people, even the people who are harsh rulers, to serve them in Jesus' name. Then Luke writes his Gospel primarily with a Greek audience in mind because the Greeks made a huge deity of the human form. They worshipped the human form.

He presented Jesus as the perfect man. Finally, John presents a theological reflection on what is the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. You need to read all four of those. I would say read them to get a good sense of Jesus coming into this world, His life, His teachings, His trial, His death, His resurrection, His ascension and the promise of His coming back. That's where they would start.

Dr. John Ankerberg: There's many religions in the world, and they all have something to say about Jesus. In India, there's going to be by 2025 about 350 million Muslims. When I've talked with Muslims in India or in United Arab Emirates, I've always asked them, "do you know about Jesus? Do you know about Issa?" "Oh, yeah, he's our honored prophet."

I said, "have you ever read what he said?" "No." I said, "well, would you like to read the Injil, the Gospels?" "Yeah, but they don't have one." I'm saying we can share and we can say, "here's the four Gospels. Just read them, if they can read." 50% of the world is functionally illiterate, which means they can't even read their own language.

What we've done at our website, jashow.org, is we have Bibles in over 1,000 different languages. So they can go to our website and there's a button where they push, and they can find their language. If they're Muslim, they can go to the Injil, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and you can read what their honored prophet himself said.

If you are in India and you cannot read Hindi or Telugu or Tamil or something else, but you can understand it, then again, go to the website, jashow.org, and just find the language. You just push a button and it'll be read to you in your language.

Sunder Krishnan: That's a huge advantage because the Word is actually a voice. One of the disadvantages of reading is we've lost that idea that it's actually a voice. Being able to listen to it on radio, I would say do that even if you can read, still listen to it. You will know it is the voice of God speaking to you.

Dr. John Ankerberg: There's going to be 10 billion smartphones in the world within three years. There's over seven billion right now. So almost every one of you that are listening, whether you read or not, you've got a smartphone. If you will go to your app store and you will just put in "The John Ankerberg Show", you will come to our app.

Download the app, it's free. There's a place that shows the Bible. Again, you can carry around your app and you can find your language and you can just press the button and you can hear it read to you while you're riding on the train, when you're riding in the car, when you're having a lunch break, wherever you're at.

You can listen to what Jesus said, what Sunder was just saying, and you can hear other parts of the Bible as well. So I want you to keep that in mind. Give me one more good thing that came into your life when you started reading the Bible, Shamala.

Shamala: For me the turning point was where a man by the name of Eugene Peterson really unlocked the key when he talked about the Scriptures being the voice of God. When you previously asked me why should we read it, one of the things he says, and it's so true, is we hear so many voices telling us to do this, go this way, go that way.

The one person whose voice is the voice that is true and who leads us in the way in which we should go—in fact, He says, "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go"—is God. For me, it's very important at the end of the day, and in spite of all the voices I hear, I want to know, God, what do You have to say?

We err because we know not the Scriptures, neither the power of God. It isn't even something that I do now because I have to, it's something that I long to do because it grounds me, it gives me perspective on my life, on my circumstances, on my relationships. I get up from there having heard His voice. It is a voice that first of all loves me, cares for me, and He cares that I walk in the way in which He has designed for me because it's a way that leads to the life He wants me to have.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Folks, we're going to talk more about the Bible, but next time we're going to talk about prayer. God speaks to us through the Word of God, but did you know that He invites you to come and talk to Him? He will listen and He will answer prayer. We're going to talk about that next time, so I hope you'll join us then.