Equipping University

It is amazing that we know anything of the New Testament. The early church had no great libraries or sanctuaries in which to store its books. Persecution began early and continued for a few hundred years. During the first three hundred years of persecution and the years after of freedom, the New Testament was continuously copied and recopied as believers held fervently to the only thing that could sustain them ��� the revealed Word of God. A study of the transmission of the Bible during this time period reveals much of how we got the Bible that we have today. Read of the amazing number of ancient manuscripts that have been discovered so far. Learn the names and characteristics of the more famous and important of these ancient manuscripts (with pictures of sample pages).

For hundreds of years, scholars refused to believe that Matthew, Luke, Paul, and Peter could have written the books of the Bible that bear their names. Instead, it was widely believed that men from the late second and third centuries wrote the documents and put the apostles' names on them for credibility. The discovery of a famous fragment from John's Gospel in 1920 changed all that forever. Read how the New Testament came together and discover that all of the New Testament was written before the end of the first century and much of it was written decades before then.

The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 was a major find for Old Testament studies. In the 60+ years since, scholars continue to learn more of these ancient books and our faith in its accuracy and reliability only continues to grow. Read about how the Old Testament was handed down and later written down and the ancient manuscripts that we have today that prove once again that we can trust the Word of God.

The Bible has long been under attack from those who would love to see its influence disappear. The attacks seem to be growing stronger and the attackers are even bolder. Hollywood, liberal scholars, Muslims, scientists, atheists, and even Christian fundamentalists all charge that the modern Bibles used by most of evangelicalism have been corrupted over time and are not worthy to be read, studied, and followed. Christians claim to know a lot of Bible (and that is debatable) but many do not know much ABOUT their Bible.

The doctrine of irresistible grace is easily understood and it all flows from the first tenet of the Calvinistic understanding of how man is saved. The Bible teaches that man is dead in sin and enslaved to a corrupt nature that does not want or seek God. Man is incapable of doing anything that is pleasing to God. Even though man is dead in his sins, he is, of course, still alive and very active in his or her rebellion. Therefore, being dead is not equivalent with inaction or passivity. Because he is dead in his sins and dead towards God, man must be raised to spiritual life (made alive by God, born again). This is all that irresistible grace means - man must be given life in order that He might (and will) choose Christ. Without this life-giving work by God, man remains dead and enslaved to sin. To be as plainly simple as possible, irresistible grace is about regeneration.