From Darkness to Light: A Course in Bible Literacy

(This entire series is available as a single PDF file -- 300KB.)

Part1: Introduction

Stepping from the Kingdom of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light is entering a whole new world. Indeed, it would be comparable to moving to another planet. The difference is so great, it defies description. Every assumption you ever had about life, even down to the very pattern of thinking and knowing, must change. It requires reconsidering all you've ever taken for granted. The paradox is you have crossed the gulf between Heaven and Hell, all while standing in the same spot on the ground.

So while your location hasn't actually changed, nor even the skin in which you are wrapped, what's inside the skin has morphed into something utterly alien to this world. Your spirit, once dead, is now alive in union with another Being. That Being is God Almighty, who has planted His own Person inside you. He does not see the world as you once did. You are now under an obligation to accommodate His way of looking at things. You will carry a burning desire to think as He thinks. We find it impossible to explain it completely using the terms to which we are accustomed. Even our very thoughts and way of discussing things must change to His ways.

This new way of addressing things, with God living in your soul, is a study you will continue as long as you live. Not just an intellectual study, but a study requiring constant reference to that new capacity inherent in His divine presence in you. Because His ways are so utterly foreign, it's quite difficult for us at first to perceive that capacity itself, much less describe it. Yet, His way of living in us, making His ways our ways, requires cultivating this other capacity. This other capacity is our newly born spirit. We must learn to "think" spiritually. That is, we must learn to allow our spirits to address our decision-making process, to rule that process. That's because our spirits are the place where God resides. Operating in that mode is not innate, but requires tuning the conscious mind to accept the input from that source.

A critical source for this study is the Bible. The primary difficulty is grasping just how foreign the Bible is to the world in which we have been living. Just because it has been translated into English is no reason to assume you can understand it as you would any other book published in English. First, we must note the Bible was written long before there was anyone speaking an English language. But it's more than a matter of whether this or that English translation of the Bible accurately conveys the original meaning, but realizing the Bible was written in a cultural frame of reference completely different from ours. The very use of language itself was different for those people there and then, quite different from our way of approaching the task of written communication. We have to learn how to read the Bible the way it was written, because that is the way the Holy Spirit thinks, and how we are expected to think while seeking to live spiritual lives.

This, then, is the task before us. We seek to bridge that immeasurable gap between where we are now, to what we should be. That bridge is the Bible, which does give clues about its different nature, but still requires some retooling of our minds to grasp the difference.

By Ed Hurst
09 February 2009

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: People of honor need no copyright laws; they are only too happy to give credit where credit is due. Others will ignore copyright laws whenever they please. If you are of the latter, please note what Moses said about dishonorable behavior -- "be sure your sin will find you out" (Numbers 32:23)

From Darkness to Light: A Course in Bible Literacy

Part1: Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7