The Bible clearly teaches us that God is good and just in all His ways. What is God's desire for all of mankind? "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance." {2 Peter 3:9} If God is unwilling for any to perish, doesn't it follow that it would be necessary for Him to inform His creation regarding what He requires of us.

"But as it is written: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual." {1 Corinthians 2:9-13}

Since man could not know God's mind, He had to reveal it to him. This is one of the major reasons we have the Bible. Many who claim to believe in God deny that the Bible is His word, or that it is in a completed form. Dear readers, the Bible is no accident! It did not just happen; it was preserved through the ages, and not in a cloud of secrecy. Man did not, one day, just "find" the Bible? Since the beginning, millions of books have been written. We no longer have many of them; they have disappeared-but the Bible has not. Through God's providence, His book has survived the passage of time.

How did we get the Bible? How many people participated in its writing? How many years did it take to write it? Where did we get the different translations? What makes a translation a good translation? Why can we have confidence that the Book is accurate and the same as when God gave it? How did God ensure its preservation through the ages? What evidence do we have to support the claim that the Bible is the ONLY divine message from God to men? These questions, and many others about HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE, we will endeavor to answer in two special issues-August and September.

Today, the Bible is under attack on many different fronts. Skeptics abound who seek to destroy the creditability of God's word. A few years ago, some so-called Bible scholars took on a six-year project called the Jesus Seminar. These so-called experts looked at over 1500 sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels to see which ones were authentic. What did they find? In the book, "The Five Gospels-What Did Jesus Really Say," they documented the conclusion that Jesus actually spoke only about 15% of the words in the Gospels. These men also introduced what they believe to be the "fifth gospel," the Gospel of Thomas. Such works, and many others that could be listed, all have the same purpose-to undercut the validity of the scriptures as a divine message. We intend to show why they all fail in their efforts to prove their case!!!