Doctrine

Where is Heaven?

Doctrine / /

I had been taught that there was a vapor canopy over the earth before the Noahic Flood. But the words of Genesis Chapter One do not describe a vapor canopy. The creation details in Genesis unmistakably indicate that there is water above the stars.

We will accept the Genesis 1 creation story at face value to understand that there is a great sea above the universe.. Recognition of this will clarify Scriptures that commentators have found obscure (or “poetic”) from one end of the Bible to the other.  This includes the statement that there will be no more sea in the new heavens and earth to come. Also we understand that God crosses this sea when He comes down from heaven and that we must quite literally (not only figuratively) cross a sea to go up to heaven . Then Scripture tells us the direction through the universe toward God’s heaven. It is situated above the celestial sea, which is frozen on the top (a crystal sea). See the theology slides Where is Heaven?

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Identifying the True Words of God

Doctrine / /

God promised us that He will teach us doctrine Himself if we believe His words above all others. So His words surely are worth having. But this would be an empty promise if He did not preserve His words for us. Indeed, He has promised that they will be available forever. With God’s help we can surely identify those words.

Scholars deny that there are infallible words.

Scholars have denied that God’s infallible words are available. By defining inspiration in such a way that it can only apply to original autographs of Scripture, they affirm that will be no Scripture, written words of God, available to man until those original autographs can be found and/or reproduced. Although there are multitudes of manuscripts of Scripture available, they do not fully agree with each other. So the scholars argue we can only approximately know God’s infallible words. Which means we must believe the words of scholars to tell us what words we can believe, and which are uncertain. Words derived in this way are certainly not what God has promised us.

Witnesses to God’s words

There is nothing in the manuscripts we have that indicates that piecing together original autographs is the appropriate way to identify God’s infallible words. Jesus Christ, who is called the Word of God Himself, told those demanding to know who He was that according to their Scriptures the truth of a matter could be determined by two or three witnesses. So in these slides, Identifying the Words of God, we will use two witnesses to identify the true words of God. Then we will trust God to teach us doctrine through those words.

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