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Men Affected by Culture and Circumstances

By Joe Felim

To faithful believers, the Word of God is The Holy Bible. It was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.

To non believers and carnal beings, the Word of God is insignificant to them and their lives. These people falsely challenge the infallibility and truthfulness of the Bible, by suggesting that it is merely a collection of human written essays, letters and laws, combined together to form a book that controls weak and foolish people.

The Bible, in it’s entirety and as originally composed, is the Word of God written. In every detail, both the form and content of the Bible are inspired by God and essential to the message of the Bible. We declare that the assertions of the Bible are absolutely true regardless of the distances of time and culture.

Any copy of the Bible is profitable and remains the inerrant, infallible Word of God, to the extent that its translation communicates clearly and accurately the meaning intended by the words of the authors of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts at the time they were written.

The Bible is the only authoritative source for Christian faith and practice, and it is the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions of any kind should be tried. There is no realm of life, belief, or investigation over which the Bible does not have supreme authority.

The authority of the Bible derives solely from the fact that it has God as its author, and not from recognition by any church, individual judgment, experience, practicality or conformity to other beliefs or knowledge. The Bible consists by definition of all written material which is inspired by God.

The Bible received entry as they were recognized by Christian consensus to be inspired, and that the composition was not of the church’s making. The inspired Bible is the 39 commonly received books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament, each as they were originally composed.

The order of books is of little or no help in biblical interpretation. The words contained within the Bible are all equally inspired and true, and are on the same level of inspiration and truthfulness as the words spoken by Jesus Himself.

Biblical revelation is progressive: while the quality of revelation never changed, the quantity increased, so that the fullest revelation comes with the completion of the later parts of the New Testament. The Bible is completely inerrant, meaning that everything it asserts explicitly or implicitly, on any subject, is true in the sense intended by the LORD GOD.

The believer’s confidence in the Spirit’s authorship of the Bible should derive from the internal conviction of the Holy Spirit Himself, rather than from human authority, tradition, intuition, personal appeal, or evidence.

The doctrine of the complete inerrancy of the Bible as originally written is absolutely essential to any theology which would call itself Christian, and that anything short of this is heresy and unbelief, and tends toward the destruction of faith. Perceived inconsistencies or inaccuracies in the words or meanings of the Bible are the reader’s misperceptions.

It is a worthwhile task to discover the resolutions of such apparent errors, but that some may be beyond present human discovery, and that in any case it is unnecessary to resolve these conflicts to be confident of the complete truthfulness of the Bible. The Bible infallibly accomplishes all the purposes for which it was intended.

All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2 AV)

And that is where the focus must be….the divine revelation of Christ. Jesus Christ IS the Word of God. To suggest that the writings in the Word of God is affected heavily by culture and personal circumstances, would falsely suggest that Christ is the creation of man. He is not.

Jesus Christ is the Word of God, and the begotten son of the LORD GOD. The Bible, which expresses this Word of God is inerrant, infallible, inspired by the LORD GOD and absolutely true regardless of time or culture. To know this truth, a man must be led toward it by the LORD GOD himself. To question it, sometimes reveals that process is beginning!

zion-bible-college-Haverhill

Zion Bible College

By Joe Felim

A special-focus institution, located in a large suburban area (Barrington, Rhode Island). It is a private religious school (not-for-profit), located in the exciting New England area of the country.

Dr. Richard Lafferty is the Interim President of the school. You can find more information about Zion Bible College by visiting their website.

Zion Bible College has a closed admissions policy. This doesn’t mean you won’t be able to be admitted to the school, but that you should contact the admissions office for complete admissions information. In order to apply for admittance, you will need your high school GPA, transcripts, and standardized test scores, such as those from an ACT or SAT. (Check with the admissions office to see which tests are acceptable.) It is also recommend (but not required) that you supply your high school ranking. If English is not your primary language, it is required that you take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and submit the results with your admissions application.

Of those who applied to the school, 99% were admitted. There are currently 274 students enrolled in the Zion Bible College. The school is associated with the Assemblies of God Church church. This association may place additional restrictions on who can apply or on student behavior while attending the school.

The school provides credit for life experiences, as well as academic and career counseling services for students.

The school has on-campus housing available for up to 400 students. On-campus housing costs average about $3,200 per year. You may also choose to participate in a meals program (19 meals per week) for an additional $1,600. (This could be a weekly, monthly, or term amount. Check with the school’s admissions office for further information.)

The average tuition for out-of-state full-time undergraduates is approximately $5,850. If you are an in-state student, then the average tuition is approximately $5,850. Any tuition figures are exclusive of required fees, books, and supplies. The fees can vary, but books typically average about $800. It is estimated that the total cost for an in-state student is $13,890 per year and $13,890 per year for an out-of-state student. If you choose to live off-campus, then it is possible for costs to be higher.

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Starting Over Again

By Joe Felim

In early 1998 we outlined the plans for the Libronix Digital Library System - the biggest and boldest vision in our corporate history and a completely new platform for Logos Bible Software. Keeping only the capability of reading our existing electronic books we otherwise started over, designing a system of abstract interfaces to modular components that could, theoretically, be expanded to do almost anything.

Of course experience had taught me that compromises would have to be made. As beautiful as our abstract system was, there was no way it would actually run on the technology available to us and our users. From the beginning I knew we would have to hack-up the actual implementation with optimizations and “special case” code to stay within our limitations.

As we implemented the system, though, we were surprised to find that our computationally-expensive, large, abstract system was actually fitting quite well within our technology limits. During the development cycle we also upgraded our computers and software tools and found that the things we expected would be difficult or even impossible to do were getting easier every day. The ugly hacks we’d resigned ourselves to needing weren’t necessary. We never took the shortcuts we thought we’d take.

As we neared completion we started giving demonstrations of the system to people inside and outside the company. In the past this necessary step was always very frustrating. No matter how much input you solicit at the beginning of a project, when you’re almost done and users can actually see and test it they come up with all kinds of feature requests and ideas that simply can’t be done. The architecture is set in place, the code is almost complete, and there’s no way a major new feature can be added.

This round of testing began just like all the others. The programmers showed the product, the users asked for little fixes and big new ideas, and the programmers agreed to the little fixes and said no to all the big new ideas.

And then something different happened. The programmers thought about the big new ideas and realized that some of them could be done quite easily within our modular framework. So they tried a few, including the ones they were sure would run just too slow. But they weren’t hard to fit in. They didn’t run too slowly. They all worked.