The Bible: Top Secret
TOP SECRET
Hidden somewhere in the world lies a book with the
secret of power more awesome than a cobalt bomb. I shall give it the code-name "F."
If our secret movement could discover
and direct this energy, we could begin a revolution that might well sweep the world.
This document is Top
Priority, and is concerned with the
possibility of someone like you finding that book and rediscovering its secrets
for our world. Of course, the volume
is in code. No secret of comparable importance could ever be left unprotected. Such frightening force in the
wrong hands might well mean terrible and universal destruction. "F"
was designed to turn the tide of
destruction on a planet that was in trouble. Mystery surrounds both the structure and designers of "F." For the purposes of Operation Discovery it will suffice
to call the creators of this power The Great Ones. "F" was to be made
available by them only for those who
qualified by meeting stringent conditions designed to protect the harmony of the
universe.
No ordinary code protects this volume's
priceless contents. The Great Ones
designed a protective coding key so simple that a child could unlock its
treasures, yet so intricate that none but those who meet the
conditions can unlock its mysteries. You will recognize the
book by its resemblance to a well-written book of history, poetry, and ethics.
An uninitiated reader could scan any encoded lines and only see a good story.
Even a lifetime of careful search by a trained decoder would still fail to
decipher its true meaning.
Decoding qualifications are simple but
not easy. Are you willing to accept a challenge? You may be the one we are looking for. Someone
must rediscover and apply the key secrets
before it is too late. Yet the
qualifications are costly. Are you willing to use this discovery for the highest good of our world? Are you prepared to
harness the awesome energies of
"F" for the betterment of
mankind, whatever the cost? Are you
ready to make any personal sacrifices necessary to apply your discoveries
unselfishly for the needs of your
generation? Are you willing to go on once you begin, although it may well cost
you your life to continue?
I hope we were not wrong in choosing
you for Operation Discovery. Do you dare say yes? The
Great Ones will know of your choice. Right at this moment, scattered across the world others
have already begun the search… the most challenging search of all time. Do we have
your consent to begin? Time is running
out, but if you succeed, we may yet turn the
tide.
Within are your instructions. Oh, by the way, you will need to get a copy of the book! Strangely
enough, it is not too difficult to obtain one. You may even find one in your
own home somewhere.
It's called the
Holy Bible.
For hundreds of years, this has been the passport of power for men and women of God who
changed their world. God's new race
to redirect history is people of His Word. Each new generation must have its
men to rediscover the fiery reality
of Holy Scripture. The destiny of your age may hinge on your venture
into its secrets.
The unseen God cannot be discovered by
unaided human reason. God is a God who hides Himself. (Is. 45:15) He reveals
His presence only to those who are honest enough to face their
sin and surrender to His love. (Is. 59:1-4; 55:6-7; Heb. 11:6)
He can be discovered only when He wants
to be. If a heart is dishonest, and a life is a lie, God will show that person
nothing. He does not need to impress anyone He will share His powerful secrets
only with those willing to become as little children - eager to learn, excited
to discover, and willing to obey. No member of the
Godhead will reveal Himself unless we meet the
conditions. (Luke 10:21-22; Duet. 29:9; Pro. 1:23; Isa. 45:3; John 12:36-40; I
Cor. 2:4:10; Eph. 2:17-19;
Matt. 18:3) Neither can God's
written Word be understood by ordinary methods of study and insight alone.
Knowledge without corresponding goodness is terribly dangerous. God has locked
His treasures so that the wise,
(according to the wisdom of the world), will only be puzzled, blinded, and
totally ignorant of its real meaning. A thousand people can all research the Bible with great intensity and each comes up baffled
with different ideas and conflicting discoveries. No matter how high the powers of reason, no matter how deep the intellect, no one can discover God's secret
messages without paying the cost of
true discipleship. God has guarded His Word so that only the
pure in heart can see its secrets. All other
efforts will fail. (I Cor. 1:17-31) God has appointed an agent through whom the Bible can be understood. Only one person can
open the mind to see the Bible's secrets - a person who knows the secret attitude of every human heart. He is the author of the
Holy Scriptures. (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20-21) Filling all time and
space, He is the most mysterious
member of the Godhead. "Secret Agent X-3" is the
third person of the Holy Ones, The Holy Spirit.
He is the Father's
chosen decoder through whom the
simplest humble servant of the Lord
God can understand the Bible. You
cannot really love God's Book until you meet this wonderful person. He alone
can open the glories of the Scriptures
and thrill your heart with Christ. (John. 14:16-17, 26; I Cor. 2:11)
STEP 1:
The first step to cracking the code of Scripture
is to yield your mind to the Holy Spirit of God. He will take command of your life and
direct your thoughts to the secrets
hidden in Scripture. He is admitted
to the control room of your reason
when you surrender your life to the Son of God, Jesus Christ. (I John. 3:23-24, Rom.
10:8-10; 8:1-9) This is the first, and greatest cost of Operation Discovery.
It involves death - death to your own proud ideas, death to your own natural
wisdom without God, death to selfish ambition. It demands total surrender of
every life faculty to the guidance
of Christ, When you enthrone Jesus Christ as the
King of your life, He will give you the
gift of the Holy Spirit. God's own Secret
Agent. He will strengthen you
against the counter attacks of the Enemy. He will help when the
journey becomes difficult, His chief purpose is to show you how wonderful the Lord Jesus is, and reveal that glory in the Bible. Let Him take over the
controls of your perception and turn on your spiritual understanding. (John
16:12-15; I Cor. 1:17-31;
Rom. 8:26; 12:1-2)
STEP 2:
The second Scripture
code lock opens with another key -
human need. Approach the Bible
without sincere desire to discover and the
door of understanding will stay closed. God does not do business with people
who do not mean business with Him. He never used anyone He could easily get rid
of. Only those who are willing to come with need - devotedly, determined, even
desperately - can discover the
secrets of the Lord God. (Gen.
32:26; Matt. 15:21-28; Luke. 8:15; 11:5-8; 18:1-8; 2 Tim.
2: 14-15) Insert the key of need and
the Bible will light up with
meaning. It is not by chance that Christ is called the
Word of God. (John 1:1) Our attitude towards the
Lord Jesus is directly reflected in our attitude towards His written Word, the Bible. It is the
only material link we have with heaven. If you really love the Author, you will love His Book. Disinterest in the written Word of God is a sure sign of spiritual
apostasy from the Living Word of
God, the Lord Jesus. Spiritual desire or need is deepened by prayer.
Bring the key of your need to God in
prayer. Whatever you desire for His glory - comfort, strength, direction, or
praise - it will be gloriously revealed by the
God of love who delights to meet human helplessness with divine power. If your
life is clean from sin, no matter how limited your education or your natural
understanding God will show you His Scriptural
treasures. The deeper your desire for
God, the more rapidly His Word will
open to you. (Matt. 5:6; John 4:34; 7:15-l7)
Right now, you are able to understand all of God's Word that you honestly want
to understand.
STEP 3:
The last code can only be cracked by the sacrifice of time. It is nearly impossible to
find time for the study and reading
of Scripture; you must make time! Satan does everything possible to keep you away from
God's Word. The "sword of the Spirit,"
(Eph. 6:17), is a deadly
weapon against the Enemy in the hands of a trained Christian. Jesus answered
each of Satan's temptations with Scripture - "It is written!" (Malt. 4:4,
7, 10) If you ever must guard your life against Enemy infiltration it will be
right here - in making time to decode God's daily instructions for sabotaging the Enemy lines. If you are pressed with a multitude
of things that must be done instead of your Bible reading - know where they come from. You must discipline your life to
make time for God's Word, and determinedly resist all the
subtle suggestions for forgetting it. If you are too busy for this, you are too
busy. Without the knowledge of Scripture, you are like a toothless tiger in a
jungle of danger.
1. Read
The basic reason most Christians do not
understand the Bible is that they never read it! You must learn to live in the great truths of Scripture
until they become a living part of
you. God's plan for world evangelism is to incarnate His Word in twice-born
men. It is this awesome unity that releases the
power of faith to revolutionize lives. (John 17:6-21; Rom. 10:13--17; Malt. 13:23, cf. Matt. 13:28) D. L.
Moody once said, "I prayed for faith and thought that some day faith would
come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not seem to come. One day
I read Romans 10:17. I opened my Bible and began to study, and faith has been
growing ever since." True,
world-changing faith is a loyalty of love to the
Word of God. The Bible can be read
right through aloud in just 70 hours and 40 minutes. Read 10 chapters a day and
you can finish it in about 18 weeks - three times a year. By reading it just
five minutes a day, you can finish the
entire Bible at least once a year. Right now you must decide how much time you
intend to give to God to train you for His work. If you gave only one-tenth of
your time each day that would be over 2 hours! Jonathan Edwards studied 13
hours a day. Billy Graham spends at least 6 hours a day in the Scriptures.
If you had to live on a "meal" of the
Bible, would you starve to death?
Do not dare patronize God with a
hurried glance at His Holy Word, and then
call this affront "devotions". If you love a person you will want to
spend time with them. Is God so hard
to love? Are His promises so boring you really couldn't care less about using them? Or will you now ask God for the courage to discipline your life to spend time
with His Book? If so, decide sensibly, on the
amount of time that you can afford each day or the
number of chapters or verses you decide to read each day. Make a solemn vow to
God before the recording angel.
(Ecc. 5:4-6) You may afterwards increase your time, but do not lessen it, so
decide carefully and intelligently. Better a few understood verses than
chapters of hurried scanning. You should read so you that will not need a
bookmarker to remember where you were reading. When you have done this, sign the following pledge and paste it in the front of your Bible.
After reading Ecc. 5:4-6 and realizing the seriousness of such a vow to my Lord, I vow to
read ____ chapters a day in the Word
of God.
2. Research
Reading alone will not open all the treasures of Scripture.
You must spend some time in study. The
Holy Spirit will help you here if
you ask Him, (John 16:13; Jas. 1:5), but you must pay the
price of extra discipline to study "to show yourself approved to God, a
workman that doesn't need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth."
(2 Tim. 2:15; John. 5:39; Acts
17:11) Your most useful tool will be a concordance. This
is a sort of Bible index that helps you find words that you only partly
remember. Simply look up one word
you do remember in the concordance
and go through the list of verses
until you find the one you are
looking for. Some Bibles have small
concordances in the back. For a
moderate cost you can buy much better ones to help you study.
Keep a notebook in which you can record
your studies. Work neatly and you will have a good record of your progress
through Scripture. In your Bible,
mark all the verses that God opens
up to you in a special way. If funds permit you may even like to buy a
loose-leaf or wide-margin Bible. Abbreviate books, verses and chapters as you
see in this sheet; i.e. the First
Epistle of John, chapter one, verses nine through to ten becomes simply "I
Jn. 1:9-10." Expect the direct
teaching and illumination of the
Holy Spirit when you study. (I Cor.
2:12-13; I John. 2:27)
3. Meditate
Meditation involves rethinking all
passages of Scripture into our daily
experiences, and using God's Word to express our feelings and decisions. Thinking God's thoughts after Him through meditation
on the Scriptures
purifies the thought life and helps
us learn God's own language to talk to Him. We will never grasp all the depth of meaning in the
Word of God, as God's thinking is higher than ours is in all levels. (Is.
55:8-11; I Cor. 1:25) But, by rethinking His thoughts after Him, through Scriptural meditation, we can alter the old habits of our minds and bring every thought
into captivity for Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5; 3:18)
To help you meditate on a verse say
it aloud. Repeat it to yourself a number of times, and mentally underline each
key word in the verse. "Chew the cud" with Scripture
until it becomes a vital part of your spirit. Constant mental repetition of a
verse is like dialing a familiar telephone number remembered through habit.
Many blessings are promised through meditation. (Josh. 1:7; Ps. 1:2-3; I Tim. 4:15) You can meditate on Scripture in many places. (Deu. 6:7) Take time to meditate!
4. Memorize
Scripture memorization is the most effective tool for using the Word of God in life. One of the simplest ways to memorize is to write out the verse that you want to learn on a card and carry
it with you all day. Read it every spare moment; on the
bus, in a line, waiting for someone. See
if you can quote it word perfect without looking at the
card. After you have learned one verse like this, you can begin another, adding that to your cards. A daily
memorization program is the single
most important practice for using Scripture
in life yet discovered. One Christian lost his arms and legs, his sight and his
hearing, in an accident. He learned to read a Braille Bible with his tongue. He
completely read the whole Bible four
times. Of all those dedicated to Operation Discovery, he is the leader when compared to what we, the "seeing ones," have done. Will you
take time daily to hide the Word of
God in your heart that you might not sin against God? (Ps. 119:11; Jas. 4:7; 2 Tim. 2:15; 3:l5-16; Ps. 119:42; I Pet. 3:15; John
6:63; Ps. 19:7; Heb. 4:l2)
Operation Discovery is now under way
for you. You must learn to feed yourself from the
Word of God, to unlock the secrets
of power with God and light a torch of faith and fire for your generation.
God's will is expressed in His Word. Your world is waiting for the discoveries you must make.
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