The Bible and Dragnet

  At Church this morning, our pastor spoke on the first Letter to the Corinthian Church in our Bibles, and he made the point that the city of Corinth then, as bad as it was, was in reality no worse than any big city in the world today, including our own city of Melbourne.

 After the service I told him that I had also preached from this book/letter about 12 months ago and made the same point about Corinth then, being no worse than Melbourne now.  I then went on to say that if the Bible was written today, the stories would be exactly the same, only the names would be different. I then used the illustration of the old TV cop show of the 50’s which always prefaced each show with: "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."

 To which the pastor replied along the lines, that that it was a great illustration, and one he might use one day, but not with the 6pm group tonight. Asked to explain, he reminded me that this was the youth service and that most of them wouldn’t know what Dragnet was!

 Anyway, later, thinking about the connection of the sameness of the stories in the Bible when written and the situations today everywhere, I couldn’t help wondering that if the Bible had been written in our time, where we would all fit in, particularly within a common story like that in the Book of Acts, as recorded from chapter four, verse thirty six to Chapter 5, verse eleven. Do read the passage for yourself and ask yourself, if this story was written today, whose name would your name replace in this story? Ananias/Sapphira? Or Barnabas?

 This way of reading the bible may sound strange to you, but in reality, should be the way we all read our Bibles. Not as an ancient history book, or even as a more ancient text book, but as a current living book that relates directly to the life of each and every one of us today.

 So in closing now, how are you going to read the word of God now? As it should be read? Or are you just going to continue to ignore it and its personal message to you and your life?

 The choice is yours, so please choose wisely.