Bible Discussion Thread

INTRODUCTION TO JAMES (Part 3):

But James has some very, very hard and very deep teachings for us, even to the point that he says that if you become a friend to this world, you have placed yourself as an enemy of God.

So which one do you want to do? Do you want Satan to be your enemy where all he can do is rattle our cages in the physical realm. He can't stop us from following Christ. He can't stop us from having a relationship with Christ. He can't take us away from Christ. He can just hassle us.

So, would I rather have Satan be my enemy, or God? And that's the question and the encouragement that these believing Jews were given, which means that there's going to be teaching and encouragement that even goes beyond what we need to know, because we don't have their difficult circumstances.

But the teachings are good. They're true, and especially when he's teaching about faith. This entire book is on faith. But after Paul's writings comes the Jewish literature. That would be the book of Hebrews through the book of Revelation. Under the Jewish literature, you'll see all of the Jewish literature, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation.

And again, the book of Revelation is best understood from a Jewish perspective, because of the 404 verses in the book of Revelation, there are 800 allusions and quotes from the Old Testament brought over into the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation was written because of Jewish believers who were suffering and even some sitting in prison waiting to die. The book of Revelation is to show them that even if they did die for their faith, the victory would be later when Jesus comes back.

So, it's the whole panorama of what we have in the scriptures of everything from creation to the end of the world in one book. And we have to handling these from a Jewish perspective. And I think that you will see that it makes more sense that way than to say that James is writing to the Christians in our day.