The Meaning and Purpose for Life on Earth
Uniting the Church of Christ with the Word of God
by
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Understanding the Truth in the Bible There is no decision anyone on earth will make that is more important than what he or she believes about the existence of God and what He says is true in His Holy Word. The consequences of this decision could not be more extreme because it determines if we have eternal life or eternal death. This decision is so important that we should not accept what others believe to be true but investigate and determine for ourselves what is true.
The need to make this decision was forced on me when, at the age of thirty-six, I was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor deep in the center of my brain. A neurosurgeon told me that my likely outcome would be to first go blind and then die. That news devastated me. You cannot imagine the thoughts that went through my mind when the doctor said, “You’re going to die.”
I want people to know that “There is a hope that they never dreamed of hoping for.” I tell people that cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me. God lifted me out of the deep, ugly darkness of depression and hopelessness into His glorious light. God has given me this peace and a loving relationship with Him that I would not have had without going through this cancer wake-up call.
This book is the result of twenty-four years of intensive study of the Bible, the Word of God. What I learned in that time is that there are many different versions of the Bible and doctrines of people about what the Bible says. And there are many divisions in the church, based on those different doctrines or traditions. Below are a few of the doctrines in the Bible that people seldom or never talk about:
Original sin—how is it that we are guilty of sin and condemned before we were born or had a chance to do anything good or evil?
The Bible speaks of our predestination and preexistence. What is that all about?
Who are the elect of God, and when and why were they elected?
These teachings of God are seldom or never taught in churches but are critical to the understanding of the Bible. Theologians and Bible scholars have been arguing about their meaning since the time of Jesus Christ.
In addition, below is a sample of the questions that people have asked about God and the Bible in the many Bible studies I have been in. Amazingly, we will find answers to all these questions below, the doctrines above, and much more in the Word of God:
Why did Jesus have to die on a cross? Couldn’t God, with His overwhelming power, take back those who belonged to Him from Satan?
If God is all-powerful and a God of love, why is there so much evil on the earth? Either He is not all-powerful, or He is not a God of love.
Why does God seem so harsh in the Old Testament—killing whole nations, children, and all—and so much more gentle and kind in the New Testament? Did God change?
Was God the Father calling the shots in the Old Testament and the kinder and gentler Jesus given that authority in the New Testament?
Did God learn as He went from the Old Testament to the New?
Why did God hate Esau and love Jacob before they were born or even had a chance to do anything good or bad, as described in Romans 9? Is God unrighteous?
What did Jesus mean when He said of the bread and wine in the Last Supper, “This is My body” and “This is My blood”?
We are taught that Jesus died to save us, but how can His death save us?
Why did God give us the law if He knew it would not and could not save us?
If God promised the land in the Middle East to the Jews, why don’t they possess all the land now?
Why are all the Jews not saved? God promised Abraham that his descendants would be like the angels in heaven.
How can those who are not Jews be saved?
Why did God say, “Let there be light,” and there was light in the first day of creation, but God did not create the sun, moon, or stars for light until the fourth day?
Is the “invisible hand doctrine” of capitalism and free trade the best economy for a nation, and is it biblical?
If Eve sinned first, why is Adam blamed for the fall of humanity?
What kind of fruit was the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Was it an apple?
If God’s almighty power cannot rescue us from bondage to Satan, how can faith rescue us?
When will the rapture occur—pretribulation, mid-tribulation, or post-tribulation?
What is the great mystery of oneness (unio mystica)—man and his wife and Christ and His church?
What is the correct baptism, and what is it for?
What does it mean to be born again, born of the Spirit, and born of God?
Why did God create people on earth, where Satan and his fallen angels (called demons) are, instead of in heaven?
What does it mean to be in the Spirit?
When Christ was raised, why did He first descend into hell?
Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Does God arbitrarily choose whom He loves and to whom He shows wrath?
Who is the Holy Spirit?
Who is Satan, and how did he become our adversary and the enemy of our souls?
How can God be three persons yet one God – The trinity?
It is the many questions about the Bible like these above that keep people from believing in God. It is the goal of this book to answer all these questions with words from the pages of the Bible and unite the church of Christ with the Word of God.
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About the Book
Imagine you are a young person seeking an education, career, a loving family, a dream home, and all the good things this world has to offer. Having gone to college, married your soul mate, conceived a miraculous son, and built your dream home, you are well on your way when you are diagnosed with a brain tumor and told by a neurosurgeon that you are going to go blind and die. But God saves your life in an eight-hour brain surgery. He gives you an incredible near-death experience in a second brain surgery in which you are shown amazing knowledge that is so far above what this world knows that you are filled with the unspeakable joy of being able to understand this knowledge. Then God removes all this understanding from you except for two words and calls you to recreate this knowledge from the pages of Bible and share it with others. Come with me as we recreate this knowledge by piecing together amazing truths and hidden wisdom found in the Word of God, and we will learn things we never knew that we never knew. The word “mystery” is found in the Bible some twenty-one times along with many parables, signs, metaphors, and symbolic language. We will piece together these truths, going into the ancient Hebrew and Greek definitions when necessary, to understand what the writers of the Bible understood, to create a picture of reality that goes far beyond this world we know. This understanding will challenge what we believe to be true in our minds and change what we desire in our hearts. And that is exactly what the Bible was meant to do. The goal of this book is to unite the church of Christ with an understanding of the Word of God that can replace the traditions of man that are not Biblically based.
About the Author
Author Rick Schramm started out life with a fascination with math and science and a passion to know the truth about how everything in this world works. He graduated with a double-major in physics and mathematics but after facing death from cancer and having a near death experience, he learned there is something more important than that!