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CHAPTER 1
Why Do We Have the Bible? Who Wrote It?
Although we are like God in some ways, in many important ways he is completely different from us. God is so different from us, so far beyond our understanding, that we couldn't know anything about him unless he told us. And that is just what he did in the Bible. He told some people about himself, and those people wrote it down for other people — including us!
We often talk about the Bible like it is one book. But really the Bible contains 66 different books! (The Old Testament has 39, and the New Testament has 27.)
The books of the Bible weren't all written at the same time. The oldest part of the Bible was written 1,500 years before the newest part. And the books weren't even all written in the same language. They were written in Hebrew, Greek, and a little bit of Aramaic. And it was written by about forty different people.
Some of these writers were very important people, like kings or people who gave advice to kings. Others were more common people, like fishermen, tax collectors, servants, worship leaders, priests, musicians, tent makers, and soldiers. These people lived in different parts of the world, from as far west as Egypt to as far east as Persia, where Iran is now.
Most of the Old Testament was written by prophets. The books that weren't written by prophets were most likely checked by the prophets to make sure that the written word spoke God's truths.
The New Testament was mostly written by the apostles. Like the prophets, these men were specially chosen by God to speak for him. All of the New Testament was written while at least one of the apostles was still alive.
But the real answer is that God himself wrote the Bible. The prophets and the apostles only wrote what God wanted them to say. And God gave them those messages — his messages for his people in the past, and for you and me today.
CHAPTER 2
Who Made God?
No one made God! God has always been alive and always will be alive. Nobody else is like that. He was alive before anything else because he made everything in the whole universe.
Where Is God?
Sometimes people say that God lives in heaven. But really, God is everywhere, which is sometimes called omnipresent. He is in the deepest cave, he is on the bottom of the ocean, he is farther away than we can see in space, and he is everywhere in between. There is nowhere — anywhere, ever! — that we could go where God is not already there.
CHAPTER 3
How Powerful Is God?
God is so powerful that he can do anything — anything — he wants to do! There is nothing you can imagine that is so big or so amazing that God could not do it. (Sometimes we use the word omnipotent, which means "all-powerful," to say this.) But that doesn't mean God will do absolutely anything. There are some things God won't do. That's not because he isn't powerful enough; it's because they are bad things. For example, God will never lie. He has the power to lie, but he is perfectly good, so he never wants to lie. God's goodness keeps him from using his power to do bad things. But his power is so huge that when he wants to do something, he is always able to do it. You know — like create the entire universe just by speaking.
How Smart Is God?
God is omniscient, which is another big word meaning that he knows everything there is to know. He knows the name of every animal. He knows the depths of the vastest galaxy. He knows the exact number and color and length of every single hair on your head. He knows it all because he made it all.
God knows everything that has ever happened and all the things that will ever happen. And even though the world has been around for a long, long time, he knows everything about how it has changed and how it will change in the future. That's because he decided what the changes would be and when they would happen. There is no question you could ask God that he couldn't answer!
CHAPTER 4
What Does God Look Like?
The Bible says that people were made in the image of God. That makes it sound like God might have eyes and ears and hands just like people do. And sometimes the Bible does talk about how God sees or hears things. Because we need eyes and ears to see and hear, we think of God having eyes and ears too.
But that's not really what "being made in God's image" means. It means we can think about things, make choices, make plans, and judge things, like God can. And it means we can even think about our own thoughts and understand right from wrong, which is why we are responsible for the choices we make.
God can do all these things without a body. How, exactly? Well, we don't really know for sure. God is a spirit, and a spirit is invisible. Still, God knows that is hard for us to understand, so he has appeared in different forms when he wanted to be seen. For example, God spoke to Moses for the first time in the form of a burning bush. But the most important way God made himself appear is when he took the form of a man. The Bible says that Jesus is the invisible God made visible.
CHAPTER 5
What Is a Miracle?
You've probably heard lots of things described as miracles — like an amazing play in a football game or when you finally clean your room. But a miracle isn't just when something unlikely happens. A miracle is when God acts in an unusual way to make something good happen that brings glory to himself.
Sometimes we think of miracles as when God interrupts the way the world works. But that sounds like God is only sometimes involved in the world.
The Bible says that God makes the world work the way it does and that he is always at work. But sometimes God works in a different way — a way that's uncommon to us — in order to display his power while doing something good.
In the Bible, God uses his miracles to carry out his plans. Often he uses miracles to prove that prophets and apostles have the authority to speak for God. Or God uses his power to save his people, like when he made water flow from a rock in the desert or food fall from the sky.
That's what makes miracles in the Bible different from the supposed miracles in other religions. In the Bible, miracles are God (not a prophet or other person) doing good things for his prophets or for his people. Other religions say they have miracles, but they're not really the same thing. They either don't do good or don't come from God or don't have a purpose at all. True miracles come from God and point us back to his glory.
CHAPTER 6
What Do Angels Look Like?
Angels are part of God's creation, but we can't see them unless God tells them to appear to us. When we can see them, they may look different to different people. Sometimes they look just like average humans, and people don't realize that they are angels. Sometimes they look like men, but their clothes are so white or bright that it is almost blinding. When they don't appear like normal humans, they usually scare the people who see them, and the angel has to tell them not to be afraid, even when he is bringing wonderful news. Even though they sometimes appear as men, that doesn't mean they look like men in heaven.
The Bible talks about two kinds of angels (but there may be more). One kind is called a cherub; another is a seraph. We see cherubim with a flaming sword guarding Eden after Adam and Eve were sent away. The Ark of the Covenant had two cherubim on the lid, and they are described as having faces and wings. Ezekiel had a vision where he saw hands under cherubim's wings. He also said they had four faces: one of a man, a lion, an eagle, and a cherub. Isaiah had a vision where he saw seraphim, another kind of angel. They seemed to look like men except they had six wings — two covering their faces, two covering their feet, and two to fly. Their voices shook heaven. The apostle John describes many of the same things in the book of Revelation. It may be that this is how angels really look, but it may also be that they are so different from anything we know that this was the best way to describe them so that we could understand.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Big Book of Bible Questions"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Amy Parker and Doug Powell.
Excerpted by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc..
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