What Really Matters?

The book of Philippians, in the Bible, is a letter written by the apostle Paul and by Timothy to all the Christians at the church in Philipi.

What was said to them can also be applied to our lives today.

9 I pray that your love for each other will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in your knowledge and understanding. 10 For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns. Philippians 1:9,10

So what do we need to understand, what really matters?

It really matters that you believe that the Bible is the Word of God and is able to change your life. It has no errors; the New Testament is the account of eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ life and the effects His life had on people; the Old Testament is the Word of God, telling of His character- His love for us- His plan to save us from our sins.

It really matters that you believe that Jesus Christ is God’s own Son, sent from heaven to live a sinless life, die for us and rise from the dead.

It really matters that you know that God has a perfect plan for your life, that He loves you enough to believe the best about you and expect the best from you, even when you are at your lowest.

God loves you and wants you to use the Scripture He gave to guide you in how to live a life for Him.


Photo by Kira Stevens

Is the Old Testament really God's Word?

One way to verify if a manuscript is authentic is to find the earliest handwritten copies, made before the invention of the printing press and compare them to the manuscripts we have today. There are many manuscripts that verify that we do have authentic copies of the Old and New Testaments. One example of this is the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were discovered between 1947 and 1956 and are the oldest group of Old Testament manuscripts ever found, according to CenturyOne.com. Fragments of every book of the Hebrew Old Testament were found, with the exception of the book of Esther.
The ancient documents are remarkably similar to the Bible we have today, with the only differences being simple spelling or grammatical differences. This is not the case with other ancient documents

Another way the Bible demonstrates its reliability is through prophesy that has already been proven to be true. Prophesy can be simply defined as telling what is going to happen before it happens. Old Testament prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, prophesied many events that later came true. They could not have known about the events at the time. Some of their prophesies came true years after they had already died, but we can compare what happened with what they said and see that they in fact did tell the future. They told the future with such detail that the chances of a random event fulfilling the prophesy are astronomical.

We can also trust in what the Scriptures shows Jesus thought of the Old Testament. If we believe that Jesus is perfect and we read about Him quoting from Scriptures, then we can place our trust in Scriptures as well.

You can follow this link to read more about the Dead Sea Scrolls

This link contains quotes from ancient historians outside of Scripture, that reference Jesus Christ.
Clarifying Christianity