Some years ago, a man wrote a book stating there were only 33 original plots in all of art, literature and theatre, and he traced all 33 of them to the Bible.

Bible scholar C.R. Stam once wrote, “Amazingly, the books of the Bible were written over a period of about 1600 years, by approximately 40 different men. The writers came from all walks of life, and include kings, priests, tax collectors, physicians, farmers and fishermen.

“Each man wrote from his own background of education and experience. Very few of the writers could have known one another. Yet, remarkably, the Book is not a jumble of disconnected and conflicting essays. Rather, from beginning to end, it tells a continuous story with several interwoven themes.

“This will come as no surprise, if we understand that the eternal God Himself directed each of the human writers to compose a portion of His message, which He was compiling as history unfolded.”

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An 1896 obituary on Harriet Beecher Stowe in the New York Times noted, "Of her mental traits none was earlier or more fully developed than her memory. The bulk of the Bible and extended passages from most of the English classics were at her tongue's end and instantly upon demand."

In an article appearing last year in Christianity Today, a Chinese evangelist reported that Scripture’s being imported into North Korea orally—“via one’s memory, a few verses at a time.” He said, "We have to remember that any Bible or portion thereof found in the possession of a person returning to North Korea will condemn them to death."

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Jordan makes the point that fighting for prayer in school today is not such a good idea.

Specifically, he reasons, “I was raised in a school in Alabama. Every school I ever went to they had prayer every morning. You know what they prayed? The ‘Our Father’ prayer. They had it piped over the P.A. system every morning—“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed it be thy name, thy kingdom come. . .’ Frank Sinatra was singing it! That’s the official prayer of the Roman Catholic Church down in a Protestant center of the country where there weren’t hardly any Catholics! That’s not praying!

“You go to Dearborn, Mich., you know the prayers they do up there? That’s the largest Iranian settlement outside of Iran. It’s Muslim. When the bell rings and prayer horn goes off, you know what they do in school? They pray. You know who complains? Nobody. You know why? Well, you get a dead fish in your front yard if you do, or something of the equivalent.

“You see, praying isn’t the issue. You can pray a good prayer, a bad prayer or no prayer. What makes the difference is the foundation that it’s built on.”

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The only religion God ever gave, He established through the hands of Moses and gave to the nation Israel. God never gave a religion to the Gentiles; they developed their own religions. The purpose and intent of the Muslim religion is to rebel against the purpose of God in the Middle East.

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When people talk about Hades, that’s the underworld; the place of the departed dead. In times past, hell had two compartments: the torment side and the paradise side. So someone like Jonah could talk about being in hell and mean the paradise side.

All that’s in hell now, though, is the torment side.

Imagine this, Jesus Christ promises in Matt. 12:36, “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” The biblical definition of an idle word is a “malicious assertion or calumny.”

By my estimation, this would even include any time anyone snorts, “Jesus Christ!” Think about that! Paul warns in Gal. 6:7, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”

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Jordan says, “Have you ever noticed how all the Bible up to Romans, you can teach stories? Romans isn’t stories; it’s doctrinal information. It’s instructions; it’s thinking processes.”

In each of Paul’s epistles there’s an introduction, body and conclusion, just like you’d find in a letter, but his introductions have a very special purpose—they introduce the particular issue the epistle’s going to address.

In his epistle to the Galatians, for example, Paul starts out by reminding them, “But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

He’s saying, “My apostleship, unlike that of the others, did not come by human instrumentality. I was commissioned as an apostle different from every other apostle before me in the Bible.”

In the gospels, Jesus Christ chose 12 apostles and told them their function was to sit upon 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of the nation Israel in that future kingdom in the regeneration of the Son of man when Christ sits on the throne in Jerusalem and they’re His earthly apostles.

After Judas dies in response to his betrayal of the Lord, there’s only 11 apostles, but before Pentecost, Matthias is made the 12^th guy by Peter.

It was through Paul’s preaching that God the Holy Spirit communicated the message of grace to the apostles. They came to understand it through Paul’s direct revelation from God.

In defending his special calling out as an apostle by Christ Himself, Paul writes in his epistle’s intro to the skeptical Galatians, “For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it: And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

Jordan explains, “Paul’s going to begin to give a series of reasons why his ministry is distinct and separate. Actually in these first two chapters (of Galatians), there are 14 separate things he says about why his ministry and message is separate and distinct from the 12.

“Paul says, ‘I profited in the Jew’s religion.’ In essence, what he’s saying is, ‘You know, I didn’t have anything real to gain by changing from what I was doing to this. I was making good money. I was profiting among many mine equals in mine own religion.’

“Did you know there can be money in religion? Paul was making it. He said, ‘I was doing real good. I didn’t have any personal reason to forsake what I was doing. I was doing okay.’

“In verse 15-16, he stresses, ‘But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen.’

“The whole purpose, Paul says, was to ‘reveal his Son in me.’ Paul understood why he was an apostle. There’s something about His Son God wanted revealed.

“There’s a plan and a purpose God had before the foundation of the world back here that He wanted to accomplish with His Son Jesus Christ, and Paul was going to be the one through whom that information was going to be revealed.”