Nearly one year ago on June 12th of 2011 through the inspiration and direction of the Holy Spirit of God I began to memorize “The Gospel According to John”. As I memorized this wonderful Gospel account of my Lord I would weekly write about Him in relation to this gospel in-particular; as the year wore on I kept memorizing “The Gospel According to John” but drifted away from writing about my Lord through this gospel. Other things in scripture began to grab my attention particularly the gospel and Romans chapter 3. Then, after that I began to write about whatever I felt like, mainly my exploits in evangelism. Lately I have felt like I have lost something, like I have lost an old friend. Some of this stems from the fact that my wife and I left our church of ten years and began attending another church with a different body of believers. We have left much behind in that fellowship and a large chunk of our hearts as well, but I do believe that the move was what the Spirit wanted us to do, in fact the Lord has been telling us to move for quite some time; but still the change and loss of friendships is difficult. This feeling of loss also stems from the fact that I have stopped doing what the Lord had originally led me to do one year ago in memorizing the gospel of John, writing about Him and sharing with you what the Lord has shown me in meditating on His life with us through “The Gospel According to John”. When I began this journey with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I was reading the (NKJV) of the Bible and have changed to the (NASB); the reason, the (NASB) is the most literal word for word translation in the English language, I wanted to be as close to the original text as an English speaking believer can be. As you may or may not know the scriptures were primarily written in Hebrew and Greek.
{The majority of the Old Testament in Hebrew, but a few chapters in the prophecies of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah was written in a language called Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language spoken in Israel during Jesus’ time. The New Testament however was written in Greek in the Gospels a few Aramaic words were used, but the New Testament was almost entirely in Greek. Greek was the language of scholarship during the years the New Testament was written, thus the New Testament was written in Greek, but a common form of Greek was used. The spoken language after the exile had changed from Hebrew to Aramaic so there were very few who could read Hebrew. The Old Testament was translated from the original Hebrew to Greek beginning in 300 B.C. and was completed in 200 B.C. ~Source: Biblica.}
The point I am making, (All though the (KJV) only people may try and disagree!)is that the Bible was not written in English, all English Bibles are translations from the original languages of Hebrew, Greek, and some Aramaic words. There is a long history of the Bible being translated into English by Many brave brothers in Christ, who lost their lives getting the Word of God into the hands of English speaking people; the first was John Wycliffe in the 1380’s. If you are interested in the history of the Bible being translated into English click this link, (English Bible History). It is fascinating, many brothers in Christ lost their lives getting the bible into the hands of the common English speaking person, now men and women everywhere can read the Word of God in their own language for themselves and I for one think God for this. I was not intending to make this into a history listen, but the point is the English Bible is a translation, so I wanted to read the Bible as close as possible to the original text as I can get in the English language, and after much research that turned out to be the (NASB) translation.
By the grace of God I have memorized the first 5 chapters of “The Gospel According to John” and have started on the 6th chapter. My plan, God willing, is to get back to memorizing and meditating on this wonderful Gospel of our Lord and writing about what the Lord has revealed to me through His word each week. Remember this, I am not a theologian, I have no formal Bible training, I did not go to seminary; what am I? A Believer of the Way in Jesus Christ who loves the LORD, so next time I write, Lord willing, I will be writing about my Lord in chapter 6 of “The Gospel According to John”; looking forward to getting back on tract on this Journey with Jesus, God bless.
Mike Peek a slave of Jesus Christ
