Before God laid the foundations of the world he knew everything we would ever think and do because God made us. It’s the same with Satan because he’s a creature of God the same as we are. That’s why God will always be ten steps ahead of Satan. Satan is the second most powerful being in the universe behind God but God has more power than Satan in his little pinky. Satan taking on God is like an ant taking on an African bull elephant but the ant doesn’t realize he can’t win.
God has given us the Holy Bible as a revelation of himself and his salvation plan for man through the coming of his Son Jesus Christ to redeem mankind from their sins. Satan has predictably tried to stop the Bible from being completed and believed by the people by stirring up competing cults with false doctrines and sowing doubt with fake written accounts of the life of Jesus. Satan failed because God has made sure the documentation of the Bible as God’s Word is beyond reproach. Nobody can thwart the will of God. God does as he pleases.
Bible scholars agree Christ died between 30-33 AD and all four gospels were written down between 25-50 years later, which was very fast for the oral culture in Palestine at that time. In ancient Israel most information was memorized and retold because writing was scarce. There were no writings about the life of Jesus for many years so the preaching in the early church followed the oral tradition of retelling, or preaching, the account of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. The explosive growth of the church was achieved without any written documents.
More important than anything in the oral histories and later in the writings were the eyewitness testimonies of the Apostles and others who had seen the miracles performed by Jesus and those who knew the true facts of the life of Jesus. More important than either the oral histories or the writings were the verifiable historical facts surrounding the life of Jesus. Everyone realized that the witnesses would not always be with us to tell the tale and facts dim over time so it was important to capture the events of Jesus’ life for future believers while the eyewitnesses were still alive to write down their stories.
The New Testament books were a written account of what the people already knew and what the churches had already been preaching for many years as the truth of God. When the church council met in 397 AD to confirm New Testament canon as the completed revelation of God the 27 books of the New Testament had already been accepted by the faithful and used for preaching in the churches for many years. The council by nearly unanimous consent merely ratified what was already accepted by the people as God’s Word.
Witnessing for Christ