God's Message: Welcome To The Bible

You hold in your hands the most powerful book ever written. Countless lives have been changed by it. Numerous authorities have tried to ban it. Some godless people have burned it. And many Christians have died to preserve it. Why has this book had such a huge impact on people? Because this book, the Bible, is the very word of God. It came from God himself--he is the author. Over hundreds of years, he chose certain individuals to write down exactly what he wanted to tell humankind. This process is called "inspiration." One of Jesus' closest followers, Peter, wrote, "Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet's own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God" (2 Peter 1:20-21).

Although these authors wrote in Hebrew or Greek, their words have been carefully translated into many languages. So today we can read God's message in our own language--modern English.