Discourses:       Tatsumi Katsuno | Takeki Ishikawa | Tim Alexander | Todd Alexander

What the Bible Tells - The Whole Picture -
Fit the Bible together and get the whole Picture
Bro. Tatsumi Katsuno May 3, 2003

1. The author of Bible is God and every word in the The Bible is God’s word.

• The Bible is a compiled book written by many people throughout about 2000 years.
  It consists of The Old Testament and The New Testament. The former was written
  by many Prophets and the latter was written by Apostles, both revealed by God.
• Read it carefully, and you can find it a story about salvation of human beings from sin and death by God.
• The Bible is a message to tell us about how God has absolute love for human beings and that God wants us to love Him and to be obedient to Him.
• The Bible tells us that God deeply loves us. It also tells us that if a man disobeys Him, He in some cases severely punishes him and in other cases He gives lessons so that he will to be obedient to Him. It tells that He resurrects human beings from death. He lets human beings get ability to be able to live in harmony with God’s law. He gives him eternal life and He gives blessings to him.
• The Bible tells us that salvation for human beings from sin and death is fulfilled by Jesus. It tells that Jesus willingly was born as a son of man. He lived a righteous life to be the example as a righteous man and died on the cross as a ransom for the redemption of Adam from sin and death.
• The Bible tells us that the ultimate way for us to consecrate oneself to God is to live as Jesus did. Also it tells us that God calls us to consecrate to Him, live like Jesus and join in the work of recovery for human beings from sin and death. This is the most important message in the Bible.

2. The Skeleton of the Bible story.

• The only one God is an existence who has no beginning, no end and is infinite.
  His name is Yahweh.
  At the beginning God created the Archangel, The Logos.
  God created angels, universe, earth, animals and plants through The Logos.
  God created humans with clay in the image of God and Logos, breathed a breath of life into it,
  Made it a living soul, put him in the Garden of Eden and let him govern living things.
  God made a woman of man’s rib and put her in the garden with man. Man was named Adam
  and the woman was named Eve.
• Adam and Eve were made as free moral agents who have everlasting life, so long as they live obediently to God’s order. But Satan deceived Eve for Adam and Eve to eat God’s forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. As a result of disobedience to God’s order they lost perfect human nature to be able to obey God and they were sentenced to death by God, and they were doomed to die.
• God had deep love for Adam and Eve and pitied them. He made a plan to redeem them from sin and death. He let the beloved son, The Logos give up his life as the Archangel and be born as a son of man. Jesus, to be a ransom for the redemption of Adam.
• Jesus willingly undertook the role to be the ransom, born as a son of man and died on the cross to restore Adam from sin and death. As a reward of His sacrificial deed God resurrected Jesus and gave him Divine Nature and made him a spirit being higher than Archangels. The resurrected Jesus is now working for the redemption of Adam and for that purpose He is calling His disciples to be co-workers in His work. The disciples need to love God, consecrate to God, taking the cross on their shoulders, as Jesus did. When they are accepted by Jesus they are resurrected as spirit beings and given Divine Nature.
• When the complete number of disciples is accomplished, Jesus, cooperating with His disciples binds Satan and resurrects the dead. Jesus rules the Millennial Kingdom, in which He educates the people so they are able to live harmoniously with God’s law. After this work is over, Satan is destroyed and the rule is handed over to God.

3. The purpose of God’s plan is to let humans die and then be resurrected.

• A man enjoys life and tastes pains on the way to death. In the dying process he learns a lesson that disobedience to God causes pain and death. He dies once and then when he is resurrected he learns another lesson and he gets wisdom with which to keep God’s law, willingly. Then God blesses him. The purpose of God’s plan is to give wisdom to man in such a way.

4. God’s love for humans.

• God has a deep love for human beings as we can see in the example by which He gave His only beloved Son as a ransom for the redemption of human beings.
• God loves and blesses those people, in any age, who love God and believe God.
• God gives additional favor to those who have strong faith.
• God punishes those who disobey Him even if they are descendants of a man whom He blesses because of his faithfulness to Him.
• God’s punishment is sometimes very severe to kill people. as in the flood in Noah’s age.
• God sometimes gives punishment to those who are obedient to God’s enemy.
• God sometimes protects those men or nations who are disobedient to God’s enemy.
• At the final stage God forgives every human being and resurrects them from the grave, educates them to be obedient to Him and blesses them even though he was extremely wicked.

5. God’s promise.

• God expelled Adam from the Garden of Eden because of his disobedience to Him and doomed him to die. But immediately after, God gave a promise to Adam to resurrect him and his descendants.
• God gave the same promises to Adam’s descendants. In those promises God told that He would resurrect human beings from death. In the descending ages God gave additional favor and made the contents of His promise clearer.
  

  5.1. God’s promise to Adam.

• God gave a coat of skins to Adam and Eve. Skins symbolize sacrifice. That suggests that Adam and Eve will be resurrected from death through a ransom.
• God sentenced Satan telling him one of Eve’s descendants will destroy him.

5.2. God’s promise to Noah.

• I will help and bless those who believe me.
• If your descendants believe me, I will give them more blessings, earthly as well as spiritual.
• I will never destroy all human beings again in a flood.

5.3. God’s promise to Abraham.

• As you obeyed my words I will give you abundant blessings.
• I will multiply your seed.
• I will resurrect your seed out of death to be a spiritual seed as well as an earthly seed.
• Your Spiritual seed will destroy Satan.
• One of your seed will be the King of the heavenly Kingdom as well as King of the earthly Kingdom.

5.4. God’s order and promise to Moses and the Nation of Israel.

• Keep the Ten Commandments and other orders, and I will give you favor and bless your descendants forever.
• Take care of the land of Canaan properly, and I will give you rich harvests.
• I will give birth to a Messiah from among the Israelites.
• Accept Him as the Messiah.

5.5. Messiah’s Sign.

• To keep the law.
• To teach the Truth.
• To perform miracles.

6. Israelite’s disobedience and punishment to them.

• Israel as a nation did not keep the law, did not use the land properly and refused Jesus as the Messiah because of their stubborn heart, though they knew the Messiah’s sign, and agreed to have him killed on the cross. So they were punished as a nation and destroyed but recovered after time prophesied was fulfilled.

Foot steps of Jesus

6.1. Birth and foot steps as a human being.

• He loved God and kept the Law.
• He taught God’s Truth.
• He performed miracles.
• He preached about The Kingdom to people and strengthened the belief of His disciples.
• He was crucified as a ransom for Adam willingly, as He promised God.

6.2. Spiritual resurrection and works after resurrection.

• He was resurrected 3 days after His death and was given Divine Nature by God.
• He was detained 40 days after His death and told His followers about Kingdom.
• He was raised up to Heaven on the 41st day after His death.
• He continues His calling, “Consecrate yourself to God, take up your cross every day, as I did, and in such a way be my disciple” He then covers them with a robe of His righteousness and imparts the Holy Spirit to them. When faithful unto death, He resurrects them as spirit beings and makes them part of His spiritual body. These disciples are true Christians.
• He replaces every political, economical, social and religious organization with His Millennial Kingdom.
• He in cooperating together with His disciples, binds Satan and teaches how to keep God’s law to those who are resurrected from death.
• After finishing the education of teaching God’s law to the people, He releases Satan to let him tempt them again, to test the people whether they are educated enough or not and assure that they are educated enough not to be deceived by Satan. Then, He hands the Kingdom over to God.

7. Jesus’ calling disciples.

• The Resurrected Jesus is continuing to call people to be His disciples.
• To be a disciple one needs to love God as well as Jesus and consecrate oneself to God.
• One needs to develop the nature of love in oneself.
• One needs to live like Jesus, taking up one’s cross every day.
• All of the teaching Jesus taught to Apostles and his followers are the adaptable standard for Jesus’ disciples.
• Disciples are covered with the robe of Jesus’ righteousness and justified.
• God gives The Holy Spirit, blessing and power to disciples.

8. Resurrection

• The disciples are resurrected as spirit beings like stars in the Heaven and cooperating with Jesus, as Jesus’ body was resurrected and blessed the people.
• Every one of human kind who ever had life comes back to life again on the earth. Sorrow of departure is changed to joy of meeting again. Those who are hostile with each other reconcile with each other and families are united again.
• People are released from pain, sorrow and death and all defects and weaknesses are removed.
• People repent of their sins, learn God’s law, and every sin is removed. Jesus as the Mediator reconciles every human being with God and people get eternal life. They are able to stand straight before God, live in harmony with God’s Law with their free will.
• Every creature comes back to life, recovers youth and vitality and the earth becomes mild and produces abundant food as the Garden of Eden.
• With love, generosity, mercy, and benevolence God gives us blessing and favor.