The Greatest Story

By Dr Walter Marques

The “Greatest Story” will take you on a stunning journey through 16 chapters covering the timeless and most important historical events in the Bible of brokenness and hope, failures and rescue, and God’s ultimate love and redemption.

About 2000 years ago, a young Jewish carpenter and teacher was put to death in a horrendous and brutal manner. The dramatic story of His life and death became the basis for a religion that today accounts for more than a third of the world’s population.

We are now part of this story and we have the chance to change the world and share His love because one day He will crack open the sky and He will return.

Walter Marques graduated with a Bachelor of Theology from the University of South Africa in 1991. He mastered a Financial services course with Pioneer International.

With his business and financial background, he has been used as a Motivational Speaker for various business enterprises.

By 2013, Walter had completed both his Master of Arts and Doctor of Arts in Theology from Mckinley University, Washington, USA. Walter grew up among many Christian books and in a Christian environment, inspiring the dream that he, too, would one day write a book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr Walter Marques
• Release date: Mar 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463977941

Book preview

The Greatest

Story

Dr Walter Marques

Copyright © 2019 Dr Walter Marques

Published by Dr Walter Marques Publishing at Smashwords

First edition 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission from the copyright holder.

The Author has made every effort to trace and acknowledge sources/resources/individuals. In the event that any images/information have been incorrectly attributed or credited, the Author will be pleased to rectify these omissions at the earliest opportunity.

Published by Dr Walter Marques using Reach Publishers’ services,

P O Box 1384, Wandsbeck, South Africa, 3631

Edited by Colleen Figg for Reach Publishers

Cover designed by Reach Publishers

Website: www.reachpublishers.co.za

E-mail: [e-mail]

Dr Walter Marques

[e-mail]

Dedications

To my grandchildren, Rafael, Giorgia, Fabiana, and Miguel

To my children, Tanya, Tiago, and Diana

To my son-in-law, George

To my daughter-in-law, Camille

To my wife, Fernanda

In memory of my parents, Fernando and Adelaide

The Bible devotes much less space to describing eternity than it does to convincing people that eternal life is available as a free gift from God. Most of the brief descriptions of eternity would be more accurately called hints, since they use terms and ideas from present experience to describe what we cannot fully grasp until we are there ourselves. These references hint at aspects of what our future will be like if we have accepted Christ’s gift of eternal life.

Let the critics be critics, for they are ignorant and cannot respond. Let the people turn away, for they are too afraid or too unaware to recognise the great need and the great answer that has been given. Let others ignore what is essential, but within you, you know you cannot ignore these things any longer. It has cost you dearly to ignore them in the past. You have already failed in so many ways to gain strength, courage and the power that God has given you. You have given your life away and are angry, frustrated and isolated as a result. Be honest, and you will see these things within yourself. Do not pretend.

You are in the world for a greater purpose. If you are not working towards this purpose, then your life is frustrated. It is confused. It is lost—governed now by the will and wishes of others, governed now by the circumstances, governed now by things that you feel are beyond your control.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. In the Beginning...

2. Adam and Eve

3. Sin Enters the World

4. Abraham

5. Moses

6. Judges

7. Kings

8. Israel’s Downward Trajectory

9. Prophets

10. Daniel

11. The Interlude

12. After the Interlude - the Gospels

13. Life, Death and Resurrection

14. Sharing the Good News

15. The Three Gardens

16. Creation Demands a Creator

Final Fact

Consulting Material

Preface

"The Bible is not merely a collection of stories, fables, myths, or human ideas about God. It is not a human book. Through the Holy Spirit, God revealed His person and plan to certain believers, who wrote down His message for His people. This process is known as inspiration. The writers wrote from their own personal, historical, and cultural contexts. Although they used their own minds, talents, language, and style, they wrote what God wanted them to write. Scripture is completely trustworthy because God was in control of its writing. Its words are completely authoritative for our faith and our lives. The Bible is ‘God-breathed’. The whole Bible is God’s inspired Word. Because it is inspired and trustworthy, it should be read and applied to our lives. We can use the Bible as our standard for testing everything else that claims to be true. We are able to use it as our shield, our safeguard against false teaching, and our guideline for the way we behave and walk through life. It is also the only source of knowledge that covers how we can be saved. The Word of God is His way of showing us what is true, and it equips us with the knowledge of how to live for Him.

It is, therefore, extremely important that in our zeal for the truth of scripture, we must never forget its purpose—to equip us with knowledge to do good. The Word of God should not only be used to increase our knowledge or to win arguments, but also as the source of knowledge for how to do God’s work in the world.

The knowledge of God’s Word is not useful unless it strengthens our faith and leads us to do good." (Extract from my other book, Apocalypse Unfolding Now, page 21)

When we look back on history, in The Greatest Story, we can see that since Jesus walked the earth (and before) things have been out of our control and mankind has leaned on God for guidance.

But no matter how much they wanted to make that leaning on God a normal part of their lives, they also found out that their flesh loves to have control over things.

It was the same two thousand years ago, throughout the subsequent historical periods, and to the present times. The fact is that the human race finds itself in a constant battle with wanting to have control. We will justify our urge to control things even further by thinking that having control will bring peace.

Throughout the book we are able to ‘see’ how God keeps teaching those who will give control over to Him how to walk in such peace.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It takes some time to learn. But each time we give a situation, circumstance, or a problem over to Him, and just let Him unfold it, we will get better and quicker at going to Him with everything.

The sequence of the themes in this book follows the order in which people commonly came to them. I start in the beginning, with God’s creation of the universe and of all humanity in it. Law, society, culture, the arts, the environment… so much depends on our understanding of God’s good creation. But it is also fallen. Its harmony is marred, its potential spoiled. So, the story continues throughout the ages; then God came in Jesus to make a new creation, to reconcile people to Himself and renew them by His Spirit. This and all that follows from it: a new life, a new community and a restored hope, is good news.

No one lives without beliefs. We all believe something; have some view of what life means. And what we believe affects us deeply; in a real sense, we are what we believe. So ‘doctrine’ and belief are not something to be left to the theorists or the experts. Our understanding of Christianity, and our response to it, will be the most crucial thing in our whole lives.

Woody Allen wrote the following, There will be no major solution to the suffering of mankind until we reach some understanding of who we are, what the purpose of creation was, what happens after death. Until these questions are resolved we are caught.

How do we know? How can we be sure that what we think we know is accurate?

Western society’s pervading philosophy is humanism. Humanism answers these questions by appealing to human reason: man starting for himself has to work out all the answers. As the eighteenth-century Scots philosopher Hume put it: Reason appears in possession of the throne, prescribing laws and imposing maxims, with an absolute sway and authority.

This belief in the power of reason is central to our whole modern, Western society. And yet Hume himself acknowledged that, if we begin from ourselves alone, we can never demonstrate the value of reason, nor the accuracy of our sense perceptions, nor be sure that we exist, that the material world exists, that cause and effect exists.

Presently, this problem that arises from trusting in reason has led many thinkers to a position of complete despair. It has become an albatross round their necks. They have made their reason into a god, which reminds us of the constant decay of meaning, of the death of value in human existence. This problem has arisen because we are finite, we are small; we cannot, from our own very limited grasp of reality, generate sufficient knowledge to answer all the questions, or understand the whole of reality. Everything seems so big and yet we are so little; how can we be sure that any of our knowledge is dependable?

Belief, faith. For the Christian, human finiteness is not a problem. We can freely acknowledge that we are small, and that our understanding is limited. But God exists and His knowledge is complete; everything in the universe is known to Him. God has given us His revelation in His Word, and this Word, though it does not tell us everything, tells us truly. We have a sure foundation for knowledge in God’s Word, and in it, God assures us that He has created us in His image to understand the world in which we live; so that our perception of the world is generally accurate.

Reason, when it stands under God’s revelation, becomes a servant of great value that can be used to explore and reflect on the world in which we live. It is only when reason is made master that it becomes a tyrant leading us into the darkest night of ignorance and confusion.

Modern humanist and secular thought in our society is tied up in a single parcel with the theory of evolution. At its crudest, this can be stated as the belief that all of the things we see in the world around us have developed by chance; that there is no God who has created the world, no First Cause that has brought into being the extraordinary diversity of the natural world. This belief requires us to accept that purely chance processes have given rise to the immensely complex and interdependent web of life.

Christianity declares totally in contrast that the order, diversity, the intricate interdependence and beauty of the natural world have been created by the living and self-existent God whom the Bible reveals to us. Order, diversity and beauty are the result of God’s creative activity, not chance processes and blind natural selection. The Word of God sees this truth as self-evident, that it is simply a matter of common sense to look at the world and see that it is a product of a Creator. The Psalmist wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

When we look at a beautiful painting, we ask, Who painted that? and we praise its creator. In the same way when we look at the universe we ought to want to know and praise its Maker.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, essayist and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. He sums up the dilemma that confronts non-Christian thought as people try to understand human nature without reference to God.

Russell has to acknowledge that humanity is different, that we are unique in this world; our moral character, creativity, love, heroism, thought and devotion to other people set us apart from every other form of life. But like Russell, many others have no better explanation for this uniqueness than any other modern, secular philosopher. For these thinkers such as Russell admit that humanity is different but cannot explain why. Many others try to deny this uniqueness and insist that the only difference is one of complexity. It’s obvious, then, that human beings are complicated pieces of chemistry, physical organisms like the mosquito and the mouse, but so complex as to be comparable to the digital computer.

An American psychotherapist, by the name of Perry London, appeals to this totally mechanistic model for human nature, and then acknowledges that this means that we have no more ultimate significance than a computer has.

My question is, if we are no more than mechanical, then we have no responsibility whatsoever for anything we do. In the end our distinctness is quite illusory; the things we experience every day – love, commitment, choice, creativity, rationality –have no meaning at all: they are shadows on the wall, tricks of sunlight, thrown up by the complicated nature of the brain.

No, no, no.

Our Christian faith, however, gives an explanation for the uniqueness of humanity. We are made in the image of God. The infinite person, God, has made other beings, men and women, who are finite and yet are persons like Himself. We are, in simple terms, reflections of God’s nature.

God is love and we are made to love God and one another.

God is righteous and we are made to distinguish between good and evil and to choose the good.

God is the Creator and we are like Him, made to create life, relationships, beauty, order.

God is a communicator and we are made to communicate with God and with one another.

God is a God of order and not chaos, sense and not non-sense, reason not absurdity. We are made as rational persons, called to reflect on our life, and the world in which we live.

All these different aspects of our experience which set us apart are characteristics of personality. Rather than lamenting that our experience of personality is an illusion in an impersonal universe, we are able to rejoice in it, because as persons we are at home in a universe made by the personal God.

God’s truth sets us free to live. We can see this in any area of life. All we have to do is follow and obey God’s commandments. We can see what happens if we don’t: it results in chaos and unhappiness in our society.

Again, Christianity fits.

Point after point, then, the Christian faith makes more sense than secular philosophy. This is because Christianity is the true wisdom revealed by God, and so is wiser than any other wisdom. Looking into the Word of God we find the answers to the questions that are raised by our life in this world.

Christianity is true to the way things are.

The aim throughout The Greatest Story has been to try to be as faithful as possible to the Bible itself.

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,,

wrote the apostle Paul to Timothy,

so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

It is my hope, then, that this book will help the reader enjoy something of the riches of the Bible, and that the different chapters will lead to the discovery of passages and moments which may not have been noticed before.

This book has been written with the desire that it may lead to a greater reading of the Bible, to its marvellous story throughout the different historical ages, and ultimately to a response to its message.

Introduction

My style of writing is what I call to and fro. It simply means that during the story you find yourself in a certain part of history and suddenly you travel back and forward hundreds of