The Meaning and Purpose for Life on Earth: Uniting the Church of Christ with the Word of God

By Rick Schramm

Imagine you are a young person seeking an education, career, a loving family, a dream home, and all the good things this world has to offer. Having gone to college, married your soul mate, conceived a miraculous son, and built your dream home, you are well on your way when you are diagnosed with a brain tumor and told by a neurosurgeon that you are going to go blind and die. But God saves your life in an eight-hour brain surgery. He gives you an incredible near-death experience in a second brain surgery in which you are shown amazing knowledge that is so far above what this world knows that you are filled with the unspeakable joy of being able to understand this knowledge. Then God removes all this understanding from you except for two words and calls you to recreate this knowledge from the pages of Bible and share it with others. Come with me as we recreate this knowledge by piecing together amazing truths and hidden wisdom found in the Word of God, and we will learn things we never knew that we never knew. The word mystery is found in the Bible some twenty-one times along with many parables, signs, metaphors, and symbolic language. We will piece together these truths, going into the ancient Hebrew and Greek definitions when necessary, to understand what the writers of the Bible understood, to create a picture of reality that goes far beyond this world we know. This understanding will challenge what we believe to be true in our minds and change what we desire in our hearts. And that is exactly what the Bible was meant to do. The goal of this book is to unite the church of Christ with an understanding of the Word of God that can replace the traditions of man that are not Biblically based.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 10, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512750041

Rick Schramm

Author Rick Schramm started out life with a fascination with math and science and a passion to know the truth about how everything in this world works. He graduated with a double-major in physics and mathematics but after facing death from cancer and having a near death experience, he learned there is something more important than that!

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Copyright © 2016 Rick Schramm.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-4978-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-4979-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5004-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016911543

WestBow Press rev. date: 8/4/2016

CONTENTS

About The Author

About This Book

About The Cover

Part I. Understanding The Truth In The Bible

Chapter 1. The Truth Of The Word Of God Is Simple

Spiritual Blindness

Original Sin—We Are Sinful At Birth On Earth

We All Are All Fallen Angels Or Spirits Who Put On Flesh

The Elect Of God

Predestination

Preexistence

Why Were We Cast Out Of Heaven And Down To Earth?

Chapter 2. The Rebellion In Heaven

The Plan Of God

Evidence Of Fallen Spiritual Beings On Earth In The Beginning

Two Definitions Of Adam

Chapter 3. The Trial In The Courts Of Heaven Begins On Earth

In This Trial, Spirits Try To Influence Us—God Tests And Satan Tempts

Part II. In The Old Testament God First Teaches The Ways Of Satan

Chapter 4. The First Age Of Anarchy

The Promise Of God To Abraham

Chapter 5. The Second Age Of The Law

The Letter Of The Law Vs. The Spirit Of The Law

We Cannot Live By The Law

Part III. In The New Testament God Teaches His Ways

Chapter 6. The Third Age Of The Church

God Is Truth

God Is Love

The Invisible Hand Doctrine

God Is One

The Need For Morality

God Is Life

The Meaning Of Communion—The Lord’s Supper

Chapter 7. The Plan Of Salvation

God Is Righteous Because He Can See Into The Hearts Of Man

The Great Mystery—Marriage Is Like Oneness In Christ

God Is Righteous Because He Condemned Sin In The Flesh, Not In The Spirit

Is Reconciliation With God By Faith Or By Good Works?

Chapter 8. The Divided Church Of Christ United As One

Sola Scriptura—The Word Of God Alone

The Meaning And Purpose Of Baptism

Recognizing The Signs Of Jesus’s Second Coming

Chapter 9. The Rapture

Understanding The Rapture

If You Miss The First Rapture

Chapter 10. The Fourth Age Of The Millennium

The Millennial Reign Of Jesus Christ And His Saints

The New Jerusalem

The Plan Of God Is Completed

Author’s Note

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MY NAME IS Rick Schramm, and I am a sinner.

In high school, I had a passion for math and science. I went to college at the University of Minnesota as a math and physics double major, with the intent of getting a good education so that I could launch a career as a scientist or an engineer and land a good-paying job to pay for a big house, fancy car, a lake home, and all the things of this world that people think will make them happy. And I was well on my way to that end; I graduated from the U of M with a bachelor’s degree in physics and was within one course from graduating with a bachelor’s in mathematics. I had married my soul mate, and God blessed us with a precious and miraculous son. My wife and I had our dream home built for us, we had two cats looking out the French windows, and our future looked bright.

Then my world came crashing down on me in the spring of 1992. My father died as a result of a series of small heart attacks over the past few years. Within a month of his death, while I was still grieving that loss, I started to have strange symptoms with my eyes, which eventually was diagnosed as caused by a brain tumor. After that, a neurosurgeon told me that I would first go blind and then die. God saved my life in an eight-hour brain surgery, but then I had a consequence of hydrocephalus, where I almost died again, and a second emergency brain surgery, where I had a near-death experience.

After all of this, when I was so sick that I did not know if I would live—and did not know if I wanted to live—God called me to write a book about my experience and how it explains the meaning and purpose for life on this planet earth with words that are found in the pages of the Bible.

So I asked why God called me, someone who had never read the Bible, to do this and not a skilled theologian who was already familiar with the Bible. Then I remembered that Jesus did not call the religious leaders and scholars of that day to be His disciples; He chose uneducated fishermen and tax collectors. And I ran across this passage in the Bible: "For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. ²⁷ But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; ²⁸ and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, ²⁹ that no flesh should glory in His presence" (1 Corinthians 1:26–29 NKJV). Weak, not mighty, not noble, and someone who is not—that pretty much described my calling and the broken physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state I was in.

Then I wondered: if God wanted me to write a book, why did He leave me with such a bad memory? And God led me to this passage: "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. ²⁷ Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:26–27 NKJV).

And finally I wondered, if God wanted me to write this book, why did He leave me in such poor health and with such physical weakness? Then I discovered that the apostle Paul had an experience that left him with what he called a thorn in the flesh: "And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. ⁸ Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. ⁹ And He said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰ Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:8–9 NKJV). While I am most certainly not Paul, all of us who are suffering for Christ’s sake would do well to use Paul as our role model because God has a reason and a purpose for our suffering.

In all this, God wanted me to know that this book about the knowledge and understanding of the meaning and purpose of this temporary life on this temporary earth was not from me but from God; that I should not try to take any credit for it, as if I was someone special, but acknowledge that this is a gift from God for the benefit of all. I believe the timing of this revelation of truth is all part of God’s plan for the end times, which I believe we are in and which we will see evidence of from a prophecy of Jesus Himself, which we will learn in chapter 6, The Third Age of the Church.

And I have come to know why God allows us to suffer: "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; ⁶ For whom the LORD loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives." ⁷ If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? ⁸ But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons … Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (Hebrews 12:5–8, 11).

Suffering is the tough love of God that lets us, His children, know that we are going down a path that is harmful and will lead to our eternal deaths, the second death of our spirits. As we have all experienced, suffering causes us to stop and consider what we are doing and turns us back to God, who loves us and cares for us. It gives us an opportunity to consider a better way. God has a better way for all of us if we will only stop long enough to consider the truth that He wants us to know. It will change our hearts and minds and set us free. I can tell you that I consider the suffering that I went through in my cancer wake-up call as the best thing that ever happened to me! To anyone who may be suffering and going through the kind of things I went through, when you cannot see a way out, I want you to know that there is a hope you never dreamed of hoping for. I have dedicated my life to share the truth that God shared with me, for it is a gift of priceless worth that I would not trade for the whole world!

ABOUT THIS BOOK

AFTER MY CANCER wake-up call and near-death experience, when I was not even sure if I was going to live, God called me to write a book and even gave me the title of the book I was to write, something like Seeing the Forest Despite the Tree. It was to be the big picture of the truth that we cannot see because we are too close to and too focused on one tree. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I used the words something like because when God called me to write this book, it was not an oral communication in words that I could hear but an idea that came to mind with a strong feeling that it was from God, and I had to struggle to put it into words.

In the early years after my experience, a neighbor invited me to talk about my near-death experience at her church. In my talk, I spoke of my experience of being before what I called all knowledge, which I described as being like a tree and a like a library—not that it looked like a tree but that knowledge and understanding was arranged in branches of knowledge that I could understand as I would go down through it. Later, when I asked for questions, someone in the audience asked if I had ever connected that tree of all knowledge with the tree of life. I said I had not, but that was a good idea.

Even though I did not recall seeing God in my experience, I knew that it came from God and was about God. While I had a passion for math and science and had gone to college that I might have a career as an engineer or a scientist, this near-death experience convinced me that there was something that was much more important than that. And God put a hunger for the Word of God on my heart that I cannot explain.

I had memorized some verses from the Bible when I was confirmed in the Christian faith, but I never read the Bible, let alone studied it, but now, that was all I wanted to do. This book is the result of over twenty years of intense study of the Bible; attending multiple Bible studies; reading a small library’s worth of Christian books; going through Christian audio and video tapes, CDs, and DVDs; watching Bible-teaching sermons on TV; and attending multiple Christian churches that teach the Bible, as many as three or four on a Sunday to re-create the incredible knowledge and understanding I was shown in my near-death experience.

My intent in writing that first book was to let the words of God written in the Bible tell the story. I did not want to say anything that is not found in the Bible because then it would be only my opinion, and there are already many opinions about what the Bible says.

After publishing the book Seeing the Forest Despite the Tree, a 484-page book that describes my cancer and near-death experiences, going deeply into the Word of God to understand the meaning for the topics I remembered from my near-death experience—truth, love, oneness, and the tree of life, plus an interpretation of Revelation—I decided to write a much smaller book with just the essentials of the first book.

In this second smaller book, I let the words of God written in the Bible tell the story. And we will still go into the ancient Hebrew and Greek, when necessary, to help us understand the choices the translators made when they chose English words for the ancient Hebrew and Greek words from the original writings. We’ll see how the meaning changes and the message becomes clearer and makes more sense if they would have chosen another word for the definition. Words are not precise; they often can have multiple meanings. As anyone who has learned another language knows, a person can write some ridiculous and hilarious things by doing a literal word-for-word translations into another language.

Even though we are sometimes confused and befuddled by what the Bible says in English, I am convinced that the disciples who were taught directly by Jesus knew and understood what they wrote and were teaching, and they were willing to die for sharing what they knew with others. I use the New King James Version (NKJV) of the Bible, unless otherwise noted. I am faithful not to change the text of the Bible verses that I quote in any way. The words in italics are those of the original translation. The Bibles that I use do not contain any bolding, so that is what I used to emphasize ideas that I think are important in the Bible text.

I use the NKJV translation of God’s words because it correctly renders some Hebrew words that reveal important concepts in the Bible and it references Old Testament verses being quoted in the New Testament. It also works well with the King James Version of the Bible that has Strong’s numbers by the English words and phrases (numbers starting with an H for Hebrew words, like H120, and numbers starting with a G for ancient Greek words, like G25) that allow us to quickly see the actual Hebrew and Greek words and their definitions from the Strong’s Greek and Hebrew Dictionary. I use an electronic version of this, which makes finding the ancient definitions much faster.

What I do is make a logical and reasonable interpretation of the meaning of these verses for your consideration. I do not base my interpretations on one verse but on a number of verses that confirm this meaning. There is a property of truth that helps us identify the right interpretation. All truths are consistent. One truth never contradicts other truths. Because God says His word is truth, if anything we say contradicts the Word of God, it is our thinking that is wrong, not God’s. If anything in the version of the Bible we are using contradicts itself, it is time to go into the ancient Hebrew and Greek dictionary to find the problem in the translation. We are all fallen humans who only know and understand the things of this world and need to learn to think spiritually. And if a different word in the translation clears up previous confusion and makes sense and has that ring of truth, we know that we are on the right track and that understanding will be exciting and may even fill us with Holy Ghost bumps!

Winston Churchill once said that to learn a new language was to become a new person. We will experience becoming new persons when we understand what God is trying to say to us, if we will only listen. There are some amazing things in the Bible that many people, including me, never knew were there. Be prepared to be amazed by how your knowledge and understanding of the Bible changes, as mine did. There is a hope, peace, love, unspeakable joy, and eternal life in knowing and understanding the truth of God found in the Bible! In this book, there will be some repetition of important verses in the Bible because, just like learning a new language, repetition helps us connect individual ideas together to form a larger framework of understanding that will help us to become new persons.

In this book, we will put together verses from all over in the Bible to show what the purpose and meaning of this temporary life on this temporary earth is all about in a timeline fashion. We will learn that this life on earth is not all there is. There is another spiritual reality where God resides. When we are done, we will know the answers to questions that people have asked about the Bible through the ages—questions that have divided the church of Christ. The goal