Reading Only the Words of Christ – Understanding God, the Bible in a Different Way (Transcript)

“The very first time that a person ever heard that you cannot die…hearing the immortal soul concept, was when Satan, through the form of the serpent, was talking to Eve. He said, God said you cannot eat of any of these fruits in the Garden of Eden. Eve replied, oh no, we can’t eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, for if we do so, that day we will die. Satan insisted, you shall not surely die, for God knows that once you eat of that fruit, you will become like God, knowing good and evil. Give it a try. Trust me. Don’t trust God.

Since then, mankind has really not been trusting God ever since and it has gotten us into a lot of problems. But that’s the very first lie in the Bible” – Bob Barney

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO BOB BARNEY’S MIDDAY BROADCAST: Reading Only the Words of Christ – Understanding God, the Bible in a Different Way

 Hi, this is Bob Barney for The Plain Truth Today, brought to you by theplaintruth.com welcoming you to another edition.

I would like to start off this program by asking a simple question.

What would happen if we just took the Bible one day and read only the red-letter words, meaning the words that came out of the mouth of Christ?

Now, I’ve plugged my own publication of the Bible that The Plain Truth has put out. It’s called The Plain Truth Red Letter Bible, where all of the words of Christ are in red… including Christ’s words in the Old Testament.

If you’ve been listening to this broadcast, you have heard that Christ is the God of the Old Testament. That He is the God that ordered the execution of men, women, and the children in Canaan. The God that we think of, or we probably think of as God the Father, you know, that mean old God of the Old Testament was actually none other than the God that became Jesus Christ when He walked this earth.

The God of the Old Testament, the God that you hear talking to Moses and talking to Adam and Eve, the One who gave prophecies to our prophets…the I Am that I Am in Exodus, the God who became a man by a human birth in and around 1 AD is who I am talking about. It’s actually 4 BC when He was born but that is who we know to be as none other than Jesus Christ. Truth be told, He had a lot to say in the New Testament, and He had a lot to say in the Old Testament.

If you take all the books of the Bible, there are many books in the New Testament, especially where there isn’t even one red letter word from Christ because they were letters written by the Apostles to the churches about things of the day. I have always said, when you’re reading the Bible, this is the order of importance that I think is best. First of all, one has to realize the Bible has truths, and the Bible also has lies. Now, God never lies, so whenever the Bible is giving you what is a lie, it’s always easy to pretty much figure out. The very first lie, and I’ve said this many times, the very first lie that you will ever read in the Bible was the idea that you have an immortal soul and that you cannot die. It is the lie that after you die, you’re going to spend eternity either in heaven or hell. That is the idea most Christian churches promote. This idea, however, is not in the Bible…it has never been in the Bible, and it is not part of God’s plan.

The very first time that a person ever heard that you cannot die…hearing the immortal soul concept, was when Satan, through the form of the serpent, was talking to Eve. He said, God said you cannot eat of any of these fruits in the Garden of Eden. Eve replied, oh no, we can’t eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, for if we do so, that day we will die. Satan insisted, you shall not surely die, for God knows that once you eat of that fruit, you will become like God, knowing good and evil. Give it a try. Trust me. Don’t trust God.

Since then, mankind has really not been trusting God ever since and it has gotten us into a lot of problems. But that’s the very first lie in the Bible.

The Bible does explain lies that we should stay away from and the Bible’s quite clear when it shows us a lie detailing where it has come from. God doesn’t lie to us. God’s telling us the truth however, the Bible does give us other people’s opinions. That is a part of the broadcast today that I wanted to get to…that when you’re reading the Bible, you have to ask yourself, what is the reader supposed to take from a passage?

Is it coming from God?

Is it in red?

This is a plug for the Plain Truth Bible, if you get The Plain Truth Red Letter Bible, you will see every red word that God says, which is Jesus Christ, throughout the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. 

You know, Jesus spoke a lot in the Old Testament, in almost every single book in all of the books of the Torah. Whenever it says, the Lord says this, or the Lord said this, or thus saith the Lord, it is really expressing thus saith Jesus Christ, the One who was the Lord of the Old Testament. When we read the Bible, we have to ask, what are we supposed to take from a certain passage? First of all, is it in red, or should it be in red if you’re reading some other Bible and you’re seeing thus saith the Lord? Well, in my opinion, even though I am not a theologian of course, I have read the Bible, and I’ve studied the Bible for almost 50 years now; so I think I come from a point of knowledge.  I have a library in my office, my home office, and I have read things that I think would actually shock people. I have many ancient Bibles, many ancient manuscripts, I have every kind of concordance, every kind of book on the Bible, every kind of book on the Torah, on the Leviticus laws of the Torah, of the New Testament, I have the complete Matthew, Henry commentaries, which I think are some of the best commentaries anybody could ever study. I have been doing so as this has been my hobby for a long time.

I want to share something about a very good friend of mine who has now since passed away and was one of my best friends ever…his assumed and known name was Michael Saint. I met him in Stewart, Florida, back in the early days of selling paint. Michael was an artist and a manager for a carnival company. He was actually one of the top wanted people in the United States because he was a drug dealer to the stars in the 1960s and early 1970s. He actually was the drug dealer that sold the drugs to people like Jim Morrison of the Doors and the Mamas and the Papas. Michael was the first person that ever told me, which absolutely surprised me back in 1984, that Charles Manson was really the second biggest drug pusher to the stars in the area of Hollywood next to Michael’s territory. Manson as you know, was known for murdering Sharon Tate and company. Michael told me that the members of the Beach Boys were one of the biggest clients whom Manson personally sold drugs to…yes, Brian and Dennis Wilson, I guess, and others.

When Charles Manson ordered his Mansonites, or his girlies, whatever they were called, to murder the people in the house that Sharon Tate was in, that was actually the house that the Beach Boys had. I believe it could be said, and has been said, that Manson was really going after the Beach Boys. The connection seems to have been the following: Charles Manson not only was he a lifelong criminal and a drug dealer, but he also thought he was a singer. Manson also thought he was a songwriter. He assumed that being in a relationship and friendship with the Beach Boys in that he provided them the illicit drugs of the day, that they would record him and some of the original songs that he wrote…giving him license to do so in his own way resulting in making him a famous celebrity as a singer. People are not aware of this fact. (You can find more of this information that has come out in the last ten years that I knew back in 1984, the Beach Boys connection, Dennis Wilson, and Charles Manson’s Song)

I learned that all from Michael Saint.

But getting back to my point about Saint…one day he came to my house for a birthday party for one of my daughters and he looked at the library I had back then which was not as extensive as it is now. Michael commented, now I understand, Bob, what your hobby really is. You know, your hobby’s not like painting like mine…I see that your hobby is studying religion, and especially the Bible. Through me, Michael Saint became a Christian before he died, and he was always a very good, decent, and moral person believe it or not, even though he had a drug related background.

But to get back to the idea, I have a lot of knowledge, and I have an order of importance that the Bible should be taken in. I believe there is a pecking order to the seriousness you should take things.

For example, you should not take the verse, you shall not surely die from Satan, as the gospel truth that you cannot die. Satan is the liar, and he’s the father of all lies.

Another example: Is an opinion of King David or King Solomon more important than an opinion of Jesus Christ? Well, I would say no. So when you read, for example, Proverbs, you’re reading the Proverbs Basically of King Solomon. I would like to say there is, I think they’re in the Bible, and they’re supposed to be in the Bible, and many of those Proverbs are, I believe, God-inspired, even though King Solomon, as a king, became a failed king. He ended up going after foreign gods of his pagan wives that he married…in all, 1,000 of them. Just think what his American Express credit card bills were like each month with 1,000 of those coming in. Getting back seriously here, you still have to, when you read those, you have to decide for yourself, based on your knowledge of God’s will, His laws, His ordinances, are these suggestions or these Proverbs God-inspired or not?

When we come back from this commercial break, we’re going to go into some of the words of God in red that you may or may not know of.

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So we were talking about the pecking order of the Bible, and when you go through the Bible, and there is a reason why I decided to do a different translation of the Bible with all the words of Christ in red, including the Old Testament, because I believe when you start reading the Bible and you see the red words of Christ and you realize they are the actual words of our living God that died for us and is alive today and is protecting us through his blood, then I think maybe you get a better understanding of how God thinks. You know, you read Paul, and you read the Apostle John or Peter, or you may read James, or you may read the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. You may read what Joseph had to say or what even Moses had to say, and they are still maybe inspired by God, having God’s Holy Spirit. But not everything they said was necessarily the best thing, and we see that time and time again in the Bible, and if I have a little bit of time, I may even point those out to you. But in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ, as the Lord God, says this. He’s kind of miffed at the people. He had just freed them from Egypt. He just parted the Red Sea in front of them and He gave them all kinds of goodies out in the desert to keep them alive. Their clothes never wore out…and they’re grumbling, and He says to Moses, God here, Jesus Christ, God of the Old Testament, says to Moses the following, and you can find this in Numbers, I believe, 14. How long will these wicked people complain about me? For I have heard all that these people are saying about me. So you can tell them, the Lord vows to do to you what you fear he will do to you, and you will all die here in the wilderness.

This is when He tells the people that not one person who left Egypt that was circumcised would die in the desert, and they would never see the Promised Land for their total unbelief. It’s not a very, what we consider, Christian forgiving attitude, is it? But God in the Old Testament, who is still Jesus Christ in the New Testament, is a different God, and He’s a different Jesus than I’m afraid most of us have been led to believe.

Here are some other words that Christ says that you can see in red letters, mainly in the New Testament. I’m going to go now, not just to the Old Testament, but the New Testament. By the way, there’s one other verse in the Old Testament when He’s talking to us, all of us really, when we read it, and He says, reason with me, let’s argue this together, tell me why I should not punish you, present your case to me so I can judge it. I don’t want anybody to die. He’s actually pleading with us to defend ourselves for our wicked behavior, and what He’s trying really to do is get us to say we have no defense except for your blood.

Some other red-letter words of Christ that maybe does not always agree with what you read by the Apostle Paul, for example. Many times, by the way, when you read the letters of Paul, he will say these exact words, this is my opinion, this is not from God, but I have the Holy Spirit, and I think I am speaking through the Holy Spirit with this opinion, and then he gives an opinion. Jesus does not say any such thing. Jesus talks with a total authority, so when you’re reading the Bible, whatever is in red, you know is coming from a total authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of the Bible. He is the Word of God, and here’s one that everyone says today, that we don’t have to follow the law of God, we don’t have to follow the Ten Commandments, we can follow Christmas or Easter, we don’t have to obey things because Christ came to do away with the law. This is what you hear in churches, and if you don’t hear it, it’s what your minister believes, just to let you know. But here is what Christ says in red, and you can find this in Matthew chapter 5. Do not think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy them but to magnify them. Now notice, I used the proper term magnification. He came to magnify the law.

Christ did not come to end the law or fulfill the law, as some of the translations say.

He came to magnify the law’s true meaning.

He came to take the law from the stone tablets they were written on and put them onto our hearts so they would be a part of us, and every day we would just naturally follow the law.

Then he goes on to say, for most assuredly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even the smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke will in any way pass away from the law, and the law means the Torah, the first five books of Moses. That’s what the law is talking about. The Ten Commandments are found there, but all the other laws of the first five books of the of the Torah, or the law, until all things are accomplished. So he says, not any pen stroke will be done away with the law until all things are accomplished. Whoever therefore shall break one of least of the commandments and teach others to do so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever shall do and teach them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So there goes the idea that, according to what most of you probably have been taught in your churches, that the law has been abolished by Christ. He nailed them to the cross. Here he says, don’t think that the law is going to be done away with until heaven and earth pass away. Now, has heaven and earth passed away yet? I don’t think so. On another note, again, we are taught by faith alone we are saved, so nobody can boast. You hear this over and over again. We are saved by faith, not by works, not by the law we’re trying to follow. We can’t follow the law. Our trying to follow the law is nothing but dirty rags. You can find that in the Bible, by the way, to God. And so we should even try to follow the law. People read Paul and they get that out of Paul, and I don’t think that’s what Paul is trying to say, but if he is, he’s wrong. But I don’t think he’s trying to say that, and people taking that is twisting it to their own destruction, as the apostle Peter writes in his letters. But this is what Christ says, and I think this is very important. Do you believe, before I read that, do you believe that if all you need to do is call on the name of Jesus Christ and believe in him and do miracles in his name, that you’re saved? You believe that? I bet you do. But this is what Jesus Christ says. It’s a red letter in a red-letter Bible, not only mine. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will come to me on that day, and this is the judgment day, and say, Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy by your name and by your name cast out demons and by your name do many wonderful works? Then I will say to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, all who work lawlessness or practice lawlessness, as other translations say.

What is that that Jesus is saying here? 

Jesus is saying that you believed in Him, you worshipped Him, you accepted His blood, you went out and performed miracles in His name, you cast out demons in His name, who knows, maybe you gave all your money to the poor in his name. But then, on the day of judgment, He’s going to say, away from me, I never knew who you were.

How is that reconciled in your mind about the real Jesus, what He’s saying here in red?

Now, you’re going to go and you’re going to find me something in Colossians or Ephesians or somewhere else where Paul seems to say something different, but he’s not saying something different, you’re interpreting something different. If you have to choose between the words of Paul, the words of Solomon, the words of King David, the words of Abraham, or the words of Christ, the God of the Old Testament, who should you listen to? Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. I think that is clear. It shows that you have to not be lawless, you must follow the law. Part of the law, by the way, is not only thou shall not murder, and thou shall not commit adultery, and thou shall not covet. One of the laws is thou shall observe my holy day, the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. That is one of them.

Last week, we talked about the idea of the immortal soul, which I said is Greek teaching, it’s nowhere found in the Bible. What does Christ say in the New Testament about people and their souls? Well, again, I guess you go to Matthew chapter 10, 28, don’t be afraid of those who can kill your body, but are not able to kill your soul. Rather, fear him, which is God, who is able to destroy both body and soul in the Yenna Hellfire.

What’s that? Your souls can be killed by God. You don’t have an immortal soul. You’re not going to go to heaven when you die, and in previous broadcasts, I’ve shown that over and over and over and over again.

One more example, and then we’ll finish up after this brief timeout for theplaintruth.com. theplaintruth.com is the one site I hope everyone goes to every day. From there, you go to the Message Board, Your Health Today, these podcasts, or the main page, but go there every day, theplaintruth.com, and please tell your friends about it.

The last example I want to read out of the New Testament, again, it’s out of Matthew chapter 15, just to show you why it’s important to read the words in red, and maybe you should spend an entire month or two doing nothing but reading the Bible every single day, reading a page or two of the words in red, starting with Genesis, let there be light. In chapter 15, the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem came to Jesus saying, why do your disciples disobey the traditions of our elders? For they don’t wash their hands before they eat bread. Now, this is something we’ve talked about again on The Plain Truth, and that is, what’s more important, man’s traditions, like Christmas and Easter, or God’s law? Well, Christ responds, why do you disobey the commandment of God because of your tradition? For God commanded, honor your father and your mother. That’s the fifth commandment of the Holy Ten, the Ten Commandments, by the way, if you didn’t know that. Honor your father and your mother, and he who speaks evil of his father or mother, let them be put to death. Do you know there’s a death penalty for not honoring your father and your mother? But you say, whoever will tell his father or his mother, whatever help you might otherwise have gotten from me is going to be a gift devoted to God instead. He will not honor his father or mother. You have made the commandment of God void because of your traditions. You are hypocrites. While did Isaiah prophesy about you? That’s Isaiah 29, 13. These people draw near to me with their mouth, and they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrine of rules of men, traditions of men, rather than the commandments of God. Well, if you listen to this program, you see that we say you follow the commandments of God. You follow what God says to you to follow. You don’t follow what Bob Barney tells you to follow. You don’t follow what some other holy rojo out there is going to tell you to do. You don’t even follow what Abraham tells you to do unless you can prove God is before that, or what Paul tells you to do unless you can prove God is behind that, or John, or any other person writing in the Bible, or the Satan, the devil lying in the Bible. Don’t quote those things. Go and see what Christ says about a subject.

Before, when you have an opinion, let’s say you have an opinion about when are you resurrected from the dead? Well, the first thing you should do is find what Jesus Christ says about the resurrection from the dead, and it’s there. He says in plain English, in your English Bible, it is. He says in plain English that the dead arise at his coming, and then you can follow that up with what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, or what is said in Revelation chapter 20 and 21 about the the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of Christians first, where they see no second death, the resurrection of the general people after the millennium, not before, nobody’s in heaven, and then the final judgment, where the second death will do away with all of those whose names were not found in the book of life. But you always go, in my opinion, I’m just giving you an opinion here, but I think this opinion is based on almost 50 years of research, go to see what Jesus Christ says first, and then read what others have to say to back it up. And if they seem to disagree, then I think you’re reading it wrong, because God’s Bible is not done in error. There may be translation errors, I will admit that, but they’re not done in error. I just decided to do one last example of where we can prove what Moses said was not inspired by God as the law but was allowed by God because of the hardness of their hearts. After Jesus finished, and this is chapter 19 of Matthew, after Jesus had finished saying these things, he left for Galilee. And crowds followed him and said, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason? And he said, haven’t you read that he made them from the beginning, male and female? And he said, for this cause, a man will leave his father and mother and will join to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no more two, but they are one flesh, just like God, the Father, and Jesus Christ are one God, and the two, husband and wife, become one flesh, one personage to God. They’re together. Therefore, God has joined together. Don’t let any man tear apart. Well, the Pharisees said, well, that’s not what Moses said. You know, Moses has predominance, right? Isn’t that what people want to say? Or Paul’s got predominance, or Peter’s got predominance? And they said, why did Moses command us to give them a bill of divorce if we wanted to divorce her? And Jesus said, listen to these words, and I believe this sums up my entire show. Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so. I tell you that whoever will put away his wife, except for sexual immorality, and will marry another commits adultery, and he who marries her when she is put away commits adultery, which, by the way, has the death penalty, according to God. So what do we have here? We have something that’s found even in basic English law, American law, precedence.

You might have a law when you go to court and you say, this law allows me to do this, but a good lawyer will have done his research and say, yes, but there is a former decision of the Supreme Court that has more precedence than the law you just cited, and so I’m asking the judge to rule on the earlier Supreme Court ruling. And that’s what Jesus Christ is doing here. He’s saying, yes, you allowed it, Moses allowed it, and it’s in your law, it’s in the Torah, but a man wrote the Torah, and it was not what God wanted from the beginning.

So Christ is going to an earlier law that is more important than the law that Moses gave because of the hardness of people’s hearts. Think about that. That’s where we are today. Because of the hardness of your heart and my heart and the hearts of the world, God, through Christ’s blood, is forgiving a lot of sins. He’s forgiven a lot of your sins because you’re supposed to be following the law. You’re supposed to be following the Sabbath day. You’re supposed to be following the holy days, and most of us are not. Most of you are not, for sure. And Jesus is covering your sins right now. We’re like lost in the wilderness, those 40 years of wandering where there’s no circumcision and there was no Passovers. They did have the Sabbath day, though, and they stoned people to death. They didn’t follow it, but that’s another point. We are using up the blood of Jesus for our traditions and for our self-centeredness, just like these people who wanted to divorce their wife for some reason because they wanted to marry some other chick down the road that was a little prettier or a little sexier, and just get a divorce because Moses allowed it, so God allows it, too.

That’s twisting the Bible to fit your needs, and God has a problem with it, and God will have a problem with you.  I say, if you’re reading the Bible and you really are a Christian and you think you really are going to follow God no matter what, and you’re going to listen to God, then start reading the red letter of your Bible, and that’s every single word in the Old and New Testament of Jesus Christ in his pre-existent form as Yahweh or Jehovah or the Lord God, and in his human existence as Jesus Christ. The words in red are the gospel more than any other the words in black of your Bible. Never forget that, and you can solve a lot of your problems and difficulties and questions about biblical practices and laws and what you should and should not do or should and should not eat. You can find that if you just read the words in red.

There was a country western song, I never heard it, my daughter told me about it, where it says the theme of the song was read the words of God in red or something like that, but I got news for you, you should. Well, that’s the plain truth today for today, and I appreciate any of those who listen, and I appreciate any comments. I do hope you really look at your Bible, I really hope you study it, and you realize it is a love letter from the one who loves you the most, your God.

This is Bob Barney for The Plain Truth Today, saying thank you for listening. I do appreciate you. Please come back and tell others about the program and tell others about theplaintruth.com. Until next time, thank you for listening. Bye-bye.