If you could travel in time to any point in the earth’s history where would you travel to?
Imagine you had a friend who developed a time machine to do just such a thing. And let’s say your friend decided to travel back in time to the exact time when Jesus began his ministry. For the next three and a half years your friend heard the actual words of Jesus. Experienced the love, kindness and holiness that Jesus demonstrated daily. Saw the great miracles of Jesus healing the blind, raising the dead and curing the leprous. Then your friend witnessed the persecution of Jesus, saw His death on the cross and beheld the resurrection with his own eyes! Lastly your friend even touched Jesus after the resurrection!
After all this your friend was so excited to come back and tell you about Jesus. But there was one problem…
As your friend turns on the time machine a red light flashes and says “not enough gasoline”. Your friend realizes that there is only enough power to send back a few thin pieces of paper. So your friend writes a few pages and sends them back through the time machine.
Could you imagine you get these letters in the mail? What a treasure that would be! What would you do with them? Would you read them just once? You know what I would do? Read them once; place them under the TV guide and flick on the television. After all I can’t miss an Angels baseball game!
Would you do that? No way! You’d have to be insane to do such a thing!
But beloved, is this what we are doing? We don’t need a friend with a time machine to get those letters… because we already have them.
Let’s read 1 John 1:1-2. Does this sound like something your friend would write?
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life (Jesus)— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us
John is saying look my dear friend I have heard, seen with my own eyes, looked upon, my own hands have touched Jesus! Likewise Peter another apostle of Jesus says…
For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. ~ 2 Peter 1:16
Dear friend, I want to encourage you to take every moment you can to study these precious books. The books of the New Testament were written by those who had seen Jesus. They walked with Him, saw the miracles, experienced His love, mercy and grace and witnessed the resurrection of God’s only Son. We cannot neglect these treasures any longer.