Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

I was drug through the Bible as a young child beginning shortly after my birth. I may have been a week old when I went to church for the first time. I do not believe that first church had a nursery, so I was in the service with everyone else. I was colicky and my mother had to be walking me outside to allow the pastor to be heard.

My first recollection of studying the word of the Lord was in the children’s department of Immanuel Baptist Church in Springfield, Missouri. It was a few blocks down the street from our home. It was still more of a pushing operation. My parents and the teachers stayed behind me directing me to drink. I wasn’t very thirsty. At age eleven I came to know the Lord as my personal savior.

These studies are called Bible Trekking because my voyage through it on my own began while I was in college. I was still attending Immanuel and was attempting to find God’s direction for my life. My travels began in earnest in 1974 when I accepted my savior’s call to the ministry of the gospel.

My entry into journalism school was scrapped and I transferred to Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, Missouri to study the Bible on a serious level. My professors reminded me of what I had heard for years as a child. They also opened my eyes to who they thought Jesus and God were. That was where the trek began.

The term Christian or Christianity has thousands of definitions that are held by those who claim to be followers of Christ and those who reject Him. Just who was He and who can we believe?

How can we learn what Christianity is about? Have you tried just reading the words that Jesus spoke? I began this study a few years ago and have decided to finish it while sharing it with you. I began by using a harmony of the gospels to flow through all four stories of the Lord in chronological order. I have decided that it would be more productive to follow His words through categories.

The time we must cover is just thirty-five years or so. We will look at the stories He told, the miracles that were performed, who Jehovah is, who Jesus claimed to be, the new covenant that God was giving to the world, and the new teachings that seemed completely foreign from Judaism.

As we read these words, what version of the Bible should we use. It doesn’t matter. I will be using both the King James Version and Young’s Literal Translation. At times the Quotations will not show either KJV or YLT. The notation will be BTV which stands for the Bible Trekking Version. This is not an official translation. It simply means that I want to use the words that I think explain it to us.

Let’s begin with the stories that are called parables. A parable usually has only one aspect that relates to the teaching Jesus wants us to learn. Some of these teachings are in more than one of the four gospels. We will discuss the different words each witness recalls Him using and if the different witnesses cause any problems with interpretation.

©Copyright 2021 by Charles Kensinger