The Greatest Prophecy We've Never Read

One of the things I've most loved about this study of the Catholic faith is the additional books you get with every single Catholic Bible! It's almost like one of those TV special offers: "Buy the Bible today and we'll throw in not one, not two, but SEVEN extra books! That's SEVEN extra books for the same price you'd pay for a regular Protestant Bible!",

Two years ago, I wouldn't have cared about the "special offer". I didn't want their extra books--books undoubtedly tossed in to support those Crazy Catholic beliefs with which many of us Protestants are familiar.

Yet, when I started this study--to prove a Catholic friend wrong, by the way--I decided I needed to be fair and do some research into how these books became part of their Scriptures and why Catholics didn't clue as to the fact that their Bibles were bastardized versions of the original text.

Well, in my search I found something interesting: history (as it has in so many aspects of this search) had a different story to tell than what I had always believed. I discovered quite quickly that it was quite possible the Catholics didn't add the books, but that we took them out.

Well, that was enough to pique my interest. I picked up a Catholic Bible and I still remember nervously cracking it open. I felt that even reading it was somehow blasphemous. And yet, I resolved to at least give it a try. I flipped it open and the first unfamiliar book I found was the Book of Wisdom, written in the 1st or 2nd Century BC. The first passage I read was this one from Chapter 2 in which the writer refers to the "Just Man" and the people who don't accept him:

13[The just man] boasteth that he hath the knowledge of God, and calleth himself the son of God. 14He is become a censurer of our thoughts. 15He is grievous unto us, even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, and his ways are very different. 16We are esteemed by him as triflers, and he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness, and he preferreth the latter end of the just, and glorieth that he hath God for his father. 17Let us see then if his words be true, and let us prove what shall happen to him, and we shall know what his end shall be. 18For if he be the true son of God, he will defend him, and will deliver him from the hands of his enemies. 19Let us examine him by outrages and tortures, that we may know his meekness, and try his patience. 20Let us condemn him to a most shameful death: for there shall be respect had unto him by his words. 21These things they thought, and were deceived: for their own malice blinded them.

I remember reading that and thinking "what the heck?" These books were supposed to contain weird Catholic beliefs--you know, stuff about eating babies and statue worship and yet here was probably the most vivid prophecy concerning the death of Christ contained in the Bible.

In a future post, I'll try to lay out some of the history behind the different versions of the Catholic and Protestant Bibles. As for now, I just wanted to share something I'm betting 99% of my Protestant friends and family have never read....