- 2008 North American Bible Conference, December 25, 2008      “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.”  Song of Solomon 8:7       “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”  Leviticus 17:11     The Connection between the Bible and Our LivesThe Bible contains the following passages. “Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man would give for love all the wealth of his house, it would be utterly despised.”  Song of Solomon 8:7 “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”  Leviticus 17:11 Since the Bible is the word of God and the absolute truth which cannot be compared with anything in this world, you may pick any two of its verses and find that they have a connection that cannot be severed. It is just as the blood at the tips of our toes is inseparably linked with the blood at the top of our heads. Just because they are separated by distance and located in different parts of the body, a distinction cannot be made between the blood providing oxygen in the capillaries at the tips of our toes and the blood at the top of our heads. It is all one blood. It may be in different parts of the body, but it is all one bloodstream. I have a reason for talking about this. It may seem as though the above two verses are unrelated, but there is actually a deep connection between the two of them. Every saved Christian will have a testimony of a particular day and a particular situation in which he or she encountered a certain verse from the Bible and experienced a definite change in his or her heart. They will address one another as brothers and sisters and live in this world having fellowship together. We may be of different nationalities and we may look different, but amongst those who are saved there is a power that weaves us all together. It is because we are aware of this and believe in this power that we make an effort to meet together. Since this is the case, won’t there be a connection between this book called the Bible which we read and try to understand, the human relationships within the day-to-day lives that we live, and our relationships with our brothers and sisters who share the same faith? Is it a matter of the Bible being the Bible, my life being my life, and my faith being my faith, each of them being separate? Or is it that, whether we are aware of it or not, we are all bound together by a common destiny, like cogs in a wheel? We need to think about these things.These days, I have been thinking a lot about the earth. What is this earth on which we are living? When we meet someone, the first thing we look at is their face. There probably isn’t anyone who first looks at the feet and not the face of a person he is meeting for the first time. You recognize a person by looking at their face and then you shake hands with them. When you extend your hand for a handshake and your skin comes in contact with that of the other party, you may think the person’s hand is cold, or a little thin or clammy. It is the same when you look at yourself in a mirror. You look at your image in the mirror and examine your face, your complexion, the color of your hair, and so on, and see what this tells you about your condition. Even though we know there are many things hidden behind what we see with our eyes, we tend to live our lives just looking at outward appearances.It is the same when it comes to the earth on which we walk. What do we know about the earth beneath our feet? We know that if you drill down just a few thousand feet below the surface, you can bring up the oil from there and put it in your car so that you can drive around or put in your boiler to heat your house, but that is about all that we know. We do not really know very much at all about the earth. I do not remember exactly in which country it was located, but some huge underground caves were once discovered in some region of Eastern Europe. Now they have been excavated to such a large degree that tourists can go in and explore the caves and take photographs. When I saw this, I wondered just how much or how little we actually know about this earth on which we walk and live.Also, one time when I was traveling in Mexico, I came across some caves. From the outside, you could not tell that these were caves, but when you went inside and followed the path, you came to an opening that could have housed several soccer fields. At the bottom there was a lake that was the color of India ink. It was so dark that it brought about a feeling of trepidation. If you venture deep into these caves, you will find there is not a single ray of light. And yet there are living creatures that exist even in that kind of environment. I am told they look like mudfish, or eels, or tadpoles, but their skin is whitish like a peach, and smooth, not unlike the human complexion. But these creatures have no eyes. They live in the dark so they do not have any eyes but it seems they use their other senses to locate food and survive.What connection is there between creatures like that which live in caves where there is no sunlight at all and this earth on which we walk and live? Even the bats, fish and insects that live in those deep underground places have a connection with our lives as we walk on the earth and eat the things from the ground. There is a connection that is being sustained so that we can eat and live in this environment that is maintained in this way, even though we cannot see it through our human eyes or through the eyes of science. This is the method determined by God in order that man might be able to live in this world. It is really amazing when you stop to think about it. There may be some people who wonder if it is necessary to consider these things in such complex terms. It is like when beef is served at the dinner table. I do not need to worry about whether the cow became infected with mad cow disease; I should just trust it and eat it. Yet I think that if you have questions about the Bible, if you consider God’s method of creation, His way of speaking, and the way He goes maintaining He creation by His word, if you consider all these things, I do not think it is possible for your thinking to remain in one place. Not only is the earth on which we live upheld by a certain power, but also the planets orbiting our earth and all the many stars out there in space. Just as this power controls the distance and the velocity of the planets, the words that we come to understand in the Bible in the course of our lives has the same power to us. It is not that the words of the Bible we heard ten years ago are no longer necessary for us today, and neither can we say that we do not need to read the Bible any more since we have been reading it a lot for the past ten years. Getting to know the Bible is different from the way we study and know the subject of our majors at university. This is because the things we have learned from the Bible as we have been living our lives from day to day until now need to be connected to all the things we will need to know in the future and these must also be connected to our lives and our thoughts. Man’s life is wrapped up in such connections until the day he dies.   The Love Referred to in the BibleAt first glance, the love referred to in the first few verses of the Song of Solomon may not seem a difficult matter to understand. Also, the words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” may not appear to be so difficult to understand since we know about our flesh, our blood and the life within us. If, however, we put these two passages together and think about them, you may wonder what on earth this is talking about.These words of “love” do not seem to have much to do with the flesh. On hearing the word, “love,” many people think of a psychological or emotional attitude towards parents, children, a spouse, family members, relatives or friends. Also, when we encounter the words, “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” we tend to set aside any consideration for matters of the mind or spirit. This is even more the case when people who are not familiar with the Bible read these verses. A doctor’s first consideration will be whether or not these words are correct in medical terms. Those who have not studied medicine will simply think in terms of physical actions, material things or the physical body. If, however, you approach the Bible with these two verses in mind, you will find that they both continue indefinitely and insepar

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