![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.frankviola.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/zweek2.png\")
<\/p>\n
Yesterday, America celebrated her 250th anniversary (the Declaration of Independence and her birth as a nation). A recent poll found nearly half (46%) of Americans don\u2019t know what America\u2019s 250th anniversary commemorates. It\u2019s worse among younger people: 61% of Gen Z respondents couldn\u2019t answer correctly, with just 39% getting it right.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the thing about being human. We\u2019re wired for narrative. Not facts, not dates, not trivia, but story. Strip away someone\u2019s sense of where they came from, and you\u2019ve basically unplugged them from where they\u2019re headed.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re just drifting.<\/p>\n
A country\u2019s story isn\u2019t some optional nicety like a national mascot or a catchy anthem. It\u2019s the operating system. Everything else runs on top of it.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s the part that should really get your attention. If you want to take a country down for good, you really don\u2019t need an army, tanks, and bombs.<\/p>\n You\u2019d just need to make people forget or stop caring about the story that holds them together.<\/p>\n Now this is not<\/em> an article about America or its history. It\u2019s about a far greater story.<\/p>\n Imagine lining up 100 seminary-trained pastors and Bible teachers from across the USA and asking them to recite from memory\u2014in chronological order\u2014the entire story from Paul and Barnabas\u2019s commissioning in Antioch of Syria to the writing of Revelation. This exercise, of course, would include the historical background and context of all 21 New Testament letters.<\/p>\n Well, I\u2019m convinced only three of them could do it. (And I\u2019m being generous with that estimate.)<\/p>\n Now you, dear reader, are either a pastor, a Bible teacher, or you\u2019re someone who learns (or has learned) from them. So that covers everybody.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the tragic truth. If you don\u2019t know the Story, you will inevitably misunderstand the New Testament letters. They are only decipherable when you have the context, the Story, that came before them.<\/p>\n In addition, if you don\u2019t know the Story of the New Testament church, you won\u2019t have a clear sense of where you\u2019re headed.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll either be drifting, or worse, you\u2019ll land in a place that\u2019s alien to God\u2019s revealed will.<\/p>\n Just like America\u2019s story, the Story of the New Testament church has been rewritten by many people. And it\u2019s produced something on this earth in the \u201cChristian\u201d world that has little resemblance to what the apostles would have recognized.<\/p>\n Yep. The Twelve, Luke, Paul of Tarsus and the men he trained (like Timothy, Titus, Aristarchus, Secundus, Sopater, Gaius, Epaphras, etc.) would look at it and shake their heads thinking, \u201cWhat on earth is this?\u201d<\/p>\n This is the precise reason why I took on the arduous task of writing the entire Story out using the New Testament narrative and the best scholarship available on first-century history.<\/p>\n Once you see the Story, you can never unsee it. And it will give you a clear and correct path to God\u2019s will for your life. In addition, it will open up your reading of the New Testament letters in dramatic ways.<\/p>\n Readers who are working through the book are testifying how it\u2019s ignited their time in Scripture and electrified their thirst for God\u2019s word.<\/p>\n I believe the Lord is looking for a new breed of Christian and Christian leader who will stop rewriting the Story based on their human traditions, but instead, understand what the New Testament letters are really<\/em> saying to us. And begin living out of that revelation.<\/p>\n It all begins with learning the Story. The one we find in the pages of the New Testament, not the rewritten versions that humans have created long after the fact.<\/p>\n Most Christian leaders today who are teaching God\u2019s people don\u2019t know the Story. But that\u2019s beginning to change, thankfully, since the book came out last year.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have a copy yet, do yourself and your family a favor and grab one<\/a>. Then grab another copy for your pastor or Bible study leader. (If you\u2019re new to my articles, I don\u2019t profit from book sales. I only write them to change lives.)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.frankviola.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/000-Post-cover.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n