James Carter Facebook ad: “Read This If You Read the Bible”

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The last words Jesus spoke before He died were a cry so raw that the people standing at the foot of the cross could barely make sense of what He was saying. Most Christians know that. Here is what most Christians have never been shown. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" is not a cry of despair. It is a direct quotation. The opening line of Psalm 22. A psalm penned by King David roughly a thousand years before Jesus was born. Jesus was not losing His faith on the cross. He was quoting Scripture. And in ancient Jewish tradition, when a rabbi quoted the first line of a psalm, He was calling upon the entire psalm. Every person standing at Golgotha who knew the Torah would have recognized exactly what He was doing. He was not crying out in defeat. He was pointing them to a prophecy. Now here is what makes that breathtaking. Psalm 22 was composed approximately one thousand years before the Roman Empire invented crucifixion. Yet look at what David wrote. "They pierced my hands and my feet." Crucifixion did not exist when those words were written. David had no context for it. No historical reference. And yet there it is, woven into the Jewish Scriptures a millennium before the method of execution that would fulfill it had ever been conceived. But that is not all. "They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing." The Roman soldiers standing beneath the cross did exactly that. They gambled for the robe of a dying man, fulfilling a line of poetry penned by a Hebrew king who had been dead for a thousand years. "I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me." Crucifixion dislocated nearly every major joint in the body. The victim hung suspended while the weight of their own frame pulled their skeleton apart. Every bone became visible beneath the skin. David described it. A thousand years early. In a song. And most Christians who have heard "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" their entire lives have absolutely no idea that those words are the opening line of the most detailed prophecy of crucifixion ever recorded. But here is the part that changes everything. Psalm 22 does not end in agony. Most Christians assume that Jesus died in despair because they only know the first verse. They hear the cry and feel the anguish and believe that the cross ends in darkness. It does not. The closing verses of Psalm 22 are a declaration of total, absolute, cosmic victory. "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before Him." "Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim His righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it." He has done it. The Hebrew word is a single, thundering declaration that scholars translate as the equivalent of one word. Finished. The same word Jesus spoke as His final breath on the cross. "It is finished." Jesus did not die quoting the beginning of Psalm 22. He died fulfilling the end of it. And by quoting the opening line, He was telling every person who knew the Scriptures exactly how the story would end. Not in defeat. In victory. And most Christians have read right past it their entire lives. Not because they do not care. Not because their faith is shallow. But because nobody ever showed them what Psalm 22 actually says. Nobody ever revealed to them that the cry and the triumph are the same psalm. Nobody ever handed them the context that transforms a familiar moment of anguish into the most purposeful declaration in the history of the world. That is the problem I stumbled into sitting in a room with my Bible study group. I have been teaching Scripture for 22 years. And one Thursday night I asked my group what Psalm 22 actually says. Silence. They glanced at each other. Looked down at their Bibles. Flipped through their notes. One person said it was about David going through suffering. Nobody knew it described crucifixion a thousand years before crucifixion existed. Nobody had connected the opening line to what Jesus said on the cross. Nobody understood that the psalm ends in victory, not despair. They had read it. They had highlighted it. They had heard it preached from pulpits for years. And they had no idea what they were actually reading. They understood my explanations of Scripture, but not the Scripture itself. And the moment I was not there to walk them through it, they were completely on their own. I am a pastor. I have been teaching Scripture for 22 years. And I had been failing them the entire time. That night after everyone left I sat alone in that quiet room for a long while, thinking about that cry from the cross. Thinking about how many Good Fridays those people had heard those words and felt the sorrow without ever feeling the victory woven inside it. They could not see it. And it was not their fault. Nobody had ever given them the roots. The next morning I sat down at my desk and started writing. Genesis. Everything someone needs to know before opening Genesis. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening in the ancient world at the time. The main themes. How it fits into the larger story. Not a sermon. Not a devotional. Just the roots. I stripped it down over and over until my teenage daughter could read it and grasp it completely on her own. Then I did Exodus. Then Leviticus. Then Numbers. Every single book of the Bible. Sixty-six pages. One page per book. It took me four months. Four months of sitting at my dining room table after everyone went to bed. Four months of writing and rewriting until it was as clear as I could possibly make it. Four months of taking 22 years of studying and distilling it into a format that any believer could use completely on their own. No pastor required. The next Thursday I brought those 66 pages to Bible study and placed a copy at every seat. "Before we open our Bibles tonight," I said, "I want you to read the page on Psalms. Just read it. Then we will study." I watched them read. Then I said, "Now open your Bibles to Psalm 22." And I watched something I had never seen before in 22 years of ministry. Their eyes changed. Not confusion. Not blank staring. Understanding. Pure understanding. One woman looked up at me with tears streaming down her face. "I have heard those words every single Easter of my life. And tonight is the first time I understood that Jesus was not crying out in despair. He was quoting a prophecy that ends in victory. He knew how it ended. He always knew." A man on the other side of the room said softly, "David described crucifixion a thousand years before it existed. That has been in my Bible my whole life. And nobody ever showed me." Another woman said, "I always thought the cross was the darkest moment in Scripture. But Psalm 22 ends with every nation turning to God. He was not announcing His death. He was announcing His victory." The rest of that evening was unlike anything I had experienced before. They were not waiting for me to explain it. They were uncovering it themselves. Connecting Psalm 22 to the Gospel accounts. Connecting David's words to the soldiers casting lots. Connecting "He has done it" to "It is finished." Seeing the thread that runs through the entire Bible once you know where to look. They were actually understanding Scripture. At the end of the night one of the older men walked up to me. He had been in my Bible study for eight years and a Christian for over thirty-five. "Pastor," he said quietly, "I have been reading my Bible my whole life. And I feel like I have only just now actually begun to understand it. Thank you." I went home that night and told my wife what happened. "They got it. For the first time, they actually got it." That was more than ten months ago. Since then hundreds of people have shared the same thing with me. "This is the first time I have ever understood what I was reading." Not because I am some brilliant teacher. But because I finally gave them what they actually needed. The roots. Who wrote each book. When. Why. What was happening in the world at the time. The main themes. How each book connects to the one before it and the one after it. And once you have those roots, the Bible you thought you knew becomes something you have never truly encountered before. Psalm 22 is just one moment. There are thousands more like it waiting in the pages you have already read. Did you know that the Hebrew word for "worm" in Psalm 22:6, "I am a worm and not a man," is tola, the crimson worm? That when the tola worm dies, it climbs onto a tree, its body breaks open, and it releases a scarlet dye that stains everything beneath it. That after three days, the crimson residue turns white. That Jesus quoted this very psalm from a tree, His body was broken, His blood poured out scarlet, and on the third day everything changed. Did you know that the ram God provided on Mount Moriah to spare Isaac appeared on the same mountain where the Temple would later stand and where Jesus would ultimately be crucified? That Abraham named that place "The Lord will provide" and a thousand years later God provided on that exact spot? Did you know that when Jesus said "It is finished," the Greek word tetelestai was the same word stamped on receipts in the Roman Empire to mean "paid in full"? That His final declaration was not a statement of ending but of completion. A cosmic debt marked as settled. Context changes everything. Every single time. I call it The 66 Roots Journey. It has 66 pages. One for every book of the Bible. Each page gives you what you need before you read. Who wrote it. When. Why. What was happening in the world at the time. The key themes. The symbolism and imagery. And how it connects to your actual life today. Written in plain language. No seminary terms. No complicated theology. Just the roots that make everything you have already read suddenly carry the full weight God intended. Because here is what I know after 22 years of teaching Scripture. The Bible is not confusing because it is unclear. It is confusing because we are reading it without the foundation that made it clear to the people it was first written for. They knew the psalms by heart. They heard the opening line and felt the ending before Jesus ever spoke it. They saw Him quoting David from the cross and understood that what looked like the darkest hour in history was actually the fulfillment of the greatest promise ever made. We hear the cry and miss the triumph underneath it. This guide gives you that foundation back. If you have ever heard "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me" and felt the weight of it without understanding the victory woven inside it. If you have ever read a passage of Scripture and sensed there was something deeper beneath the words that you could not quite grasp. If you have ever wondered what you would discover in God's Word if someone just gave you the roots first. This is what you have been looking for. God did not speak from the cross by accident. He never does anything by accident. Do not let a lack of context be the thing that keeps you from understanding what He has been saying to you your entire life. Draw closer to God by actually understanding His Word. Not just the familiar parts. All of it. The whole story. That is what The 66 Roots Journey was built for. And you can start yours today. I'll link it right down below. God bless you and your journey through His Word. 🤍

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Read This If You Read the Bible ☝️