Posted on 02/23/2015 1:54:30 PM PST by boatbums
The Bible, the Word of the one true and living God, is the truth and the only source of truth that convicts of sin, warns of judgment, saves the sinner, purifies, cleanses, matures the believer and gives the hope of eternal glory. And because it is the revelation of God by which God does His work to His own ever-lasting glory, it is the priority for the church and for every believer. It is also always under attack, always under assault by Satan and his demons and the people in the kingdom of darkness. Attacks on the Bible have never ceased, they’ve only accumulated through the years.
In the early years, the Bible was attacked as to its veracity, its truthfulness, as to its inspiration, its inerrancy. It was attacked as to its completeness. Is it all the revelation we have? Or isn’t God giving more? Aren’t there more revelations in visions and dreams and words of wisdom and words of knowledge? And is the Bible the singular inspired text of God, or are there not other texts that are equally inspired of God? Is the Bible relevant? Is not the fact that it is an antiquated book, an ancient book, if you will, written in another context in other languages in another time, in another place, doesn’t that set it on the shelf and make it virtually irrelevant to this modern world? And is the Bible actually comprehensible? Is it clear? Can it be understood?
Through the years we have gone to battle on all these kinds of issues. The early part of my ministry here was directed at the issue of inerrancy. Is the Bible inerrant? That is, in its original autograph without error in all that it says and all that it affirms? That battleground launched a ten-year effort by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy to defend the inerrancy of Scripture. A hundred scholars were engaged in that formidable effort, defending the inerrancy, the inspiration and thus the authority of Scripture down to every inspired word.
Then came another wave of attacks in the next decade, coming from those people who didn’t believe the Bible was all the revelation there was. There was more revelation. There were dreams and visions and experiences and the voice of God. And revelation was continuing as God was speaking. And that was very, very dominant in the Charismatic Movement.
There was associated with that a kind of spiritual movement, a kind of an inner-voice movement where people began to develop the idea that you could listen for the voice of God and He would speak to you quietly, privately in your own heart in some kind of quasi-audible fashion, giving you verbal direction, by directing your thoughts in a certain way. And this, too, was the revelation of God. And if you wanted to really live the Christian life, you had to learn to listen for the voice of God apart from Scripture.
In more recent years there’s been an attack on the clarity of Scripture, coming from the emerging church, telling us the Bible is not clear in anything to speak of, and so we want to be open and generous and all-embracing and have a conversation with everybody because we can’t be sure about anything.
But in the middle of those kinds of battles, there has been another battle that just goes along all the time, and that is assaults on the sufficiency of Scripture, as if somehow the Bible wasn’t enough. You need more than the Bible to make the gospel attractive. You need more than the Bible to solve your marital problems. You need more than the Bible to get a grip on your own life. You’ve got certain kinds of personality quirks that can only be resolved through psychology. We have been embroiled in battles for the sufficiency of Scripture throughout the years, it is an issue that is not only an issue in our culture, but it’s been an issue all over the world, everywhere I have gone. Of necessity I have preached on the sufficiency of Scripture that the Word of God is true, it is inerrant, it is inspired, it is complete. It brings all revelation to an end. Nothing more is needed than the truth of the of the Word of God applied by the Spirit of God. It is clear and it is sufficient...it is sufficient. Not all these attacks, by the way, come from people outside Christianity, most of them come from people who call themselves Christians, liberal theologians, experientialists, existentialists, pragmatists, occultists, cultists, etc., etc., all claiming to represent God and attacking Scripture’s inspiration, inerrancy, historicity, canonicity, uniqueness, power, clarity and sufficiency. And so we’re always going to need to go back and defend Scripture.
How do we do that? Well there are two possibilities. You could defend Scripture from outside Scripture, then you would make human reason the ultimate determiner of Scripture’s truth. Far better to let Scripture defend itself and then you let Scripture be the ultimate determiner of its own veracity. And so we take what is called a presuppositional approach to the defense of Scripture, we presuppose the truthfulness of Scripture. We assume it to be so. And any faithful, diligent exercise in studying Scripture will yield the fact that this is truly the Word of God, we let Scripture speak for itself, not trying to defend Scripture from outside Scripture, but from inside Scripture. Let God speak in defense of the Word which He has written.
Right there with you bro. Chauncey. God gave us free will and that free will includes to, everyone who voted for Obama and liberals of his ilk who support the killing of innocents, homosexuality, perversion of marriage, etc., etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Evil seems to be in the majority everywhere we turn. I'm praying that we get some leaders who are committed to Jesus Christ and soon, if we don't there will be dire consequences for our country. I'm old and may be with our Lord before it happens but I want better for my children and grand children than what I see with our country right now.
Thanks. Excellent series. Just listened to the pod cast last week on the GTY App.
Seems some really need the refresher.
Have you been following this forum lately.
First came Christ and the Church. Then came the Bible.
Sadly I have. Most of the posts have been of a decidedly unedifying nature. And as noted by my earlier comment, the intellectual level of some of the posts have been... I will be polite and say unimpressive.
Some of the titles are very basic. However the pieces themselves are very good.
Not saying you but the norm around here is for folks to comment on just the title of a post.
We have a wide spectrum of articles posted here. Some basic and some more advanced. I gather you are no longer feeding on “milk” and want more “meat” here? If so lead the way. I say that constructively.
Please keep in mind that some obfuscation appears on these forums. To the point where clarity of message is important. So I thank Rnmomof7 for providing these articles/sermons.
I though this
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3258163/posts
was rather meaty. But as you noted, people seem to comment on titles without actually reading the post or the linked article/book etc.
No, you laugh at the apologetics...God wrote the apologetics...And we read, believe and understand them...
Psa 119: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
1Co 1:19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
1Co 1:20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
1Co 1:21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
1Co 1:22 For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom:
1Co 1:23 But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
HaHa...Can you wrap your intellectual mind around that???
Yep.
I got you beat:
>>”HaHa...Can you wrap your intellectual mind around that???”
“HaHa...Can you wrap your intellectual mind around that???”
I think so...
“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
Let me translate that for anyone who isn't wise to the RC tricks of the trade:
When they say "The Bible", they mean the compiled into a single volume all the books of the Old Testament (plus some extra-Biblical ones they placed with it even though they were NOT Divinely-inspired like ALL the rest) along with all the books of the New Testament and finally "infallibly" declared (by them, of course) to BE God's word, The Bible. But, seeing as the word "Bible" means "book", and ALL the actual Old Testament writings were long recognized as Divinely-inspired hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth as the incarnate God, the Roman Catholic church cannot claim "they" gave the world the Scriptures.
The writings that make up the New Testament were recognized by the first Christians AS also Divinely-inspired sacred Scripture because they received them from the Apostles of Jesus Christ. These writings didn't need some church meeting deciding whether or not they would obey God's word to them because they already had the example given to them for the Old Testament Scriptures and these new ones followed the same pattern and were authoritative BECAUSE they were from God, not man. The early Christian churches collected copies of these writings, made more copies and disseminated them throughout the local churches of the known world - this happened before the close of the first century.
Having them all placed together in a single bound volume, hardly meant the Scriptures didn't exist until that happened. Every Jewish synagogue had their scrolls of the Old Testament books. They certainly didn't have to wait for the church to give it to them. Jesus even read from such a scroll when he was twelve years old.
The Roman Catholic church likes to claim they came before Scripture - which is untrue - so they can claim authority OVER Scripture - which is preposterous AND blasphemous. If quoting the authority of Scripture was good enough for Jesus to prove His place, mission, purpose and plans, then it should be good enough for "church" people as well. Like this article points out, God defends the authority of HIS word throughout the Bible and He expects us to believe it and obey it.
This is just one of the many exaggerations and distractions RC polemicists will try here and have tried here - many times. Forewarned is forearmed.
Yes and I commented on that thread as well:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3258163/posts?page=8#8
Which the elements in which the author deems is unity is quite dividing between the West and East churches. As I noted in the link above.
Explain what you mean by the “complete” Bible, then. And how does this effect what the article describes as God’s OWN defense of Scripture? Do you disagree that He does this? Thank you.
AMEN
Could be, yes..
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