THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD

CW – Welcome once again to our broadcast. We promised
you that we would be talking in the coming weeks about
the basics of what Christians believe and why they
believe it. To do that we will introduce you to the
source of what we believe - the Bible.	Christians have
been known to the world as the people of the Book. 
Other religions have their books but Christians have
The Book and that book is different from all other
books claimed by all other religions.

Paul – That’s right CW.  Every religion known to man
tries to answer questions about their god or gods to
fill the God-shaped void that exists in each of us,
and there have been many so called prophets that have
claimed to speak for god and have produced books that
claim to be the truth about god and the world. 
Hinduism has the Vedas, Buhddism has the teachings of
Buddha, Islam has their Koran, and Mormonism has the
Book of Mormon. These books often make for some very
interesting and even fanciful reading but none are
like the Bible of CHRISTIANITY. Christians point to
the Bible and say it is the sole standard for all our
faith and practice.  It is our Final Authority.

Ford – Yes, Brother Paul, we hang a fancy word on that
belief called “sola scriptura” which is basically
speaking saying that Scripture is the only infallible
rule for deciding issues of faith and practices that
involve doctrine. Some people think the issue first
came up during the Protestant Reformation when
Christians were rebelling from the Catholic Church.
But the truth is that there has always been a body of
Christian believers from the day of Pentecost till
today that held to the belief that Holy Scripture is
the sole authority for what we believe. 

CW – Brother FORD, I recall that you used to give your
students a booklet called “The Trail of Blood” that
showed how the true church existed in an unbroken line
for 2000 years of history.

Ford – It was called The Trail of Blood because true
Christian believers were persecuted and killed for
their faith; they shed their blood as a testimony to
their faithfulness to the Word of God.  And this has
been occurring since the very beginning of the church
as described in the Book of Acts.  These believers
searched the Scriptures to make sure that what they
heard being preached was accurate and true, and not
some pack of lies and false doctrines.

Paul – The Bible has the answers to the questions that
all people are searching for.  Answers not found in
the sacred literature of non-Christian religions.  I
have read much of the material in those other books,
and it does not satisfy.  The other books just don’t
measure up when it comes to providing good answers to
the important questions of life, such as: where we
came from; where we are going; and what is our life
worth as an individual.  

People the world over and through out history have
sought God and tried to worship god in various ways. 
So many are wondering if God really exists, and if He
does exist, then what is He like?  Our Bible tells us
all that, and it also tells us what God thinks about
us.  
The Bible is a record of God’s communication to man.
It tells us about such important things as, what
happens to us after we die. 

CW – The answers God gives us in His word makes our
bible different from all the books offered by other
religions.  THAT IS THE TOPIC OF OUR PROGRAM.  Our
faith is based on the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 He is the foundation of our Christian belief and His
word, the Holy Bible, is part of Him; because it is
His testimony.  What the Bible teaches is the basis of
all doctrinal claims made by genuine Christianity –
THE HOLY BIBLE is a book that is truly unique - like
no other book in the entire world.

Paul – Yes, the Bible is our authority.  Its authority
is recognized and acknowledged by people who never
read it.  For example, our political and legal systems
have historically required people to swear oaths by
laying their hand upon the Bible.  It is ironic that
all of our judges and politicians have sworn upon the
very Bible that they often deny in their rulings and
legislation.  Abortions would never have become
legalized in the United States if our judges had taken
seriously their oaths made upon the Bible.
The very word “bible” has come into common usage as
another word for “authority” on a subject.  We see
non-religious books published often that are called
bibles, like the Shooter’s Bible or the Camper’s
Bible, and others.

CW – Where did we get the word Bible?

Paul – According to my dictionary, our English word
“bible” comes from the name of an early Phoenician
city, “Byblos”, that was named after the papyrus plant
that was used to make paper.  The city of Byblos was
one of the first major locations that manufactured and
exported the paper made from papyrus.  Much later the
word byblos came into common usage among Latin and
Greek speakers.  The word in its various forms came to
mean “book”, after the papyrus plant paper became more
popular for writing on than the other materials than
had been previously used, such as bricks, wood, pieces
of pottery, and animal skins.
	It is interesting to note that the word “bible” never
actually appears in “the Holy Bible”.  In addition,
though the word means book, our Bible is more than
just one book.  It is really a collection [a
compendium] of books and letters written by
approximately 40 different people over a period of at
least 1500 years, and maybe as much as 2000 years.  
The oldest document in the Bible is the Book of “JOB”
which is generally thought to have been written during
the time of the patriarchs (ABRAHAM, ISAAC, JACOB, AND
JOSEPH) around 1600 to 1900 bc.  
The most recent document is the book of “The
REVELATION” which was written during the first century
A.D. by the apostle John while he was in exile on the
island of Patmos.

	Ford – To me that is one of the most amazing things
about the Bible.  It was written over a couple
thousand years by many different people, yet, it has a
remarkable consistency and utter lack of
contradiction.  You cannot say that about other
so-called “holy books.”

PAUL - Unlike the other books held sacred by various
religions of the world, our Holy Bible is based upon
actual historical events.  The history of the ancient
world has been dated by many of the events recorded in
the Bible, though modern liberal scholars don’t want
to recognize the Bible for what it is – an accurate
history book, as well as, a special revelation from
God Almighty.

CW – Yes, I have heard that the Bible has actually
been used to discover oil.  People just looked where
the Bible hinted that something was to be found.

Paul - For one of the seminary classes I taught I
developed a historical timeline based upon the dating
system God uses in the book of Genesis.  A similar
method was used several hundred years ago by Bishop
Ussher when he developed his system of dating that has
been published in some of our modern Bibles, like the
Scofield Reference Bible and others.  Bishop Ussher
was able to develop a dating system by using passages
in the Bible that estimated the creation of Adam and
Eve around 4004 BC.  You can still purchase copies of
his work, a large book that provides a history of the
world from creation until the time of Christ and
beyond.

Ford – And you know one of my areas of study is in the
field of Creation and post flood science. Things like
Niagara falls and even the Great Barrier Reef have
been shown in the light of science to be about 4000
years old. These began to form after the flood. This
gives us about 6000 years from the Creation to present
time, which fits into a prophetic understanding of
God’s Word as well. The Bible is more than black print
on white paper or the ramblings of some mystic’s
imagination. As a matter of fact the Jewish system of
counting time places the world just short of six
thousand years old.

Paul – Yes we have very sound reasons to believe that
the Bible is talking about real people who actually
lived and spoke the words written about in the pages
of scripture.  In addition, the Bible boldly claims
itself to be the words of God.  Expressions, such as:
“Thus saith the LORD”; and “I am the LORD God and
besides me there is no other god”.  We say that it is
a “Special Revelation” to us from God, so that we
might know Him in a more personal way than would
otherwise be possible if all we had to reveal God to
us was just the “General Revelation” of God seen in
the created world around us.  

CW - Brother Paul, we like to remind people that the
Bible does not merely contain the word of God; it is
the word of God.

Paul – Good point!  The so called liberal scholars and
theologians like to pick the Bible apart and try to
tell us which parts are from God and which parts are
merely the imaginations of men.  The men and women
that teach that are doubters and unbelievers - It is a
sign of unbelief in the inspiration of the Bible.  The
sum total of all the scriptures, from Genesis to
Revelation, is literally God breathed.  We use the
technical term “plenary inspiration” to describe the
belief that the entire Bible is inspired – not merely
some parts of it.  It is inerrant (without error) in
all parts and in all teachings whether about salvation
or about history.

The liberals try to convince us that the history as
related in the Bible is not accurate.  That God could
not have created the world in merely 6 days; that
there could not have been a worldwide flood and a
literal ark of wood that saved all living land and air
creatures.  They tell us that the Bible is filled with
inaccuracies when it comes to people and places and
timeframes.  Of course there has never been a
documented, fully proven error identified anywhere in
the written word of God.  In fact, just the opposite
has occurred.  Many times the so-called errors of the
Bible have been later proven to be accurate when
discoveries have confirmed the biblical account while
simultaneously discrediting the claims of the
unbelievers.  A couple of well-known examples are: 
the discovery of the Hittite civilization that for
years scholars had claimed never existed; and the
discovery of Babylonian and Egyptian writings that
have confirmed that written communications existed in
the time of Moses and earlier, though scholars had
claimed that Moses could not have written the first 5
books of the Bible so early in history due to their
idea that no written communication was developed that
early in the world.

FORD – Before we leave the subject of inspiration of
scripture, let’s not fail to mention that the Bible is
not only fully inspired in all parts, but it is
inspired in every word.  We speak of the “Verbal
inspiration” when we mean that the inspiration extends
to the very words used, not merely to the ideas
presented.

When God inspired the use of a singular instead of a
plural word, we know that he intended to use a
singular instead of a plural.  When he uses a verb
instead of a noun, or a masculine instead of feminine
word, we know that is exactly what he wanted us to
read.

CW – That is one of the reasons that we like the King
James Version better than the newer English
translations.

FORD – If a Bible translator does not believe in the
inspiration of each and every word, then he is not
going to worry about translating each word exactly. 
Instead, he will translate the idea presented by a
passage and change the wording.  We call that “dynamic
equivalence”.  The King James translators were very
careful to use the more precise and more accurate form
of translating that we call “formal equivalence”. 
What that means, basically is that the King James
Version is a word for word translation that preserves
the verbal inspiration.  However, all the other
translations deny the verbal inspiration of scripture
because they make changes to the words and phrases
that appear in the Greek and Hebrew original language
versions.  They make sometimes subtle and sometimes
glaring changes to what God has given us when they add
and delete words, use words with different meanings,
change the order of words, change the tense and
gender, and on-and-on.  They do not show a genuine
respect for what God actually inspired the writers to
pen down, but instead they provide us their opinion of
what the apostles and prophets should have said.

Paul – Jesus himself told us that every jot and every
tittle of God’s word would be preserved, but men are
constantly trying to prove him wrong.  They refuse to
accept the accuracy of the scriptures as they have
been preserved by the Jews and by the true Christian
believers down through history.

Let me give a couple of examples.  The New
International Version deletes sometimes entire verses
and casts doubt on entire passages with foot notes and
margin notes that claim the passages are not accurate
or do not belong.  The NIV authors would have us
believe that Jesus did not really have a conversation
with the woman taken in adultery and her accusers, or
that the last 12 verses of Mark’s gospel are part of
God’s inspiration.  The NIV translators want us to
believe that numerous verses should be left out of the
Bible, verses like the following 12 examples:  Matt
17:21, Matt 18:11, Matt 23:14, Mark 7:16, Mark 9:44
and 46, Mark 11:16, Mark 15:28, Luke 23:17, Acts 8:37,
Acts 28:29, and Rom 16:24.

Now, either God has inspired and preserved his actual
words or He has not, but we can’t have it both ways. 
I like to say that the Bible is God’s love letter to
each of us, and I personally want to know exactly what
He said.  I am not interested in hearing a rough
version of what Jesus said or did, nor am I interested
in reading what some man thinks God would have or
could have or should have said.  I want to know what
God actually inspired the authors to write – word for
word.

FORD – Let’s be clear.  You are not saying that the
King James Version is verbally inspired are you?

PAUL – No, I am not saying that.  The Bible was
originally written in primarily the Hebrew and Greek
languages, and it is the words in the Hebrew and Greek
that are verbally inspired.  What I am saying is that
the King James translators did a much better job of
preserving the verbal inspiration than did any of the
other modern translators of the Bible into English.  I
don’t think that the KJV is a perfect translation, but
I am convinced that it provides us a more literal and
accurate translation of what God originally inspired.

FORD – Dr. D. A. Waite said it well when he summarized
the issue something like this.  The King James Version
has the benefit of having had:
1.  better qualified translators, 
2.  better original language manuscripts, 
3.  better translating techniques and methods used,
and
4.	better life changing impact throughout the world.

CW - God has truly blessed the use of the KJV in
missionary and evangelistic work over almost 400
years.

PAUL  – You can literally say that God anointed the
King James Version through the blood of countless
numbers of saints that was shed when they were
martyred for trying to translate, print, and
distribute that version of God’s word.  I love to read
the stories about the faith and the sacrifices made by
people such as Wyclif and Tyndale and others as they
fought and died trying to get an accurate English
translation into the hands of the common man.

CW – William Tyndale’s translating was so good that
much of his work was used by the King James
Translators in their version.

PAUL – Let me summarize briefly for our listeners what
we have discussed so far in this program.  First, we
have stated that the entire Bible is God’s word, not
just parts of it.  Second, we have said that the
scriptures are God breathed or inspired, and that they
are without error and infallible.  Third, we have
stated that the Bible is both fully inspired from
front to back and that the inspiration goes to the
very words used, not just to the ideas presented. 
Fourth, we reviewed the orthodox doctrine of “sola
scriptura” that means that the Holy Bible and only the
Holy Bible is the source and authority for true
Christian doctrines and teaching.

FORD – The Roman Catholic Church says that it gave us
the Bible, and that scripture is primary but not
solely our authority in matters of doctrine and
teachings.  They use the expression “prima scriptura”
and condemn the teaching of “sola scriptura” by
Baptists and Protestants.  It was Martin Luther who
first popularized the term “sola scriptura”, but the
idea that the scriptures were the sole authority, not
the traditions of the church leaders, has been
recognized by true Christians since the time of the
apostles.

PAUL – In theory there are only three possible sources
of authority for a Christian to rely upon.  He could
accept the tradition or authority of the church - as
the Roman Catholics teach.  Or, a Christian could
accept human logic and reasoning as his ultimate
authority.  That is what liberal thinkers and many
so-called scholars claim as their authority.  The
third option is the one that we advocate, and the one
that the Bible teaches, is to let the Bible itself be
the ultimate authority – this is true sola scriptura,
only scripture, nothing else.  This is also the
historical position of the true believers as described
in both the Bible and in the writings of many of the
early believers.

The idea of sola scriptura is even present in the Old
Testament in the beliefs of Abraham, Moses, David, the
prophets, and all those who exercised faith in God’s
word, as opposed to trusting in vain rituals and
traditions of men.  In the Gospels, Jesus actually
criticized the Pharisees for teaching the “traditions
of men” as if they were the doctrines of God.  We see
the same thing happening today.  So many people will
just not study the scriptures in order to seek the
truth, but instead they rely upon their preachers or
priests or teachers to tell them what God has said.

CW – They are betting their souls upon another man’s
words, rather than resting in the true words of God.

PAUL – This brings us to the fifth point that we are
addressing in this program about the Written Word of
God.  Each and every person must assume responsibility
for knowing and responding to what God has said, but
actually doing that is not quite as simple and
straightforward as most people assume.  Someone has to
be responsible for correctly interpreting the
scriptures and for understanding what God is asking
each of us to do, and then for doing what God asks. 
Here is the problem, the Bible tells us that we are
all sinners by nature – conceived and born into sin -
and that we are blinded by Satan and the world to the
truths of God.  The Bible says that there is none
good, no not one, and that there is none that seeks
after God, but that we all have gone astray. 
Therefore, it is only through the illuminating work of
the Holy Spirit that anyone can truly appreciate the
spiritual truths revealed in God’s word.

FORD – The Holy Spirit is the agent of God that works
in the hearts and minds of men to create a sense of
need for God and to convict our hearts of sin, so that
we will come to Him.  It is said that He draws us to
him, in order that we might be saved.

PAUL – Yes, we are touching here upon a hotly debated
topic of theology.  Believers that call themselves
“Reformed Christians” are those like Presbyterians and
others that follow in the footsteps of John Calvin and
other Reformation teachers that taught that mankind is
“Totally Depraved”.  By that they mean that no person
can come to God or trust in God until after God has
already saved them and indwelled them.  This is
usually called the belief in “Predestination” or
“Irresistible Grace” and is a primary teaching of
Calvinism.  This is opposed to the teachings in
Baptist and Methodist denominations where the “free
will” of the believers is said to enable a person to
freely choose to either accept Christ’s gift of
salvation or to freely reject the offer of salvation.

FORD – But, both groups, those that believe in
Predestination, and those that believe in the free
will of the individual, believe that it is the Holy
Spirit of God that illuminates the heart of the
individual and awakens him to the need for salvation.

PAUL – Yes, both see that only by the grace of God can
we see our depraved state and understand our need for
salvation.  But, the difference is in the fact that
Calvinist teach that a person has no say in the matter
– either God has arranged for him to be saved or to be
condemned, and there is nothing that the individual
can do to resist God’s will in that.  The free will
advocates teach that each individual is given enough
freedom by God to choose whether he will accept or
reject God’s gift.  They believe that God does all the
work of salvation, except that he does allow the
individual the choice after he is enlightened or
illuminated through the convicting power of the Holy
Spirit.

This is considered a confusing point to many, but in
my view the important point is this.  Since only the
Holy Spirit can illuminate the heart of the sinner,
then it is of the utmost importance that we all pray
for the unsaved and ask God to prick their consciences
and convict their souls of sin.  We can witness to an
unbeliever all day long, but until the Holy Spirit
decides to work within their heart, there is nothing
that we can accomplish.  Prayer is the key, but
accompanied by our faithful witnessing, since we
cannot always know when or how the Spirit will work in
the life of a potential convert.

CW – As a closing thought, have you ever wondered why
God wanted to use a written copy of His word?

FORD - We have been careful to focus our teaching on
the written word of God for a reason.  It was God
Himself that decided that a written communication was
necessary.  With a little thinking, we should be able
to understand why God wanted to have His word written.

PAUL – Since God wanted all people to hear the good
news and have an opportunity to be saved, He knew that
only by the written word could the truth be made
available to all people, during all periods of time,
and in all regions of the world.  Not everyone would
be able to personally witness Christ’s life, death,
and resurrection.  Not everyone would be able to hear
His teaching, and no one could be trusted to hear the
gospel message and then to pass it along without
changing the exact wording of the message.  So, a
method was needed to insure the accuracy of each word,
and then to send the exact message to many people in
many difference places at many different points in
time.  The use of a written method is the only known
way to get the message out to everyone when they need
it.

FORD – Yes, the written method is the best way to
preserve the accuracy.  In addition, it is the easiest
method to use in the teaching and training of
evangelists for the faith.  Not everyone can attend a
Bible College or get seminary training on the finer
points of doctrinal teaching.  Not everyone wants to
wait upon a teacher or a mentor to show them the
proper way to share the gospel or to otherwise obey
the commandments of God.  If a person can read, then
the fastest, most accurate way to study and to learn
is through reading the material himself.  That way
there is no reason to blame anyone else for the lack
of knowledge or understanding or for the lack of
action.  

God has really left us no excuses.