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Religion Title: How do you know that the Bible is Divinely inspired? How do you know that the Bible is Divinely inspired? Leave a comment Posted by Anna Diehl on November 8, 2013 What we call the Bible today is a collection of old manuscripts that are believed to be Divinely inspired. The entire book did not magically appear one day out of thin air; instead the documents collected in it came into being at very different points in history. The ages of some manuscripts differ by centuries. It is important that we understand how our Bible came into being and what a tenuous thing its existence really is. After all, who’s to say that the Bible you read is really the correct one? Within the Christian Church there are several different biblical canons (collections of books) in use. Some denominations include more books in their Bibles—books which they believe to be every bit as inspired as the rest of Scriptures. Yet other branches of the Church reject these books as not inspired enough to warrant a place within our sacred Scriptures. Some Bibles include additional material for the books of Daniel, Esther, Psalms, and Jeremiah—material that other Bibles intentionally leave out. At some point we need to ask ourselves, “Why do I believe my Bible is truly inspired by God?” If our answer is just “Because someone else said so,” then we have a problem. We need a much better reason than this. Many Christians think the “proof” that the Bible is inspired can be found within the Bible itself: “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness…” (2 Timothy 3:16) But here we have a problem. This statement merely reflects one man’s opinion of the Old Testament, not the entire Book. Have you ever met Paul in person? Of course not. So why do you put so much stock in his opinion? Why do you hang on his every word and blindly believe anything he says? Because your pastor tells you to? If your pastor told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it? We Christians have such trouble remembering that the New Testament didn’t exist at the time it was being written. Every reference we find to “Scripture” in the Bible can only be referring to the Old Testament—either part or all of it, depending on when the comment was made. The Jewish men who penned our Bible had never heard of the New Testament. When Paul wrote his letters to Timothy and various churches, he had no idea that his letters would be preserved for all time. When he wrote to the church in Rome, he wasn’t trying add to what he considered to be inspired Scriptures. He was simply writing a letter to address certain issues, just as we write letters to people today. None of the New Testament authors were trying to expand the Scriptures. As far as they were concerned, the Scriptures plus the revelation of Jesus were complete and sufficient for training souls in righteousness. In their day, Jesus’ teachings were being spread about verbally and through individual letters like Romans, Colossians and Luke. There was no convenient collection of documents like we have today. It’s important to realize that this “Divinely inspired” business is a manmade label, which is easy to misapply. The letter of Romans did not come floating down to us from the sky with the Holy Spirit’s Personal seal on it. It began as just a letter—a document that could have been easily lost forever if someone hadn’t gone to the trouble of preserving it. What makes us decide to preserve a letter that some random human jotted down to someone else? Well, it depends on who the human was. If he was a man we respect, such as the apostle Paul, then we take special interest in the things he wrote. We figure that when it comes to God, Paul was given some spiritual insights that we could all benefit from. We read what his letter says, we pray about it, and if our gut feels like it sounds inspired, we put in the Bible and declare that it is now a sacred document which must never be altered. This is how we got the book of Romans into the Bible. This is how all the books got into the Bible we use today. One by one, they were pulled out of a vast sea of written material and declared as Divinely inspired. First the Jews gathered together the books we now call the Old Testament. Later on, Christians decided to trust the Jews’ judgment about their Scriptures being Divinely inspired, and then they added on more documents which we now call the New Testament. So when you read your Bible, you’re rifling through a collection of documents that some total strangers decided were trustworthy. You don’t know who these people are, yet you are blindly trusting their judgment. Is this a good thing? Not really. If all you’re doing is trusting in strangers, you could be just as easily talked into believing that some cultic book was the “infallible and inerrant” Word of God as well. After all, bibles aren’t unique to Christianity. Many religions have sacred scriptures, and many treat the writings of their prophets as Divinely inspired, even though those prophets were visited by “angels” who told them that Jesus was not the Son of God. If we’re going to risk our eternal future on other people’s opinions, visions, and dusty manuscripts, we could quite easily end up in Hell. Knowing the truth about who God is and what He wants from us is far too serious a thing to toy with. There are a lot of problems with trying to decide which documents are really worthy of receiving the “Divinely inspired” stamp. Authorship is a big one, yet we’re sometimes so impressed with a man that we get sloppy about testing the things he says. James, for example, makes some pretty farfetched claims in his book. He suggests that God will always heal the sick, as long as we follow a certa in formula of behavior and have faith. By now we’ve had time to learn that James’ guarantee simply doesn’t work. No doubt he was sharing what his personal experience had been, but his immature claim has caused volumes of needless torment and guilt for sincere souls whose requests for healing were denied. James is also the one who gives us that famous “resist the devil and he will flee from you” line which has also led many astray into believing they can have a life free from demonic harassment. Not hardly. As long as we are on this earth, we will be attacked by demons and many battles will be very long and arduous, no matter how stalwart our resistance is. Satan doesn’t flee for the hills the moment we start resisting him. Things are much more complicated than that. Satan couldn’t ever attack us in the first place unless God was giving him permission to, and when God lets Satan have at us, He has a reason for putting us through the ordeal. We’re supposed to be focused on growing through our trials, not just trying to escape them all through perfect prayers. Why did we keep the letter of man who has such underdeveloped theology? Because he was James. We consider his identity to be sufficient credentials—a system which has some obvious flaws. Interestingly, we don’t even know who wrote some of the documents that we now cling to as sacred. Why are we keeping the teachings of an unknown author? Because the contents ring true to us. Authorship and contents—that’s pretty much all we have to go by when dealing with old manuscripts. And of course there’s no telling what archeologists might dig up tomorrow. What if they uncover another letter from the apostle Paul? Will we consider that Divinely inspired as well? What if Paul says something totally wrong? Will we keep it just because it’s a work of his hand end up leading generations of Christians astray? How do we know when we’ve made a mistake with our labels? How do we really know that all the books in the Bible should be in it? Many Christians try to argue that “God obviously guided the formation of the Christian Bible, so that’s why we know it’s what He wants.” This is a very weak argument. God is in absolute control of this universe, yet He allows people to print lies and blasphemy about Him all the time. Just because God lets a book become published doesn’t mean He approves of its contents. We can’t just throw some documents together willy-nilly and call it a Divine revelation. Since you didn’t personally assemble the contents of your Bible—since you didn’t rifle through all the other documents available and do some serious studying and praying and comparing to see what sounded like an authentic message from God versus just someone’s opinion, <>how do you know that what you’re reading is really true? We can’t base our lives on words written by human hands simply because those humans claimed to be inspired by God. Any nutcase can claim to be inspired by God. Plenty of people claim the Quran is inspired by God. Others say the Book of Mormon is a sacred text that we should all be putting our trust in. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Are you going to risk the fate of your own soul based on someone else’s claims? Today we are so used to having our Old and New Testaments that we can’t imagine how we could ever come to know who God is without them. Yet as we turn back the historical clock, we find souls like Moses, Noah and Abraham coming to an understanding of who God is and what He wants without any Bible at all. There were no written Scriptures when these men first established personal relationships with God. Like us, they lived in a world that was filled with false religions and false gods. Everybody had a theory about who made the universe and what happened after death. Plenty of cultures had sacred writings and oral traditions that they considered to be divinely inspired. How could anyone possibly sort through such a mess to find the truth—especially someone without any access to Scripture? It’s an impossible situation as long as we stick to the ridiculous assumption that God needs the help of a Book to teach us. But when we remember that the Holy Spirit is quite capable of illuminating souls without using any props, a lot of things start making sense. Your relationship is with God, not a Book. God can speak to you using anything He wants: the Bible, a movie, a song on the radio, a conversation with a friend. We mustn’t become so narrow-minded that we start thinking we would be spiritually lost without our precious Bibles. Now of course it is a marvelous thing to have access to ancient documents which have been translated into languages we can understand. And if something we’re reading really was inspired by God—well, what a thrill. Of course we want to pay close attention. But before we can get all excited, we have to receive some kind of confirmation from the Holy Spirit within our own souls that what we’re reading is something He feels is true and accurate. It is YOUR responsibility to be a discerning Christian. You cannot simply rely on the judgment of a bunch of dead theologians and scholars who lived long ago and decided the Scriptures you have are authentic. The only way you’re going to be able to tell the difference between truly inspired documents and clever counterfeits is by going to God directly. You must remember that GOD is your end goal. You are building a relationship with a living, active, non-human Being. You aren’t just reading the Bible to study up on religious tradition like one studies up on the origins of Santa Claus. If you want to know God, you have to talk to Him directly—you can’t just sit around reading bits of paper. Prayer and focus are essential elements of discernment. If your soul isn’t focused on the Holy Spirit when you read the Bible, and if you aren’t asking Him to show you His truths, then you’re just wasting your time. Satan has all kinds of interpretations that he’d like to shove on you, and unless you are in tune with God, you’ll be an easy sell for his lies. Countless Christian theologians, teachers, and laymen have gone far astray because they tried to use the Bible as a substitute for God. Without God, the Book is useless. Unless we are aligned with Him every time we read with a submissive, eager-to-learn, open minded attitude, we are just going to keep recycling the same lies that have been passed around the Church for years. You need God to teach you truth, and as a Christian, you have Him dwelling right inside of you all the time. Now you just need to be wise enough to listen to Him. Don’t be impressed by manmade credentials and degrees. Many souls who have spent thousands of dollars to purchase a doctorate in biblical studies are total idiots when it comes to God’s truth because they aren’t listening to Him. You don’t have to follow their bad example. By all means, read your Bible—but only receive from it truths that the Holy Spirit is giving to you. Don’t let Paul, James, Luke, Matthew or anyone else be your final authority in life. Listen to God Himself, and He will tell you when the words of other men have merit for you. So then, is all Scripture really God-breathed? Don’t take Paul’s word for it. Ask the Holy Spirit. He’s the only One who really knows.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 14.
#10. To: SOSO (#0)
Baloney
The linked site is a tritheism site. Perhaps a stealth Mormon site. Doing more research.
Would the article's source or the author's affiliation be a legitimate reason to not address or consider the points raised? Is it not possible for someone to ask good questions or make good points if they have imperfect theology?
#19. To: Pinguinite, Vicomte13, TooConservative, GarySpFc, liberator (#14)
Well yes of course. If one gets the Nature of God incorrect they will get just about everything wrong. Because, if Jesus is not Who He says He is then jettison the whole deal. That is why the site relegates Holy Scriptures to mere suggestions. The 10 Commandments then become the "10 suggestions" etc.
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