Foundations for Christian Leadership Building Foundations for Life

Student’s Note Session 2

GOD'S WORD -- REVEALER OF SALVATION

Today there are many people who say that they have the truth. There are members of certain
religions who say that their is the only true religion. There are some who say all paths are the
same; any path you choose will lead you to God. Others say there is no God. How do we know
what is true?

As Christians, we believe that truth matters. Jesus said that He was the way, the truth and life
(Jn. 14:6). Pontius Pilate, before Jesus' crucifixion, asked an important question: What is truth?
(Jn. 18:38) Ironically, the person standing before him not only could tell him the truth, but He
was the truth! Jesus was the perfect image of the invisible God, the perfect revelation of what
God is like (Col. 1:15). His very purpose in coming, in part, was to testify to the truth so that the
whole world would come to know Him (Jn. 18:34).

It has been God's plan since the fall of Adam to restore us to a right relationship with Himself.
Yet on his own man is incapable of coming to know God. God has graciously chosen to reveal
Himself and His truth to us. This is called revelation. How has He done so?

Two Types of Revelation -- Ps. 19

I. Psalm 19:1-6 General Revelation

In Psalm 19:1-6, David describes how the physical creation tells about the glory of God, and the
great works of His hand. This is what can be called general revelation. Everyone with eyes is
able to see clearly the creation of God -- that it has order, that it is immense, that it inspires awe,
that it is powerful. By seeing these attributes, we are able to say that the One who made them
must be greater than the creation. He must be a God of order, immense even beyond the
universe, deserving of fear and respect, of infinite power. And the creation shows this daily.
Even watching the sun as it rises and sets should be enough to convince a person of the
awesomeness of God.

Yet while the creation points to the existence of God, it does so with unspoken words (v. 3-4). It
speaks clearly of God's greatness, but does not speak of how we can know Him directly.
Another kind of revelation is needed for us to know Him personally.

II. Psalm 19:7-11 Special Revelation

David shifts his attention from the greatness of the creation to the beauty of the Law. For David
and the Children of Israel, the Law was God's word given directly to them. Moses, their great
prophet, had stood face to face with God, and God had revealed to Moses the laws and
commandments which He intended for them to obey.

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David said that the Law of God, His words spoken to communication with man, was very
valuable. It restored David's soul, made uneducated people wise, gave joy to the readers,
enlightened the eyes. The Law was not limited, but was right and true forever. The revealed
Word of God was more valuable than anything, and in keeping His laws there is great reward.

The contrast of the unspoken revelation in creation and the recorded Word of God is very evident
in the conclusion of the Psalm. The creation caused David to stand in awe of God; the Law
caused him to draw near to God, to recognize his sinfulness, and to seek God's acceptance and
His redemption (v. 12-14). While the general revelation can lead us to want to know God,
knowing Him is only possible if He takes the initiative to reveal Himself more completely. This He
has done through His written Word, the Bible.

III. Psalm 19:12-14 -- Enlightenment

It is also significant that David ends the Psalm recognizing His need not only for the revelation of
God, but for His direct enlightenment. He asks for God's personal involvement to lead David to
obedience. It is the same way for us today. God's Word is true whether we seek God or not,
whether we believe it or not. But God uses it personally in our lives when we seek to know and
serve Him. He enlightens us through the work of the Holy Spirit, convicting us and leading us
into all truth (Jn. 16).

It is important also to note that even with God's Word man cannot on his own come to a right
understanding of God. Paul writes in Romans 1-3 that neither the person who sees only general
revelation (the Gentile), nor the person who is familiar with the Scriptures (the Jew), can come to
a true knowledge of the truth. Neither the Jew nor the Gentile can please God, except by placing
his faith in Christ. Both are unable to understand the truth of God except when God opens their
eyes.

The chart on page 8 shows the different ways God has revealed Himself to us.

The Doctrine of Inspiration

What is Inspiration?

It is clear then that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, both generally through His
creation and specially through His Son and through the Bible. But Jesus is no longer
physically present on earth. So the primary source of special revelation still available to
us is the Bible. What we know about Jesus, and about all that God has chosen to reveal
to us, is dependent on the truthfulness and reliability of the Bible. How certain are we that
what the Bible says is truly the Word of God?

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It is the doctrine of inspiration that assures us that when we read the Bible we are certain
that we are reading the truth that God intends for us to know.

Inspiration is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide the authors of the Bible to compose and
record in words, without error, God's revelation to man.

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TYPES OF DIVINE REVELATION *

Type Place Scripture Significance

Ps. 19:1-6 Reveals God exists
In Reveals God's glory
Nature Rom. 1:18-21 Reveals God is omnipotent
Reveals God will judge
General In Matt. 5:45 Reveals God is good to all people
Revelation Providence Acts. 14:15-17 Reveals God provides food for all people
Dan. 2:21 Reveals God raises up and removes rulers
In Conscience Rom. 2:14-15 Reveals God has placed His law in the hearts
of all people.
John 1:18 Reveals what the Father is like
In Christ John 5:36-37 Reveals the Father's compassion
John 6:63 Reveals that the Father gives life to all who
Special John 14:10 believe in Jesus.
Revelation 2 Tim. 3:16-17 Reveals all the doctrine, rebuke, correction
and guidance needed for Christian life
In Scripture Reveals all that God has chosen to disclose
2 Pet. 1:21 through human authors directed by the
Holy Spirit

* Adapted from Paul Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1989), p. 157.

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Note several important aspects of this definition. First, it is the Holy Spirit
who guided the authors, which ensures that the Bible is accurate and
complete. Second, He guided human authors, using their unique personali-
ties and experiences. Third, the result of the partnership between the Holy
Spirit and the human authors is God's truth without error. Fourth, even the
individual words used were guided by God. And fifth, inspiration applies to
the original writings, not our present translations.

False Theories of Inspiration

Very often you will meet people who say they believe the Bible is inspired, but
mean something completely different from what the Bible intends. The following
are some of those views:

Natural Inspiration. This view holds that the Bible is inspired in the same way that
great authors and artists are inspired to create great works of literature and art.
The Bible is inspired the same way that we say that Shakespeare was inspired.
The writers may have been naturally talented, even or gifted by God, and the
product is great, but it is not without error or directly guided by God.

If this is true, however, any literature could be inspired. You or I could write new
scripture if we are "inspired" enough. The Bible would just be another good book.
Yet the Bible claims that it is not merely the thoughts and ideas of men, but the
literal words of God through human authors. When the prophets wrote, "Thus saith
the Lord," it was not the same as writing "inspired" literature.

Partial Inspiration. Many people have held that parts of the Bible are inspired, but
that inspiration does not extend to the historical and scientific details recorded.
This is especially popular with those who do not believe that many of the miracles
recorded in the Bible really happened. They believe that the miracles were not real
miracles, but misunderstandings by poorly educated people who did not
understand the laws of science.

According to this theory, there are many stories and statements that supposedly
contradict historical evidence. These are cited to "prove" that the whole Bible is not
without error. The "inspired" parts of the Bible are limited to those sections that tell
about how to live as Christians -- the "faith and practice" of Christianity.

However the Bible clearly states that many of the miracles are foundational for our
faith. According to Paul, if we take away the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity
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ceases (I Cor 15). Jesus based His claims on the reality of His works, including
His miracles (John 10:38). Who decides what is inspired and what isn't? A theory
which accepts only certain parts of the Bible as inspired makes man the judge of all
things. Man becomes God's judge.

Concept Theory. To avoid some of the apparent contradictions in Scripture, some

have held the position that God gave the ideas (concepts), but left the explanation
of the concepts to the writers. Thus the ideas of Scripture are from God, but there
may have been errors in the way the authors presented the ideas. For example,
God could be the source of the idea that man is sinful, but there is no need to
assume that the story of Adam and Eve was literally true. Perhaps, this theory
would hold, the author of Genesis simply used the story to communicate the idea
of the fall of man.

While this may appear to solve the problem of apparent contradictions, it creates
more problems than it solves. Jesus (Mt. 5:18) and Paul (I Thes. 2:13) both
believed that the actual words were inspired. The Bible says frequently that the
words themselves are important (Ex. 20:1; John 6:63; John 17:8; I Cor. 2:13). Paul
bases a whole passage about the promise to Abraham being fulfilled in Jesus on a
single word from the Old Testament (Gal. 3:15-16). And many of the supposed
contradictions cited have been resolved as more archeological evidence is
discovered.

Ideas are communicated in words. For us to know the concepts God inspired, He
had to have guided the very words of the biblical authors.

Dictation Theory. This theory holds that God used passive people to merely hold
the pen while He wrote down through them what He intended to say. According to
this theory, this is how God made sure that everything in the Bible is without error.

However, anyone who has read the Bible can see clearly that the Bible is written
with many styles and includes a large variety of personal perspectives. Philemon
was written by Paul to help a friend; Ecclesiastes was written by a brilliant man at
the end of a life of wasted potential. There are stories, letters, history books,
visions and government records. If God had dictated it, why would He include
such a wide variety of styles and forms?

Few people actually believe in the dictation theory, but many people who criticize
inerrancy say that this is what Christians believe. Although there are some
sections of Scripture that are dictated by God (Ex. 20:1ff), it is only a small
percentage, and it
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s stated in a way that we know it is a direct quotation from God. God used the
writers and their personalities to communicate His message. To properly
understand what the Bible says, we must consider the culture, personality and
situation of the author.

Neo-orthodox View of Inspiration. Some modern theologians have claimed that

the Bible is not the Word of God until God uses it to speak to you. When He
speaks to you through the Bible, that is when it becomes the Word of God for you.
This view does not try to answer apparent contradictions, or to prove that
everything in the Bible is factually true. The importance of the Bible is whether it
speaks to us, whether or not it is all factually correct.

This view confuses inspiration and illumination. Inspiration is the process by which
God guided the original writers of Scripture. Illumination is when God the Holy
Spirit reveals something to us from Scripture that He wants us to know. It is a very
real experience when suddenly you feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit as you are
reading a passage in the Bible (Jn. 16:13-14). But even when the Spirit does not
convict you through a certain passage, or you do not gain a fresh new insight as
you are reading it, the passage -- and the whole of Scripture -- is still inspired by
God and without error (II Tim. 3:16).

If these views are not true, what is the correct perspective?

Support for the Biblical View of Inspiration

There are two basic arguments which support the biblical view of inspiration. Theologians
call them "internal evidence" and "external evidence." Internal evidence is simply proof
that is found in the bible itself -- its own claims for its inspiration. External evidence is
what can be found outside the Bible -- evidence from manuscripts, from fulfilled prophecy,
and from other sources that can be checked outside the Bible itself.

Internal Evidence

What does the Bible teach about its own inspiration? There are several key
passages which help us understand the doctrine of inspiration.

Key Passages

II Tim. 3:16, 17. Paul instructed Timothy that "all Scripture is inspired by God." It is
from this term, "inspired by God," that we have the doctrine of inspiration. The

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word "inspired "in Greek is "theopneustos," which literally means "God-breathed."
From

this we understand that Scripture comes directly from God - God is the source. If
God is the source, then we can be certain that it is completely trustworthy. By
Paul's statement "all Scripture," we can be sure that every part of the Old and New
Testament is equally inspired by God. We will see this even more clearly in the
later discussion of the canon of Scripture.

II Pet. 1:16-22. Many people think that if they just could see Jesus face to face, or
stand in the presence of God, they would have more faith. Peter disagrees. In this
passage, Peter recalls standing on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus, Elijah
and Moses (1:17-18 cf. Matt. 16:28ff). It is hard to imagine a more spectacular
experience of the presence of God. But according to Peter, the truth of Scripture is
more certain than experiencing a such an amazing miracle (v. 19)!

Scripture is absolutely certain because its writing was guided by God. The Holy
Spirit "carried along" those who were writing. This term "carried along" is like a
ship on the ocean carried by the wind and current. The way the ship sails is
certainly dependent on the ship (like the authors wrote and spoke in ways unique
to them), but the final destination is entirely determined by the wind. Like the wind,
God the Holy Spirit guided and directed the writers to ensure that the message
they wrote was exactly what He wanted written.

Jesus' view

Jesus held a very high view of Scripture. Jesus said that not one of the smallest
marks of Scripture would be left unfulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18) -- the Greek equivalent
of crossing the "T" or dotting an "I." The phrase, "The Law and the Prophets" was
the Jewish way of saying "the whole Old Testament." In Jn. 10:35 He said that the
Scripture cannot be broken. Luke quotes Jesus as saying that everything written
about Him in the Old Testament must be fulfilled.

Jesus often quoted Scripture as the final answer to a question -- all He needed to
say was, "It is written," and the case was closed. He argued a point even on the
basis of a single letter, as in Matt. 22:23-33. The Sadducees were rebuked at their
belief that there would not be a resurrection because of the tense of a verb. A
similar use of a single word is found in v. 44, where the Pharisees were rebuked on
the basis of the word "my" Lord. Jesus' identity as the Son of God, and as God
Himself, is based on that single word "my." Jesus quotes from many Old
Testament books, all with the same assumed authority (Genesis, Exodus,

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Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Micah,
and Jonah, to name a few).

Jesus not only accepted fully the truth and authority of the Old Testament, but also
predicted the same authority for the New Testament. In John 16 He taught that a
key role of the Holy Spirit after His departure was to bring to remembrance all that
He had taught them. Jesus Himself directed the writing of the book of Revelation
by John. On the basis of Jesus' testimony, we can have complete confidence in
the accuracy and authority of both the Old and New Testaments.

Paul and the apostles' view

Paul and the apostles also taught and demonstrated a high view of Scripture. Paul
is the source of the most complete statement of the authority of the Scriptures (II
Tim. 3:16-17), and he demonstrated his trust by quoting regularly from them. On
of the best arguments for accepting both the Old and New Testaments is found in I
Tim. 5:18. Here Paul says, "The Scripture says..." and quotes both Deut. 25:4 and
Luke 10:7. This shows that, even during his ministry, Paul already accepted the
Gospel of Luke as sharing the same authority as the Old Testament.

The apostle Peter also showed reverence to both the Old and New Testament as
Scripture. In II Pet. 3:16, he says that the readers should be wary of those who
distort the teachings of Paul "just as they do with all the Scriptures." This shows
that Peter gave the same respect to Paul's writings as to the Old Testament.

External Evidence of the Inspiration of Scripture

What if you were talking to someone who does not already have some confidence
in the Bible? You may have a hard time convincing them that just because the
Bible claims to be inspired, it is. Is there any other evidence that the Bible is
inspired? The following are some reasons which support our belief in inspiration
from outside the Bible itself..

Influence. No other book has had the same influence the Bible has in the history
of the world. The constitutions of most countries are based on the principles of the
Bible. Millions of lives have been affected by the teaching of the Bible. Many of
the greatest statesmen of the world have sought guidance from the pages of the
Bible. It is the most read, most translated and most published book in history, and
continues year after year to be the world's best selling book.

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Manuscripts. Compared to any other ancient book, there are far more surviving
copies and fragments to prove the accuracy of the Bible we now read. In most
classical history classes in universities, a primary source for knowing about ancient
Rome is the Annals by Tacitus. Yet the Annals has been reconstructed based on
only 20 early manuscripts. The oldest of these manuscripts dates back

to 1100 AD, over 900 years after it was written. Yet the Bible is supported by over
25,000 manuscripts, and the earliest dates to 125 AD, only 25 years after it was
written. There is no doubt that the Bible we now read has far more manuscript
support than any other ancient text. It can be trusted.

Archeology. There have been many people who doubted what the Bible says
because they say it has errors or information that contradicts modern science. Yet
the more archeologists dig to understand the ancient peoples of the Middle East,
the more they prove the Bible to be true.

For example, for many years is was widely believed that Moses could not be the
author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament). According to
many scholars, there was no written language in Palestine 1500 years before
Christ, the time when Moses wrote. He could not have written the Bible.

But 20 years ago an ancient city was discovered called Ebla, a city-kingdom
located in what is now Syria. Archeologists found over 17,000 clay tablets dating
2400 years before Christ, in the same area where the children of Israel finally
settled. They found not only one written language, but two. They even found a
dictionary which translated words between the two languages! Clearly, archeology
did not disprove the Bible, but proved that Moses could have been the author, just
as the Bible claims.

Fulfilled Prophecy. One of the most powerful evidences of the inspiration of

Scripture is fulfillment of prophecy. Josh McDowell, in his book Evidence That
Demands a Verdict, lists over 60 Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus
Christ that were fulfilled in the New Testament. Peter Stoner, in his book Science
Speaks, lists the odds of only eight of those prophecies being fulfilled. He said that
the odds were only one in 100,000,000,000,000,000!

To understand how impossible this is, imagine this challenge. If we took

100,000,000,000,000,000 peso coins and spread them over the whole area of the
Philippines, it would cover the Philippines more than one meter deep. Then
imagine that we fly by helicopter and drop a single peso with a special mark on it
somewhere in the Philippines. Now suppose that we blindfold a man and send him
out to choose just one peso coin. The odds of him choosing the marked peso coin
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are the same as having one person fulfill those eight prophecies! Yet the Bible
accurately predicted what would happen to Jesus. If it can do that, we can trust it
to be accurate in every other respect as well.

Indestructibility. Over the years people from around the world have attempted to
destroy the Bible. During the Cultural Revolution in China, the government tried to
destroy every copy of the Bible in the country. In spite of their efforts, the church
grew, and the hunger of people for the word of God today is greater than ever.
Sidney Collett, in his book All About the Bible, Sidney Collett recalled the prediction
of the French atheist philosopher Voltaire. Voltaire once said that "in one hundred
years from his death Christianity [and the Bible] would be swept from existence
and pass into history. But what happened? Voltaire has passed into history, while
the circulation of the Bible continues to increase in almost all parts of the world."
Less than fifty years after his death, Voltaire's own printing press and home were
being used by the Geneva Bible Society for the publishing of the Bible!

Conclusion

It is clear from this study that there is no book like the Bible. It is through the Bible that we
are allowed to discover God and His plan for us. Some may question the reliability of
Scripture. Satan may tempt us to doubt its authority. But the evidence is clear that God
has spoken through the Bible, and we can trust what it says. We can say with the
Psalmist,

Oh how I love Thy law! It is my meditation all the day...Thy Word

is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path...
Ps. 119:97, 105

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