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The First Article of Faith
We believe that the Holy Bible was written by
men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that
it has God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture
of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge
us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center
of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds,
and opinions shall be tried.
This is the first Article of Faith of a great
many Baptist churches in our Southland. The first statement is, "We believe that
the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired." This brings us at once to
the subject of the inspiration of the Scriptures. The word inspiration is
derived from the Latin word inspiro which means "to breathe on" That is
the literal meaning of the word.
The theological meaning is to breathe on or to
breathe into for the purpose of conveying the Holy Spirit, in order that those
inspired may speak or write what God would have spoken or written. That is
inspiration.
A Scriptural example of this is found in John
20:22:
And when he said this he breathed on them and
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit.
That gives us the true conception of
inspiration. Following that, verse 23 gives the result:
Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven
unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.
That is, an inspired man can declare exactly
the terms of remission of sins, and the terms upon which sins can cannot be
remitted, because he is speaking for God .
The book that a man, so breathed on, writes is
called a theopneustos, a Greek word meaning God-inspired."
Example:
From a babe thou hast known the sacred
writings, which are to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith in Christ
Jesus. Every scripture is inspired of God (2 Tim. 3:15-16a).
After God Breathed into Man
After God breathed into man the Holy Spirit in
order that he should accurately write the things which God wanted written then
the book that he wrote was called theopneustos. So that this second passage is a
very important one in discussing inspiration, probably the most important in the
whole Bible.
If the book is God-inspired, then it is God's
Book and not man's book.
Another illustration is found in the second
chapter of Genesis:
And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a
living soul.
The body was present, but it was dead. It had
no vitality. The distinction between a body that is in-breathed and a body that
is not in-breathted is the distinction between death and life. Therefore, a
man's book is a dead book. I don't care how lofty its thought, how fine its
argument, or how perfect its rhetoric, the book will pass away. It has not the
principle of eternal life. But books that are God-breathed are called the
"living oracles" (Acts 7:38). It is impossible for a God-book to die.
The oldest book that was ever God-inspired is
as much living as the latest one, and it will be unto the end of time a living
oracle.
What Is An Oracle?
But what is an oracle? In Greece there certain
shrines - certain deities - such as the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. There was a
priestess that ministered at that shrine. Men would stand before her and ask a
question, and the priestess would fall into an ecstasy. While in that ecstasy
here answers were called oracles. Heathen oracles are dumb, but these
God-inspired oracles are living.
They are not only called living oracles, but
they are called the oracles of God, as we see from Romans 3:1-2:
What advantage hath the Jew? Much every way,
for first of all they were entrusted with the oracles of God.
The advantage is that these Old Testament books
were entrusted to them, not as man's books, but as containing the speeches of
God, as well as the works of God.
Now, I will briefly set forth the inspiration
of both the Old and the New Testaments. Second Timothy 3:15-16 covers all the
Old Testament. Paul says to Timothy: "From a babe thou has know the sacred
writings." Any other writing is what is called profane writing, not in our
modern sense of profanity, but means not divine, but rather human or secular.
"Thous hast know the sacred writings, which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation. Every Scripture is inspired of God." etc. He first speaks of the
books of the Old Testament in groups, ta hiera grammata, the sacred writings.
Then he speaks of then disturbutivley, pasa graphe. Every one of these sacred
writings is God-inspired.
We may stand on that one declaration to affirm
the inspiration of every one of the Old Testament books.
Another passage bearing on Old Testament
inspiration is 2 Peter 1:20:
No prophecy of Scripture is of private
interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from
God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
Here again is the idea of inspiration. An
inspired man speaks, does not speak his will. When he writes, he does not speak
his will, but he speaks and writes for God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.
The New Testament
Now let us take up the New Testament. In John
14:26 we find that a promise was made, before inspiration was given, that they
should be inspired:
But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to
your remembrance all that I said unto you.
Again in 16:12-13:
I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come he shall
guide you into all the truth; for he shall not speak from himself; but what
things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak; and he shall declare unto you
the things that are to come.
That is, Christ in His lifetime did not
complete the revealed truth. They were not prepared to receive it all. But he
made provision for the revealing of the truth by promising the Holy Spirit who
would teach them all that it was necessary for them to know. What Christ said in
His lifetime, which they had forgotten, the Holy Spirit enabled them to remember
and guided them into the completion of the truth. So, after His resurrection,
Christ breathed on them and said unto them, "receive ye the Holy Spirit" (John
20:22). This is inspiration and fulfills His promise to them. This same thought
is emphasized in 1 John 2:27:
But the anointing which ye have received of him
abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as
it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.
One other passage, a very important one, is 1
Corinthians 2:6-13:
Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are
perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world,
that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the
hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of
the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have
crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath
prepared for them that love him.
But God hath revealed them unto us by his
Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For
what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him?
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have
received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we
might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we
speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The Promise
Here is the promise again clearly stated: that
what is to be communicated through this inspiration is something eye could not
see, ear could not hear, nor the heart of man conceive. It is a revelation, and
it comes through the Spirit that knoweth the things of God. As your spirit alone
can know you (your neighbor does not know you as well as you know yourself), so
the Holy Spirit alone know the will of God, and that Spirit has communicated it
to inspired men in man's words. Mark this verbal inspiration: "Combining
spiritual things with spiritual words."
It has always been a matter of profound
surprise to me that anybody should ever question the verbal inspiration of the
Bible.
The whole thing had to be written in words.
Words or signs of ideas, and if the words or not inspired, then there is no way
of getting at anything in connection with inspiration. If I am free to pick up
the Bible and read something and say, "That is inspired," then read something
else and say, "That is not inspired," and someone else does not agree with me as
to which is and which is not inspired, it leaves the whole thing unsettled as to
whether any of it is inspired.
What is the object of inspiration? It is to put
accurately, in human words, ideas from God. If the words are not inspired, how
am I to know how much to reject, and how to find out whether anything is from
God? When you hear this silly talk that the Bible "contains" the word of God and
is not the word of God, you hear fool's talk. I don't care is he is a Doctor of
Divinity, a president of a university covered with medals from universities of
Europe and the United States - it is fool-talk. There can be no inspiration of
the book without the inspiration of the words of the book.
Proof of the Inspiration of the
Bible
Very briefly I have summed up the inspiration
of the Old Testament and of the inspiration of the New Testament, and now I will
give you some Scriptures on both Testaments together. Hebrews 1:1-2:
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners
spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days
spoken unto us by his Son ...
In old times there were inspired men; but the
culmination or completion is in the Son. That covers both. Hebrews 5:12 also
cover both:
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers,
ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the
oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong
meat.
Here the New Testament is called "oracles" as
well as the Old Testament. Those were Christian people who had learned the first
principles of the oracles of God and stopped. Another passage is 1 Peter
4:11:
If an man speaketh, speaking as it were the
oracles of God.
Peter is here talking about the Old and New
Testaments. If a mans gets up to speak, let him remember that there is a
standard, and that that standard is fixed. he must speak according to the
oracles of God. These Scriptures cover both.
Now let us consider some
observations:
First, the books of the Bible are not by the
will of man. Not one of the books of either the Old or the New Testament would
ever have come into being except by the inspiration of God. I want to give you a
searching proof on that, found in 1 Peter 1:10-11:
Of which salvation the prophets have inquired
and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them
did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the
glory that should follow.
Moved by the Holy Spirit
Here are men moved by the Spirit of God to
record certain things about the future, and they themselves did not understand
it. They studied their own prophecies just as we study them. They knew that God
had inspired them to say these things, but they did not understand. For example:
God instructed a prophet to say that the Messiah should come forth out of
Bethlehem of Judea. To show that these things did not come from the will of man,
the man himself could not explain them. It was a matter of study and
investigation to find out what these signified. They found out what their
prophecies were meant for the future, that is, for us.
The second observation is that the propelling
power in the speaking or writing was an impulse from the Holy Spirit. They, the
inspired men, became instruments by which the Holy Spirit spoke or wrote. Take
for instance, that declaration in 2 Samuel 23:2, where David said:
The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and His word
was upon my tongue.
In Acts 1:16, we find that the utterances of
David were being studied. We have a declaration that the Holy Spirit spake by
the mouth of David concerning Judas; and in the third chapter of Acts we have
another declaration of the same kind. Always the speaker or writer was an
instrument of the Holy Spirit.
The third observation is that this influence of
the Holy Spirit guided men in he selection of material, even where that material
came from some other book, even an uninspired book, the Spirit guiding in
selecting and omitting material.
From such declarations as John 20:30-31 and
21:25, we learn that Christ did many things, that if all were written it would
make a book as big as the world; that what ha been written was written for a
certain purpose. The Holy Spirit inspired Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to
select from the deeds and words of Jesus that which God wanted written; not to
take everything He said, but only that which was necessary to accomplish the
purpose.
The fourth observation is that inspiration is
absolutely necessary in order to take awaken the power of remembrance. John 2:22
says that after His resurrection they remembered what He had said, that is, the
Spirit called it to remembrance.
To illustrate, take the speeches of Christ, for
instance, that address delivered at Capernaum on the Bread of Life, the Sermon
on the Mount and, particularly, the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth chapters
of John.
There were not shorthand reporters in those
days, and there is not a man on earth who could, after a lapse of fifty years,
recall verbatim et litreatim what Christ said. Yet John, without a shadow of
hesitancy, goes on and gives page after page of what Christ said just after the
institution of the Lord's Supper. Inspiration in that case was exercised in
awakening the memory so that John could reproduce these great orations of
Christ.
Of the orations of Paul, take the speech
recorded in Acts 13, an exceedingly remarkable speech, or the one recorded in
Acts 26, or the one of Mars Hill, in chapter 17, one of the most finished
productions that the world has ever seen. Inspiration enabled Luke to report
exactly what Paul said. Luke never could have done that unassisted. Luke, as a
man, might have given the substance, but that is not the substance, it is an
elaborate report, the sense depending upon the words used.
The fifth observation is that inspiration was
to make additions to the Scriptures until they were completed, in order that the
standard may be a perfect treasure, incapable of being added to, unsusceptible
of diminution. We wand what is there, all that is there, and no more than is
there. Therefore, when we come to the last book of the Bible, this is said
which, in a sense applies to the whole Bible:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the
words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God
shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man
shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away
his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things
which are written in this book. (Rev 22:18-19)
The Design of Inspiration
It was the design of inspiration to give us a
perfect system of revealed truth, whose words are inspired. As an example of
verbal inspiration, take Paul's argument, based on the "seed" in the singular
number. Everything in the interpretation depends upon the number of that noun.
Apart from verbal inspiration, how on earth would Paul hinge an argument on
whether a word is singular or plural?
The next observation is that inspiration was to
give different views of the same person or thing by different writers, each
perfect according to its viewpoint, but incomplete so far as the whole is
concerned, all views being necessary in order to complete the view. There is a
Gospel by Mark, written for the Romans, beginning with the public ministry of
Christ. Then there are the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and a gospel by
Paul. Each of them is perfect according to the plan which the Spirit put in the
mind of the writer. They are perfect so far as the whole thing is concerned, but
incomplete so far as the whole thing is concerned. We have to put them side by
side in order to get a complete view of the life of our Lord. That is what we
mean by harmonical study. Each is infallibly correct, but it takes the blended
view of all to make the whole thing.
The Design of Genealogy
Apart from inspiration, no man on earth can
account for Genesis. Just see in what small space there is given the history of
the world up to chapter 11 - how much is justify out. We see the same plan all
through the book. It first takes up the wicked descendants, give their genealogy
a little way, then sidetracks them and takes up the true line. Then of their
descendants it follows the wicked first a short way and eliminates them and goes
back and takes up the true line and elaborates that. That principle goes all
through the Bible.
For instance, the first missionary period of
Paul's life covered a greater period of time than any other, and there is no
record of it, just as single reference to it in Acts. So with his fifth
missionary journey. There are only a few referenced to it in Timothy and Titus.
But the intervening three journeys are elaborately given.
Now we come to an important point. When these
inspired declarations were written, they were absolutely infallible. Take these
Scriptures: John 10:35, "The Scripture cannot be broken;" Matthew 5:18, "Till
heaven and earth shall pass away, one joy or tittle shall in no wise pass away
from the law, till all things be accomplished:" Acts 1:16, "It was needful that
the Scripture should be fulfilled."
That is one of the most important points in
connection with inspiration, that the inspired word is irrefragable, infallible;
that all the powers of the world cannot break one "thus said the
Lord."
Another observation is the power that comes
upon the inspired word. Hebrews 4:12:
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart.
The Object of the Word
Yet another observation is the object of the
Word. There are two objects. John sets forth the first one when he says that
they are written that we might believe, and, believing, have life, or, as Paul
says to Timothy, "which are able to make thee wise unto salvation." They are
both expressed in the nineteenth Psalm:
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the
soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the
simple."
The last observation is on the sufficiency of
the Word; that the inspired record is complete; that is all-sufficient. That is
presented in two Scriptures, Luke 16:29: Abraham said to the rich man in hell
who wanted a special messenger sent to his brothers:
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the
prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went
unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear
not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from
the dead.
The Other is 2 Timothy 3:17:
Than the man of God may be complete, furnished
completely unto every good work.
Let me say further that only the original text
of the books of the Bible is inspired, not the copy of the
translation.
Second, the inspiration of the Bible does not
mean that God said and did all that is said and done in the Bible. Some of it
the Devil did and said. Much of it wicked men did and said.
The inspiration means that the record of what
is said and done is correct. It does not mean that everything that God did and
said is recorded. It does not mean that everything recorded is of equal
importance, but every part of it is necessary to the purpose of the record, and
no part is unimportant. One part is no more inspired than any other
part.
It is perfectly foolish to talk about degrees
of inspiration. What Jesus said in the flesh, as we find it in the four Gospel,
is nor more His Word than what the inspired prophet or apostle said.
That is the folly of the Jefferson Bible. He
purposes to take out of the four Gospels everything that Jesus said and put it
together as a Bible.
What Jesus said after He ascended to heaven,
though Paul or any other apostle, is just as much Jesus' word as anything He
said in the flesh.
Here are some objections:
First, "only the originals are inspired, and we
have only copies." The answer to that is that God would not inspire a book and
take no care of the book. His providence has preserved the Bible in a way that
no other book has been preserved.
The second objection is, "We are dependent upon
scholars to determine what is the real text of the Bible." The answer is that
only an infinitesimal part of it is dependent upon scholars for the
ascertaintment of the true text, and if every bit of that were blotted out it
would not destroy the Holy Scriptures.
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