The Bible is Inspired

RV217-02

© Berean Memorial Church of Irving, Texas, Inc. (1993)

Faith

People often speak about the quality of faith, and faith to them is some kind of a magical factor that can carry one through all kinds of situations in life. People have a lot of confidence in faith. Faith is often portrayed as somehow having great value in itself. So, we have phrases like, "Keep the faith, baby," whatever that means. But faith, per se, has no special measure to accomplish anything. The value of faith, which is trust in something, lies in what you trust in. Faith for knowledge about salvation must be placed in the gospel of grace. Faith for knowledge about God is only of value if you place your faith in the Bible.

The Bible

The great question today is whether the Bible is the Word of God, and thus merits our complete faith and devotion for guidance in daily living. That is a very great question. We have pointed out that, in Revelation 17:17, God says, "Nothing that He has spoken in the words of judgment against Babylon will be unfulfilled." This covers Babylon in both of its two phases: its religious phase, which is what we've been looking at; and, its political and economic phase, which we will begin in the next session in chapter 18. Everything that God has pronounced against this system is going to be carried out, because the Words of God will be fulfilled.

So, faith in the Bible today is at low ebb, as the faith of people is placed instead in the principles of humanism, with its rejection of supernaturalism. Faith in man is the thing. So, you have expressions like these Christians trying to do this and do that. Well, you have to always translate expressions like (what a phrase is saying). You guys with all this faith in the Bible who take it literally and as truth are demanding certain conduct. You're demanding certain things in the elements (the institutions) of our society.

Well, as the tribulation era comes to an end, God the Holy Spirit takes one more opportunity here at the close of the Revelation 17, which deals with a religious Babylon, begun by Nimrod at Babel. God reminds this mongrel, vile system of idolatry that what God has said in His condemnation is going to come to pass. We have pointed out that the contents of the Bible came from God to the authors of the Scriptures. The authors were guided in writing the Scriptures by the Holy Spirit. So, in the original manuscripts, they were preserved from entering any error whatsoever. So, the Bible claims for itself divine inspiration, which ensures that it is also inerrant. While people have attacked the Bible from a variety of angles and reasons, they have yet to demonstrate that indeed the Bible is not inerrant. They try, and in the past, they have victoriously thought that they have found a mistake.

Some of the old copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica in the 1920s had some confident declarations of errors in the Bible, which had been demonstrated. For example, the Bible speaks about the Hittite culture, and until the 1920s, nobody ever found anything about the Hittites: nothing written; and, nothing in archeological remains. They concluded that the writer of the Bible just made that up, like Joseph Smith made up names. Then, one day, somebody with a shovel dug up the Hittite culture. It was an extensive, sophisticated, large culture of the ancient world. The Bible was proven right on track. The subsequent editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica had to very quickly change those paragraphs on that subject. So, the Bible simply confirms what it claims.

Satan has brought into question this issue of placing our total confidence in this inspired, inerrant book to find the mind of God. Satan has pointed people in the wrong direction. He has pointed them to a Bible which is written by fallible men, and has fallible ideas inserted, but these thoughts are supposed to be inspirational. What is true is to be determined by man's fallible reason. How's that for being smart? The rejection of the Bible as an infallible book, and what is in it, can be determined by the fallible mind of man.

The inspiration of the Bible, as we point out, is a conviction. It comes to you from God. You can't argue people into this. You get it from the indwelling Holy Spirit. There comes a subtle conviction upon your heart that the Bible has always proven to stand us in good stead. We pointed out that the supernatural elements of the Bible are: the unity of the message, with so many writers over so many years; the fulfillment of all prophecy in detail; the view of the sinfulness of man; and, the refreshing, ennobling teachings, all of which prove that God has a great view of man once he is regenerated.

So, theologians from New Testament Times have firmly held to the Bible's inspiration, and thus to its infallibility. That is no longer true today. Most preachers who have spoken in their pulpits this day do not believe that the Bible is a book free of all error. Therefore, they reject the whole foundation of Christianity, and the whole foundation upon which our magnificent Western culture was built. They reject the concept that there is a body of revealed absolute truth to be found in the Bible. They question how knowledge can be gained about God.

The Scripture is the answer. The Scripture is the essential link between man's fallen mind and the information that he needs about God. The Bible is the connecting point, and it's the linchpin of any knowledge of God. Scripture's essential function of conveying divine viewpoint to the mind of man has been virtually abandoned by most ministers today. So, what is the believer to do? He is hard-pressed to feed his soul. Those who still believe that the Bible contains all the truth of the teachings of God are dismissed as rather (as one man said), "Pitiful remnants of medieval credulity – the prisoners of a fossilized tradition." To the liberal today, all that the Bible can provide is themes for theology to discuss, but not content.

So, the modern man's problem with the infallibility of the Bible is not due to alleged errors that have been shown in the book, but to the Bible's claim of claiming divine truth in human language produced by the Holy Spirit, which is therefore inerrant, and which you cannot dismiss, and from which you cannot argue from. When man leaves the solid ground of inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he inevitably goes into emotionalism or experiences to find truth. That's what happened to the charismatic movement. They left the teachings of the Word, and went into their feelings, and into their experiences.

The Extent of the Inspiration of the Bible

Now, I would like to direct your attention to the extent of the inspiration of the Bible.

Verbal Inspiration

First of all, the Bible is verbally inspired. That means that its words come from the Holy Spirit. What the Holy Spirit did was guided the Bible writers in the choice of the words that they would use as they wrote their books. This did not interfere with the writer's style; his vocabulary; his background; or, his personality. All of that was preserved in the process.

In the seminary, when you study the Greek language, after a while, when you get the hang of things, you discover that the book of John is very easy Greek. It is referred to often as "baby Greek." John is a fisherman. He was an ordinary man. He spoke the common Koine Greek of the day, and his book reflects that that's his style and that's his vocabulary. But everything in the gospel of John is absolutely true because the words are true and selected by the Spirit of God.

On the other hand, you will discover, in your studies of the Greek language, that when you come to a man of considerable education, such as Luke, the medical man, the gospel of Luke is very hard Greek. I mean, it has something like 600 words that are not used any place else in the Bible – just that one time. A lot of these words are used in the book of Acts in connection with the shipwreck chapters, where he's using technical terms relative to nautical matters. But it's very clear that Luke has a different style, and he has a considerably more advanced vocabulary. But everything in the gospel of Luke, in that high-class Greek, is still absolutely true, and guided by the Holy Spirit in its very words.

So, we're not saying that this was a dictation process. The writers were not writing, like secretaries, whatever they heard from the Spirit of God. They didn't even know that they were writing Scripture. They were just writing like Luke said when he wrote the book of Acts to his friend Theophilus. He said, "I've been in on this whole thing from the very first, and I've had come into my possession manuscripts and writings where people have recorded details about the Lord and about the early church." He said, "Now, I've taken those manuscripts, and I've studied them, and I collected the information, and now I'm going to set it out in an orderly form to give you a history of the New Testament church." And that's exactly what he was doing. But every time his pen touched that parchment, the Spirit of God was guiding him in the words – words from his own vocabulary, but words which are absolutely accurate in what they were saying.

So, this accuracy applies to every word in the original manuscripts (the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts), but the copies that we have today of those Greek and Hebrew manuscripts are virtually the same. There is very little doubt that we have the Greek manuscripts and the Hebrew manuscripts just as they were when they came from the hand of the original writers.

So, the term "verbal inspiration" is the thing I want you to learn right now. This pertains to what is referred to here in Revelation 17:17 as the Words of God which are going to be fulfilled. Verbal inspiration deals with the words of the Bible. The words are God's Words used in the style and vocabulary of the writers.

Thoughts and Words

You cannot convey a thought apart from words. Try to think of a thought right now without putting it in words. It's impossible to think a thought without putting it in words. And you cannot convey a thought accurately unless you have the right words. A businessman will dictate to his secretary a letter so that he can pick the right words to convey his thoughts exactly.

When I was in Officer Candidate School in the Marine Corps, we spent a lot of time practicing how to write out orders, and practicing how to be very definitive in the words we used, so that when we gave an order, it was foolproof, as much as possible, and it would not be misunderstood, when that written communication was written, by whomever it was directed to. The Bible writers faced the same thing. There are times when they wrote about things that were completely beyond their knowledge – things that God had to guide them into, and that God had to explain to them. That was even harder for them to talk about things that were not within their experience. These were things that were revealed to them.

The Bible says the Earth is Round

For example, Isaiah 40:22 illustrates this. Speaking of God: "It is He who sits above the vault (or the circle) of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." This verse refutes the nonsense of people who say that this Bible teaches that the earth is flat. This was one of the mistakes they thought they found in the Bible. They concluded that to be the case because the Bible spoke about the four corners of the earth, which is simply a way that we speak about the extensive expanse of the earth. Consider someone like Christopher Columbus (whose great event 501 years ago, we will be commemorating tomorrow, and who was a great student of the Word – a great reader of Scripture). I have no doubt that he ran across this Scripture, and he knew that the earth was not flat. He knew that, as all wise navigators and men of science of his day knew, the earth was round. They already knew that. Only the most superstitious and ignorant people of the day thought that the earth was flat. Here the Bible clearly speaks about the vault (that is, the circle) of the earth. Now, how to describe such an earth required special words given by the Holy Spirit.

Another example of that is in Job 26:7. Job was probably the first Old Testament book to be written: "He stretches out the north over empty space, and hangs the earth on nothing." Now, how could these people know about gravitational pull and the rotation of celestial bodies? They had no science for that. Yet, here he is talking about that. God the Holy Spirit came in and gave them the words, so that what He says we can fully understand, and it is scientifically accurate.

"The Word of God"

So, what the Bible does is it claims divine authority for its very words. A word is a vehicle for communicating a thought from one mind to another. So, the expression "the Word of God" refers to the Bible is a collection of divinely selected words to convey the divine viewpoint thoughts of God to us. Whatever words came from the mouth of God must, because of the veracity of God, be completely true and trustworthy.

It's rather chilling to hear somebody take something that God has said and dismiss it as not true. We have a lot of that today. The liberal theologian insists that the Bible was written in the fallible words of fallible men, and therefore the book is fallible. But that isn't what the Bible claims. The Bible claims that its words are the words of God. The liberal wants to say that men wrote it, and men were mistaken, because he does not want to have to take the Bible literally. He wants to be able to decide for himself what parts of the Bible he wants to accept. So, the liberal can say this: "The Bible is a record of revelation. It's a diary which writers wrote of their religious experiences, and they expressed those experiences in their own fallible words." Therefore, the liberal says, "The Bible is just a record of revelation, and just a record of information like a diary, so it has many mistakes in it."

Concerning the words that the biblical authors (the people) recorded in the Bible: were they the same as (equated to) the very Word of God? Yes, they were. Exodus 4:12 is an example of that. Moses is objecting to facing the Pharaoh because he's not eloquent. Exodus 4:12 says, "Now then go. I, even I (that is, God), will be with your mouth, and teach you what you are to say." That's very clear. God says, "I have a message. You're going to carry My message. I'm going to give you the words to say. You're not going to be a stumblebum over your words. You're not going to be a cottonmouth. You're going to speak very clearly, and your words will come very distinctly." Exodus 4:15 says, "And you are to speak to him, and put the words in his mouth. And I, even I, will be with your mouth, and his mouth, and I will teach you what you are to do here." Here, God is speaking to Moses' brother Aaron. God says, "I'm going to tell, Aaron, what to say, and you tell your brother what to say." We have explicit words of God being spoken. So, when Moses spoke, and when he wrote later of what he had said, what he recorded were the very words of God that he had originally been given.

Please notice Deuteronomy 18:18: "I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, that he shall speak to them all that I command them." Here is a great (in the future) prophecy specifically about the fact that God was going to raise up a prophet like Moses who would be God's spokesman. And that ultimate prophet was Jesus Christ Himself. Here in His humanity, God says, "I'll give Him the words that He will speak." What did Jesus say? Jesus said, "What I have told you doesn't just come from Myself. What I have told you is what God the Father gave Me to tell you." So, even Christ, in His humanity, claimed that His words were the very words of God.

The prophets of God were inspired by God in their spoken words, and they wrote these words down. The information came to them by divine revelation. Revelation is the information that God communicated; many times, about things that they had no way of knowing about, like the events of creation. But once God gave that to a prophet like Moses, and Moses proceeded to record the information about creation, God very carefully guided the words that he used. And on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he used the right words. And using the right words conveyed the right message. God placed His words in the mouths of his communicators so that what they said was precisely God's way.

Take a look at Jeremiah 1:9: "Then the Lord stretched out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, 'Behold, I put My words in your mouth." Here, the prophet Jeremiah is told explicitly that the words that he would speak would be God's Words. This is verbal inspiration. Jeremiah was not just given thoughts for him to put down the way he wanted them. He was given thoughts that God then developed in words that God chose. The same concept is repeated many times in Scripture. We won't read them all here. Let me give you the passages. You'll find it this is in Ezekiel 2:7, Ezekiel 3:4, Ezekiel 3:10, Isaiah 1:10, 2 Samuel 23:1-2, Daniel 10:9-11, Hosea 1:1, and Joel 1:1. All of those verses repeatedly state that the words that the messenger spoke were words from God, not just ideas. That's why you have this formula so often in the Old Testament: "Thus says the Lord." It is because what follows that expression are the very words of God.

The New Testament writers also declared that their words were the words of God. They too, when they wrote, wrote as inspired communicators. In John 14:26, we read, "But the Helper (the Holy Spirit), who the Father will send in My name), will teach you all the things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." Here, the disciples are promised that they received a lot of instruction from Jesus. Some of it might be hard for them to recall, but the Holy Spirit was going to come along and enable them to recall all of this instruction, and to communicate it in an exact, truthful way. Well, that required that the Spirit of God would guide them in their words.

1 Thessalonians 2:13 says, "And for this reason, we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the Word of God's message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but what it really is: the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe." There's an important principle. The Word of God we cannot describe as magical words, but the Word of God are words of great power. This is why Hebrews 4:12 says, "The Word of God is alive and active." There is something that is powerful when you have God's Words. And when you read Scripture, it is all God's Word.

When I switched to the New American Standard Bible for our text for preaching, I desperately tried to buy a Bible in a particular Schofield version that I wanted that did not have red letters recording what Jesus said. A red-letter Bible implies to the average person that these are the important words because this is the Word of God. That is very deceptive. Everything that Jesus said was the Word of God, but everything that the apostle Paul said, and that Peter, said was also the Word of God. In fact, I think we have seen that they were the very Words of God.

So, when you read the Bible, you are listening to God. You can imagine a deep bass voice; a middle-sized voice; a very high tenor voice; or, whatever – however you would like God to sound. Well, what you are hearing is the very voice of God in His own words. Now, that makes it very sobering, and that's why the passage in Hebrews 4:12, which says, "The Word of God is alive and active" is well-stated.

In our morning teachers' prayer meetings in the academy, where we go through reading passages of Scripture, I am constantly amazed how something jumps out at me that hadn't struck me there before. It may be three or four or five very powerful words that just, all of a sudden, stand out on that page. And I think, "This is really strange." I mean, this happens all the time. It may be something that I've read many times, and here, suddenly, comes something that is so pertinent that it stands out – maybe because of what's happening in the world today in some respect. But what I'm experiencing is that active power that are in the very words of Scripture. They are the Words of God.

Does this make the Bible a supernatural book? Its message is supernatural. Does this make the Bible something that we worship like the liberals accuse us of doing? No, we don't worship pages and the ink and the binding.

I remember one day when I was a junior, and I attended the church service at the Lutheran church in Chicago. It was a cold day, and I was outside in front on the steps of the church, waiting for my parents to come. And there was a concrete banister that came down to a flat place next to the stairs. And I put my Bible on that flat place and I sat on it so that I'd be warm – keeping part of the body warm (the extremities). A lady came out and saw me sitting on my Bible, and she had a fit: "You're sitting on the Bible? You're sitting on the Word of God?" And she had me all intimidated. I got off that Bible, and it was really warm by that time. And I lost my cushion of protection. To her, it was a terrible thing to sit on the Bible.

Well, we don't worship the Bible as a book. But what is in it we take very seriously word-for-word. The Bible stresses the fact that its words are the very words of God. We have shown you that the Bible writers claim that they spoke God's Word. The question now is: do they also write God's word? Well, let's take a look at Romans 9:17. The apostle Paul says, "For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, 'For this very purpose, I raise you up to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.'" Here, the apostle Paul is quoting Exodus 9:16, which is exactly what Pharaoh said, and he is saying that "the Scripture said." What Pharaoh said is recorded precisely in the Scriptures, as what God said. God said this to Pharaoh, and what God said is what is recorded here in Romans as the very Word of God. What he said is also what is written.

Galatians 3:8 is another example of this – that what God said is what is written in the Bible. In Galatians 3:8, the apostle Paul is quoting Genesis 22:18. Galatians 3:8 says, "And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'All the nations shall be blessed in you.'" Paul is quoting Genesis 22:18, and he's calling this "Scripture." So, here again, what God said to Abraham (his very words), Paul, in this verse is saying that that was Scripture. So, what we have in the Bible is also what God said.

Certainly we have to take into account what Jesus Christ thought about the Bible, and about the words. In John 10:35, Jesus made that dramatic statement, "The Scriptures cannot be broken."

In Matthew 4:4, Jesus says, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes out of the mouth of God." Now, how are we going to have the words that come from the mouth of God? There is only one way. You're not going to hear messages. Only the only the charismatics hear messages, and those are not from God, if they do hear anything. There's only one way that we hear the words of God, and that is in Scripture: "Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

So, Jesus said that the words of God are what are in Scripture. And the writings of Scripture by Moses is equated by Jesus to the Word of God. John 5:46: "Do you think that I will accuse you before the Father? The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believe Moses, you would have believed Me for he wrote of Me.

Verse 47: "But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" Moses wrote about Jesus. Moses wrote the words which God gave to him. These were God's words, and they should believe them. Now Jesus says, "I don't speak for Myself. I don't make this up. My message all comes from God. I'm giving you the Word of God. If you don't believe Moses, which you don't, why would you expect to believe Me?" Jesus said that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, which prophetically speaks of Christ. Well, the liberals deny all of this.

Remember the two disciples on the Emmaus Road? Jesus condemned and rebuked them in Luke 24:25 for the fact that they did not believe what the Word of God (the Old Testament Scripture) said.

Matthew 12:40 says that Jonah was swallowed by a large sea monster. Those are exact words. That's exactly what happened. It is precise.

Jesus declared that God created Adam and Eve. Was He a mistaken man? No, that's what the Word of God says. Those are exactly the records that we have.

The flood was a historical fact. Jesus pointed this out in Luke 17:26. Was He mistaken? No, it really did happen. What do the geological scientists say today? They say that there was no flood, and that there never was such a thing on this earth. There never was a total covering of water over all the earth. Who's right? Jesus or these scientists?

In Luke 17:32, Jesus said that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt. Was she actually salt? Could you have sat there, and been in the field, and cook a little dinner of bacon and eggs, and scraped a little bit of Lot's wife off to salt your eggs. Yes, you could. It was real salt. It was right there. It was for real. There was no joke about it.

Everything that Jesus did in His post-resurrection ministry was to explain the Words of God to His disciples. It is absolute nonsense, then to speak about inspired thoughts apart from inspired words. That would be like speaking about a tune without notes. You cannot have a tune without pitch, and pitch is carried by the notes. Pitch is expressed through the notes on the staff. If you don't have notes on the staff, you don't have a song. You don't have a melody. And if you don't have the words of God, and the exact words of God, you don't have the exact inspired Scriptures conveying the mind of God.

So, without God's word, there could be no accuracy in the ideas. Without inspired words, there is no such thing as expository preaching. Expository preaching is explaining the meaning of the words of the Bible. Why should we come to church and spend the time going in such research of what the words mean if the words are simply the words of men? There would be no reason for that. But because it is the Word of God (that's what we're explaining), now it carries great impact upon us.

You remember that it was Jesus who said in Matthew 5:17-18 that the Old Testament is so accurate that all the details of the words are going to be fulfilled. He said that not a "yo" (that's the smallest Hebrew letter), not even a little marking (which is like the dot over an "i," or the cross on the "T" – the little things that you have under the Hebrew letters), not even one of those little details is going to be lost until it's fulfilled.

Letter Inspiration

So, we not only have verbal inspiration, but we even have letter inspiration. This is even true of the verbs and the tenses. I teach you that because they have meaning. In Mark 12:26-27, Jesus was claiming to be deity, and He did this by the tense of the word "to be." He said, "I am" in present tense. And, boy, did that make those rabbis mad, because they knew that in the Old Testament, this is how God describes Himself: as "the Great I am" – the eternal God?

In Galatians 3:16, Paul says that the promise to Abraham to be a blessing to all nations was not through "seeds" (plural), but through "the seed." Isn't that amazing? Why would Paul get so specific? Galatians 3:16: "Now, the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed, he does not say, 'And the seeds,' as referring to many, but rather to one, and to your seed that is Christ." So, here you have even the singular or plural is controlled by the Holy Spirit because it was a seed, namely Christ, that blessing of salvation would come.

So, the view of the Lord Jesus Christ is very clear – that the very words of God are inspired. Jesus holds to the concept of verbal inspiration. I've taken the time to take you through this because the world hates this. The theological world does not like to think that the very words of the Bible are inspired.

Plenary Inspiration

However, there's something else. That's the other part of inspiration, and that we call plenary inspiration. The word "plenary" means "entire." It means that every portion of the Word of God is equally inspired. 2 Timothy 3:16, we pointed out, is that critical verse that says, "All Scripture is inspired by God." That means that the whole Bible comes from God, and all of it is authoritative. Whatever kind of Scripture it is, it's all the Word of God. You cannot find the Word of God just in part of the Bible. The Bible is a trustworthy guide in spiritual things, in all of its parts (from one end of it to the other), or it is not. There are certain types of material covered in the Bible and inspiration applies to these.

Inscriptions

For example, there are divine inscriptions such as the Ten Commandments, which were written by the finger of God in stone (Exodus 31:18). We have that reported exactly. That part of the Bible (recording inscriptions) is absolutely true.

In Daniel 5:5, you have the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast: "You are weighed in the balances and found wanting." Even while the drunken party was going on, the Medes were out there, and they had diverted the Euphrates River, which came under the walls, and was the source of water for Babylon. They diverted the river, and then came under the wall. They marched right under, and the city fell to them that night, and Belshazzar was killed. What was on that wall was reported to us exactly. So, any kind of inscriptions that the Bible gives is included in being inspired.

Revelations (Prophecies)

Then there are revelations – prophecies from one end of the Bible to the other. These revelations are given, whether their visions or however. God spoke in dreams sometimes. Sometimes it's about the unknown past, like creation; or, about the infiltration of angels (the demonic angels) into the human race in Genesis 6. All these direct revelations, when they were given to the writer, were all inspired.

Dictation

Then there is divine dictation. This includes the parts of the Mosaic Law. Exodus 20:1-22 indicates that all those parts of the Law were dictated by God, and all of that is covered as inspired. The warnings in the prophetic portions of the Word of God, such as the book of Revelation – that's inspired by God. The letters to the seven churches – those were dictation. Those letters were dictated to John. That's true. And when Satan tells a lie (or anybody else in Scripture tells a lie), that lie is reported accurately. That lie is under divine inspiration. Plenary inspiration covers that.

Records of History

Then there are records of history, like the book of Acts. Whatever Luke used of his documents, when he wrote it down, God eliminated that was false in those documents. So, all of the history of the Bible is true.

Devotional Literature

Then there's the devotional literature. Job to Ecclesiastes is filled with the expressions of people's emotions; the pressures; and, the triumphs of life, and the grace of God, and the plans of God. All of these are part of what is under plenary inspiration.

Doctrines

This is also true for the doctrine relative to our practices. This includes the doctrine of the devolution of man – how man went down from the knowledge of God (Romans 1). The doctrine of the election of God – of some to salvation. That's part of plenary inspiration.

This is true when angels teach. These angels who are leading John around in the book of the Revelation – that's covered as part of the message of God.

Plenary inspiration means that all parts of the Bible are infallible and trustworthy. We stress that because the liberals break up the Bible, and they say that some parts of it are not true. The parts that they don't like (that they say are not true) are those that express the vengeance of God. These include the parts where God tells us what He's going to do to express His wrath against mankind, such as in the book of the Revelation. They say that that is not trustworthy, and that is a misrepresentation of a loving God. Jesus said that the full content of every book of the Bible, including all of its doctrinal statements and all of its principles – that all parts of the Bible were equally inspired.

The writers of the Scriptures were not omniscient. They labored under the same limitations and the ignorance of people of their day. They didn't know about science. They didn't know everything about history. They believe certain things that were wrong. But when they wrote Scripture, their human misconceptions were never included in the Word of God.

Personal Matters

The Bible even includes plenary inspiration for practical personal matters. Paul says, "Please bring me my cloak and my books" in 2 Timothy 4:13. Paul gave some medical advice to Timothy, who was having stomach problems. He said to Timothy, "Get some hot melaleuca tea. Pour five drops of melaleuca in your tea. It'll do worlds for your stomach." That was inspiration. It was absolutely true. This was such a simple thing. When he found a slave, he sends him back to his friend Philemon, and he says, "Treat Onesimus as you would treat me." This is a personal matter, but it's absolutely inspired.

Verbal Plenary Inspiration

Everything in the Bible is inspired of God. That's the contrast of biblical Christians against liberal Christians. We hold to what the Bible claims as true – verbal plenary inspiration.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1993

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