Credible Bible Lesson 3

Our Credible Bible (Lesson 3)

Inerrancy and Textual Variants

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

Throughout church history, believers have considered the Scriptures to be accurate and reliable, both historically and theologically. Many words have been used to try to express this belief in concise, precise form. The two most common terms of late have been "infallible" and "inerrant".

 

Infallible refers to the unfailing nature of Scripture. It will not let us down. If we are sad, it comforts us. When tempted, it strengthens us. When lost, it saves us. If doubting, it assures us. When we stray, it rebukes us. When discouraged, it encourages us. When worried, it brings us peace.

 

The Bible is a reliable, sufficient, trustworthy guide for us in our daily lives. It will never misdirect us. It will accomplish the purposes God meant for it to achieve; it won't return to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

 

"Inerrant" means without error, wholly true. The Bible verses being considered are deemed to be true, not false. We will never be led into error by anything it teaches. Baptist confessions have often conveyed this concept by saying the Bible has "truth for its matter, with no mixture of error."

 

The word inerrant refers only to the original documents, never to copies. Since we do not, as best we know, have originals, some people do not like the term inerrant, but belief in inerrancy of the autographs is what fuels our drive to find ever-older manuscripts. As more manuscripts are found, we feel confident we are getting ever closer to what the originals said.

 

We want to know what the originals said, for we believe they contain the very words of God. Our embracing inerrancy means we believe the authors gave a true and accurate statement regarding what God wanted said.

 

Some people are very uncomfortable with inerrancy. When they see in their versions of the Bible footnotes that point out variants, discrepancies, and seeming contradictions, they cannot understand how there can be any inerrant originals if there are so many differing interpretation-alternatives. I personally think much of this discomfort today stems from the fact the KJV had no footnotes. I think this may have left the impression with most readers that there were no issues regarding the actual wording of any texts.

 

 

The variants should not crush our faith. The Bible is a God-book; it is also a man-book. God condescended to use human beings to write, preserve, and transmit Scripture. Thus we should expect to see human touches in it.

 

Also, is there any other Christian doctrine that we require all difficulties to be resolved before we believe it? What about the Trinity, the Incarnation, Predestination, Creation, etc.? Do we feel we must have 100% understanding of these doctrines in order to believe them? Questions about Bible doctrines often perplex us, but we usually let this drive us to adoration, not skepticism. To resolve all difficulties, we would have to be living by sight, rather than by faith. Do not be surprised if belief in inerrancy leaves us with unresolved questions. We are not going to understand it totally.

 

All Bible doctrines have to end in some measure of mystery because they are dealing with God, whose innermost being and unfathomable ways are beyond our full comprehension. In this life, we see in a mirror dimly, and know in part (1 C 13:12). Therefore, we will never have all the answers regarding any Bible doctrine, including the inerrancy of Scripture.

 

When we come to textual variations, what we cannot fully explain, we leave unresolved, believing the problem is our limited knowledge, not the Bible. If there are seeming discrepancies we cannot solve, we leave it with the Lord. He knows all. Fortunately, we do not have to know everything.

 

Having said this, we still have to face the pesky question, what about all those textual variants? Skeptics smugly use this to ridicule our claim the Bible is the Word of God, and believers are sometimes aghast at their own inability to answer these cynicisms. Fortunately, the issue becomes less disheartening when we are willing to ask the pertinent questions, and to take time to delve into what the variants actually entail.

 

We have 25,000 partial and/or complete New Testament manuscripts from Greek and other languages, containing about 400,000 or so textual variants. This means we have an average of only 16 variants per manuscript. The United Bible Society fourth edition of the Greek New Testament contains 1,438 of the most significant variations in its footnotes and presents manuscript info for them. Less than one percent of variants are significant enough to make it into the footnotes of our English translations.

 

The evidence for a trustworthy transmission of what the Bible originally said is overwhelming. Our manuscript evidence holds up well against other writings of antiquity (See Blomberg, p. 35). In addition to the manuscripts, we have over 30,000 scriptural quotations in sermons and commentaries of early church fathers. Even with no manuscripts, the latter would reconstruct the vast majority of the New Testament.

 

Our earliest manuscripts offer convincing help for us. We have 12 manuscripts from the 100s, 64 from the 200s, 48 from the 300s. By the way, each of these early manuscripts is written with the careful handwriting of an experienced scribe. None of them is "scrawled".

 

Most of these early manuscripts are fragmentary, but taken together, the entire New Testament is found in them multiple times. Later manuscripts add less than 2% more material to the text--that's 2% over 1600 years. This indicates a very stable transmission history. We have so many manuscripts that few new variants will ever be found. We can safely assume the first writing of any given text is in one of the variations.

 

Studies of ancient libraries of antiquity have shown that manuscripts were used anywhere from 150 to 500 years before being discarded. For instance, the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus was read and used for at least 600 years after it was produced. Facts like this show there may not have been various time-gapped generations of texts between the originals and the earliest manuscripts we now have.

 

Greek is not the only language we draw confidence from. In the 100s the New Testament was translated into several languages, including Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Gothic, Ethiopic, and Armenian.

 

Having many manuscripts with variations actually helps textual analysts. Varying streams of thought from different languages can provide confirming evidence of what the original said. For instance, 20 manuscripts would be more helpful than one in trying to find precise original wording. Thus, thousands of manuscripts is better than having few. A preponderance of similar texts helps confirm what the original said, and in the New Testament manuscripts there is almost always overwhelming agreement.

 

For one thing, a proliferation of manuscripts proves no one tried to manipulate the text. No hierarchy was trying to promote their own agenda.

 

The variant problem diminishes substantially if we look at it closely. For starters, 70% of all variations are spelling variants. Ancient scribes had no standardized spelling guidelines. Thus, in the 25,000 manuscripts with 400,000 variants, 280,000 of the latter are spelling variations. This means we have 120,000 other types of variations spread across 25,000 manuscripts, which reduces the number of variants per manuscript from 16 down to 5.

 

Other variants involved confusing similar letters, substituting similar sounding letters or words, omitting a letter or word, writing a letter or word twice, reversing order of two letters or words, incorrect word division, changes in spelling due to archaic language or grammar, and replacing rare words. Today's textual critic has to work as a private detective in trying to find original words (For types of errors, see Cowan and Wilder, pp.127ff).

 

Of these variants, only two disputed passages in the United Bible Society Greek text are longer than two verses: the end of Mark (16:9-20), and the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). In over 25,000 manuscripts, no other passages are anywhere nearly as long as these two.

 

When considering the variations, our chief concern should be, do they affect any major Bible doctrines? The answer is no. Let's consider a few samples (For more cases, see Blomberg, pp. 21ff, or footnotes in a Bible).

 

            Should Matthew 5:22 contain "without a cause"? Does the Doxology belong at the end of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:13? Does Mark 1:41 say compassionate or indignant? Many manuscripts omit Luke 22:43-44 and Acts 8:37. Does Romans 5:1 say we have peace, or let us have peace? Is 1 Corinthians 13:3 saying burn or boast? In Philippians 1:14 is the message "of God"? The three testifying in 1 John 5:7-8 is hard to unravel.

 

An interesting footnote: The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (www.csntm.org) seeks to preserve Scripture by taking digital photos of all known Greek New Testament manuscripts. 5800 documents are known to exist (about 5000 after AD 1000; about 800 before). Some are fragments, especially older ones, but the average Greek NT manuscript is over 450 pages long. There are a total of 2.6 million pages of text.

 

 

Credible Bible #2

Our Credible Bible (Lesson 2)

Why These 66 Books?

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

            Thanks to the Dead Sea Scrolls we know we have a reliable record of the books Jesus and the early believers deemed Scripture. At this point, we would be well served to consider why we accept the 39 Old Testament books, but not the Apocrypha, as Scripture. We reject the Apocrypha because Jesus said the prophets, a common way for referring to Holy Writ in His day, went from Abel to Zechariah (Luke 11:50-51). Abel was killed in Genesis; Zechariah was killed near the end of the book of Chronicles, which is the last book in the Hebrew Old Testament.

 

Once convinced of the makeup of the Old Testament, our next issue to face is; why have a New Testament at all? Why did we not stop with the 39 Old Testament books? Why did early believers, who obviously believed the Old Testament books were Scripture, feel a need to add any more books?

 

Two answers are very plausible. One, Jesus had promised to send His disciples the Holy Spirit, who would make them remember Jesus' teaching (JN 14:26), testify about Christ (15:26), and lead them into all truth (16:13).

 

Two, the Old Testament was a collection of open-ended books. Many of them ended looking ahead to a time when God would restore His people, and send Messiah. For instance, Jeremiah and Ezekiel predicted a coming new covenant. Other Old Testament books could also be cited as examples here (see Blomberg, pp. 61-62). They leave the strong impression the story of Israel was not yet complete. More was yet to come.

 

Early believers felt they had experienced in Jesus the completion and fulfillment of Old Testament expectation and hopes. All four Gospel writers for sure wrote as if they were continuing the Old Testament story line.

 

Another question is, why stop at 27? Some think certain works by the early church fathers belonged in the canon. Only 14 books other than our 27 New Testament books were ever given any consideration by early believers. None were serious contenders, except for the Shepherd of Hermas.

 

This brings us to the three guidelines that were used for inclusion in the canon. One, apostolicity; written during the Apostolic Age, in the first century, before the last of the 12 Apostles had died. This criterion was, first and foremost, the dominant requirement. Almost all scholarship now agrees the 27 books of the New Testament were written within the first century. Paul wrote first, in the early 50s to mid 60s. Matthew, Mark (the first Gospel writer), and Luke-Acts were written in the 60s. John was written in the 90s. (For an excellent handling of dating the four Gospels, see Bird, pp.125ff.)

 

Some church fathers began writing soon after John died, even very close to 100 A.D., but this was considered too late to make the final cut. This requirement precludes adding the Koran or Book of Mormon to the canon.

 

Two, orthodoxy. A book had to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus and the disciples. This became more valued as time passed, especially as heresies began to pop up. No book was allowed to be more than one person removed from an Apostle. Matthew and John were numbered among the original 12 disciples. Mark was believed to have written for Peter, who counted Mark as his son in the faith (1 P 5:13). Luke was a student of Paul.

 

Three, widespread use. To gain acceptance, a book could not be popular in only a small sect or in only one section of the Empire. Leaders everywhere were expected to be using them. They had to be valued widely.

 

The early believers interacted a lot. Roman roads helped make this the case. Paul's trips were also a unifying factor. Information and manuscripts flowed freely among early believers. They saw themselves as not only a local, but also a global, community. They felt a need to have worldwide impact. Thus, what happened elsewhere in the Empire mattered to them.

 

Origen (184-253 A.D.), in Alexandria, pondered a few books other than the 27, but when he moved to Caesarea and did not find these books used there, he dropped them because they failed to pass the widespread use test. This test may explain why the Shepherd of Hermas, though written very early, did not make the cut. It remained popular in the west, but not the east.

 

New Testament books obviously spread far and wide quickly. By the last half of the 100s, the Fathers at various points of the Empire were referring often to many of what are now New Testament books as Scripture.

 

They were read in churches every Sunday; an honor accorded only the Old Testament Scriptures. One reason so many manuscripts were saved is due to the fact early believers deemed them authoritative from the first, and wanted them for public reading in worship services.

 

The four Gospels were almost immediately and universally acknowledged everywhere by every one as extraordinary. Early believers also had no controversy with Acts, Paul, 1 Peter, and 1 John. Ones that triggered some discussion were Hebrews (no author mentioned), James (contradicts justification by faith?), 2 Peter (so different from 1 Peter in style; could it be by same author?), 2 and 3 John, and Jude (too short to be of timeless value?), and Revelation (always a puzzle).

 

The early church fathers quoted what are now New Testament books as authoritative, often showing them the respect they showed Old Testament books. Irenaeus (130-202 A.D.) picked 22 (20 for sure plus Hebrews and 2 John). Tertullian (155-240 A.D.) had 23 (James and Revelation; not 2 John). Origen (184-253 A.D.) had 21 (not Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2,3 John, Jude). In the 300s the Church Councils would confirm ideas and beliefs that had already been generally held in the 100s and 200s.

 

Determining the canon was not playful activity. Dodging persecution, and wrestling against heresies, can make people serious about what books they are willing to die for. Selecting the right books was serious business.

 

The canon was not forced on believers. Dan Brown's fiction, "The Da Vinci Code" notwithstanding, the council called by Constantine at Nicaea in 325 A.D. had nothing to do with determining the New Testament canon. This issue was not debated. This council was about the Person of Jesus.

 

Constantine did commission Eusebius to copy and send 50 Bibles to key locations in the empire. Eusebius included all our 27 books, but divided them into categories of acknowledged, and acknowledged with some doubt.

 

Well after Constantine, there still wasn't absolute unanimity on the final list. The first official list with our 27 books on it, all deemed to be without doubt Scripture, happened in AD 367, when Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, sent an Easter letter to the churches and listed the precise books we acknowledge today. In 397 the Council of Carthage ratified this list.

 

The four Gospels deserve special mention. Though in the 100s there was no widespread formal movement toward compiling a canon as such, from the first the four Gospels were entrenched among the earliest believers as the authoritative information sources about Jesus. In the mid 100s, Justin called them "Memoirs of the Apostles". These four books contained stories about Jesus, the essence of our faith, and kept people from fanciful thoughts about Him by setting limits on how far we can go in interpreting who He is.

 

For early believers, the Gospel of Matthew led the march toward canonicity. It was by far the go-to Gospel, for reasons not fully known. My guess is its having the Sermon on the Mount, and having been written with Jewish believers, who outnumbered Gentiles at first, in mind. Early church fathers thought Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic before he left Judea in order to leave his remembrances behind with the mostly Jewish audience he was leaving. Irenaeus (130-202 A.D. Lyon, France), Justin (100-165 A.D. Rome), Clement (150-215 A.D. Alexandria), and many others preferred it in their quotes and use. There are more manuscripts of Matthew than any of the other three Gospels. John comes in second.

 

A fascinating thing I have learned is; early believers had a rabid desire to read, and be read to, about Jesus. As Christianity spread across the Roman Empire, the four Gospels began to be translated almost immediately into languages other than Greek. Talking in our parlance, the Gospels went viral.

 

Demand for the four Gospels was so great that believers helped develop a new literary form; they contributed to the world's shift from scrolls to books. Scrolls were cumbersome and could be written on only one side. Books allowed documents to be written on both sides, and made it possible for them to be stacked and then bound together.

 

From the first, believers craved to have copies of the four Gospels. People wanted to know about Jesus. What I liked most about studying this was seeing how desperately early Christ-followers wanted to be in the Word, and to be near Jesus in their learning. Amen. May we be and do likewise.

 

The fourfold Gospel codex was by far the most popular book among early believers. The fourfold Gospel witness was not due to edicts enforced from above, but due to a grassroots movement among believers to have the Gospel. The people had a portable Jesus library they loved. They enjoyed the richness of having more than one vantage point to look at Jesus' life.

 

 

Why Pray?

Acts 4:25-26 (Part 2)

Confession. Thanksgiving. Supplication

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

After the lame man was healed, and 5000 became Christ-followers, Peter and John were released by the religious leaders, and went to celebrate with their fellow believers, who voiced a prayer of praise that came straight from the Bible.

 

Acts 4:25-26 (Holman)   You said through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David Your servant; "Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers assembled together against the Lord and against His Messiah."

 

           This quote of Psalm 2:1-2 is one of many examples we could use of people in the Bible praying words of the Bible. This has caused us to ask, if God promises something, why should we pray about it? If God is sovereign, why pray at all?

            The acronym ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) is helping us. We pray, first, because God deserves our adoration. We also pray due to our need to ever be confessing our sins. We must pray in order to live holy lives.

"Prayer is the lungs of holiness. . . .Prayer and sinning cannot keep company with each other. One or the other must of necessity stop" (E. M. Bounds). "Prayer is a reminder to yourself, as well as a declaration to the enemy, that you know he's there. That you're on to him" (Priscilla Shirer, "Fervent", p. 44).

The first of the 95 theses Luther nailed on the Wittenberg door was; "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said repent, he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance." This is not doom and gloom. Luther was speaking of a gracious method we are allowed to use to always be close to God. Because we know God wants to forgive us of our sins, and to restore a joyful relationship with us, we can approach repentance as not a burden we dread, but a gift we treasure.

Luther understood the ongoing dynamic of the Christian life. It entails never ending change. In this life we never fully arrive at all we should be, but we must ever be growing closer to the ideal. Repentance is the key to spiritual success.

This dismantles religiosity—for instance, using indulgences to buy people out of Purgatory. We gladly expect God's forgiveness when we repent of our sins.

Confronting our own sins is a bitter pill to swallow, but leads us to joy in God's presence. To find God's power for holy living, we must always be confessing our sins. The more we pray, the closer to God we will be. Holiness matters most, and holiness lives on prayers of repentance in the private place.

 

            Why do we pray? First, adoration; second, confession; third, thanksgiving. We don't want to make too hard and fast a distinction between adoration and thanksgiving, but there are maybe subtle differences. Adoration praises God for who He is. Thanksgiving praises God for what He has done, for gifts He gives.

Adoration consecrates our present tense, our right now. Thanksgiving consecrates our past. It sets yesterday on the altar as a gift to the Lord.

Giving thanks provides us one more moment of enjoying something that brought us pleasure. It becomes pure worship when our final burst of happiness over something we have enjoyed is directed toward Heaven (C. S. Lewis).

Confession and supplication are often instinctively driven by circumstances. Events in our lives regularly drive us to our knees to repent and to request. This inner compulsion is not available for adoration and thanksgiving. This is why the latter two are such wonderful forms of worship. They rise unprompted by some compelling force; they prove love is bubbling up unforced, like an artesian well.

If thanksgiving is not impelled, then what should we do to encourage it? Begin by organizing your prayer life. Create a system whereby you regularly come into God's presence with thanks. Write a prayer list of what you are thankful for.

C. S. Lewis gave another helpful hint. He said we should develop the habit of thanking God immediately, on the spot, for every good thing in our lives that happens to us. Whether He is the first cause, the obvious origin, or not, we should remember He is sovereign, moving behind all things coming our way. "Every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17b).

Once we capture this truth, whenever we are blessed in any way, "One's mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun" (C. S. Lewis). Habitually ask, what kind of God would be this good to me? Keep chasing sunbeams to the sun.

Why do we pray? First, adoration; second, confession; third, thanksgiving. Fourth, we pray in order to offer supplications, to make requests.

We ask God for things because He told us to. He ordains not only the results of our requests, but also the means of receiving them, and one of the means is; He tells us to pray. Our prayers are somehow included in helping order our cosmos.

A Bible example of this is the interfacing of a prediction given through Jeremiah, with prayers Daniel offered. As Israel was being exiled, YHWH said through Jeremiah (29:10b), "When 70 years for Babylon are complete, I will attend to you and will confirm My promise concerning you to restore you to this place."

Seventy years later, Daniel (9:2b), living in exile, took hold of this promise, saying, "I, Daniel, understood from the books according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet that the number of years for the desolation of Jerusalem would be 70." What happened next is very informative for us. Daniel did not sit by idly and wait for the prediction to be fulfilled. Instead, "I turned my attention to the Lord God to seek Him by prayer and petitions, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes" (Daniel 9:3). Since God promised Israel would return from captivity, why pray?

Let's return to Jeremiah's prediction. The length of the exile was only a part of God's prediction. The Lord also said through the prophet about this event, "You will call to Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you" (Jer. 29:12).

God needed a person to do what He said had to be done before the prediction could be totally fulfilled. Someone had to pray. Before the predicted result could be fulfilled, the predicted means had to be fulfilled. When Daniel prayed, the angel Gabriel came to tell him his prayer request had been heard and would be granted.

Now I need to clarify one matter. Direct promises declared in the Bible by God will be fulfilled. This does not mean God's desire will shall always be done.

Let me give an example. We know it is God's will that no one be unsaved. One of the most helpful Bible comments for praying for lost loved ones is 2 Peter 3:9b, which says God is "not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance."

This means we can come boldly to God, and pray in agreement with Him, saying we too want a particular loved one to be saved. This does not mean God will force that individual to be saved. Free will is something He will not violate.

Some want to fully understand the difference between free will and God's sovereignty. We cannot grasp this fully, but they are two sides of the same coin.

God ordained in His sovereignty that people would have free will. God can heal the sick, move mountains, and alter circumstances, but will not force free will.

He is bound by His own edict. We are thus making a huge request when we ask Him to save someone. Do ask. Ask Him to put people in the loved one's path. Ask Him to put circumstances that challenge the unbeliever. Do ask, but know God can only go to a certain point and then has to stop, due to His own self-limiting.

We embrace sovereignty and free will with equal vigor, not knowing 100% how they interact. Embracing both at the same time protects our prayers from two extremes. His Sovereignty gives us freedom to pray as boldly as we like. We do not have to worry about asking for something that might end up being ultimately harmful. Our sovereign God loves us, and lets the Holy Spirit filter our prayers.

Without this safety net under our prayers, "wise people would never pray again" (Tim Keller). This being said, I warn us to beware the sin of the high hand, of belligerently lambasting God in prayer. We do not want to test His patience.

While sovereignty protects our boldness, free will allows our prayers to be important. We are not robots. Our prayers matter. We are engaged in the running of the Universe. This keeps us from feeling useless, and being bored and listless in God's presence. Knowing we are decision makers helps us commune with God, and forces us to stay in contact with the Father.

Why pray? So we can offer adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

 

Credible Bible 1

Our Credible Bible (Lesson 1)

Introduction

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

Ruth and I are in our fifth year of hosting a college Bible study group in our home on Thursday nights during the school semesters. We have fallen in love with our students, and enjoy sharing life with them.

 

In these studies, Ruth and I have learned a painful truth. We are often reminded students can be unknowledgeable and unappreciative of the Bible.

 

Even students who grew up in church often show a lack of knowledge about rudimentary Bible truths. Even more alarming, they can be lax in their commitment to Scripture as the authority in their life for belief and behavior.

 

Due to this disconcerting observation, I took a three-week study break in January 2016 to investigate certain scholarly theological books that would help me better defend to our college students the truthfulness and reliability of Scripture. The six books listed here helped me immensely:

 

Bird, Michael F., "The Gospel of the Lord" (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids MI, 2014)

Blomberg, Craig L., "Can We Still Believe the Bible?" (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids MI, 2014)

Cowan, Steven B., and Wilder, Terry L., "In Defense of the Bible"

(Broadman and Holman, Nashville TN, 2013)

MacArthur, John, ed., "The Scripture Cannot Be Broken" (Crossway, Wheaton IL, 2015).

Ward, Timothy, "Words of Life" (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL, 2009).

Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge, "The Inspiration and Authority of the

Bible" (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg NJ, 1948 reprint).

 

            Warfield's book is the greatest book I ever read regarding the Bible. I think the other five authors in the above list would pretty much agree with this assessment. I think I can safely say Warfield's book is referenced in the other five books more times than all other sources combined. It would be hard for me to express how refreshing it was to read a masterful, scholarly book that was 100% totally sold out to the Bible being the Word of God.

 

Through 50 years of ministry, I have been guided by a firm belief that without a commitment to the truth of Scripture, we have no chance of living a successful spiritual life. The Bible is the crux of our faith. I respect and love the Bible. I want our college students to do the same—thus this class. I pray it will effectively teach the importance of Holy Writ.

 

I feel the timing is right for a class like this. Forces seem to have been let loose in our land that want to convince us the Bible has no current value for our culture. Sadly, these attacks sometimes come from within the so-called Christian movement. Some see it as antiquated, an ancient relic irrelevant to today. But many of us believe what the Bible says, God says. We feel we can make this claim based on rational, reasonable research.

 

People are prejudice against the Bible before they even give it a fair hearing. Nothing in the writings of the ancients has near the verification and support the New Testament does, but people do not reject the other writings.

 

Many reject the Bible on predetermined factors totally unrelated to the reliability of Bible manuscripts. Often they have a sin they don't want to forsake; thus the Lordship of Christ is not a welcome thought. Sometimes our interpreting the Bible is inconvenienced by its interpreting of us.

 

Others hate the Bible's worldview. They have no use for a God who became flesh through a virgin birth, lived a perfect life, died for the world's sins, rose from death, returned to Heaven, and is the only means of salvation.

 

THE APOSTLE PAUL AND MY DAD

 

            On Paul's second missionary journey (AC 15:36-18:22), Paul founded the church at Thessalonica (AC 17:1-4). Philippi was Europe's first church. Thessalonica was second. (Maybe they called it Second Baptist.)

 

            Within months of the church's founding, Paul felt a need to write his first letter to the Thessalonians. He probably took a pen made of hard reed that was cut diagonally across one end with a finely cut slit through the point. His ink would have been made of soot with burnt resin or pitch. Thicker and more durable than our ink tends to be, Paul may have had to use water to thin its gumminess. An inkstand discovered at Herculaneum, Italy, which was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D., contained ink as thick as oil, and was still usable for writing.

 

            Paul's writing material would have been either papyrus or parchment. Papyrus, the more common, was made from the pith of a water plant that grew along the banks of the Nile. Parchment, sometimes called vellum, was made from the skins of cattle, goats, and sheep that were scraped till smooth.

 

            Armed with pen, ink, and papyrus, Paul wrote his name in Greek, "Paulos", thereby penning the first word of Holy Writ in almost half a millennium. His letter was the first New Testament writing, and is our oldest extant written Christian document. The year was 51 A.D.

 

In 1951 A.D., the year I was born, my dad began preaching from a Bible, which I now own, that contained a copy of Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. The purpose of this class is to analyze what happened to the message of that letter and of the other New Testament books in the intervening 1900 years. Can we be sure that the book my dad preached from was conveying the same message Paul wrote 19 centuries earlier?

 

Questions about the reliability of Scripture have to be viewed through the lens of Archaeology, which has become our true friend. (CW, pages 236-239, lists several significant archaeological discoveries.) Over the past few decades the archaeologist's spade has become a witness on our behalf.

 

I learned this on my study break. It had been 40 years since I had read in-depth theological books. I was surprised at how much more corroboration there is for Biblical reliability now than I was exposed to in seminary.

 

For example, in my seminary days, Rudolph Bultmann, the liberal German scholar, was a force to be reckoned with. Now, almost none of his tenets are widely accepted. That's a game-changer for me. I am grateful we have left his arguments behind us.

 

Though Archaeology is our friend, news outlets still seem to prefer to publicize any find that might in any way possibly contradict Christianity. Digs sometimes turn up factors that are quickly analyzed, and prematurely assumed to disprove some historical tenet of Scripture. These are almost always later shown to not evidence Bible error, but the damage is done.

 

The story of Archaeology's finest hour fits well here. Much criticism of the Old Testament was made passé by the greatest archaeological find ever--the Dead Sea Scrolls, which pushed back 1000 years the date of our oldest Old Testament manuscripts.

 

The scrolls helped us better appreciate the reliability of the text we have. We now know the Masoretes accurately conveyed Holy Writ to us.

 

For me, the Dead Sea Scrolls' biggest contribution is; they gave us copies of the Bible that predate Jesus. This is earthshakingly vital to me.

 

We have always known Jesus believed the Old Testament Scriptures were true and divinely inspired. He said, "Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), and "Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law" (Matthew 5:18b). Critics, though, could say, "Yes, but we don't know for sure what the Old Testament manuscripts said in His day. We have no manuscripts extant within 1000 years of His lifetime."

 

They can no longer make this claim. Now we know what the Scripture of His day said. Dead Sea Scrolls have portions of every OT book except Esther. The most striking result of these 972 or so Dead Sea manuscripts, ranging from from 250 BC to 50 AD, is how similar they are to the Masoretic texts of a thousand years later. A stunning example of this is the handful of minor differences the huge scroll of Isaiah brought to the table.

 

Jesus' judgment is the most valuable one we have, and the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown that what we have now is what Jesus had then, and He verified them all as trustworthy and holy. We know precisely what He was referring to when He claimed, "It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail" (Luke 16:17).

 

 

Praying the Bible

Acts 4:25-26 (Part 1)

Praying the Bible

Prepared by Dr. John E. Marshall

 

Brother Andrew was a Christian missionary most famous for smuggling Bibles into communist countries during the Cold War. One of his closest friends was Corrie ten Boom, who during the Holocaust saved many Jews from the Nazis.

Brother Andrew was blessed by Corrie's powerful prayer life. He said an important part of her praying was the way she used Bible promises to ask God to keep His word. She would sometimes stop in the middle of a prayer, and begin turning pages in her Bible to get a promise worded precisely. Then she would hold her Bible up, point to the verse, and say, "Here, Lord, read it Yourself."

Corrie of course did not create the idea of praying the Bible. The Scriptures themselves contain instances of people who prayed to God, using other words of the Bible.

Our text is one example of this. After the lame man at the temple was healed, and 5000 became Christ-followers, Peter and John were hauled before the religious leaders, and ordered to quit speaking in the name of Jesus; a command the disciples refused to obey. When they returned to celebrate with their fellow believers, the group broke into a prayer of praise that came straight from the Bible.

 

Acts 4:25-26 (Holman)   You said through the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of our father David Your servant; "Why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand and the rulers assembled together against the Lord and against His Messiah."

 

         This quote of Psalm 2:1-2 is one of several examples we could use. When God threatened to destroy Israel because they worshiped the golden calf, Moses, realizing God's Word is a sword we can wield in battle (Eph. 6:17), unsheathed a promise God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (EX 32:13) to save the nation.

Moses also prayed a Bible passage often quoted in Bible prayers, Exodus 34:6-7a, where YHWH described Himself as "a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving wrongdoing, rebellion, and sin."

When Israel refused to enter Canaan, YHWH was about to destroy them, but Moses saved the nation by crying out the Lord's words back to Him, "The Lord is slow to anger and rich in faithful love, forgiving wrongdoing and rebellion" (NB 14:18). When the Psalmist was going through a dark time personally, he twice in the same Psalm pleaded with YHWH, using the Lord's own words, "You, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in faithful love" (PS 86:5,15). In the book of Nehemiah (9:17), when the Israelites confessed their national sins, they pleaded in prayer with God's own words, "You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and rich in faithful love." When Jonah (4:2) pouted before YHWH for saving the Ninevites, he told God he had not wanted to go to Nineveh to offer them salvation because he knew God was a "merciful and compassionate God, slow to become angry, rich in faithful love".

          Even our Master, who Himself was the Word incarnate, used the written Word in His prayers. Two of His most moving cries from the cross came from the Old Testament. In the noontime darkness, He prayed, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Mark 15:34). This directly quotes the beginning of Psalm 22, which deals with despair in the presence of the Father. I wonder how many times Jesus had read this Psalm, knowing someday He would be the one rejected. Jesus also prayed, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit" (Luke 23:46), a direct quote of Psalm 31:5. This Psalm is a plea for protection.

Read the Bible. "A major reason for weak prayer lives is a neglect of God's Word" (Wesley Duewel). Pray its promises. Immerse yourself in the Psalms; not only read them; also pray them, turn them into prayers. To pray well, we must read the Bible till, as Spurgeon said, our blood runs bibline. Pray to God through the Holy Spirit the Bible words He gave to us through the Holy Spirit. We should want the Word to flow through our prayers without our even realizing it is happening.

          At this point in these prayer lessons, we have to face pertinent questions. Why do we have to pray the promises? If God said it, why pray about it? Let me expand the question. If God is sovereign, ruling in the affairs of men, and knows the end from the beginning, why pray at all? It can seem like a useless activity. The rest of this lesson, and the next, will try to answer this possible cause of fretfulness.

          To unravel this quandary, we need to look at prayer in its various parts. The acronym ACTS has long been used as a way to remember important elements we should include in our prayers: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. ACTS is not a perfect, all-inclusive, way to consider prayer, but is sufficient to give us a hat rack on which we can hang some thoughts about why we should pray.

          We should pray, first of all, because God is worthy to be adored by us. Our Administrative Pastor Jay Hughes often reminds us of this. God created us, sent His Son to die for our sins, gave us forgiveness, and promised us everlasting life. He gave us this church and each other, setting us in groups where we find spiritual family. I'm thankful for my wife, children, in-laws, grandchildren, parents, and 13 years of life after two heart attacks. Why should we pray? If for no other reason, to lift our hearts and voices in praise to the One who deserves to be adored. He has condescended to enter into a relationship with us. Never cease to be awed by this.

To think of prayer as only a way of getting things from God for our benefit is a selfish way of picturing prayer. We love Him because He first loved us. We should want to spend time alone communicating with Him, just as we do with anyone we love dearly.

Our inner chamber, the prayer closet within us, should be the first, and never neglected, sanctuary of our existence. There, in the private place, we must regularly convey our thoughts of love to Him, entering His presence with wonder and awe.

One way we can know our private adoration is being truly effective is when it spills over into public adoration, when we honor Him before others. Our Lord deserves for others to hear us uplifting Him, and bragging on Him.

Praise through music in the gathered assembly is one way we can honor Him before others. Never underestimate the value of unbelievers entering a worship service and hearing ordinary folks singing God's praises. What they hear from the platform is "hired help", but they cannot slough off people singing in the pews.

          The importance of honoring God in the presence of others was driven home for me by something I recently read. We church leaders have long used the image in Isaiah 6 as a template for public worship directed toward the Father. A writer called my attention to a little phrase I have somehow missed, though having read the Bible over 40 times. The angels who say "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts" before the throne speak not only to God—their audience is not only One—they also "called to one another" (Isaiah 6:3a). Their worship is expressed toward God in the hearing of others. Even the seraphim teach us we should pray to adore Him directly for Himself, and to adore Him publicly in the presence of others.

 

Prayer Book #4

When I was a young preacher, an older Pastor whimsically said, "Sell all you have and buy books by Spurgeon to read." I would in the same spirit like to say, "Sell all you have and buy books by E. M. Bounds to read about prayer."

There is no one else like him. Each sentence he wrote has power in it. What a great gift modern publishers have given us by compiling all his writings into one book. I recommend you find it, read it, and then go back through it slowly as part of your daily devotion time.

Prayer Book #3

The first two books on prayer I recommend are by Tim Keller and Wesley Duewel. Book #3 is the most famous of Andrew Murray's 240 books he wrote on the deeper Christian life: "With Christ in the School of Prayer."

I do not agree with everything Murray wrote. How could anyone agree with every sentence in 240 books?

However, this having been said, I am enthralled by his burning passion for holiness, for a close, intimate walk with Jesus.

Anyone who wants to learn about prayer needs to read Andrew Murray. He has been blessing readers for the last 125 years.

Dr. John 3:16 Marshall, Pastor

Second Baptist Church

We exist to glorify God by making disciples through the Bible and relationships.

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Springfield MO 65804

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