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So what do you say to the person who says that he
believes in God, but doesn’t believe that the Bible is the
Word of God? Rather than dive right in with our
Bible Apologetics 101 arguments, we should first consider
the first part of the person’s statement, his claim to
believe in God. We must understand that many believe
in a seeker-friendly wrathless god who ignores sin, a
heavenly bellhop who submits himself or herself as a servant
to man, a god created in our own image rather than the One
Holy Triune God, Creator of heaven and earth, who sent His
Son to redeem us from sin, and lives within us in the Person
of the Holy Spirit. We must also understand that, even
though others may have a relatively accurate perception of
the true God and state that they believe in Him, many only
believe certain facts about Him, but don't actually “believe
Him”. The Greek word used for believe (pisteuō)
means “to trust, commit to, and rely on” rather than mere
intellectual assent. The Bible generally refers to an
“unbeliever” not as one who doesn’t believe that God exists
(James 2:19 states that even the demons believe in God’s
existence), but as one who does not trust and rely on Him
(does not possess saving faith). In most cases, the
person who does not believe the Bible to be the inerrant
inspired Word of God is not a true believer.
We should next attempt to determine the motivation of the
person, that is, why he or she made the statement. Is
the person’s mind closed, or are they sincerely seeking the
truth? Is his doubt an intellectual or a spiritual
issue? Many people deny the inerrancy of the Scripture
because they don’t want their thoughts and deeds to be in
subjection to it. I usually ask if I can convince the
person of the Truth of the Bible beyond a reasonable doubt,
will he believe it. If he says no (and many will), you
know he has a spiritual problem rather than an intellectual
problem. Referring to scoffers, Jesus said not to give
what is holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs (Mt
7:6), so we should just keep praying for them and leave the
conversation open in such a way that it can be continued
later. The Holy Spirit will need to work on them a bit
before they're willing to listen.
For those who truly have an intellectual problem with the
Bible, the most common objections raised are “the Bible is
full of errors” and “the Bible was actually written by men,
not by God”. We’ll discuss these and other objections
further in our Bible Apologetics writings, but we first want
to find out if this person has actually read and studied the
Bible, or is he just repeating what he’s heard from someone
else (who may not have read the Bible either and is also
passing along someone else’s opinion ad infinitum).
To do this, I usually respond to the first objection by
politely saying something like “I’ve heard that many times,
but have not actually been able to find an actual error.
I wonder if you can point out one to me so we can analyze
it.” In the rare cases that the person will be able to
find one, we can explain the alleged error or research it
further and get back with him. Most disputes can be
traced to such difficulties as language (not only
translations, but also Hebrew slang changes from generation
to generation, as anyone with teenagers can identify),
presuppositions (many people automatically reject any
miraculous event), historical facts or ancient customs (most
have been cleared by new archaeological discoveries), or an
inexact Bible translation (using a loose paraphrase such as
the Message or New Century Version). It can also be
that the person’s interpretation is flawed. The most
common causes of this are taking a passage out of context
and/or reading our biases into the text rather than letting
the author’s intended meaning speak for itself. In
general, critics tend to classify any difficulty (anything
not understood) as an error, but these complexities actually
point to the divine origin of the Bible. If the
Scriptures were written by humans apart from the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, these authors would surely have
simplified the writings and attempted to work out any
difficulties so that it could be fully understood without
faith, and without divine illumination.
To the charge that the book was written by men apart from
divine inspiration, anyone who has done any serious Bible
study should be able to rule this out. Although the
personalities of the human authors were woven into their
writings, the words were divinely constituted. The
primary evidence against the Bible being written by men is
the unity and the vast amount of fulfilled prophecy.
The 66 books of the Bible were written over a span of about
1500 years, on several continents, in 3 languages, by dozens
of authors from all walks of life. Only by divine
inspiration could the scripture be in such harmony.
There have also been approximately 2000 prophecies fulfilled
without a single error (including over 300 by Jesus).
Odds are astronomically past the point of impossibility of
this happening at random. We’ll elaborate further on
these and other objections in
An Overview of
Bible Apologetics.
We should next explain to the person what we mean when we
say that the Bible is the “Word of God”. The Bible
itself claims to be inspired by God (Gal 1:11, 2Tim 3:16,
2Pt 1:20-21 etc), and since God can’t lie (Titus 1:2, Heb
6:18), inspiration guarantees the inerrancy of the
Scriptures (see What
do We Mean by Inerrancy for a definition and discussion
of this crucial doctrine). In addition, the Bible is
not simply a written record of God’s revelation to us, but
the source of God continuing to speak to us today. It
is not just a list of rules and regulations, but reveals, to
the extent that we can grasp, the very nature of God.
The Bible being the Word of God also means that its message
carries the same authority as if God was audibly speaking
directly to us. Disbelieving or disobeying the
Scriptures is equivalent to disbelieving or disobeying God.
This authority of the Bible is not intrinsic, but derives
from the fact that its Author is the triune God, that is,
God is exercising His authority through His written word.
We can then turn our conversation to Christ by asking the
person “Do you believe in Jesus, that He is God the Son and
Lord of your life”. Anyone who believes in the true
triune God will answer “yes” to this question. We
should then ask the person “How does Jesus exercise His
Authority and Lordship over your life”. At this point,
any honest and intelligent person must admit that the only
correct answer is “though the Scriptures under the
illumination of the Holy Spirit”. While He will speak
to us through circumstances, thoughts, consciences, pastors,
teachers and other Christians, we must have a divine
foundation to discern if what we're hearing is from Him.
Our inclination these days is to appeal to human reasoning
and to trust our own feelings. There is a way that
seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death (Pr
14:12). Without the Bible, we have no basis of the
knowledge required for a proper relationship with God.
The bottom line is, I don't see how anyone can do an honest
open-minded serious study of the Bible and not believe that
it is the Word of God. We've all heard of many
atheists, who have taken up a study to disprove the Bible,
only to end up being converted into an apologist for the
true Word. As mentioned earlier, very few people
claiming not to believe the Bible have actually spent much
time reading it. A great method to get them started
is to challenge the person to read the Gospel of John (a
chapter a day should take about a month). Strongly
(but politely) suggest that they pray beforehand something
like, “God, I’m not sure if this is your Word or not, but if
it is, please reveal yourself to me through these readings”.
Make yourself available to encourage them and answer
questions as they progress through the book, then meet with
them for further discussion after they finish. Above
all, remember that it is the Holy Spirit that will
ultimately convince them, not our own assertions (1Cor
2:10,14).
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