All Scripture is Inspired

[John from Kentucky]

It is confusing for me. Every person from every denomination and every religion will claim that THEY are the ones who see clearly and everyone else is blind. How can one know what is true?

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,6452.0.html

http://bible-truths.com/twelve.htm

Hi largeli,

Have you read the two studies from Ray that I attached?

They are delightful statements of some basic truths.

Two paramount truths:  1)  God does not lie, and 2)  God's Word does not lie.  Once those truths are learned it will be difficult to be deceived.

John

[lareli]

FriendofJC

Every church in every denomination will say that those verses apply to them and their beliefs. They will use those verses to validate whatever beliefs they have and also to discredit all who disagree. Everyone is right in his own eyes.

[friendofJC]

FriendofJC

Every church in every denomination will say that those verses apply to them and their beliefs. They will use those verses to validate whatever beliefs they have and also to discredit all who disagree. Everyone is right in his own eyes.

They twist the words to their destruction(and yours if you believe a lie).  Read your bible!

[lareli]

I'll spend some time on those links John.

[lareli]

John I believe God doesn't lie and Gods Word doesn't lie but I think my question is, what makes something Gods Word. You hear 'the word of God' or 'Gods word' and I automatically think, 'The bible'. But the NT aside from Revelation is mans words.. Letters written by men. The bible itself was mans doing.. Paul's letters are Paul's words and Paul was not perfect right? I think I heard an audio from Ray on YouTube where Ray wasn't quite sure how he felt about what Paul said about women teaching..

Are the apostles letters infallible?

[Kat]

This is from the conference 'How We Got The Bible.'

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5815.0.html ---

But where did ALL these Bibles come from? Where did that German Bible come from? Most importantly, are these Bibles complete? Are Books missing? What about all these Lost Books? You know the Lost Book of Eden - The Book of Enoch - the Book of Jasher and all of these. Which Scriptures did Jesus and the Apostles use? Did the Catholic Church decide what is and what isn't Canon? How can we know for sure? So we are going to answer these questions.


                              WHAT IS "CANONIZATION?"

There is nothing mysterious about how or what is meant by canonization. It merely means that a book or writing has to be recognized, approved, or officially used or read or marked or stamped by the highest servants of God, as genuine and inspired of God. Well who does that? 

All the examples we have, it was always a very high official of God's, either a priest - a governor - a king - a prophet. Generally no one less had the authority to say this is Scripture. Now it could be counted Scripture by merely the use of it. If it was used regularly, taught regularly, spoken or read regularly then it was considered Scripture. If it was made part of the ceremony at the Tabernacle and later on even more so at the Temple, like where David set up singers and so on. So then whatever they used was considered Scripture. So it could be by usage, it could be by declaration that someone just says, 'this is Scripture' or it could be that they put a stamp on it, like Hezekiah did. 

Josiah made all the Scripture in the Square Block form of Hebrew. So any of the old Scripture, if they weren't Square Block form then you could say, 'I don't know if Josiah approved that or not.' So there are ways we can know what is scripture. 

There are 7 periods of making some kind of gesture as to what is the Scripture. What are the Scriptures that are God's Word, in which God put His approval on the Books that He desired to be collected and maintained as His divine Scriptures? We are going to see how they were passed on.

Now the good thing is we don't have to go back to Moses and Elijah, Nehemiah, David and Solomon to have a good idea what constitutes Scripture. What authority can we go to, to jump forward a thousand years or so? 


                                 THE WITNESS OF OUR LORD
                         [The Most Credible Witness To The Canon]

Our Lord is, of course the most credible witness as to what should be Scripture and what should be in your Bible that there is.

Now, here we are going to learn some interesting things. The third Synoptic Gospel was written by the physician Luke. Luke was a Greek name, but there are some who contend he was a Jew. I think most scholars think he was a Gentile and there seems to be a good reason for how he wrote, if he was a Gentile.

He was one of Paul's closest and dearest traveling companions. You can see this in Col. 4:14 and Philemon 1:24 and others. Luke wrote the Gospel according to Luke, and also the Book of Acts, which introduces the Gospel to the Gentiles - Acts 9:15; 10:45; 11:1; 13:47; 15:7; 21:19; 22:21; 26:23; 28:28.

Act 9:15  But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name to the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel:

First He mentions "to the Gentiles" and this is Luke, he wrote this. So Luke is letting the Gentiles know and if you have a red letter edition, that verse is in red, those are the words of our Lord and He said these Scriptures are to go to the Gentiles. Well now if we are going to send 'the Scriptures' to the Gentiles, we've got to know what 'the Scriptures' are, right? Does Luke inform us as to which of these Scriptures, are to be considered the Scriptures, the gospel and all these messages? In Luke 2 it's a very interesting little story and Luke is the only one that carries it. My Bible heading says 'Simeon's Prophecy.' 

Luke 2:25  And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon...
v. 26  And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
v. 30  For my eyes have seen Your salvation
v. 31  Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
[Now notice what it says in verse 32]
v. 32  A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.

Notice that he mentions the gentiles first. This is a little reversal from what the Jews always did and what Paul always did. It was always to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. Here we have the Gentiles first and then the Jews In the book of Acts we just read, "to the Gentiles" and then to Israel also. Why should that be? Well maybe because we have a Gentile writing it. Maybe he understood already that God was going to leave off with Israel and go predominately to the Gentiles.
 
I mean Paul still at the end of his ministry, he's still going to the Synagogue of the Jews, when he goes to a city. But in Palestine Jerusalem he shook the dirt off his feet and said, "I go now to the Gentiles." (Acts 18:6).

But you see there are some things covered by Luke that aren't in the other gospels and Luke wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote that book. Now let's turn to something really interesting. So to go among the nations, we already read in Luke 2. Now let's read this.

Luke 24:46-47  And He said to them, thus it is written, and so it behooved Christ (He is talking about Himself in the third person) to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

So where did Christ according to Luke... because the others don't word it this way, but Christ did say this. It's just that Luke was the only one that picked up on it, because he's a Gentile and this means a lot to him. All nations, okay. 

Now it says in verse 46 "thus it is written." Where is it written? Where is this prophecy that He should go to the Gentiles, where is it written? There was no New Testament yet. Christ hadn't called Paul yet, there wasn't no Epistles of Paul. Christ was just resurrected from the dead that day or within so many days. But where is it written? Now we are talking about the Old Testament.

We read something else that the only place in the Bible that you will find it is back in verse 44. We are going to learn where it is written.


                  TRIPARTITE DIVISION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
               THE LAW OF MOSES - THE PROPHETS - THE PSALMS

Luke 24:44  And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in THE LAW OF MOSES and in THE PROPHETS and in THE PSALMS about Me.

There it is. That is called the Tripartite Division of the Old Testament, the Law - the Prophets - the Psalms. The Psalms are also known as 'the Writings.' So Christ is telling us there is 3 divisions of Scripture that prophesy and talk about Him; the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.

This is the only New Testament Scripture that mentions this Tripartite Division of the Scripture. The Jews in Jersalem had the proper Scriptures, Rom. 3:2 "...unto them [the Jews] were committed [Gk.- 'put in trust and charge of'] the oracles [Old Testament Scripture - divine utterance, I Kings 6:16, Heb. 5:12, I Peter 4:11] of God." Paul is here confirming that the Jews in fact HAD carried out this commission of the Jews.

But why did Luke record this? Well certainly not for the Jews, they knew what the Scriptures were. The Jews didn't need to be told what Books constitutes the Scriptures... but maybe the Gentiles did. All you had to do was go to the Temple or go to any Synagogue and you could see what the Scripture are. But these were not the Synagogues of the Gentiles. There were no Synagogues of the Gentiles, they had no Holy Scripture, Hebrew writings or the Law of Moses. So Luke is writing this for the benefit of Gentiles. That's US!  Us Martin Luther people. So we know what scripture we should be looking at, the Law - the prophets - the writings. 

You could go into any Temple and say 'Rabbi, I heard somebody out in the street talking about the Law and the Prophets and the Writings/Psalms, what is he talking about?' 

'Well he is talking about the Scriptures. You see all these scrolls, there is the scroll of Isaiah, see and I've got them all up there.'
 
'Oh okay, so does everyone know about them?'

'Yes my son, everybody knows. Every Jewish boy for a thousand years knew that.'

'Is this the only place they can find these, here in the Temple?'

'Oh no, all the villages and towns that have a Synagogues, they all have them. Right next to Peter house in Capernaum, they have them up there too.'

'Oh okay.'

You know I wanted to bring a vellum scroll, a sheep skin scroll. So I checked eBay to see if I could get one. Was I in for a shock. They wear out, so they buy new ones. Now all Synagogues have these vellum scrolls, well they might have paper, but the real orthodox, they had real vellum, you know the skins. So I checked eBay and the cheapest one I could find was $9000 and they only had 3 or 4. They went from 9 to 50,000 dollars. This is for modern scrolls. These might have been made back in the 50's or 60's, for $50,000.

So I said, well they're not going to see those scrolls, I guess. I'll bring my old Germany Bible, that's an original.

So everybody knew what these were, except maybe the Gentiles. Luke is a Gentile, writing to the Gentiles and that's 'us' people. Now we know whatever constitutes the Laws, the Prophets and the Writings to the ancient Jews, that's the Old Testament. So by the time of Christ, the Old Testament had to be completed, right?


           EZRA FINALIZED THE CANONIZATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT:

All other periods of canonization are of little important compared to that of Ezra who made the final decision on all books. Approximately 444 BC Ezra publicly reads The Law in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8 & 9), and Nehemiah is renamed Governor of Judah and began re-establishing proper worship (Nehemiah 5:14).

Ezra edited some books to make them more understandable. Example: Deut. 34:5-12 was added by Ezra (Moses did not record his own death). Ezra edited numerous books to bring them up to date. He wrote the book of Ezra, Book of Nehemiah was previously known as II Ezra, and he wrote I & II Chronicles. He wrote THE LAST BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT!

There was no new revelation for 450 years, from the time of Ezra back in about 444. So for 450 years that Book is finished, whatever The Laws and The Prophets are, it's finished. So whatever they had in the Synagogues and in the Temple, those are 'The Books.' You don't need the Catholic church to tell you which Books belong to the Old Testament. Trust me they did not have the Apocryphal in there. 

Listen, in the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted by the different writers about 260 or so. Exact scripture are quoted from the Old Testament in the New Testament, Matt., Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and James, they all quoted from the Old Testament.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mercy, peace and love
Kat

[Dave in Tenn]

Just a note:  That's not exactly what Ray said concerning "women preachers".   

My 'faith' in scripture TODAY is very much in line with what Mike said. 

Here's what I think...take it or leave it.  Scripture ITSELF divides the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats, the seed that grew and the seeds that didn't, the good fish from the whole catch. 

Look at the Sermon on the Mount.  Ray said it was "for you".  What good is it if you can quote it from memory and have read/heard 1000 devotionals/books/sermons on it if you don't DO what He says?  It is in obedience that we "understand" the deep things of the book.  When we "obey" we begin to know what He's talking about.  Some things He only shared with His disciples.  Still does.

Just one example:  All my life I have heard that "by grace are we saved, through faith" and I THOUGHT I knew what that meant.  It was a 'doctrinal position'.  Now I understand not only more fully what the WORDS mean, but I understand what the statement means.  AND because I've experienced the truth (at least in some ways) of that "inspired word of God" written by Paul, turns out Scripture is TRUE!  Who'd a thunk it?   

The SUM of His Word is Truth...rightly 'divided' (cut), line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little (the way Peter and the others preached), spiritually discerned, not 'broken' (contradicting or contradicted), two or more 'witnesses', matching spiritual with spiritual  The more I do THAT, the more "true" I understand Scripture to be.  And the 'signs' that it is true are all around me, and in me, and in my present and past which gives me some foundation for a faith in the future..."a conviction of things not seen"...and a faith in what is yet unseen in my life.  Among these are the completion of salvation, the conforming/making of mankind in His image, and resurrection.  This is HIS faith...the faith He has...and to the degree He has done so, He has shared it with me.  He hasn't shared it with everybody, however, and not even with most who call Him Lord and "believe the bible".

I think I might could write at least a short book on/from that one 'verse'.

Oh well...if you are looking for some other 'proof', there may be some scriptural "apologetics" that could be helpful, but I don't know of one.

Moses wasn't perfect, neither were the prophets and poets.  What they wrote, however, is perfect.  It does exactly what it is intended to do.  It's sharper than a two-edged sword, able to cut asunder...it's part of the "sum"...the "whole counsel of God".

Mark Twain and William Shakespeare weren't perfect either, but you can get a lot out of reading them...except the gospel of the Kingdom of God.     Once you believe THAT, however, you'll find it even there. 



     

[Mike Gagne]

Amen Dave    I was thinking on this scripture 2 Timothy 2:25-26 and  I couldn't help but remember when I didn't know truth even though I read and studied my Bible I just didn't know it. I thought those who where teaching me were teaching me truth, and then God opened my eyes and I seen that it was not the truth I was learning. I was actually deceived. Now I have some thing to compare with and now God can show me truth because I have seen what was untrue. Maybe  I am wrong? But always hoping to learn!

[Mike Gagne]

Maybe I am off topic on last post sorry!

[John from Kentucky]

John I believe God doesn't lie and Gods Word doesn't lie but I think my question is, what makes something Gods Word. You hear 'the word of God' or 'Gods word' and I automatically think, 'The bible'. But the NT aside from Revelation is mans words.. Letters written by men. The bible itself was mans doing.. Paul's letters are Paul's words and Paul was not perfect right? I think I heard an audio from Ray on YouTube where Ray wasn't quite sure how he felt about what Paul said about women teaching..

Are the apostles letters infallible?

What makes something God's word?  The simple answer is God does.

Men wrote the Scriptures under God's inspiration and direction.  The Scriptures were preserved over the centuries by God's direction.

Men do not have free will.  It is not difficult for God to direct a man to write what He, God, wants written.

Jesus told us that birds do not die without God's say.  A God with such control over His creation would have no problem directing a group of men to write what He wanted.

To keep us on track, God gave us the key truth "by two or three witnesses let every word be established."

We must have at least two scriptural witnesses to establish a truth or doctrine.  God's word the Scriptures never contradict.

This way of life is fairly easy (especially on the inside, in our hearts) when a few basic truths are known and followed.  Those two links of Ray's that I referenced are very good and all supported by at least two witnesses.

[Rene]

It is confusing for me. Every person from every denomination and every religion will claim that THEY are the ones who see clearly and everyone else is blind. How can one know what is true?

Largeli,

I believe you when you say you are confused.  Only God can give you the eyes to see the truth and faith to believe.  Here is an email reply from Ray that pretty much sums it up:

http://www.forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,1710.0.html

Faith is the assurance that God's Word is Truth and that God will do all that He has promised.  This assurance (faith) is a GIFT of God and cannot be obtained by any human endeavor (Eph. 2:8-9).  Reading and hearing the Scriptures can increase your faith, BUT ONLY BECAUSE GOD SUPERNATURALLY GIVES YOU THAT FAITH AND ASSURANCE, as you read and hear.  Through faith you will both know God's will and live God's will.  You must go to God for faith--there is no other source of true spiritual faith and assurance of God's trustworthiness.

God be with you,

Ray

[Kat]

Hi Largeli,

Are the apostles letters infallible?

To me, that really is not the question. Yes the Apostles were only men, but there really is no question that they were being directed by the Holy Spirit, so that same Spirit will direct us to the truths God wants to teach us just like it did them. We do not have to worry so much if there is errors or if the Bibles are mis-translated, it is God's Spirit that will show us truth. He did provide Ray to help clear up some of the mis-translations.

Trust God, that is where truth comes from, that is what Christ means by saying My words are spirit and life. His Spirit will show us what is truth, so keep praying and reading His word.

John 6:63  It is the spirit that giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, are are life. (ASV)

mercy, peace and love
Kat

[lareli]

Thanks guys

I will spend some time in the links youve all referenced..

What do you guys think about Paul saying women shouldnt teach because of Eve and all that? What about in Romans where Paul wrote we should bow down to the authorities? I think I am a naturally rebellious person and sometimes I feel like that needs to be broken (thats what the church says anyway) but sometimes I feel its righteous, lol, but I know every man is right is his own eyes so I could be wrong... what do you think, is guilt or shame an indicator of wrong doing or is it a tool of the devil to make you think youre in the wrong when youre actually on the right track?

[Dave in Tenn]

I don't know of a scripture that says 'bow down to the authorities'.  It's often dangerous to paraphrase.  Scripture says plenty about submitting to those who have the rule over you, being at peace as much as is possible, not resisting evil, returning good for evil, etc. etc. etc.  Get specific, and understand these situations ARE specific (in that they are choices literally faced by each of us in individual ways) and not too fruitful (in my opinion) 'imagining' scenarios. 

On guilt:

http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,3709.0.html

[Joel]

We that are alive today, in some ways are at an advantage over people in past history.
We have a Bible that we can read and compare Spiritual things to Spiritual things as never before.
Looking at the Old Testament we can see how God dealt with those that chose the good and those that followed after evil.
God only revealed himself to a minority of people over the years, and the rest of the world worshiped false gods and idols.
Even Israel, and Judah did a lot of the same things as the other peoples around them.
It must have been a wonderful thing to have seen the temple that Solomon built and heard the Wisdom that God gave him to judge, and rule during his day.
We have the books of the Old Testament because God moved on various people to record and preserve events, by his Spirit.
We have the New Testament that we can compare to the Old Testament because God moved by his Spirit on Faithful men that Recorded the life, death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus The Christ of God. And to people he chose to be eyewitness of all the things he said and did.
It is very helpful as we are faced day to day with various good and evil events that apply to us in our generation. If the numbers are correct, about 2.1 billion people out of over 7 billion even consider the God of creation, and go about worshiping other gods and idols the same way that it has been for thousands of years.
Many saw Solomon at his best, and Untold numbers will one day see Jesus in his kingdom as he rules and reigns along with those he picks to make up that last great government like none has ever seen before.
We can hold in our hands The Old, and The New Testaments as God's two witnesses of events past and future.
We truly are a blessed people like none before us.
Thankful for his Love, and Mercy.

Joel

[Mike Gagne]

Would it be safe to say that,  if God is sovereign,was sovereign and will be sovereign, then all scripture and everything that is written is inspired by the sovereignty of God?