The Authority of the Bible

Any way you look at it, the Bible is a remarkable Book. It was put together over a period of about sixteen-hundred years by 40 different authors, give or take one or two, I suppose, and all of these writers came from different walks of life. Some were military men, some were kings, there were fishermen, farmers, shepherds, builders, poets, philosophers—all different walks of life. And yet with all of this uniqueness and these various backgrounds, these different time periods spanning 16 centuries, look at the perfect harmony that there is in the overall message that’s contained in the Bible. Look at the overall theme and how it all fits together perfectly. Now, despite the many criticisms of those who refuse to submit to the AUTHORITY of God’s Word, there are no contradictions in Scripture. Jesus, Himself, said that the Scripture cannot be broken. It all fits together. It all applies to today. It’s so much more than just a religious text, like many believe it to be.

The English word Bible is a derivative from the Greek expression biblia, which is, itself, a plural form of the Greek biblos or biblion, which means books. So it’s a collection of all of these inspired books, holy books, holy writings. The English translation has classified this book as containing 66 different books or letters, but if you go by the Hebrew classification of 22 books, it’s not like the way that the English have organized it, or the English translators have organized it. But leaving that aside, I mean just as I said, the way that it’s organized is masterful if you look at it as a religious text, as a collection of literature, a collection of books. And we know why, of course, it all fits together so perfectly, because of the one mind that was behind it all.

Now, as organized and as harmonious as the biblical text is, there’s also some significant gaps in the story or in the writing. Biblical history, for example, is concerned primarily with the people of Israel, the Israelites, and really, it only talks about other peoples or other nations insofar as they come into contact with Israel. It’s a book, Mr. Armstrong used to say, primarily about Israel, the Bible is. There’s also the 400-year gap between the prophet Malachi and Jesus Christ, and what’s recounted there in the gospels. The Church at Rome, of course, tried to bridge this gap with the Apocryphal writings, but these books were not inspired and were never considered part of the Old Testament canon either by the Jews or by Jesus Christ.

Then when you get to the New Testament, you have four books that are devoted to the life of Jesus Christ, and the rest of the New Testament, primarily, is about the first few decades of the New Testament Church. That’s it. I mean, it’s a relatively short time period that’s covered there in the New Testament.

Let’s look at Isaiah 28. Why for all of the inspiration, for the similar theme that runs from beginning to end? I mean, you can compare on your own time Genesis 2 to Revelation 22 and see that it’s the same message—it starts the same way as it ends. And yet why, in the midst of all of that, are there these gaps in the time frame, in the chronology? People get hung up, in fact, on the chronology and the dates and the specifics of how it all fits perfectly with secular history, or imperfectly the way they see it. And yet the biblical writers weren’t concerned, so much, about the specific date that had to be written down like they were writing a journal or something. The Bible’s more concerned about events and the personalities that DROVE those events—that’s the real significance. Now, if you study further you can certainly put these events, many of them, together, much of them together with what is covered in secular sources.

Isaiah 28 and verse 10, it says, “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little:” Now, this is an important principle of Bible study, to get a little bit here, to get a little bit there. That’s the way that God put it together.

Verse 11 says, “For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.” Stammering there, if you look at the meaning, it just means to make pauses in the speaking or in the message, in the delivery. And that’s the way the Bible was put together. This is not a flaw; this is the way God inspired it to be. This is the way God WANTED it to be, to have these gaps, these pauses, so that He could then bring it all together for our understanding, as He opens our minds to understand and know what He teaches, to know what is the purpose for man.

This is from Mystery of the Ages. Mr. Armstrong wrote, “If one begins reading the Bible continuously from beginning to end, one becomes bewildered. The Bible simply cannot be read like any other book. It is a mystery because it is a coded book,” he says. “It is like a jigsaw puzzle, with perhaps thousands of various pieces of different forms and shapes that can be fitted together in only one precise pattern.” Now, you’ve put together a puzzle before, most likely, and you see how that it can only be arranged a certain way. You can’t force pieces together. We try to do it sometimes, but it doesn’t work, it doesn’t fit.

He says, “The truths of the Bible are revealed here a little, there a little,” he’s paraphrasing Isaiah, which we just read, “scattered from beginning to end, and revealed only through the Holy Spirit within those surrendered and yielded to God, willing to have confessed error and wrongdoing, and yielding to believe Christ the Word of God.” He says, “Jesus was the Word in Person. The Bible is the same Word in print.” The Bible is God’s Word in print!

Now, for those who just refuse to submit to God, they can really never come to understand the meaning and the purpose behind these inspired words. They’ll reject God’s authority. They’ll say it’s full of contradictions. They’ll ignore the text. And they do so, and as Jesus even brought out, and as Mr. Armstrong brings out there in Mystery, even if they wanted to, I mean they couldn’t understand unless God performed a miracle.

You can look at Matthew 13 on your own time there in the gospels where Jesus said that He spoke in parables—not to make the meaning clearer but to conceal the meaning, and He goes on to say that it’s given to you disciples to know and to understand. God was working with them in a special way because He had to raise up the foundation of the Church.

John 6:44 also is an important scripture Mr. Armstrong used often. No man can come to God except God draws him, unless God opens his mind to understand, to be able to put the jigsaw puzzle together.

Now, if our attitude is such that we humbly come before God and submit to Him, then it is amazing how our minds can be opened to know the meaning.

Mr. Armstrong said, “Instead of putting the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle properly and sensibly together, it has become the practice and custom to read an already-believed false teaching into each particular scripture, taken out of context.” He says, “In other words to interpret the scriptures to say what they have already been taught and come to believe.” See, we’ve been taught it, we’ve believed it, we’ve grown up with these misconceptions, and so we search for the scripture that conforms to that belief, we think.

He says, “The Bible needs no interpretation because it interprets itself.” We don’t have to go to a seminary. We don’t have to get the meaning from someone else, not if you’re willing to study with the right attitude, to look into the Bible, and to let it speak for itself, to let it interpret itself, to accept the words of God as God meant for them to be accepted.

Now, there’s obviously a lot that we can take away from an inspired lecture or article that is written or spoken in support of the obvious and clear meaning in Scripture. But it’s not enough just to hear that or to read an article. You’ve got to go and look into the Bible yourself and prove it! For yourself. And prove whether or not it’s true, what you’re hearing or reading.

2 Peter 1, verse 15. Peter says, “Moreover I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance. [16] For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” Peter here is referring to the vision of Christ’s Second Coming that’s recorded over there in Matthew 17. I mean, he saw it; he was a witness! He was an eyewitness to that vision of Jesus Christ in the Kingdom. And there were many other eyewitnesses that saw Jesus Christ, that heard Him!

Twenty-one of the New Testament books were written within 40 years of Christ’s ministry. I mean, again, there’s gaps, but if you look at how the New Testament, for example, was put together. I mean, so much of it was right around the time of Jesus Christ—these letters, these books, these gospels. Paul wrote that Jesus Christ actually saw 500 people after He was resurrected. Five hundred! Think of the many thousands that He saw, that He spoke to, that He healed during His ministry. And then even after His resurrection 500 morewitnessed Him, saw Him, wanted to touch Him in a few cases.

If this was all some kind of gigantic hoax, why aren’t there many documents from that same time period, from that First Century time period? Why aren’t there many documents preserved that dispute, I mean seriously dispute what Paul or Peter or John or Mark or Luke wrote about these events. I mean, if this was some kind of hoax there were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in on it, and the whole world has been fooled ever since. Okay, so you’re sitting there thinking, well, okay, it’s not a hoax, but now look into the words, read about the miracles, the resurrection in itself, and think about the power of God, and think about His involvement in the affairs of men, and think about how accurate and how authoritative this Word of God really and truly is. Think about how inspired it is.

Verse 20 says, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.” I mean, human beings make their interpretations, but God says human beings cannot interpret this Book. Only God can. Only God can open our minds to understand. Only God can call. We don’t decide to go after God. I mean, we do have our part—study and prayer and so on—but look at, as I said in a recent message, look at how much confusion and disagreement there is about what the Bible says. You wouldn’t have this kind of disagreement or confusion with any other textbook, but with the Bible—I mean, everybody’s got a different interpretation. And the reason for that is because people won’t submit to the Bible! They won’t submit to God’s authority! And so they read into it what they want it to say, what they want their religion to be. That’s not the approach God says we must take.

Verse 21 says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy [Spirit].” You see, these men were moved—these prophets, these apostles—they were moved by the Spirit of God. They weren’t giving their own private interpretation. God inspired them! God wrote through them!

2 Timothy 3 and verse 15; it says, “And that from a child you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Timothy knew these scriptures from his youth up. And of course, all that his mother and grandmother had to work with was the Old Testament, and those verses, those passages were able—as it says there in verse 15—to make Timothy “wise unto salvation.” Right there in the Old Testament! We see here from the writings of Paul, just how both Testaments were meant to be a perfect complement to one another. One’s not out the window once the other one comes, else why would there be so many quotations in the New Testament from the Old Testament? Why would there be so many references in Paul’s Epistles to the Old Testament writings? Why would Jesus come along and say the Scripture can’t be broken? What was He talking about in the First Century? What scriptures? Those that had been written and preserved by the prophets, by these holy men of God.

Verse 16, “All Scripture,” ALL OF IT—Old Testament and New—“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” God, you see, inspired these books. That word inspiration means God breathed. God breathes life into the Word. This is Jesus Christ in print! This is God’s Word we study! He gave it to us for our benefit that we might know and come to understand His purpose and His plan if we’ll yield to His authority in our lives.

Matthew chapter 5. God is the one who used these men to put the Book together; that’s why, even though put together over the course of sixteen-hundred years, you see how all of these books perfectly complement one another. They quote one another. They’re based on the same laws. They’re coming from the same God. Matthew 5 and verse 17. Of course, those who reject it just say that, “Well, it’s just men. Just men, a collection of writings that men put together.” And they’ve never really studied the Bible, or if they have, they haven’t studied it like the Bereans to search whether the things were so. They’ve studied it with a pessimistic attitude, with a negative attitude of, “Well, it’s all flawed to begin with.” And so they search and they look and they turn things over and they dig up things, trying to find flaws, trying to find weaknesses, trying to point out errors. Even as they, themselves, miss the entire point! And in that kind of an attitude and approach, they can’t know the meaning, they can’t understand the Bible, their minds haven’t been opened to the truth, and so they carry on with all of these ridiculous fables, with all that they’ve been taught, with all that they’ve just blindly accepted growing up.

Matthew 5 and verse 17, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” This is Jesus Christ saying this! [18] “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” He didn’t come to destroy the law, He came to magnify the law, to make it honorable! You know who said that? You know who wrote that? The Prophet Isaiah! He knew this! Jesus said the same thing! And yet people think that Jesus came along and just threw the law away, buried the law, and just wanted people to focus on Him, His personality, His life in the flesh, and that’s it, for the most part. But the Bible reveals that He, I mean, far from ignoring or even belittling the prophets or doing away with the teachings, He came to fulfill what they wrote and to uphold and to honor their teaching, and certainly above all, God’s laws, God’s government.

John 5, verse 36 says, “But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father has given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. [37] And the Father himself, which has sent me, has borne witness of me,” Christ said. “Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. [38] And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he has sent, him you believe not.” See, they didn’t believe Christ, and so they couldn’t know the Father, they couldn’t know God’s will because they rejected God’s servant, they rejected God’s Son.

Verse 39, Jesus says, “Search the Scriptures.” I mean what Scriptures is He talking about here? “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” I mean, here Jesus Christ is pointing to the sacred writings, in this case the Old Testament, in particular, and He’s saying, “These works, these books, these writings, they point to My Messiahship!” Hundreds of times, in fact, it was referred to in the Old Testament. These books testified of Jesus Christ, of His Messiahship. I mean, without the Old Testament you could never prove that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. You could never prove it! That’s where all those prophecies were found. If we’re to prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God, then of course, we begin our study in many of those Old Testament passages.

Verse 46. Here again, this is Christ. “For had you believed Moses, you would have believed me: for he wrote of me. [47] But if you believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?” If you’re not going to believe Moses, how are you going to believe Jesus? If you’re not going to believe Jesus Christ, how are you going to believe Moses? The two—their teachings, their writings—complement one another.

John 1, we’ll conclude over here. If we don’t believe the writings of Moses are true and inspired and written, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, as an admonition for us—if we don’t believe that, I mean then how can we lay claim to the belief that we’re followers of Christ?

John chapter 1, verse 45, “Philip finds Nathanael, and said unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“I mean, we’ve FOUND the Messiah! Moses spoke of this man! Moses wrote about this man! The other prophets talked about His appearance!”

Verse 49 says, “Nathanael answered and said unto him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” How did he know this? He knew it because all of it had been foretold in the pages of the Holy Bible, in the Old Testament, hundreds of times.

Far from doing away with the teachings of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ and the First Century apostles confirmed the veracity of the Old Testament canon, and established the text, along with their own inspired writings as the divinely inspired and authoritative Word of the Living God.