The Word of God

A matter that is of great concern to me is how the church for the past number of years has been viewing the Bible. I had a minister in a sister denomination say to me, “The Bible is not the word of God but the word of man.” I had someone say that they don’t read portions of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, because they simply don’t agree with what is being said.

Then, there are those who love to pick on the apostle Paul and they will say with a laugh, “Well, you know that’s Paul and we all know what Paul is like.” What about the overused claim, “That statement is simply a matter related to its time and really doesn’t have anything to say to us today?” Then, there is the coup de grace, “Very learned people today tell us that certain statements mentioned in the Bible disagree with modern science. We prefer to accept modern science.”

Wow, where does that leave us? If we are going to accept the words of specialists over biblical statements and creeds then we might just as well toss the Bible out or rewrite it completely. I don’t know of a man or woman of science today who will tell you that a virgin birth is possible, that the miracles recorded in both the Old and New Testament are possible or that the resurrection of a dead body is possible. So whose word will we accept? We have literally torn the Bible up into little bitty pieces, some of which we accept with modification, of course, while other pieces we will discard as totally unbelievable and therefore non-applicable.

I believe and I was brought up in a church that believed the Bible in total is the word of God. Whether it is the apostle Paul or Jesus who is speaking, it is one and the same: God’s word. The Old Testament is as much the word of God as the New Testament and so we cannot make the claim that we believe in the God of Love as proclaimed in the New Testament but we have problems with the God of Justice found in the Old Testament for they are both one and the same God. I tend to agree with a colleague in a sister denomination who once said, “I prefer to believe the words of those who were closer to the actual event than someone who is writing about it today.”

I am one who still believes that the Bible is the inspired, infallible and inerrant word of God. We have to recapture the wonder and awe of God’s Holy Word and start living by it rather than playing with it.