Thursday, June 16, 2011

TheoQ&A: God’s sovereignty and His true Word – the Bible -Relevant Theology

WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE?

The Christian Issues Network

Biblical Q&A; Scriptural Q&A; Theology Q&A; Proverbial; What Do You Believe

"Every Thursday we post to The Christian Issues Network"?

"Answering Questions Biblically"

RELEVANT THEOLOGY

God’s sovereignty and His true Word – the Bible

If God is in control of everything, and He is, that means that He superintended the writing of His Bible, as well as preserving it intact down through the centuries, and there are no contradictions, errors or discrepancies of doctrine in it. Written over a 1500-year span by approximately 40 men, each with a different style and a different perspective, to a different audience, for a different purpose, the Bible’s accuracy is nothing short of astonishing.

When we consider the number of times it was copied by hand for at least 1400 years by thousands of different people until the printing press was invented, there is no way to explain the incredible accuracy of the Bible except divine preservation. God was actively and sovereignly protecting the accuracy of that which He had inspired, literally “breathed out” (2 Timothy 3:16).

Who doubts the truthfulness of the Bible? Satan, for one. God haters and God rejecters, for another. The Genesis account of the fall of man into sin is a prime example of methods of the truth deniers. Genesis 3:1-5, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God reallysay, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" Technique number one: call into question God’s words. Cultists are really good at this. They argue passages of the Bible by saying, “yes, but that’s not what it really means.” Then they proceed to tell you that it means something it doesn’t say.

Eve reiterates God’s command: if we eat from the tree, we will die. But Satan says, "You will not surely die." Technique number two: directly contradict God’s Word. Then the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." Technique number three: call God’s character into question and float a new and improved, revised version of truth.

Not a day goes by at Got Questions that we don’t hear from those intent on challenging God and the truthfulness of His Word. These are the skeptics who bring up “contradictions,” some too ridiculous to contemplate. “How could God make light if He didn’t create the sun until the fourth day?” As though God is powerful enough to create everything from nothing, but He couldn’t come up with a light source other than the sun, like the light of His own incredible glory, for instance.

Or how about “God didn’t create the world in six days. It took billions of years.” Or “God created everything, but He used the process of evolution to do it.” Or “Jesus wasn’t God; He was just a moral man and a good philosopher. But He didn’t die for our sins.” While these might seem like nothing more than simple ignorance, the implications of doubting God’s Word on these issues are huge and eternal.

The attack on the inerrancy of Scripture has at its very core the effort by demonic forces and the unbelievers they control to deny the essence of the Gospel – that Jesus Christ came to save sinners from spiritual death and an eternity in hell. The poor, misguided skeptics don’t realize that when they deny the Genesis account, they also deny the fall of man into sin and ultimately, reject God’s plan of salvation from sin.

If evolution is true (millions of years of species living, dying and mutating), then God’s words in Romans 5:12 “..sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” must be a lie. Death occurred for the very first time after the fall of man in the Garden. It didn’t occur, as evolution demands, for millions of years prior to Adam and Eve. But if we can be fooled into thinking that death didn’t come by one man, Adam, that negates the doctrine of the atonement—that all who died because of Adam’s sin will be made alive again through one Man’s sacrifice (Romans 5:17-21). See how sneaky Satan is?

Once people are convinced that even part of the Word of God may not be true, they can be deceived into believing that Christianity itself is false. When we question the validity of the Genesis account, the doctrines of the faith begin to crumble – sin, heaven, hell, faith, grace, Christ, and the plan of salvation. The whole thing stands or falls on the truth of Scripture, beginning with the Genesis account. Once the deceiver convinces us that the Genesis account isn’t true, he has us in his grasp, because if we deny the plan of salvation as outlined in Genesis, our destiny is hell. And that, my friends, is exactly what he wants.

This is why God sovereignly and graciously protected and preserved His Word down through the centuries, from every bleary-eyed copyist’s hand-written symbol, to the numerous legitimate translations in nearly every language cranked out by the millions today. And He will continue to do so, despite every effort of the evil one to thwart Him. “The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever” (Psalm 119:160).