Excerpt from "OUR BIBLE: THE MOST CRITICAL ISSUE" by J. Sidlow Baxter
“Christianity is based on a book. It centres in a Person. It expresses itself in a message. It authenticates itself in an experience. That basic book is the Bible. That central Person is Jesus. That expressive message is the Gospel. That authenticating experience is the new birth. Think here about that basic book. Christianity stands or falls with the Bible. It is no use saying, as the liberalists or modernists do, that so long as we have Jesus we do not need an infallibly inspired Bible. Nay, all that we know authentically about the Lord Jesus we owe, and shall keep on owing, to the Bible. To say that so long as we have Jesus we do not need the Bible is about equal to saying that so long as we have the sunshine we don't need the sun. I have said it many a time, and am surer of it than ever, that the life and death issue of Christianity is the inspiration and authority of the Bible. If the Bible is uniquely and inerrantly inspired, then we have certainty; we may know real truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, and about human destiny on the other side of the grave. But if the Bible is not the uniquely and inerrantly inspired Word of God, then (let us be blunt) we do not have certified truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, or about human destiny in the hereafter: we are only groping. If the Bible is provenly inspired by the divine Spirit, then Christian theology is truly a science, for by it we may truly ‘know’. But if the Bible is anything less than provably inspired, then Christian theology instead of being ‘the queen of the sciences’, is merely religious philosophy and human speculation. If the Bible is only human lore, and not divine truth, then we have no real answer to those who say, ‘Let's pick the best out of all religions and blend it all into Pan-Deism - one world religion with one god made out of many’. The most devastating blight on modern Protestantism is not its plurality of denominations. The modern ecumenicity movement, which until recently found its loudest voice in the World Council of Churches, has wasted our time with its dreary dirge about denominational divisions while it says nothing about basic heresies which destroy faith in the Bible and create the deepest division of all. It was because Luther and Zwingli and Calvin and Melancthon and their co-reformers broke through the encrusted mass of medieval superstition, and cleaved their way straight back to the historic sources of the Christian faith in the Holy Scriptures that there came to us the never-to-be-forgotten triumph of the Protestant Reformation. Ever since then, of logical necessity, we Protestants have always been the people of the Book. It is in the Book that we find the veracity of our cause, the validity of our claims, the vitality of our message. It is in the Book that we find the warrant for our existence, the magna charta of our freedoms, and our divine ‘Declaration of Independence’. It is in the Book that we find the sum and substance of our argument, and the inspiration of all our activities.”
Excerpts from "BORN AGAIN BY THE WORD OF GOD" by John D. Morris, Ph.D. “’Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.’ (1 Peter 1:23) Our rebirth into the family of God is quite unlike our natural birth. All human birth and, indeed, due to the universal curse placed on all creation (Romans 8:20-22) at the time of Adam's rebellion (Genesis 3), all plant (1 Peter 1:24) and animal reproduction as well, is ‘of corruptible seed,’ withering and dying. Our spirits, however, if we have availed ourselves of God's free offer of eternal life through the death of His dear Son, have been reborn of ‘incorruptible’ seed, not subject to decay or death. The agent which brought about this transformation is the incorruptible ‘word of the Lord [which] endureth for ever’ (v. 25). This ‘word’ is modified by two descriptors, both of which are emphatic in the Greek. First, it liveth; i.e., it actually possesses life. His sacrificial death yields our eternal life. Note the precious truth: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20). Secondly, the Word of God ‘abideth’ (same word as ‘endureth’ in verse 25) forever. There are two emphases here: One is on the quality of the Word; i.e., it will never change or lose its relevance. The other is on the self-perpetuating nature of the Word. It so consists of life that it is able to give life. ‘This is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you’ (1 Peter 1:25), by which we are born again to incorruptibility and immortality. ‘That by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust’ (2 Peter 1:4). JDM” http://www.icr.org/article/7297/
Comments