The Bible is the Word of God. It is without error. It can not fail. It does not “contain” the Word of God, as in, some of it is inspired and some of it isn’t ispired. We believe that EVERY WORD of the Bible proceeds out of the mouth of God. No one can be saved without the light of scripture in the form of the Bible itself, or Bible-based preaching, or other Bible-based communication such as tracts and other literature. We should base all of our beliefs and practices, without exception, on the Bible alone. In areas not directly addressed in scripture, we must make decisions based on sound biblical principles. The principle of love toward God and our neighbors is applicable in all situations.While the Bible is effective in nominally curbing the sinfulness of unsaved people, and unregenate people may hear the preaching of the word and show some passing interest in it; nevertheless the word does not effect them in a saving way because the things of God cannot be understood by the natural man. But those that have been born again by the Spirit of God are brought by the Word into a state of faith, growth, holiness, and ultimate deliverence from this world of sin.
Furthermore, when the Holy Ghost “moved” men to write down the Word of God, He did it through the particular language and personality of the man so moved, so that when we read Matthew’s Gospel, we are reading divinely inspired words, but those words are in Matthew’s voice. Likewise with the Gospel of John, whose voice is obviously different than Matthew’s, but equally inspired nonetheless.
At Sovereign God Ministries, we prefer the King James Version of the Bible, but we do not believe it is the only useful version, nor do we believe that it is “inspired” in the same sense that the original manuscripts were inspired. We recognize that the King James Version translators did not in every case make the best translation, and some later versions do a better job than the KJV in translating certain passages. Nevertheless, we regard more recent translation with caution, because most of them question the validity of certain texts, using an arbitrary rule in saying that older manuscripts are “better” than the less ancient copies. We do not consider the age of a manuscript alone as the determining factor in it’s validity.
Tags: Bible, confession, faith, religion, scripture
Sovereign God Ministries 
January 6, 2008 at 4:00 pm |
You wrote:
“The Bible is the Word of God. It is without error. It can not fail. It does not “contain” the Word of God, as in, some of it is inspired and some of it isn’t ispired. We believe that EVERY WORD of the Bible proceeds out of the mouth of God.”
Not even the writers of the Bible believed that, as we can see from the preface to Luke’s gospel, where he mentions that many have already written on the subject, and he too will write on it, and he offers nothing at all about divine inspiration to back up his writing. And of course there are numerous variant readings — so which one is “inspired”? And then there have been various canons not only over the centuries but even today, so which of those is “inspired.” I do not believe there is the slightest evidence or support for what you claim here. Instead, the Bible is a very human and fallible collection of documents, which have been revised and edited over time, and even what is included in that collection has historically not been stable.
January 8, 2008 at 3:17 pm |
Hokku, thank you for your comments and your frankness. I will respond appropriately as soon as I can, probably in the form of a new post on the subject.