Category Archives: Scripture

The Bible Created the Church

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It is not the church that gave us our Bible, rather it is our Bible the gave us the church. When the church made a list of the inspired Scriptures, these were already acknowledged to be so in the Christian community. The Church did not stand over the Scripture in authority but submitted to them, using the Latin phrase “Recipimus” meaning “We Receive.” That is vital to understand. The Scriptures are self authenticating, having their source in God. The church merely recognized and received the word of God. God created the world by His word and creates Christians the same way – “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23)

– John Samson

The Supremacy of Scripture

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Quotes by Tim Chester from his upcoming published book “Scripture is Supreme”:

  1. “When Christians say that Scripture is supreme, we are saying that the Bible is the authoritative guide to God.”
  2. “Scripture is supreme because it is wholly trustworthy, and it is wholly trustworthy because God himself inspired its creation, acting through human authors to ensure Scripture’s complete accuracy.”
  3. “We accept Scripture as our supreme authority because we recognise God as our authority. By submitting to Scripture, we are submitting to God.”
  4. “We accept the supremacy of Scripture because we accept the supremacy of its author.”
  5. “The true Christ is the Christ we find in Scripture. And therefore, the supremacy of Christ becomes the supremacy of Scripture.”
  6. “Through the Holy Spirit, God himself speaks through the Bible as it is read and preached. That’s why Scripture is our supreme authority—because it is the voice of God.”
  7. “The supremacy which God-through-Scripture claims over us is the loving, liberating, life-giving rule of a loving, liberating, life-giving God. If ever we have reason to doubt this, then we can look to the cross, for at the cross we see the love of God in all its height, depth, and breadth (Rom. 5:8).”
  8. “Whenever we have to choose between what the Bible says and what anything else says, we choose the Bible every time.”
  9. “The supremacy of Scripture is not a dictate imposed on us by a faceless despot. The words of Scripture are the words of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his people.”
  10. “God becomes supreme in our hearts not by battering us into submission but by gently changing our desires and fuelling our love. This is why we read the Bible every day: to hear God speak to us in love and so be energised to serve him.”

Quotes on the Word

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“When the canon closed on the OT [Old Testament] after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, there followed four hundred ‘silent years’ when no prophet spoke God’s revelation in any form. That silence was broken by John the Baptist as God spoke once more prior to the NT [New Testament] age. God then moved various men to record the books of the NT, and the last of these was Revelation, also the last book in our Bibles. By the second century A.D., the complete canon, exactly as we have it today was popularly recognized. Church councils in the fourth century verified and made official what the church has universally affirmed: that the sixty-six books in our Bible are the only true Scripture inspired by God. The canon is complete. Just as the close of the OT canon was followed by silence, so the close of the NT has been followed by the utter absence of new revelation in any form. Since the book of Revelation was completed, no new written or verbal prophecy has ever been universally recognized by Christians as divine truth from God.” – John MacArthur, Does God Still Give Revelation, TMS Journal

“An ambassador is not a man who voices his own thoughts or his own opinions or views, or his own desires. The very essence of the position of the ambassador is that he is a man who has been sent to speak for somebody else. He is the speaker for his Government or his President or his King or Emperor, or whatever form of government his country may have. He is not a man who speculates and gives his own views and ideas. He is the bearer of a message, he is commissioned to do this, he is sent to do this; and that is what he must do. In other words, the content of the sermon is what is called in the New Testament ‘The Word’. ‘Preach the word’, or ‘preach the Gospel’, or ‘the whole counsel of God.’ That being interpreted means the message of the Bible, the message of the Scriptures.” – Martyn Lloyd Jones

“Let the man who would hear God speak read Holy Scripture.” – Martin Luther

“The Word of God can take care of itself, and will do so if we preach it, and cease defending it. See you that lion. They have caged him for his preservation; shut him up behind iron bars to secure him from his foes! See how a band of armed men have gathered together to protect the lion. What a clatter they make with their swords and spears! These mighty men are intent upon defending a lion. O fools, and slow of heart! Open that door! Let the lord of the forest come forth free. Who will dare to encounter him? What does he want with your guardian care? Let the pure gospel go forth in all its lion-like majesty, and it will soon clear its own way and ease itself of its adversaries.” – C. H. Spurgeon

God Actually Spoke To Me

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Article by Tim Challies – original source here.

I want to hear God’s voice. I want him to speak to me in a personal way. I want to know that it’s really and truly him. Is that too much to ask?

It’s not too much to ask. In fact, it is God’s joy to communicate to each one of his children in the most personal and intimate way. Our Father speaks to us. He speaks clearly and he speaks personally. He really does.

John Piper wrote about this once, describing a vivid encounter with God during his early-morning quiet time:

Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning … God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt that it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of a conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.

As I prayed and mused, suddenly it happened. God said, “Come and see what I have done.” There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment. At this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. I paused to let this sink in. There was a sweetness about it. Time seemed to matter little. God was near. He had me in his sights. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down.

He goes on to share some of what God said to him in that time together—God spoke of his deeds, of his power, of his authority and sovereignty. And then, “Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe of this. The God who keeps watch over the nations, like some people keep watch over cattle or stock markets or construction sites — this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard his very words. He spoke personally to me.”

Now, what did this do in Piper? How did the shock of receiving this word from the Lord affect him? This is where he springs the big surprise.

It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, and through the Bible I have experiences like this almost every day. The very God of the universe speaks on every page into my mind — and your mind. We hear his very words. …

And best of all, they are available to all. If you would like to hear the very same words I heard on the couch in northern Minnesota, read Psalm 66:5–7. That is where I heard them. O, how precious is the Bible. It is the very word of God. In it God speaks in the twenty-first century. This is the very voice of God. By this voice, he speaks with absolute truth and personal force. By this voice, he reveals his all-surpassing beauty. By this voice, he reveals the deepest secrets of our hearts. No voice anywhere anytime can reach as deep or lift as high or carry as far as the voice of God that we hear in the Bible.

It is a great wonder that God still speaks today through the Bible with greater force and greater glory and greater assurance and greater sweetness and greater hope and greater guidance and greater transforming power and greater Christ-exalting truth than can be heard through any voice in any human soul on the planet from outside the Bible.

Piper heard God’s voice and experienced genuine relationship with him through the Bible. Was it an impersonal experience? Did it leave him longing for something else somewhere else? No, not at all. It increased his intimacy and communion with God. It increased his confidence in the power and beauty of the Bible. It satisfied his desire to commune with God, yet made him long to experience even more of God in the pages of his Word. Continue reading →

The Scriptures by Thomas Watson

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(Original source here)

Q-II: WHAT RULE HAS GOD GIVEN TO DIRECT US HOW WE MAY GLORIFY AND ENJOY HIM?

A: The Word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.

2 Tim 3: I6. ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God,’ &c. By Scripture is understood the sacred Book of God. It is given by divine inspiration; that is, the Scripture is not the contrivance of man’s brain, but is divine in its origin. The image of Diana was had in veneration by the Ephesians, because they supposed it fell from Jupiter. Acts 19: 35. The holy Scripture is to be highly reverenced and esteemed, because we are sure it came from heaven. 2 Pet 1: 2I. The two Testaments are the two lips by which God has spoken to us.

How does it appear that the Scriptures have a Jus Divinum, a divine authority stamped upon them?

Because the Old and New Testament are the foundation of all religion. If their divinity cannot be proved, the foundation on which we build our faith is gone. I shall therefore endeavour to prove this great truth, that the Scriptures are the very word of God. I wonder whence the Scriptures should come, if not from God. Bad men could not be the authors of it. Would their minds be employed in inditing such holy lines? Would they declare so fiercely against sin? Good men could not be the authors of it. Could they write in such a strain? or could it stand with their grace to counterfeit God’s name, and put, Thus saith the Lord, to a book of their own devising? Nor could any angel in heaven be the author of it, because the angels pry and search into the abyss of gospel mysteries, I Pet 1: I2, which implies their nescience of some parts of Scripture; and sure they cannot be the authors of that book which they themselves do not fully understand. Besides, what angel in heaven durst be so arrogant as to personate God and, say, ‘I create,’ Isa 65: I7, and, ‘I the Lord have said it,? Numb 14: 35. So that it is evident, the pedigree of Scripture is sacred, and it could come from none but God himself.

Not to speak of the harmonious consent of all the parts of Scripture, there are seven cogent arguments which may evince it to be the Word of God.

[I] Its antiquity. It is of ancient standing. The grey hairs of Scripture make it venerable. No human histories extant reach further than Noah’s flood: but the holy Scripture relates matters of fact that have been from the beginning of the world; it writes of things before time. That is a sure rule of Tertullian, ‘That which is of the greatest antiquity, id verum quod primum, is to be received as most sacred and authentic.’

[2] We may know the Scripture to be the Word of God by its miraculous preservation in all ages. The holy Scriptures are the richest jewel that Christ has left us; and the church of God has so kept these public records of heaven, that they have not been lost. The Word of God has never wanted enemies to oppose, and, if possible, to extirpate it. They have given out a law concerning Scripture, as Pharaoh did the midwives, concerning the Hebrew women’s children, to strangle it in the birth; but God has preserved this blessed Book inviolable to this day. The devil and his agents have been blowing at Scripture light, but could never blow it out; a clear sign that it was lighted from heaven. Nor has the church of God, in all revolutions and changes, kept the Scripture that it should not be lost only, but that it should not be depraved. The letter of Scripture has been preserved, without any corruption, in the original tongue. The Scriptures were not corrupted before Christ’s time, for then Christ would not have sent the Jews to them. He said, ‘Search the Scriptures.’ He knew these sacred springs were not muddied with human fancies. Continue reading →