Inerrancy of Scripture

American evangelicals’ grasp on theology is slipping, and more than half affirmed heretical views of God in the 2022 State of Theology survey, released by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research.

Overall, adults in the U.S. are moving away from orthodox understandings of God and his Word year after year. More than half of the country (53%) now believes Scripture “is not literally true,” up from 41 percent when the biannual survey began in 2014.

Researchers called the rejection of the divine authorship of the Bible the “clearest and most consistent trend” over the eight years of data. Researchers wrote, “This view makes it easy for individuals to accept biblical teaching that they resonate with while simultaneously rejecting any biblical teaching that is out of step with their own personal views or broader cultural values.”

Here are five of the most common mistaken beliefs held by evangelicals:

1. Jesus isn’t the only way to God. 56 percent of evangelical respondents affirmed that “God accepts the worship of all religions.” This answer indicates a bent toward universalism—believing there are ways to bypass Jesus in our approach to and acceptance by God.

2. Jesus was created by God. 73 percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” This is a form of Arianism, a popular heresy that arose in the early fourth century.

3. Jesus is not God. 43 percent affirmed that “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,” which is another form of Arian heresy.

4. The Holy Spirit is not a personal being. 60 percent of the evangelical survey respondents believe that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”

5. Humans aren’t sinful by nature. 57 percent also agreed to the statement that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” In other words, humans might be capable of committing individual sins, but we do not have sinful natures. This denies the doctrine of original sin.

A team of archaeologists with the Archaeological Studies Institute believes it has found a tablet dating back to 1400 BC. Institute Director, Scott Stripling, says the tablet pre-dates the commonly held belief about when the Bible was written by as much as 800 years. If true, this would dispel the theory that the Bible was written around 600 years after the occurrence of some of the first events it describes. This means that the events were written as a firsthand account rather than after the fact.

Stripling continued, “Some scholars believe in something called the ‘documentary hypothesis,’ which states that the Bible was composed hundreds of years apart in different sections, and then later redacted. The tablet is a problem for that theory and the idea that Moses could not have written the Pentateuch. ... This type of writing is more characteristic of the very beginning of the Late Bronze Era II horizon around 1400 B.C. For those who want to push the Exodus date way off into the future, this is really problematic for them.”

Houston Baptist University Professor, Craig Evans, said; “This tablet contains the oldest text that we know of so far. It also correlates with two passages in the book of Deuteronomy where it talks about going up on Mount Ebal, building an altar and cursing the enemies of Yahweh in Israel … The skepticism that nobody could write Hebrew that far back—is just an unwarranted skepticism."

The tablet has major religious and historical implications. If the peer review of Stripling’s discovery confirms his claims, it could dispel the liberal idea that the Old Testament was written in 600 BC.

In his recent book, The Wisdom Pyramid, Brett McCracken shares the following story about his father:

I will always remember my dad's Bible. As a kid, it was a fixture in our house. Thick, black leather-bound, with gold leaf edges; stuffed full of church bulletins, Scripture, memory cards, and who knows what else. The well-worn pages were adorned with underlined verses, variously colored highlighted sections, and scribbled margins. I saw dad with it almost every day—studying during his quiet time, preparing a Sunday, school lesson, or maybe leading our family in a dinnertime devotional. The presence of dad's Bible nearby was a comfort. I think it made the Bible more credible to me that, for my dad, it wasn't just a prop to bring to church on Sundays. It was his beloved source of guidance for everyday life.

My life was full of the Bible: learning Old Testament stories on flannel graph in Sunday school; memorizing the order of the Bible's sixty-six books in Vacation Bible School; doing "sword drills" in Awana; memorizing the "Romans Road"; singing songs that went:

The B-I-B-L-E

Yes that's the book for me!

I stand alone on the Word of God: the B-I-B-L-E!

The Bible was the book that shaped my life more than anything else, which is odd looking back on it: an Oklahoma kid being profoundly shaped by an ancient collection of Jewish literature and two-thousand-year-old Mediterranean letters. But I was, and I am.

And my story isn't unique. The Bible has been a treasured source of truth and life all over the world, across countless generations. It manages to speak to the soccer mom in San Diego as much as the truck driver in Taipei; it guides the life of a skateboarding teenager in 2020 Buenos Aires as much as it did the blacksmith in 1520 Liverpool. Everywhere you go in the world, people who share almost nothing else in common can say in unison: "The B-I-B-L-E Yes, that's the book for me!" This can be said of no other book in the world. No other source of truth is as universally beloved and consistently cross-cultural as the Christian Bible.

There was no archaeological evidence for the existence of the biblical King David. That is, until 1993, when surveyor Gila Cook noticed a basalt stone inscription by an Aramaic-speaking king celebrating a military victory over “the House of David.”

To date, archaeological evidence has confirmed the historical existence of about 50 Old Testament figures, most of them kings. Archaeologists have also found records of a few other names, such as Balaam, which may or may not be the biblical prophet of the same name.

Biblical people named in the archaeological record:

Foreign kings: 26

Israelite kings: 8

Judean kings: 6

Israelite priests: 3

Israelite scribes: 1

Possible Preaching Angle:

Once again, archaeology confirms that the Bible record is true and accurate and it has a historical framework. “All your words are true” (Ps. 119:160).

NASA’s Perseverance rover was launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Its mission was to seek for signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock for a possible return to Earth.

It’s only reasonable to think that all the components of NASA’s Perseverance rover are new. After all, it is the successor to the Curiosity rover, and it was only launched in 2020. And so, it would be a surprise to find out that the Perseverance’s brain is a piece of technology from the late 90s. That’s right. A processor released by IBM and Motorola over two decades ago, in 1997, serves as the brain of the Perseverance rover. The question is, why?

The craft's developers were more interested in reliability than sheer power. Their solution was a G3 processor used in Apple's Macintosh starting in 1998. Apple veterans remember the G3 fondly. It smoked older Macs with a processor operating speed that topped out at a screaming 266 megahertz (MHz). Or so we thought at the time. Today's processors leave the G3 in the dust. For example, the processor in an Apple iPhone 12 runs at 3 GigaHertz (GHz).

Possible Preaching Angle:

What is old is not necessarily outdated and it can be more reliable than what is newer. This is certainly true of the Word of God. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matt 24:35). "Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89).

When Sarah Sallon moved back home to Israel, to her job at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, she went looking for medicinal plants which had helped her during a previous illness. And she found lots of them. But she also heard about ancient medicinal plants that had disappeared.

She said, “They're just historical ghosts. Like the famous date plantations along the Dead Sea, 2,000 years ago—described by Pliny; described by Josephus, the first-century historian. They're not there anymore. They just vanished!”

But Sallon realized that seeds from those trees still existed. They'd been recovered from archaeological sites. So, she went to the archaeologists and proposed planting some of those seeds, to see if they'd grow again. It didn't go well at first. She said, “They thought I was mad! They didn't think that this was even conceivable.”

But she kept pushing, and eventually persuaded a few of them to provide some seeds to try this. More than a decade ago, she planted some of these ancient palm seeds. Six weeks later, little green shoots appeared!

Sallon and her colleagues recently announced in the journal Science Advances that they'd grown another six trees from some of those ancient seeds. No wonder God’s Word is likened unto an imperishable seed.

Florencia Rastelli was mortified. As she wiped the counter at the cafe where she works, she knocked over a glass and it shattered loudly on the floor. The customers all stood still, petrified, Ms. Rastelli recalled. “I was like: Of all days, this one,” she said. “Even a police officer popped in and asked me to keep it down. I was so embarrassed.”

The people of Cremona, Italy, are unusually sensitive to noise right now. The police have cordoned off streets in the bustling city center and traffic has been diverted. The city’s mayor implored Cremona’s citizens to avoid any sudden and unnecessary sounds.

Cremona is home to the workshops of some of the world’s finest instrument makers, including Antonio Stradivari, who produced some of the finest violins and cellos ever made. The city is getting behind an ambitious project to digitally record the sounds of the Stradivarius instruments for posterity. And that means being quiet.

So that future generations won’t miss out on hearing the instruments, sound engineers are producing the “Stradivarius Sound Bank”—a database storing all the possible tones that the instruments can produce.

The engineers thought their project was finally ready to get underway. But a soundcheck revealed a major flaw. The sound of a car engine, or a woman walking in high heels, produced vibrations that ran underground and reverberated in the microphones, making the recording worthless.

The police cordoned off the streets. The auditorium’s ventilation was turned off. Every light bulb in the concert hall was unscrewed to eliminate a faint buzzing sound. The violist played a C-major scale as the recording team watched their screens responding to the crisp sound of the instrument.

Then it happened, and they froze. “Stop for a moment, please,” the sound engineer said. They rewound the recording, and played it again. The technician heard the problem, loud and clear: “Who dropped a glass on the floor?”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Bible; Scripture; Word of God – The Bible accurately records the very words of God so that we can hear his voice generations after he has spoken; 2) Meditation; Silence; Fellowship with God - In order to meditate on Scripture and to fellowship with God we must silence the constant noise around us and focus on him.

Like many of her generation in the early nineties, Stella Wedell once made a mixtape to take with her on vacation to Spain. And like many 12-year-olds, Stella lost track of the cassette during her various adventures in the beaches of Mallorca and Costa Brava. Thus, Wedell was shocked and amazed to find it --more than two decades later--in a Stockholm art exhibit.

The tape had been recovered by UK-based artist Mandy Barker after it was found washed up on Fuertaventura, a different Spanish beach island. Barker let it dry in a windowsill for more than a year, then eventually took it to an audio restoration specialist, who reported listening to several of the songs.

Barker’s exhibition, “Sea of Artefacts,” is part of her broader work exploring plastic pollutants in oceans and seas, of which the mixtape was one notable example. Barker said, “The songs at the start were damaged. But further in the songs were as clear as they would be today. It shows how long plastic can exist in the sea.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God's Word never fades or expires, no matter how long it's been. Some may not have opened God’s Word for years, but we can always turn to God's Word for what we need.

A devastating fire ravaged the building housing Freedom Ministries Church in West Virginia. It was intense enough to justify a joint response from several nearby fire departments. It was so hot that at one point it caused firefighters to back out from the blaze. But after the fire was extinguished, what they found inside shocked them even more.

A post on the department’s Facebook page explains: “In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes. [But] not a single Bible was burned and not a single cross was harmed!! Not a single firefighter was hurt!” Photo evidence showed several compelling photos of Bibles unscathed amidst plenty of charred remains.

"Though the odds were against us, God was not," the firefighters added.

Potential Preaching Angles: God’s Word is the truth, and truth can withstand the attacks against it. Even when it seems like all else will fail, God’s Word remains.

In his book, Faith Is Like Skydiving, Rick Mattson illustrates the reliability of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and resurrection by drawing a horizontal spectrum on an easel pad. He labels one pole 0% and the other pole 100%. Then he asks people to imagine that four friends named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John attend a sporting event together and afterword write down what they saw. If 0% of the four reports harmonized with each other, we’d think the guys got their wires crossed and attended separate events. Matthew reported on a baseball game. Mark reported on a football game. Luke and John reported on completely separate sports events. By contrast, if the accounts were 100% verbatim, or pretty close to it, we would also be skeptical. We would think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John huddled in a room somewhere to fabricate a single harmonized account.

But what if the reports were in the 70% range, roughly speaking? What if the broad contours of the stories were very similar, though some of the details different? Say Mark’s account of the baseball game was the shortest and most selective. Matthew’s account was longer and more organized. Luke highlighted some of the underrated players and a distressed female fan who got beaned by a foul ball. John’s was the most philosophical about baseball. Despite these disparate angles, the reports had much in common: the New York Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins 8-4, the game was played in Minneapolis, such and such players were the goats, and one player in particular stood out as the clear hero of the game—knocking in all of his team’s runs and hitting a grand slam on the final out to seal an unbelievable come-from-behind victory.

It seems to me we could feel pretty confident that this game actually took place and that its elements were truthful as reported by the four witnesses. And that’s just what we have in the four Gospels.

In his book Unbelievable, Justin Brierley writes convincingly that the resurrection is the only adequate explanation for the historical evidence found in the Gospels:

Mike Licona and Bart Ehrman are both New Testament scholars who have very different takes on the resurrection of Jesus. Ehrman let go of his Christian faith after encountering perceived problems with the New Testament. Mike Licona had a similar crisis of faith in the early years of his academic career when his study of the New Testament didn't match what he had been taught about it while growing up. However, whereas Ehrman's study led him away from Christianity, Licona's research convinced him that the resurrection was the only adequate explanation for the historical evidence he found in the Gospels.

Other pieces of the puzzle fell into place as Licona began to appreciate how the New Testament accounts reflected the literary conventions of their day rather than the modern standards often imposed on them by both Christians and critics. During one of his dialogues with Licona on the show, Ehrman rattled off a list of differences between the Gospel accounts of the resurrection, such as the number of women and the accounts of angels at the empty tomb.

He argued that these differences give reason to doubt the reliability of the resurrection story. Naturally, Licona knows these differences just as well as Ehrman but he didn't find that they count against the overall strength of the account, saying:

It is a bit like the Titanic. There were conflicting accounts from survivors, such as whether the ship broke in half before sinking or whether it went down in its entirety. But no one called into question whether the Titanic sank or not. It was the periphery details that were in question. It is the same thing with the New Testament. They are all peripheral details that have no impact on the fundamental truth of Christianity.

Not all symphonies are created equal. Go online and one album featuring Beethoven's Fifth Symphony might cost $5, while another one with the same exact piece might cost $15. One might chalk this up to corporate greed, but the real difference is the conductor. The way the conductor directs the music changes the way it sounds. Thus, a performance directed by one orchestra leader will sound different from one directed by someone else. This is because their individual style, perspective, and purpose in how they direct the music influences the music itself.

Listen for yourself to two versions of the same Beethoven symphony:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDFyigVcXw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4mW2Mc9is

Notice the difference? It would be foolish to suggest that these differences in performance indicate a historical weakness in Beethoven's original creation. An expert on Beethoven would state that it speaks to the transcendence and brilliance of Beethoven's music that it could continually inspire new performances. The substance of Beethoven's works remains untouched but the communication of it changes from conductor to conductor.

Students of the Bible can say the same thing about the four Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. While the substance of Jesus' life and ministry never changed, the telling of it did. So then, the Gospel of Matthew is not a plagiarized sham of an earlier work anymore so than Leonard Bernstein's 1979 recording of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is a theft of his original masterpiece. The four Gospels are merely retellings (inspired by the Holy Spirit) of the life of Christ that preserves the original content of his ministry but is "conducted" by the Synoptic authors in such a way that reflects their styles, perspectives, and purposes.

The Oxford Comma is perhaps the most controversial piece of punctuation in the English language. There are conflicting guidelines governing whether or not the extra comma at the end of a list should be used, depending on which authority one consults. Those in opposition say the comma is unnecessary, while supporters of the comma argue that it serves to clarify in instances whether two items are meant to belong together or not (as in "I'd like to thank my parents, Mother Theresa and the Pope.").

The controversy heated up, however, when a judge in Maine ruled that a dairy company owed its employees approximately $10 million in unpaid overtime expenses for an absent Oxford Comma which rendered a list of overtime exemptions slightly ambiguous. The ruling reversed the decision of a lower court. Though not an official stance, the lawyer representing the drivers said that in cases of ambiguous sentences, the best rule to live by is: "If there's any doubt, tear up what you have and start over."

Potential Preaching Angles: It is amazing what kind of confusion can be caused by one missing punctuation mark. By the grace of God, however, the Bible is abundantly clear when it comes to the inerrancy of Scripture, the Gospel, and the identity of Jesus Christ. We do not need to fear misunderstandings of either the Bible or the Person of Jesus because it has been revealed as unambiguously as possible: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Alas, the Monopoly thimble is no more. Back when the iconic board game was introduced during the Great Depression, players could choose from a variety of game pieces, including the top hat, boot, iron, racecar, and dog. Parker Brothers, the creators of the game, have cycled game pieces in and out over the decades, "retiring" dated pieces in favor of more relevant ones. Recent years have seen the company host online polls where fans can vote to keep or replace the current pieces. The practice has gained popularity across the internet, and has resulted in the death of the iron, horse and rider, and now the thimble-icons of a bygone age, replaced by ideas promising to be more exciting and certainly less "old-fashioned" to modern generations. Its replacement has yet to be determined, but could take the form of a cell phone, computer, or even jet.

Only time will tell how long the few remaining original pieces will last in our ever-evolving world, but until then, we can all bid the thimble a warm and nostalgic goodbye.

Potential Preaching Angles: Some things need to change and die, going the way of the thimble. Other things—like the Word of God, the truths of Scripture, the core of the gospel, etc.—do not change even when they are no longer as popular.

When a place has been besieged for years and hunger stalks the streets, you might think that people would have little interest in books. But enthusiasts have stocked an underground library in Syria with volumes rescued from bombed buildings—as users dodge shells and bullets to reach it. Buried beneath a bomb-damaged building, is a home to a secret library that provides learning, hope, and inspiration to many in the besieged Damascus suburb of Darayya. As one user says, "We saw that it was vital to create a new library so that we could continue our education."

Since the war, volunteers—many of them also former students whose studies were brought to a halt by the war—have collected more than 14,000 books on just about every subject imaginable. "In many cases we get books from … near the front line, so collecting them is very dangerous," says one of the collectors.

The idea of people risking life and limb to collect books for a library seems bizarre. But volunteers at the hospital use the books to advise them on how to treat patients, untrained teachers use them to help prepare classes, and aspiring dentists raid the shelves for advice on doing fillings and extracting teeth.

But in a besieged town wouldn't it make more sense for them to spend their time looking for food rather than books? One of the library users said, "In a sense the library gave me back my life. I would say that just like the body needs food, the soul needs books. Books motivate us to keep on going. We want to be a free nation. And hopefully, by reading, we can achieve this."

Possible Preaching Angles: Word of God; Bible; Do we as Christians hunger and thirst for God's Word like these endangered Syrians hunger for knowledge? Would we risk our lives to own and read the Bible in order to find hope and meaning for life?

If you were ever affected by a natural disaster, in the middle of an emergency situation, or stranded in the wilderness, would you know what to do to survive? Would you know how to treat a snake bite while on a hike? If you were lost in the woods would know how to make a fire without matches or how to track and hunt wild animals for food? What would you do in case of a terrorist attack? Would you know how to escape or forage for food? How would you survive major disasters like floods, avalanches, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and nuclear aftermaths?

Well, now there's an app to help you with all of these crucial questions. The SAS Survival Guide app takes the bestselling book by John "Lofty" Wiseman and puts it into digital form. Wiseman was a British soldier of the Special Air Service who wrote a best-selling book on SAS Survival.

This app that is jam-packed with extremely useful and potentially life-saving information, videos, and other tips and tricks for how to survive when the worst and unexpected happen. The photo galleries show you different animal tracks, medicinal and poisonous plants, sea creatures, and snakes, while the videos show you various instructions. The app also has a comprehensive First Aid section.

Do you think you've got what it takes to survive? Take the included 100-question quiz and put yourself to the test.

Possible Preaching Angles: The Bible is much more than a survival guide, but it does provide the essential skills we need to prepare for the crises of this life and for the next.

In 2005 a retired merchant seaman named Waldemer Semenov donated a compass to the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. The ordinary and small compass (a mere four and half inches in diameter), doesn't look impressive, but this device has a fascinating story behind it.

During World War II, Semenov was serving as a junior engineer on the American merchant ship SS Alcoa Guide. On April 16, 1942, the ship was sailing from New Jersey to the Caribbean when a German submarine surfaced and opened fire with its deck cannons. Semenov recalls, "We didn't have any guns, and there were no escorts. [The Germans] were using us as target practice." The SS Alcoa Guide caught fire and started to sink 300 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

Semenov snatched three loaves of bread ("I knew we might be in the water for a while," he said) as he and the rest of the crew scrambled to lower two lifeboats and a raft into the water. Fortunately, the lifeboats were equipped with a compass. Semenov and his fellow crew members used the compass to sail west by northwest toward the shipping lanes. After three days, a patrol plane, searching for sailors from any of the three ships that had been sunk that week, spotted Semenov's lifeboat. The next day the USS Broome rescued the men on the lifeboats. In contrast, it took three weeks to find the raft, which was drifting aimlessly with only one survivor. In all, thanks to that compass, Semenov and 26 other crew members from the SS Alcoa Guide survived.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) God's Word, The Bible—In a survival scenario like this, having a compass can save your life. It is a trustworthy device to tell you what direction to go. The same is true for our spiritual lives. (2) Goals, Vision—They're like a compass that leads us to our next destination.

A book titled The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible came out a few years ago. It was written by a non-Christian named A. J. Jacobs. It is a funny book, and he is a great writer. He spent an entire year committed to obeying Bible commands as literally as he could.

He lives in New York. He grew a beard, dressed like Moses, and started to eat kosher. The Bible in the Old Testament commands stoning Sabbath-breakers, so he would prowl around Central Park, looking for offenders. He did not want to get arrested, so he would stealthily pelt them with tiny pebbles from behind and then look the other way. Of course, it is absurd, and that is the point of the book.

He writes, "Millions of people say they take the Bible literally. A 2004 Newsweek poll put it at 55 percent, but my suspicion was that almost everyone's literalism consisted of picking and choosing. People plucked out the parts that fit their agenda." Part of what he intends to show is no one can take the Bible literally.

Of course, many people do pick and choose, so his critique is fair. It is a humorous book, but he is dead wrong. He missed the whole point of the Bible. If, like he did, you treat the Bible naively, like a list of disconnected rules as though it was an owner's manual, you are not taking the Bible literally. You have to know the whole story.

In April 1945, the German army surrendered to the Allies. The war continued. Japan still fought, even though Germany had surrendered. At this point, Allied soldiers who had been fighting against Germany began rebuilding Germany, all during the same war.

Imagine somebody looking back on World War II and saying, "That's odd. Sometimes Allied soldiers attacked Germans, and sometimes they helped Germans. I guess they randomly picked and chose what they wanted to do." But that is not literalism; that is "stupid-ism." That sort of conclusion comes from misunderstanding the story.

Have you ever watched professional golfers and been awed by their ability to land a shot from two hundred yards away just a few yards from the hole? You wonder how they can judge the distance to the hole with such precision. Do they have an internal GPS system that enables them to guess the distances on the course with uncanny accuracy?

Not really. What they have is a yardage book. A yardage book is a map of each hole on the course that gives distances from various landmarks on the hole to the green. Decades ago Arnold Palmer and his caddy began drawing rough yardage charts with little pictures of trees, fairways, greens, sand traps and such of the various holes on all the courses they played. Jack Nicklaus was the pro who really made yardage books popular. Today along with the maps many pro golfers will keep what essentially is a personal journal of how they have played each hole of the course, what clubs they have used from various distances, what the wind was doing, and so on, and what happened to their shots.

Golfers swear by their yardage books. Zach Johnson, winner of the 2010 Colonial, says, "I feel naked without it out there. It's my golf bible."

Steve Marino says, "You see what you did in the past, you make sure you have the right number and then trust all of it, because the room for error is nil."

Scott Vail, caddie for Brandt Snedeker, says, "There are huge ramifications if you are just even 1 yard off."

One former caddie, George Lucas, has made a business out of driving the country and charting distances of some 1,000 golf courses and publishing his data in a book that is now available to the public.

Wouldn't it be nice to have yardage books for the tough decisions we make in life? Should I date this person or not? Should I go to this or that school? Should we buy this house? In our technological age, we want specifics. We want everything mapped out. We want to remove all the uncertainties from life. We want to be able to use our past experiences to predict exactly what will happen in the future. But God hasn't chosen to work with us in that way. He has given us an essential book of guidance that we can't do without, but we still have to use judgment in how to apply what it teaches. Most important, we need to be walking with God in prayer and trust.