From the beginning, Satan has grounded his attack on human souls in an attempt to shake our faith in what God has said. The first recorded words of our accuser were, “Did God actually say?”-Genesis 3:1. What the devil knows is, if he can destroy our trust in God’s revealed will, we have nowhere to turn to find instruction and encouragement from our Father in times of temptation. If truth can not be known, we are at the mercy of the one who is more cunning than any other created being.
If Satan succeeds in destroying our faith in God’s revealed word, it is a simple thing for him to convince us, our will is just as good as our Creator’s. When he says, “you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”-Genesis 3:5, the devil is really saying, “Why listen to God? Your decisions are just as valid. Go ahead, do what you think is right.”
In our modern world, Satan’s attack is focused on our faith in the Bible. So many false teachers will say something like: “The Bible is full of contradictions. The Bible is only inspired generally. The message was inspired but the men who wrote it down were fallible,” and on and on. The excuses may have changed but the scheme remains the same. If Satan can get us to lose faith in God’s revealed word, he can substitute error for truth and lead us to hell in exchange for heaven.
The question for us becomes very simple, “Do I believe the very words recorded in the Bible are from God through his Holy Spirit?” If they are the word of God, the implications occur to us immediately. If I say, “Jehovah is my God.” then I must do what he tells me. And what he tells me I must believe, do, or avoid are set in stone and can not change.
We must individually make a decision about the Bible in its entirety. Do I believe the very words are the revealed, inspired words of God? Thus the title of this article, “It either is, or it ain’t!” I don’t get to pick and choose. We either give our hearts and minds to God’s instructions totally or we might was well reject them totally.
Jesus believes in the inspiration of Scripture. In Matthew 22, our Lord refers to the written word of Moses as the Scriptures. Then he tells us, if we read Exodus 3:6, it is the same thing as God speaking to us. Moses and the books of the Old Testament he wrote are not the words of man. Jesus prefaces his quote from second book of the Law of Moses this way, “have you not read what was said to you by God?-Matthew 22:32.
In fact, every word of the Old Testament is given an apostolic stamp of approval by both Peter and Paul: “no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”-II Peter 1:20-21; “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”-II Timothy 3:16-17.
The revealed word of God is perfect and produces salvation, “when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”-I Thessalonians 2:13. The Scriptures are the way God leads us to heaven. It is to God’s word I will cling. It is the light of the gospel I will let shine. Don’t let Satan blow it out!
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