In Swindoll’s Sept 2 “Insight For Living” he wrote: “Stay with the Scriptures. While our individual experiences may vary somewhat as the Lord uses each of us in unique ways, we must never—and I mean never—get too far from the revealed and reliable Word of God. If you do you will begin to use your experience as a basis for your beliefs, and the Scriptures will diminish in importance as you make more and more room for more strange experiences.”

“I have pastor friends who have done just that. And today when I talk with them, I find that they no longer believe that the Bible is God’s final Word. If that’s true, then how do I know where His Word starts and their vivid imagination stops? How much of it can I trust? No matter how persuasive the preacher, you and I need God’s inspired Word, not additional revelations of “truth.” When that happens, we are hopelessly awash.”

I teach “Christian Evidences” in my Bible classes, so the inspiration of the Word is a dear subject to me. It is true that we do not have the original writings of the apostles and prophets. But we do have thousands of manuscripts (copies) that help assure us that we have trustworthy translations today. It is true that there are “apparent contradictions” in the Word. But those can be explained if you give the Bible the “benefit of the doubt”. But today we hear more serious doubts about the inspiration of Scripture. Paul is considered to be just an uninspired man giving his homophobic, misogynistic opinions. Thus the LGBQT movement splits churches (the Methodist church and others). The inspired teachings of Paul are no longer the standard for determining right and wrong.

So they tell us that some parts of the Bible are inspired but that the false ideas of the writers are mixed in with the inspired portions. As Swindoll said, how can we determine which part is the actual word of God? Do we leave it to some uninspired preacher to tell us which parts of Scripture are “truth”?

I hope what Paul said of the Thessalonian Christians can be said of you. 1 Thessalonians 2:¹³ For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of mere men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which also is at work in you who believe.”