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Transcript 410B — What is the Nature of the Bible?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening, Brother Camping. I'm a beginner in Christ, and I do not want to be divisive. But I have a problem. The Bible, as I understand it, is a collection of writings. This King James Version has been in existence for a great number of years. Within the last about 100 or 150 years, perhaps less, there has come a new teaching which propounds its own version of certain basic fundamentals as contained in the King James Version. If it is, as Timothy says, approved for teaching, how is it that they do not accept, for example, the Trinity, or that they believe that the soul is nothing more than life force? It's got me confused.
HC: You see, we have to make a fundamental decision. Your question really is, what is the nature of the Bible? Or what is the Holy Scripture?
The Bible does not contain a collection of writings which are divinely inspired. The Bible is the divine Word. The Bible from cover to cover is the divine Word. It alone and in its entirety is the divine Word of God. Any Bible or any gospel which purports to be the true Gospel, but which denies that parts of the Bible are the Bible, or adds to the Bible with other writings, calling it also the divine Word, by definition is not the Gospel of the Bible, or it's not the Word of God any longer. The Bible alone and in its entirety is the divine Word.
Now the King James translation that we have is one of the finest translations that has ever been produced. It was produced over 300 years ago. It is not absolutely infallible, however. The original writings, which were chiefly in Hebrew and Greek with some Aramaic, are to the very letter and the very word absolutely infallible. However, the King James translation, as any good translation, is as accurate a translation as can be possible from the most ancient copies of these original autographs, so that we have in the King James Bible, to all intents and purposes, may be understood to be the infallible Word of God.
Do you see this distinction?
CALLER: Yes, I see what you're getting at.
HC: We read the Bible and we don't question, "Is this the Word of God?" We start out with the premises that this is the Word of God. God is speaking to me. Now the question is, am I ready to humble myself? Am I ready to accept what I read by faith? I may not understand a lot of it because the Bible of course is the revelation of the infinite mind of God. There is much that is very deep. It's very difficult to understand. But whether I understand it or not is not the question. The question is whether I receive it. Do I accept it as the Word of God, being ready to be obedient to all that I see there, insofar as I can understand it.
CALLER: I see what you mean. Would Revelation 22:18 apply only to the Book of Revelation, or to the entire Bible?
HC: Let's assume for the moment that Revelation 22:18 & 19 applies only to the Book of Revelation. The question that's being raised is, does this apply only to the Book of Revelation? Let's add a chapter to the Book of Revelation and call that also a part of the divine Word. Now effectively we have added that chapter now to the whole Bible, because the Book of Revelation is an integral, cohesive part of the whole Bible. Anything added to the Book of Revelation is added to the Bible.
By the same token, if you decided, "Well, I don't like Revelation 19 and 20. Let's take that out of the Book of Revelation," then immediately you have taken it out of the Bible, because the Book of Revelation again is an integral cohesive part of the whole Word of God.
So, effectively, whether you want to understand "the words of this book" of Revelation of 22:18 as meaning the Book of Revelation or being the whole Bible, it really makes no difference. Effectively it becomes the whole Bible.
CALLER: All right. Thank you very much.
HC: You're welcome. Good night.