Sunday School | The Bible is Inerrant (Without Error)

So last week I said something intentionally provocative. If you can believe it, you guys let me get away with most of you. And then somebody sitting right around here came after me this week. And so I wanted to revisit this conversation we had, Gary and I.

Last week we talked about the canon of scripture. The word canon means measure. And the question is: is it done? The canon of scripture. We would say—I would suggest to you that the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, 39 Old, 27 New, are the canon. And there's a generally accepted doctrine within Christianity that the canon is closed. And what we mean by that is it's all done. We're not going to add anything to it. We're not going to staple on the Book of Mormon to the back end of the thing, right? We're not going to add anything to it.

But last week, I think I probably left in your minds the possibility that the canon is not closed. Do you remember this? I'm always troubled by it. But I was explaining to you that the scriptures were built like one leaf of lettuce at a time. Keeps added, added, added, added. And then there's a 400 year pause. And then we added some more stuff. And it was kind of surprising when we started to add the Gospels on and we add Paul's letters and Peter's letters and all those kind of things.

Basically, Gary was asking me: do you think it's closed or do you not? Because it kind of seems like you're open to it not being closed. Am I representing you fairly?

Gary brought up the point that at the end of Revelation it says—it strongly says, it implies that it's closed. It says if anybody adds to the words of this book, God will add all the plagues to them.

The Argument from Revelation 22:18

So the canon is closed, and they will tend to go to the passage Revelation 22:18. And it's often kind of put forward that this is how we know that the book is done. Revelation 22:18 says:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. — Revelation 22:18

And that is treated as if it's like "and here endeth the lesson"—it's done. And I want to suggest to you that it's not the strongest argument that you could make.

Is the canon closed? My answer to that is: yeah, probably. I think so. But if Jesus comes back and God wants to write something else down, then he gets to. And he's not forbidden himself from ever doing that. But I think that it's probably closed. But I don't think it's closed because of this verse.

Everything in Revelation—everything in Revelation is a quote of the Old Testament. And this verse here is itself a quote of the Old Testament. So if you say Revelation 22:18 means God is no longer going to allow himself to add anything to the book, what do you do with Deuteronomy 4:2?

Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you. — Deuteronomy 4:2

Or what do you do with Deuteronomy 12:32?

See that you do all that I command you, do not add to it or take away from it. — Deuteronomy 12:32

Or Proverbs 30:5?

Every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. — Proverbs 30:5

So there have been multiple times along the way that we are enjoined against presuming to add to it. That is always the case. If somebody comes to me and says, "Hey, I have an addition—here is a 67th book," don't add it. Don't do that, right? But God can add to it anytime he wants to. And he has over and over and over.

Is he going to add anything else? If I had to guess, probably not. I don't think so. But if he chooses to, he is not going to consult me. Does that make sense?

There is plenty of cults that will add to their thing. I'm not saying we should do that. But there is kind of this sense that sometimes I think we take an overly simplistic answer. I think what John was talking about was Revelation, not the Bible, right? And so don't add to Revelation. That's his thing. I think Revelation 22:18 is not about all 66 books, it's about the 66th. And I think we're probably done here. But I wouldn't overstate that and in so doing, I wouldn't want you to ignore other times that God has said something similar to that.

Any heartburn? Can you live with that? I think the book is closed.

Scott, would it be safe to say also within that that he didn't know other books were being written?

I don't think so. Because I think Revelation is the final piece.

No, I'm just saying that as he wrote Revelation, maybe he didn't know it was the last. So I don't think that John necessarily knew—okay, this is the final piece—I don't know that when John wrote that, he knew that the canon includes Jude and James and Luke. I don't think that was a question he was trying to answer. So yes, I think he was talking about his own writing.

There are other things, by the way, that we'll point to in the New Testament. We will point to 1 Corinthians 13 as an argument for the closed canon. Have you ever seen this argument made?

Love never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease. Where there are tongues, they will be stilled, where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part we prophecy in part, but when the perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I taught like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, but when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. — 1 Corinthians 13

That is often thrown out there to say once the canon is closed, once we get the final, once the book is compiled, there'll be no more prophecy in tongues, right? That's not what that means. That's John MacArthur's argument in Charismatic Chaos, and it's just a weak argument. If it were true, then no books written after Corinthians would have to be excluded. It's just kind of a silly case.

Others might look at Hebrews 1:

In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he made the universe. — Hebrews 1:1-2

But again, if Hebrews 1:1 is saying "and here end the lessons," then what about the handful of things that were written after Hebrews? It's just not so much a closed case. Sometimes evangelicals can be a little mechanical, a little simplistic and fail to recognize there's just a little more complexity to these things. We like these tidy little categories, okay?

Is the canon closed? I think so. Is God free to open it up? Yup. Is he going to do it through me? Very unlikely, okay? But if he comes back and we write something down when Jesus returns, no problem.

On Undiscovered Texts

Harry's question is, what if there are other books? What if it's not new things that are written, but new things that are discovered? There are certainly texts that are contemporary to the gospels, to the letters of the fathers. In fact, those other things they discovered—like, Paul wrote a second Corinthians. First and Second Corinthians are not the only letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Did you know that? So what if somebody digs up the true first Corinthians? Do we need to add that to the canon?

My answer to that is I don't think that we do because it seems to me that God meant something not only when these scriptures were written, but also when he preserved them. First and Second Corinthians, as we have received them, are meant to be kept. But if Paul wrote a grocery list, that's not supposed to go into the Bible, right? We're not saying that Paul is inspired. We're saying Romans is inspired. There's a difference.

Could something else be discovered? Yes. If that happened, would that be complicated? Yes, it sure would. It would be fascinating to see. But I trust that what God has preserved through the centuries is exactly what he wanted us to have preserved.

On Excluding Biblical Books

Chuck's question is, what do you say to people who wish to exclude, say, the writings of Paul from the canon? You know, and specifically, it seems like it comes up when talking about LGBT type of issues.

So the question is, what do you do when people want to exclude the writings of Paul? Or really, the writings of anybody, right? Famously, people will say, you know, the Jesus Seminar? Do you remember the Jesus Seminar? They would go through Jesus' writings, and they would basically color his words red or pink or gray or black. Red meant Jesus definitely said this or something very similar. Black meant he definitely didn't say this or anything like it.

And then pink and gray were kind of like the in between, right? So people have been playing this game all the time. And when they would want to exclude something that Paul says, it is generally just as you suggested, not because there's archaeological or historical reasons to be suspicious that Paul really wrote it, but because it doesn't happen to conform to something that they believe 2,000 years later, right?

And it is always the case that the scriptures come into contradiction with culture. It just comes in contradiction in different ways. So today, the scriptures are going to come into conflict with things that the LGBTQ community is going to espouse and the scriptures stands. In a different era, at a different time, it's going to come into conflict with people who think that we're allowed to own other human beings, right? And so at every different moment in time, there's a tendency to subordinate the scriptures to whatever we happen to want to believe. And that is the temptation that we must constantly resist.

Say, you know, the word of God stands. You can hit it with a hammer, like pound away your wicked hands. The hammer breaks. The animal stands. It will remain. And when culture comes in a conflict with scripture, my determination is that scripture wins. And sometimes it's at odds with me, right? Like there are things that it's going to say that I'm going to be like, man, what is it? I would rather that I was the arbiter of truth, but I'm not, right? And so we all must bend the knee. And so when those arguments against Paul's writings are simply obviously those culturally derived, it has very little weight to me. Who cares?

On the Apocryphal Writings

So when Dan's referring to the apocryphal writings, what he's talking about is a number of writings that would be included in a Catholic Bible, but not in a Protestant Bible. The Catholic Church would teach that these books are from that 400 years of silence from the end of Malachi to the beginning of the New Testament, when stuff was happening in the life of Israel.

Those books are generally regarded by Catholics as scripture and by Protestants as not scripture, but not heretical. There's nothing bad about the apocrypha. We just don't think that they're inspired anymore. These are a million books that I don't think are heretical and that you're welcome to read. In fact, Anglicanism historically tends to have a very high view of the apocrypha. You see, like, historical Anglican readings will often include writings from Maccabees or from these letters. So it's not that it contains heretical things. It's just like this class is not canonical. I don't think it's heretical. I think it's trustworthy, but it's not divinely inspired. And I would put the apocryphal books in that category.

There's no problem if you want to read the apocrypha, have at it. It is not on the same category as reading like the Gospel of Thomas, which is heretical, right? So read the apocrypha, be happy. Hebrews refers to it in chapter 12. Hanukkah is born in that period of time. Maccabees talks about that. So I don't have any problem with the apocrypha. I just wouldn't rank it with Paul's writings, or Jeremiah's writings for that matter.

On Reading Apocrypha in Church

Gil's saying he's been to a church that their scripture readings included reading from the apocrypha, and he's asking what I draw a line on. I would. In as much as when we do our Old Testament and New Testament readings and we have you stand for the Gospel, we are saying these are not ordinary books. These are divinely inspired and worthy of your submission to. But in a sermon, I'm sure we quote all the time from some article in the New York Times or something, right? And so it's not that you can't read them. I just wouldn't affirm to them that they're on the same level of scripture.

They did like an Old Testament reading, Ecclesiasticus, and then a New Testament reading. Again, I wouldn't. I mean, they can live their lives, do what they want to do. I wouldn't do that because I think it creates a confusion that it is the same level. But I've got a million other things I want to talk about.

So then you can go and we'll move on. What's the question? Is this the main tenet that separates the LDS from Christianity? No. The main tenets that separate the Church of Latter-day Saints, Mormonism from Christianity, are many. At the most fundamental level, they don't believe in a Gospel of salvation by grace through faith. That's the most core important difference, but then beyond that, there is a host of things that the Church of Latter-day Saints is going to claim that's just historically false, that's aberrant theology, their understanding the origin of the universe. The number of things we'd have to list is a very, very long list. You could say that all of those errors, the multitude of those errors are born out of the fact that they believe they've got, not just one, but four additional books of revelation that are just completely made up, pure fiction, total nonsense, false. I don't know if I can be any more plain on this. There's a lot going on there that I think is super bad news.

The Inerrancy of Scripture

Okay. So let's talk about this. Here's one: the scriptures have many different attributes. We began this thing talking about the attributes of God, he's omniscient, he's omnipotent, all these types of things. The scriptures also have many attributes, but I want to talk about this morning—maybe I had a couple in mind, but maybe we'll just do one—is that the Bible is inerrant.

What does the word inerrant mean? Without error. What that means is that the Bible never says anything that is contrary to fact about anything. The Bible is inerrant. It says nothing that is contrary to fact. Now this requires—I want to talk about what that does mean—but just so that you can hear me when I say what it does mean, let me say a handful of things that it doesn't mean.

When I affirm for you all day long the inerrancy of the scriptures, absolutely trustworthy, absolutely true, absolutely says nothing that is contrary to fact—it is an accurate description of reality in all that it discusses. That is my position.

Some sub points though that don't necessarily follow from that: it's not always literal. There's this vision, especially within evangelical circles, that we must affirm that the Bible is literal. Obviously it's not all literal. The Bible uses all sorts of communication. When Jesus says,

I am the vine and you are the branches

is he being literal? Clearly not. When John says,

Behold the Lamb of God

is he telling us that Jesus' species is sheep? Clearly not. Is it all literal? No, it's not all literal, obviously not. But it's always true. He means something when he says, "I am the vine and you are the branches." John meant something when he says,

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world

And it's not generally difficult to figure out what it means. You can generally tell, even in normal conversation, you drift in and out of literal and metaphorical language. You use similes and all kinds of figures of speech. When you say, "Hey, what time is the sunrise tomorrow?" it would be annoying if your spouse says, "You know, the sun doesn't actually rise because the earth is spinning." I'd be like, yes, thank you very much. We understand how that works. It's just, you talk like a normal person and the scriptures talk like a normal person.

Is it true? Absolutely. Contrary to fact? Never. Is it always literal? No, of course not. It uses a variety of different forms of speech.

Not only that, but it doesn't necessarily follow that everything that is given to you is a didactic transcription of all that has happened. So within this—if you want to get super dorky about that, you can forget this—but there are two kinds of tags for the way that we would understand the dialogue in the scripture. We can say that the Bible gives us ipsissima vox or ipsissima verba. You're like, okay, I don't know what those words mean. It doesn't really matter. What it means is: did the gospel writers, for instance, capture the exact voice or did they capture the exact words that Jesus spoke? Anywhere the dialogue is captured in the scriptures—was it a memory transcription, exact words, or is it the exact voice, meaning the exact meaning? Some would say if you're going to say the Bible is inerrant and it says nothing contrary to fact, then it has to be a didactic, exact memory transcription of what was said. And I would say that's mistaken. That is not the case.

We all the time might quote. I might come home from work someday and say, "You know, I was talking to Kelly, I was talking to Sloop and he said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

And if Dave were to poke his head around the corner and say, "You're misquoting me," then I would say, calm down Dave. I'm going to capture the exact voice and portray that, and it's a fair, reasonable quotation of what he said, right? This is how the scripture speaks. In fact, there are places—some interesting spots—where it shows you this happening in ways that admits, "Hey, we're telescoping here, or we're simplifying here, or we're summarizing here." I'll show you one of these that I think is pretty interesting.

Go to Genesis 42. In Genesis 42, this is where Joseph is having his conversation with his brothers. You get this impression as the story begins that they're having this dialogue back and forth. Scroll down to around the 20s or so. Let's start on verse 18 just to give us a starting point.

On the third day, Joseph says to his brothers, "Do this and you'll live, for I fear God. If you're honest, man, let one of your brothers stay here in prison while the rest of you go and take grain back." He says all this. Verse 21: "They said to one another, 'Surely we're being punished because of our brother. We saw how distressed he was.'" And verse 22: "Reuben replied, 'Did I not tell you not to sin against the boy? But you wouldn't listen.'" — Genesis 42:18-22

So there's this conversation happening, and they're talking, and you could get the impression that they're talking to each other—like I'm talking to Chris, Chris says something back. So we're just having this two-person dialogue. Well, it goes on like this for a great conversation, but then look what happens in verse 23:

They did not realize that Joseph could understand them since he was using an interpreter. — Genesis 42:23

You don't realize that this entire conversation we've been having the whole time—I'm talking to Gina who's translating to Chris, and Chris is talking to Gina who's translating to me. But they didn't bother to tell us that in the beginning. They weren't lying. They were just summarizing. They were just telescoping the conversation. Does this make sense?

In a similar way, dialogue in the other scriptures is going to capture the exact essence of what is being said, the exact voice. And this is also very important: it's going to capture precisely what God wanted recorded. I believe not just in the inspiration of the scriptures, but in a doctrine that is called verbal plenary inspiration.

Do you remember what a plenary session is at a conference? Everybody's there. Verbal plenary means every word. Jesus is going to make arguments based on the jot and tittle—it's like the apostrophes are correct. Every word is exactly what God wanted recorded. But it doesn't necessarily follow that every word in dialogue is exactly what was said like a transcript. There is summarization.

For one thing, let's consider this: What language were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John written in? Greek. What language were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John spoken in? So of course it's not the exact words. It's not even the exact language. But it is exactly what God wanted said. There are places where Jesus is going to make entire arguments hanging on the tense of a verb. This whole book is absolutely reliable, but you can't impose upon it a certain set of expectations that it's not even attempting to meet.

Whatever error never happens—never contrary to fact. The exact voice and the exact words that God wanted to use. But it's not always literal. It's using metaphor, and it's not that hard to tease out. The resurrection is described quite obviously as something that actually happened. The resurrection is not a metaphor, it's not a parable, it's not a picture—it's history. But Jesus is not literally a vine, and it's just not usually that hard to separate them out. Good enough?

Now we're going to make a case for it. But first, Catherine.

Catherine raised a question: Isn't it what happened where like one incident, one of the gospel writers would say this happened—he saw this—and another one would say it completely differently? So do we not see among the four gospels, or really among the three—among Matthew, Mark, and Luke—don't we see differences? And does that suggest that there's something contrary to fact?

That's right. Yes. So Catherine was pointing out: different people from different angles.

And the answer is it doesn't, because it might be that in Matthew, I'm going to keep using you guys, in Matthew's gospel it might record that Tim was having a conversation with Chris, but in Luke's gospel it might record that Tim was having a conversation with Gina and Chris, and in Mark, it might record that Tim was having a conversation with Gina. These are all true statements, right, and it might be that for whatever purpose somebody's emphasizing this detail and excluding that detail, that happens all the time. Not only that, but you guys, Jesus was an itinerant preacher. He'd save sermons multiple times. He would have the same conversations multiple times. So it might be that one is recording this conversation, another's recording this very similar conversation, but he did similar things more than once, right.

So I just observe all those to say, when you see things that challenge the inerrancy of Scripture, the trustworthiness of Scripture, you guys, there's always a more satisfying explanation. If you understand what's going on and what we really are saying and what we're not saying, this book is so unbelievably reliable, it's completely trustworthy.

Three Points on Biblical Inerrancy

Number one, all Scripture is God breathed.

All Scripture is God breathed. — 2 Timothy 3:16

The idea of breathed is like speaking is a breath function, right? You're forcing a column of air and you're articulating it on the way. All Scripture is written by God, is breathed by God, is spoken by God, and it's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting. It corrects us. We don't correct it. And training in righteousness, so the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Number two, God never lies.

We have a faith and a knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time. — Titus 1:2

God is not a man that He should lie, nor a son of man that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill? — Numbers 23:19

So if all Scripture is from Him and if He does not lie, then the conclusion, I don't think is that complicated: all of His words are true and trustworthy, and indeed they are.

O sovereign Lord, you are God, your words are trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. — 2 Samuel 7:28

The words of the Lord are flawless, like silver refined in a furnace of clay purified seven times. — Psalm 12:6

And Jesus says something I've heard Kelly say a thousand times:

Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. — John 17:17

It's all from Him. He does not lie, therefore His words are trustworthy. And different parts of what He has said will be challenging to you, depending on the time that you live, the culture you live, your own particular bent. There will be things that you're like, "But I don't like this part," and you're going to want to get in a racecar and play whatever game Thomas Jefferson supposedly played, or maybe he did not. I've heard different things about this. I've always thought that Thomas Jefferson was excising the parts that he didn't like, but I've also heard that he was actually compiling a thing of his favorites. And that's different. I've actually seen a photograph of a Bible that he used for that and that's been checked. So don't do that, okay?

So here are some challenges. You tell me, what are the ways that this gets challenged or have you heard it challenged—the inerrancy of Scripture?

He said, there are errors, but they're not the errors you're thinking. There are like these translation errors that might get an adjective wrong or it might get a pronoun wrong—all these small things. If you compile all those small errors, you have thousands, but then if you explain them, you have like four that actually you're like, yeah, we don't know where those come from, but they don't change the actual scripture at all. Okay, that's good.

Now nobody heard you say this. So Gil is saying that he's taking a class and in the class he had a professor who made this point, and this is true. I'm completely in agreement with this professor that your Bible, your print Bible has all kinds of things that are like, maybe this, maybe that—there's mistakes, there's errors. This is absolutely true.

So let me clarify what I am saying and then how we understand this. If you look in your Bible, on many, many pages of a print Bible, if you go into the footnote section, you'll see some note that says most manuscripts say X, but some later manuscripts say Y. Have you noticed this? All these little things.

Here's what that means. First of all, when I'm saying that the scriptures are true and reliable and trustworthy, what everybody means when they say that is the original copy—what Paul wrote, what Moses wrote, what John wrote, what James wrote—those things are without error, okay? Then there's a separate question. If they got it right, the next question is, do we have a faithful copy of what they originally wrote, okay?

We probably won't do it right now, but there is a story to be told about the process of getting from the original to here. But here's what I want you to know about this at the moment: there are variations from the original to now. There are. It's absolutely true.

Here's the great news. We know what they all are. We know them. We have them. And it is not at all difficult to reconstruct from those what the original is. It'll be like, Paul will say something about Jesus Christ in one manuscript, one copy, and there'll be this other copy where he'll say something about Christ Jesus. And we're like, man, what in the world did he write there? Like, what did he mean? Was it Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ? They're all incredibly inconsequential. They're very simple.

Or there'll be a phrase that's missing, and you're like, well, he usually used this phrase. So either somebody added it because they were just kind of habituated to it, or they skipped a line when they were copying it. But we have so many thousands of copies that we know what they are. And we're very transparent about them all. They're all literally footnoted in your Bible. You don't have to wonder like, is there anything weird about this one? No, it's right there. Look at it.

So when you're reading through, you can see them. You can see how many they are, what they are, and you can see for yourself that they're unbelievably inconsequential.

The largest one of those, and we really don't know how to resolve it, is the very end of John 8—the whole story about Jesus rescuing a woman who was caught in adultery and saying, whoever's without sin cast the first stone. That might be a true story, and it might not. I think that's the biggest one. Am I wrong? You think that's the largest chunk? Yeah, that was not—I remember the ones were like what you said, like they skipped a phrase?

Yeah, they're usually where they were and then they look away or get distracted and then they skip a whole lot. They're very brief. There's a couple of big ones—not big or significant. There's no doctrine that hangs on them, but there's like, this is the chunk that was either added or excised and we're not exactly sure. So those things exist. But we know them.

Original Manuscripts and Copyist Errors

So when we go back to the original copies, this is what we're saying is free of error. There are copyist errors, they're insignificant, they're visible, they're known. And I promise you, you look them up and there's no difficulty, okay?

Let me give you another one before we get out of here. Here's an argument that would say that sure, the Bible is authoritative and accurate and trustworthy on the stuff that matters, but all the other kind of the surrounding words that aren't really doctrinal—it doesn't need to be accurate about that. It's only trustworthy and true on the stuff that matters.

And I would suggest to you that that is a very bad claim to adopt. It all matters, right? And the Bible affirms the entirety of itself, not just the important stuff. As soon as you play the game of, yeah, it's important—all the stuff that's important is true—you've lost the plot.

Well, immediately as soon as you start that game, more and more things become unimportant because it's just cultural, or that was just this, or that was just that, or they were just speaking out of their own framework.

Here's how Acts 24 says it. Paul says:

"However I admit that I worship the God of our fathers as followers of the way which they call a sect, I believe everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the prophets." — Acts 24

Or Luke 24, Jesus says:

"How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken." — Luke 24

Or Romans 15:4, Paul says:

"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." — Romans 15:4

He says in 1 Corinthians 10:11:

"These things happen to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages have come." — 1 Corinthians 10:11

Jesus in Matthew 12 answered:

"Haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? They entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do but only for the priests." — Matthew 12

He's not just picking doctrinal things. He's saying the things they did—the record of what they did—it's all important. It's all important. It's trustworthy, it's true, it's reliable. It doesn't mean it's literal. You can tell when it is and you can tell when it's not. The whole book is reliable.

Judy, this is not the right thing for the end of this session, but as a science teacher in a Christian school, the whole Genesis, the timelines—like, this is a model, but it's very, very difficult when you have science regarding the age of the earth and the age of the trees and the creation in one day. What is the meaning of the whole thing if it's very difficult to believe it?

Okay, so Judy's observing that I'm basically saying you can tell when the Bible is being literal, you can tell generally speaking when it's being literal, you can tell when it's being metaphorical. And Judy, I think, is suggesting that you can't always tell. And she's right about that.

So there are people that would stake a very strong position that the six days of creation are six 24-hour periods of time, and if you deny that you're undercutting the foundation of the whole thing. Others would say, I'm not sure that's the question that Moses was trying to answer, right? Is he being literal? Is he being literal in Genesis 11, 12, and 13? If so, is he being literal in Genesis 1, 2, and 3? These are difficult questions.

I appreciate you're observing this. This is not necessarily the time to settle that right now. But yes, I will just stipulate that though you can usually tell when it's literal, usually tell when it's not, you can usually extract the meaning from the non-literal. There are passages, and there are important passages, where that is a difficult task. And it's worth doing. Maybe we'll leave it there for the time being.

The Anglican Church and Biblical Inerrancy

I'll just say this right now, you guys. We are Anglicans, meaning Church of the Holy Spirit is part of the Anglican Church in North America. And since the founding of Anglicanism is the Church of England. I don't know if you're even paying attention to Anglican news or if that's too nerdy for you, but there is a major break in the Anglican Communion this week. Does anybody have any idea what I'm talking about?

Basically, it is our position that the Church of England is dead. That's what's happening right now, live this week. We are part of an organization called Gafcon, the Global Anglican Futures Conference. And it is essentially—this is a little bit of oversimplification—but it's essentially the conservative wing of the Global Anglican Church.

Today, this week, an edict came out from Gafcon that officially says we are no longer associated with the Church of England—England being the mothership, right, the chief among equals. And the reason that the relationship with the Church of England is now severed from this body that is an outgrowth of the Church of England is that a long time ago they stopped believing that the scriptures were inerrant. And then bit by bit over the years—and it's been many decades—the outgrowth of the rejection of the inerrancy of scripture is ultimately a complete repudiation of the gospel.

This is just what happens. And it has happened not just among Anglicans. It happens, I mean, we could list the denominations. They begin to prioritize some cultural reality. And then, like, well, this is true, then that part's not true. And they start to erase parts of the Bible. And they eventually conclude, well, it's not really trustworthy. And then the thing just dissolves into madness.

It's happened over and over and over, including the Church of England, that was born as a repudiation of others who had lost the plot in the scriptures, right? It happens a lot. It's tragic and it's terrible, but we mean to be a people that continue to affirm the inerrancy of this book.

It is trustworthy. It is true because God wrote it, and he would never lie to us. Amen.

All for now. Thanks for coming—we'll do it more next week.