# 1 of Ten
Reasons Why I Believe The Bible Is The Word Of God by
R. A. Torrey
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FIRST, on the ground of
the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Many people
accept the authority of Christ who do not accept that of the Bible as a whole.
We all must accept His authority. He is accredited to us by five Divine
testimonies: by the testimony of the Divine life He lived; by the testimony of
the Divine words He spoke; by the testimony of the Divine works He wrought; by
the Divine attestation of the resurrection from the dead; and by the testimony
of His Divine influence upon the history of mankind. But if we accept the
authority of Christ we must accept the authority of the Bible as a whole. He
testifies definitely and specifically to the Divine authorship of the whole
Bible.
We find His
testimony as to the Old Testament in Mark 7:13. Here He calls the law of Moses
the "Word of God." That, of course, covers only the first five books
of the Old Testament, but in Luke 24:27 we read, "And beginning at Moses
and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all
the Scriptures the things concerning Himself,"
and in the forty-fourth verse He said, "All things must be fulfilled which
were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and the Psalms." The
Jews, divided the Old Testament into three parts-the Law, the Prophets, and the
Psalms-and Christ takes up each of these parts and sets the stamp of His
authority upon it. In John 10:35 Christ says, "The Scripture cannot be
broken," thereby teaching the absolute accuracy and inviolability of the
Old Testament. More specifically still, it possible, in Matthew 5:18, Jesus
says, "One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all
be fulfilled." A jot is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet-less
than half the size of any other letter, and a tittle is the merest point of a
consonant-less than the cross we put on a "t,"-and Christ here
declares that the Scripture is absolutely true, down to the smallest letter or
point of a letter. So if we accept the authority of Christ we must accept the
Divine authority of the entire Old Testament.
Now, as to the
New Testament. We find Christ's endorsement of it in John 14:26, "The Holy
Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
Here we see that not only was the teaching of the Apostles to be fully
inspired, but also their recollection of what Christ Himself taught. We are
sometimes asked how we know that the Apostles correctly reported what Jesus
said-"may they not have forgotten?" True, they might forget, but
Christ Himself tells us that in the Gospels we have, not the Apostles'
recollection of what He said, but the Holy Ghost's recollection, and the Spirit
of God never forgets. In John 16:13, 14, Christ said that the Holy Ghost should
guide the Apostles into "all the truth," therefore in the New
Testament teaching we have the whole sphere of God's truth. The teaching of the
Apostles is more complete than that of Jesus Himself, for He says in John
16:12, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all
the truth." While His own teaching had been partial, because of their
weakness, the teaching of the Apostles, under the promised Spirit, was to take
in the whole sphere of God's truth.
So if we accept
the authority of Christ we must accept that of the whole Bible, but we must, as
already seen, accept Christ's authority.
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