The Doctrine of Christ

LESSON THREE The Inspiration of the Scripture

1. All Scripture is inspired. 2 Timothy 3:16. TDOC 7.4

2. The prophets spoke for God under the influence of the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:21; Acts 1:16; TDOC 7.5

2 Samuel 23:2; Acts 4:24, 25; 28:25; Hebrews 3:7; 10:15; Ephesians 6:17. TDOC 7.6

3. God spoke through the prophets. Hebrews 1:1, 7, 13, Jeremiah 9:12; Matthew 1:22; 2:15; Acts 3:18-21; 13:47. TDOC 7.7

4. The word of God was thus given through the prophets. Jeremiah 22:1, 2; 23:28; 26:1, 2. Luke 8:21; 11:28; Hebrews 4:12; 1 Thessalonians 2:13. TDOC 7.8

NOTES: The real Author of Scripture

“Inspired of God means that the Spirit of God is the author of this Scripture, influencing the men who wrote in such a manner that their writings are pure and absolute truth.” TDOC 7.9

Inspiration a fact

“The inspiration of Scripture is a fact, not a theory. We find great difficulty in framing a theory even of those influences of the Spirit which we ourselves have experienced, such as regeneration and conversion. How can we, with any degree of certainty, propound a theory of an influence of which we have no personal experimental knowledge. We receive the fact, asserted by the Scriptures themselves, and abundantly confirmed by them, that, though written by men, they are of God, and that the ideas they unfold are clothed in such words as he, in his wisdom and love, intended, so that they may be safely and fully received as expressing his mind, and the thoughts which he purposed to convey to us for our instruction and guidance.” TDOC 8.1

The word of God

“We take the Bible in its entirety with the same assurance that it is the word of God, as if Jesus Christ himself had written every word of it, instead of Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezra, Daniel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, and James. It is all God’s word to us; and we receive and interpret it, not on the authority of any theory, but simply as the word of God.” TDOC 8.2

God’s word written

“There can be no doubt that Christ and his apostles accepted the whole of the Old Testament as inspired in every portion of every part; from the first chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Malachi, all was implicitly believed to be the very word of God himself. And ever since their day the view of the universal Christian church has been that the Bible is the word of God; as the twentieth article of the Anglican Church terms it, it is God’s word written. TDOC 8.3

“The Bible as a whole is inspired. ‘All that is written is God inspired.’ That is, the Bible does not merely contain the word of God; it is the word of God. It contains a revelation. ‘All is not revealed, but all is inspired.” TDOC 8.4

“This is the conservative and, up to the present day, the almost universal view of the question. There are, it is well known, many theories of inspiration. But whatever view or theory of inspiration men may hold, plenary, verbal, dynamical, mechanical, superintendent, or governmental, they refer either to the inspiration of the men who wrote, or to the inspiration of what is written. In one word, they imply throughout the work of God the Holy Ghost, and are bound up with the concomitant ideas of authority, veracity, reliability, and truth divine.” TDOC 8.5

“Thus said the Lord.”

“Dr. James H. Brookes is authority for saying that the phrase, Thus said the Lord,’ or its equivalent, is used by them [the Old Testament writers] 2,000 times. Suppose we eliminate this phrase and its necessary context from the Old Testament in every instance, one wonders how much of the Old Testament would remain.” TDOC 8.6

Life in the word

“God, who ‘breathed into man the breath of life and he became a living soul,’ has also breathed into his Book the breath of life, so that it is ‘the word of God which lives and abides forever.’” TDOC 9.1

Christ’s view of the Scriptures

“The Lord Jesus, our Savior and our Judge, believed then in the most complete inspiration of the Scriptures; and for him the first rule of all hermeneutics, and the commencement of all exegesis, was this simple maxim, And the scripture cannot be broken.” TDOC 9.2

One organic whole

“All Scripture is one great organic whole, possessed of the self same spirit and life, inspired by the Holy Ghost, who saw the end from the beginning, and who unfolded, through successive developments, the manifold fullness which existed from the very earliest commencement of God’s dealings with the children of men.” TDOC 9.3

The divine and the human

“The union of the divine and the human, manifest in Christ, exists also in the Bible. The truths revealed are all given by inspiration of God. Yet they are expressed in the words of men, and are adapted to human needs. Thus it may be said of the Book of God, as it was of Christ, that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” And this fact, so far from being an argument against the Bible, should strengthen faith in it as the word of God.”-Testimonies for the Church 5:747. TDOC 9.4

The present danger

“The danger of our present day, the ‘down grade’ as it has been called, of doctrine, of conviction, of the moral sentiment, a decline more constantly patent as it is more blatantly proclaimed, does it not find its first step in our lost hold upon the very inspiration of the word of God?” TDOC 9.5

The source of authority

“The Bible is authority because in it, from cover to cover, God is the speaker.” TDOC 9.6

For the common people

“The Bible with its precious gems of truth was not written for the scholar alone. On the contrary, it was designed for the common people; and the interpretation given by the common people, when aided by the Holy Spirit, accords best with the truth as it is in Jesus. The great truths necessary for salvation are made clear as the noonday; and none will mistake and lose their way except those who follow their own Judgment instead of the plainly revealed will of God.”-Testimonies for the Church 5:331. TDOC 9.7

The oracles of God

“Men spoke, and thus the words retain the individual characteristics of those who uttered them; but the inspiring breath was that of the Holy Ghost, and thus their utterances are nothing less than the oracles of the living God.” TDOC 10.1

God’s voice

“The word of the living God is not merely written, but spoken. The Bible is God’s voice speaking to us, just as surely as though we could hear it with our ears. If we realized this, with what awe would we open God’s word, and with what earnestness would we search its precepts! The reading and contemplation of the Scriptures would be regarded as an audience with the Infinite One.”-Testimonies for the Church 6:393. TDOC 10.2