The Bible authority, the Christian and the world

by: José Augusto de Oliveira Maia

 

14.04.2014

 

 

It is very common these days we hear people questioning the Bible and its contents; an interesting aspect of this phenomenon is to realize that many people doing this questioning, never studied or simply read the Bible from cover to cover, in an orderly and systematic manner; recently, I read the following sentence about it: "A person who says he doesn’t like the Bible, certainly never read it.". But questioning the Word of God is not something new.

 

Already in Genesis 3:1 - 10, we see that the strategy of the serpent to deceive Eve was based on two points: confuse what God had said (v. 1), and contradict what God says (v. 4 and 5).

 

Eva had a similar profile to that of many people these days; she demonstrated know the Word of God (v. 2 and 3), but didn’t have enough faith in God and what He said, letting herself be seduced by the serpent had said, and the attractiveness of the fruit (v. 6).

 

Analyzing the behavior of Adam and Eve, realized they both knew the Word of God, and knew they were indebted to it; otherwise, they would have asked God to see that his eyes were open, but didn’t do it; instead, they were afraid and tried to hide from God.

 

The Christian faith always had as one of its foundations recognize the Bible as the Word of God, divinely inspired; for many centuries, the Bible has remained hidden from the eyes of the people, who could not read; but even if they did, the biblical text was usually kept in Latin, a unknown language for most people, and was not translated into the common language of the people; this was Satan's strategy to keep people in ignorance about the Bible and its contents, leaving the field open for the proliferation of sin, separation from God and condemnation to hell.

 

But the Reformation of the sixteenth century with Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox and others, brought the Bible into the language of the common people; where the knowledge of the Bible and its contents in the language of the people came, it wasn’t possible to prevent the advance of reform movements; the Gospel has been proclaimed and understood, leading people to repentance and salvation of their souls, reconciled to God through faith in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

 

But today, the strategy has changed, returning to the old question of the divine inspiration of Scripture and the authority of the Bible, trying to invalidate not only the Christian doctrine, but also the very message of the Gospel.

 

The apostle Peter spoke about this problem (II Peter 3:15 - 17); proclaiming the Scriptures as the Word of God, and recognizing the same divine inspiration in the writings of the apostle Paul, predicted the condemnation of those who distorted the contents of the Bible; the same strategy of Satan in the Garden of Eden was repeated in the times of the apostles, and even today, continues to be used.

 

The world lives today problems like hunger, poverty, wars, diseases, moral decay, excessive ambition and degradation of nature, certainly in proportions never seen before, and without showing signs of consistent solution; however, people continue to reject God and His Word, the Bible, on behalf of a purely rational understanding of the world; this evil and its consequences had been foreseen by the apostle Paul almost 2,000 years ago (II Timothy 4:1 - 4).

 

So, awake all those who call themselves Christians, because you cann’t be sons of God and at the same time rejecting the authority of the Bible in your own life (James 1:21 - 25); the rejection of the Bible as the divinely inspired Word of God inevitably continue leading the world to its final destruction.