The topic that we’re going to tackle in this first session is the question: "Is the Bible reliable?" And I think it is important that we begin by defining our terms.

Let me tell you about someone I know by the name of Harry. I would hate to say it, but Harry has a personality defect. He is not reliable.

Now, if you tell Harry, "Harry, you’ve got to meet me at 3 o’clock. Now, do you understand, Harry? Three o’clock!"

"Yeah. Sure, pastor. I’ll be there."

You can count on it: 3:15, 3:30. He’s unreliable. But what you find out about poor Harry—and everyone who knows him has come to this conclusion—is that he sincerely believes many things in which he’s absolutely mistaken. But you also see, when it comes to Harry, that he will contradict himself. So he doesn’t show up at 3 o’clock. Maybe he doesn’t show up at all.

So the next day you say, "Harry, I was waiting for you."

He said, "Yeah, but the wife had problems, you know? And with the car breaking down and...." He gives you three or four different excuses for the same thing. He contradicts himself; he’s not reliable.

And you also have to come to the conclusion that Harry at times would deliberately and knowingly lie to you. Now remember, a lie is not a "mistake." If my little boy is doing his addition, and I say, "What is two plus two?" If he said, "Two plus two is five," I don’t say, "That’s sin! Give me the switch! This boy is going to get booked!" You don’t punish people for making a mistake. A mistake is where you speak according to what you know is true. Even if you’re dead wrong, there is no moral issue. So you don’t spank your kids if they come up with the wrong answer, because they don’t know any better.

A lie is when you know what is true and you say something else. But you see, Harry lied. He is unreliable. He tells you things; he knows they’re not true. His wife was not sick. His car was not broken down. He over-slept. He lies, deliberately.

And also, fourthly, he makes up stories whenever it suits him. He said, "Oh, pastor, you know what happened to me the other day?" I can’t believe him any more. He’s not reliable. Do you know anybody like that? Perhaps there’s an Uncle Harry in your life. Perhaps there’s someone at work who’s always shooting the breeze and talking and you know you can’t believe anything he says. He’s unreliable. Well, you see, this is exactly what liberal theologians mean when they say the Bible is not reliable.

You see, in liberal theology they tell us that the authors of the Bible were often sincerely mistaken in what they believed. And when they spoke, they spoke out of mistaken ideas and concepts.

"Well, you see, the authors of the Bible believed that the world was a flat dish supported by two pillars and that the sky ultimately was surrounded by a band of water," and they believed there were four corners to the world. And you see, the biblical authors were simply mistaken. And when they said God created the world, they didn’t know any better. When they talked about their life and their times and the world, well, you see, they were just ignorant people living in those old by-gone days. You can’t trust the Bible in that first sense. They were mistaken men with foolish ideas and you can’t trust them. You see, we live in the modern age." (Interestingly, every generation says, "We live in the modern age." Every generation claims it is walking in the light and darkness preceded it, but as soon you get to the next generation, they tell you you’re in the dark.)

Secondly, they tell us that the Bible frequently contradicts itself because the authors of the books of the Bible contradict not only themselves, like poor Harry, but they contradict each other. Oh, I’ve had debate formats with atheists, and they say, "The Bible is full of contradictions!" Usually I push that Bible across and say, "Good. Then you can show me one."

"Oh, it’s from cover to cover!"

I say, "Good. Then show me one." And I just keep pushing that Bible at them. "Come on! Come on, quick! Come up with one."

"Well, I’ve seen them. There are just plenty of them!"

I said, "Well, go ahead, give me one." Usually they can’t come up with anything, or if they do?? and I do debate sharp atheists who say, "I’ll give you some." They can claim that there are contradictions because they are violating the laws of logic and they are applying to the Scripture twentieth century literary standards that you should never apply to ancient documents.

Thirdly, liberal scholarship tells us that the authors of the Bible deliberately and knowingly tried to deceive people by tricking them into thinking that the books they were writing were actually written by someone else. So you have some fool who said, "Oh, these are the books written by Moses. I know Moses didn’t write them but we’ll just say Moses did. Daniel didn’t write this book, I’ll just say Daniel...Matthew didn’t write Matthew...Mark didn’t write Mark...Paul didn’t even write the Pauline Epistles!"

You mean someone could have written a book, sincerely as a Christian, and know that he wrote it and put Paul’s name on it? "Oh, yes!" says liberal scholarship. "That’s what the kind of people were in the first century, the second century. Weren’t they wonderful? But they had good goals, you see." And Bultmann and the rest would say, "Oh, well, you see, they tried to deceive people for their own good and that makes it okay. Not only did they falsify authorship, but the authors of Scripture fabricated the details of the birth, life, sermons, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus never said those things. Those things never happened."

I was chairman of the membership committee of the Evangelical Theological Society for several years. We had a meeting up in Canada, at which time we had one of our members give a presentation on a new commentary on Matthew that he had written in which he stated that Matthew was a "romantic novel, and you must take it tongue in cheek, take it with a pinch of salt," and, "Matthew wrote it with a romantic flair with his imagination soaring." So I stood on the floor. And I said, "In other words, let me ask you: Were there any shepherds who came to the newborn Jesus?"

"Oh, there were no shepherds. That’s just a fictional account."

"Was there a star over Bethlehem?"

"No. There was no star. You’re too intelligent to believe there was a star! Everybody knows! There was no Magi, no shepherds, no star. That’s a romanticized account. That’s a fictional thing. And you see, all these little miracles and these things...you see, someone’s preaching a sermon there in the early church and he says, ‘How can I get these people to understand what faith is?’ I know, I’ll think of an illustration: ‘Imagine that Jesus was walking on the water one day, and He says to old Pete, "Come on the water and walk with me."’ That’s it! And some stupid fool in the next generation, they thought Jesus actually walked on the water. These things didn’t happen!"

Of course, I said, "You’re following redaction criticism and there are other redaction criticism authors who write their books. Whose word do we take in terms of what is a fictionalized event and when it was an actual event? I mean, I could pick another commentary on Matthew that says this event actually happened, while you said this was a romantic, imaginative, fictionalized invention. Eenie meenie minie mo, which commentary has to go? The integrity of the text of Scripture should be in the text, not in the interpreter. We have only your word for it that there were no Magi, there were no shepherds, there was no star."

Well, you see, they would tell us that the details of the birth of Jesus were fictionalized, his life was fictionalized; He never did those things. His sermons? He never said those things. Remember, the Jesus Seminar would vote: "Oh, He never said that."

"How do you know?"

"We took a vote."

Scholarship is done on the basis of 51 percent voting? Didn’t anybody look...a little bit of Greek, a little bit of Hebrew, a little bit of shuffling in the Aramaic?

"Oh, no. Just take a vote."

Isn’t that wonderful? "His miracles, His death, and the so-called Resurrection? All that’s fictionalized."

I remember in college a friend of mine said, "Oh, you’ve got to come to this church! They’ve got a new preacher. He’s preaching the Word!" A downtown Presbyterian Church. A beautiful building with those stones and then glass windows...oh, beautiful! I know that thing was a bastion of liberalism for years.

So I said, "Okay. I’ll come Easter Sunday."

I sat there..."We believe Christ rose—in our hearts." And "We believe in the resurrection of Jesus...we believe He arose—in our hearts."

Now, what was he doing? Did Christ arise out of the tomb or did He arise in our hearts as we happen to reflect and remember Him? So He exists as long as, like Tinkerbell said, "As somebody thinks about him and applauds."

You see, this is liberal scholarship. And after they state this, they go on to say that the writers of the New Testament fabricated a new religion centered around a fabricated Christ and produced a religion and a Christ that Jesus Himself would have never recognized or condoned. And after saying all of this, they collect their check from the denominational headquarters or the seminary; they sign the confession of faith and tell you, "I love the Bible. We love the Bible." After they have torn it page after page.

Now, as orthodox Evangelical Christians representing historic Christianity, what do we mean when we speak of the reliability of the Bible? Well, when Christians use such words as "infallibility," "inerrancy," they are simply saying that the Bible is reliable in everything it records.

Now, by "reliable" we mean that you can count on the Bible, that it is true, that it is factual, that it is real, that it is historical. That is, the Bible is a true account of whatever it’s recording. It’s not false. It is factual; it is not mythological. It is not legend. It is real and not fantasy. It is historical and not upper-story end with the German theologians would have called the heilsgeschichte [a German word literally translated "salvation history"] instead of history. It actually happened—what the Bible says.

Well, first of all, we mean by that that the Bible is a reliable record of the experiences and beliefs of the biblical authors. When Paul spoke concerning his experiences in the Book of Galatians, when the risen Christ appeared to him, when the Gospel was revealed not from man, through man, but from Christ Himself, he was giving a reliable account of his own experience. When Peter would share with us his beliefs, that is a reliable account of what he believed. So that the Bible, first of all, is a reliable record of what Isaiah believed and experienced; what Jeremiah believed and experienced.

Secondly, the Bible is a reliable record of the beliefs and experiences of other people. Remember, we’re talking about the Bible as a record. In the same Bible in which, let’s say, Matthew or John would tell us what he believes, he also records what other people believe. So we find in the Bible what the Pharisees believed. Now, just because we find in the Bible what the Pharisees believed, what the Sadducees believed...for example, the Sadducees did not believe in resurrection; they did not believe in angels; they were the liberals of their denomination. And we find that the Pharisees believed in the resurrection. Does that mean, therefore, because the Bible records what the Pharisees believed, therefore what the Pharisees believed was true? Or is it a reliable record of what people believed, what they thought, their opinions?

Thirdly, the Bible is a reliable account of the lies and false ideas of men and of demons. How many of you have heard of Erich Fromm, the apostle of love and situational ethics? He wrote a book entitled You Shall Be as Gods, in which he tried to say that the Bible teaches we’re all gods because the Bible says, "You shall be as gods." Well, he forgot to tell you that it was the devil who said that. In other words, as you pick up this Bible, you just can’t open it and say, "Every verse is truth." No, it isn’t. "Oh, whatever I find in the Bible is the Word of God because it’s true." No, it isn’t. This Word of God records the lies, the false teachings, the false doctrines, the false concepts of men and of demons. You can’t simply assume that if you pick up the Bible, you automatically have truth in every verse. For example, the Book of Job is probably the most misused book in the Old Testament, next to Ecclesiastes. Why? Well, if you look carefully at Job 42:7, God says, "You and your friends did not speak aright. You were mistaken. You were giving false teaching." You see, they were having a "bull session" where they were pooling their ignorance. There was no Scripture. This was the first book. These were people who existed before Moses. And in this account given in Job, the oldest of the books of the Bible, they were pooling their ignorance concerning the problem of evil. One person says, "Well, I believe, you know, if you’re good, you get wealthy and healthy, and if you’re bad, God’s going to make you sick and poor. And I believe you’ve got to blab it and grab it. Confess it, name it, claim it, blab it, grab it, you’ve got it."

"Now, look at you, Job. Lost your children. Lost your money. Lost your health. And you’re left with that wife and you lost your happiness. You’re in sin!!"

Job said, "I’m not conscious of any sin."

"Yes. You’re in sin."

And there was a bull session about the problem of evil. You just can’t pick up the Book of Job and say, "Well, now here’s what the Word of God says! Over here in Job...yeah... .here it is right here....Job, Chapter 35 and verse 2!"

You have to ask, "Who was speaking that particular portion of Job? One of the men that God condemned because what they were saying was wrong? The Bible contains, as an infallible record, what people were saying that was wrong.

I think about my dear, sweet grandmother. The only Christian in my family for many, many years. She always thought that whatever the Bible said was true.

I said, "No. It’s reliable. Not necessarily true. It can be a reliable account of what isn’t true."

One of her favorite verses was: "Touch not. Taste not. Handle not." Until I pointed out to her that that was in quotation marks because Paul was quoting the Gnostic philosophers and he was refuting such silly statements. And how many Christians run around, "Touch not, taste not, handle not." That’s not the Word of God. Paul was refuting that Greek philosophy.

So when you pick up your Bible, you have to say, "Who said it? What was the context? What’s going on? Etc."

Fourthly, the Bible is a reliable account of the good things that people do. Remember Dorcas, Acts 9:36-39? "Peter, come quick. Come quick." Peter didn’t come quick enough and she died. Oh, when he got there, they were crying. Oh...and they took and showed him the clothes that she had sewn and how she had washed the disciples’ feet. She was a woman full of good work; she loved Jesus and loved people. And everybody was just so...this was a good woman! She got raised from the dead. And does the Bible tell us about those heights, the good side of man? Yes, it does. It doesn’t say people can’t do good. The Bible talks about even unbelievers doing good. Who gave money to the rebuilding of the temple? Old Cyrus. Was he a believer? No. He wasn’t a believer. God put it into his heart. A lot of good things in the Bible.

But fifthly, there is also in the Bible a reliable record of the many evil things that people do. Man’s inhumanity to man. Now, this is where, see, again, some people are stupid. I remember one time I was debating a woman from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

She said, "Well, the Bible teaches cannibalism! The Bible teaches rape!"

I said, "The Bible teaches…?"

"Yes! Right over there! You see, there was the rape of Dinah in Genesis 36. It’s the Word of God. And you see here?! The Bible teaches to go out and rape women!!"

I said, "You’re assuming that whatever the Bible records, it’s recommending?"

"Well, it’s the Word of God, and you should believe and obey everything in the Bible."

I don’t know what Sunday school she went to, but she was taught wrong. You don’t obey and believe everything written in the Bible, because in the Bible we are given things not to believe and NOT to obey! Just because the Bible records cannibalism, rape, lying, you have Christians running around saying, "I can do it. I can do it. I can do what the Bible says." It doesn’t mean you can go do it. It’s like those people running around with hatchets and they say, "Well, they killed them in the Old Testament. I’m gonna kill them, too!"

No, the Bible records the evil things that people do. And you notice, it never says: And God blessed them greatly as they raped the women. It doesn’t say that. Now, the Koran condones murder, robbery...and you know what? When you captured women and you put them in your harem and you raped them at will, do you think that they were there by choice?

No, the Bible records a lot of evil things, you see? But it doesn’t recommend them. It’s putting them in the Bible to warn you, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10, he said the idolatry, the immorality, all the evil, these things are written that you know not to do them!

So you just don’t open up the Bible, put your finger down—the flying fickle finger of fate—and say, "I have to believe it and obey it!" No, no, no, no. It may be a passage telling you what not to believe. What not to obey.

I hope this isn’t getting too confusing.

Sixthly, the Bible is a reliable record of historical events, natural and supernatural, which surrounded the rise and progress of the people of God. So that the Bible is a reliable record of what happened upon the stage of history—the good, the evil, the bad, the ugly, the just, the unjust. And you know, the Bible is so far superior to the Vedas, to the Koran, to all the other so-called books, because the Bible is realistic.

Notice that the Bible always paints people with their warts and moles intact. You see, particularly during the Victorian Age, when you sat for a portrait, they didn’t put in warts and moles and double/triple chins. When that painter got through with you, it’s like, there’s the old Queen of England, and you look on the English money and there she is—20 years old. You look at that thing sitting there and this thing—"Hey, this ain’t the same Queen."

Does the Bible tell us the truth about Abraham? He was a liar at the beginning. And guess what he did at the end? Lied again. What was his character fault? Whenever he got in a corner, he lied his way out.

What was David’s problem? Hormones.

What was Peter’s problem? Cowardliness.

What was Barnabas’ problem? A softy. He could be taken for a ride.

The Bible tells it like it is. Notice, there were no victorious Christians who lived the higher life, the deeper life, and entered into complete victory and lived without sin. The Bible records people as they are.

And you see, it tells us about Creation; the Fall; the Flood; the Tower; the patriarchs; the Exodus; the rise, the fall and return of Israel; the life of Christ; expansion of the early Church. All of these things are written as sober, historical accounts, as historical narratives, and they’re not to be viewed as unreliable, but as reliable, because whenever we have been able to test them, they have been reliable. That’s why when archaeologists have gone and dug at the place where the Bible said a certain city would be there...for example, Sir William Ramsey, as an agnostic, went to the Holy Land to disprove the Bible. There was no record and no indication of such cities as Lystra, Derbe and these places and when he dug, he expected to find nothing but dirt. And when he found the cities of Paul, the names of his book, it ultimately led him to bow the knee to Jesus Christ.

As Professor Albright said, in a hundred years of archaeology, every time the spade has turned the dirt over, it has confirmed the Bible, not refuted the Bible. It is a reliable, historical account of what happened. And notice, the supernatural events are described with the same kind of clarity and conviction as "secular" events. There is no indication that the authors of Scripture accepted what is called the Greek philosophy from Plato, the Dichotomy which ultimately arose, which we don’t have time to go into. It has to do with Parmenides and Heraclitus. And Parmenides is the father of rationalism. Heraclitus, the father of empiricism. And one said "all is mind," the other said "all is matter." What is mind? Never matter. What is matter? Never mind. And Plato put them together. The upper story and the lower story, you have matter and you have mind. Aristotle said, "Well, it’s form and then essence," and Thomas Aquinas said, "It’s nature and it’s grace" and Kant said, "It’s phenomenal and monumental." And Karl Barth then could say there’s the lower story and the upper story and the upper story is non-science, non-rational thought and that’s where you put the miracles of the Bible. Well, the authors of the Bible never took a course in Kantian epistemology. So you’ve got to be very careful of reference works. Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament... of course, he was one of the staunch supporters of the Third Reich and proclaimed it as the Millennium under Adolph Hitler. As you read the analysis of Greek words in Kittel’s Theological Dictionary, you will often find them defining words in the light of Greek philosophy or of recent German philosophy. So they’ll say, "Here the apostle Paul is using the word cosmos in the helga...." and you read this. Paul never read German philosophy and theology! That’s reading back into the Bible those things. Be very careful of dictionaries and reference works that define words in terms of today instead of saying, "What did this word mean at the time the author wrote?"

We saw a good example of that. The Jews today and those who deny the Trinity. "Hear, O, Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord" (Shema Yisraêl, Yehowah, Elohainoo, Yehowah aichod). What does aichod mean? Well, we say it’s one unified and we say here God is referred to as a plural. It’s Elohim. And then you have the "us" and the "our." And you say, "Oh, but that’s just the plural of majesty." "Us" and "our." But even Gesenius, the father of Hebrew grammar, said that the concept of a plurality of majesty was unknown in biblical times. A king said "I," not "we." In manuscripts and hieroglyphs on the wall, you do not find the majesty a plurality. I is I. We is we. And you’ns is you’ns.

Seventhly, the Bible is a reliable record of biblical authorship. Matthew wrote Matthew; Mark wrote Mark; John wrote John; Luke wrote Acts; Paul wrote the Pauline epistles; Isaiah wrote Isaiah. They used to say there were two Isaiahs, then there were three Isaiahs, then there were four Isaiahs and, finally, now they say there’s the "school of Isaiahs." Imagine a seminary dedicated to the glory of God where the students conspired with the faculty to produce a book in the name of someone dead for centuries and then palm it off on the gullible public and they did this with the approval of God and man, and you have liberal scholarship.

Number eight, the Bible is a reliable record of what God revealed to the authors of Scripture. That’s why in Galatians 1 and verse 1, and then verses 11 through 12, the Apostle Paul said, "Now, listen, I want you to get this straight. When I preached the Gospel, I did not get that Gospel from someone teaching me. After I was saved, I went to my own private seminary and Jesus Christ revealed to me the Gospel. And that came not through man, by man, from man, but God Himself." Well, he’s either a nut; he’s either a liar; or it actually happened. And there is no indication that we should presume the Bible guilty until proven innocent. And this is the liberal trick. The Bible is always assumed to be guilty. "Oh, it’s automatically a lie! You’ve got to prove it’s true!" Well, that may work in a Mexican court, but that certainly is not going to work here in this country.

Number nine, the Bible is a reliable record which does not contradict itself. Did you know that? When I was in high school, after my conversion to Christianity, I made a diligent study of contradictions in the Bible. I kept a little 3" x 5" metal box where I collected contradictions in the Bible. And you’d have the Life magazine edition on the Bible full of contradictions and you’d have this is a contradiction and that is a contradiction and here a contradiction and there a contradiction, all over the place. And I would read the liberal books and I’d write it down. I said, "I’m going to find somebody and answer this for me."

Down through the years I have found that nearly every single apparent contradiction has actually been resolved and there are very few that are left. The ones that are left are generally referred to as a contradiction if at the moment there is no verification from extra-biblical sources, which is not a contradiction, it simply means an argument from silence. To say there is no extra-biblical verification for this particular passage does not mean that the passage is a lie, a fraud, a contradiction; it simply means that you have to await further confirmation. You cannot go from silence to condemnation.

Tenthly, the Bible is a reliable record of what we must believe in order to be saved and how to live the Christian life. You see, these are the two things that all of us have to face. What are you going to believe? And how are you going to live? And should how you live determine how you believe and what you believe should determine how you live? You should live what you believe and believe what you live or should you somehow manage to believe and live in utter contradiction? That’s why people kill themselves.

Francis Schaeffer, one of my heroes, used to say, "Look, if you can’t live what you believe or believe what you live, you’re wrong somewhere. Something’s wrong." So here someone says, "There is no meaning. There is no significance to man." Well, I could think of Lord Russell who said, "Man is a curious accident in a backwater." One can think of Flaubert, Sartre, Camus, the existentialism: All is meaningless. All is absurd. All is nausea. There is no meaning. There is no truth, no love, nothing. Then they fall in love with a woman and they have a wonderful relationship and the children come and they run and grab that little girl and kiss her and snuggle up. Now, if you killed that child, would they say, "Oh, there’s no meaning, there’s no significance, there are no morals." This is why Sartre, you see, ultimately betrayed the existential movement because in the war between France and Algeria in which there was a struggle for independence, Sartre came out and said, "The war is wrong! It’s immoral!" Well, if there is no meaning, there are no standards, there is no truth, there is no error, there is no good, there is no evil, you can’t say something is evil.

This, by the way, I call it one of my atheist catchers. "How was that?" Well, here I debated George Smith who wrote the book, The Case Against God. I said, "Okay, George, put up or shut up. What’s your case?"

"Well, I… I… I… you don’t have a case."

I said, "No. No. No." I said, "You said the title, The Case Against God. You’ve got to give me a case, NOW!"

"Well, well, ah, I wasn’t saying I had a case."

I said, "By the way, you had a chapter in which you defended Ayn Rand and you said you believed in situational ethics and you believed in ethical relativism, that there are no moral absolutes."

"Yeah."

And the very next chapter is entitled, "The Evils of Christianity."

Out of this side of the mouth: "Everything’s relative! Do your own thing!" And out of this side, "You Christians are evil! You Christians are bad! The Bible is b-a-d!"

Like the person who comes up to me and said, "Don’t push your religion on other people!"

I said, "Do you mean that you should live according to your religion?"

"Yes."

"Well, my religion is to push my religion on other people! Don’t push your religion which says don’t push your religion onto my religion which says to push my religion!"

I love when I get on these talk shows and they say, "You’re judging!"

I said, "Don’t judge me in the name that is wrong to judge in."

Someone says, "I don’t believe in dogmatism!!"

I said, "Are you dogmatic about that?"

"No one knows anything for certainty."

"Are you certain about that?"

"Everything is relative."

"Except that absolute?"

You see, humanism can never live what it really believes. I remember the time that I had in my car a woman who started her own universal mind church. She’s a relative of the family. My wife’s side is Christian Science, Unity, Science of the Mind, Unitarian Universalists, and a few other things thrown in. My father was agnostic, when sober; an atheist when drunk. Jim Beam [bourbon] gave him courage to know there was no God. He died an alcoholic. Cirrhosis of the liver.

But I had this woman in my front seat and she was always saying, "All is one and all is God and God is all and God is one and God is good and that’s all that’s good. There is no evil, Bob. There is no such thing as sin. All is mind; all is spirit; God is spirit; God is mind; all is good; all is mind; all is spirit." You know....and I had my little three-year-old daughter in the back seat and I said, "You mean to tell me, Evangeline, that if somebody raped my baby girl and then cut her up with a razor blade you would stand over her mutilated body saying, ‘All is good; there is no evil’?"

She said, "Yes."

I said, "You don’t really believe that. You know how I know you don’t really believe that?"

She said, "Why?"

I said, "Give me your pocketbook. Push it over toward me."

She said, "Okay."

I reached in that pocketbook and I took out a ring of keys. She lived in New York City. And I went, (tingling of keys). She looked at me. I’m driving, you know.

She said, "Look, what are you doing?"

"The bell is tolling and it’s tolling for thee. If you don’t believe in evil, why do you lock your apartment? Why do you lock your car? Why do you have a safety deposit box? Why do you lock your office? There’s no evil? Then when you get home to New York City tonight, leave your apartment open. Walk down Harlem," I said, "about 120th Street would be good. Take the A train about Midnight and just walk through the street and say, ‘All is good. All is God. There’s no evil.’"

I said, "You’ll meet evil."

Her sister, who joined her in this religion, leaped out the window of their apartment and killed herself on the sidewalk below. The woman has since lost her mind. You see, we live in a world in which there is pain. We live in a world in which there is evil. We live in a world in which you must live what you believe and believe what you live and if you interpret Christianity correctly, you can live the kind of Christian life described in the Bible without difficulty. Any views of sanctification that are unlivable, that are denials of what is, mean you cannot live what you believe and believe what you live.

Oh, I tried as a teenager. I went to these conferences...."You can live without sin. Let go, let God, let Jesus live His life through you. That’s it. No more sorrow. No more sin. No more struggles. Just let Jesus...that’s it...lay back.... Let Jesus live His life through you.... All will be peace. Do this little step plan...do the 3-step plan...No, do the 4-step.... Next speaker says, ‘I’ve got the 10-step plan.’" One said, ‘I call it the Roman choo-choo: Know, yield, reckon, obey. And like that train you’re going up the incline: "Know, yield, reckon, obey." And you get right up to the top, and you’ll slide over and then you’ll just be coasting in your Christian life. No more trouble. No more temptations. Shangri La Station, here we come!" And I would try, "Know, yield, reckon, obey." And then I’d sin and slide all the way down that track and say, ‘I sinned.’"

"I’ll never forget. I went up, one big Christian Life Conference, and the speaker was a speakin’ and I came, and with tears, I said, ‘I’ve tried to live the sanctified, the high life, the deeper life. I’ve tried...I keep sinnin’!" He said, "Oh, that’s because you’re trustin’." I said, "No, I knew about that from the last conference." And he said, "Well, you’re trustin’ in your trustin’." I said, "No...I know about the trustin’." He said, "Well, you’re trusting that you’re not trusting in your trusting."

Another one. I went up to him after he gave a big discussion of the mystery of godliness.

"Are you living the kind of Christian life you preached today?"

"No. But others may. Others may."

He could not live what he believed. The Book of Psalms is your key to the Christian life. Did David have periods of depression when he was not "Happy in Jesus and Yahweh?" Yes. Are you going to have depressing times? Yes. Was he up and down? You read the Psalms. He was up and down. Paul said, "I have not reached perfection." You see, the Bible is realistic in that it describes the kind of Christian life that’s real. It’s true. Don’t go for any view of sanctification that’s La-La Land.

I remember one cousin. "I haven’t sinned since I been saved." I reached over and stuck...put my heels down on his foot so hard that I broke his toe!

He said, "What are you doing!!"

I said, "You’ve sinned now. It’s all over."

I only did it once because I about got beat up by that guy.

I said, "Well, I’m going to do that stomping..." Next time another guy says, "Well, let me talk to your wife for about five minutes. You’re sinless? Let me talk to your wife."

"What do you want to talk to her about!"

I said, "If you’re sinless, your wife will tell me. We’ll find out."

He said, "You’re not talking to her."

I said, "You betcha I’m not talking to her, because you know what she would say."

The Bible is a reliable record of what we must believe and how to live and that’s why in terms of the preaching of the Gospel—and I’ll close with this observation. I do pastors’ conferences. I say, "If you take a pair of scissors and you go through the church epistles and you cut out of the church epistles all of the verses that relate to what to believe and put them on this pile, and then all the verses talking about how to live, as a family man, as an individual, which stack is higher? The how-to-live or the what-to-believe? And then I want you to go through and find the other verses that talk about how to be saved. So you have three stacks: How to be saved. What to believe. How to live. Would you please tell me, from the smallest to the biggest stack...?"

One pastor friend of mine said, "I’m not going to answer that question because I know where you’re going."

I said, "Yes. I’m trying to take you down the Primrose Path. But where am I going?"

He said, "I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say there are very few verses in the church epistles where this is material given to churches about how to be saved. Very few. I think there’s like three. Then there are verses about what to believe. And then, when it talks about verses how to live and how to love and how to relate; how to forgive and not...that just fills up, piles high."

I said, "Yes."

And he said, "Then I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to get after me about my preaching. Because all I ever preach is: Be saved. Come down to the altar and be saved. Sunday morning, you need to be saved. Sunday night, you need to be saved. Wednesday night, you need to be saved. And next week, you need to be saved. And why you should be saved. And how you should be saved. And...."

Whereas, in terms of proportion, that’s not how churches are supposed to be taught. People are supposed to be saved out in the highways and the byways as the people in the pew go out and evangelize the world for Jesus because they’re equipped to do the work of the ministry. The preacher’s job is to fill the pulpit. The people’s job is to fill the pew. And once the people are saved, they’re brought into the church. That’s why the Greek word for preaching is used for activities outside of the church. The Greek words that are used to describe what goes on inside the church? Teaching. Edifying. Instructing. Well, then, what’s the purpose of church? I thought it was to save sinners! No. The purpose of church is to equip the saved to go out and save sinners. So that the Christian who comes in a year’s time, yes, there should be a message here and there. There should be a little word in every sermon about you need to come to Christ. That’s fine. But just a little itsy bitsy. And then there should be, Yes, there needs to be teaching on doctrine. Why do you believe in the Trinity? Oh, I ask at pastor’s conferences: "How many of you preached on the Trinity within the last year? How many of you have preached on the sinless nature of Christ? How many of you have preached on the Deity of Christ? How many of you...."

They’re just looking at each other. "What’s he talking about?"

I said, "How many has even read a book in five years? But then how many of you had a golf club in your hand?"

In terms of the proportion or the percentages, the majority of the teaching that should go on in the church should be about how to live.

Does the Bible tell you how to get along with your neighbors? Yes.

Does it tell you how to run your business? Yes. As a matter of fact, I have a series in Proverbs. Proverbs tells you how to make the money, how to save the money, how to spend the money, how to give the money and how to see to it that great-grandchildren even inherit the money.

Does the Bible tell you how to treat your wife?

"Yeah. We have a sermon once a year from the pastor. The sermon is entitled ‘How to Submit.’" See, women get theirs once a year. And every man said, "Yeah, go get her preacher! SUBMIT! You women! Submit!"

But does anybody ever tell the women the sevenfold curriculum in Titus 2 where he says, "Teach the women the following seven things." Nobody’s teaching it.

"Teach the young men the following things. Teach the older men...."

Where is it!!

"Well, you see, when it comes to how to live, you’ve got to go to the psychologist. You don’t need to go to the Bible."

We’re living in a day and age when the most popular speakers on God are people who have never studied theology. Who would know the Zeta, Eta, Theta, or whatever? People who talk out of their experience. Well, you see, this is why we’re in the trouble that we’re in. How do people know that the Bible is reliable if it has never been preached to them in a way that they can rely on it in their marriage, at business, in dealing with...if all they ever hear: BE SAVED! Be saved!

And I’m not saying you don’t need to be saved. But I’m saying, why don’t we let our preaching reflect how the New Testament pictures the kinds of things you should tell churches? We should major on how to live. We should make sure the foundation is doctrine in terms of what you believe. Yes, you need to be evangelizing your own people, but not so where that’s all the church is is a salvation factory where you grind out decisions for Jesus.

You must live what you believe and believe what you live.

Some very common mistakes about inerrancy. Should we interpret the Bible literally? This is a question I get all the time. And I say, "Absolutely not."

"Oh! You mean you don’t interpret the Bible literally?"

I said, "No. Nobody does that I know of."

They said, "Well, I do."

I says, "Well come up here. Come up."

He says, "Well, what do you mean?"

I said, "I’m looking to see if that right eye is in there."

"Let me see, do you have both hands?"

"Um-hum. That’s right. You’re taking it literal, aren’t you?"

How many of you take the Bible literally? You don’t say that when immediately you jump into the Bible, you take it literally. The Bible is not one book, it’s 66 books. And it contains different kinds of literature. We call them genre: different kinds. There are those portions of Scripture which are historical narratives. From thence you should not derive doctrine or morals. There are sections that are poetry. There are sections that are apocalyptic, that deal with prophecy. There are sections that deal with doctrine. There are different kinds of literature. And as you read the Bible and as you preach the Bible, you have to observe what you’re dealing with.

And I’ll close with this illustration. I have a lecture dealing with the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is another book that is greatly to be understood as misused. Most people fail to understand that Proverbs tells us the kind of life that we will live if we begin with God. And Proverbs says that wisdom is the most important...sell everything you have to get wisdom. And godliness and obedience and a good reputation. Proverbs talks about your vertical relationship to God. You begin with God, you will succeed in life and you will have meaning, you’ll have truth, you’ll have significance. You’ll have it. The blessing of the Lord.

Then comes the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is written from the perspective of the man under the sun which means, What happens if you begin without God? Proverbs says you begin with God. This is what will happen. Ecclesiastes says, you begin without God, this is what will happen. If there is no God, then there is no meaning. There is no significance. Wisdom means nothing. A good reputation means nothing. Matter of fact, the slogan in chapter 10, verse 19 is that money is the answer to everything. It’s in Ecclesiastes we’re told that the only important thing is partying. We’re told in Ecclesiastes that when you die, you get thrown in the ditch like a dog and it’s over with, so simply grab the ring as you go around the merry-go-round of life. Life means nothing. Yet, where do the cults habitually go to prove soul sleep? Ecclesiastes. But I generally deal with them.

I say, "Now, you don’t really want to quote Ecclesiastes, do you?"

"Oh, yes."

I said, "Then you believe that money is the answer to everything?"

"Hum? It says that?"

"Yes. That’s what it says."

Well you see, if you understand the kind of literature which is sarcasm, tongue in cheek; it’s seeking to give us from the perspective of a humanistic view what life would be like if there is no God. Thus, realize the Bible is reliable in all that it records, in the fullness and the plentitude of that meaning.