Why We Believe the Bible - Lesson 3 — John Piper

The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God is available at www .DesiringGod .org.

The Problem of Enoch and Jude's Citation

We turn now to step five. How can we justify the claim that the Bible makes for itself and credit the inspiration, inerrancy, and authority of all the books of the Bible? Let me go back to Glenn's question about the reference in Jude 14 and 15.

Two possibilities came out in our discussion between the sessions. One is that God could have confirmed by inspiration in His own mind something that was true by virtue of some oral tradition about Enoch, happened to be recorded in that book that God approved.

Though He approved that, and it sounds like special pleading, a second possibility would be that even though you know this book does not, by virtue of its being inspired in the period of inspiration in the Old Testament, have authority, nevertheless, and you see its claim to have either been written by or about Enoch, you cite it without making those distinctions simply for what Enoch, who in that context was the seventh from Adam, said about what you're saying about these immoral people in the church, which is true.

Without saying, even though it looks like you're treating Enoch like a historical figure, all you're doing is alluding to the Enoch of that writing. So those are two possibilities anyway. But it's a problem, and I admit that, and that's where I'll leave it.

Historical Warrant for Paul's Testimony

Step five. I'm going to talk first about Paul's testimony and how we credit Paul. So there are two more sections I want to move through. This one and the Westminster explanation of how we come to trust the Bible.

So this is kind of a historical argument, and the other one will be a more theological, spiritual kind of approach. This one, I think, strengthens and encourages our ability to help people in an apologetic way get over some humps, but in the end probably does not provide the kind of solidity that you need for the hour of your greatest trial and crisis of death.

There has to be a kind of conviction about the scriptures and about God and about Christ and about his salvation and his plan and purpose for your life and for the world and for heaven and for hell that you arrive at that has a more solid footing under it than your capacity to draw historical inferences from data.

Even if those historical inferences are exactly legitimate and valid and compelling, which I think they are, but a little voice will always say, but maybe you left out a few facts. Maybe you drew a few wrong inferences.

This is why assurance ultimately is a gift. You can always call into question your conclusion, but God ordains. We're talking about this a little bit between the times. God ordains that we use minds, use our capacities to read grammar and syntax, use our capacities to peel away historical arguments that are valid or invalid, and in and through that horizontal human rational approach, which is the only approach, he can do a supra-rational thing, which I'm going to argue in the end is necessary, if we're going to have the confidence in God and his word that we're going to need.

We were just talking that some belittle the rational dimension of this, and I just said it sounds inconsistent to me to do that, since they're using that very faculty to do the criticism. They use the very faculty they debunk to debunk it.

Something's wrong when that happens. God ordains that the gospel be preached for the miracle of regeneration and illumination to happen. The gospel being preached is coming through language. Language to be learned has to do what my little girl Talitha is doing in kindergarten, in homeschool right now every day.

Matt sat on the cat. Preposition, sat, verb, past tense, cat, position, subject, object. That's all rational, that's all human. Nobody gets saved who doesn't engage in that, except maybe little babies and imbeciles.

God has ordained, not that that be the bridge across the chasm of hell, and I made it across the bridge because I learned grammar, and I learned logic, and I know how to construe sentences. No, no, no, no, no.

You learn grammar, you learn syntax, you may learn Greek, in fact, and then you expose yourself, you struggle, you construe, and you get meaning, you defend, and God, in and through that, miraculously, supernaturally illumines the mind to have a sense of the spiritual reality and beauty of what it says, which now rises above the merely rational to the spiritual apprehension of divine things.

Many historic, wise, deep theologians over the centuries have written about the mystery of Scripture in relationship to the mystery of the Incarnation. Is this man God, or is he not? He looks like me, just like a preposition, looks like a preposition, not a divine declaration that would explode my brain if it were really from God.

He looks human, he eats, he sleeps, he walks, and he calls himself. And here's this book, it's got grammar, it's got syntax, it's got historical argument, it's got flows of thought, and we call it God's Word.

What language does he speak? So there's mystery in both there, but you don't arrive at the divine Son of God by getting rid of the man Jesus, and you don't arrive at the Word of God by getting rid of grammar and syntax and the rational capacities it takes to construe them.

In fact, you lose both if you try to abandon either. Why do we want to credit Paul's testimony? So here we are trying to find historical warrant for crediting Paul's testimony. Why? Why should we care?

Paul's Claims About Spirit-Given Words

Well, he claimed to write with words taught by the Spirit. We saw this last night, 1 Corinthians 2 .12. We receive not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words, or interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.

But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God. We'll say more about that in a minute in another place. But he teaches in words taught by the Spirit. That's true. We want to know it.

So how do we credit whether it's true? He said that the Old Testament Scriptures were inspired and profitable. We saw that in 2 Timothy 3 .16. So we want to know if that's true, because that will undergird our confidence in the Old Testament.

He made stunning claims about the universal authority of Jesus. Although he existed in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped. Equality with God, this Jesus, before he was born, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant, therefore also God highly exalted him, bestowed on him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

So if these things are true, I want to know, because my whole history and life hangs on whether that's true about Jesus. Every knee is going to bow to him, either willingly or unwillingly. He was in the form of God before he came to earth.

He came to earth, he became obedient, he died a death, God exalted him. Those are spectacular claims that this man is making. Does he speak the truth? Colossians 1, 16 to 18,. For by him all things were created.

So he's creator, he's your creator, he made you. Would you want to know that true or not? If somebody made you, and you're not a collection of energy and chemical plus time, but a person made you, the way you make a pie, only more amazing because he did it with less to work with, like nothing, when he created your soul, that's an important thing to find out.

Visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, he made all that. He made Bin Laden, he made everybody. All things have been created by him and for him. Wouldn't you want to know what everything is for?

Everything is for, but I would give some unity to your life, I'd give some direction to your labors in life, if you know what everything is for, what's milk for and pizza for and air conditioners for and cars are for and business is for and media is for and TV is for and sex is for and money is for, what's it for?

Answer, if he's right, Jesus. Everything is for Jesus. If that's true, it changes everything. We've got to know if this is true or not. I mean, I've staked my whole life. What a fool I've been. Get up here in this pulpit, week after week, declaring with all my might that these things are so, if they're not so.

He is before all things. In him, all things hold together. Wouldn't you? If you were a physicist, wouldn't you want to know that? Molecules hold together. Weather systems hold together. Galaxies hold together.

Solar systems hold together. The sea stays in its place. The mountains stay in their place because of Jesus. He is also the head of the body, the church. If you're a Christian, you belong to the church, you'd want to know that.

Colossians 2, 9, In him, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Now, so that's why it's important. I mean, it just didn't get any more important. That's important to know whether Paul tells the truth or not.

Is there a way to know he's speaking the truth? That's the issue. This is what the seminar is about. Well, how does Paul argue for his credibility as a spokesman for the living God? Paul is not oblivious to the problem.

Paul's Conversion and Apostolic Authority

And in Galatians 1, He undertakes to say something which sounds like he's trying to help the Galatians credit his testimony. So, put yourself now in the Galatians' shoes and say, We want to know, can this man be trusted?

I mean, he's a killer. He's a murderer. And now he's starting to preach some pretty amazing things. So, here's the way he argues. We have to decide if this is true or not. For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.

These are not just human words and message you're getting here. For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So, his claim is that these amazing things he says about Christ and the gospels was not learned by ordinary human means, but that he received it from Jesus Christ as a revelation.

And then comes this word, for, which shows you that he cares about giving a ground. If you draw a for, you say, I say this, for, I say this. And this is the foundation of that. You use that kind of language all the time.

The for introduces the basis of the foundation, for I received it as a revelation of Jesus. Alright, so what's his argument? For, you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism. How I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it.

And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions. Stop right there. So, what he does with his first premise in this argument is to say, you have access to knowledge here that you know is true.

Namely, I was one amazing Pharisee. I was ahead of everybody. I was a persecutor. I was advancing. You knew. I didn't believe this. Jesus was an absolute hoax as far as what I was concerned. I was on my way to Damascus to put people in jail.

I didn't anymore believe this than the man in the moon. My conscience was clear. I was doing for God what he wanted done, namely to keep these pretenders from sweeping Jews into hell by their false messiahship.

Just another one of those crazy rebellious pretenders that gets the Romans to crash down on us and make life hard. That's the way I was. You know that's the way I was. That's premise number one. Now, here comes verse 15.

But when he who had set me apart even from my mother's womb called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son to me that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me.

I went to Arabia, and then I returned to Damascus. Then, three years later, I went up to Jerusalem to become acquainted with Cephas. And I stayed with him 15 days. But I did not see any of the other apostles except James, the Lord's brother.

Then he takes an oath. Now, in what I'm writing to you, I assure you before God that I'm not lying. Because he sees some possibility there that they'd say, oh, you're just making that up, even though that's credible.

Again, 15 days, he said, Cephas, you can go check this out. Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea, which are in Christ, but only they kept hearing, he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy, and they were glorifying God because of me.

That's his argument. I was once utterly out and out, moving towards the destruction of Christianity and advancing in Judaism. And now, 180 degrees, I'm preaching Jesus Christ, who appeared to me on the Damascus Road.

And I want you to know, I didn't get all this by running to flesh and blood, or going up to Jerusalem, or talking to the apostles. I went away. And only three years later did I get together and have a talk with Peter and the others.

Now, the point there is to say, I'm not dependent on them. Even though they have the apostolic tradition, I'm not dependent on them for my authority. I got, through a revelation of Jesus Christ, my gospel.

Now, he will say later that he faithfully handles the tradition of the apostles. But he does not say, I do it the way other people do it. I am one of the apostles. I had direct access to Jesus Christ.

He called me. He set me apart even before I was born, made me his apostle. And I lay out my life here and the change that you see as the primary evidence of it. And I add that I didn't consult with them early on in my Christian walk, but went to Arabia and came to my own God-given convictions about this.

Historical Controls on Galatians and Paul's Testimony

Now, let's ponder this argument. Let's see whether it has any warrant or any validity. Is there some historical control here that shows Paul is not free to fabricate? Well, there are several. Everybody agrees that he wrote Galatians.

There's not a single liberal, radical scholar who denies to Paul Galatians. We'll start there. They deny to him 1 and 2 Timothy. They deny Ephesians, Colossians, Thessalonian correspondence, a lot of arguments about certain letters that Paul wrote, whether he wrote them.

Nobody denies Galatians. Too many traits of his own personal way. Number two, the description of his pre-Christian days includes his passionate persecution of the church of Christ. You have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure.

Luke confirms this in Acts 9. And, of course, they would have known it. In Galatia, they knew all this, and they could have easily falsified this had they wanted to or been able to. Now, Saul quotes Acts 9.

This would be public knowledge, especially among those who oppose Christianity. They'd want to know very much about that. Third observation or historical control. The description of his pre-Christian days includes his passionate devotion to the Jewish law and traditions.

So this is public. This, too, would be public, verifiable knowledge. It's extremely unlikely that he could be fabricating this in a time and setting where falsification would be so easy. Four. Now, after his Damascus Road experience, he's 180 degrees opposed to what he gave his life to before and is claiming Jesus to be the Son of God and the Christian gospel to be the truth.

They kept hearing, he who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith. This change in Paul was also public among those who had known him on both sides of his conversion. Now, Paul is making claims for Jesus that are so universal, so demanding on the allegiance of everyone that he seems to have, and here seem to be the options that I could think of.

He's lost his mind. And almost all these have been developed in scholarly ways to reject Paul's legitimacy. He's lost his mind. He's got a serious psychosis. Something happened in Damascus. Or he's a con man.

He's become a great trickster. Become an Elmer Gentry type. Or he's making an honest mistake as a sober and reasonable man. Or he's speaking truth as a reasonable and honest man. Those are the possibilities that seem to me we would have to entertain for Paul to write all the crazy things he writes about Jesus Christ if he's not true.

So let's think about each of those. The historical likelihood or evidences for them. This is just putting into formalized thought. I think the way you intuitively go about crediting somebody's testimony.

Somebody comes along and says, I saw such and such. And you weren't there? And you don't know if that happened? So you can either try to find it on TV or try to find somebody else to corroborate or whatever.

But you also immediately do a checklist in your head. Is this person crazy? Well, he hasn't always been crazy. Does he look like he's having an illusion? Are there some traits here of some psychosis? No, it seems to be normal.

You run through this mental checklist. And to the degree that you have some experience with this person, his credibility rises and falls. And that's what we're trying to do with Paul. The writings of Paul do not fit the way lunatics or psychotics speak.

His writings, like Romans, are reasoned in an extended and coherent way. His writings bear the marks of many warm, personal relationships. His writings bear the mark of much interest and concern with others.

Now, if you say, would you come up with this list? Why are you mentioning those things? These are the things... I know a lot of schizophrenics. And there's a lot in this neighborhood. And you talk with people who have mental problems over the years long enough.

You learn certain traits that... And you try to figure out, why is this person so weird? What is it about this person that's not normal? I can't quite figure out why it is. And then you start to realize, this person never has any thought about anybody but himself.

Things like that. And there are certain traits of people who are mentally ill. And these are the ones that I'm saying Paul doesn't manifest. His writings bear the marks of many warm, personal relationships.

Mentally ill people don't have warm, personal relationships. I'm talking serious mental psychosis here now. I don't mean depression and things like that. His writings bear the mark of much interest and concern with others.

Psychotic people are just unbelievably wrapped up in their own world. His writings evidence a wide range of normal emotions. In general, no one would get the impression from these 13 letters, this man's insane.

So, I'm not inclined to think that that's a very good solution to what he says, that he's insane. So, here's my second response. The price Paul was paying to be a Christian and an apostle ruled out the idea that he was using it as a platform to con others.

He proved repeatedly that he was not being driven by money. He was a tent maker. He didn't take offerings for himself. He had others handle offerings when he was trying to collect the money for the saints in Jerusalem.

This man was not driven by greed, not driven by money. He wasn't using this message as a platform to con others. He accepted suffering constantly and documented it in a way that was publicly verifiable.

I don't think I'll take the time to read these accounts of his suffering. But, he documents them in a way that people can say, that isn't true. You've never even been on the sea. You've never even been in the country.

You never had trouble with false brethren. They could document whether that was so or not. To say that Paul is making an honest mistake, as a reasonable man, is to miss the point. The problem is not just that he might have made an honest mistake in his conversion, which would be inexplicable enough.

The problem is that he goes on, year after year, making the most outrageous claims about his own revelatory experiences and the reality of Christ and the Holy Spirit and the nature of reality. This is not an honest mistake.

This is a lifetime of sustained delusion. Or deceit. If he's not telling the truth. You can't say of the poor Paul, he's an honest and good man and he made a few honest mistakes. He is not making a few honest mistakes.

He's making many dishonest mistakes or he's crazy. The evidence is strong that Paul is speaking as a reasonable, honest man who knows what he is saying and why. His explanation is that Christ appeared to him and that he receives revelation.

With such revelation, he credits the Old Testament and speaks a full message about the person and work of Jesus Christ as God's truth. We must decide if we believe he is a credible witness. There's good reason to believe that he is.

Personal Trust in Paul as a Reliable Witness

Now, I didn't used to argue this way. I didn't used to develop it like this. I've been preaching now for 21 years. Before that, I taught for 6 years. Before that, I was a Christian for all my life since I was 6 years old.

I've lived with Paul and Matthew and Mark and Luke and John for a long, long time. I have had my faith threatened and challenged by almost every conceivable side. There may be new challenges that emerge that I haven't thought of.

And over time, I've begun to think of these writers, not in some magical way, but rather as people like you that I know. I know them, in fact, better than most of you. I've lived with them longer. I've seen more about what they think than what you think.

And I have been posed repeatedly in down times and up times and hard times and good times. Are these guys reliable? And Paul is special to me because Paul has 13 letters. And they are letters. They're not like the Gospels, like Matthew.

Matthew is hidden. Matthew never says, I felt this or I felt that. Paul, he's talking about himself all the time. You really get to know Paul when you read the letters of Paul. He talks about his angers.

He talks about his anxieties. He talks about his failures. He talks about his successes. He talks about his conflicts. There's Paul all over the place. Whereas you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and you read Jesus.

And Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they're kind of hidden. Back here, the genre of a Gospel was not to intrude themselves in there, but to tell the story. And yet, you can see the way they go about it. And you have to decide, is the Jesus they're presenting, are they reliable?

But with Paul, it's special. It's different. He's got so many letters, and you can kind of get to know this man. And he can become a friend. And he can either be a fool to you, or he can be a wise counselor to you.

So I have felt like it's almost like a thing with my wife. I can either trust her or distrust her. I can have this notion, she's really always cheating on me. She's got to figure it out. How to do it without me finding out.

And she's not reliable. This is possible. I could be totally deluded. I mean, my wife is away from home hours every day. We don't see each other. That's possible. So am I going to live that way? And subjectively, you know what?

I don't lose any sleep over that. There is this profound, deep sense, which I don't feel is naive at all. She's not doing that. I trust her. Big time. And that's sort of the way I've grown to be with Paul.

I just have lived with this man so long. I've struggled with what appear to be inconsistencies so long. And found such deep and wonderful consistency. I've seen the way he handles conflict. And I've seen the way he talks about God.

That I just can't reject Paul. As a friend and counselor and a wise knower of Jesus. Who had an encounter with him that I never had. And had a unique call on his life. So, I mean, just personally, that's the way I relate to the Apostle Paul.

That's why I developed that kind of argument. So that's the end of my treatment of Paul. You want to ask any question about that? Or make a comment about it? Don't assume that I'm claiming more than I am here.

I'm not claiming. Therefore, now, Piper says, with historical control and Paul's argument. You now have a bridge across Lessing's ugly ditch. This is a philosopher who created the problem for Christianity.

And that you can walk blithely across with absolute total confidence. Based purely on rational historical argumentation that is infallible. Now, that's just not the way I was thinking as I developed that argument.

I'm looking for evidences of pretty high probability. So that I can distance myself from other arguments that would say no. It's pretty highly probable that Jesus is not the Son of God. And that the Bible is unreliable.

And so on. And I know right now, perfectly well. That with that kind of historical argument. Which gives me some sense of. This man is not a fool. This man is not making honest mistakes. And this man is not a deceiver.

And therefore, I believe what he's saying is true. That conclusion could be torpedoed easily. Some late night. With some high powered intellectual skeptic who might point out something that I haven't thought of yet.

Questions About Josephus, 2 Peter, and Paul's Revelation

Was there a hand? Yeah. Joe, help me here. I don't think Josephus mentions Paul. Could be wrong there. Josephus and Philo are your two New Testament contemporary extant writers. Soon after Paul, you got writers.

Irenaeus and others. And they're referring to Paul's writings right away. So, I think the answer to your question is no. That contemporary writers. Don't talk about Paul. I just wonder. Am I knowing? Contradict me there?

Because I'm not claiming that my memory is completely accurate here. Josephus is writing at the same time. Philo is writing roughly at the same time. They do. Josephus does mention Christ. But I don't know that he mentions Paul.

What? The New Testament. Yeah. 2 Peter refers to Paul. Very good. So, inside the New Testament, we have at least one testimony to another person writing about Paul. I think it's the only one in the New Testament, isn't it?

2 Peter 3. Any other comment? Yeah. If it says in Galatians 1 that Paul received a revelation of Jesus Christ, meaning he's the content of it and it came to him not from Jesus Christ, meaning Jesus delivers a message.

That's the distinction you're making. Might that pattern be seen throughout authentic revelatory experiences throughout the Bible? I don't think those prepositions will hold out in a consistent way. In fact, I think the preposition there is dia.

Anybody got their Greek text open to see that? Through. I think it's through. Dia. Dia. I received a revelation dia Jesus Christ, which almost undercuts, I think, what you're observing here. So, I don't want to build too much on what you're saying.

I think what you're saying is true theologically that the revelation that Paul got, for example, in 2 Corinthians 12, is of Jesus Christ. He saw the living Jesus Christ. He was the content and substance and reality of the revelation.

It wasn't that he just got a message that came from Jesus Christ. But I think it's not unbiblical to talk about as him having received inspiration from Jesus Christ. So, I think both are true. When cultic leaders claim to have gotten revelations from God or whatever, I doubt that we will persuade anybody as to the inauthenticity of those by their claiming it was from rather than of.

I think other factors are going to have to figure in there as to whether Joseph Smith and Muhammad and Mary Baker Eddy and whoever it was behind the Jehovah's Witnesses are authentic or not. I'm not an authority on all the cults and religions of the world by a long shot.

And when you look at your life that you've got to live, which is very finite, very short and very limited in what you can read and study, you do have to make some choices. I am so thankful that there are people like Ron Carlson and others who have given their lives to understanding the cults and writing on them.

I was just over at Northwestern Bookstore on Thursday on my day off poking around and there's a new one out published, I think, last year. I wrote it down, but I didn't bring my little thing with me. On the cults and I just looked at it and said, oh, this is valuable.

This is so helpful to have in a space of 12 to 15 pages a good, well-documented explanation of the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists and right on down the line. But the point I'm making is to have credibility, do we have to be authorities on all those religions and all those cults?

This seminar is designed in a sense to say we can't be. There must be a way to credibly land with truth without becoming a world expert on Zoroastrianism or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or its various subcultures.

The Bible as the Measuring Rod for Other Religions

And I think that's true. If you can discern a credible way to say that the Bible and only the Bible is God's word, then you measure all the other things by the Bible. So all they need to do is say Jesus is not God.

And I'm finished with the Jehovah's Witnesses. I'm just finished. I'm not going to spend any more time with the system. He's a great angel, Michael. Period. Or if I find enough in the Mormonism that God is a body and that we're all going to be gods and just enough to show that it's dramatically out of sync with the Bible, I'm not going to take all the time to read the Book of Mormon in order to find out what all its claims are.

But you see what I'm doing? I'm hanging everything on my conclusion that the Bible is so. So that it becomes the canon, the measuring rod. So that as soon as something is far enough out of sync with it, I'm finished with it.

I've got only one life to live. I'm staking my whole life on what I'm about to show you right now in the last hour. This is the most important part, and I'm doing what I should never do, and that is shove it into the last 40 minutes.

The Westminster Catechism and the Trustworthiness of Scripture

So here's my approach. I only have one section to do, but it's got a lot of overheads here. And I'm going to take my starting point from the Westminster Catechism. And I'm going to take it apart piece by piece to see whether its argument for the validity of the Scriptures as a whole is true.

It's not building upon what we just saw from Paul. That was one approach. Now I'm taking another approach. The Westminster Catechism, set in 1646, roughly, was developed as a summary of the Scriptures.

And it's written for the church. It's written for lay people. It's written by people with way more experience than me, experience things like me, about God's truth and authority in the Word and in experience.

And wanted to develop a warrant for the Scriptures that laymen would have access to. See, I know perfectly well that if I developed the most sophisticated, historically controlled, scholarly reasoning for the resurrection and the authentication of the ministry of the Apostle Paul, and I developed a ten week seminar on it, and I got everybody in the church to come, and I did it and I wowed them with my ability to reason and know.

A year later, they wouldn't have it. They would just remember, that was good. But they wouldn't have enough memory of the facts to reconstruct the argument so that in a moment of conflict or threat or death or torment or torture, it would work.

I tried for years to live mainly on historical arguments. I never, in all my German experience, in all my Fuller experience, in all my subsequent dealing with people at Bethel, as I was teaching, I never found myself close to doubting or close to jettisoning the historical reliability of the Bible.

The arguments, once I gave myself to them, were always good enough. But you know what? I had to rebuild them every time I taught it. I had to go back and relearn them every time. So to prepare this seminar, I couldn't do this off the cuff.

I had to go back and reread all these things, rethink, look up a few texts, reconstruct the arguments in my head so that I would remind myself how compelling they were. Well, existentially, I can't live that way.

I simply can't live that way. Reconstructing compelling arguments that I forget won't work in the World Trade Tower. With about five minutes to go, when I'm either going to burn or fall out. So as a pastor, the more I've come close into people's lives, the more I deal with real people, the more I deal with various kinds of people at all ages of life, I say, if the Bible is going to be trusted, and God wants us to trust it, He must have made a way to see its trustworthiness different than that.

And that's what I want to talk about. Now, question four in the larger catechism, how does it appear that the scriptures are the Word of God? Answer, the scriptures manifest themselves, themselves to be the Word of God by their majesty and purity.

By the consent, that means agreement, of all the parts. And the scope of the whole, which is to give glory to God. By their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation.

But, so that's all the kinds of traits that the scripture has that would compel you to yield. But, the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with, that's very crucial. I'm going to talk about the testimony of the Holy Spirit almost the rest of our time here.

Please don't understand me or the Westminster Divines or John Calvin to mean a voice telling you the Bible is true. So many people when they think internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, they look at the Bible and then they look away and say, Okay, Holy Spirit, is it true?

Tell me. That's not the way He does it. It is by and with. The Spirit of God bearing witness by and with, by and with. It's as you keep looking, as you keep looking, you see. So we'll talk about that in a minute.

In the heart of man is alone able fully to persuade it in heart that they are the very word of God. Now I think that is a true answer to the question. And I want to spend the rest of my time talking about each of those pieces starting right here with Madison.