Is the whole Bible true?

But God's word IS true. Every single word as originally given is true. Nothing in it is or can be false; we can rely on it and its veracity completely.

No, depend upon this, God loves us a great deal too well to put into our hands a book that cannot be trusted. I say this soberly, and seriously, and I have no hesitation in saying — spite of the infidelity of the day — that I believe that the Scriptures are the Word of God, from cover to cover. And, in spite of all that is said against it, the more I study the Bible, the more do I find out its unity, its completeness, its reliability, its absolute impregnability against all the attacks of the enemy; and that it is the revelation of God to my soul. I have found light, and always increasing light, through the Scriptures. And to you I commend them most earnestly and fervently.

And His word is absolute truth. Weakness in belief of one part of the truth involves weakness in belief of all. Though composed of sixty-six books written by almost as many writers extending over many centuries, it is one component whole. It is like an arch. Take out one stone and the whole is weakened.

No doubt, every true believer enters upon the study of scripture with the full and deeply wrought conviction of its absolute perfectness in every part. He reverently believes that there is not, from the opening of Genesis to the close of Revelation, a single flaw, a single hitch, a single discrepancy — not one; all is as perfect as its divine Author.

After all, if God has given us the Holy Scriptures surely they are faultless from beginning to end. This is the attitude of faith. And thank God the copies of the original and the translations therefrom are so good and reliable that we may rest content that we have God’s own veritable word in our hands. Hoping this may help you.

Of how much importance is it to insist upon this, today! Scripture is true and trustworthy every where, or it is to be trusted nowhere. Let us take our stand boldly there, if we would retain anything of what God has given to us. And away with the unbelieving thought that Scripture is not meant to teach us science! Let us rather say that it is meant to teach whatever it does teach. It is light, not darkness; truth, and only truth; the soul of reason; the illumination of all it touches.

Here is not the place to show, not only how baseless is this unbelief, but the divinely admirable truth which the Holy Spirit set out in these inspired accounts of our Lord as everywhere else in the Bible. It would demand volumes and can be found by those who seriously enquire. But such speculations ought never to have been entertained for a moment. Their source is evil, though good men be ensnared by them. "Every scripture is God-inspired." We are entitled as believers to set one's seal to it that He is true; so is His word. We are bound in simple faith to deny errors or discrepancies in scripture as He wrote it. We may not be able to answer every objection, or to clear up every difficulty which ingenious ill-will or even weakness may muster; for this depends on our intelligence, which may be small. But if we believe the apostle's deliverance on the Bible to be "the commandment of the Lord" (as he claims generally and for smaller things in 1 Cor. 14), we are warranted to rest in the peaceful certainty that "every scripture is inspired of God."

Another remark may close this section. Christ has been made an exception, and prophecy allowed in His case to be not hyperbolical, though assumed to be everywhere else. We have just seen how grudgingly its application even to Him is allowed. But where is the warrant for considering prophecy in His case valid; in every other, precarious and exaggerated? Scripture draws no such line; and man's unauthorised rule to this effect is as capricious as absurd and irreverent. It is forgotten in effect, as always, that every scripture is inspired of God, and that the prophetic word is His, no less than the Law or the Psalms, the Gospels or the Epistles. Even in human testimony, if we could not receive the witness of men about the least things, how trust it about the highest? Truthfulness we want, and have, nor this only, but divine character and purpose everywhere. If we believe it all to be God's word, such questions are decided. Impossible that God could lie anywhere, or as to anything. If we can trust Him when promising life eternal in His Son, assuredly no less if He speaks of Edom or Egypt, of Jerusalem or Judah.

The introduction of the Word of God leads the Apostle to state the character and uses of all Scripture. He says, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (or, "every good work"). vv. 16, 17. All or every scripture is then divinely inspired, given by the operation of the Holy Ghost through human vessels as a revelation of the divine mind (see 2 Peter 1:21), and the Apostle in another place claims this inspiration for the words in which he delivered his message: "Which things also we speak," he says, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which [in those which] the Holy Ghost teacheth" (1 Cor. 2:13). It is not only therefore that the Scriptures contain, but they also are the truth; and they are thus absolutely infallible and, as such, have attached to them God's authority because they are the expression of His own mind. They are therefore to be received, unquestioningly received, as the voice of the living God to our souls; and thus the only proper attitude to be taken up when they are read is that of Samuel, who said, "Speak, for thy servant heareth."

We can readily understand an unbeliever questioning the truthfulness of the Divine oracles, because thus only can the authority of God, so troublesome to a guilty conscience, be set aside. We may also remark that the religious infidelity of the day is characterised by impeaching the veracity of everything divinely revealed, and ends by believing nothing. But what we so earnestly desire for every Christian reader of the Scriptures is, if possible, a deepening moral certainty that these writings, from the first word in Genesis to the "Amen" closing the Revelation, are fully and verbally inspired of God. We refer, of course, to the original Scriptures.