The Bible Fraud

The Bible is the most misused and misunderstood book ever written. It has been used to justify all manner of impropriety, wickedness, and falsehood. Every spiritual fraud ever prepetrated in the history of Judaism or Christianity has claimed support from the Bible. On the authority of the Bible the Jews crucified Christ, stoned Stephen, and imprisoned and beat the Apostles. With the Bible as justification put Christians "unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women" (Acts 22:4). After the death of the Apostles the Bible was taught by authority of the whip and the sword. To the Reformers it became the source of priesthood authority and the final will and testament of their mute God.

A knowledge of what the Bible does and does not claim for itself is important in protecting against its misrepresentations and misuse. Let us consider one of five common frauds perpetuated in the guise of loyalty to the Bible.

The Bible is Not Infallible

The fundamental error of the Bible cultists is the doctrine of Bible infallibility. This tenet holds that the Bible must be "completely authoritative and trustworthy in all that is asserts as factual, whether in matters of theology, history, or science." [1] The Bible, it is held, "does not contain error of any kind." [2]

It has to be significant that the Bible makes no such claim for itself! There is not a single passage of scripture that can properly be used to sustain such a view. Nor is there any agreement among those maintaining such a position as to what verion of the Bible should be used or what the Bible is saying on a host of matters.

The argument simply is that the Bible cannot be trusted in all things. Because of endless textual and translation problems, many scholars concede error in our modern Bible while maintaining the infallability of the original manuscripts as written by their authors. The position is secure since none of the original manuscripts exist and no one would have to accept them even if they were found.

It is helpful to ask why the fundementlists in the Protestant word find it so necessary to argue for an infallible Bible. The answer is the Bible is all they have. They have no living prophets, they have sealed the heavens to revelation, and even if they were to find some ancient manuscript written by one of the new testament writers, they have locked themselves into a postion that would prevent them from adding it to the canon of scripture. The Bible is all they have, and as such it becomes the sole source of their authority. From the Bible they claim priesthood authority, doctrine, and the commission to preach and teach. Without it they have NOTHING. We as LDS seek the word of God not a book that has been mistranslated, misrepresented and ultimately misused by men of all centuries.

Stone, leaves, bark, skins, wood, metals, baked clay and pypyrus were all used anciently to record inspired messages. Our concern with the ancients is not the perfection with which messages were recorded but the inspiration of those messages. More importantly, we are interested in the fact that the heavens were open to them, that they had such a message to record. Knowing as we do that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the fact that he spoke to them, however poorly they preserved it, witnesses that he can speak to to us. After all, the Bible is only black ink on white papper until the spirit of God manifests its true meaning to us; if we have obtained that, do we need to quibble over the Bible's suitability as a history and science text?

Wer62

________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

[1] Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties [Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan 1982], pg 19

[2] Haold Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible [Grand Rapids Michigan: Zondervan, 1976], pg 18