Why I Believe the Bible to be the Word of God (pt.2)
The New Testament is the Word of God
How about the New Testament? Did Jesus set the stamp of His authority upon it the same way He did upon the Old Testament? He did. How could He when not a book of the New Testament was written when he departed from this earth? By way of anticipation. Turn to John 14:26 and you will hear Jesus saying, “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you,” thus setting the stamp of His authority, not only upon the Apostolic teaching as given by the Holy Ghost, but upon the Apostolic recollection of what He Himself had taught. The question is often asked, “How do we know that in the Gospel records we have an accurate reproduction of the teaching of Jesus Christ?” It is asked, “Did the Apostles take notes at the time of what Jesus said?” There is no reason to believe that they did, that Matthew and Peter, from who Mark derived his material, and James (from whom, there is reason to believe, Luke obtained much of his material) took notes of what Jesus said in Aramaic, and that John took notes of what Jesus said in Greek, and that we have in the four Gospels the report of what they took down at the time. But whether this is true or not does not matter for our present purposes, for we have Christ’s own authority for it that in the Apostolic records we have not the Apostles’ recollection of what Jesus said, but the Holy Ghost’s recollection of what Jesus said, and, while the Apostles might forget and report inaccurately, the Holy Ghost could not forget.
Turn furthermore to John 16:12, 13, and you will hear Jesus saying, “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth.” Here Jesus sets the stamp of His authority upon the teaching of the Apostles as being given by the Holy Ghost, as containing all the truth, and as containing more truth than His own teaching. He tells the Apostles that He has many things that He knows to tell them, but that they are not ready yet to receive them, but that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will guide them into this fuller and larger truth. If then we accept the authority of Jesus Christ, we must accept the Apostolic teaching, the New Testament writings, as being given through the Holy Spirit, as containing all the truth, and as containing more truth than Jesus taught while on earth. There are many in our day crying, “Back to Christ,” by which they usually mean, “We do not care what Paul taught, or what John taught, or what James taught, or what Jude taught. We do not know about them. Let us go back to Christ, the original source of authority, and accept what He taught, and that alone.” Very well, “Back to Christ.” The cry is not a bad one, but when you get back to Christ, you hear Christ Himself saying, “On to the Apostles. They have more truth to teach than I have taught. The Holy Spirit has taught them all the truth. Listen to them.” If then we accept the authority of Jesus Christ, we are driven to accept the authority of the entire New Testament.
So then if we accept the teaching of Jesus Christ, we must accept the entire Old Testament and the entire New Testament. It is either Christ and the whole Bible, or no Bible and no Christ.