Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - Inspired Words or Concepts?
Do errors in the Bible shake your faith in God? What types of errors are we talking about? Are these doctrinal or life application errors or spelling errors? Jeremy looks at inspiration and how significant the errors we have in our modern translations are. Hint; they're pretty darn small.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament Framework. Today a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And inspiration means God speaks, and I just add these words for kids through men, in other words, I try to make it really simple for them. Revelation God speaks. Inspiration God speaks through men, in other words, he uses humans to write the text. So, first of all, inspiration is verbal. Again, that means it's words, not just the concepts. I don't know if you've seen the movie Rudy. You probably have, because Rudy's an inspiring, you know athletic movie, right? Well, rudy goes to this Roman Catholic university and he's got to get a couple years under his belt before he gets accepted to the, a couple years under his belt before he gets accepted to the big league. You know Notre Dame, so he can hopefully go out and play for Notre Dame, right? Yes, rudy loves this, he wants to do this, he's a passionate individual In his classes to get qualified for Notre Dame, one of the classes you listen to, the Roman Catholic priests talk about inspiration in Roman Catholic theology and he says not the words but the concept are inspired.
Speaker 2:The concept, not the very words, but the concept. That's one view of inspiration. It's not the actual words, it's the concept. But scripture seems to indicate, for example, in 2 Timothy 3.16, that all Scripture is God-breathed, that all, each, every we can discuss this word, but that it's discussing the very words of Scripture as being inspired. Not that the prophets and the apostles received words from God and then they translated those words into concepts that, hopefully, are good enough, but know that it's the actual words that are sourced in God. So the primary author and inspiration is God, and that means he is the source of what we have in the Scripture.
Speaker 2:Now, the secondary author is man. God uses man, remember, that's the definition God speaks through men. He decided not to write it all down himself. He could have done that. He did that with the ten words at Mount Sinai, didn't he? He literally emblazoned the words on the stone that Moses then took down. But that's the only portion of Scripture that he did that. With the rest of it, he had it written through men. So human authors were superintended by God, the Holy Spirit, meaning watched over, let's say kept from error, so that they record the very words of God while at the same time preserving their style, their personality, their intellect and so forth. Because you read Peter and it's not like reading Paul. You read Luke and it's not like reading the author of Hebrews. It's like, hmm, somebody different wrote this. What you're seeing when you see that is you're seeing that God preserved the personality, intellect and background of the individual authors, while making sure that every word that they chose was the words that he wanted us to have.
Speaker 2:Okay, and then, lastly, inspiration points to inerrancy. In other words, if god is the primary author and he ensured that his words would be written down through men, then the original manuscripts would be inerrant. Right, I mean, they'd have to. I'm not saying the manuscripts we have today, I'm saying the original manuscript, the one that Paul, mark, john, whatever, when they used the pen on the parchment, on the vellum, whatever they used to write it on exactly that original manuscript, that first letter that was sent to the Ephesians or the first letter that was sent to the Galatians, that was inerrant. You say, well, it doesn't really matter, they were inerrant.
Speaker 2:But what about today? Let's just say they're very, very accurate. In other words, so accurate that there really is no contest between the Bible and any other ancient literature, and all, all secular, unbelieving historians agree with this entirely, because it's an undisputable fact. There are far more manuscripts of the Bible that we have access to that show the accuracy of the Bible than any other book. I mean by mile by mile. It's not close, there's no competition. I think Homer has the second most with like 800 copies. Our New Testament alone has almost 6,000 copies and over 25,000 fragments and Homer is at 800. So we're talking about we win by a mile as far as attestation and the accuracy is remarkable. Probably the New Testament more than 99%, the Old Testament somewhere in the range of 97% to 97.5% and those things that are.
Speaker 2:You know where we find discrepancies and stuff like that. It's stuff like this for example, I've got a student who just finished a paper and he kept writing the word fulfill, like this F-U-L-F-I-L, and I was like kept doing it and I was like, is that how you would spell it, fulfill, f-u-l-f-i-l? No, you'd put another L on the end. Of course, I'm the professor, I've got to make sure. So I looked this up. In the UK and Australia they spell it with a single L. In the US the predominant is the double L. So it's right, but we don't really use that here. But I can't count it wrong, right? Those are the types of errors you find in the Bible. A lot of them are that kind of thing. Is that really going to shake the foundations of your faith.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app, and until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.