Your Convictions About The Bible

Of all the books ever written, there is only one that is utterly infallible, timeless, and completely trustworthy—the Bible. But is it merely a collection of ancient men’s words or is it the revelation of the living God?

Your answer to that question is of the utmost importance. In this message, Dr. Stanley shares his personal conviction that the Bible is the very Word of God—inerrant and wholly reliable.

What you believe about the Bible matters! For more messages from Charles Stanley, including this week’s broadcast, go to www.intouch.org/watch

God’s Messages

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

What are your convictions about the Bible?
What do you really believe is true of the word of God.
Maybe you’ve owned one for years but haven’t read it too much.
Or maybe you’re one of those persons who reads it every day, but you never thought really about where it came from, what it’s about.
So what are your convictions about the Bible?
So to clarify what we mean by conviction, listen, having a conviction is being so thoroughly convinced that something is true that you will take a stand for it regardless of the consequences.
Now, a preference is something you believe and believe strongly, but you would change your mind under certain conditions.
But that’s not true of a conviction, thoroughly convinced that it’s true to the point that you are willing to pay the consequences of believing the Bible.
So if somebody says to you, uh, what, what is the Bible?
Well, lots of people believe that the Bible is a book that was written by many different men over a long period of time.
And therefore, because they weren’t perfect, there must be errors in the Bible.
And so they will tell you that there are.
And they will say, you know, some parts of the Bible are outdated now because after all, this is the 21st century.
And you mean to tell me that uh they are not errors in the Bible.
I mean to tell you, there are not errors in the Bible.
Listen, the God who gave us his word, knows how to keep his word true, no matter who is recording it.
And once in a while, somebody would say, well, men, men make errors. They certainly do.
But let me ask you a question, what error does God make?
And anything is important is God’s message to the whole world for all time and eternity.
God knows how to protect the truth of His word.
So when people tell you that the Bible is only partially true, you can forget it.
The Bible is the story of God’s redeeming love for mankind that’s relent in a nutshell.
It’s the story of God’s redeeming love for mankind. Now watch this.
It started in the garden of Eden when God forgave Adam and Eve and we are living today and God is still forgiving us.
It is about the awesome love of our awesome God who loves us and wants the best for us and for those who do not believe the Bible for whatever their reason may be, mark it down.
That’s your belief, but it is not the truth.
This absolutely awesome, holy righteous God would not give us a book full of errors or filled with errors and then expect us to live a Godly life.
So when people tell you well, it’s outdated. Ask them where, where is it outdated?
What principle in the scripture has he given us? It’s outdated. Not a single one.
It’s all the truth of the living God. So think about it in this way.
Somebody says, well, it’s something that men wrote. Now watch this.
First of all, man did not write it.
God wrote it through men and control them.
If man could have written it, he wouldn’t have, I’ll tell you why because it condemns him and his sin.
Nobody’s gonna write a book that condemns them and their sin.
So a man couldn’t write it if he would have and it wouldn’t, if he could have for the simple reason, it’s all about righteousness and holiness and God stands for His word.
I want you to turn if you will to Isaiah 66 I just want you to read a couple of verses here and then I wanna turn you to Psalm 1 19 and uh a couple of verses there.
But Psalm six, I mean Isaiah 66.
There’s one part of this verse that we need to look at.
Thus says the Lord in verse one, Isaiah 66 verse one.
Thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and the earth is my foot still where then is the house you could build for me.
And where is the place that I may rest for my hand made all these things and all these things came into me declares the Lord.
But to this one, to this person, I will look to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word.
Understanding that this book is so holy.
The truth is when you and I begin to understand the truth of it, we do tremble when we think of eternity in the future in the past and how God has kept clean and pure His holy word, telling us how to be saved, telling us how to live in difficult times.
It is a book that makes us indeed tremble. Then the 119 psalm uh just one simple verse there.
Uh That’s, that’s that long psalm. Psalm 1 19.
Look there for just a moment and I want you to look at it because I want you to remember this Psalm 1, 19 verse one oh five.
Listen to what he says. Your word. That’s the Bible, the scripture.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
I have sworn and I will confirm it.
Yeah, it’s a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
God has given us the Bible to give us instruction how to live our life.
And it’s more than simply a trustworthy God. It’s matches every single experience that we face in life.
God has an answer that explains oftentimes what he’s doing.
So when I think about the Bible, I think about it has four purposes really.
And that is to reveal the one true God to us, to how, tell us how to be saved, how to live a Godly life and how to serve Him.
It’s all found in the word of God. Now, what is the truth about the scripture?
People have all kind of ideas.
So what I wanna do is simply do this, I’m gonna tell you the truth about the Bible and you think about it, you decide whether it’s true or not, it is true.
And what I wanna show you is with all of this being true.
When somebody tells you the Bible is full of errors. It’s this, that, that’s outdated and so forth.
They do not know what they’re talking about.
So I wanna give you the reasons that the B I believe that the Bible is absolutely the word of God beginning with.
It’s timeless, it’s never outdated. You can’t outdate the word of God. It’s timeless.
It fits in, in a generation, it’s infallible. That is, it is without error.
And in Second Peter, if you turn to Second Peter, listen to what he says, verse one of chapter two of Second Peter.
But false prophets also arose among the people just as there will also so be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive.
He even denying the master who brought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves.
Many will follow their sensuality and because of them, the way of the truth will be maligned and in their greed, they will exploit you with false words.
Their judgment from long ago is not, is, is not idle and their destruction is not asleep.
That is people not believing the scripture didn’t start today. There’ve always been people who did not believe it.
But what I want you to see is it is the revelation of the one true God.
That is when God provided us a Bible.
He provided us a book by which you and I could live and face every single situation in life.
No exception, God has his answer for us and his support to us.
It exposes man’s sinfulness and his hopeless condition. This is why people don’t wanna believe it.
If I want to live in sin, I certainly wouldn’t want to read the Bible because the Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And that we will give an account for all of our sin.
I’ll tell you why they don’t read it because the word of God will convict them of sin and they don’t want to be convicted of sin.
So their excuse is, well, it’s not true.
I’m here to tell you that will not work before the judgment of God.
Then of course, uh it’s a trustworthy God for our daily life.
I think about all of you who are watching and listening. Do you read the Bible every day?
It’s a trustworthy God for our daily life. And in every circumstance of life, God has an answer.
Only God could have written, could have pinned through men, the answers to all the things that He answers in the scriptures.
Then of course, it pictures for us the consequences of sin and think about this God in his wisdom in providing us a bible.
Over these years, he started where He knew we needed to start and that is man will fall into temptation and disobey God.
Then what? And one of the things that He wanted us to learn very early in life is there are consequences to sin.
God told Adam and Eve the truth. He said, if you disobey me, here’s what’s gonna happen.
They disobeyed him and that’s exactly what happened. What he said. God never misleads us.
He tells us the truth when it’s good. He tells us the truth. When it’s painful.
There are consequences to sin. Watch this carefully.
God knew the kind of society we grew up in the kind of life we’d have to live and He’s provided us all the warnings that we need.
And he says there are consequences to sin. On the other hand, he reveals his unconditional love for us.
Watch that God’s love for you and me is not conditioned upon whether I’m obedient or not.
The principle is there. If I’m, if I’m obedient, I’m blessed of God. If I’m disobedient, watch this, I’m disobedient.
I pay the penalty. But I don’t listen. God doesn’t stop loving me, your Children, for example, disobey you.
Do you stop loving them? No. Are you greater than God? No, the forgiveness of God.
The love of God is the message of the word of God.
It explains, for example, how we can be saved from our sins.
Where would you ever find the verses that contains what this verse contains?
You could take every word and preach a message on it for God.
So love the world that He gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life period.
How could only God put so much in one verse of scripture to explain all of redemption in one verse of scripture had to be from God.
It declares who Jesus is and why he came. He came. He’s the Son of God.
He came into this world for the purpose of dying on the cross and paying our sin debt in full.
People who argue about the Bible. They don’t even have any.
They don’t even have an idea of why Jesus came.
They’ll say, well, I know Jesus was born and this that and the other. But he was just another man.
No, he was God walking in human flesh among men.
In order to down across and pay our sin debt in full, that’s who he is.
And that is the message of the word of God.
It explains for example, why he is born of a virgin.
Because remember this virgin born meant that Jesus had no sin.
If Jesus had been a normal man and had sin in his life, he couldn’t have died on the cross for your sin and mine.
So that go watch this. God’s whole redemptive plan is based on the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
And when somebody says, well, I, I believe in Jesus, but I don’t think that virgin birth is all that important.
It is extremely important. It’s essential that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, no sin.
He wasn’t paying for his sin.
If he not born of a virgin, he’d have been a son like any other man.
The only reason he could die for your sin and mine and pay our sin that in full is he was absolutely pure.
He was God in the, in the human flesh.
And then of course, it explains why he died on the cross. Why did Jesus die on the cross?
All through the Old Testament? People said that Old Testament is so that, that’s just, I don’t, I don’t get that you may not get.
And they don’t understand why.
So many times the Bible talks about the sheep, the lambs because those lambs were symbols of the son of God who would one day lay down his life on the cross and shedding his blood would take care of our sin dead in full, all of our lives and for all eternity.
So there’s nothing in the Bible that’s unimportant.
And just because you don’t understand all those sacrifices doesn’t mean that there’s a mistake or that there’s error or that there’s anything in here that’s unimportant.
God wouldn’t place anything in the Bible that’s unimportant. You come to a book like Leviticus, for example.
And those passages of scripture talk about building the Tabernacle and this what in the world is all about.
All that is about symbols of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s all important.
God gave us a book to guide us and to enable us to live a Godly life.
And so what you may consider on important is very important.
Now of God, then of course, it describes His resurrection and you know that people talk about their God, this their God, that Jesus was born of a virgin, the perfect Son of God God in human flesh.
They crucified him. He was dead. There’s no question about the fact He was dead.
They sealed the tomb and in spite of sealing the tomb, the tomb was broken and Jesus Christ was resurrected.
He’s the resurrected son of the living God. And therefore, he beat death.
And so Jesus Christ, listen, he didn’t just down across he rose from the dead and the Bible says, he seated at the father’s right hand making an as session for us.
That’s where he is. Now, he see the Father’s right hand, whereas God, he’s in the holy temple in heaven.
And so the scriptures are complete. It tells us for example, how to handle temptation.
You look in the first Corinthians 10 13 and you listen to Paul talk about how we had to respond when tempted and so forth.
It identifies the person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of eternity.
And Jesus said to his disciples made it very clear.
He said, I’m going away, but I’m not gonna leave you. Uh I’m not gonna leave you alone.
The spirit of God is going to come. He’s gonna be your helper.
He’s gonna be in you with you and upon you and he’s gonna seal, watch this.
He’s gonna seal you as a child of God under the day of redemption, which means when you were saved, for example, I was saved at the age of 12, at the age of 12.
Not only was I forgiven of my sins and saved, but I was sealed.
I was sealed forever as a child of God and cannot lose my salvation like you can’t lose yours if you’ve been saved by the grace of God.
And so the work of the Holy Spirit was not only to seal us but to in but to inhabit us, to live the life of God through us.
And so he’s the one who helps us interpret the word of God.
He’s the one who enables us to live a Godly life. We have him as our great enabler.
So God didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t leave anything out. It wasn’t that Jesus left God and went to heaven.
But what he says, the Holy Spirit is gonna come and when he comes, you’re going to be filled.
That’s what Pentecost was all about.
So that every single person who is a believer has the Holy Spirit of the living God, who is the third person of the Trinity God, the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit living on the inside of you.
Listen, he’s with you every day, every night. He’s with you all the time.
You can’t be separated from God once you’re saved by the grace of God.
Somebody says, well, I believe that you can be saved and lose your salvation.
I grew up believing that, that um that I could lose my salvation. That’s what I was taught.
Did that bother me? Sure. It bothered me.
And I think you mean, I gotta give an account for all of that.
And I was sitting in a Greek class in seminary translating the book of first John.
When I first finally realized that I am saved and I was saved and saved forever and no sin can separate me from Almighty God.
That’s the grace of God And so he didn’t say I’m gonna save you, but you better keep saved.
If I had to keep saved, that wouldn’t be possible because we live, we live in a fallen world and we’re gonna make mistakes and we’re gonna sin against God.
That’s the awesome grace of God. The world doesn’t understand that.
Listen, whatever God’s forgiveness took care of every single solitary sin, of every single person that was the power of the cross and the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And when people tell you, well, I don’t, I don’t know about, I don’t know about that Bible business.
You better know about it because there’s gonna come a time when you’re gonna have to give an account.
And the scripture teaches us for example, how to face trials and difficulties in their life.
Look at the Apostle Paul, the life of the Apostle Paul.
Look at all these epistles he he wrote in prison, what was God doing?
It looked like Paul just had a terrible time and God wasn’t very fair to him.
You know what God was doing?
God chose that man miraculously saved him on the Damascus road and allowed him to suffer and suffer and suffer and go from one prison to they all know about the cross of Paul.
And what did he do? He listened to God while he was in prison and he wrote, he pinned these awesome epistles by the hand of Almighty God.
No man could have thought up all of that. And what did he do?
He gave us to the Apostle Paul, all of these epistles to help us know how to live and face every kind of situation you and I could possibly face.
That’s the grace and goodness of almighty God. There’s nothing missing in this Bible, not anything.
And when people tell you their arrows, just hand them your Bible and say, OK, pawn them out.
They can’t pawn them out because they’re not there.
Listen, if I wanted to live in sin, the last thing I’m gonna do is open this book.
If I’m gonna live in sin.
The last thing I’m gonna do is to listen to your testimony because listen, the word, watch this.
The word of God. The scripture says the word of God is sharper than any two edged sword.
Going straight to the heart, straight to the conscience, straight to the mind to convict us of sin.
Naturally, the unbelieving world doesn’t want to believe the Bible because it is the law of the living God and it is his word.
It’s a fountain of encouragement.
Notice what Jesus said many times, but he said my peace I give unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled, need to let it be afraid. The Bible is full of encouraging things.
You I don’t, I don’t understand some things. The Bible.
Well, you know what, John, the crowd, there are things that all of us have to read several times and then you think.
Well, now Lord watch this. Are you listening? Say amen. Real, real loud. Amen.
If God had made the scriptures as simple as you want them, we would read it once and lay it down, but he made it difficult enough to do what to send me back over and over again.
And I love it. There was Lord. Then what did you say? Let me see if I understand it.
Oh, that’s what you meant. Oh, that’s what you meant. Hallelujah.
That’s what you meant because God made it difficult enough to do what to draw us back.
What, what, what did he mean by that? For by grace?
You say what in the world is that grace business.
And so when it comes to forgiveness, what are the verses? If we, if we confess our sins?
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Hallelujah.
I don’t have to wonder whether I’m forgiven or not. You don’t have to live in doubt.
You believe the word of God. There’s gonna be a blessed Assurance and we sing that song. Blessed assurance.
Jesus is mine. Oh For a taste of glory, divine and on and on, we go, it is not a book of errors.
It is a book of absolute truth. To guide us and to lead us in every single situation in life.
You can’t name anything that God’s left at, in his word. Well, it explains what happens at death.
And for example, if you’re one of those persons who doesn’t believe the Bible, let me ask you this.
Do you believe you’re gonna die?
Well, if you don’t, you are really fooled but you’re gonna die one of these days.
So, since you don’t believe the Bible, what do you think is gonna happen to you when you die?
And most of the time people say, well, I’m just gonna, that’s gonna be the end of me.
Oh no, it’s not, not gonna be the end of you. You’d like to think it is, but it’s not.
Now for all of us who believe us, we say praise the Lord.
We don’t have to worry about death because here’s what God said. Absent from the body present with the Lord.
The Bible has the answer for every single question that I need in life to live it or did I?
And for example, there are people who believe in purgatory that you die and then you go somewhere and you suffer until finally you’ve paid for all of your sin.
If you die saved by the grace of God, you’re not gonna be in a purgatory.
You want me to tell you why you’re not going in a purgatory because there’s no such thing.
It’s nowhere in the Bible that watch this because if I believe Jesus and trust him as my savior, then I have to go suffer, then something happened or was missing at the cross.
The cross took care of our sins, all of our sins, past present and future.
There is no room for purgatory. None whatsoever.
You trust Christ as your savior, his sacrificial death at the cross being born again, the Son of God sent him for the purpose of dying, paying your sin debt in full.
If it’s paid in full, they can’t be a purgatory. So absent from the body present with the Lord.
But listen, what the scripture says, it assures us for example of the return of Christ and our future rewards.
If somebody says, well, Jesus is gone. Well, here’s what he says.
He says, and the 14th chapter of John is a beautiful, beautiful passage and we most of us probably know it by heart.
But you if you have a little problem that you might look at that, he says, do not let your heart be troubled.
He says, you believe in God believe also in me, in my father’s house are many mansions.
Listen to this Jesus, wait a minute who died on the cross rose from the grave, seated.
The father’s right hand said in my father’s house are many dwelling places if it were not.
So I would have told you, I’m going to prepare a place for you.
And if I go to prepare a place for you, I’m coming back to receive you to myself.
Now he’s, he’s gonna come back for this one, that one, this one, that one, that one and one of these days he’s coming back to wrap up all of civilization.
You don’t know Christ is your savior. You don’t have any hope.
The worst thing that could happen to you is to die without Jesus.
And you listen, you will be a fool not to receive Christ as your savior.
You’re hearing the truth of the word of the living God and he’s the one who said I’m coming to receive you to myself that where I am there, you may be.
Also if you’re one of his Children, if you’ve trusted him to be your savior, if you recognize what he did to cross also included you.
Well, it also warns those of coming judgment, it is appointed unto man who wants to die.
And after this, the judgment, listen, watch this carefully.
Many people take the Bible and they wanna use it like salt and pepper. I like this part.
I don’t like that part. I, I believe that part. I don’t believe that part.
And they give you all these reasons why they don’t they believe parts of it.
You can’t, you can’t pick and choose with the Bible.
You don’t have to pick and choose if you’re trying to escape judgment. I’m sorry.
It’s a point that the man wants to die.
And after this, the judgment that is, we’re gonna have to give an account for our sins.
If you’re saved by the grace of Almighty God and the spirit of God is living within you, you’ve been sealed as a child of God.
It’s, it’s already taken care of.
But every person watch this judgment for the believer is the judgment of rewards.
Judgment for a person who’s rejected. Christ is a judgment of eternal punishment. I can hear you.
Now you say, well, I don’t believe that. Let me ask you a question.
Do you think that your disbelief changes the word of God? No, it doesn’t.
And one day you wish you had believed it. God loves you.
He wants to forgive you of your sin. He wants you to go to heaven.
He, he, he wants the best for you.
But if you push away the word of God, then there are consequences.
He, the Bible tells us of future events, read the book of the revelation.
We think all those things, I don’t understand all that well, you know what it watch this carefully.
If I understood everything about God, I would be equal to God and that ain’t gonna happen.
And so what happens?
We’re driven back to read and to pray and to read and to pray and to search and to pray.
And all of that draws us closer to God because He doesn’t tell.
He tells me everything I need to know.
Not everything I’d like to know is the indestructible word of the living God, for example, I think about people who have mocked it, scuffed, it blasphemed, it burned, it denied it, attempt to destroy it.
Done everything possible to get rid of the book.
You think, for example, uh in Russia alone, they did everything they could do to get rid, destroy the word of God and it’s all over Russia and that it listen, it’s all over China.
Why? Because that’s the power of the living God.
And God wants his message of love distributed all over the world.
People give their lives just to translate a portion of a book of the Bible to somebody, for example, does not have a Bible.
And so it’s still rolling off the presses every single day and we are to love it, obey it and to share it.
So that’s the word of God.
And so the scripture says in Matthew 24 heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will not pass away.
That’s what Jesus said. Heaven and earth may pass away in the future judgment.
But my words will not pass away.
Then Isaiah 40 verse 81 of my favorite verses the grass withers and the flowers fade.
But the word of our God stands forever.
Believe the word of God live it out, practice it, obey it.
Let’s just say, for example, you’ve closed the Bible in your life.
You just don’t want that in your life. Let me ask you a question.
Uh Let’s say that you’re one of those multi multi millionaires or billionaires.
You, you got billions, you own stuff. You can, you hardly, you’ve almost forgotten it.
You’re coming to your last day of life. I ask you a question.
What will be more valuable to you on the last day of your life with all your billions, your money or the word of God and listen carefully, your money can’t buy you into heaven.
You can’t give enough to any church, any organization to pay your way into heaven.
Salvation is by the grace, the undeserved love of almighty God provided for you through his son Jesus Christ.
When Jesus went to the cross, that’s not just the Easter celebration.
That’s a celebration of the death of the Son of God, not somebody, the Son of God whose death was so powerful.
It atoned for the sin of all mankind, past present and future.
What a fool you’ll be to die without the word of God.
How foolish to live your life thinking that somehow you’re gonna pay your way through or somewhere.
I haven’t, I haven’t been all that bad. That’s from your point of view. Think about this.
If you reject the Son of the living God, whom God sent into this world to reveal the truth, who went to the cross died on the cross to reject the Son of God is not some simple decision you make.
It is a horrible decision you make.
You think that somehow you’ve been good enough to be saved. How good have you been?
You can tell me the good things you’ve done or how much you’ve given.
That’s not the issue for by grace.
He is saved through faith that deserves it as a gift of God not works less and one should boast it is the result of the grace of God.
So you either believe the word of God and get ready to meet him or you just turn your back on it and say somehow I’ll make it watch this.
That’s your false opinion. That is the devil’s lie.
That’s the way you would like for it to be.
That is not the way it’s going to be the soul that’s in it.
It shall die for all eternity.
You can either live your life without God and stand before the judgment and be eternally separated from God.
The Bible is crystal clear, eternally separated from God.
I know you don’t like the word hell and the way people use it here lately, you don’t know what it means.
I’m talking about scriptural hell. Jesus used the word. He didn’t promote it.
He says this, this is the ultimate of separation from God and my plea with you is number one, you can’t show me a bunch of errors in the Bible.
The Bible is God’s inspired divine accurate word in order to show us His love for us and that Christ died for us that you can be forgiven of your sin and it can be true of you absent from the body present with the Lord or absent from the body and forever separated from the Lord.
You say, oh no, that’s just what you believe. No, no, no, no, no.
That’s what God says. I plead with you in Jesus name to think the word of God pinned by those men whom God chose to write truth by which you and I to live.
Wouldn’t you agree that living by love is the best way?
Not only that you can live, but you can leave this earth with blessed assurance, absent from the body, present with the Lord present with the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is my plea for you. And father, we know that everybody has a choice to make.
But I pray that every person who hears this message will ask themselves the question.
How am I living? How am I going to die?
What is going to happen to me after death?
What is the wisest thing for me to do?
And I pray God, they’ll understand that it’s receiving Jesus Christ as their personal savior for all eternity in Jesus name.
Amen.