The eighth thing that the Bible teaches concerning the extent of the
inspiration of its writings is that _because of this inspiration of
Prophets and Apostles, the writers of the Bible, the whole Bible as
originally given becomes the absolutely inerrant Word of God_. In the
O. T. David says of his own writings, in 2 Sam. 23:2, a passage already
referred to, +"The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and His Word was
upon my tongue."+ In Mark 7:13 Our Lord Jesus Himself calls the law
of Moses "the Word of God." He says +"making void the Word of God by
your tradition, which ye have delivered."+ In the verses immediately
preceding, He has been drawing a contrast between the teachings of
the Mosaic law (not merely the teachings of the Ten Commandments,
but other parts of the Mosaic law as well) and the traditions of the
Scribes and Pharisees, and has shown how the traditions of the Scribes
and Pharisees flatly contradicted the requirements of the law as given
through Moses, and in summing up the matter he says in the verse
just quoted, that the Scribes and Pharisees made void "_the Word of
God_" by their traditions, thus calling the law of Moses "_the Word
of God._" When I was in England a high dignitary and scholar in the
Church of England in a private correspondence tried to call me down
by saying that the Bible nowhere claimed to be "the Word of God," but
I replied to him by showing him that not only did the Bible claim
it, but that the Lord Jesus Himself said in so many words that the
law given through Moses was "_the Word of God_." In 1 Thess. 2:13 the
Apostle Paul claims that his own epistles and teachings are "_the Word
of God_." He says: +"And for this cause we also thank God without
ceasing, that when ye received from us the word of the message, even
the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but as it is in
truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe."+
Here the Apostle Paul claims for his own teaching in the most absolute
way that the message that he gave was "_the Word of God_." When we
read the words that Jeremiah wrote and Isaiah wrote and Paul wrote and
John wrote and James wrote and Jude wrote and the other Bible writers
wrote, we are reading what God says. We are not listening to the voice
of man, but we are listening to the voice of God. "The Word of God"
which we have in the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, is
absolutely inerrant down to the smallest word and smallest letter
or part of a letter. Our Lord Jesus Himself says of the Pentateuch
in Matt. 5:18: +"For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth
pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the
law till all things be accomplished."+ Now a "jot" is the Hebrew
character "yodh," the smallest character in the Hebrew alphabet, less
than half the size of any other letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and a
"tittle" is a part of a letter, the little horn put on some of the
Hebrew consonants, less than the cross we put on a "t," and here our
Lord says that the law given through Moses was absolutely inerrant,
down to its smallest letter or part of a letter. That certainly is
verbal inspiration with a vengeance. Again he said, as recorded in John
10:35, after having quoted from the 82nd Psalm and the 6th verse, as
conclusive proof of a point, "The Scripture CANNOT BE BROKEN," thus
asserting the absolute irrefragability or inerrancy and finality of
the Scriptures. If the Scriptures as originally given were not the
inerrant Word of God, then not only is the Bible a fraud, but Jesus
Christ Himself was utterly misled and is therefore utterly unreliable
as a teacher. I have said that the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments _as originally given_ were absolutely inerrant, and the
question of course arises to what extent is the Authorized Version, or
the Revised Version, the inerrant Word of God. The answer is simple;
they are the inerrant Word of God just to that extent that they are an
accurate rendering of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as
originally given, and to all practical intents and purposes they are
a thoroughly accurate rendering of the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments as originally given. There are, it is true, many variations
in the many manuscripts we possess, thousands of variations, but by
a careful study of these very variations, we are able to find with
marvellous accuracy what the original manuscripts said. A very large
share of the variations are of no value whatever, as it is evident
from a comparison of different manuscripts that they are mistakes of
a transcriber. Many other variations simply concern the order of the
words used, and in translating into English, in which the order of
words is often different from what it is in the Greek, the variation is
not translatable. Many other variations are of small Greek particles,
many of which are not translatable into English any way. When all the
variations of any significance have been reduced to the minimum to
which it is possible to reduce them by a careful study of manuscripts,
there is not one single variation left that affects any doctrine held
by the evangelical churches, and the Scriptures as we have them to-day
translated into our English language, either in the A. V. or R. V., are
to all practical intents and purposes the inerrant Word of God.