COVER STORY – INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE

The simple child of God takes those words at face value and knows that when he reads the Bible he is reading the very words of God. What a glorious truth and solid foundation for our faith! Since the Bible is God’s Word, it is completely without error, and we can depend on every word.
However, the inspiration of Scripture, and therefore also its inerrancy, has always been under attack by those who don’t want to submit to every word of Scripture. Those attacks continually get more refined, therefore we must define the truth ever more precisely.
Critics and skeptics have said, “Sure the holy writers were inspired,” but they mean the apostles and prophets were inspired like an artist or novelist, not that God breathed every word into the apostles and prophets. They might even say, “God gave them the thoughts but the writers used their own words.” That is why it became necessary to speak of verbal inspiration, indicating that the very words are given by God.
Then some false teachers said, “Yes, the Bible is verbally inspired in the parts that are authentic.” So they will say “The Bible contains God’s word.” Therefore we now speak of verbal plenary inspiration, which means that every single word in every part of the entire Bible is God-breathed.