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“The first step astray is a want of adequate faith in the divine inspiration of the sacred Scriptures. All the while a man bows to the authority of God’s word, he will not entertain any sentiment contrary to it’s teaching. “To the law and to the testimony” is his appeal concerning every doctrine. He esteems that holy book, concerning all things, to be right, and therefore he hates every false way. But let a man question, or entertain low views of the inspiration and authority of the Bible, and he is without chart to guide him, and without anchor to hold him. In looking carefully over the history of the times and the movement of the times of which we have written briefly, this fact is apparent: that where ministers and Christian churches have held fast to the truth that the holy Scriptures have been given by God as an authoritative and infallible rule of faith and practice, they have never wandered very seriously out of the right way. But when, on the other hand, reason has been exalted above revelation, and made the exponent of revelation, all kinds of errors and mischiefs have been the result.”
C. H. Spurgeon, 1887
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“It is no secret that Christ’s Church is not in good health in many places of the world. She has been languishing because she has been fed, as the current line has it, “junk food”; all kinds of artificial preservatives and all sorts of unnatural substitutes have been served up to her. As a result, theological and biblical malnutrition has afflicted the very generation that has taken such giant steps to make sure its physical health is not damaged by using foods or products that are harmful to their bodies. Simultaneously a worldwide spiritual famine resulting from the absence of any genuine publication of the Word of God (Amos 8:11) continues to run wild and almost unabated in most quarters of the church."
Walter C. Kaiser
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“This is the cultural context in which the Evangelical church finds itself at the beginning of the new millennium. It is a moment which cries out for a countercultural declaration that there is truth, that God has secured that truth in his Word, that it is this Word that he has given to the Church for its instruction, nourishment, and encouragement, and that he still intends to use this biblical truth in regeneration and sanctification. This countercultural conviction is far too rare today. For many, the world seems too complex, the church too confused, to think that God still can accomplish his ends through this means. The Church is therefore awash in strategies borrowed from psychology and business that, it is hoped will make up for the apparent insufficiency of the Word and ensure more success in this post modern culture. Today the issue is not so much the inerrancy of Scripture but its sufficiency, and this at the very moment when a robust confidence in its sufficiency is precisely what the Church needs to have if it is to live out its life and proclamation and service effectively. . . The truth of the matter is that the fraying at the edges of the evangelical world has now turned into an unravelling at the center. First came the new definitions about who evangelicals were. Then the boundaries were shifted. Then they were crossed. And now the reality of God is redefined and made altogether more accommodating to our post-modern culture. It is for these reasons that I believe Evangelicalism is now in a free fall.”
David F.Wells
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