Who is Afraid of the Bible?

No book has faced the scrutiny of man or attacks by detractors like the Bible. Before the advent of Christianity, only Jews had access to the Old Testament books or Torah. They were read in the Synagogues in Jewish Quarters within the Roman Empire. The Bible as a complete book started attracting attention after it was compiled by St. Jerome around A.D. 400. This article is not about the history of the Bible. We aim to enlighten Christians on the scheme of satan to discredit God’s word through his human agents.

         The inerrancy of the Bible, that is, the belief that it is without error or fault in all its teachings, was first questioned by Arius, a Christian priest in Alexandria, Egypt. This was through a doctrine he published in which he declared that Jesus Christ was only a created being.

He asserted that Jesus did not exist from eternity and was therefore not coequal with God, contrary to Philippians 2:6-7 which declared that though Jesus was in the “form of God, He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. But He emptied Himself, taking upon Himself the form of a servant”.

          To deal with the heresy, Emperor Constantine who had converted to Christianity, convened an ecumenical council in Nicaea. The council condemned Arius and his teachings, now called Arianism, and declared the complete equality of God the Father and Son, and that the Father and Son were composed of “one substance”.

In spite the council’s decisions, the problem of Arianism was not solved. Emperor Constantius II, Constantine’s son, supported Arianism after the death of his father, as did Valens, one of his successors, who shared the rule of the empire with his brother, Valentinian I, emperor of the East.

         With Constantius II on the throne, the Arians rose in power and began to persecute orthodox Christians; that is, those Christians who held to the faith in the divinity of Christ. Athanasius, the Greek patriarch of Alexandria, who was the leading defender of Christian orthodoxy against Arianism, and many of his bishops were banished from Alexandria and their positions filled with Arians.

          The poison injected into Christianity by Arius has festered and bred more heresies in contemporary times. In the United States of America in particular, many so-called churches reject basic Christian tenets, including the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In neighbouring Canada, the United Church, an umbrella for liberal denominations insists that the Bible is not the authoritative word of God. These group of churches have also ordained homosexual pastors.

           It is not only the New Testament that has attracted scorn from the Satanists. The Roman Catholic Church on its part declares that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are “fiction”. This apparently motivated the Vatican to authorise a research into the origin of man.

The position of the Catholic Church is however consistent with its aversion to the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The simple logic is that it would be impossible for anyone to accept Jesus’ atonement for the sin of humanity if Genesis chapter 3 which records the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is mere fiction. So, the Vatican is now at the head off the campaign for the unification of all religions, on the grounds that God accepts everyone as they are; and that all religions lead to the Father.

         In fact, the current Pope and the entire Catholic institution clearly call Jesus a liar despite claiming to lead His church worldwide. It is apparent that the Pope and his own disciples have created another Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible declared in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through Me”. On whose authority has the Vatican edited this Scripture to invalidate the claims of Christ?

              Sadly, billions of people on earth are following the Pope to their doom. How can anyone with functional grey matter reject the word of God in favour of the delusions of agents of satan? It beats my imagination that some people could be so gullible to believe that God conceded authority to a mere man to change His word. Psalm 138:2 tells us that God exalts His word more than His great name”. 1 John 5:7 states; “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one”.

         So, who is afraid of the Bible? Whose interest is threatened by the preaching of the whole counsel of God? None other than satan, the moron who wants to be “God”. He is at the heart of the attack on the inerrancy of the Bible. His trick is simple.

So long as Christians fight over conflicting doctrines, the church is a house divided against itself. Remember that it was Jesus Himself who declared in Mark 3:25 that a house divided against itself cannot stand.

         If the attack on the Bible was just from fringe groups, we would be less perturbed. It transcends all Christian denominations. Orthodox churches are up in arms against Pentecostals who believe in the operation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Whose integrity are the anti-spiritual gifts proponents calling to question? That of Jesus Christ of course.

He is the one who said in Mark 16:17-18, “And these signs shall follow them that believe; In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them, they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover”.

          While the Orthodox crowd has not come out to call Jesus a liar, they insist that the spiritual gifts that He mentioned here are not for this generation, and that these gifts were intended to be used by those who established the church in the first Century. Possibly, they have never read Acts 2:38-39 or they have been blinded by satan.

In the cited Scripture, Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be immersed, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far away, as many as the Lord our God will call”.

          If Jesus Christ the Son of God could not minister until He was filled with the Holy Spirit, how can anyone believe that he can deliver souls from the kingdom of darkness in his own wisdom? Even Paul acknowledged the futility of preaching the gospel without the unction of the Holy Spirit. He said in 1 Corinthians 2:4, “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power”.

              This was exactly why the Lord restrained His disciples from propagating the gospel until they received the baptism of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49). Satan, the evil trickster knows that a gospel lacking in power cannot save anyone. It is only the Holy Spirit that can convict a sinner, as attested to by Jesus in John 6:65: “For this reason I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it were given him by My Father”.

Explaining some of the functions of the Holy Spirit to His disciples before His crucifixion, Jesus said in John 16:8-9, “When He comes, He will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgement: of sin, because they do not believe in Me”. What is clear from these Scriptures is that nobody can be saved without being convicted of his or her sin by the Holy Spirit.

Because satan knows the importance of the Holy Spirit in the ministry of the word of God, he has succeeded in convincing most Orthodox churches that those operating in the gifts of the Spirit are demon possessed. In effect, if Jesus and the early disciples to were return to the earth today to minister in the power of the Holy Spirit they would be rejected by these churches.

One of the Scriptures that the devil has used to deceive them into rejecting the operations of the Holy Spirit is 1 Corinthians 13:8, “Love never fails. But if there are prophecies, they shall fail; if there are tongues, they shall cease; and if there is knowledge, it shall vanish”.

           If they insist that tongues and prophecies have ceased based on this Scripture, what happened to knowledge? Why has knowledge not also ceased? I doubt if they have taken time to read Ephesians 4:8-14 which give details of what Jesus gave to the Church to mould us into His image and likeness. It is necessary to present this Scripture in detail for emphasis:

Therefore He says, ‘When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men’. In saying ‘He ascended’ what does it mean but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also He who ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all things.

He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, and for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, into a complete man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so we may no longer be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men, by craftiness with deceitful scheming.

But speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, Christ Himself, from whom the whole body is joined together and connected by every joint and ligament, as every part effectively does its work and grows, building itself up in love”.

How sad that millions of people who identify as Christians do not have a healthy respect for the word of God! That is the door through which satan and his demons have infiltrated the church to propagate their evil doctrines. Satan knows too well that he is not a match for the Spirit of God.

That is why he is doing his best to prevent some denominations from accessing the ministry gifts of the Holy Spirit. Of course, the trickster plays in all fields where gullible people have opened doors for him.

He has also succeeded in polluting the Pentecostal fold with demons who mimic operations of the Holy Spirit. The truth is that many so-called men of God patronise dark powers to attract ‘customers’ to their churches. Others open doors to demonic infestations by their inordinate quests for revelations.

They are not contented to stop where the Bible stops. Their pride propels them to seek revelations to justify their ‘men of God’ status. In fact, one of them, the Minister of an American Church published a version of the New Testament that has an additional chapter he claimed was given to him by Jesus Christ!

         Our consolation is in knowing that the Lord did not hand over the building of His church to anyone. He said in Mathew 16:18, “I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. Of course, satan knows who is LORD. He isn’t that stupid. All he wants to do is to take as many people as he can to the lake of fire with him.

That is why we must intercede for these deluded souls, regardless of the platform they belong to – Catholics, Orthodoxy, Pentecostal, etc; because there are level of deceptions are peculiar to each of them. Let us pray that Almighty God would open their eyes to the truth and cause them to retrace their steps before hell closes its mouth on them.

Let us pray that God would help them to accept the inerrancy of the Bible and stop trying to inject their ideas into that Holy Book. 2 Timothy 3:16 is emphatic that “All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness”.

          Satan has also used ungodly Bible translators to denigrate certain Scriptures. These translators impudently exclude some verses from their own versions of the Bible, based on spurious claims. The figure below shows some Scriptures excluded from certain translations of the Bible by the so-called progressive Christians.