Test Of Inspiration 23
ACCORDING TO St. John” All these writings had not yet seen
the light of day. They were to follow many decades and
centuries later. Paul had no inkling about them. He was referring
Timothy to the “ Holy Scriptures” with which he had been
familiar from his “ childhood,” the Books of the Jews as
contained in the Old Testament. Confirm this from verse 15 of 2
Timothy chapter three (2 Timothy 3:15).
Since verse sixteen under discussion is widely used by the
Christian missionaries to prove the validity of the whole Bible,
we will use it for a test case.The verse implies that if any scripture originates from God, it will
prove profitable for —
- DOCTRINE: teaching
- REPROOF: for convicting, rebuking, for showing people
what is wrong in their lives. - CORRECTION: useful for correcting faults.
- INSTRUCTION UNTO RIGHTEOUSNESS: for training
and teaching us how to live correctly
I find the above four headings to categorise God’s Word to be
very reasonable, 1 have been asking the Christians whether they
can find a fifth heading under which the Word of God can be
rubricated, and in all my experience I have not had another
befitting headline. We will leave it at that. Now let us revert to
that famous chapter thirty-eight of Genesis for analysis. It is
worth perusing the whole chapter so that no missionary can ever
accuse you of reading his Bible out of context.
What is the context? The first five verses speak about Judah and
his three siblings. Judah is the father of the Jewish race from
whom we derive the words “Judea” and “Judaism.” Also Juda
(Heb. Huda; also Arabic). Huda to Hudi, Yahudi. meaning Jew.
Of his three sons — Er, Onan and Shelah — he gets his first
born Er married to a woman named Tamar. But verse seven
records his untimely demise: