The Alternative

The Bible does not have authority in the lives of most believers. Dr. Tony Evans says many Christians doubt the Bible's power because they misunderstand its source. A lot of us believe it's the word of man about God, rather than the word of God to man.

This is The Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When it comes to hearing from God, people may ask, "Why just the Bible?" Well, today Dr. Evans explains why the collection of books we call Scripture is complete, trustworthy, and final. Let's join him as he presents this important look at how God chose to speak and why that matters today.

Dr. Tony Evans: When we talk about canon, we're not talking about a gun that fires. The word canon was used—it meant a reed. And this reed was used like you would use a ruler today to measure something. While this reed or canon became that which measured a standard, something that would be the standard for something that would become the rule or the guideline or the boundary.

Well, when applied to the Bible, the word canon came to be used of the completed list of books that make up the Bible. When we talk about the canon, we're talking about the books that make up the Bible. Remember, the Bible is one book composed of 66 books written by over 40 different authors over a period of 1500-plus years.

And these 66 books—39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament—make up the canon or the rule that God established for the revelation that He wanted recorded inspiration and passed down to man. The Bible is the complete and binding, determinative standard for rule, faith, and life by which every other writing, every other concept, and every idea must be measured.

So that's where canon is. It's the standard or the measuring rod for anything else that's written, for anything else that's thought, idea, for anything else that's communicated or any other concept. The Bible is the standard. The question of the canon is, how do we know which books should have made up the Bible?

There were plenty of books written that are not in the Bible. How do we know that somebody else can't come up with a new book and say, "This book should be in the Bible or part of the canon, part of the collected books that make up the Bible?" At the heart of this, we must understand a very fundamental principle: man does not determine the canon, God does. Man only recognizes the canon that God has set up.

The chief standard is this: that the books placed in the Bible had to have been written by a prophet or an apostle—prophet in the Old Testament, apostle in the New Testament—or someone operating under their authority. The first prophet that God spoke through is Moses. We get a little bit of that in Exodus chapter 24, verses three and four.

Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances, and all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do." And Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. So God spoke revelation, Moses wrote it down inspiration. Then he arose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain with 12 pillars of the 12 tribes of Israel.

So then, there was a record. Moses heard from God, he made a record of what God had said so that there was now a recording of events that God wanted recorded. How do we know what happened in Genesis 1? In the beginning, God created the heaven and earth. Well, there's only one way we know that: it was written down. That's how we know that. Who wrote it down? Moses.

Where did Moses get the information? Well, remember all that time he spent up there in the mountain? He was getting private consultation on events that had already taken place that no human being was around to witness when they took place. God told him directly. How do we know there's a heaven? The same way Moses found out that the earth was created by God: God wrote it down.

The reason we know that there's an eternal future is because God had it written. So, when it was written down, it became part of the written documentation that later on would be made part of this canon. In fact, the Scripture goes on to say that there were strict guidelines when God spoke to a prophet. And this is some information you can even use today. Look at Deuteronomy chapter 18.

God says in verse 18: "I will raise up a prophet from among the countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command." God spoke through the prophets. "And it shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name"—please notice that, he's speaking but I'm talking. He's just the mouthpiece; I am the spokesperson.

"I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die." Now, don't be in a hurry to be a prophet. In other words, if you go say, "God said," and you're speaking on behalf of God, and God says, "And I didn't tell him to say that," you will know that I didn't tell him to say that.

There will be no question about whether I told him to say that. You know why? Because he won't be saying anything else. He will die. Now, do you think there was a long line of people volunteering to be a prophet? No, because that person was responsible for speaking the very words of God. He had to communicate what God had said.

So God spoke through the prophet, it was recorded in a book, but now we go one step further. The book became the standard by which the people of God were supposed to live. So what made it canonical or part of the canon: God said it, a prophet got it, the prophet wrote it, but it became now the measuring stick or the standard by which the people of God were to live their lives and function.

In other words, God didn't give the Bible so you would have reading every day. He didn't give the Bible just so you could have some spiritual words to pick up. He gave the Bible so that it would be the standard for the life of the person who received it. Look at Joshua chapter one, verse eight, talking about the book that Moses had composed, which basically are the first five books of the Bible.

Joshua, who's the next generation, says in verse eight: "This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and you will have success." So why are we failing? Because we're not following. We like parts we like, we don't like parts we don't like. We do the parts we like, we don't do the parts we don't like, and we wonder why we have unsuccessful lives.

The canon were the books God chose that the people were supposed to follow, not simply the book God chose that the people were supposed to read. And so that would be the canon. Let's look at another verse in Joshua, chapter 24, the last chapter of the book, verse 26. And Joshua wrote these words in the book of the Law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.

Now, please notice this: Moses wrote the book, but guess what Joshua does? Adds to the book. So God is building His book over time. He said something through Moses; now He's giving additional data through Joshua. He tells Joshua to write it down. Why does He tell Joshua to write it down? Because God wanted it as part of His canon. He wanted it to be passed on to the next generation.

So the Bible is an accumulated document over time, not a one-book wonder that was written by one person because it was written in stages as the people had need for more information. So you have an accumulated document, again, spoken by God to a prophet or somebody functioning underneath of a prophet that was to be the standard whereby the people of God were to live.

This is how the last days' things were spoken by Jesus Christ. He spoke it to the disciples, and they recorded it at the proper time. And so the Old Testament through prophets, the New Testament through Jesus Christ, that is, through His apostles. In Galatians chapter 1, verse 11, we read these words: "For I would have you to know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached to me is not according to man."

"For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." So he's saying, "I didn't go to school for this, nobody sat me down and told me to write it. I got this directly from God." That's why he can say, if you turn back a few pages to Romans chapter 15, verse four, we see these words: "For whatever was written in earlier times," the Old Testament, "was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope."

The New Testament people knew the Old Testament Scriptures came from God. A lot of us believe it's the word of man about God, rather than the word of God to man. Did you follow that? It had to bear the testimony of the Holy Spirit—that is, its content had to square with biblical truth. Its content had to square with biblical truth. You couldn't be writing something that contradicted everything else that had been accumulated up to that point.

Because a contradiction cannot be God, because God is a non-contradictory being. God is totally consistent with Himself. God never gets confused. So everything must always be consistent. So therefore it had to line up with the Holy Spirit. That's why it says the prophets, 2nd Peter 1, spoke by means of the Holy Spirit. That's why the best way to interpret Scripture, the Scripture says, is to compare Scripture with Scripture.

Now, one of the keys to knowing that it was canonical is that the church, or the people of God, accepted it as such. In other words, it found a hearing among God's people. Why? Because their spirit witnessed with the information that was given them. One, it came from an apostle; two, it was consistent in doctrine; but three, it found wide hearing no matter where it went because it was indeed the word of God and they would refer to it as the Scripture.

So God's people recognized it as such. That's why the people in Nehemiah chapter eight cried, the Bible says, when they heard the word of God. They just wept. They cried because they had missed it for so long, then they threw a party. They cried because they had missed it for so long; then they threw a party because they finally had it, because they had what was the word of God.

Now, when the standard was met, and there were all these books out there, but they began narrower and narrower as men recognized what was written by a prophet or authorized by a prophet or an apostle, what was consistent in doctrine, what was widely accepted by the church, what was validated by Jesus's own words—it was composed of a canon or the closed book.

Now, let me say something about the Bible. The Bible is finished, complete. There are no new revelations. There are new illuminations, the application of the Bible, but God is not writing anymore. You can't write past Revelation. You can't write past the end. When you come to a book and the last thing on the page is "the end," if you're writing something else, then you just didn't have the end. Revelation is the end.

Now look at what Revelation 22:18 says: "I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book." Now, sometimes you just need to read this book, because I don't even want to deal with the plagues in the book, let alone have added plagues on top of that in the book. Yet many have tried to add to the revelation of God.

The reason why the books called the Apocryphal books—the additional books to the 66 you find in the Catholic Bible—are wrong, they should not be part of the canon, just so you know. Number one is because they're never referred to by Jesus. Jesus referred to the whole Old Testament that we have; He never refers to one of those books.

Number two, the books themselves don't declare themselves to be the word of God. But the books in the Bible declare themselves to be the word of God, so there is no internal indication in the books themselves that they even believe that they are Scripture. Third, it was never accepted by the church prior to Catholicism coming on the map. Fourth, they have errors in them.

For example, one of the books says that you need to give money to go to heaven, you need to do alms to go to heaven. Well, see, that would not be consistent with the work of the Holy Spirit because that would contradict doctrine. So for numbers of reasons, why are those books added on to it? I'll tell you why those books are added on to it: because the church said so.

And that's the problem. Now, I have a lot of good Catholic friends, there are a lot of great Catholic Christians, so I'm not talking about individual people. I'm talking about a system, a system that places the church over the revelation of God. But I don't want to pick on them. The Mormons have the same problem. The Mormons have a Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith, he's sitting down having a dream one day and he hears revelation.

So he doesn't just add to the Bible; he writes his own Bible, Book of Mormon. Jehovah's Witnesses: same thing. They've got their New World Translation, they've got their Watchtower which they call revelation. Christian Scientists: they have their own revelation. They call their piece Revelation. So people are regularly adding to the Bible.

Why do people want to add to the Bible? Because they do not want to be limited to God. They want to be able to add some man in there. God composed the canon of 66 books. One is called the beginning, Genesis. The other is called the end, Revelation. You can't start before the beginning, you can't go further than the end.

Nor can you add to it because there are no more apostles. Now, I know you got guys running around here saying, "I'm an apostle." There are no more apostles. Why do I know that there are no more apostles? Because the Bible says in order to be an apostle, you would have to have seen Jesus in the flesh. If you haven't seen Jesus in the flesh, there are no more apostles. You have had to have seen Jesus in the flesh in order to qualify for that.

So God had a special group of people He was using to write the Bible. However, He's given us all the Holy Spirit so that we can be illumined by the Bible and see it applied in the various aspects of our lives. God composing the canon is like going for a walk. Let's say you're going for a walk with your girlfriend or you're going for a walk with your wife, and you're walking down this path, and there are some beautiful flowers on the path.

And so you're walking along talking, and you pick up a flower and you hand it to her. Then you keep walking, you pick up another flower and you hand it to her. You walk a little further, you pick up another flower and you hand it to her. You walk a little further, you pick up another flower and you hand it to her. You walk a little further, you pick up another flower and you hand it to her. Of course, she's grinning from ear to ear by now. But you pick up another flower and you hand it to her.

After you come to the end of the journey, she has a bouquet. She has a beautiful bouquet. She didn't start with a bouquet. She started with nothing. But along the way, things were picked up that were there that got added to, so that when you started with a flower, you wind up with a canon.