The Bible is different things to different people, depending on how one views it. To me, it is in truth "the word of God" (1 Thess. 2:13), since it was inspired of God (2 Tim. 3:16, 17), and the holy men who wrote it were directed by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21), even in the choice of the words in which they expressed the Spirit given message (I Cor. 2:13).

Brother J. P. Sanders, an Abilene Christian College graduate, who has since defected to the Christian Church, recently wrote what he sees in the Bible. He said:

"In the Bible I see some exquisitely religious lyrics, some repugnant nationalistic verse, some incomparably beautiful erotic poetry, some profound mythology, some colorful and at times amusing folk lore, some legends and fables, some great rules for community life in an ancient society, some tiresome regulations of ritual and diet, some dazzling - if schizophrenic - visions, some dull didacticism, some dynamic and moving preaching. Nowhere - nowhere - do I find a consistent diagram or blueprint of what life should be or what the church should be. I see in it man's sorrow and anguish, his despair and hope, his loving and living, his hating and dying - but I do not find a schematic program of salvation." (RESTORATION REVIEW, March, 1967, p. 5

Now why would a man be interested in studying a book in which he saw so many contradictions and humanisms? And more particularly, why would a man want to spend his life studying and preaching from a book so entirely human? Indeed, when a man has lost his faith in the Word of God, he has lost all.

TRUTH MAGAZINE, XII: 7, p. 19
April 1968