A Brief Defense of the Inerrancy of the Protestant Bible

The word of God is without error. It is perfect and divinely inspired. We know this because of internal and external evidences.

The Scriptures themselves give internal evidences of their own inerrancy and the divine inspiration. The Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:19-21 said, "And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." The Scriptures did not come by the will of man, but by the will of God. The Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16 said, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." The Scriptures say that They are the divinely inspired Word of God; therefore, if any of the Scriptures contain errors, then errors must exist throughout. If this is true, then the Bible is nothing more than a book of fiction, and the very existence of Jesus Christ is questionable. Furthermore, if errors are mingled throughout the truth, individuals would have to be "divinely inspired" in order to understand which verses are divinely inspired.

Not only are their internal evidences, but there are also external evidences for the ennerancy of Scripture. History, with the help of archaeology, provides many external evidences to the divine authorship and inerrancy of Scripture. 1 Kings 13:25-26 reads, "It happened in the fifth year of King Rehoboam that Shiskak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. And he took away the treasures of the king's house; he took away everything. He also took away all the gold shields which Solomon had made." King Shishak recorded this military exploit, along with several others, back on a wall in Egypt. This was written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. For a couple centuries, Egyptian hieroglyphics could not be deciphered, until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This stone had the same statement written on it in three different languages; these were Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian dematic, and Greek. Because we could understand Greek, we were able to decipher the other two languages. The wall in which King Shishak had written, could now be interpreted. Thus proving through history, with the help of archaeology, the inerrancy and divine inspiration of the Scriptures. This is merely a drop in the bucket of the many historical facts and finds that agree with Scripture. To argue with the inerrancy and divine authorship of the Bible is to argue with historical fact.

The Word of God is perfect and divinely inspired. Many men have set out to question these facts, and have been unsuccessful. These facts are proven by internal evidences of the Bible itself, and by the external evidences of history and archaeology. By these evidences we know that we have the inerrant, divinely inspired Word of God in the Protestant Bible.