Why Did God Get Quiet?
Where should we draw the line regarding scriptures?
Why Did God Get Quiet?
Where should we draw the line regarding scriptures?
As Evangelicals, we’re told that the canon Bible is all we should believe in, that it is the entire perfect word of God and any attempt to add or subtract from it is instigated by the Devil misleading people. In fact, reading any other scriptures is basically the Devil trying to mislead or confuse you and such actions should be avoided.
Evangelicals will cite the following Bible verses to support this belief:
“You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.”-Deuteronomy 4:2-NASB
“I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.”-Revelation 22:18–19-NASB
These verses are seen by Evangelicals as being the final word on their book being complete and perfect.
Evangelicals don’t even like the fact that Catholics have the Apocrypha, which Catholics will tell you are useful but perhaps not divinely inspired. Evangelicals see this as still “adding” to the scriptures.
The thing is the Bible wasn’t written by a single author, it was written by numerous authors spread out over close to a millennia.
Then it wasn’t until around two hundred-plus years past the writing of the last of the books that the church decided which ones would be considered “canon”. Funny enough the verses above belong to a book that almost didn’t even make the cut to be included, and at the time it was written no one knew it was going to be included in the “canon”, so what scriptures was it even referring to? I mean early Christians pretty much universally accepted The Book of Enoch as “scripture”, yet it didn’t make the cut.
Then if we refer to the verse from Deuteronomy at that time there was no New Testament, so anything that was written by Christians would’ve likely been seen as “adding” to the scriptures. So should we not trust any New Testament books?