Doctrine For Difficult Days

[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
Foreword

Dr. J. Vernon McGee’s extraordinary spiritual gifts have manifested themselves in a worldwide ministry of exposition of Scripture probably equaled by no one else in our generation. As far as I know, no one else has ever reached as many languages and as many millions of people with an exposition of the Bible extending over a five-year program as Dr. McGee does in Thru the Bible Radio.

My first acquaintance with Dr. McGee was as a graduate student in Dallas Theological Seminary, where he earned his doctoral degree. Subsequently I enjoyed fellowship with him in each of his churches and especially in the Church of the Open Door, where I spoke many times. In addition, Dr. McGee was often scheduled in Bible and Prophecy Conferences in which I also was included, and we had wonderful fellowship over a long period of time.

Anyone who knew Dr. McGee knows that he was a rare individual with unusual gifts and a God-given ability to take difficult doctrine and expound it in language that anyone could understand. This volume, containing the transcriptions of some of his public ministries in the Church of the Open Door, will be welcomed by thousands of his faithful listeners who still follow each broadcast with avid attention.

His exposition of the Word of God was, first of all, analytical, in that it expounded what the Bible actually said. It also was very practical. Dr. McGee had an unusual ability to take doctrine and apply it to life. When listening to his broadcast, one had the impression of a man who was sitting in a comfortable chair, talking to someone in his own living room, and discussing the things of God. People from all walks of life were challenged by his ministry and the truth that he presented.

In this volume the major doctrines of Scripture are unfolded, including the doctrine of the Bible, its inspiration and origin; the doctrine of man concerning his origin and history; the doctrine of angels and their relationship to God’s program; the doctrine of Satan, tracing his beginning as well as his program of opposition to God; the doctrine of salvation and its wonderful aspects of redemption, propitiation, and reconciliation, including the great doctrines of regeneration, justification, and faith. God’s program for sanctification is also faithfully expounded, along with the prophetic prediction of the Bible concerning heaven and hell. No important area of the biblical doctrine is avoided. And as all who follow Dr. McGee know, he never wavered into any of the bypasses of modern liberalism, but remained close to the Bible, accepting its inerrancy and its absolute truth for all to believe.

It would be possible through the study of this book, as well as Dr. McGee’s other writings, for a person to be well-taught in biblical doctrine, even to the point where he could transmit it to others as a preacher or teacher. We trust this volume will fulfill its destiny in the hearts and lives of those who read it.

Dr. John F. Walvoord
Dallas Theological Seminary
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
What is Doctrine?

As we begin this study of doctrine, we want first of all to answer two primary questions: What is doctrine, and does the Bible have much to say about it?

In the Book of Deuteronomy we have the song of Moses that he gave the children of Israel before his death, and he began it like this:

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;
And hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Let my teaching [doctrine] drop as the rain,
My speech distill as the dew,
As raindrops on the tender herb,
And as showers on the grass.
(Deuteronomy 32:1-2)

Moses was speaking here about his teaching, his doctrine, which he was going to give to the children of Israel.
In the Book of Proverbs, Solomon wrote:

Hear, my children, the instruction of a father,
And give attention to know understanding;
For I give you good doctrine.
(Proverbs 4:1-2)

When we turn to the New Testament, we read where Paul wrote to a young preacher named Titus about setting things right in the church, and he mentioned three areas in which the church should function. The first was that it should be an orderly church; second, it should be doctrinally right; and third, it should be a practical church, that is, doing things. Then Paul wrote to Titus:

But as for you, speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine. (Titus 2:1)

I think I know what Paul would say to a preacher who does not believe the Bible. He would say to him, as he said to this young preacher Titus, “Speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine.” That is, if you’re going to be a minister and stand in the pulpit, then your authority ought to be the Word of God, the Bible. That should be the basis of what you have to say.

Now don’t misunderstand me. You have a perfect right not to believe the Bible, but you have no right to stand in the pulpit and not believe the Bible. Your liberty is to get out of the pulpit, out of the ministry, and to turn your collar back around the way it should be. When people say, “You are putting a bridle on the preacher,” I say, “Oh, no. A preacher has a perfect right to leave the ministry if he doesn’t believe the Word of God. But when any man stands in the pulpit, it is assumed he believes the Word of God.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
What is Doctrine?

I would hate to go to a doctor who did not believe in the medicines or instruments that he was using. I went to the doctor today about my eyes, regarding a pair of glasses. Boy, is he sold on his glasses and the benefit they give! I liked that. In fact, he sold me so completely that I’ll be back in his office in a few days. He convinced me because he believes in his own product. If he had said to me, “Well now, you can’t be sure about these glasses. I don’t think you can count on them to improve your vision. I have no confidence in them,” I’m sure that I would not go back! Oh, my friend, why do we have to have men who are doubting the Word of God and yet are preparing for the ministry? Well, I say they ought to go into another profession. They ought not to be entering God’s service. Any man who is in the pulpit should believe the Word of God.
 
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The Meaning of Doctrine

Paul said, “Speak the things which are proper for sound doctrine.” This word doctrine — what does it really mean? The Greek word is didaskalia, which simply means “teaching.” It is interesting to note that the words doctrine and doctor come from the same stem, if you please. Actually a doctor, primarily and originally, had nothing to do with healing the human body. He was a teacher. So I think a minister may have a better claim to the title doctor than the physician who originally was a teacher and attempted to improve the brain, not the body. And so this word doctrine means teaching. That’s all in the world it means.

Now there is a great importance attached to doctrine or teaching in the Bible. I turned up an abundance of Scriptures here, but I would like to mention just one, 2 John, verse 9:

Whoever transgresses and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God. He who abides in the doctrine of Christ has both the Father and the Son.

Doctrine is teaching, you see. Now John wrote his epistles even after he wrote the Book of Revelation. When he wrote this epistle, it was about a.d. 100. John was about a hundred years old at this time, and he was very adamant here, very dogmatic that if you do not have the doctrine of Christ, you are not one of His; and if you have the doctrine of Christ, you have both the Father and the Son.

At the very beginning of the church, on the Day of Pentecost when three thousand were baptized and brought into the church, we are told:

And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. (Acts 2:42)

Those were the four things that they continued in, so that one mark of the early church was the apostles’ doctrine, their teaching. It was something that was very, very important.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
What is Doctrine?

The Importance of Doctrine

Now doctrine will lead to action, always. You remember the Lord Jesus said this:

If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine [the teaching], whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. (John 7:17)

The difficulty today is that it’s so easy to deny and to criticize and to find fault with the Bible, saying, “I don’t believe that.” But God has put down a challenge to you. He says that the only way you can know the Bible is true is by testing it. In other words, God says, “You pour it into the test tube of your life, and you’ll know whether this doctrine that I’m giving you is true or not.” That, my friend, is the real test of Christianity. It’s the real test of anything, for that matter. I’m told that there are patents in Washington for millions of inventions that have not yet appeared on the market. Why? Well, some inventions are marvelous ideas — but they didn’t work. And the thing about the Christian faith is that God approaches you from the opposite viewpoint. He says, “If you will make the Word of God the authority of your life, you will find out whether it is true or not.”

Now, that is the challenge God gives us. Someone has put it like this:

Doctrine without duty is a tree without fruit.

Duty without doctrine is a tree without root.

You must have right doctrine before you can have right actions. You have to think right before you can act right. This business today of saying, “It doesn’t make any difference what you believe, just so you act right” is dead wrong. If you start thinking about turning off the highway to the right and you signal you’re going to turn right, and then all of a sudden you turn left, may I say to you, friend, you’ll find out that you have to act like you think or you’re in for trouble. You can’t think one thing and do another. You’ve got to think right if you’re going to act right. Doctrine is very important. The teaching is very important.

Paul gave instructions to Titus for the church in Crete, “that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (Titus 2:10). The Greek word for adorn, kosmeo, is the same word from which we get our English word cosmetics. In other words, ladies, if you are sound in the faith, you should be wearing the appropriate cosmetics. I would like to see more of the lipstick of a kind tongue. Speaking kindly is a mighty fine lipstick. And then there’s the face powder of sincerity and reality. My, there are all kinds of cosmetics that you should use today as a Christian.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
What is Doctrine?

The Application of Doctrine

We’re ready now for a definition of the word doctrine. It is a systematic and scientific arrangement of biblical truth. If you look it up in Webster’s dictionary, you’ll find that doctrine means principles in any branch of knowledge. And as far as the Word of God is concerned, it’s the systematic and scientific arrangement of biblical truths under their different subjects. Its purpose is to see what the Word of God has to say in a systematic way on any subject.

Now we find Paul writing to the young man Timothy:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine. (2 Timothy 3:16)

That’s the first thing he mentions. Because there has been so much said about 2 Timothy 3:16, I’d like to give you the Amplified Bible translation because it is the best I’ve come across:

Every Scripture is God-breathed — given by His inspiration — and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, and for training in righteousness [that is, in holy living, in conformity to God’s will in thought, purpose and action].

In my opinion this exhausts the meaning of the verse. It tells us that the Word of God is profitable for doctrine, for us to organize these great subjects that we have. Therefore doctrine is the arrangement of biblical truths.

That is where doctrine differs from theology. Theology can deal with philosophy, or deal with many other things, but doctrine must rest upon Bible truths. It must rest upon what the Word of God has to say.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

This brings us to our all-important subject. So far we have dealt with merely the preliminaries; we come now to the Bible itself. The first thing I’d like for you to notice is that the Greek words for The Bible are Ho Biblos, which mean “The Book.” Biblos means “book,” but the early church always put on the scroll Ho Biblos, The Book. The separated it from all other books. There could be any number of books, but this is The Book.

When Sir Walter Scott was dying, he asked Lockhart to read to him from “the book.” Puzzled, Lockhart scanned the shelf holding all the writings of Scott, and he asked, “Which one?” Scott shook his head and said, “Why do you ask that question? When a man is dying, there is only one book. Bring the Bible.”

The early church separated the Word of God from all other writings. They called it The Book. Actually The Book is a collection of 66 books. There are 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.

I didn’t learn the arrangement of the books of the Bible until I was in seminary. I was embarrassed. One night when I was in my first year in seminary, one of the fellows at the table, kidding another one, said, “I bet you’ve never read the fifteenth chapter of Hezekiah.” And everybody laughed — I did too, although I didn’t know what they were laughing at. And the fellow being kidded answered, “You can’t fool me, the book of Hezekiah doesn’t have fifteen chapters.” And everybody laughed again — and I laughed again. When I got back to my room, I got out my Bible to find how many chapters the book of Hezekiah had. Well, I never have found how many chapters it has (since it doesn’t exist), but I did find that I needed to memorize the books of the Bible. And I worked out a system of doing it.

Now these 66 books of the Bible were written over a period of about 1,500 years by about 45 different authors. We marvel at the unity of their writings. Some of these men never even heard of the others, and there could have been no collusion among 40 of them. Two or three of them could have gotten together, but the others could not have known each other. And yet they have presented a Book that has the most marvelous continuity of any book that has ever been written. Also, it is without error. Each author expressed his own feelings in his own generation. Each had his limitations and made his mistakes — poor old Moses made mistakes, but when he was writing the Pentateuch no mistakes got in there.

It is a very human Book, written by men from all walks of life, prince and pauper, the highly intellectual and the very simple. For example, Dr. Luke writes almost classical Greek in a period when the Koine Greek was popular. His Greek is marvelous! But Simon Peter, the fisherman, wrote some Greek also. His was not so good, but God the Holy Spirit used both of these men. He let them express exactly their thoughts, their feelings, and yet through that method the Spirit of God was able to overrule in such a way that God said exactly what He wanted to say. That’s the wonder of The Book, the Bible.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

The Canon of Scripture

How did these 66 books become the Bible? That’s always been a big question. The Bible is also called the Canon of Scriptures; canon is a Latin word meaning rule or measurement. Therefore, each book was measured by certain standards before being put in the Bible.

The Bible is comprised of those books universally accepted as holy writ according to standards of the church in the apostolic period. The Old Testament is composed of those divine writings compiled by the Israelites during their history before the advent of Christ, and they were authenticated by Jesus Christ Himself. What actually happened is this: Moses wrote the first five books in the Bible. That can be sustained easily today.

Incidentally, I wish that when critics of the Bible come out with things like “the Garden of Eden is a myth” or “the virgin birth of Christ is not true,” that they would try to be more original. The arguments they present are the Graf-Wellhausen and Teubingen hypotheses, which are both well over one hundred years old. These hypotheses are referred to as higher criticism. The higher critical movement is a system of criticism whose main object was to impugn the authority of God’s Holy Word. These philosophers for the most part were not Christians and had no faith in God’s divine revelation but set about to discredit and throw doubt upon its authority. It was all answered long ago. Apparently the current critics have never read but one side of the question, yet they are the ones who talk about being broad-minded! These questions raised by the German high critical scholars a couple of hundred years ago — and added to for a hundred years — caused conservative scholars to do a great deal of research and study, so that now we do have solid answers to all of their suppositions.

Moses wrote the first five books in the Bible. Then Joshua wrote, and these books were added to the scroll. And when you come to the time of Samuel, you find that he did a great deal of writing and collecting. And then Ezra, during the time of the Captivity, gathered together the books of the Bible. By the time of Ezra’s death, the Old Testament was complete. As you can see, the church had nothing in the world to do with that.

May I say to you that I have never tried to sustain the thesis that the arrangement of the books of the Bible was inspired. But I do insist that the inclusion of certain books in the Bible, as well as the exclusion of other books, was inspired by the Holy Spirit.

As for the New Testament: By the end of the first century, all the books of the New Testament had been written and were circulating in the church. May I say that the gradual assembling of these books was superintended by the Holy Spirit.

By the fourth century the New Testament was intact, and by that time certain books were already excluded, although they are still found in Roman Catholicism today. For instance, you will never find anything about purgatory in the New Testament. If you ask Roman Catholics where they get their doctrine of purgatory, they will cite one of the books that had been excluded early on — one of the apocryphal books, you see. Purgatory is not mentioned in the 27 books of the New Testament at all.

For several hundred years the church was neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic, nor did it bear resemblance to any church today. It was in that congregation of believers which we call the early church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that the New Testament came together. May I say that when you read the apocryphal books and you read the books of the Word of God, you can see the difference immediately!

Therefore when we come to the fourth century, we find the complete canon of Scripture as we have it today, 66 wonderful books in which we can have absolute confidence.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

The Character of Scripture

Now I want you to notice the following four words:
Revelation
Inspiration
Illumination
Preservation

We need to understand the meanings of these words. And we need to know the differences between them, because this is where there’s so much confusion. The critic today is far too effective because people so often don’t know how to make the distinction between revelation, inspiration, illumination, and preservation.

Now let me give a brief word or two concerning the meaning of each of these.

Revelation (don’t confuse this with the Book of the Revelation — we’re not discussing that here) means “God has spoken,” and that’s all it means. Inspiration guarantees what God has said — that it is reliable, it is accurate, and it is without error. Illumination means that if you are to understand God’s revelation you must have the Holy Spirit to teach you. He alone can illuminate our minds so that we can understand His Word.

For example, when a prominent churchman says that the Book of Genesis contains myths, he is admitting that he is an unbeliever, and I don’t expect him to say anything else. But if he said he believed the creation story but he denied the virgin birth of Christ, I would have been confused because the churchman would first be affirming and then contradicting the Bible. You see, the Word of God says that the unbelieving man will not accept the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness to him — he cannot understand the Word of God until the Holy Spirit opens his heart. An unbeliever can learn the history of the Bible, he can learn a great deal about the facts that are in the Bible, and he can appreciate the poetry of the Bible, but he cannot understand its spiritual truths. The only way any of us can comprehend the spiritual truths of the Bible is by illumination of the Holy Spirit.

Preservation refers to God so watching over His Word that He has preserved it, and through the centuries it has come down to us intact. We today can know that it is the Word of God. That is what preservation means.

Now we will discuss revelation, inspiration, illumination, and preservation in more detail.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

Revelation

Revelation means that God has spoken. It means God has revealed Himself.

First of all, let me call your attention to the fact that intelligent creatures communicate with each other. That has always been true. They have some way of expressing themselves. Even the animal world does that, although it’s not an intelligent method of communication. But the human family finds some intelligent way to communicate. Since God has given mankind a certain amount of intelligence (probably very little) it would be strange indeed if the Creator, the God of this universe, had not revealed Himself to man in some way. Turn that over in your mind for a while. You would never, never expect the Creator not to attempt to communicate with His creatures. My friend, this is such an axiom that if today you and I had no revelation from God, I think we could sit right here until God broke through and let us know something. But God will not break through to reveal anything more to us because He has already spoken.

God has spoken in two different ways. He has spoken in a natural way, in the cosmos, His natural creation which is around us. And He has also spoken in a supernatural way, and that is through the Bible. It is well for us to notice these two ways in which God has revealed Himself to us.

He has spoken in a natural way. That is, He has spoken through creation. The psalmist says in Psalms 19:1-3,

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.

Creation doesn’t say a word. It doesn’t speak Greek or Hebrew or English. It doesn’t have an accent. But it is speaking to every creature on topside of God’s earth. The heavens declare the glory of God. This is so important that when God, speaking through Paul, begins to show that man is a sinner (Paul never attempted to prove it, he just stated the fact), there will be no excuse for someone to say, “Well, after all, man started out with no knowledge of God. And the story of man is his stumbling around in the dark seeking after God.” The Bible says that is not true. From the beginning man had revelation from God so that he is absolutely without an excuse. Really, creation ought to keep man on the track. He ought never to go into idolatry. He ought never to go aside either to worship a creature or become an atheist, as many scientists have become. Why? Well, because of the fact that creation itself is speaking to us.
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

Now notice this:

Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen. (Romans 1:19-20)

What is it that is so clear in creation? I think that today this universe is yelling its head off, telling man something. What is it saying? Just two things about God:

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:20)

This verse says, first of all, that back of creation there is a Person. Behind the thing is the Thinker. All nature is crying out that back of the creation there is a Creator. The human family is without excuse.

The second thing it says is that the God of this universe is a God of tremendous power. His Godhead (His person) and His power are the only two things you’ll find in nature. You don’t find the love of God in nature. Say you go to the beautiful Yosemite Valley, walk up from the floor of the valley to the top of El Capitan, admire the view, then step off. Do you think a God of love will stop you? No? Why? Because you won’t find the love of God in nature!

Incidentally, I think that this age, which untied the atom and found that in the smallest thing that exists there is tremendous power, will be responsible to God more than any other age. We found out that there is power in creation, a power we had not imagined before. And if you want my opinion, I believe there’s power resident in this little atom that they haven’t even touched today. God has a whole lot that He hasn’t revealed yet, a great deal that He has not permitted into the hands of men.

This tremendous universe — how big is it? And how far does it extend in this direction and that direction? Well, we have been told that radio telescopes reveal no end to it. As far as man is concerned, there is no end. We can’t even imagine it. What does this universe tell you? That back of this universe there is a Creator of infinite power.

Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21-22)

Do you know what God thinks today of the scientist who is an atheist? The atheist makes the statement, “I don’t believe there is a God.” God says, “You are a fool.” I’m not giving you my opinion. God said it. God said that he is a fool. The scientist is handling the things of this vast universe, and yet he says there is no God? God says he’s a fool. Our universities don’t give degrees like that today, but they ought to, because there are a lot of men who have earned it. God has conferred upon them that degree.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man — and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:22-23)
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

They went down and down. That’s the picture of the human family. And the average man’s view of God today — you don’t have to go out to the jungles of Africa, just go out into your own community and ask them — people don’t think much of God. Have you ever seen a beautiful image of God that the heathen made? They have never thought of God as being attractive. The average person’s view of God today is that He is very unattractive.

Oh, my friend, if you are a child of God, you ought to be very careful to whom you criticize Him and whine and cry and complain and find fault, because the unbeliever is listening. Do you know what the Word of God says?

Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.
(Psalms 107:1-2)

And if the redeemed of the Lord don’t say so, nobody else is going to say so. The redeemed are the ones who have to say so! God is good.

God has also spoken in the supernatural. What about the Bible? Well, may I say to you that “what saith the Scriptures” is the important thing. The Lord Jesus, praying to His Father, said, “I have given them Your word” (John 17:14).

Notice the testimony of the Word of God to itself, and notice our key verse again, 2 Timothy 3:16, which declares every Scripture is God-breathed — theopneustos. Theos means “God.” Pneo means “breathe.” All Scripture is God-breathed, given by inspiration, and it is profitable for instruction or doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and conviction of sin, and so forth. But it is God-breathed. All Scripture is God-breathed.

Unfortunately, some newer Bible versions give a wrong translation: “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable.” That is not an accurate translation from the original Greek text, nor can you get that from the original at all. Notice another Scripture:

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation [that is, no portion of the Scripture is to be interpreted apart from other references to the same subject], for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21)

This tells us that the Holy Spirit was the One who moved upon these men, carried them along the way a sailing ship is carried along.

Now the Bible is the Book that claims to be a revelation of God. In the Old Testament 2,500 times you find this or a similar statement, “Thus saith the Lord.” It assures us 2,500 times that what we are reading are the words of the Lord!
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

Inspiration

You’ll find also that the Bible is very specific. It says, for instance, in Numbers 1:1, “Now the Lord spoke to Moses.” And then in Deuteronomy 31:9, “So Moses wrote this law.” And I’d like to spend just a moment with Jeremiah. This man was actually unwilling when he was called to the prophetic office. He was called when he was very young, and then when he got a little older he wanted to resign. He even handed in his resignation to the Lord. Finally he had to come back and say, “Your word was a fire within my bones, and when I tried to keep silent I could not keep silent” (see Jeremiah 20:9). But now notice what God had said at Jeremiah’s original call:

Then the Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me: “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.” (Jeremiah 1:9)

Did you notice that God said, “I have put My words in your mouth”? We believe in what is known as the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Bible. We believe that the words are inspired, and fully inspired.

That is important, because you and I are living in a day when there are some very tricky interpretations. Neoorthodoxy has a very tricky interpretation of inspiration. Its proponents have said the same thing we say, “We believe that the words are inspired.” But the thing they did was to go in and emasculate all of the words. They took the meaning out of the words and made the words mean something else. A retired Methodist preacher told me about speaking to an outstanding Methodist preacher some years ago. He said to this preacher, “I have heard that you have been called a liberal, but when I listened to you, you were using the same language that John Wesley used.” And this was the answer of the man: “I’m using the same language that John Wesley used, but I don’t mean what John Wesley meant.” That’s tricky, isn’t it? And it’s deceptive.

Also, a lady said to me concerning a certain preacher, “Dr. McGee, you said that man was a liberal, and you said he was neoorthodox, and I don’t know what that means, but I do know that he preached a marvelous Easter sermon. He talked about the resurrection of Jesus.” And this dear lady was very angry with me.

I said, “Did you go to him and ask him what he meant by the resurrection?”

“Well,” she said, “what could he mean? He just said he believes in the resurrection. He talked about the resurrection of Jesus.”

I said, “You should go and ask him.”

Well, she didn’t, until the next Easter. In fact, in the afternoon of that Easter Sunday, she called me up, weeping. She said, “Today he preached another sermon on the resurrection and I remembered what you had said, so I went to him and asked, ‘Do you believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ?’”

He laughed and said, “Of course not.”

“Then what did you mean by the resurrection of Jesus?”

“Oh, that’s a spiritual resurrection.”
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

You see, friend, how today the words are being robbed of their meaning. And that’s the reason I always track a fellow down. He doesn’t impress me with his words. I want to know what he means by these words. I want him to define them.

Now we believe that the words in this Bible are inspired. And when we say “the words” we mean the original words. Somebody may say, “You’re beating around the bush — we don’t have the original words.” We will see the answer to that when we look into the preservation of this Book. But let me just say now that I hold in my hand a translation, but this translation is a reputable one in which I can have full confidence. I can believe it regarding my salvation, and there is no question about any of the great doctrines of the Scriptures. The Word of God as we have it today is clear.

As I said before, we believe in the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. When you come to the New Testament, you find that the Lord Jesus Christ put His seal upon the Old Testament in one of the most remarkable ways. In the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke, the Lord Jesus, after He had been resurrected, walked together with two little-known disciples on the Emmaus Road.

And He said to them, “What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?” Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to Him, “Are You the only stranger in Jerusalem, and have You not known the things which happened there in these days?” And He said to them, “What things?” So they said to Him, “The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a Prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to be condemned to death, and crucified Him…. Today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company, who arrived at the tomb early, astonished us. When they did not find His body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said He was alive. And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but Him they did not see.” Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:17-26)

The thing Jesus rebuked His own disciples for was the fact that they did not believe the Old Testament concerning His resurrection.

And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:27)
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

Illumination

Now you will notice, He didn’t end with that. There were other appearances to His disciples after His resurrection. Remember that His disciples were in an upstairs room, locked in for safety, if you please. And when He appeared to them, He held out His hands to them, saying, “Behold My hands,” so they could see the nail wounds. He asked them to feel His side, to make sure it was a real body. And He even ate some fish with them. And after He did that He said to them:

“These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45)

In these verses you have three of the four things we have been dealing with. You have revelation, you have inspiration, and you have illumination — Jesus opened their eyes that they might understand. He rebuked them because they didn’t know the Scriptures, so He went back and began with the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, and explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

Wouldn’t you have loved to have been there that day and heard Jesus go through the Pentateuch, then come on through the poetical books, the Psalms, and then move on through the historical books, and then the prophets, and to have Him turn to the Scriptures that referred to His resurrection! And I think He included His death, His burial, and His resurrection, and He took them through all the Scriptures that spoke of Him.

Now if you should ask me, “McGee, how do you know for sure this is the Word of God? I need something I can get my teeth in, something that I can stand on as firm ground, and know it’s God’s Word.” Well, I can give you several proofs, but the greatest is fulfilled prophecy. Hundreds of prophecies were fulfilled concerning Jesus at His first coming, literally fulfilled! Twenty-eight of them were fulfilled while He was hanging on the cross. When He was ready to die, as you remember, He said, “I thirst.” They gave Him vinegar to drink, which fulfilled the last prophecy, and then He expired.

I challenge you to show me any person who can accurately predict the future every time by reading stars, tea leaves, or anything else. Oh, they can make lucky guesses, but there has never been a person who could predict the future — not even our weatherman!
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[nChrist]

Doctrine For Difficult Days
by J. Vernon McGee
The Bible

Years ago I happened to be in the state building where one of our local weathermen had his office, and he came up on top of the building where I was. So I watched him — in fact, I went over and talked with him. He took a balloon and let that balloon go up, and he stood there and watched it. The fellow with him had some instruments and measured something, I don’t know what, and they went up to a higher level and looked out over something else, and I asked, “What are you doing?”

He said, “We’re gathering information to make a weather prediction.”

“Well, you’ve done quite a few things here. Are you prepared to give us a prediction?”

“Not yet.”

“What else do you have to do?”

“We’ve got twice as many instruments down in the room below, and we have to go down and read all of those.”

“Well, when will I find out?”

“You’ll see it in the paper this afternoon — the prediction is for tomorrow.”

“Can I depend on it?”

He laughed. “How many times do you think I get it right?”

“Well, according to my daily paper you don’t hit it very often.”

Now that was many years ago, and today with all his sophisticated equipment and even with the help of a satellite, he still misses it.

When we were in Minneapolis, I read the weather report and it predicted clear weather. Clear! I have never been through such a rainstorm as that which came in Minneapolis. I couldn’t even see the highway. The whole area was like a lake. They said that about three inches came down within an hour. May I say to you, even the weatherman can’t predict the future.

However, here is a Book filled with fulfilled prophecy. You can’t match that, brother. Men are not in any way able to predict the future. There are other solid bases for having confidence in the Bible, but to me, fulfilled prophecy is final. And it’s unanswerable. Nobody can disprove that. I believe the Bible is the Word of God. I believe it because of fulfilled prophecy, if for no other reason. But there are other reasons as well, as we shall see.
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