As far as the human race is concerned... Yes. If we have nothing then there can be no final authority for us. Everyone will claim whatever they please and couldn't be proven wrong. Unless of course you are of the silly camp of people that still "hear" God in their head. You know just like the "renegade" Mormans who claim God tells them to kill people that are in the way of God's plans.
God stopped communicating directly with man at the close of scripture(ie no one hears anything from God. There is no one who can claim "thus saith the LORD" if it is not already in scripture. Though many give it a shot like Benny Hinn ).
Why, you might ask? Quite simply everything God wants us to know is contained in His Holy Word. If His written Word was of no use or importance than Jesus Himself would not have constantly reffered to the scriptures as proof of His statments. He even used written scripture against satan!! I dare say then that His Holy written Word is most precious and not to be tampered and handled so lightly.
Let me begin by saying that I agree with the understanding that we need the word for the mere sake of accountability, if not more so for our knowledge and subsequent understanding of our God. Paul said in Romans 7:7-8 (and I'll use the KJV not to stir up anything unnecessarily)
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.
God's word provides us the understanding of sin and how to deal with it as God planned.
The point I was trying to make with my question, was to get you to look at the passage from whence came your support for this topic. Let's look at that passage from Matthew 24 contextually:
1 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and his disciples came to him for to shew him the buildings of the temple.
2 And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
4 And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.
12 And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.
13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
25 Behold, I have told you before.
26 Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not.
27 For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
28 For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.
29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
31 And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:
33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.
34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.
35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.
Jesus here is speaking in response to the questions posed by His disciples,
after He pronounces the fall of the temple. This is important. Why? Well for one, many miss the mark by using this passage as an understanding of the second coming. Yet the disciples asked
two questions:
1. When will the temples destruction take place - vs. 3a
2. When will He come again and the end times begin - vs. 3b
In the passage listed above, Jesus answers that first question. The generation He speaks of was not a spiritual one, but a physical one. He was being literal, and literally speaking, within
that generation that temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.
But let's stop here. He is talking about the destruction of the temple - and throws in a statement concerning His written word? We can explain that away, I'm sure, but not without taking that verse completely out of context. Jesus had said that the temple would be destroyed. To the Jew, that was an impossibility. God, afterall, was on
their side. The disciples had viewed Jesus as a liberator - yes, they knew Him to be God very God, and worshipped Him accordingly. Yet they had thought His kingdom would be set up in the here and now; that He would remove the Roman oppression and set Israel back up in the supremacy it once knew. And then He tells them the exact opposite. For the temple to be destroyed the city would have to fall. For the city to fall, the vision of Jewish liberation that they had would not have been fulfilled. So, Jesus makes a very unique statement:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away."
These things are temporal. God's word is not. God had just said that the temple would fall. He isn't pointing to the existence of a written copy of His word, rather the truthfulness, and eternality of that word. All else shall pass away, but
not His word. When we take that verse to support the KJV only position, we do so out of context. We attribute that word in the form of the KJV. That is simply, contextually, not so.