This entry is strictly for my students in the Bibliology and Hermeneutics Class at The Master's College to respond to. No other responses will be approved.
Students: Respond in about 150 words to the following statement. The responses are due by the time we meet next Monday. I will be judging spelling, grammar, etc., as well as content, so consider your response carefully. I may or may not respond to your input, but we will discuss them all next Monday. This question is framed as if someone asked you about this issue in person.
"I know your school makes a big deal about the inerrancy of the Bible. But I'm not sure what the big deal is. My pastor doesn't believe in inerrancy, but he preaches the Bible and he tells us in his sermons when the Bible may have gotten something wrong about history or something that doesn't really have anything to do with the Gospel. So, if we believe the gospel and the important stuff about Jesus and God, what difference does the Bible being inerrant really make?"
The only thing worse than some of the absurdedly stupid things Pat Robertson says, is that news media outlets continue to pick up on them. Today he stated (click here for full story):
If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. Wednesday, he added, "there well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.Robertson says he got this information at his annual "prayer retreat" in January. I love the preface to his comments, "If I heard the Lord right." You will look in vain in Scripture to see any real prophet ever using such an introduction to a real prophecy.
Real prophets had no problem understanding what God was telling them. Moses, for instance, entirely understood the Lord in Deut 18:20-21. Fortunately for Robertson, the provision in verse 20, "but the prophet who shall speak a word presumptiously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die," is not in general practice in the United States.
In the case of Robertson, though, the last part of verse 22 should be applied, "When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptiously; you shall not be afraid of him."
Robertson is no prophet and the increasingly goofy pronouncements coming from him make it clear that no one should be afraid of him and everyone would be better off simply ignoring him.
The Together for the Gospel Position Statement is now available in a final version at this site. It is signed by the four main participants, R. Albert Mohler, Ligon Duncan, Mark Dever, and C. J. Mahaney. While the original version also listed John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, and John Piper as signatories; those three are not listed in the final version. My undestanding is that these three gave "verbal affirmation" of the document, but I have not seen that documented as of yet.