Dr Paul Allen

Books (Photo credit: henry… ) Have you ever looked at your Bible and wondered, “Why do we regard these 66 books, and no others, as comprising the inspired Word of God?” That is a critically important question, of course, since there are many today who would deny that these 66 books are truly the complete canon of Scripture . The Roman Catholic Church , for example, claims that the Apocryphal books which were written during the Intertestamental Period (between the Old and New Testaments) ought to be included in the Bible. Cult groups like the Mormons want to add their own books to the Bible—things like the Book of Mormon, The Doctrines and Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price . And then there are popular books and movies, like The Da Vinci Code from several years back, that claim later Christians (like Constantine) determined what was in the Bible centuries after these books were written. So, how do we know that “all Scripture” consists of these 66 books? How do we know that t...

Image via Wikipedia His [Paul’s] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16b). The English Bible is composed of 66 books. How do we know that these books and no others are the infallible and inerrant Word of God ? The basic answer to this question is that when men wrote these books, they came to be aware that they had written the Word of God. Right away, the community of the faithful recognized that these books were the Word of God because the Spirit of God caused them to recognize the Master’s voice. Thus, right away, each new book was added to the collection that Moses had begun. This process went on during the Old Testament times and continued in the New Testament . We see this process in action in 2 Peter 3:16, where Peter refers to Paul’s letters as already part of the canon (list) of Scripture. Still, how do we know today that some books have not...