Articles
04 The Back to the Bible Plea
04 The Back to the Bible Plea
Mike Willis
This article will explain in more detail what is intended by a call to go “Back to the Bible.”
The Back to the Bible plea affirms and acknowledges that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God. Paul wrote, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). This is what the Bible claims for itself.
Until the early nineteenth century, all churches believed in the divine inspiration of Scripture. The Standard Manual for Baptist Churches by Edward Hiscox (1890) expressed what most churches understood the Bible to be at that time:
We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us; and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true centre of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried (58-59).
Until the early nineteenth century, all churches believed in the divine inspiration of Scripture. A few began to question divine inspiration in the nineteenth century; however, over the last 200 years, a large percentage of mainline Protestant and Catholic Churches have walked away from believing that the Bible is the inspired word of God.
If the Bible is what it claims to be, it is the inerrant, divine instructions for what man must do to be saved by faith in Christ. The requirements for salvation made in the New Testament Scriptures can be compared to God’s giving the Law of Moses to Israel in the Old Testament. Men were expected to learn and obey the Law of Moses and, wherein they departed from the Law, restoration to God demanded that they go back to the Law of Moses and obey it. When they went back to the Law of Moses and obeyed it, God received His disobedient children and forgave them their sins, the sins they repented of committing and quit practicing.
The New Testament Scriptures are the inspired Scriptures given to all of mankind in order that they may be saved from sin by the shed blood of Jesus. It contains within its pages the teachings of Jesus while on earth and that of the Holy Spirit inspired apostles and prophets whom He sent forth to reveal and proclaim His divine will. To the degree that one neglects, disobeys or fails to obey the commandments of Jesus revealed in the New Testament, one needs to go back to the Bible and begin to obey God’s commandments.
Let me give an illustration of what I mean, chosen not because this sin is worse than all others but because it is simple to illustrate. The Bible condemns “fornication” or “sexual immorality” (that is, sex outside the bonds of wedlock, see 1 Cor. 6:9-20). Those who are guilty of having sex outside the bonds of marriage are called upon to repent and quit the practice of fornication. In modern American society, sex outside the bond of wedlock is so prevalent that it has become normalized. Practically 70% of people in the United States expressed the opinion that sex between an unmarried man and woman is morally acceptable (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1367103/us-opinions-on-sex-before-marriage/, published August 9, 2024, accessed 1/13/2025). The call to go Back to the Bible means that we should reject our own opinions for what the Bible teaches and bring our lives into conformity with the word of God. It is not a difficult concept to understand, but it does require repentance and the fruit of repentance (a change in lifestyle). The simple question is this: “Are we willing to go back to the Bible and live the life that Christ commanded that we live?”
