While belief in the inerrancy of God’s Word is necessary for salvation (How can we trust Him if we do not believe Him?), to know the arguments is not necessary for our salvation (John 20:29).  The study of apologetics is still profitable though, for the times when the questions come.  Some of those questions will even come from people who are seeking the truth and want to trust the Lord, but find it difficult because they have been taught that His Word is illogical and is not supported by the evidence.

We are up against a culture driven by the desire to break away from the truth and its Author (Psalm 2:1-3).  Christians are increasingly marginalized and ridiculed, because we are the last holdouts against the world’s march toward outright rebellion against God and the subsequent destruction.  We are Abraham standing on the hill overlooking Sodom and Gomorrah, interceding with God for their salvation.  Ephesians 6:12 teaches us that the people themselves are not our enemies, but that the evil deception that holds sway over them is our enemy.  As long as we serve as the restraint against evil, we will be targeted by our enemy, the devil.

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.  It is the opium of the people.”-Karl Marx

“They get bitter, they cling to…religion…as a way to explain their frustration.”-Barack Obama

“If you’re not introducing it as reality, if you’re telling your kids the world is 6,000 years old, and they shouldn’t believe scientists because there is no way humans are related to other animals, and don’t believe any of that stuff you learned in school, or take your kids out of school because they are learning something, then it is like the Taliban at some level, which is an extreme form of child abuse.”-Lawrence Krauss, Professor of Theoretical Physics, Arizona State University

“This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation.  We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation.  We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown vs. Board of Education.  And we saw it in the proliferation of state bans on same-sex unions intended to stifle any hope that gay and lesbian Americans might one day be afforded the right to marry.”-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, on opposition to allowing trans-gender men into women’s restrooms

“When an opponent declares, ‘I will not come over to your side.’  I calmly say, ‘Your child belongs to us already.’”-Adolf Hitler

Not only are we being attacked by the world that openly opposes God, but more and more we are being attacked from within the church.  Many prestigious high-profile ministers, musicians and seminaries from within the church are abandoning the Word of the Lord, in favor of a “figurative interpretation” of scriptures that they find inconvenient.  Many of them look at those of us who still believe God and accuse us of being divisive over issues that they assert do not really matter.  They say that we are just raising controversy and thereby fracturing the unity that the Lord wants within His church.

Our response should be:  “Who moved?”  Truth, by its nature does not move.  We are not the ones who abandoned our positions.  Honesty dictates that we must move to accommodate the truth, instead of trying to move the truth to accommodate our beliefs.  Those who move forfeit the standing to accuse those of us who stand on the truth of being divisive.

Matthew 10:32-34 teaches us that Jesus does not expect us to be tolerant; He expects us to love.  Tolerance demands that I let you live, but it will also let you die.  But, love will save your life.  Love compels me to reach into the filth to pull you out, just like someone else did for me.

John 12:42-44 shows us that there were some who believed Jesus, but would not confess Him out of the fear of popular opinion.  The scripture tells us that “they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.”  One lesson that these verses teach us is that the source of our unity is not having the biggest umbrella under which the most diverse interpretations of God’s Word are welcome.  Instead, the source of our unity is that we all desire God’s approval.

So, we come to John 10:10.  Do we view God’s Word from the standpoint of our flesh, or sin nature, and see His commands as oppressive constraints?  Or, do we view His Word as it actually is, His instruction to people He loves and wants the best for?  Do we actually believe that He wants us to “have life, and have it abundantly?”  Like the maker of a precision instrument, like a fine automobile, or a musical instrument, God knows better than anyone else how it works best.  Do we believe that enough to honor every Word of His?

Hebrews10:35-11:3 teaches us about the life lived by faith that God requires of us.  Verse 35 urges us not to “throw away [our] confidence, which has a great reward.”  What is our confidence in?  Keep reading.  In verse 38 God states that His “righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back, [His] soul has no pleasure in him.”  But in verse 39 He reassures us that “we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul.”  So we know that we need to believe God and not forsake His Word as some have done, to their own destruction.

Hebrews 11:1 further clarifies what faith is:  “the assurance of things hoped for,” and “the conviction of things not seen.”  So, what is it that we hope for but do not see, but are assured and convicted of?  It is the Word of God.  The rest of Hebrews 11 is a recounting of the actions of many saints who believed God for what He said, but they did not see yet.

Noah believed God and was saved along with his family.  Abraham believed God and established his household outside of Sodom and Gomorrah, while Lot suffered great loss because he allowed his family to become comfortable with sin.  Caleb and Joshua believed God and received the land that God had promised, while everyone else fell in the wilderness because of their unbelief.

1 John 4:1-6 cautions us not to “believe every spirit,” but to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”  Verses 2-3 teach us that the Bible’s testimony about Jesus is the point upon which all truth hangs.  Whatever or whoever contradicts His Word is not from Him, but is “the spirit of the antichrist.”

Colossians 1:16-17, speaking of Jesus, teaches that “by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-all things have been created through Him and for Him.  He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

So, what happens when, as in Romans 10:1-4, seeking to establish our own righteousness, we do not subject ourselves to the righteousness of God?  Then, we have not believed the Bible’s testimony about Jesus.  We are instead listening to the spirit of the antichrist.