Notes: Doctrine from True Teachers

TEXT: 2 Peter 1:16–21 PREACHER: Mark Driscoll RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2009

Introduction: Six Unique Claims of Jesus Christ

1. No one says they came down from heaven but Jesus (John 6:38, 41–42, 60, 66)
2. No one says they are God but Jesus (John 10:30–33)
3. No one says they are sinless but Jesus (John 8:46)
4. No one says they can forgive sins but Jesus (Mark 2:5)
5. No one says they are the way to heaven but Jesus (John 14:6)
6. No one promised to rise from death but Jesus (Mark 10:33–34)

Where can the truth be found about Jesus Christ?

Option #1 – Ridiculous nonsense from people educated beyond their intelligence who make stuff up about Jesus and should be ashamed of themselves and repent before they see Jesus and it goes über bad for them forever (2 Peter 1:16a).

Popular Myths (Lies) about Jesus

• Liberal "Christians" – Jesus was a good man, a prophet, and an example–not fully God.
• Mormonism – Jesus is one of many gods and the polygamist half brother of Lucifer.
• Jehovah’s Witness – Jesus is the archangel Michael, a created being who became a man.
• New Age – Jesus was an Eastern holy man with an elevated state of consciousness.
• Scientology – Jesus was an implant forced upon a Thetan roughly 1 million years ago.
• Levi Dowling – Jesus underwent 7 degrees of occultic initiation making him the Christ.
• Edgar Cayce – Jesus became the Christ after shedding his karma through 13 incarnations.
• Bahai – Jesus was a manifestation of God--a prophet, but inferior to Muhammad and Bahá’u’lláh.
• Buddhism – Jesus was not God but rather an enlightened man like the Buddha.
• Hinduism – Jesus was a wise man like Krishna
• Islam – Jesus was merely a man. He was a prophet inferior to Muhammad.
• The Dalai Lama said, "He [Jesus] was either a fully enlightened being, or a bodhisvatta [a being who aids others to enlightenment] of a very high spiritual realization."
• Indian Hindu leader Mahatma Gandhi said, "I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as divine as Krishna or Rama or Muhammad or Zoroaster."
• Dan Brown – Jesus married and had kids.

Option #2 – Believe the Bible.

Written by Eyewitnesses (2 Peter 1:16b-18)

• The gospel writer Matthew was one of the disciples.
• John wrote five books of the New Testament. He was one of the disciples, included in Jesus' inner circle with Peter and James (John 19:35; 1 John 1:1–3).
• Paul wrote the majority of the books in the New Testament. He lived at the time of Jesus' ministry. He initially hated Christianity, but was converted after an eyewitness encounter with Jesus (1 Cor. 15:6–8). He also worked with many of Jesus' disciples.
• James and Jude were Jesus' brothers and worked closely with the apostles (Mt. 13:55; Gal. 1:19 cf. Jude 1:1).
• Luke wrote a gospel account and the book of Acts. He was probably not an eyewitnesses of Jesus' ministry, but emphasizes his exhaustive research, including interactions with eyewitnesses (Luke 1:1–4).
• Mark wrote a gospel account, and probably witnessed some of Jesus' ministry. Though he was not an apostle, Mark worked closely with both Paul (2 Tim. 4:11) and Peter (1 Peter 5:13). Some early church fathers say that Mark's gospel is a report of Peter's own story.
• Peter was present with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) and an eyewitness to Jesus' three years of ministry (2 Peter 1:16).

F.F. Bruce writes in The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?:

One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical books were both held in North Africa—at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage in 397—but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of these communities (27).

Written by Divine Inspiration (2 Peter 1:19–21)

The Bible (both the Old and New Testaments) is:

• Prophecy
• God's light in darkness
• Scripture (truthful, revalatory, without peer)
• Revelation (God's self disclosure--as opposed to speculation)
• Divinely inspired

Key Doctrinal Concepts

Verbal Plenary Inspiration

• Verbal – The very words of Scripture... (Matt. 5:18)
• Plenary – ...in all of Scripture... (2 Tim. 3:16)
• Inspiration – ...are from God.

John Elder writes in Prophets, Idols and Diggers:

It is not too much to say that it was the rise of the science of archaeology that broke the deadlock between historians and the orthodox Christian. Little by little, one city after another, one civilization after another, one culture after another, whose memories were enshrined only in the Bible, were restored to their proper places in ancient history by the studies of archaeologists. . .Contemporary records of biblical events have been unearthed and the uniqueness of biblical revelation has been emphasized by contrast and comparison to newly discovered religions of ancient peoples. Nowhere has archaeological discovery refuted the Bible as history (16).

Inerrancy

The Bible is without error (Psalm 19:7; Proverbs. 30:5–6; John 17:17).

Sufficiency

The Bible tells us everything we need to know about God.

Sola Scriptura

Scripture alone is in highest authority, under which there are courts of lesser authority; there is truth to be found outside of Scripture (thanks to God's common grace and general revelation), but all things are to be tested by the Scriptures.

Further Reading

Visit the Resurgence for recommended books about the authority and reliability of the Bible.