Good morning to everyone. Thank you, Dr. Stinson, for your generous introduction. And it's really a joy and a privilege to be at this pulpit in such a distinguished institution, so well known across the world, and with friends that I have pastored at some occasions, and then with faculty members that have been at our church and our institution teaching our students and beyond. So thank you again and again. I want to thank Dr. Muller for his invitation, but I want to thank the leadership of the institution for your support. Truly has been something that we never imagined it would happen, but in God's plans and by God's grace, it did. So thank you again and again. This morning, I would like to speak to you about a subject that perhaps you have not thought so much about, and it has to do with the inerrancy of the word in the global South, the implication for the Great Commission. But before we do that, let's just pray and thank the Lord for the opportunity. Father, we bow before you, and I thank you again for another time, another opportunity, underserved to preach Your inerrant word through fallible lips. I just pray that You would allow Your servant to glorify You in ways that he is not capable of. In essence, Lord, glorify Yourself through Your word for Your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, amen, amen. Well, as I said, I will be speaking to you about the implications of the inerrancy of the Bible in the fulfillment of the last mandate of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I think when we think about the Great Commission, we tend to, and the challenges that it presents, we tend to think about the harvest, which is plenty, the workers who are few, the resources that are limited, and yet this morning, I would like to address an issue that perhaps it has not been in the front of many people when it comes to the Great Commission, and that is the attack on the trustworthiness and the inerrancy of the Word of God, something that has been going on in the North for a long time. Ever since the beginning of the Enlightenment, the Word of God and the people of God have been under siege. And as the time has gone by, I don't think that the attacks have lit up, but rather have continued to increase. So for our discussion this morning, I selected a very well-known passage from the Gospel of Matthew at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 28. You know that passage almost by memory, if not by memory, beginning in verse 16 to verse 20. And this is the word of the Lord. Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountains to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. That was the announcement of Christ's global mission. And as one would expect, a mission, a universal mission was going to require a universal authority and a universal and constant presence of the one in charge of the mission. And that is precisely what we see in the Great Commission text that I just read. Christ commanded us to go to the end of the world because all authority has been given to him and he promised that he would be with us to the end of the age. All authority, all nations obey all, all the time. And as the Lord commissioned his disciples of these first missionaries, he passed on to them not only a message, but also a conviction, a passion, a hope, and a certainty. It is hard to imagine all of that being transmitted through a corrupted word, as some would consider the Bible. Jesus gave them a command with an authority that couldn't fail because behind those words was the integrity of his name. And a mission as monumental as the one announced by Christ before ascending into heaven would need a solid, unquestionable, unshakable, unchallengeable authority, and so they received in his word. We are not certain about the inerrancy of the original message. We couldn't know what the gospel is, and we couldn't repeat the words of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Corinthians in his first letter, Chapter 15, the first three verses, listen for one second. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel that I preach to you, which you receive, in which you stand, by which you are being saved. If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also receive." That last phrase, what I also receive, it is very important. We pass on to others the same gospel we received so that being certain being sure that we are handing to the next generation a trustworthy word in its entirety. And for the purpose of exposing this passage that I read to you in relationship to the doctrine of inerrancy, I will divide my passage into four points or four phrases which are within the passage itself. Go therefore, number two, to the ends of the world, number three, make disciples, number four, teaching them to observe or obey all that I have commanded you. So let's take the first phrase, go therefore. Jesus was sending his 11 disciples and their followers into a worldwide mission where they would encounter all kinds of obstacles, opposition, uncertainties, and that is the very reason why he was so emphatic when he said, all authority has been given to me. And Christ was delegating that authority to those 11 who were personally trained by Him. But in some measure, He was also delegating some of that authority to the rest of us who were going to be preaching the gospel and going into the field to honor His commandment. But that authority was invested in His Word. The people being sent needed a complete confidence in the sender, but they needed a complete confidence in the message to be shared. Any degree of doubt in either Christ, the sender, or His word would create doubtful, hesitant disciples that would be fearful and incapable of embracing a task as encompassing as the entire world. The men of old risked their lives going and preaching the gospel to evangelize the heathens because they were convinced that no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 1 Peter 1.21, they knew full well that if men spoke from God, they spoke in his name. And therefore, the preaching of a fallible message would bring into question not only his word, but his very name, the name that they would be using to baptize the new converts. And any question about God's Word or about God's name brings into question His nature, because both the name and the Word of God represents all that He is. The Word of God is extensive with God Himself, with His being. This is the way the psalmist said it, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word. The two things that represent God's niche. When disciples, makers, go into the mission field believing that the Word of God is not totally reliable, there will be a tendency to retrieve when the message is challenged. And that is exactly what had happened in many cases. Some, perhaps many today, would say that we couldn't trust the cosmology of the first three chapters of the Bible. because it doesn't quite square with today's understanding of science. These critics would argue that the writers of the Bible quite frequently describe the cosmos and the historical accounts of that time according to mythological understanding of their day. Now, if the critics are correct in their assessment, then there is no way to argue against the cosmological understanding of the false religion in the mission field. Because they both, ours and theirs, would be reflecting mythological descriptions of the origin of the universe or mythologized history, as some would call it. Now think for a second, why should anyone abandon a flawed revelation of the origin of the universe, a flawed revelation of life and the world, what the Germans call a Wolfenstein, to embrace another faulty revelation of life and the world? If those who are being sent to proclaim the gospel cannot be sure about the message to be shared, Would they go passionately? Would they risk their lives? Would they engage in apologetic evangelism? Would they? Would they confront the cultures that they are being sent to with their lives? If the revealed word they carry were inaccurate, what would be the moral authority to challenge the beliefs of those who are being evangelized? The Great Commission would become a mission impossible. Many pastors and even missionaries do not believe in the power of the gospel alone to do the work of evangelism. So the result of that was the introduction of gimmicks and strategies to attract the unbelievers throughout the 1990s in the middle of the church growth movement that we saw in the U.S. O'Guinness, a very well-known apologist and Christian writer, quoted a church growth consultant who claimed that 5 to 10 million baby boomers would be back in default within a month if churches adopted three changes. Advertise, let people know about product benefits, and be nice to new people. Now, one has to wonder if these people read the same Bible as we do. You have to. Now, is it any wonder that one of the gurus of the church growth movement during that time was Peter Wagner, professor of church growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary School of World Mission. That was the institution that began to distance itself from the inerrancy of the Bible in the 1960s, and finally changed their doctrinal statement in 1971. If one loses the confidence in the gospel to attract and transform lives, it is only natural that the world would recur to ancillary methods of evangelism and church growth. And that's exactly what happened. As a consequence of this renovated interest in the growth of the church, there was a renovated interest in social sciences. So sociology soon became attractive to study the communities to see what kind of churches the people wanted so that you may go out and plan that kind of church. Psychology became the preferred field of knowledge to do biblical counseling. Marketing became so appealing so that articles and books were written. I remember reading one article back then. The title was, Would the Church Survive? I guess they have not read the Bible. The gates of hell will not prevail again. Christ's church. Now, all of those new ideas were introduced with good intentions, good intentions to build a church, except that the wrong church was being built, and today we're paying the consequences of it. It is not an accident that many of the people involved in the development of these trends were not, are not, defenders of the inerrancy or the sufficiency of the Bible. Now, the church allowed the The modernity movement to impact its theological understanding, and it's now suffering the consequences of such a clash. Modernity questioned the inerrancy of God's Word and the sufficiency of God's work. The disciples were told this. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest so he can send out workers into his harvest." How is that for a marketing strategy? Now the disciples were further instructed by waiting, by waiting for power. And then when power came down, they preached the word boldly, Acts 4, 13. Jerusalem was filled with the disciples' teaching, Acts 5.28. Samaria was filled with joy, Acts 8.8. Ephesus was in turmoil as a consequence of the preaching of the gospel, Acts 19.23.24. All of this was taking place, all of that transformation, without any involvement of today's social sciences and without the use of new teaching on evangelism. that I will mention in a bit. Second phrase, to the ends of the world, some have declared the inerrancy of the Bible an American construct, an American idea that resulted from the clash between modernity and fundamentalism. And based on that observation, they have said that because in the Global South, we did not have the classic clashes and debates with fundamentalism, that inerrancy is not needed. It's not a discussion that we should have in the Global South. But I think to affirm such an idea is to ignore the nature of truth. To begin with, we need to remember that inerrancy is about truth, and truth is universal. If something is truth in the global north, if we want to say it, then it must be true in the global south. Truth is about God, and God is universal, and God is the source of truth. He is the revealer of truth. It would be unthinkable to consider a mission that is so encompassing as to include the entire world with related to truth that are believable or true in one hemisphere but not in the next. The doctrine of inerrancy, inspiration, sufficiency, completion of the canon, they are all bound up together. If you remove one of those blocks, the whole building suffers with it. It is true that in the global South, we do not have the clash with modernity and fundamentalism the way the U.S. experienced it in the past. It is true. For that reason, The loss of the confidence in the Bible in the Global South did not come through the front door of inerrancy. It came through the back door of extra-biblical revelation. That is the way it happens. In many cases, the introduction of extra-biblical revelation came as a consequence of the animistic worldview of the regions being evangelized. But once you yield to extra-biblical doctrinal revelation, the denial of the inerrancy of the Bible is very simple, because to move from a Bible in need of completion to a Bible in need of correction is only one step away. And that's the way it has happened. So in the Global South, the new prophets and apostles are trying to complete the Bible with their new revelations. In the North, the new critics or the new academicians are trying to correct the Bible with new research. So new doctrinal revelation in the animistic hemisphere, and new research in the rationalistic world. The South does it through mysticism, The North does it through rationalism, and that's the way it's going on. The prophets and the apostles in the North and now in the global South have never been defenders of the inerrancy, of course not. Their new revelations is more fitting with the Bible that is errant. Now, I mentioned that during the 1990s, many of the experts in the church growth movement were making use of social sciences to grow the church. In the Global South, something similar and different was taking place. The church was growing, but not making use of social sciences, but making use of a spiritual warfare, a new movement. The problem, according to these new teachers, was that demons were in charge, were opposing the evangelization of the world, and they were occupying certain regions so that before you preach the word, you needed to go and expel them out so that the evangelization of that area could take place. A new spiritual warfare movement was born. What was the result of that? The church stopped preaching the gospel and became engaged in a whole new movement of spiritual warfare. But Christ said, go out, carry out the Great Commission by what? By teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. Teach them obedience to my word. That is the way we carry the Great commission. Once you stop believing in the inerrancy of the Bible, we chip away at the authority of the same Bible even to evangelize. So as part of the spiritual warfare movement, some began to speak of what has been called prophetic acts, the remitting of the sins of nations, the tearing down of strongholds, and many other ideas. These terms were unheard of before the 1990s. Never. Evidently, according to this new teaching, the church has been rendered largely ineffective in evangelizing the world because it did not understand the spiritual warfare that we are involved in, which we are, and it's real, it's content, it's massive. But it's not to be fought the way the church was taught in the global south. Others spoke about training the goers to do signs and wonders, to carry out the mission of the church through something called power evangelism. Can you imagine? teaching people to do signs and wonders. I don't know where each one of us is here regarding the gift of the Spirit, but one would think that we would all agree that they are or they were gifts, not abilities to train people in, to do seminars so that I would learn to do powers and wonders and signs and How far have we gone? How far are we going to go? Once again, Peter Wagner says that the key elements of this power boost that have so far emerged are a strategic level, a spiritual warfare, a spiritual mapping, and identification of repentance. Now, some might think, what is that? Well, spiritual mapping refers to the ability to find out what kinds of demons are in certain regions, so that you may say, well, here there are demons of loss, here there are demons of division, so that you may learn to catch them out. And identification of repentance speaks about identification of sins of prior generation that we now need to confess in this generation. Otherwise, the evangelization and the Great Commission will never be possible. Question, where in the Bible do we find teaching of that sort? All of this is nothing more than a lack of confidence in the power of the gospel to evangelize the world. When inerrancy goes, the confidence in the Bible goes with it. That is something that has been shown over and over again because the Word of God is the Word of God. It's self-authenticated. We do not sit in judgment of it. It's the other way around. Number three, and guarding my time here, make disciples. That is our third phrase. That phrase summarizes the entire Great Commission. In the original, that phrase, make disciples, is one word. It is the main verb. It is the only verb in the imperative, and the others go, baptize, teach, are subordinate participles that acquire imperial force. So the task is about making disciples, and that's simply about evangelizing. And the task was not to make profession of faith, but to make disciples, people who would be committed completely to the lordship of Christ. Now those who were going to make disciples need a certain level of assurance, and that is precisely what Christ did for them. In the Sermon on the Mount, you find One verse, Matthew 5, 18, that provides some of that confidence. You could read this. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all, that is the word again, all is accomplished. That is our famous word this morning. All. Obey all. I'll be with you all the time. All authority. In other words, they could and we can count on the integrity of the Word in its entirety from beginning to end. You find another small assertion in the Gospel of John, chapter 10, 34 and 35. Scriptures cannot be broken. No, it cannot. It will not. It is impossible. The assurance of text of this sort is vital for the missionary enterprise. Because a pastor in the mission field can anchor his life, his family on that truth. A pastor can anchor his followers, his parishioners, his members, the members of his church on that truth. Not even an iota will pass away. The moment one admits the possibility of an errant word, one could doubt the fulfillment of any of the prophecies. You would have to wonder, was this really prophesied? Now, do I have the prophecy the way it was really stated? If the Bible is full of errors, how do I know? How do I teach my disciples that these promises are true? Now, how do we teach from that point on? Especially when you think about that the quality of the disciples we make depends upon the way the disciples take the Word of God to be. Listen to the Apostle Paul, what he says to the Thessalonians in his first letter, chapter 1, verse 7. You became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. Okay, you are an example. Now in chapter 2, he tells them why they became an example. This is how he says it in 2.13, and we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of man but as what it really is the word of God which is at work in you believers that's why you are such a great example to all the churches because when you heard God's message you took it for what it is the word of God and not the word of man that's why you are the kind of church that you are Receiving the Word of God one way or another will affect the quality of the disciples you make. And we see this in the Global South, and I think we see it here in the North as well. Now, in carrying out the Great Commission, we need to ask the following question. What should we teach the disciples about the truthfulness of the Word being received? Do we say the Bible is totally reliable, or the Bible is partially reliable? Or, the Bible is totally reliable in some portions, and partially reliable in some other portions. Now, when they ask you, how do I know which portions are totally reliable and which portions are partially reliable, what do you say? Well, that depends upon the word of the critics. So you immediately are confronted with one problem. You either trust the word of God in its entirety, or you trust the word of the critics in its entirety. There is no in-between. It's one way or another. And number four, so I could close on time, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. That is a monumental phrase about obedience. The Lord specifically revealed to his sender how to make disciples. You teach them obedience to my word, no partial obedience, obey That instruction leaves out any possibility of proclaiming and obeying one portion of the Bible and ignoring, denying and ignoring another portion of the Bible. Daniel Doriani makes a very poignant observation in his commentary on these texts. And he says this, the Greek expression that is translated everything, all, it is actually two terms. One means all things, and the other means as much as. The effect is to intensify the command. We must teach potential disciples to obey every last thing Jesus says. Why would the Lord give them such an absolute command? Because all the scriptures is God's breathe, and therefore is inerrant. It is absolute, authoritative, trustworthy, unbreakable, and then worthy to be obeyed. That's why he said what he said. Inerrancy is about truth, and the source of truth is God, and therefore we need to believe that what came from God came without any errors. I cannot imagine making disciples by telling them that they must obey all that Christ commanded, and at the same time informing them that within the text that they are being commanded to obey, there are myths and mistakes. So the commandment was to teach the disciples to obey all that I have commanded, but now I have to tell my disciples, but be careful. with that all because they are full of errors. Now so many would argue that Christ said that but he refers to basically to his words, the ones that he spoke. The problem is that Christ treated the Old Testament as fully authoritative as well. And then Paul came and then Paul said that we should preach the whole counsel of God. So, how are we going to do that if within that whole counsel of God we are going to encounter errors, mistakes, myths, midrash, and then we need to obey all of that? No, I don't think so. The value of that statement from Paul about teaching the whole counsel of God can be called into question immediately if the Bible is not in error. The importance of a particular doctrine can be judged based upon three things, I believe. Number one, the verdict from God about the Bible, in this case, the Bible itself. You could look at Psalm 19, Psalm 119, Dr. Mohler preached recently on Psalm 19, I believe. Well, that is God's verdict about His Word, how inerrant, how just, how unchangeable it is. But you could judge also the value or the importance of one doctrine if you look at the results when that particular doctrine is in place. So if you look at the history of the Reformation, that would tell us how important it is, it was, the doctrine of inerrancy for the triumph of that movement. Or you could judge the importance of a particular doctrine. If you look at the consequence produced when that doctrine is absent, and then you can look at the history of the liberal movement, and that speaks very eloquently for what happened where you don't believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. In closing, let me just read to you this text from 2 Timothy chapter 4, verses 1 to 5. I charge you in the presence of God. and of Christ Jesus, this is sovereign, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing in His kingdom, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season reproof, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to soothe their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myth." Exactly. As for you, always be sober-minded. Endure suffering. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. Notice the connection between do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry in verse 5, and the charge to preach the word in verse 2. That is the way we carry out the Great Commission. We preach the word And we carry out our ministry by doing that preaching. That is the way Christ did it. You can see that in the gospel. That is the way the apostles did it. You can read that in the book of Acts. That is the way the true church has always done it for 2,000 years. So having said all of that, let us not compromise at this time of ambivalence. Let us stand together for the sake of God's name and the glory of God's word. Let us go forth preaching this inerrant and unshakable word to a world that is drifting. Let us go from this place remembering that in Christ we have his promises, in the gospel we have his power. And let us not be afraid. All authority has been given to our Lord and Redeemer, and he promised, and he will complete it, he will fulfill it, that he will remain with us until the very end of the age. Father, we thank you and we praise you. for your unshakable word, for the glory and the power of your name. I just pray, Lord, that you give us strength and courage so that we may go forth believing what you said, believing what you revealed, living by it, and making disciples by teaching them to obey all that you commanded. Thank you for your immovable word of God. In Christ we pray, amen.