This is the month we celebrate our Country’s Independence so what better time to revisit the famous midnight ride. Remember the hullaballoo back in May? Here’s my take on it: Didn’t that ride involve a signal for the colonists: The British are coming! One if by land, two if by sea? We obviously can’t check with eyewitnesses, but I remember history books from elementary school and mine had a drawing of Paul Revere galloping in the dark of night to wake the colonists. They believed his warning and we believed the account of it. But how do we really know that what was written is true? Enter Wikipedia. Evidently there was so much “rewriting” of the facts last May that the site dealing with this portion of our history had to be shut down while truth was sorted from the “maybe not quite true, but sure sounds good” entries.
And do we really care who Paul Revere was warning? You can believe what you want, I’ll have my idea of what happened and we can both be happy. Does it really matter? Certainly the reason for the midnight ride isn’t a matter of life and death today (the British already came and we won), but could we be teetering on the edge of a slippery slope? What about those other areas where the truth just doesn’t fit our worldview or makes us a bit uncomfortable? Surely it didn’t happen that way; someone must have gotten it wrong. My version sounds better so I’ll go with what I think must have happened.
Maybe there is a bit of wiggle room on some things, but in one area there is absolutely none. When Jesus said “I am the Truth”, that’s what He meant whether we like it or not. If what the Bible says makes us uncomfortable, perhaps that’s God’s convicting Holy Spirit. If we can’t make sense of all the stories and parables and miracles recorded in the Bible, remember, God is the Omniscient One, not us. Nowhere are we told to figure it all out; we’re to believe by faith. And even the faith to believe comes from God. But what is it that we must first believe before all else? That all Scripture is inspired by God and without error. It’s not what someone tells us about the Bible; it’s what the Bible tells us about ourselves and God. Men who were moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God (2 Peter 1:21) and many were eyewitnesses to the very events they wrote about (2 Peter 1:16). From the very beginning, God protected His Word because He knew there would be those who would oppose the truth, who would “pick and choose” what to believe, who would make changes to fit their own purposes or who would choose not believe at all.
In 2 Timothy 3:16 we read that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Everything we need in order to live as we should is found in God’s Word. The story of God’s love for mankind is not a “cleverly devised tale” but instead, Paul reminds us in 2 Timothy 3:15 that Scripture gives us “the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus,” the One who is Absolute Truth. We can’t “rewrite” Scripture. We can only let God use it in our lives to make us “adequate and equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:17) If there is any changing to be done, it needs to be in us.
