Marcyon only included books in the New Testament that fostered and championed his idea of a distinction

between the loving God of the New Covenant and the mean and nasty God of the Old Testament.

So Marcyon gave us the first scissors and paste version of the Bible, where he actually tried

to play around with the writings of the apostles and dismiss what he didn't like and keep what he

did like and doctor up the sources.

Throughout church history, there have been those who would pick and choose what parts of the

Bible they would accept, in which parts they would reject, whether it was Marcyon in the second

century, liberalism in the 20th century, or preachers today who cherry pick proof texts in an attempt

to make the Bible say what they want. You're listening to renewing your mind, as this week we

consider the important topic of the Bible and its authority in our lives. Since there have been

those throughout church history who have disagreed about which books should be in the Bible,

how can you and I trust and have confidence that the books we have today should be there?

Well, Marcy Sproul will explain how it is that the books of the New Testament came to be recognized

as the revealed word of God. Here's Dr. Sproul.

In our last segment of our study of this theme of the authority of scripture, we looked at those

claims that the Bible makes for itself. And if you recall, I was quick to point out that simply

because a book makes a claim to have an origin in God, that doesn't mean that it has such an

origin in God, but the fact that the claim is made makes the stakes extremely high. Because if

the claim is fraudulent, then the credibility of the source is brought into question.

Now, I mentioned in Paul's second letter to Timothy, Paul made a statement,

all scripture is given by inspiration. Notice that he didn't simply say scripture is given

by inspiration, but he used the term all, as if to indicate that there would be more than one

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