All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. -2 Timothy 3:16-17

When it says “all Scripture,” there is a reference back to the preceding verse: “From 
a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures.” And nothing on earth is more clearly 
understood than that the Holy Scriptures that boy studied from the time he could 
learn at all, was that Book, or twenty-two books, called now the Old Testament. 
Every Jewish child in the land had access in some way to that volume.

There are twenty-two divisions of the entire Old Testament. I mean to say that the 
Jews thus divided it for convenience to themselves in its use, and they made just as 
many divisions as there were letters in the Hebrew alphabet, as you will find by 
reading the one hundred nineteenth Psalm, where that Psalm is divided into twenty-two 
parts, each part for convenience being named so as to correspond to a letter of 
the Hebrew alphabet. And so the Jewish division of the Old Testament into twenty-two 
parts, as set forth by Josephus, includes the thirty-nine books as we now have 
them.

Anybody who will give five minutes’ attention to it can receive a perfect 
demonstration of the historical correctness of the fact that our thirty-nine books of 
the Old Testament correspond to the twenty-two Jewish books. For instance, they 
put all the twelve Minor Prophets into one book, and they counted First and Second 
Kings one book. Their twenty-two and our thirty-nine correspond in text, and that 
volume of twenty-two books was translated into the Greek language and the 
translation completed at least one hundred and fifty years before Christ came into the 
world. That translation is the Septuagint.

Now that Book, subdivided into twenty-two books, was, by the Lord Jesus Christ 
Himself and by His apostles and by uninspired Jewish rabbis, called in a body the 
Holy Scriptures. It is the declaration of this text that every one of these sacred 
writings is – now here, just one word – God-inspired, i.e., in the Greek it is just one 
word. Every one of these books is God-inspired, and it means God-inspired in every 
part of every one of them. And it means much more that it is inspired in its words 
than it means inspired in the thoughts of the men who wrote it. Often the thought in 
the mind of the man who wrote it was not the right thought, but the words he wrote 
were from God, and it is verbal inspiration.?Take the case of one of the prophets included in that list of twenty-two books.

When the revelation came to him, he was not expecting it at all. It was as much a 
surprise to him as it was to anybody else in the world. Take another case – the man 
who was inspired didn’t in any sense understand what he said and what he wrote. 
His thoughts did not enter into it at all. Very many of the ancient prophets recorded 
under divine direction and proclaimed under divine authority things that were as 
mysterious to them as they were to anybody else in the world. So, to make it an 
inspiration at all, it is absolutely essential that the words should have been inspired. 
Not only is this true, but in the case of some of them they were not themselves 
conscious that they were under inspiration at all at the time, as when Caiaphas made 
a prophecy concerning Christ, so that the thought of the human writer had nothing to 
do with the inspiration.

This inspiration may be mentioned under three parts: First, its revelation; second, its 
record; and third, the authentication of the record. God may reveal His will to a man; 
or He may reveal to that man some event that will happen in the future and so far it is 
known only to that man. The record is made up either by that man or by somebody 
else, and it makes no difference whatever who does the recording. It makes no 
difference whatever whether the one who recorded it had himself any inspiration at 
all, if you can get inspired authentication of the accuracy of the record afterward. 
The whole question of the Old Testament practically comes before us upon a simple 
question of authentication. Is it authenticated to us? And does this authentication 
declare that it is God’s revealed will, and that the record is accurate, as God had it 
recorded? Do the proofs that authenticate it to us cover the question? With the rest 
of it we need have nothing to do. Indeed, it is wholly unnecessary for the average 
man to consider it. Therefore, we take the Book itself. We find the Book in use at 
that time. We find that it was completed many years before Christ. We find that 
every little Hebrew boy in the land had access in some way to a copy of that Book. 
And it makes no difference who wrote any particular part of this Book.

As a whole, is it by a proper authority authenticated as the Word of God, as the 
standard, the supreme and infallible standard, of human conduct? If one is disposed 
to study the subject twenty-five minutes, he can see that the entire authority of Jesus 
Christ is pledged to the fidelity and accuracy and sufficiency of that Book (I am so 
far discussing the Old Testament), and to reject any part of the Old Testament is to 
reject the authentication of the Son of God. As for myself, it is a small matter with me 
to go back and pick up any part of it in detail and verify any particular part of it. 
“From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures.” and I take it that every one of 
these holy writings is God-inspired – every one of them.?Now, with reference to the New Testament, our Savior declares that He is the Word of God to men; that He comes to make known the way of life, and again His Word, so far as we are concerned, depends upon its authentication. Is it authenticated? He rested the authenticity of all of it on one single fact, on one single sign.

He put the standing or falling of both the Old Testament and the New 
Testament upon one solitary issue – His own resurrection from the dead; that there 
should no sign be given but the sign of the prophet Jonah; that as Jonah was three 
days and nights in the body of the great fish, so the Son of Man should be three days 
and three nights in the earth; and that if Christ be not risen, our faith is vain and we 
are yet in our sins. But if Christ be risen, and if He has ascended into heaven, and is 
at the right hand of the majesty of God, and from that standpoint of absolute and 
universal sovereignty and power, if He has given a proof that authenticates the Book, 
that covers the question of the whole of it without going into any of the details of it. 
Every one of the objections to Biblical inspiration rests on sinking sand, whether 
presented from the standpoint of science, or translation, or variations in texts, or 
certain expressions used in the Book itself that would seem to imply that its human 
authors were not at all times inspired. But I am not on that subject now. Just now I 
stand on the authentication of the entire Book; that it is sacred writing; that it comes 
to us accredited in such a way that we are criminal if we do not receive it in its 
entirety.

Now, I want to make the application. There were men, and there are some millions 
of them living now, who have practically set aside that Book as authority and 
substituted in the place of it mere traditions and reference to it. I could cite here for 
one-half hour declarations of distinguished Jews, some of them when dying, telling 
those about them not to look to the law, but to look to the Talmud, to look to the 
comment on the law, to look to the tradition as better than the law. Then there are 
two hundred million professing Christians in the world today who are averse to 
putting the Book itself in the hands of the people. And I could cite you authentic and 
official so-called infallible declarations from different popes, to the effect that the 
Bible societies, when they put the Word of God in circulation among the peoples of 
Italy and Spain and France, were committing a great sin, and that the people must 
look to the traditions and interpretations of the church and not to the Book itself.

I now come to press home upon your hearts one or two thoughts. First, there is a 
God. Then, touching His character, a good God would reveal to His immortal 
creatures a standard of right and wrong. He would not leave them to grope in 
darkness. There is bound to be, wherever there is moral accountability, a standard 
that measures right and wrong and that standard must be, if it comes from God, an 
infallible standard. You cannot conceive of right and wrong without a law that makes?one thing right and another thing wrong. You cannot even think of a good God – the 
thought is inconceivable – who would leave His moral and accountable creatures 
without a standard of human conduct.

Now, here is the historical fact that I want to impress upon you. Where men have 
turned aside from this Bible standard, they have been utterly at sea as to what is the 
standard. There has been no agreement among them. There have been just as many 
standards as individuals. It is a people without a king, each man following the bent of 
his own inclination.

Take the case of our text. Here was a little boy with that Book before him – that 
authenticated Book. His mother loved him, his grandmother loved him, and they 
believed that it could make him wise unto salvation by faith in the Redeemer it 
discloses. And they taught this boy this Book as the Word of God. He grew up in 
the knowledge of it, and when he got to be a man, he went out into the world and he 
found people who said, “Look here, and look there. I would not go by that Book. 
You take this. Here is something better than that.” Paul said to him: “You remember 
that from a child you studied this Book. You remember from whom it came. You 
remember why it came. Turn away from these men who would call your attention to 
any other standard.”

I know of one man who said to souls under conviction of sin. “Here, leave that; that 
is old. Come to modern Spiritualism. Let us turn away from the love and oracles of 
God and look to the spirits to tell us what is right.” A man, intelligent upon other 
subjects, said, “When I die, that is the last of me. I go out like a candle, and I do not 
live again.” And he is living as if this life were all, as if after death there was no 
judgment. He has turned away his heart from the supreme standard of right and 
wrong – the Word of God.

Why do men turn away? This Book tells us. They become lovers of self. They 
become lovers of money. They become haters of God. They become implacable to 
men. They become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. Their deeds being 
evil, they hated the light of the Bible that shone on those deeds and called them sin, 
and they turned away from the Book, from the standard of right and wrong. 
Now, look at the declaration in that text. Because that Book is God-inspired, every 
bit of it is profitable. There is not a word in it that is not profitable. For what? For 
instruction. You want to know your relations to God and to your fellowmen in this 
world and in the world to come.

A steady and unwavering light shines from that Book on the human heart and on the 
human life, that will give every man instruction as to what he should do, that will?show him what is right and what is wrong, and here is the proof of it – that within 
himself a witness rises up and affirms it. His conscience speaks in attestation of the 
truth of God’s Word, turns away from the lies that have been whispered into his ear 
as a substitute for that Book.

It is profitable for conviction. You have seen illustrations of that during this meeting. 
Men have been going along through this city attending to their business or pleasure 
perfectly unconcerned, absolutely thoughtless with regard to the trend of their 
driftings and of their tendencies and of their moral bearings, and they hear the Word 
of God preached, and all at once they become thoughtful: “Where am I? Where am 
I?” And that Book becomes a discerner of the thoughts and intents of their hearts; 
that Word becomes sharper than a two-edged sword; that Word unjoints their 
bones and cuts into their marrow and penetrates to the very secrets of their souls, 
and they are convicted. And they say, “We are sinners.” They show that they are 
convicted. They tremble under its revelations and by their actions they testify that 
those revelations are from God.

It is profitable for rectification. “How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking 
heed thereto according to Thy Word.” That Word is a straight-edge, laid by the side 
of his crooked conduct to show that it is out of plumb, out of line. That Word, laid 
parallel with his life, reveals the moral discrepancies in his conduct and shows him 
what will conform his life to truth and to righteousness.

That Word is profitable in training, in discipline. Here are feet new to the path of 
righteousness. They have not walked in it much. They are not strong in God and in 
the power of His might. Their spiritual limbs are not yet sturdy, and their muscles 
supple and pliant with power. They do not yet know how to endure, and that Word 
takes them and trains them until they become spiritual athletes in the sight of God. 
But the main point and the last point that I want to bring in on it is this: If you close 
that Book; if you tear out its pages; if you shut out its light, in all the whole universe 
of God there is not revealed a way by which a sinner can be saved, not one in the 
world. To me that is a stupendous fact.

Since being a sinner myself, since my friends are sinners, since my neighbors are 
sinners, and all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, it is to me of 
supreme consideration, where shall there be found a God-inspired and God-authenticated 
method of saving a sinner? Outside of that Book there is none, and there is not a man living, who has intelligently studied the subject, who will say so. In all the literature of this world, sacred or profane, civilized or barbaric, coming from white men, or brown or black men, take away the Bible, and there is not in all the?literature of this world even a glow-worm light on the subject of how a sinner can be saved, not a bit of it.

Take away that Book and there is not even a glow-worm light on the condition of 
the dead – on their eternal destiny. After a profound investigation of the subject, I do 
not hesitate to say that everything in the two or three thousand books that are 
published upon the subject of Spiritualism as a revelation is no more than the clatter 
of apes in a coconut tree on this point.

How shall a sinner be saved? How shall a man whose conscience condemns him and 
who feels that he is under the condemnation of God be justified before God? You go 
to that Book or none. And what does it say? What are its directions? I want to come 
to that in a few words. I want, to put before you the way of life, and I shall take a 
single case – the case of the publican. Here was a man perfectly conscious that he 
was a sinner. He knew it. There were some things that he didn’t know, but upon that 
question he didn’t have the least shadow of a doubt. The question that came to this 
sinner’s heart was: “How can I be justified before God?”

There was a way appointed, and he came to the Temple, and that Temple spoke of a propitiation, of a sacrifice, of the slain, of blood shed on account of the penalty for sins, and he came there and he beat upon his heart and he said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Or, to put his language into English, “God, be propitious to me through a sacrifice. God, 
let Thy mercy reach me through an atonement made by another.” That is a fair 
rendering of the Greek expression that he used, “God be merciful to me”; be 
propitious to me through a sacrifice. And Jesus said that man went down that very 
day justified. He went down acquitted. He went down absolved from his sin, freed 
from its penalty, a man against whom the law had no charge at all.

Today there rush into my mind the memories of men whose faces I have seen when 
they first began to be interested, the first steps that they took, the eagerness with 
which they pressed forward, finally the depths of conviction that came upon them 
when they felt they were lost; and then that sweet and happy transition from 
darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. And they are today 
witnesses of the truth and power of this Book of God as revealing a way of life and 
of salvation.

I have seen the wife, the jewels of tears in her eyes, steal over softly and sit down by 
her husband and look up appealingly into his sin-scarred face, as if she would say, 
“Thou art dearer to me than life, and thou art lost. Oh, come to the fountain of 
cleansing.” And I have seen him start, take her hand, and come up and fall down 
before God, and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” And I have seen the light 
of heaven shine in his eyes when the glorious redemption came to him and he stood?up before all men present and said, “God Almighty, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven 
my sins.”

I have seen fair maidens, against the propriety of whose conduct from a worldly 
standpoint nothing could be said, and who, in worldly parlance, would he called 
innocent, and who were not guilty according to the world’s standards of right and 
wrong, but whose hearts, in the sight of God, were alienated from Him, who did not 
love Him, who loved pleasure more than they loved God; who did not worship Him; 
who, if they worshiped Him at all, worshiped Him only in an empty form and denied 
the power, the vital and eternal and spiritual power, of religion. And I have seen 
them, under sharp conviction of sin, seek for mercy and find peace in the Lord Jesus 
Christ.

I have seen Christians who, with this perfect standard of life and conduct as their 
guide, had deflected from it; went away from it into irregularities; went into 
dissipation; departed from the true and the living God, and lived by day and by night 
contrary to His expressed precepts. And I have seen this Word, under the power of 
the Spirit who inspired it, reconvict them and bring them with tears to confess their 
sins and to forsake their sins, and to turn back to the fountain of truth and 
righteousness, to light, and peace, and holiness.

What more do you want? What kind of a standard do you ask? By what standard of 
right and wrong will you regulate your life? By what forecast of the future will you 
outline your own destiny? Unto what oracle will you go to receive the truth 
concerning the realms that lie in the outskirts of darkness beyond the grave? What 
will they tell you? What have they to offer you? O Book of God – God-inspired 
Book – precious volume! All thy words are power, those infallible oracles, those 
living oracles of God to men! It makes my soul shudder within me when I hear any 
man speak slightingly of God’s revealed will.

There are some here today upon whose hearts and consciences I want to impress 
repentance or impending doom. I have always, throughout my life, even in the days 
of my dark rebellion against God, had an admiration for men of decision, for men 
who were not reeds shaken by the wind; for men of action; for men who would not 
be influenced in vital concerns by that most trifling of all shifting clouds, the influence 
of other people; but upon personal conviction, when the individual soul is confronted 
with a question of right or wrong, under responsibility to God, and under the ‘ light of 
His eye, and under the determination to be the arbiter, the sole person who should 
settle the question that pertained to self, would take the step, and take it regardless 
of time and circumstances and people.?I would always rather preach to people in the daytime than at night.

I would rather preach to them when there is the least suspicion of undue influence operating upon their minds; when you can look right into their eyes and they can look right into yours; and when the question presented is one whose important bearings they can recognize, and in the light of God’s bright day stand up and say, “Here I am. I take my stand. I follow that Book. You show me in that Book what I am to do and I will do it. I am no child. I am no straw, taken up by the west wind and carried east, and 
by the east wind and carried west. But with full purpose of heart, and because it is 
right in the sight of God and eternity, I say I want to be saved. I want to be 
reconciled to God. I know I am a sinner. I don’t need any argument on that point, 
but how shall I get right? How shall I realize in my own lost soul that God loves me 
and that my soul is precious in His sight?”

Well, I shall tell you the way. It is to come directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. Come to 
Him face to face. I do not pretend to put Him before you here in the flesh, but I do 
say to you today that He is here in the Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that 
He is sensibly here, and that His power is here, and that if you will come to Him as 
your mind sees Him, as your soul recognizes Him, and say, “Lord Jesus Christ, I am 
here according to thy Word, a lost sinner. I come on Your invitation. I come on 
Your promise that if I would come You would not cast me out; I come right to You, 
and I say, ‘Help, help, Lord, for I perish.’” He will save your soul this day.

O sinner, sinner, if you would know the things that make for you great peace; if you 
will, today, make one earnest, straightforward, honest effort to come to the Son of 
God for light, I pledge you my honor you will find it. Will you come? Sinner, turn; 
why will you die? Separate yourselves from the throng that shuts you in. MOVE! 
The law of motion is the law of life. Stir up your minds. Stagnation is death. Rouse 
your energies and exert your powers to overcome the inertia of long rest in sin. 
Break away from restraints. Throw off the stupor of irresolution. Convert inaction 
into movement. It is thy salvation; seek it. It is thy promise; claim it. It is thy door of 
escape; knock, knock, now; knock loudly and escape for thy life. “Whosoever shall 
call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

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About The Author

Benajah Harvey Carroll was born in Mississippi and raised in Texas. He was a soldier for the Confederate army. In 1865, at the age of twenty two, he converted to Christianity at a Methodist camp meeting after taking up a preacher's challenge to experiment with Christianity. After the war, he was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Waco and later the founder of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, still the largest seminary in the world. He was a powerful leader of the Southern Baptist Convention and was a formidable foe in the political controversies that often arose. He almost always found himself on the conservative side of such issues. He was mildly Calvinistic and a postmillieniallst. He stood strongly against Modernism and Catholicism. He believed that preaching was the essence of the pastor's duty; he was an expositor in the truest sense. He believed in the authority and the inspiration of the Bible first and foremost. He criticized and chided the "Higher Criticism" teachers as being false brethren. Carroll published 33 volumes of works, and is best known for his 17-volume commentary, An Interpretation of the English Bible. Benajah Harvey Carroll died November 11, 1914, and is buried at the Oakwood Cemetery in Waco, Texas.

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