Our God-Breathed Book: The Bible

by John R. Rice

The apparent conflict between Christ's deity and humanity was fought out years ago, so that now Bible believers all accept the fact that Christ was perfectly human, yet without a trace of sin or a limitation of His deity. The similar paradox of the eternal perfection of the Word of God, "settled forever in heaven," yet given in human words through human personalities, has not been so well explained and thought out. We believe that here Dr. Rice has gone further in clearing up this matter than has before been done. The teaching agrees closely with that of Gaussen, Warfield, Harris and Young. Here you will find the truth, witnessed by devoted and learned Bible scholars Charles Feinberg, R. Laird Harris and S. Maxwell Coder, as well as other trusted fundamental scholars, that the Bible was settled in God's mind in every detail before written down on earth and that God prepared the men who wrote--Isaiah is "a polished shaft," for example (Isa. 49:2)--and that God even prepared and controlled the environment and character and feeling of the writers so that they wrote down God's revelation in His inspired words. Here the Bible's clear claim to being God-breathed, perfect, eternal, is expounded; the greatest Bible expositors and authors on inspiration are quoted, questions are answered, fallacies explained, all with a holy devotion to Christ and to the Bible as the very Word of God. There has been a great need for a scholarly, thoroughly trustworthy exposition of what the Bible claims for its own inerrant, authoritative inspiration recorded in God-breathed words. Here, evangelical faith and scholarship combine with evangelistic warmth and crystal clear, flowing language. This is the documented result of forty-eight years of Bible teaching, preaching and writing, followed by monumental labor to prepare this volume. We believe the book will prove itself an indispensable classic setting the standard for Bible believers for years to come.

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Hardcover, 416 pages

Published August 28th 2000 by Sword of the Lord (first published August 2000)

tags: theology, religion

John R. Rice

John R. Rice (1895 - 1980)

Was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper. Rice believed that the mission of churches was "not to take care of Christians" but to "win souls," a notion his mostly lower-middle-class church members did not wholeheartedly endorse. When Rice spent more time away from his pulpit to hold revivals elsewhere, a supply pastor and his supporters staged a coup. Rice decided to reenter evangelism. Yet before he did so, he encouraged the church to change its name from Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle to Galilean Baptist Church, thus distinguishing his ministry and that of the church from J. Frank Norris.

In 1934, Rice founded The Sword of the Lord, a bi-weekly publication that grew into an influential fundamentalist Baptist newspaper. At first it was simply the publication of his Dallas church, handed out on the street and delivered door-to-door by Rice's daughters and other Sunday School children. The Sword's circulation grew dramatically. It was thirty thousand in 1940, fifty thousand in 1946, and ninety thousand in 1953, surpassing the circulation of the venerable Moody Monthly. Rice regularly published reports from evangelistic campaigns that became valuable publicity tools for approved revivalists. In 1946, he and other prominent evangelists adopted a code of ethics and a statement of faith to prevent "evangelists from being unduly criticized for commercialism and unethical practices." The same year Bob Jones College conferred on him an honorary Litt. D. degree.

John Richard Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas, on December 11, 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie Elizabeth LaPrade Rice. Educated at Decatur Baptist College and Baylor University, he did graduate work at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago.

Although Dr. Rice served as pastor of Baptist churches in Dallas and Shamrock, Texas, in addition to starting about a dozen others from his successful independent crusades, his primary work was as an evangelist. He had been a friend and peer of Billy and Ma Sunday, Bob Jones Sr., W.B. Riley, Homer Rodeheaver, H.A. Ironside, Robert G. Lee, Harry Rimmer, and other leaders of that era. He himself held huge citywide crusades in Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, Seattle, and numerous other key metropolitan centers.

Dr. Rice authored more than 200 books and booklets, circulating in excess of 60,000,000 copies before his death--about a dozen of which were translated into at least 35 foreign languages. His sermon booklet, What Must I Do to Be Saved?, had been distributed in over 32,000,000 copies in English alone--8,500,000 in Japanese, and nearly 2,000,000 in Spanish.

In 1934 he launched The Sword of the Lord, which, by the time of his death, had become the largest independent religious weekly in the world, with subscribers in every state of the union, and more than 100 foreign countries. Thousands of preachers read it regularly, and it undoubtedly had the greatest impact on the fundamentalist movement of any publication in the 20th century.

Rice was a Baptist evangelist and pastor and the founding editor of The Sword of the Lord, an influential fundamentalist newspaper.

Rice was born in Cooke County, Texas in 1895, the son of William H. and Sallie Elizabeth La Prade Rice, and the oldest of three brothers. The death of John R. Rice's mother when he was was six years old left a lasting mark on the man.

Rice did not complete his seminary course but in 1923, took a position as the assistant pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Plainview, Texas. The following year he became senior pastor in Shamrock, Texas, an oil boomtown; but in 1926 he left the pastorate for evanglism. Settling in Fort Worth, he became an unofficial associate of the flamboyant and authoritarian fundamentalist J. Frank Norris, pastor of First Baptist Church, who was preparing to leave the Southern Baptist Convention. Rice himself broke with the Southern Baptists in 1927.

During the next few years, Rice held a series of successful revivals in Texas that were promoted by Norris. Rice made converts during his campaigns and then organized the new Christians into at least a half-dozen churches with the name "Fundamentalist Baptist."

In July 1932, Rice held an open-air evangelistic campaign in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas and hundreds made professions of faith. There Rice organized the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle of Dallas; but instead of moving on, he pastored the church for more than seven years.

Rice believed that the mission of churches was "not to take care of Christians" but to "win souls."

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