Christianity is based upon a book

Christianity is based on a book. It centres in a Person. It expresses itself in a message. It authenticates itself in an experience.

That basic book is the Bible. That central Person is Jesus.

That expressive message is the Gospel. That authenticating experience is the new birth.

Think here about that basic book. Christianity stands or falls with the Bible. It is no use saying, as the liberalists or modernists do, that so long as we have Jesus we do not need an infallibly inspired Bible.

Nay, all that we know authentically about the Lord Jesus we owe, and shall keep on owing, to the Bible. To say that so long as we have Jesus we do not need the Bible is about equal to saying that so long as we have the sunshine we don't need the sun.

I have said it many a time, and am surer of it than ever, that the life and death issue of Christianity is the inspiration and authority of the Bible.

If the Bible is uniquely and inerrantly inspired, then we have certainty; we may know real truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, and about human destiny on the other side of the grave But if the Bible is not the uniquely and inerrantly inspired Word of God, then (let us be blunt) we do not have certified truth about God, about man, about origins, about morals, about the race's future, or about human destiny in the hereafter: we are only groping.

If the Bible is provenly inspired by the divine Spirit, then Christian theology is truly a science, for by it we may truly "know". But if the Bible is anything less than provably inspired, then Christian theology instead of being "the queen of the sciences", is merely religious philosophy and human speculation.

― J. Sidlow Baxter (1903-1999, Our Bible: The Most Critical Issue).