1. Apologies, ma'am.
2. I believe it is by the word of God and the testimony of the saints that people are saved. That's what the Bible tells me.
I believe that God knows also how to soften the heart of certain individuals in order to get them to accept the testimony of the saints and to believe in Jesus Christ.
3. True. False religion was a bigger issue in Jesus' day. But He did refer to the gentile pagans as "heathen".
So, there were heathen gentiles having homosexual orgies and killing people(including his own), yet Jesus still felt as though the legalistic, controlling pharisees were more important of a matter to deal with? Yes, that's very telling, I agree.
4. I need no reason outside the Bible to believe the Bible is inerrant. I believe what the Bible says. And the Holy Spirit in my heart testifies to what is written. Even logic dictates to me that God preserves His word.
1a. With this reasoning, you'd have almost no chance converting a Muslim who thinks the same way and making them believe the Quran is not the divine, written word of God.
1b. It seems as though the 'holy spirit' you're referring to(as I call into question if it is the real deal or not), according to our many denominations and sects of Abrahamic belief systems, have either been telling people wildly different things, or these people are being swayed by something that is NOT of God.
5. Just google "2011 NIV gender-neutral" and you'll see. Not to mention that the NIV is based on manuscripts that leave out a lot of verses. I don't consider the NIV the word of God. Sorry if I made you ill.
I'm no scholar, but from what I've read the 'gender-neutral' nonsense you've been referring to is actually more accurate to the original manuscripts in most cases. A lot of the times when the bible would say things like 'mankind', 'his' or 'men', it was referring to the human race as a whole(likely all stemming from the 'mankind' term, which is not gender specifically obviously). I don't know how the original language worked exactly, but it's just word semantics and not propaganda. Furthermore, I don't see why one would be upset about it; someone could easily read a more 'man-heavy' translation and assume the commands only apply to men when they obviously do not.
Yes I do have a lot of hate and anger towards false doctrine and attacks on God's word and sovereignty. As I've said, the problem with scholarly research is that it comes at it from a naturalistic point of view. It rejects even the possibility of God's involvement in bringing about the scriptures. They won't consider: divine inspiration, biblical inerrancy/original authorship (in lieu of missing autographs), prophecies being written beforehand and not after the fact, etc. They approach the research from a purely naturalistic mindset. So I don't believe anything they have to say regarding dates or authorship or anything. I believe in a sovereign God; I believe that the Holy Spirit was involved in the bringing about of God's word. I believe the scriptures were God breathed and that God Himself preserved His word. And with that consideration, I am in no way bound to the scholarly consensus.
There are a lot of Christians who claim a lot of things are from God, which totally contradicts the current bible. How do you plan on telling a Muslim that the Quran is not the word of God? How do you reconcile the Christian denominations such as catholicism and orthodoxy which have books in the biblical canon that we do not? Oh right, we consult history because if we just assumed that anything claiming to be 'God's word' was real, our bible would be a mess.
I believe God will preserve his words--I don't know about scripture. Nowhere in the bible does it say you need to read scripture to be a Christian, but what it does say is to believe in Jesus Christ and follow his commands if you want to be saved. Jesus Christ IS God's word, that I know for sure.
In any case, I also have no problems with people assessing scripture from 'naturalistic' means; or do you forget that God is still God of the 'naturalistic' too, and that his work is present in everything?