Since I began talking to anybody and everybody about their faith, I have run across many who don't believe in God or the Bible at all, and others who aren't sure if it's all true and question the authenticity of the actual Bible. This blog is for you as well as for others who are trying to be bold in their faith and have been confronted with the question: "How do you know the Bible is true?"
There are many ways to know that the Bible is the Word of God. For example, it has amazing continuity. If you take any biblical theme (for example, the subject of "blood") and follow it from the Old Testament into the New Testament, you will find incredible continuity and harmony, even though the Scriptures were written over a period of 1,500 years by about 40 different people from all walks of life.
Or if you study the nature of the Creator - that He is perfect, holy, just, and good - you will find the same consistency throughout the Scriptures. This is because the Bible was written by one Author - GOD, who used men to write His words to mankind, just as you would use a pen to write a letter.
You can also know that the Bible is the Word of God because of its hundreds of fulfilled prophecies. Unlike other books, the Bible offeres a multitude of detailed predictions - some thousands of years in advance - that have been literally fulfilled. No other religious text has specific, repeated, and unfailing fulfillment of predictions many years in advance of events over which the predictor had no control.
The Scriptures predicted the rise and fall of great empires, foretold the destruction of cities, and prophesied of the reign and death of national leaders. Even more important are the many prophecies of a coming Messiah. God said He would send someone to redeem mankind from sin, and He wanted there to be no mistake about who that Person would be. There are over three hundred prophecies that tell of the ancestry, birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth. All have been literally fulfilled to the smallest detail. Only one who is omniscient can accurately predict details of events thousands of years in the future. God provided this evidence for us so we could know that the Scriptures have a divine Author. In all, over 25 percent of the entire Bible contains specific predictive prophecies that have been literally fulfilled. This is true of no other book in the world. And it is a sure sign of the divine origin.
In addition, archaelogical evidence attests to the accuracy of the Scriptures. There have been over 25,000 arcaelogical finds that relate to people, places, and events in the Bible, and not one has ever refuted a biblical statement. The Bible is not only historically true, but it gives a purpose for history. History is not merely a series of unrelated events. The Bible tells us the beginning and shows a progression to an end, and promises that the world in which we live, with all its corruption, will one day be made into a new world without sin.
However, there is another way to know that the Bible is the Word of God. It speaks to the experience of the Christian.
Imagine if you were given a dry, complicated instruction book that didn't make much sense to you. Then someone gave you a very complex appliance that you had no idea how to operate.
You wondered if the instruction book was made by the appliance manufacturer, so you opened it with that in mind. It said to plug the appliance into an electrical outlet, and then to adjust three switches on the left, and a red light would come on. When you flicked the three switches, the red light came on.
If gave you fifteen more instructions, which you diligently carried out. You then flicked the main switch, a blue light came on, as it said it should, and the appliance turned on and ran perfectly. Your experience proved to you thtat the instruction book in your hand was for the complex appliance.
You are the complex appliance, and the Bible is your instruction Book. Do what it says and you will experience that it was indeed written by the Manufacturer (AKA the Creator - God).
~WOTM
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