Questions about the Bible: 1. Why do you believe the Bible?
Why do you believe the Bible?
Before I started to read the Bible for myself I am not sure I did believe it. I had heard it read in Church, and even in school assemblies, but it wasn’t until I actually opened it and read it for myself that its truth was revealed to me. I started in John’s Gospel, which is a record of Jesus’ life. It, or rather God through it, spoke to me as I read. It was as though Jesus walked off the pages and introduced Himself to me.
The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books, which are found in two sections, the Old and the New Testaments, bound together in one volume. As a whole it was written over a period of 1550 years by around 40 different authors from different backgrounds and situations. Despite this great variety and the long period in which it was written, there is total unity and consistency within it. Each author writes of humanity’s ruin through sin, and God’s remedy and rescue through Jesus. Jesus brings forgiveness, and the Holy Spirit brings new life to those who believe.
Imagine today trying to bring together a volume of over 40 authors who have written since 500 AD or so – what strongly varying ideas and contradictions there would be. This isn’t the case with the Bible – there is no contradiction in thought or theme. The first section in the Bible is the Old Testament. It looks forward to the coming of Jesus. The New Testament records Jesus’ arrival
on earth as a man, traces His life, death and resurrection, then His impact and ultimate reign on earth.
Time and again the Old Testament foretells, in minute and specific detail, the events of the future, which we then see in the New Testament. This is not done in a weird fortune-teller type of way, but rather pinpoints prophecies that we see come into reality, just as they were predicted, in the New Testament.
For example: execution by crucifixion was devised in around 300BC. However around 700BC Isaiah, a prophet, and before him around 1000BC, King David, both describe how One was coming who would die by crucifixion. Their description of the forthcoming events leave the reader who knows about Jesus, in no doubt that this is prophesying His death. They not only say how He will die, but also tell of the circumstances surrounding the events that day. They say His clothes would be gambled for; He would be sold for 30 pieces of silver; He would die a poor man’s death in the prime of His life; be crucified between two thieves; buried in a rich man’s tomb; His hands, feet and side would be pierced and yet His bones wouldn’t be broken; that as He died He would take the sin of the world upon Himself; and that He would rise from the dead after three days.
These predictions are in so much detail, and there are so many of them, that this is no coincidence. God leaves nothing to chance. Instead God is in total control, and not subject to time, so He can, through the Bible, speak of what will happen. Only God can see the future and specifically and accurately write it down, as it will happen.
The Bible has God’s imprint all over it. Like a crime scene that is smothered with the criminal’s fingerprints, so it is with the Bible – it has God’s prints throughout it.
Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated through this book’.
Go to: Do you believe everything which is in the Bible?
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