How Can I Be Sure the Bible is God’s Word?

The Bible stands unique among the religious writings of the world, and it’s more than a simple matter of the Christian’s opinion.  The following points will briefly outline the major reasons why the Bible alone is recognized as God’s unique and reliable communication to man, as opposed to men simply writing about God.

God worked through human authors to give His special message to mankind.

As Peter said in his second letter, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21, NIV, emphasis mine).  In the Old Testament, historians, leaders, and prophets wrote down their experiences with God and the predictions of future events that He wanted communicated to His people throughout history.  In the New Testament, eyewitnesses told the story of Jesus, and His Apostles clarified the foundational teachings of Christ and foretold the events surrounding Christ’s return.  All these authors wrote from their own experience and used their own distinctive writing style, but God used those qualities to communicate exactly what He wanted written.  We can say that the Bible was inerrant in its original manuscripts because God, who does not make mistakes, superintended its writing and communicated its content to and through the human authors.

It communicates a unified message from Genesis to Revelation.

The Bible isn’t a single book, but rather a collection of sixty-six books written by over forty different authors from all walks of life over a period of 1,500 years.  Even so, the writers spoke with harmony, continuity, and unity the single unfolding story of God’s love for and redemption of mankind.[1]  Most religious writings abound with internal contradictions or change their doctrine (or teaching) over time.  The overarching nature of and unwavering commitment to the salvation message found in the Bible indicates a divine hand directing its writing.

Its message has survived intact after nearly 2,000 years of scrutiny, scorn, and attempts to silence it.

The Bible’s Old Testament—the Hebrew Law and Prophets—has been passed down in writing for over 3,500 years.  Its accuracy is assured through a detailed set of copyists’ rules meant to preserve the text from inadvertent or intentional error.[2]  The accuracy of transmission maintained by this discipline is evidenced by the remarkable correspondence between the oldest extant manuscripts (approximately 500 BC) and the newest (approximately 1500 AD).[3]  The New Testament has over 5,300 manuscripts and manuscript fragments to support it.  From this manuscript evidence, we can be more confident in the accuracy of the New Testament than in any other ancient literary work, including Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the histories of Julius Caesar, and the collected works of Plato and Aristotle. Taken together, the solid manuscript evidence of the Old and New Testaments allow us to say that we know what the original Biblical manuscripts contained, even though the actual original manuscripts themselves (called the autographa) no longer exist. As Norman Geisler quotes Sir Frederic Kenyon, “The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”[4] 

It uncompromisingly answers the big questions of life.

The Bible offers consistent and coherent answers to the big questions of life, including:

• Where did the universe come from?
• Why does evil and suffering exist?
• Why was I created?
• What happens when I die?
• How can I be sure I’ll go to heaven when I die?

The Bible answers these questions without simply explaining them away, offering hope and assurance where other religious writings and systems can offer only fear and doubt.  Its answers speak with an authority that only an omniscient God can legitimately offer.

Its historical accuracy has been proved through the science of archaeology.

If we are to trust that the Bible is true in its spiritual details, then it should also be true in its historical details.  The history of the Bible has been thoroughly explored by both Christian and secular scholars and has been proved accurate on every occasion.  For instance, the historical accuracy of the Gospel of Luke, once considered highly questionable, has been vindicated as amazingly accurate through successive archaeological finds.[5]  The work of secular historians such as Tacitus, Josephus, and Eusebius also corroborate specific historical details in the Bible, including specific information on the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Its message has transformed countless lives for the better.

The message of the Bible stands above other religious writings in that it has a proven track record for changing lives.  For example:

• It called a quiet shoe salesman named Dwight L. Moody into dynamic and successful evangelism ministry.
• It led young women such as Dana Curry and Heather Mercer into missionary work in the repressive and life-threatening environment of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
• It turned a Royal Navy deserter and later slave-ship captain into the autobiographical author of one of the most recognized Christian hymns, “Amazing Grace.”

While some religious writings turn a person’s focus inward, the Bible teaches its adherents to look upward for forgiveness of sin and for allegiance to God, and then to look outward and live out the love of Jesus in their interactions with others.

It records specific predictions of hundreds of future events that have been literally fulfilled.

“Unlike any other book, the Bible offers a multitude of specific predictions—some, hundreds of years in advance—that have been literally fulfilled or else point to a definite future time when they will come true….  If an omniscient God exists who knows the future, then predictive prophecy is possible….  And if the Bible contains such predictions, then they are a sign of the Bible’s divine origin.” [6]  Some have charged that the prophecies were inserted into the Bible after the fact because they are so precise in their fulfillment.  For example, there were more than 300 prophecies relating to the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  If only 48 of these prophecies were fulfilled by chance, the odds would be 1 in 10¹⁵⁷ (1 followed by 157 zeroes).  In other words, fulfilling these prophecies by accident is statistically impossible.[7]

If the Bible isn’t God’s word, how else could we have received it?

Given the accuracy of its predictive prophecies, its consistent, life-transforming message, its direct answers to the big questions in life, and its survival despite attempts to destroy it, is there any other reasonable explanation for these qualities of the Bible?  If so, the explanation would have to satisfactorily answer all the points we’ve examined.  For example, one cannot answer the existence of predictive prophecy by stating that all prophecies were added after the fact because the dating of manuscript evidence places the writing of the prophecies before their actual fulfillment.  When all such explanations for the origin of the scriptures have been considered, the best explanation remains that "men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21, NIV).

This article just brushes the surface of the information available about the trustworthiness of the Bible.  If you are interested in additional resources on this topic, we suggest:

• Geisler, Norman L.  The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.
• McDowell, Josh.  The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
• McDowell, Josh.  More Than a Carpenter.
• Sproul, R.C.  Reason to Believe.