Bible Think
Evidence that the Bible is Inspired by God
The Bible claims to be more than an accurate history. It makes claim to be a message from the Creator of the Universe. Such claims are extraordinary and require evidence to support them. There are several directions from which this evidence can come.
Fulfilled Prophecy
One kind of evidence of inspiration is that the Bible contains information which could not have been available to human beings by ordinary processes. Among these is knowledge of the future. The Bible contains predictions of events which were future at the time they were written but which have since happened. Many of the predictions in the Bible were fulfilled only shortly after they were written; these were of importance at the time that the prophets wrote, but provide little proof nowadays because of the difficulty of showing the date at which they were given. However, the Bible also contains long-term predictions, mainly about the history of the nation of Israel. These long-term predictions are important evidence.
Scientific Statements
The oldest parts of the Bible were written in the Middle Bronze Age and the most recent parts were written during the early Roman Empire. The understanding of nature of the different writers of the Bible would be much different from a modern understanding of the way the universe works. The Bible is written in a manner which was comprehensible to a Bronze Age farmer but which is not obviously wrong to a modern scientist. No other ancient book manages to do this. How could the writers of the Bible know what scientific discoveries would be made many centuries later?
Harmony of Message
The Bible was written over a matter of some 1400 years. There were over 35 different writers. These came from a wide range of background; among them were: peasant farmers, kings, fishermen, a tax collector, scholars and civil servants. They wrote in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. An equivalent project to producing a book like the Bible would have been to write a book with a collection of writers from dark-ages chieftains to modern scientists, including a wide variety of backgrounds.
In spite of these problems the Bible has a single message, both in general terms and in specific detail. The same picture of God, of life after death, of human nature and of future hope are found throughout. This indicates a guiding intelligence who could control the writing over many centuries, many backgrounds and many thousands of miles. Only God could do this.
The Witness of Jesus
Jesus Christ was far more than a prophet, but among the other things he was, he was certainly a prophet with a message from God. One of the unusual things about Jesus is that one can show that he is authoritative without having to rely on the Bible to do so (see pages on Jesus). However, it is very clear that Jesus described the Old Testament as a message from God, not once but over and over again. The most telling statement is “He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’” (Luke 16:31). Thus, if one accepts that Jesus had authority from God for his teaching one must accept that the Old Testament is inspired by God.
Jesus also promised his disciples that they would receive the Spirit from God. This was to show them what to teach and to say. The Apostles wrote the New Testament. The witness of Jesus is that there would be spirit-inspired people to write the New Testament and to decide whether those who wrote records should be considered as inspired and authoritative. Thus Jesus underwrites both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
What it Means
The fact that the Bible is a message from God means that it is a book that deserves attention. However, it doesn’t mean that any organisation that claims to interpret the Bible has any special position. It is up to us to read the Bible and understand its message for ourselves.
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