Honest question for everyone here. There was a stretch where I kept hearing the Bible was just stories people made up, and it shook me more than I wanted to admit. What helped me was actually reading it slowly and seeing how it held together, plus a few older believers who let me ask hard questions without judging me. Isaiah 40:8 kept coming back to me: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” Have you ever wrestled with whether you can trust Scripture? What helped you, or what are you still unsure about?
I have never doubted that the Bible always tells the truth.
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That’s a solid place to stand, Bob. Was there a verse or moment that settled it for you early on? Mine was Psalm 119:105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” It got me through the days I couldn’t see far ahead.
I can’t remember how it came to pass. I’ve always believed God is perfect and the Bible doesn’t lie. Perhaps I learned it in Sunday School as a boy.
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That kind of steady faith from childhood is a gift, Bob. Sunday school stuff sticks for a reason. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6.
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If God is real at all (and He is), then the Bible is going to be 100%true.God is not going to put us here and then not give us instruction.
We’ll stand before Jesus one day and He might say: So did you read my book to you?
You: Well some guy said it was not reliable.
God: So you didn’t read it for yourself? I never knew you…
Everything we need to know about God and about spiritual principles is in that book. Instead of questioning how reliable it is, you’d do better to assume it is 100% reliable and the only way to find out is to open it and read it for yourself. We get to know about God through reading His Word. God gets to know about us when we pray to Him. You can probably never find God without reading His Word.
Thanks Edward, I agree that reading it for yourself is the part that changes things. Nobody can do that step for you. For me it was just sitting down with one book at a time and letting it speak instead of the noise around it. 2 Timothy 3:16 says “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Which book would you point someone to first?
The Gospel of John in the NT. There’s lots of action, promises, and words to live by in it. From there I suggest starting at Genesis and reading it straight though. I do it every year by reading 3 chapters a day. I’ve done that for the past 7 years now except for it felt like it was going to slow for me and wasn’t enough each day so I started reading 6 chapters a day! I’m up to 1 Samuel of next years reading now. I finished this years reading a couple months ago? It does get easier to understand the more you read it and that’s the Holy Spirit revealing spiritual truths as you read it. Faith grow when you read the Word!
Isaiah 53, Romans and Ephesians.
I’ll never forget my amazement when I studied Isaiah in Hebrew and began to grasp what the Messiah endured in our place.
My 2 cents.
J.
I guess way back when I knew nothing. I guess it was more that I knew nothing than that I doubted it. However, if you look into it, there can be no doubt. As I think we have talked about here before, one of the easiest ways to disprove the Bible is also one of the easiest ways to prove the Bible is the Truth. There are 1,239 prophecies in the Old Testament and 578 prophecies in the New Testament for a total of 1,817. This is according to “The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy” by J. Barton Payne.
If the Bible makes all these predictions, and even some are proven false, then the Bible is indeed false. However, if the Bible makes all these predictions, and some 26 percent of the total Bible is made up of prophecies, then predictions that have been proven correct prove the Bible true. Here are some examples.
In Ezekiel 26:3–14 (written c. 6th century BCE), Ezekiel prophesied that many nations would come against Tyre, and its walls and towers would be broken down. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon besieged the mainland city of Tyre for 13 years (586–573 BCE), destroying the mainland settlement.
The Prediction: In Daniel 2 and Daniel 8 (written c. 6th century BCE), Daniel described a succession of world empires represented by a multi-metal statue and symbolic beasts:
Gold / Lion (Babylon)
Silver / Bear (Medo-Persia)
Bronze / Leopard (Greece)
Iron / Terrifying Beast (Rome)
Daniel 8 specifically named Persia and Greece (Javan), predicting that the King of Greece would conquer Persia, but upon his peak power, his kingdom would be broken into four smaller realms.
The Fulfillment:
The Neo-Babylonian Empire fell to the Medo-Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE.
Alexander the Great of Greece conquered the Persian Empire in 334–330 BCE.
Following Alexander’s sudden death in 323 BCE, his empire was split among four of his generals (the Diadochi): Seleucus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Cassander.
Ezekiel 36:24 and Isaiah 11:11–12 foretold a future regathering of the Jewish nation back to their ancestral land. Oh, in one day. The Jewish diaspora occurred across centuries following the Babylonian exile and Roman destruction in 70 CE / 135 CE. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, culminating in the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jewish people returned to the region from nations around the world. In one day.
Jesus, Isaiah 53. A perfect picture of Jesus’ birth, life, and death, hundreds of years before He was even born.
Remember that the Bible was written by about 40 different human authors over roughly 1,500 years (c. 1400 BCE to 90–100 CE). The human writers came from various backgrounds, locations, occupations, and life circumstances. Three languages were used: Hebrew (most of the Old Testament). Aramaic: Small portions of Daniel, Ezra, and a few phrases in the New Testament.Greek (Koine): The entire New Testament.
The text was written across three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. It originated in various locations, including royal palaces, wilderness deserts, Roman dungeons, and the island of Patmos. Despite the authors never meeting, the result is a flawless work. Continuous, cohesive, and harmonious, delivering a unified message.
Be blessed, be a blessing.
Peter
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