How do we know the Bible is true?

The question is this: "How are we to know that the book which we call the Bible is the word of God?" Our answer to this question is very simple. It is this: the One who has graciously given us the blessed book can also give us the certainty that the book is from Him. The same Spirit who inspired the various writers of the holy Scriptures can make us know that those Scriptures are the very voice of God speaking to us... If the Holy Spirit does not make us know and give us the certainty that the Bible is the word of God, no man or body of men can possibly do it; and on the other hand, if He does give us the blessed certainty, we do not need the testimony of man.

To believe in holy Scripture because it comes to us accredited by any authority on earth would be to set that authority above holy Scripture, since the thing that guarantees has more weight, more value, than the thing guaranteed. So we should no more think of looking to human authority to confirm the word of God than of bringing out a small candle to prove that the sun is shining.

But it is by its acting on his heart and conscience, and revealing God to him, that he knows it. I know what a knife is when it cuts me, and honey when I taste its sweetness. It is not a matter of proof. The word acts through grace on the soul, and I am conscious of its actings from God as sharper than any two-edged sword, and I find all things naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom I have to do, and that is God. So I know it is His word, His eye on me.

And do we not have here a very complete answer to the often-raised question of unbelief, "How do we know that the Bible is the word of God?" If we truly believe in Christ, if we own Him to be the Son of God, God revealed in the flesh, truly God and truly man, we cannot fail to see the moral force of the fact that this divine Person constantly appeals to the Scriptures — to Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms — as to a divine standard. Did He not know them to be the word of God? Undoubtedly. As God, He had given them; as Man, He received them, lived by them, and owned their supreme authority in all things.

If a friend handed us a huge volume of sixty-six books, written by between thirty and forty people, at different times, spread over fifteen hundred years, and said, "In spite of all their differences there is a remarkable unity throughout," would we not be astonished? As a matter of fact there is no such book as the Bible in this respect; nor could there be, unless everything it contained had been written under the guidance of One mind, and its communications throughout given by the One Spirit.

There is no book in the world that can boast of — or that even claims to have — anything comparable in the way of fulfilled prophecy. The precision and number of fulfilled biblical prophecies can leave no doubt in any honest mind. Biblical prophecy has been fulfilled, and the future part will be.

Many rationalists say they cannot believe the Bible because of the many difficulties in the word. On the contrary, I say I would be very surprised indeed to find no difficulties. The Author is divine, I am only human — can I be expected to understand everything?... If I do not understand a passage, let me say that its meaning is doubtful to me, not that the meaning itself is doubtful, and then wait on God to teach me its meaning.

The moral state of the soul, the single eye, is the means of receiving and intelligently discerning the teaching that came from the Father. The conscience is open, the heart quite ready to receive the truth... Such a man discerns what is of God when God speaks. It is not reasoning that convinces the mind; reasoning never convinces the will. But where the desire is there, God adapts His teaching to the needs and heart of man.