How do we know the Old Testament is true?

At the close of Luke's Gospel we have the Lord Jesus setting the seal of His divine approbation on the Old Testament Scriptures, when He said to His disciples, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory." Having thus admonished His disciples, He began "at Moses and all the prophets," and "expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (Luke 24:25-27). In verse 44 of the same chapter the Lord Jesus with His divine authority shows that all the Old Testament is inspired, where He says, "These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me."

If in life our Lord emphatically endorsed the writings of Moses as concerning Himself, if He quoted the Psalms of David as the Holy Ghost's testimony of Himself, and referred to the prophets as also having reference to Himself, the same was equally characteristic of His ministry to His disciples after He rose from the dead. He assured some that their mistake and folly arose from not believing all that the prophets had spoken, and He showed them that He Himself was the great subject of Old Testament revelation and ministry; for "beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." On another occasion He also said unto His disciples, "that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning Me." (Luke 24) Thus He not only authenticates the Old Testament writings as a whole, but assures us that their ministry is concerning Himself.

Let us now see what the New Testament teaches. What was it caused the Sadducees to err? They knew not the scriptures. What did the Lord quote to enlighten the two disciples of Emmaus? Moses and all the prophets. And what did He quote to the twelve? The law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, that is, the entire scriptures of the Old Testament, according to the Jewish division of them, as we possess them now. To the Lord these were authority. He founds His teaching upon them. Then He opened their understanding that they might understand the scriptures (Luke 24), which would have been perfectly incredible and unintelligent had the scriptures not been the word of God. Would God give by divine power a special understanding to understand a human-given statement, which was as correct as its author could possibly render it from such information as he had been able to obtain? or is there a divine revelation for the Jew, and no divine revelation for the Christian in respect of the accomplishment of the truth as it is in Christ? Peter said (Acts 3:18), "God hath thus fulfilled what he had announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets." The Lord declared (John 103, "The scripture cannot be broken." These, we are told, were Jewish prejudices. Did the Lord then confirm them in their Jewish prejudices in order to deceive them?

It would be too much to glance at every book, as we have at those which compose the Pentateuch. But all else in the O.T. as in the New has the same authority of God. Hence the O.T. scriptures are called as a whole by the apostle Paul (Rom. 3:2) "the oracles of God;" as Moses is said by Stephen (Acts 7:38) to have received "living oracles" (not dead legends) to give unto God's people. And the Lord Jesus when risen said to the disciples, "These are the words which I spoke unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and prophets and psalms concerning me" (Luke 24:44). This covers the entire Hebrew O.T. as the Jews present it to us. And herein the Latin church has proved a faithless guardian by adding apocryphal Greek writings to that Canon, which even Jerome in his Prologus Galeatus to the Vulgate admits to be not properly included. So similar unfaithfulness was essayed in early days by reading publicly uninspired writings, and joining them, as an Appendix, to the copies of the Greek N. T. But even Rome did not commit itself to so gross an imposture as this last.

When we reach the New Testament, we find plain endorsements of the inspiration and authority of the Old, first from the lips of our Lord Himself (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10; Matt. 5:17; Mark 12:24; Mark 14:21; Luke 4:21; Luke 16:31; Luke 24:25-27, 44-46; John 5:46-47; John 10:35), and then from the Evangelists in their frequent references to the fulfilment of Old Testament scripture in the life and death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. "That it might be fulfilled," "That the scripture might be fulfilled," are words that we read over and over again. In the epistles, too, we have inspiration clearly claimed for the Old Testament writers in such passages as 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 1 Peter 1:10-12, and 2 Peter 1:19-21.

I will not multiply quotations to prove that the prophets assert the inspiration of their prophecies; because it recurs at the beginning of almost every separate prophecy, but I will point out the passages in the New Testament which recognize the scriptures of the Old as having this authority. "All things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me," Luke 24:44. Jesus here recognizes the body of writings called the Old Testament in its three parts — still thus entitled in the modern Hebrew Bibles. The Lord gives them equal authority in verse 27 — "And, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." "Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me," John 5:39. "And the scripture cannot be broken," John 10:35. These passages demonstrate that the scriptures of the Old Testament were a body of writings recognized by the Lord; and that in the detail of its present divisions it was recognized as having absolute authority. But to have these writings — to have truths communicated in this form — is something more than to have the truth spoken by word of mouth, even though it were by the mouth of the Lord Himself. "If ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" John 5:47.

9 The writings then were the object of faith, and consequently had the authority of the word of God. "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them." "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead," Luke 16:29-31. When the apostle preached the truth at Berea, the Jews, his hearers, "searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so"; that is to say, they made use of the scriptures as an authority by which they judged the teaching even of an apostle; and they are commended for so doing; Acts 17:11. The inspiration then of the Old Testament is demonstrated, its authority is recognized by the Lord, and the whole — as we possess it — is declared to be authentic and to be clothed with an authority which nothing can invalidate.

So far, therefore, we have seen (1 ) that Christ attached much importance and authority to Old Testament writings; (2 ) that He promised the apostles extraordinary and constant Divine assistance, so that we may regard the apostles' writings as infallible; (3 ) that the apostles themselves regarded the Old Testament with the utmost reverence, and on more than one occasion definitely stated it to be inspired.

What then? We have shown that Christ, the Son of God, taught the inspiration of Scripture, that He promised great assistance to His apostles, who taught inspiration, that the prophets constantly justify their writings with: "thus saith the Lord," that David ascribes purity and truth to the "law of the Lord," that the apostles appealed for support in their writings more than 450 times to the Old Testament, that the Passion was fully foretold by the Old Testament, that the purpose of the histories of men found in the Old Testament is manifold, that the Jew's greatest privilege was to be allowed to keep the "oracles of God," and lastly, that the writers in some cases at least definitely disclaim understanding what they wrote. Is not all this testimony a sure proof of the inspiration of the Old Testament?

Our Lord testified to the authorship of Moses. “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27). And again He testified belief in Moses to be of such vital importance, that no one can be a Christian, who does not receive his testimony. He said, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me, but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words” (John 5:47). Again, he referred to Moses as an author, whose authority was undisputed by them. And this appeal to Moses is carried on in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles. Indeed, the argument of the whole Hebrew Epistle hangs upon the existence and acts of the great law-giver.

I need hardly quote more from the writers of the New Testament, besides a multitude of allusions in those I have referred to, to show that Christ and the apostles accepted the Bible as we have it (I mean the collection of the books of the Old Testament as a whole) as of divine authority, as the word of God, inspired, and of absolute authority with them. It is that by which the Lord overcame Satan, to which Satan resorted to cover his guile. Man had to live by every word which proceeded out of the mouth of God. Such is Scripture to the believer by its own intrinsic authority, and the words of Christ and the apostles carry an evidence which no cavils of infidelity can shake, while they call themselves Christians: and the authority of Christ Himself and of the apostles weighs more than the speculations of men, based by each on some new fancy of his own, and though helping on infidelity as it passed and the ruin of man's hopes, passing away with the influence of the mental energy which created it. I only, in addition, beg my reader to remark that these quotations authenticate the writings and the writers, and the writings as being those of the writer whose name they bear, as well as the truths contained in them as given of God, and that with the authority of Christ and His apostles.