Because of the disaster in Eden and the Fall of Man, human beings are very seriously damaged. We are not headed in a good direction or to a good place. We are headed away from God and eternal life – not toward God and eternal life. We are confused about the most basic truths. We don’t always know what is true and what isn’t. We desperately need help to get us out of our deadly confusion and the Bible claims to reveal the truth that will do that. But since many people are not sure that the Bible is a divinely inspire message, here are ten evidences that demonstrate that it is unique among the religious books of the world and is the divinely inspired Word of God.
1. Divine Origin
The first way that the Bible is unique is in its divine origin. It’s one of the few books that make the claim to be the Word of God. It claims to be the uniquely inspired communication from our Creator to us. The phrases, “Thus says the Lord” and “the Word of the Lord” are used hundreds of times. In 2 Timothy 3:16 the claim is made that God inspired it: All Scripture is inspired by God. “This means that God is the author of the Bible. The writers produced a product, which, while it was their own, was also the Word of the Living God” (Harold Lindsell, The Battle For The Bible, page 35). With these claims we would expect that the Bible would meet or exceed the highest standards for accuracy – and it does.
2. Unique In Unity And Harmony
Over a period of 1600 years, God commissioned 40 different Jewish authors from all walks of life and living on three continents to write the 66 books of the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation, the writers cohesively reveal a complex drama about God’s redemption of man from eternity past to eternity future. Think how incredible this is! It’s hard to get two or three people in the same room to agree on several important ideas, yet here you have 40 men separated by 1600 years and three continents all agreeing about dozens of the most important ideas!
3. Popularity And Influence
If it were the divinely inspired Word of God, you would think that the Bible would make an impact on the world. And it has! The Bible is the most circulated book in history. It has been read and studied and quoted by more people than any other book. No other book has impacted society and culture so impressively or has changed lives so dramatically – evidence that it indeed is the Word of God.
4. Indestructibility
The Messiah taught that because the Word of God was divinely inspired, not even the smallest part of one Hebrew letter could be broken – and it hasn’t been. Truly I say to you, until Heaven and Earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Torah until all is accomplished (Matthew 5:18). And that is exactly what has happened. The Bible has withstood intense scrutiny by thousands of skeptics and survived continuous attacks by emperors, kings and dictators. They all failed in their attempts to silence the message. People have heard that the text of the Bible has been corrupted over the centuries, but that is not true. The Hebrew Scriptures have been meticulously transmitted, as the Dead Sea Scrolls demonstrate. A shepherd made a great discovery of Bible manuscripts in 1948. Complete manuscripts such as Isaiah, the Psalms and Deuteronomy were copied over 2,000 years ago and found in these caves near the Dead Sea. These ancient manuscripts are essentially the same as our modern copies. This proves that they were transmitted over the years with extraordinary precision. When it comes to the New Testament, thousands of New Testament documents, some of them written very early, in the first and second centuries, show that the text of the Bible has not been corrupted, but has been faithfully transmitted. The Bible is the Word of God because of its indestructibility.
5. Unique Message Of Salvation
The Bible is unique in its message. It proclaims that we have been so damaged by joining the rebellion of the fallen angels and the forces of sin and death that salvation can only be attained as a free gift of God’s grace through our coming to know the Messiah and transferring our loyalties to the Three-in-One God. All other religious books teach that human beings must earn salvation through religious rituals or their own efforts. No other religion offers salvation by God’s grace through faith. The message of the Bible stands alone in this regard, and this is what we would expect if it were the revelation of the true God.
6. Painfully Honest
The Bible is unique in that it is painfully honest in the accounts of its heroes. In most other books with claims to ultimate truths the heroes are praised for their accomplishments, and their shameful and sinful activities are covered up. Not the Bible. The Bible shows that Jacob, one of the fathers of God’s chosen people, was a deceiver. It shows Moses, the Lawgiver, as a murderer. It shows David, Israel’s most loved king and spiritual leader, as an adulterer and murderer. It shows Peter, one of the greatest of the apostles, as a betrayer of the Messiah. It shows Paul, who wrote over half the New Testament, as the worst of sinners. The Bible is painfully honest about the lives of the people involved, which is another indication that the Bible is truthful and divinely inspired by God – not man.
7. Historical And Geographical Accuracy
Archeologists continue to unearth evidence of ancient peoples, places and cultures that are all described in the Bible. The descriptions have always proven to be completely reliable and accurate. Here is one example: The Bible talked about the Hittites, yet for centuries there was no archeological evidence of their existence. Was the Bible wrong? No, the Bible wasn’t wrong; archeological evidence of the ancient Hittite kingdom was finally discovered within the past 250 years. Here is another example: “William Ramsay is regarded as one of the greatest archeologists ever to have lived. Although initially skeptical about the accuracy of the Book of Acts, after some research he became aware of the meticulous accuracy of its historical details, and his attitude changed. He concluded that ‘Luke is a historian of the first rank … this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians’” (From More Than A Carpenter, pages 43-44).
8. Scientific Accuracy
While not claiming to be a textbook on science, the Bible reflects accurate scientific knowledge of the universe. Scientific references about the physical universe recorded in the Bible thousands of years ago were not discovered until modern times using advances in science and technology. Some examples: The Earth is round (Isaiah 40:22). It is He who sits above the circle of the Earth.The Earth is suspended in space without support (Job 26:7). He stretches out the north over empty space and hangs the Earth on nothing. The stars are countless (Genesis 15:15); the water cycle, sea currents (Psalm 8:8) the paths of the sea; living things reproduce after their kind; many insights into health, hygiene, diet, physiology (such as the importance of blood, e.g.,Leviticus 12:3, the eighth day after birth being high in blood coagulant); the second law of thermodynamics (Isaiah 51:6). Lift up your eyes to the sky, then look to the Earth beneath; for the sky will vanish like smoke, and the Earth will wear out like a garment. From page 18 of The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, edited by Don Batten, Master Books, 1990. The Bible reflects accurate scientific knowledge, which is not surprising since the God who created the universe and set in motion the laws that govern our world is the same God who inspired the writers of the Bible to record these fascinating facts.
9. The Bible Describes Reality Better Than Any Other Religion Or Worldview
It tells us why the universe has laws, design, order, complexity, simplicity, elegance, symmetry and beauty – because there is a great and wise and powerful Designer. It tells us why there is beauty, love, wisdom, justice, truth and personality. These are not the results of chance processes and random activity, but they come from God who has these attributes. It tells us why there is evil, suffering, death, injustice in the world. It’s due to humanity joining the rebellion of the fallen angels and the sin and alienation from God that resulted. It tells us the way of salvation, and that life can be meaningful, full of purpose and eternal significance. Our lives are not the result of the chance coalition of impersonal atoms that ultimately mean nothing. Someone wisely observed that if a person believes that the universe comes from an impersonal Big Bang, where something came out of nothing, which took place some 20 billion years ago, and that we are the result of billions of years of time and chance; that we evolved from an amino acid primordial soup, grew into a cell, which is an amazingly complex thing, which somehow learned how to reproduce itself; then we developed into a bacteria, or a one-celled animal, then a slug or a fish, then an amphibian, then a lizard, then a small mammal-like rodent, then a monkey and an ape-like man; if a person believes that this universe will continue for billions of years, and then experience either a gradual heat death, so that there is no activity, or that the universe will start contracting, and all the galaxies will reverse themselves and everything will return to its beginning point – one singularity; if a person believes he is ultimately nothing more than an advanced sea slug, a meaningless bit of temporary matter, and that when we die we die, because there is no after-life, no God, and therefore no moral or spiritual absolutes and that his life is ultimately meaningless – no wonder there is so much unhappiness, depression, despair, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual immorality and moral decay, so much senseless violence and so many suicides! The secular-humanist worldview doesn’t work! In contrast to that the Bible has a worldview that fits the facts, that lines up with reality and with human nature and gives us hope and happiness. The Bible describes reality better than any other philosophy or religion or worldview and it works because it is true!
10. Bible Prophecy
The last evidence that the Bible is unique and the divinely inspired Word of God is its ability to tell the future. The Bible is unique in its ability to tell the future. The Koran, Hindu and Buddhist books don’t predict the future. The Bible is the only religious book that accurately predicts the future – years, centuries and even millennia, in advance. The Bible contains hundreds of detailed prophecies that foretell specific details about individuals, cities and nations – particularly the nation of Israel, and most particularly about the Messiah. Fulfilled prophecy is clear evidence that the Bible was inspired by a sovereign God who controls all things.
Here are some of the fulfilled prophecies concerning Israel that reveal the prophetic nature of the Bible: Even though the Jewish people were chosen by God to bring the knowledge of God to the confused nations of the world, and the way to be reconciled to the Creator so that we could live forever, due to our lack of faithfulness, the Jewish people were told that we would be exiled from the Land of Israel. Life in the Diaspora among the nations would be very difficult and precarious, but we would survive (Deuteronomy 28:15-68, Leviticus 26:31-45). It happened and is happening right now! Then, spiritual restoration to God and physical restoration to the Land of Israel would follow (see Deuteronomy 30:1-5). It’s happening right now! Just before the Messiah’s return, the Jewish people would be regathered from all the nations and established in our ancient land (Isaiah 11:11-12, Isaiah 43:1-8, Isaiah 49:8-13, Jeremiah 31:10-11, Zechariah 10:6-12, Ezekiel 36:24-32, Ezekiel 37:21-22). It’s happening right now! The Word of God foretold that our return to our ancient homeland would provoke a reaction from Israel’s surrounding neighbors. They would claim that the Land of Israel belongs to them (see Ezekiel 36:1-12). It’s happening right now! This would cause Israel to be a difficult situation for the surrounding nations, a “cup that causes reeling” and a “heavy stone”. Eventually the conflict will be internationalized and an army made up of a coalition of united nations will invade Israel, but the invading army will be destroyed (see Zechariah 12:1-10). You can see how easily this scenario can happen. The Bible’s ability to predict future events lets us know that God, who is not limited by time, was in communication with Israel’s prophets, with Messiah Jesus and with His apostolic representatives. The author of the Bible is indeed the One who knows the end from the beginning, and we should pay close attention to what He has revealed in His unique and divinely inspired Word!
Thank you to Rabbi Loren Jacobs of Congregation Shema Yisrael for the permission to show his article.
