How Can We Know that the Bible is the Word of God Without Error

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

Why do we believe that the Bible is the Word of God without error?

First, let's deal with the fallacious reasons.

Some have said that they believe the Bible because they have faith, and they do not use the Biblical meaning of faith. They think that faith is simply believing for no reason at all. However, the Bible says that faith comes. That means that we human beings don't generate faith. The Bible further says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word, literally the utterance, of God. God speaks. He speaks through the Bible and many other ways. He speaks to every person with or without the Bible. Some listen.

The Bible further says that faith is the faith of God. It is not human faith.

Some have said that they presuppose that the Bible is the Word of God without error. To suppose is to simply state without proof. They are basically saying that they believe because they believe or they suppose because they suppose.

Some have said that the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is the Word of God. Therefore, God said it since the Bible is the Word of God. This is a bit of circular mental gymnastics that will certainly bring justified ridicule. That is not why they believe. They don't realize what has happened to them and what continues to happen to them.

Some have seemed to imply that the Bible is God in some sense. They contend that the Bible is the source of all knowledge and wisdom. However, the Bible says that Jesus is the source of all knowledge and wisdom, so, if they believed what the Bible says, they would not say that the Bible is the source. In fact, the Bible says that Jesus is our wisdom and in Him is hidden all knowledge.

Some have said that we use our God-given intellect to analyze and determine that the Bible is the Word of God. They have apparently not read in the Bible what God says about the human mind. The human mind is incapable of receiving the things of the Spirit of God.

Some have said that the Bible is the Word of God because it presents the only worldview that is both internally and externally consistent. This is true, though not the best understanding of what is happening. The Bible is internally consistent in that there are no contradictions between one part of the Bible and another part of the Bible. The Bible is externally consistent in that there are no contradictions between the Bible and the reality of the rest of creation. There are problems with using this as foundation. Christ is the only foundation. That which is built on Christ can become part of the foundation through submission to Christ. As far as testifying to the unbeliever, the unbeliever will not accept the premise that the Bible is both internally and externally consistent. The unbeliever will also rightly point out that the Christian who takes this as the foundation is using circular reasoning because he or she is saying that the Bible is truth based on it's consistency with the creation around it. And then he or she is using that same Bible as the foundational basis to analyze the creation, which will act as a filter when observing the creation. Doing so will assure that the Christian's perception of the creation is not in conflict with the Bible. The Christian could point out that the unbeliever is guilty of the same thing, and the Christian would be right, but there are two problems with this. First, the Christian is bringing the discussion down to a matter of opinions, to relativism. Second, many unbelievers aren't even aware of how they think their thoughts--or why they hold their opinions. They don't know that have a worldview, a paradigm, that acts as a filter limiting their ability to observe what is around them. So, they would deny the fact that they have a worldview or that they are not objective. Besides all this, the Christian would not be realizing what is really happening and how they themselves came to be saved and to believe that the Bible is the Word of God without error. It was through direct revelation. Christ made Himself apparent to them in some way.

Here is the reality. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word (utterance) of God. God speaks. God speaks to every person. Whoever will listen receives the faith that is of God. This is a supernatural belief that is not human-generated. It is a gift. That faith is the belief that what God has said is true. Before a person is born again, there is a history of hearing God's voice. No one can come to Christ unless the Father draws him or her. A person is born again the moment that he or she hears God's voice and receives faith to believe in Jesus as Savior from sin. In the same way, it is God who speaks and says that the Bible is the Word of God without error. When we hear His voice, then His faith comes, the supernatural belief that the Bible is the Word of God without error. Once God opens our eyes, we see that the Bible is the only source that is both internally and externally consistent. We cannot possibly believe unless we are having an active interaction with our Maker. Some Christians are not aware enough of their own experience to know this. That's why we have all the previously-mentioned reasons for believing the Bible as the Word of God.

Interestingly, only the genuine explanation given in the previous paragraph does not depend on circular reasoning or poor logic. It depends on God. This is the kind of faith that is what is really operating. It is based on revelation. Now, a naturalist will attack the whole idea of revelation claiming that revelation cannot be verified.

The reality is that the rationalistic approach cannot be verified. When we consider the concept of very old fossils and the associated concept of one kind of living thing evolving into another kind of living things, many recent scientific discoveries make that concept so unlikely that it would normally be labeled as a scientific impossibility. Yet, since this story of evolution has been a powerful tool of Satan, the ungodly are not convinced but still find ways to speak about the evidence in a way that is favorable to evolution.

Revelation is real. We cannot come to Christ without revelation. We cannot understand the words of the Bible without ongoing revelation. We cannot read the Bible and get it right without revelation. If you are speaking to an unbeliever, that person cannot come to belief unless God reveals. That is one of the reasons that Scripture tells you to speak as the oracle (mouthpiece) of God. If God speaks through you, and they receive it, faith will come to them. If you speak your own words, it is unlikely to have much effect whether the unbeliever would have been willing or not.

Revelation can be verified, though sometimes it takes a while to see the outcome with human eyes. Revelation will always eventually be verified. It has always been so. Even in Scripture, there are many examples of those who were saying, "Thus saith the Lord," while others were saying, "No, we have the Word of God." In fact, it seems that the majority were always wrong. They were shown to wrong. Here are two examples from Scripture: One lone prophet said that the evil King Ahab would die the next day in battle. All the other prophets said that King Ahab would live. King Ahab died. One lone prophet said that Israel would go into captivity. All the other prophets said that Israel would not go into captivity. Israel went into captivity.

The first question to be answered is, "Does God exist?" The second is, "Can God be known in a real way?" Once we know that God exists and that He rewards those who seek Him by leading them, then we can move forward, eventually coming to faith in Christ. When God leads us to Christ, we are changed. Our eyes are opened to a great extent at that moment. We begin to hear His voice more clearly. As we vigorously seek Him, our hearing becomes better. At some point, we hear Him tell us that the Bible is His Word and is without error. He speaks to us through His Bible. He also speaks to us through other Christians and through the creation itself. He can speak through visions and dreams and other ways. Scripture tells us that He now reveals these things to His apostles and prophets. In all these ways of receiving, they never conflict with the Bible. If an unbeliever would like to verify this by experience, he or she must enter into the experience.

How Can We Know that the Bible is the Word of God Without Error

How can we know anything about anything

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