God said to the prophet Isaiah, “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11) When we consider whether God is silent or not, we have to consider the sheer power that the words of the Almighty bear. That’s the major point of Natural Revelation, that the words of God created matter, energy, and life. As it says on the first page of Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth just by speaking them into existence ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing (Genesis 1).
God’s creation naturally reveals Him. God’s words, which are recorded in a book called the Bible, are His special revelation. We can read the actual words of God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, who knows everything, who can do anything, and whose presence is everywhere, at once.
For over the span of around 1,000 years (roughly 1,440 BC to 440 BC, “When Was Each Book of the Bible Written?“), God’s Spirit led men like Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Daniel, and other prophets to write the books of the Old Testament. When hearing from God, they received messages through dreams, in visions, from angelic visitors, and even directly from God. In this collection of 39 books, there is history, law, poetry, wisdom, and prophecy. Through the entirety of the Old Testament, we read about the impact of sin and rebellion against God. We learn that people have not changed since the dawn of time. We read how God intervened through human history to carry out His redemptive plan to restore their fellowship with Him.
The second volume of the Bible is the New Testament. In the New Testament, written about 2,000 years ago, we read how God’s plan to redeem lost people came about through His Son Jesus Christ. The volume contains four books, called the gospels, which are about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The gospels were written by four different men: Matthew, Mark, and John being eyewitnesses and Luke, a historian. The remaining books are letters to early churches and the prophetic book of Revelation.
Some say that the Bible is some sort of made-up fairy tale with good moral stories. You should know that archaeology in the Middle East is unearthing historic details that confirm the veracity of Israel, its history, and details found in the Old Testament. Ancient writings outside of the Bible reference Jesus. Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are the original languages of the Bible, and while the originals have passed with time, textual criticism yields that the copies we have of the ancient documents are faithfully copied through Millenia. All this about archaeology and the validity of Scripture is the domain of historians, apologists, and theologians.
You may hear debate about the accuracy of the Bible that challenges whether the Bible is the inerrant, infallible Word of God. There are two questions. Did God really speak the words in the Bible, and did fallible people really write and preserve His words accurately through the centuries (especially considering scribes copied manuscripts by hand until the Gutenberg press in 1454)? To the first point, Paul and Peter (two New Testament authors) point out that the Scripture is “God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) and that “men carried along by the Holy Spirit” wrote it (2 Peter 1:21). Basically, an infallible and perfect God is capable of helping men uphold the integrity of His word over time.
If you haven’t read the Bible, it takes the average person about seventy to eighty hours to read it through. I invite you to pick up a copy (an English translation, of course; I suggest the English Standard Version if you go out looking for one; it’s also freely available online). It begins with the Creation and fall of man; it ends with God’s ultimate judgement on sin and the prophecy of the New Heaven and the New Earth. Best of all, you’ll learn about Jesus, the Son of God, Messiah, Lord, King, and Savior of the world.
Part Three: The Gospel Truth
I recommend an article at Got Questions, “What does it mean that the Bible is infallible?“, for answers to questions about Biblical inerrancy.
