We are answering tough questions from Christian teens and have been for several years. You can read other questions and answers here.

Here’s our next question:

How do we know the Bible is really God’s Word? There are a lot of books that claim to be from God.

That is an excellent question!

This is a question I also asked many years ago. Getting the answer led me on a five-month journey investigating truth claims about God’s existence, the credibility of the Bible as being the Word of God and the reliability of historical information concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God

My first question concerned the existence of God. Nothing could be God’s Word unless God existed. I eventually arrived at the conclusion that God could exist, but then the question became “which God.” Would it be the Christian God? The Muslim God? The many gods of Hinduism? I began by asking questions about science and morality. You can read more of my findings here.

The Bible

Religious writings as a whole lack believability, if I may be so bold to say. Most are fanciful and don’t carry evidential weight, which is important to a journalist like myself. Most people who believe their sacred text is from God don’t seem to have good reasons to believe their truth claims. In looking back at conversations with Christians when I was an atheist talk show host, they also didn’t seem to have good reasons to believe the truth claims in the Bible. It was not until I met three knowledgeable Christians that I learned the many good reasons to believe the truth claims in the Bible.

The Bible has a long, long history, so there are many things we can look at to get an answer to your question. Billions of people have believed the Bible is God’s Word, so that’s one thing to consider. Billions of other people have not believed the Bible is God’s Word, so that is another thing to consider. What convinced so many people to view the Bible in divergent ways?

I wrote a lengthy book many years ago titled A History of Man’s Quest for Immortality (Fifth Estate Publishing, 2007) that looked at many of the “sacred” texts written through the centuries. Why would the Bible be more credible than all the others?

As an atheist journalist I wanted evidence that could pass the journalistic test for authenticity. I had spent some years studying Hinduism and Buddhism prior to becoming an atheist and was familiar with the textual support for both. I believed the support was rather thin. So, how about the Bible?

Evidence

Evidence is important to determining if something is true or false. Legally, verifiable evidence is documented proof that is reasonably reliable to establish authenticity (Law Insider). Evidence is defined as “the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid” (Oxford Langages).

Each piece of evidence does not have to be the total proof of a claim to be legitimate evidence that a judge and jury can consider. Evidence needs to be strong enough to be seriously considered during an investigation, but one piece of evidence may not lead to what we think of as “absolute proof” that something is true or false. That’s why prosecutors and defense attorneys supply multiple pieces of evidence to lead to a decision of guilt or innocence for a defendant.

The Bible is a mountain of evidence — between 700-thousand and 800-thousand words depending on which version of the Bible you use. The Bible is really a compilation of many different writings (66 total), which in itself is interesting because they all point to the same person — Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I’ll elaborate on that in just a minute.

I found the amount of evidence for the credibility of the Bible to be very strong — especially in the areas of history and archaeology. In fact, I determined from my investigation that both the Old and New Testaments were historically reliable. Reliability is an important step in determining whether we can trust something to be true. If I had found the writings of the Bible to be historically unreliable, my investigation would have ended at that point.

This is quite remarkable when we consider that the Bible was written over a period of about 15-hundred years (approximately 1450 BC to 97 AD) by more than 40 people. The Bible has withstood the test of time in both its ability to morally and spiritually transform people while surviving multiple attempts through history to destroy it.

Jesus Christ

The historical reliability of the Bible led me to take a close look at Jesus of Nazareth. I learned that He is the primary focus of the New Testament and that the Old Testament spoke of His coming as Lord and Savior. That’s what I mentioned earlier. The entire Bible points to the same Person — the Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah, Christ Jesus. Even though the Bible was written over a span of 15-hundred years by more than 40 human authors, Jesus Christ is the focus of all of their writing. As the writers of the Bible tell us, God inspired the human authors to write what they wrote so that we can trust their words to be true (e.g. John 16:12-13; 1 Corinthians 2:7-16; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 2 Peter 1:16-21).

I found the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to be credible. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead is primary evidence that the Bible is God’s Word. I say that because Jesus confirmed that the writings of the Old Testament were God’s Word and that the Holy Spirit would guide His apostles into “all truth” (John 16:13). We learn about the life, words and works of Jesus of Nazareth in the Gospel accounts. We see Jesus die for sin and rise for the promise of eternal life. We see Jesus ascend back to Heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father. We learn about the Holy Spirit empowering followers of Jesus to preach the Gospel of Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and across the world. We read the letters of the apostles and see how they explain the amazing details of how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. We read the Book of Revelation and see what will happen in the future and how everything in Heaven and on earth will come under the Kingship of Jesus Christ.

This is evidence of the Christ-centeredness of the entire Bible and of it being the Word of God. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, came to earth to fulfill the Word of God spoken by the prophets of the Old Testament. After Jesus rose from the dead, He opened the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) and showed the apostles how the Word of God pointed to His coming to earth to suffer and die for sin and rise from the dead:

Then He said to them, ‘These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures. Then He said to them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24:44-47

Because Jesus rose from the dead after openly predicting His death and resurrection to His disciples on multiple occasions (e.g. Matthew 16:21; 17:22; 20:17), we can believe what He says to be true (1 Corinthians 15:12-28).

I also looked at extra-biblical writings from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD to see what non-Christians wrote about Jesus and His followers. You can read more about those writings here.

Forward and Reverse

The approach I used in my early investigation (more than 50 years ago) of whether the Bible is the Word of God might be called a forward approach. I started at the beginning (Genesis 1:1) and worked my way through the Bible .. Old Testament, then New Testament .. looking at historical and archaeological records from a variety of ancient people groups. Once I saw that the Bible was a credible historical record that included the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, I knew that what it said was true.

Another way to look at the evidence for the reliability of the Bible being God’s Word might be called a reverse approach. Everything in the Bible points to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our first glance is Genesis 3:15. That was an early point in my forward approach. However, the Apostle Paul made an astonishing statement in 1 Corinthians 15:

For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. 1 Corinthians 15:16-19

Paul actually handed everyone a way to falsify Christianity. If Jesus rose from the dead, then Christianity is true – along with all its other truth claims. However, if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is false and pointless. That’s pretty straightforward and worth considering. I met a former atheist years ago who said she determined to disprove the resurrection of Jesus, but became a Christian because of what she found from her research. She then worked in reverse to look at the reliability of the Bible being God’s Word from the perspective of what the resurrected Jesus said about the reliability of the Bible, existence of God, etc.

What we also learn from Paul’s statement is how to begin with the resurrection of Jesus and go in reverse to Genesis 3:15. Jesus told His followers He had all authority in Heaven and earth (Matthew 28:18-20) because of His resurrection.

Jesus actually claims to have the authority of God. That’s a BOLD statement. Can He back that up? Absolutely. Jesus has the authority of God because He rose from the dead. That’s Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 15. Here’s how Paul explained the Gospel to the Christians in Corinth:

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. 1 Corinthians 15:1-8

Each primary point of the Gospel message has a supporting point:

  • Primary Point — Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures
  • Supporting Point — He was buried
  • Primary Point — He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures
  • Supporting Point — He was seen

The burial of Jesus supports His death. Hundreds of eyewitnesses support His resurrection. Once that is understood, we move in reverse and ask questions that raise more primary and supporting points for the Bible’s claim that it is the Word of God.

Engage 360 approaches having spiritual conversations with people from this “reverse” approach. I highly recommend their Engage Your World curriculum for every Christian who wants to talk with friends and family about Jesus.

I hope this was helpful to you. Thanks for the question!

[Podcast version of this study coming soon.]

The Next Question

In the next part of our special series, Tough Questions From Christian Teens, we will look at —

Is It Wrong For Me To Question My Faith In God?

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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