How do you know the Bible is true?

Question from the youth group to the church elders: How do you know the Bible is true?

I’d like to start by answering a similar question in reverse: How do you not need to know the Bible is true?

If you are convinced that Darwinian evolution and the laws of physics and theories of multi-verses can explain how we got here, then you have no reason to believe the Bible. If you can look at the most intricate biological system or the most picturesque landscape and are confident that it just happened by no cause and for no reason, then you have no need for the Bible. And no explanation of why the Bible is special will compel you.

On the other hand, if you think there must be a creator, then that changes everything. You can’t get something from nothing. And if you think a bit more, you realize you can’t get the personal from the impersonal, so the only way to explain us as persons, with morality and rationality and language and artistry, is if the creator is personal. And if there’s a personal God, then you can expect that he would communicate with the persons he made. And if God is going to communicate, then you need to ask if there is any place or time in human history where it appears that God has communicated. And now you can start asking serious questions about the Bible.

And once you start asking serious questions, you’ll see there’s no book like it.

It spans thousands of years of time, across many major civilizations verified by archaeology.

It was written by dozens of men, yet has a consistent story that traces from Genesis to Revelation.

It contains prophesies of historical events which are fulfilled hundreds of years later in its history.

It describes the human condition perfectly: that man is created good but has fallen into sin. That man is like God yet separated from God.

And it presents a Savior who is unlike any other. The main reason to believe the Bible is to read it and meet Jesus. He doesn’t present himself as a moral teacher or a wise man or a leader of men. He presents himself as the Savior of the World: the sinless man who lays down his life to save sinful humanity and to redeem all creation for himself.

If you don’t meet Jesus and aren’t compelled by the force of who he is and what he did, then you can always find some technical reason to dismiss the Bible. But once you see the power and beauty of who he is, you learn the treasure the Bible as God’s Holy Word.