Trusting God’s Word

10/03/23 – 10/07/23

The Testimony of the Bible

By Michael Youssef, Ph D.  10/04/23

Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17.

More than two thousand times in the Bible’s pages, we read, “Thus says the Lord.” The Bible testifies to its truthfulness by appealing to its divine Author.

The Bible contains sixty-six different books written over a span of about sixteen hundred years. These sixty-six books were written by forty different writers, and the backgrounds of these writers vary tremendously. There were doctors and shepherds, prophets and kings, statesmen and lawyers, priests and tax collectors, tentmakers and fishermen. As you would expect, these people held various opinions and worldviews, especially when you consider they wrote over such a vast time period. And yet, together they produced a unified book—unified in doctrine, ethics, and vision. It’s actually mind-boggling when you think about it. So many people over so many years, and yet they penned a single, unified narrative: the story of God’s divine redemption.

The unity of the Bible is not superficial or forced, either; it is profound and organic. The seeds that were sown in the very beginning, when the first books of the Bible were written, grew into a huge tree so that by the time you get to the book of Revelation, the fruit has ripened. And yet the Bible is one enormous tree, one grand narrative without contradiction. There is only one logical explanation for the unity of the Bible: Behind those forty human writers, there was a perfect, sovereign, divine God, who guided their minds and their hands.

Even so, over the years many people have tried to disprove the Bible through archaeology—and yet time and time again, archaeology has only confirmed the history the Bible teaches, down to the smallest details.

You see, the Bible is reliable—and it reveals “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). If it were only a collection of made-up stories without any real power, the devil would not oppose it the way he does. There are places in the world where the Bible is shredded, burned, and forbidden. In many countries, a person would be arrested if a Bible were even found in their possession. The Bible bears such intense hatred because it was authored by the Holy Spirit, and He has the power to utterly transform a soul from a citizen of this world to a citizen of heaven.

Prayer: Father, Your Word is amazing. Help me to understand the full narrative of Scripture, that I might take deep joy in Your good will for me. I pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17).