Is the Holy Bible real?

But when we come to the Scriptures of Truth how different everything is. David said, "The Spirit of the Lord speaks by me, and His word was in my tongue" (2 Sam. 23:2). Again he testified, "The Lord made me understand in writing by His hand upon me" (1 Chr. 28:19). The Apostle Peter wrote, "Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21): the Apostle Paul testified, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16).

The holy men of old wrote, "not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches" (1 Cor. 2:13), and so there was a fulness about their very words which was divine. We are conscious of that fulness as we read our Bibles, in spite of the fact that ours are only a translation from the original. All theological systems, all creeds are human, Scripture has come from God. We do well to pin our faith to it, and not to them.

If God has revealed Himself (as every Christian believes He has) in His word, then His word will speak about and for itself. Extra-biblical evidence would only detract from its inherent authority. The only place where we can learn whether the Bible is inspired, and what exactly this means, is: in the Bible! God's book speaks for itself.

It could not add a single bit to the power, value, and authority of holy Scripture, to say that all the councils that were ever convened — all the doctors that ever taught — all the fathers that ever wrote — in a word, the voice of the universal church for the last eighteen centuries bore testimony to the authenticity of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. And, on the other hand, it could not, in the smallest degree, touch the integrity of those unmatched writings though all these authorities that I have named were to call in question their divine inspiration.

It was accepted as it existed, was read, used and spoken of as "the Word of God" (Mark 7:13), "the Scripture" which cannot be broken (John 10:35), by the Lord Jesus... Would the Lord have put His seal of approval upon a Book, accepting its various divisions as they stood (Luke 24:43-44), calling it the "Scriptures," opening His disciples' understanding that they might understand these Scriptures, and sending the Spirit to teach and guide them into "all the truth" it contains, had He believed, as some now would try to persuade us, that the Book is a mixture of truth and error, of divine revelation and human legend?

Over three hundred direct prophecies about the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and future glory of our Lord Jesus Christ lie scattered over the pages of the Old Testament scriptures. The fulfilment of prophecy... is the strongest proof of the divine origin and inspiration of the Bible.

Bind sixty-six books on any subject you like — medicine, astronomy, geology, science — and you bind books that will contradict each other, but in the Bible we have sixty-six books, yet one Book in unity and testimony.

It has often been a forgotten book, but it has always been a hated book, men have hated it as they would hate a living enemy they were terrified of... men who thought they could destroy the truth of the words of it as easily as they could destroy the parchment the words were written on... but it has survived the rage of its enemies. Its preservation as well as its production proclaims it to be the [word of God].

But it is by its acting on his heart and conscience, and revealing God to him, that he knows it. I know what a knife is when it cuts me, and honey when I taste its sweetness. It is not a matter of proof. The word acts through grace on the soul, and I am conscious of its workings from God as sharper than any two-edged sword.