Truth Equals Bible

We read in John 17:17 that truth equals the Bible. According to God, the Bible is the truth He has given to us. In Second Timothy 3:16‑17 the Bible says, ‘All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.’ The Bible claims that the Scriptures, another word for the Bible, were given by inspiration of God. The word inspiration means God-breathed. The words I speak are Doug‑breathed words. I breathe them as I speak. The words of the Bible are not man‑breathed words. The Bible claims to be God-breathed words. The Bible claims to be God speaking to you and me. Remember God said one day we are going to be judged according to truth, and the truth is the Bible, and now He tells us that the Bible is nothing less than Him speaking to us. We better pay attention.

In Second Peter 1:21 the Bible says, ‘For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’ Some people say the Bible was just written by men, but that is not what the Bible claims. Remember we are trying to understand how God views things. God says the Bible didn’t come by the will of men. A bunch of fellows didn’t one day sit down and decide to invent a new book and start a religion. The Bible wasn’t created in the mind of some prophets who wanted to have a book named after them. The Bible says these didn’t do this by their own will, but they wrote these things by the will of God, as they were moved, as the Holy Spirit of God carried them along.

Some people might say, ‘Anyone could write a book and say it is God’s Word. Anyone could write a book and say it is true. How do we know it is true?’ Let’s look at some things that prove it is true. The Bible is made up of sixty‑six books, from Genesis to Revelation. Literally we could say that the Bible is like a library of sixty-six books put together into one book. It has sixty‑six books and forty different authors. There were forty different men who lived over a period of time of about sixteen hundred years who wrote down what God told them to write. Most of these men never even met each other. Many of the men never even read the writings of the other authors. Yet when you put all sixty‑six books together they perfectly agree with one another.

Think about that for a moment. There is not one contradiction from Genesis to Revelation. I dare you to pick up any two books written about science and see if they agree. Get two history books and see if two history books agree. You don’t have to consider sixty‑six books, just two. You are going to have a hard time finding just two that would agree totally on every point with each other. Yet the Bible is sixty‑six books, written by forty different authors who lived over a period of sixteen hundred years. These men were widely apart in learning and background, yet they perfectly agreed with one another. How could that be?

We could also look at the honesty of the writers. You know, if I was writing a book and it was going to be a holy book with my name attached to it, I would not write about all my problems. I wouldn’t tell you about my sins. There would be things I would hide because you don’t need to know about them. God was pretty honest about His heroes. Even the best had chinks in their armor and God tells the truth about them. The men who wrote told the truth about their lives and the lives of others.

Next, let’s consider the prophecies of the Scripture. In the Bible, a prophet is someone who tells the truth to other people. Also, from time to time, they actually foretell the future, or tell prophecies of things that are going to happen. It might be a prophecy about the name of a king four hundred years from now who is going to be born, and the country over which he is going to reign when he grows up. Can you imagine making a prophecy like that and having it come true? Or it could be a prophecy about a city being destroyed, how it would be destroyed and then how it would be rebuilt. Yet there are literally hundreds of prophecies like that in the Bible and they were all fulfilled literally, just as they were prophesied.

In Second Peter 1:19 the Bible says, ‘We have also a more sure word of prophecy.’ Peter, who wrote the book of Second Peter, had seen Jesus transfigured on the mount with Moses and Elijah. It was a spectacular sight, quite a miracle. But he realised that the written Word of God is more powerful, more sure, more steadfast than seeing a vision or seeing a miracle. That is exactly how God views His Word: as truth. This truth, the Bible, is what will judge you and judge me one day.