QUESTION: How can I explain to somebody that the Bible is truly the word of God without quoting from the Bible? I have a couple of friends who believe that there is a Creator but don’t really think that the Bible is reliable. They think that it was just written by some men. So my question is how can I show that God wrote the Bible without using Scripture?

ANSWER: That’s a great question. In fact, it’s important for any person to be able to demonstrate the truth about God without always relying on the Bible.

You asked a slightly different quesiton, and that’s how to know that the Bible is truly the Word of God without building a proof from the Bible. Here are a couple of thoughts from our book, “Knowing the Bible 101,” that may help

When you look at the Bible, you have a book that is unique among ancient books. Here are just four reasons:

1. The Bible has been transmitted accurately from the time it was originally written.
2. The Bible is correct when it deals with historical people and events.
3. The Bible contains no “scientific absurdities.”
4. The Bible remains true and relevant to all people for all time.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether these qualities are possible in a book written by men acting on their own, or if these men were influenced in some way by a divine source. And think about this. It wasn’t just one man who wrote the Bible, but 40 men over a span of 1600 years. That all of these guys would write with such agreement, focusing on a single theme and with such cohesiveness, is truly remarkable.

Here’s something else about the Bible that no other book can match, or even come close. The Bible contains about 2500 prophecies about future events. Of these, approximately 2000 have already been fulfilled to the letter without one mistake. Humanly speaking, that is impossible. The only alternate explanation is that the Bible has a divine origin. Yes, it was written by men, but they were “inspired” by God through the Holy Spirit.

People will often object and say that if God wrote the Bible, why is it full of errors? Well, the way to answer that is to ask them to give you an example or two. Guess what? People usually can’t come up with even one example. And if they can, it’s usually easily answered.

Here’s the bottom line. No book has been more scrutinized over such a long period of time than the Bible, yet there has yet to be one issue or alleged error that was not resolved.