How God's Word Has Come to Us (Part One)

  • Jan 28, 2008

The Bible did not drop out of Heaven with a black leather cover, printed in English on paper, with 66 books bound in one volume. How did the Bible originate? How has it come to us?

Knowing how we got the Bible can strengthen our faith in the Bible as God's Word. This series investigates the Bible's origin and how it came to be in its present form. This article will explain how the Bible was written through God's revelation to prophets and apostles whom he guided to write it.


Revelation
Astronauts depend upon communication from NASA to navigate their spacecraft back to earth. Inhabitants on planet earth are dependent upon a word from God. Human thinking alone cannot solve life's most basic questions-about meaning in life, right and wrong, death, and life after death. Philosophy and science do not provide infallible answers. The only way we can have certain truth on these issues is for God to disclose to us truths about ultimate issues. The Bible is not human speculation in an error-marred search for God. Scripture discloses God himself and his will in the story of human history.

General Revelation. God has revealed himself in a nonverbal way in creation, providence, the physical universe, and human conscience. We call communication of God's truth in nature general revelation. The Lord of the universe "did not leave himself without witness" (Acts 14:17).1 The physical universe continuously pours forth information declaring the power, wisdom, and glory of God. We should know from the evidence in the physical universe that a creator and supreme being exists (Romans 1:18-20; see also Psalm 8:1; 19:1, 3, 4; 29:1-5; 104:24, 31; 119:89-91; Isaiah 40:12-14; Acts 14:14-17; and Romans 2:14, 15).

The disclosure of God in nature is awesome but limited. From this evidence we can know God exists,