How Does God Authenticate His Word?

Christians: how do you know the Bible is the Word of God? How do you know the Bible is true? How can you trust that what we hold in our hands is from God?

Have you ever stopped to consider the answers to these questions? And I don’t mean “I just know” or “Because the Bible says so.”

If the Bible is a message from God, how can God authenticate this message as being from Him? How can He demonstrate to the reader that this message is truly from Him and not some contrivance?

You can sum it up in one word: prophecy!

God authenticates His message to us by laying out events before they happen, sometimes centuries before they happen!

God says through the prophet Isaiah:

“Remember the former things long past, for I am God,and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ’My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’; calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of My purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken; truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it, surely I will do it.” –Isaiah 46:9-11.

The Bible is filled with prophecy. A classic example is Psalm 22. This Psalm vividly depicts someone dying of crucifixion. But the key point is that the Psalm was written 400 years before it was even invented by the Persians, later adopted (“perfected”) by the Romans!

So then the real question becomes: if the Bible is authenticated over-and-over again by way of prophecy, thereby clearly making it a message outside of our domain of time and space, what is the implication?

The answer has to be: it is a message from the Creator of the Universe! And if that is true, then this is not just some old book that was written by some really old Jewish guys, but a love letter to mankind, written in the precious blood of the Savior of all.

May He Increase!