What is the Bible?

A study completed a little over 10 years ago found that the most read book in the world was the Bible, by a significant margin. Over a 50-year time frame, the Bible sold over 3.9 billion copies, which is over 3 billion more than the runner-up, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung”. The reason the Bible is so popular is that it is the Word of God. It is a book written by God to humankind, and who wouldn’t want to read a book that comes directly from God?

The word “bible” comes from a Greek word that means ‘book’, so the Bible literally means ‘the book’.The Bible contains 66 different books, 1189 chapters, and 783,137 words in the King James Version. The whole Bible was written by over 40 different men over a time period of approximately 1,500 years. The Bible is split into 2 main sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, and the New Testament was written primarily in Greek. As of 2022, the full Bible has been translated into 704 different languages. After considering all these things a major question pops up, ‘how can the Bible be the word of God, if it was written by over 40 different men’?

How do we know the Bible is the Word of God? This is the most important question that must be answered when considering the Bible. When all the evidence is considered, the clear and factual answer is that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible is scientifically and historically accurate and can also be confirmed by manuscript and archaeological evidence However, the most confirming piece of evidence for the Bible is its divine nature. 2 Timothy 3:16 says “All scripture is breathed out by God”. The Bible contains something unique from every other book in the world, confirmed prophecy. Prophecy is the foretelling or predicting what will happen in the future. The Bible contains over 1,800 prophecies, some of which have already been fulfilled, while others will be fulfilled in the future. But of every prophecy that has been fulfilled, they have done so with 100% accuracy. A few examples include:

Hundreds of years before Alexander the Great was born, the Bible predicted the rise of the Greecian empire and the young death of Alexander the Great in Daniel 8:5-8.
Hundreds of years before Jesus Christ was born, the Bible predicted where and how He would be born in Micah 5:2 and Isaiah 7:14
The Bible also predicted how Jesus would die, how He would be betrayed, where he would be buried, and even how much Judas would betray Jesus in Zechariah 11:12.

The list could go on and on concerning prophecies that have accurately been fulfilled. All the evidence points unequivocally and totally towards the Bible being the Word of God. The Bible explains it is written by the hand of men, but the Spirit of God inspires each word. Divinely, God wrote the Bible through men. Just as God could breathe life into Adam during creation, God could breathe life into every single word written in the Bible.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” 1 Timothy 3:16.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” 1 Corinthians 2:12-13.

“For the Word of God is living and active” Hebrews 4:12.

The Bible consists of history, law, poetry, teaching, and prophecy, among other things. The Bible answers key questions like, ‘Where do we come from?’, ‘Why are we here?’, ‘What is the meaning of life?’, ‘What happens when we die?’. But arguably most important of all, the Bible offers hope and salvation to everyone. How can anyone have true hope? Only through the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible tells how mankind’s sin has separated them from God and how Jesus died on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven and rose again from the dead. By repenting of your sins and believing in Jesus Christ, you can be saved and have what the Bible offers freely, hope.