Ten Reasons Why I Believe the Bible is the Word of God
By Reuben Archer Torrey
I
was brought up to believe that the Bible was the Word of God. In early life I
accepted it as such upon the authority of my parents, and never gave the question
any serious thought. But later in life my faith in the Bible was utterly
shattered through the influence of the writings of a very celebrated, scholarly
and brilliant sceptic. I found myself face to face with the question, Why
do you believe the Bible is the Word of God?
I had no satisfactory answer. I determined to go to the bottom of
this question. If satisfactory proof could not be found that the Bible was
God's Word I would give the whole thing up, cost what it might. If satisfactory
proof could be found that the Bible was God's Word I would take my stand upon
it, cost what it might. I doubtless had many friends who could have answered
the question satisfactorily, but I was unwilling to confide to them the
struggle that was going on in my own heart; so I sought
help from God and from books, and after much painful study and thought came out
of the darkness of scepticism into the broad daylight of faith and certainty
that the Bible from beginning to end is God's Word. The following pages are largely
the outcome of that experience of conflict and final victory. I will give Ten
Reasons why I believe the Bible is the Word of God.
FIRST, on
the ground of the testimony of Jesus Christ.
Many people accept the authority of Christ who do not accept that
of the Bible as a whole. We all must accept His authority. He is accredited to
us by five Divine testimonies: by the testimony of the Divine life He lived; by
the testimony of the Divine words He spoke; by the testimony of the Divine works
He wrought; by the Divine attestation of the resurrection from the dead; and by
the testimony of His Divine influence upon the history of mankind. But if we
accept the authority of Christ we must accept the authority of the Bible as a
whole. He testifies definitely and specifically to the Divine authorship of the
whole Bible.
We find His testimony as to the Old Testament in Mark
7:13. Here He calls the law of Moses the "Word of God." That, of
course, covers only the first five books of the Old Testament, but in Luke
24:27 we read, "And beginning at Moses and all the prophets,
He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning
Himself," and in the forty-fourth
verse He said, "All things must be fulfilled which were written in the
law of Moses and in the prophets and the Psalms." The Jews, divided the
Old Testament into three parts--the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms--and
Christ takes up each of these parts and sets the stamp of His authority upon
it. In John
10:35 Christ says, "The Scripture cannot be broken," thereby
teaching the absolute accuracy and inviolability of the Old Testament. More
specifically still, it possible, in Matt.
5:18, Jesus says, "One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from
the law till all be fulfilled." A jot is the smallest letter in the Hebrew
alphabet--less than half the size of any other letter, and a tittle is the
merest point of a consonant--less than the cross we put on a
"t,"--and Christ here declares that the Scripture is absolutely true,
down to the smallest letter or point of a letter. So if we accept the authority
of Christ we must accept the Divine authority of the entire Old Testament.
Now, as to the New Testament. We find Christ's endorsement of it
in John
14:26, "The Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall
teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I
have said unto you." Here we see that not only was the teaching of the Apostles to be fully inspired, but also their recollection of
what Christ Himself taught. We are sometimes asked how we know that the
Apostles correctly reported what Jesus said--"may they not have
forgotten?" True, they might forget, but Christ Himself tells us that in
the Gospels we have, not the Apostles' recollection of what He said, but the
Holy Ghost's recollection, and the Spirit of God never forgets. In John
16:13, 14, Christ said that the Holy Ghost should guide the Apostles into
"all the truth," therefore in the New Testament teaching we have the
whole sphere of God's truth. The teaching of the Apostles is more complete than
that of Jesus Himself, for He says in John
16:12, "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear
them now. Howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you
into all the truth." While His own teaching had been partial,
because of their weakness, the teaching of the Apostles, under the promised
Spirit, was to take in the whole sphere of God's truth.
So if we accept the authority of Christ we must accept that of
the whole Bible, but we must, as already seen, accept Christ's authority.
SECOND, on
the ground of its fulfilled prophecies.
There are two classes of prophecies in the Bible--first, the
explicit, verbal prophecies, second, those of the types.
In the first we have the definite prophecies concerning the Jews,
the heathen nations and the Messiah. Taking the prophecies, regarding the
Messiah as an illustration, look at Isaiah
53, Mic. 5:2, Dan. 9:25-27. Many others might be mentioned, but these will
serve as illustrations. In these prophecies, written hundreds of years before
the Messiah came, we have the most explicit statements as to the manner and
place of His birth, the manner of His reception by men, how His life would end,
His resurrection and His victory succeeding His death. When made, these
prophecies were exceedingly improbable, and seemingly impossible of fulfilment;
but they were fulfilled to the very minutest detail of manner and place and
time. How are we to account for it? Man could not have foreseen these improbable
events--they lay hundreds of years ahead--but God could, and it is God who
speaks through these men.
But the prophecies of the types are more remarkable still.
Everything in the Old Testament--history, institutions, ceremonies--is
prophetical. The high priesthood, the ordinary priesthood, the Levites, the
prophets, priests and kings, are all prophecies. The tabernacle, the brazen
altar, the laver, the golden candlestick, the table of shewbread, the veil, the
altar of incense, the ark of the covenant, the very coverings of the
tabernacle, are prophecies. In all these things, as we
study them minutely and soberly in the light of the history of Jesus Christ and
the church, we see, wrapped up in the ancient institutions ordained of God to
meet an immediate purpose, prophecies of the death, atonement, and resurrection
of Christ, the day of Pentecost, and the entire history of the church. We see
the profoundest Christian doctrines of the New Testament clearly foreshadowed
in these institutions of the Old Testament. The only way in which you can
appreciate this is to get into the Book itself and study all about the
sacrifices and feasts, etc., till you see the truths of the New Testament
shining out in the Old. If, in studying some elementary form of life, I find a
rudimentary organ, useless now, but by the process of development to become of
use in that animal's descendant, I say, back of this rudimentary organ is God,
who, in the earlier animal, is preparing for the life and necessities of the
animal that is to come. So, going back to these preparations in the Bible for
the truth that is to be clearly taught at a later day, there is only one
scientific way to account for them, namely, He who knows and prepares for the
end from the beginning is the author of that Book.
THIRD, on
the ground of the unity of the book.
This is an old argument, but a very satisfactory one.
The Bible consists of sixty-six books, written by more than thirty different
men, extending in the period of its composition over more than fifteen hundred
years; written in three different languages, in many different countries, and
by men on every plane of social life, from the herdman and fisherman and cheap
politician up to the king upon his throne; written under all sorts of circumstances;
yet in all this wonderful conglomeration we find an absolute unity of thought.
A wonderful thing about it is that this unity does not lie on the
surface. On the surface there is oftentimes apparent contradiction, and the
unity only comes out after deep and protracted study.
More wonderful yet is the organic character of this unity,
beginning in the first book and growing till you come to its culmination in the
last book of the Bible. We have first the seed, then the plant, then the bud,
then the blossom, then the ripened fruit.
Suppose a vast building were to be erected, the stones for which
were brought from the quarries in Rutland, Vermont; Berea, Ohio; Kasota,
Minnesota, and Middletown, Connecticut. Each stone was hewn into final shape in
the quarry from which it was brought. These stones were of all varieties of
shape and size, cubical, rectangular, cylindrical, etc., but when they were
brought together every stone fitted into its place, and
when put together there rose before you a temple absolutely perfect in every
outline, with its domes, sidewalls, buttresses, arches, transepts--not a gap or
a flaw anywhere. How would you account for it? You would say:
"Back of these individual workers in the quarries was the
master-mind of the architect who planned it all, and gave to each individual
worker his specifications for the work."
So in this marvelous temple of God's truth which we call the
Bible, whose stones have been quarried at periods of time and in places so
remote from one another, but where every smallest part fits each other part, we
are forced to say that back of the human hands that wrought was the Master-mind
that thought.
FOURTH, on
the ground of the immeasurable superiority of the teachings of the Bible to
those of any other and all other books.
It is quite fashionable in
some quarters to compare the teachings of the Bible with the teachings of
Zoroaster, and Buddha, and Confucius, and Epictetus, and Socrates, and Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus, and a number of other heathen authors. The difference
between the teachings of the Bible and those of these men is found in three
points--
First, the Bible has in
it nothing but truth, while all the others have truth mixed with error. It is
true Socrates taught how a philosopher ought to die; he
also taught how a woman of the town ought to conduct her business. Jewels there
are in the teachings of these men, but (as Joseph Cook once said) they are
"jewels picked out of the mud."
Second, the Bible contains
all truth. There is not a truth to be found anywhere on moral or
spiritual subjects that you cannot find in substance within the covers of that
old Book. I have often, when speaking upon this subject, asked anyone to bring
me a single truth on moral or spiritual subjects, which, upon reflection, I
could not find within the covers of this book, and no one has ever been able to
do it. I have taken pains to compare some of the better teachings of infidels
with those of the Bible. They indeed have jewels of thought, but they are,
whether they knew it or not, stolen jewels, and stolen from the very book they
ridicule.
The third point of
superiority is this: the Bible contains more truth than all other books
together. Get together from all literature of ancient and modern times all the
beautiful thoughts you can; put away all the rubbish; put all these truths that
you have culled from the literature of all ages into one book, and as the
result, even then you will not have a book that will take the place of this one
book.
This is not a large book. I
hold in my hand a copy that I carry in my vest pocket and yet in this one little book there is more of truth than in all the books which
man has produced in all the ages of his history. How will you account for it?
There is only one rational way. This is not man's book, but God's book.
FIFTH, on
the ground of the history of the book, its victory over attack.
This book has always been
hated. No sooner was it given to the world than it met the hatred of men, and
they tried to stamp it out. Celsus tried it by the brilliancy of his genius,
Porphyry by the depth of his philosophy; but they failed, Lucian directed
against it the shafts of his ridicule, Diocletian the power of the Roman
empire; but they failed. Edicts backed by all the power of the empire were
issued that every Bible should be burned, and that everyone who had a Bible
should be put to death. For eighteen centuries every engine of destruction that
human science, philosophy, wit, reasoning or brutality could bring to bear
against a book has been brought to bear against that book to stamp it out of
the world, but it has a mightier hold on the world to-day than ever before.
If that were man's book it
would have been annihilated and forgotten hundreds of years ago, but because
there is in it "the hiding of God's power," though at times all the
great men of the world have been against it, and only an obscure remnant for it,
still it has fulfilled wonderfully the words of Christ, though not in the sense of the original prophecy, "Heaven and earth
shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away."
SIXTH, on
the ground of the character of those who accept and of those who reject the
book.
Two things speak for the
divinity of the Bible--the character of those who accept it, and, equally, the
character of those who reject it. I do not mean by this that every man who
professes to believe the book is better than every man that does not, but show
me a man living an unselfish, devoted life, one who without reservation has
surrendered himself to do the will of God, and I will show you a man who
believes the Bible to be God's Word. On the other hand, show me a man who rejects
the Divine authority of that book, and I will show you a man living a life of
greed, or lust, or spiritual pride, or self will.
Suppose you have a book
purporting to be by a certain author, and the people best acquainted with that
author say it is his, and the people least acquainted with him say it is not;
which will you believe? Now, the people best acquainted with God say the Bible
is His book; those who are least acquainted with God say it is not. Which will
you believe?
Furthermore, as men grow
better they are more likely to accept the Bible, and as they grow worse they
are more likely to reject it. We have all known men who
were both sinful and unbelieving, who by forsaking their sin lost their
unbelief. Did any of us ever know a man who was sinful and believing, who by
forsaking his sin lost his faith? The nearer men live to God the more confident
they are that the Bible is God's Word; the farther they get away from Him the
more confident they are that it is not.
Where is the stronghold of the
Bible? In the pure, unselfish, happy home. Where is the stronghold of
infidelity? The gambling hell, the drinking saloon and the brothel. If a man
should walk into a saloon and lay a Bible down upon the bar, and order a drink,
we should think there was a strange incongruity in his actions, but if he
should lay any infidel writing upon the bar, and order a drink, we would not
feel that there was any incongruity.
SEVENTH, on
the ground of the influence of the book.
There is more power in that
little book to save men, and purify, gladden and beautify their lives, than in
all other literature put together--more power to lift men up to God. A stream
never rises higher than its source, and a book that has a power to lift men up
to God that no other book has, must have come down from God in a way that no
other book was.
I have in mind as I write a
man who was the most complete victim of strong drink I ever
knew; a man of marvelous intellectual gifts, but who had been stupefied and brutalized
and demonized by the power of sin, and he was an infidel. At last the light of
God shone into his darkened heart, and by the power of that book he has been
transformed into one of the humblest, sweetest, noblest men I know to-day.
What other book would have
done that? What other book has the power to elevate not only individuals but
communities and nations that this book has?
EIGHTH, on the ground of the
inexhaustible depth of the book.
Nothing has been added to it
in eighteen hundred years, yet a man like Bunsen, or Neander, cannot exhaust it
by the study of a lifetime. George Müller read it through more than one hundred
times, and said it was fresher every time he read it. Could that be true of any
other book?
But more wonderful than
this--not only individual men but generations of men for eighteen hundred years
have dug into it and given to the world thousands of volumes devoted to its
exposition, and they have not reached the bottom of the quarry yet. A book that
man produces man can exhaust, but all men together have not been able to get to
the bottom of this book. How are you going to account for it? Only in this way--that in this book are hidden the infinite and
inexhaustible treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God.
A brilliant Unitarian writer,
in trying to disprove the inspiration of the Bible, says: "How irreligious
to charge an infinite God with having written His whole Word in so small a
book." He does not see how his argument can be turned against himself.
What a testimony it is to the divinity of this book that such infinite wisdom
is stored away in so small a compass.
NINTH, on
the ground of the fact that as we grow in knowledge and holiness we grow toward
the Bible.
Every thoughtful person when
he starts out to study the Bible finds many things with which he does not
agree, but as he goes on studying and growing in likeness to God, the nearer he
gets to God the nearer he gets to the Bible. The nearer and nearer we get to
God's standpoint the less and less becomes the disagreement between us and the
Bible. What is the inevitable mathematical conclusion? When we get where God
is, we and the Bible will meet. In other words, the Bible was written from
God's standpoint.
Suppose you are traveling
through a forest under the conduct of an experienced and highly recommended
guide. You come to a place where two roads diverge. The guide says the road to
the left is the one to take, but your own judgment passing
upon the facts before it sees clear evidence that the road to the right is the
one to take. You turn and say to the guide,
"I know you have had
large experience in this forest, and you have come to me highly recommended,
but my own judgment tells me clearly that the road to the right is the one we
should take, and I must follow my own judgment. I know my reason is not
infallible, but it is the best guide I have."
But after you have followed
that path for some distance you are obliged to stop, turn around and go back
and take the path which the guide said was the right one.
After a while you come to
another place where two roads diverge. Now the guide says the road to the right
is the one to take, but your judgment clearly says the one to the left is the
one to take, and again you follow your own judgment with the same result as
before.
After you had this experience
forty or fifty times, and found yourself wrong every time, I think you would
have sense enough the next time to follow the guide.
That is just my experience
with the Bible. I received it at first on the authority of others. Like almost
all other young men, my confidence became shaken, and I came to the fork in the
road more than forty times, and I followed, my own reason,
and in the outcome found myself wrong and the Bible right every time, and I
trust that from this time on I shall have sense enough to follow the teachings
of the Bible whatever my own judgment may say.
TENTH, on
the ground of the direct testimony of the Holy Spirit.
We began with God and shall
end with God. We began with the testimony of the second person of the Trinity,
and shall close with that of the third person of the Trinity.
The Holy Spirit sets His seal
in the soul of every believer to the Divine authority of the Bible. It is
possible to get to a place where we need no argument to prove that the Bible is
God's Word. Christ says, "My sheep know my voice," and God's children
know His voice, and I know that the voice that speaks to me from the pages of
that Book is the voice of my Father. You will sometimes meet a pious old lady,
who tells you that she knows that the Bible is God's Word, and when you ask her
for a reason for believing that it is God's Word she can give you none, She
simply says:
"I know it is God's
Word."
You say: "That is mere
superstition."
Not at all. She is one of
Christ's sheep, and recognizes her Shepherd's voice from every other voice. She is one of God's children, and knows the voice which speaks
to her from the Bible is the voice of God. She is above argument.
Everyone can have that
testimony. John
7:17 (R. V.,) tells you how to get it. "If any man willeth to do
His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God." Just
surrender your will to the will of God, no matter where it carries you, and you
will put yourself in such an attitude toward God that when you read this book
you will recognize that the voice that speaks to you from it is the voice of
the God to whom you have surrendered your will.
Some time ago, when I was
speaking to our students upon how to deal with sceptics, there was in the
audience a graduate of a British University who had fallen into utter
scepticism. At the close of the lecture he came to me and said:
"I don't wish to be
discourteous, sir, but my experience contradicts everything you have
said."
I asked him if he had followed
the course of action that I had suggested and not found light. He said that he
had. Stepping into another room I had a pledge written out running somewhat as
follows:
"I believe there is an
absolute difference between right and wrong, and I hereby take my stand upon
the right, to follow it wherever it carries me. I promise earnestly to endeavor
to find out what the truth is, and if I ever find that Jesus Christ is the Son
of God, I promise to accept Him as my Savior and confess
Him before the world."
I handed the paper to the
gentleman and asked him if he was willing to sign it. He answered,
"Certainly," and did sign it. I said to him:
"You don't know there is
not a God, and you don't know that God doesn't answer prayer. I know He does,
but my knowledge cannot avail for you, but here is a possible clew to
knowledge. Now you have promised to search earnestly for the truth, so you will
follow this possible clue. I want you to offer a prayer like this: 'Oh, God, if
there be any God, and thou dost answer prayer, show me whether Jesus Christ is
thy Son, and if you show me He is, I will accept Him as my Savior and confess
Him before the world.'"
This he agreed to do. I
further requested that he would take the Gospel of John and read in it every
day, reading only a few verses at a time slowly and thoughtfully, every time
before he read asking God to give him light. This he also agreed to do, but he
finished by saying, "There is nothing in it." However, at the end of
a short time, I met him again, and he said to me, "There is something in
that." I replied, "I knew that." Then he went on to say it
seemed just as if he had been caught up by the Niagara river and had been
carried along, and that before long he would be a shouting Methodist.
A short time ago I met this
gentleman again, and he said to me that he could not
understand how he had been so blind, how he had ever listened to the reasoning
which he had; that it seemed to him utterly foolish now. I replied that the
Bible would explain this to him, that the "natural man receiveth not the
things of the Spirit of God," but that now he had put himself into the
right attitude towards God and His truth, everything had been made plain. That
man, who assured me that he was "a very peculiar man," and that
methods that influenced others would not influence him, by putting himself into
the right attitude towards God, got to a place where he received the direct
testimony of the Holy Ghost that this Bible is God's Word; and, any one else
can do the same.