Question:

One of the questions I tend to run into a lot from co-workers of mine is
“How do we know the Bible was inspired by God” and “How do we know that
the men who wrote it didn’t just put in what they wanted us to hear and
left other things out?” How could I go about tackling this question? I’ve
found scriptures to back up the validity of men being inspired by the Holy
Spirit to write down the scriptures, but is their another angle to tackle
this question?

Answer:

I get from your question that you have used passages from the Bible which
claim the Bible is inspired (such as 2 Tim 3:16 or 2 Peter 1:19-21) with
no luck. This should not surprise you. You have presented a person with
the claim, but not with the evidence which supports the claim. Now it is
your job to provide the evidence (the apologetics) which proves these
rather strong claims to be true. Many of our hearers are already prepared
to accept that the Bible is inspired by God, but more are not prepared to
accept this. To simply present the claim and expect an open heart to
accept it does not make sense for most people. They need evidence.

If you do a search of the question and answer part of the web site you
will find that I have answered very similar questions a number of times.
I suggest you go to the “general apologetics” section of the Q & A and to
the section on Bible manuscripts, although there are others scattered
through the hundreds of questions. I will give you a snippet of an answer
here, and ask you to go from there by searching some through my Q & As.

My answer is that we know the Bible is inspired by God because of the
evidence. The evidence includes messianic prophecies in the Old Testament
which are fulfilled in the New Testament. You can find material on this
by getting a copy of my book Reasons for Belief at www.ipibooks.com or my
book From Shadow to Reality, also at www.ipibooks.com. From Shadow to
Reality adds hundreds of examples of historical foreshadows, prefigures of
the Messiah, types/antitypes in the OT law, the festivals, the sacrifices
and so forth. All these provide incontrovertible proof of inspiration.
Let me give you just a couple of examples, and you can find more in these
books or in an article entitled Messianic Prophecies in the articles
section of the web site.

1. Psalms 22:17,18 says that the Messiah would be crucified, hundreds of
years before crucifixion was invented. It also says that those who
crucified him would both divide and gamble over his clothing. The no
bones being broken was also fulfilled when they broke the bones of the two
thieves, but not Jesus.

2. Zechariah 11:12-13 says that the Messiah–God–would be betrayed for
thirty pieces of silver and that this money would be used by throwing it
to the potter. Both of these were literally fulfilled by the enemies of
Jesus.

3. If you go to my material on messianic prophecies, you will see that in
Daniel 9:23-25 even the year the Messiah would be killed for our sins was
predicted.

All of these and many more were written hundreds of years before the
events, yet they happened exactly as predicted.

Another reason I know that the Bible is inspired by God is that Jesus was
resurrected from the dead. When he said, “destroy this temple and I will
rebuild it in three days.” and then he was resurrected on the third day,
that right there validates both Jesus’ claims and his teachings as being
from God. The evidence supporting this claim is found in my book
mentioned above Reasons for Belief, but also there is more than one
article on the resurrection of Jesus, by myself and others at the web site.

I could continue to mention miraculous historical accuracy, miraculous
preservation of the Bible text, amazing scientific insight in the Bible
and many more. All these are mentioned in Reasons for Belief and in
numerous articles at my web site.

The evidence that we have substantially the same text as the original
writings is overwhelming. The evidence for general inspiration of beyond
a reasonable doubt. If you present this evidence with respect and
patience to your friends, they will either accept the obvious, or they
will reject it. If they reject it, you will know that it is not because
of lack of evidence but because of a sinful heart which is not ready to
submit to God.