The Bible Among the Sacred Books

It is quite reasonable to wonder why Christians hold the Bible in such high esteem, rejecting the texts considered sacred by other religions. I did something similar, having been raised in a liberal religion. The Fundamentalist Christian school I attended raised many questions for me.

When I confronted teachers and schoolmates with questions, they used the Bible as their authority — not books of any other religion. I spent a great deal of time reading the Bible, references, and apologetics books. Where is this or that doctrine taught?

Bible outdoors, Unsplash / Aaron Burden

The liberal rebellion I had eventually reversed and I became more conservative and more educated. Biblical teachings appealed to me, and I learned that creation is true and fish-to-fool evolution is a lie. What played a key part after the school days (1979?) was attending the adult Sunday School of another church. They were listening to cassette teaching tapes of Dr. Walter Martin and cults. Why are we right and they are wrong? This proved to be very beneficial.

Of course, I investigated the teachings of other religions. Especially Buddhism, which I tried to mix with Christianity when I was in a backslidden state. That was stupid and cost me a lot of time. In the initial investigation of the Bible itself, the Holy Spirit was leading me. He also brought me out of my Buddhist fiasco.

People can approach creation, Christianity, and so on from an intellectual standpoint, but the truth only comes through the Holy Spirit working in our lives. Some mistakenly get involved in sects that appeal to emotions lead them to feel ecstatic at times, but I have noticed such people are seldom grounded in the Word of God. Emotions are real, God gave them to us. He also gave us our minds and expects us to use them. (Indeed, some of the best biblical creation scientists became so after they came to faith in Jesus Christ.) The Bible is intellectually satisfying as well as emotionally and spiritually.

The Koran, the Vedas, the Tripitaka, the Tao Te Ching, the Book of Mormon . . . and on and on the list goes. Hundreds of religious books claim to contain truth about a god or gods. What makes the Bible different . . . .

The Bible never tries to defend itself as the truth from God. It simply says that it is (Psalm 119:160; Proverbs 30:5; John 17:17). The Bible consistently says that God doesn’t lie (Titus 1:2) but that mankind does (Romans 3:4). Therefore, we know that God, not any person, must be the very standard for truth. Indeed, without God, who is truth, truth can’t exist as there must be a standard or authority to measure whether something is true.

To read the entire article, see "Did God Write Other Books?"