Part 3: What is special about the Bible?

Welcome to part three. We have seen what the Bible says about itself: that it is God-breathed. But other religious books make similar claims. So why can we be so confident that the Bible tells us accurately about the real and true God? What is so special about it? Here are three things.

First, the Bible’s unity. It stands out as a unique piece of literature. It took over a thousand years to put together, and many different people were involved in writing it.

Ask a dozen people today to write about God, and you will get a dozen different opinions. Yet the Bible's message is always the same. Its various human authors describe the same God, working by the same principles. From beginning to end, there is consistency.

How can that be? Because God does not change. His purposes do not alter. Page after page, the same truth is revealed.

Second, the Bible does something no other book does. It predicts, with amazing accuracy, events that will take place in the future. Names, places and details of distant events are foretold hundreds of years before they happen. We can sometimes guess what will happen tomorrow. No one can describe what will happen centuries from now, unless God, who knows the future, has told him.

This is clearest in what the Bible says about God's Son, Jesus Christ, who died in a most exceptional way, and then astonished the world by rising from the dead. Where He would be born. What He would do. How He would die. And how He would be raised. All this was recorded in the Bible hundreds of years before it happened.

And the Bible stands alone among religious books in this: it tells the history of the world from its creation to its final end.

Third, the Bible has a depth and a seriousness found in no other book. It does not avoid the hardest questions. What happens after death? Why do we fear it? What is our relationship with God? How can we know Him, and serve Him?

These things reach beyond our experience. They concern our souls, and our destiny. No one living has been through death and come back to tell us what lies on the other side. So who can speak about such things with authority? Only someone who has come from there.

Listen to what Jesus Christ said about Himself. Look up John chapter eight, verse twenty-three.

Then He told them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23, BSB)

You are from below; I am from above. Every other teacher in history has been one of us: born in this world, and speaking from within it. Jesus says that He is different. He came into this world from outside it. He is not guessing about God. He came from God.

And He said the same thing in another way. Look up John chapter three, verse thirteen.

No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man. (John 3:13, BSB)

No one has gone up into heaven to see what it is like, and come back to report. But One has come down from heaven. That is why the Bible can speak with clear authority about the unseen realm: about heaven, and about what lies beyond death.

Only in the Bible will we gain understanding of these things. Life and death, and all the serious and important issues of life, are dealt with in this special book. God is real. And as we will learn in the rest of this course, the Bible tells us about Him, and explains how we can know Him and serve Him.

So here are some questions to ask yourself. How do you try to explain the world around you? Do you believe there must be a Creator? What lies beyond death? Do you think about it, and wonder what will happen to you? And are you prepared to read the Bible seriously?

And here is something to pray about. Ask the Lord to teach you from His word, and to help you understand the message He has given us in the Bible.

Below this video, you'll find the passages from this part, and some questions to think about.

Then take the short quiz to complete study one.

In study two: God is glorious. Thank you for watching.