Back to the course: God’s attributes
You are talking to an AI helper, not a person. Answers come from this lesson first. It cannot give quiz answers, and it can make mistakes, so please check what it says against the Bible.
📖 Memory verse: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
📄 Read the words of this video
Welcome back. In part one we saw that we need a final authority, to tell us whether our thinking about God is right. And we said there is a book unlike any other. Now let's see what makes the Bible different. The answer is simple, and astonishing: in the Bible, God Himself has spoken.
The Bible has an authority unlike any other book. It gives us information that no other book gives. Its view of history, of the present, and of the future, is unique.
Why? It tells us about God, because God Himself has spoken, and made Himself known, in the Bible. If you want to know what a person is really thinking, the surest way is for that person to tell you. God has told us.
That is a great claim. So let's see what the Bible says about itself.
Look up Second Timothy, chapter three, verse sixteen.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness… (2 Timothy 3:16, BSB)
All Scripture is God-breathed. When you speak, your words are carried out on your breath. They come from inside you. That is the picture here. The words of Scripture come from God Himself. And notice: all Scripture. Not only the parts we find easy.
And because it comes from God, it is useful. For instruction: it teaches us what is true. For conviction: it shows us where we are wrong. For correction: it puts us right. And for training in righteousness: it shows us how to live. The Bible is not a book only to admire. It is a book to live by.
But the Bible was written down by men. So how can it be the word of God? Peter explains. Look up Second Peter, chapter one, verses twenty and twenty-one.
Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation. For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20–21, BSB)
Men spoke. Real men, each with his own way of writing. But they spoke from God, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Think of a sailing boat. It has a real sail and a real crew, but it is the wind that carries it where it goes. The writers of the Bible did not put down their own ideas about God. No prophecy, says Peter, was ever brought forth by the will of man.
The Bible had different human authors, each with a different upbringing and different experiences. Nearly all of them came from the Jewish people. But this is what unites them all: God revealed Himself to each of them, and spoke through them.
All through history, God has revealed Himself and spoken to people. Here are four of them. He spoke to the first human beings He made, Adam and Eve. He told them plainly that they might eat freely from every tree of the garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. From the very beginning, God has not left people to guess what He requires.
He spoke to a man called Abraham, who was to play a significant part in God's purposes in history. And He made him great promises: ‘all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.’
He revealed Himself in a very dramatic way to Moses, in a bush that blazed with fire and yet was not burned up. God said: ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.’ Moses later received the Ten Commandments from God, and had a profound impact on the world.
And later in history, God spoke to a man called Jeremiah, who became a prophet: someone specially chosen to be God's spokesman. God said to him: ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you… and appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’
All these people, and many others, heard from God. What they were given to write down is what we have in the Bible today.
So when you open the Bible, you are not reading people's best guesses about God. You are hearing from God Himself. That is why, all through this course, we will keep asking one question: what does the Bible say?
Below this video, you'll find the passages from this part.
Then mark this part as complete and continue with part three: what is special about the Bible?
God speaks through the Bible
The Bible has an authority unlike any other book. It gives us information no other book gives. Its view of history, the present and the future is unique. It tells us about God, because God Himself has spoken and made Himself known in the Bible. Let's see what the Bible says about itself.
📖 Look up 2 Timothy 3:16
What does this verse say all Scripture is?
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
2 Timothy 3:16 (BSB)
📖 Look up 2 Peter 1:20–21
From whom did the prophets speak, and how?
20Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation. 21For no such prophecy was ever brought forth by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Peter 1:20–21 (BSB)
The Bible had different human authors, each with a different upbringing and experiences. They came from the Jewish people (with one or two exceptions), but what unites them all is that God revealed Himself to each of them, and spoke through them.
God spoke to people
He spoke to the first human beings He made, Adam and Eve.
📖 Look up Genesis 2:16–17
What did God tell the man he could eat, and what must he not eat?
16And the LORD God commanded him, “You may eat freely from every tree of the garden, 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
Genesis 2:16–17 (BSB)
He spoke to a man called Abraham, who was to play a significant part in God's purposes in history, and made him great promises (Genesis 12:1–3).
See also: Genesis 12:1–3.
Then He revealed Himself in a very dramatic way to Moses, another man who had a great influence on the world, and who received the Ten Commandments from God.
📖 Read Exodus 3:1–5
What did God say to Moses in verse 5?
1Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from within a bush. Moses saw the bush ablaze with fire, but it was not consumed. 3So Moses thought, “I must go over and see this marvelous sight. Why is the bush not burning up?” 4When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from within the bush, “Moses, Moses!” “Here I am,” he answered. 5“Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Exodus 3:1–5 (BSB)
Later in history, God spoke to a man called Jeremiah, who became a prophet – someone specially chosen to be God's spokesman.
📖 Look up Jeremiah 1:5
When did God set Jeremiah apart, and for what?
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
Jeremiah 1:5 (BSB)
All these people, and many others, heard from God. What they were given to write down is what we have in the Bible today.
Scripture quotations are from the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), which is in the public domain. They keep its American spelling. Like many English Bibles, it often says ‘man’, ‘he’ or ‘brothers’ where it means people in general, men and women alike.