What is the Bible?

The simplest way to explain what the Bible is can put this way; the Bible is God's way of revealing Himself to humanity and His plan of salvation for His creation. While this sentence sums up the Bible in a nutshell, it is also the most profound concept to ever exist. Imagine the Creator of the universe reaching down to my level to reveal Himself and His thoughts and plans to the world and me. The word 'awesome' does not begin to describe the depth of such a concept.

The Bible has been rightly described as having three main sections. The first involves God's creation of all that exists. The universe, the world and all that exists were created by God's mighty hand. He spoke and the universe leapt into existence (Gen. 1:2). The second part involves mans choice not to follow God's will. Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and as a result, sin entered the world and so did death (Gen 3; Rom 5:12). The third and final part is the story of God's plan of salvation. The remainder of the Bible explains God's dealings with His people and how He has set up a provision by which all men (and women) can be with Him throughout eternity.

This one provision is Jesus the Christ. The word 'Christ' is the Greek word for savior. Jesus is the savior of the entire world. Hid did this by taking on all the sins of all men ever. Only he could do this because only he lived a perfect and sinless life. He could live a perfect life because Jesus is God in the flesh (Col 2:9). It is because of Christ's perfection and deity that only he could endure the wrongs of all mankind.

The Bible is broken up into 66 books by some 40 authors. Thirty-nine make up the Old Testament. All these books deal with the history of God's relationship to his people as well as prophecies about the coming savior, or Jesus. The 27 books of the New Testament deal with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It also gives details about His church and His second coming. In the Old Testament men looked forward to the coming of Christ, in the New Testament we look back on Christ's life as proof of God's love and as an example of how we are to live. The Bible can rightly be summed up in a word, Jesus. The Old Testament prophesies His coming. The New Testament records His arrival.

While man wrote the Bible it is authored by the Spirit of God (1Cor 2:10). The writers were carried along by the Spirit of God (1 Pet 1:21), thus the Scriptures are literally God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16). Because of this, we can be sure that the original manuscripts were flawless. That is to say that since God cannot error, and the Bible is the Word of God, the Bible cannot error. Since no original manuscripts exist, and all we have is copies, the issue then arises of how reliable the copies are. With literally thousands of manuscripts, we can be quite sure of the integrity of the Bible (See Manuscript Evidence).

It is because of the overwhelming manuscript evidence that the inerrancy of the Bible can be insured. While there are difficulties in the Bible, there are no errors. In fact, no errors to the original texts have ever been proven. The Bible, when difficulties arise, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Time and archeology have consistently proven the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. Because of this and other evidence (See Other Evidences) the burden of proof rests on the critic to refute the inerrancy of God's Word. Sadly, many critics begin with the conclusion that the Bible is incorrect, then work hard to produce evidence to that conclusion.