I know my case here will not change the mind of the skeptic, atheist and spiritual ne’er do well. But hopefully my brothers and sisters in the LORD will be encouraged and know that the Bible we have been given was not done so in a vacuum, but given to us through time from God, using fallen sinful men, to reach a fallen and sinful people for His glory.

Often times we hear objections from non-believers that we cannot trust the Bible because it was written by men. The implication is that the Bible is fallible because men wrote it, men who were simply giving their opinion, or worse, conspiring to say something that God never said. It is the quickest way to stifle conversation or thought among non-believers. Never mind the fact that men are making this judgment that we cannot trust the Bible. Which means if men are so fallible that we cannot trust the Bible, then how can we trust their opinion that we cannot trust the Bible because men made it, and they are men, and men are making opinion statements… wow, that was confusing. But you get the idea.

There are several problems with this objection. The first is, who else is He going to use? The purpose of the Bible is showing God’s plan of redemption throughout history. He is out seeking to redeem a people to Himself, and in doing so, He has not only communicated man’s great problem, that of sin, but the solution to that problem, a redeemer in Jesus Christ. Therefore He uses fallen men in this process to reach and speak to those who are His. He uses fallen men because that is all that there is. There are no righteous people for Him to use in writing the Bible because there are none. This is why it is so important that we understand that the Holy Spirit was moving the prophets along as they were writing the Bible. Peter tells us in his second letter, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21).

The men who wrote the Bible were not writing in a vacuum. They were writing in a specific time and place and the Holy Spirit was carrying them along as they did so. This doesn’t remove the men from their earthly setting or situation, it doesn’t remove their personality from them. God was using the fallen men, made holy by His calling on their lives and the righteousness of Christ to come, to pen what He wanted them to say. They were not robots, but men who were being redeemed telling others about the God who is and the redemption necessary and found only in Christ. All 66 books of the Bible either point to that reality, or say it specifically. So in this sense, the Bible has only one author: the Holy Spirit. The writers are in agreement with one another because the Holy Spirit is involved in giving what is written.

This leads to another proof that the Bible is God’s word. The Bible never candy-coates the men who wrote it. What I mean by that is that if the Bible were actually written by “just men” and not the Holy Spirit as well, we would never know that Moses murdered an Egyptian before becoming God’s mediator for the people. I’m quite certain that he would have glossed over that little bit in his history. But he doesn’t because he is being moved by the Holy Spirit to give an account of what took place. It is for this reason we also know of King David’s transgression with Bathsheba, and Paul’s aid to those stoning the first Christians. So a majority of the Bible is written by three murderers showing God’s rich grace toward His people and showing that there are none He cannot reach with the righteousness of Christ.

Another aspect of this, which also helps us to see that we can invalidate other supposed holy books, is that there were those to testify to what was written. When Moses wrote about the fact that he murdered an Egyptian man, there were Jews there who knew this to be true. He wasn’t writing the first five books of the Bible in a vacuum. There were those who could testify to its truthfulness in that day. This is not true when it comes to the writings of cult leaders like Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy. There was no one who could testify to the truthfulness of what they wrote. No events to prove the case. They were writing in a vacuum. The same is true for whoever wrote the Koran.

Finally, we also have hundreds of places in the Scripture where the writer was quoting directly from the LORD. For instance, when Moses gives the Ten Commandments, he does so by quoting the LORD directly. He gives in the preamble to the Ten Commandments what the LORD said: “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, you shall have no other gods before Me.”

This happens throughout Scripture, especially in the New Testament when Jesus is quoted as saying something. We are hearing directly from the LORD when He speaks.

I know my case here will not change the mind of the skeptic, atheist and spiritual ne’er do well. But hopefully my brothers and sisters in the LORD will be encouraged and know that the Bible we have been given was not done so in a vacuum, but given to us through time from God, using fallen sinful men, to reach a fallen and sinful people for His glory.

Timothy Hammons is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. This article appeared on his blog and is used with permission.