WHEN I WAS VERY YOUNG, as were many other students, was fond of airing my views at the Speakers Corner which is in Hyde Park, London. I had been brought up to believe the Bible to be the Inspired word of God. It was an assumption that I accepted as being no less certain than that the world was round and that night followed day!
Quite naturally, armed with such an authority, I quoted the Bible copiously and, providing I could find a Bible text to fit the occasion, was convinced that that was the end of any argument!
It was a few days before Christmas, when I was about twenty years of age —and I’m not going to let on how long ago that was—when I got my comeuppance! A very pleasant man, not looking nearly as wicked as he should have looked, parried every assertion I made with the simple but profound words `Yes that IS what the Bible says but how do you KNOW that the Bible is the Word of God?’
Well I DID know, as every Christian knows, that the Bible is the Word of God because the Holy Spirit had revealed it to me and nobody who has had that revelation can ever doubt the fact. I could sing with the hymn-writer of old `I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough that Jesus died and that He died for me!’ There are millions of people in the world of all nations, of every social strata and of all levels of education who have had that experience! We, I can assure the doubter, need no other argument, for we have received the knowledge from God Himself by direct revelation.
It is not easy however to conduct a discussion on the basis of one having an inner-feeling which obviously no-one else can comprehend! The pleasant man did not destroy my faith in the Bible being the Word of God but he did cause me to wonder how I could prove TO DOUBTERS that the Bible is the Inspired Word of God. How, I wondered, could it be proved from evidence EXTERNAL to the Bible that the Bible is the Word of God?
That great Evangelist/Revivalist my good friend the late Principal George Jeffreys used to say `Bible prophecy is the test of Bible inspiration.’ He was right! When it is realised that, at the time of writing, over two thirds of the Bible was written to foretell future events it will be seen that the Bible is the most prolific book of prediction in the world!