Why I Believe: One Skeptic’s Journey to Faith Part 1: Knowing the Bible
For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. —Matthew 7:8 (NKJV)
Have you ever been skeptical or had questions about God? I sure have. I was an atheist who believed that science had disproved God and the Bible. I thought belief in God was a crutch, or perhaps complete ignorance… until I started to actually look and see if there was any truth to it. I was blown away to find lots of evidence supporting its truthfulness—both outside and inside the Bible.
To really understand the God of the Bible I realized I would need to, at the very least, read through the whole Bible. I had a ton of preconceived ideas about God that I had gotten from stuff I had seen, read, or heard from others, most of which were not actually true. Reading the Bible gave me a much more accurate understanding of who God really was. I kept asking myself, If God was real would this be plausible?
The answer I always came to was, yes.
When I opened the Bible, I expected it to read like a fairy tale because that’s what I thought it was. Very quickly I realized it was more like reading a history book. The vast number of genealogies, detailed descriptions of the tabernacle and temple construction, the descriptions of all the sacrifices the Jews had to make to reconcile themselves to God… the parts of the Bible many people find boring, spoke to me of its truthfulness.
The prophetic claims throughout the Bible, many of which have been fulfilled perfectly, not only speak to its truthfulness but that it must have God’s influence on it. For example, Jesus fulfilled about 300 prophecies from the Old Testament in His short time on earth. (The odds of fulfilling even 100 are astounding.) Many of those were out of His hands even if He were trying to manipulate things in His favor—things like where and when He was born, how He died, what His enemies did with His belongings when they tortured Him, etc.
To give you an example, one of these prophetic passages, full of multiple prophesies about Jesus, is Isaiah 52:13–53:12. The oldest known, full, and intact copy of the book of Isaiah is from at least 100 years before Jesus was born, and the book of Isaiah was originally written 500-600 years before Jesus was born. This passage in particular causes a lot of problems for many Jews who don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah, because it describes who Jesus is and what He would go through for us. It describes the gospel message so well that many Christians quote it when describing the gospel.
Things in the Old Testament will make more sense after reading the New Testament and vice versa. Saint Augustine once said, “The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed. The New Testament is the Old Testament revealed.”
The Bible is amazing and well worth a read through, in whatever way works best for you. I started with a children’s Bible and then got an audio Bible to listen to in my car. You don’t have to completely understand everything, not many people do. You will at the very least know more than you did and the next time you go through it you will understand even more. I would encourage you to figure out a way to get through the whole Bible, to better understand the God who made you. If you’ve already done it, maybe it’s time to do it again. The more questions you have, the more answers you will find. Seek the truth, search it out, and you will find it.