Why the Incarnation Proves the Trustworthiness of the Bible

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! 

Last week, we talked about how the holiday season is a good time to remember how far the Lord has brought you. That's not all the remembering you get to do this time of year, though! Christmas is also a time to slow down and think about the Incarnation. 

It's a really powerful mystery. We can't understand the full significance of God becoming man—we can't understand the incredible humility Jesus showed in lowering himself so much, the glory of that night, or just how important the Incarnation is for our salvation. 

There's a lot to be said about it, and a lot gets said around Christmas time. But right now let's focus on just one aspect of the Incarnation: the prophecies throughout the Old Testament, and how they prove that the Bible is completely true and trustworthy. 

 

The Prophecies

You've probably heard them already this Christmas season. Many Messianic prophecies are commonly read this time of year—passages like Isaiah 9:6, which reads, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

(Every time I read that verse, Handel's Messiah starts playing in my head. If you haven't listened to it, you absolutely should.)

Isaiah 9:6 is a prophecy about the coming Messiah. In Isaiah's day, people probably thought about the Messiah as someone who was coming to save the nation of Israel, but that understanding wasn't completely accurate. The Messiah had been prophesied as early as Genesis 3:15: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

The Messiah wasn't just for Israel. The Messiah was for everybody, and he'd been promised as soon as sin entered the world. 

Here's a fun exercise: guess how many prophecies of Christ there are in the Old Testament. 

I don't know how good at guessing you are, but I know I was surprised when I found out the answer. There are 324 prophecies of Jesus in the Old Testament—at least.

Some of those are specifically Messianic, and some are more vague. Depending on what you count as a prophecy, that number could be even higher. (Check out this article for more information.)

That's... a lot. 

 

The Authority of the Bible

I'm a writer, and I want to be a published author. As such, I've tried my hand at writing books, and recently completed the first draft of my second novel. 

The biggest thing that I've learned over my writing journey? 

Writing is hard. 

Especially books. You have to think about so many things—plot structure, character development, prose and word choice—and you have to keep them all internally consistent, which is a real challenge. The details that you put in Chapter 2? Yeah, they still apply, a hundred pages later. 

I struggle to remember all the details of the things I've written, and I'm just one person. (Not to mention that I have a bunch of fancy tools like a computer at my disposal.)

The authors of the Bible didn't have those tools. They were writing by hand on papyrus scrolls. And, according to tradition, there are over 40 individual authors of the Bible, spread over hundreds of years.

Can you imagine the amount of collaboration required to write a collection of myths that was that internally consistent? 

Isaiah didn't know Matthew. Matthew knew of Isaiah, since he would have read what was then the Old Testament Scriptures. But Matthew was a tax collector, not a scribe—he wouldn't have had time to obsessively study the Scriptures to make sure that his fraudulent storybook would be as accurate as possible. 

Same for Mark, Luke, and John. The authors of the Gospels weren't Bible scholars! Matthew was a tax collector. Mark was a young man who probably acted as the scribe for Peter, an uneducated fisherman from Galilee. Luke was a doctor, so he would have had a better education than most—but he would have focused on healing people, not on the nuances of Scripture. And John was just another Galilean fisherman. 

If they were really writing a fictional story, then why does their testimony line up so well? 

Because it's true. 

It's a pretty simple answer. The Bible is incredibly internally consistent because all the authors were writing the truth—and truth never contradicts itself. 

Why does Jesus fulfill all of the Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament? Because he's the Messiah. They were all about him from the beginning. 

No human could have written the Bible. It's just too complex. 

The prophecies prove to us that Scripture is divinely inspired—God knew the whole story before he wrote it, so he knew what to put in the Old Testament about Jesus. He knew what was going to happen. He'd predestined it from the beginning! 

The Incarnation is the culmination of the Old Testament. The Bible is perfect—perfectly cohesive, perfectly beautiful, and perfectly powerful. And Jesus is woven into every chapter. 

He really is the Messiah, guys. And he's the only one who can save you. 

Do you think that the Bible could have been written by humans? Could it be just a collection of myths? 

The Bible isn't like any other book—ancient or modern. If you don't agree, then just pick up a book on Greek or Norse mythology and see how much sense it makes. 

Jesus fulfills all the prophecies to the letter. He's the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God and Son of Man. He's the Creator and Lord of the universe. 

And I hope (and pray) that he's the Lord of your heart.