Why I Believe In The Bible
I have, within the past fifty years, come out of all
uncertainty into a faith which is a dominating
conviction of the Truth and about which I have not a shadow of a
doubt. It has been my lot all through life to associate with
eminent scientists and at times to discuss with them the deepest
and most vital of all questions, the nature of the hope of a life
beyond this.
I have also constantly engaged in scientific work and am fully
aware of the value of opinions formed in science as well as in
religions in the world. In an amateurish, yet in a very real
sense, I have followed the development of archaeology, geology,
astronomy, herpetology, and mycology with a hearty appreciation
of the advances being made in these fields.
At one time I became disturbed in the faith in which I had grown
up by the apparent inroads being made upon both Old and New
Testaments by a “Higher Criticism” of the Bible, to
refute which I felt the need of a better knowledge of Hebrew and
of archaeology, for it seemed to me that to pull out some of the
props of our faith was to weaken the entire structure.
Doubts thus inculcated left me floundering for a while and, like
some higher critical friends, trying to
continue to use the Bible as the Word of God while at the same
beyond time holding it to have been subjected to a vast number of
reductions and interpolations: attempting to bridge the chasm
between an older, reverent, Bible-loving generation and a
critical, doubting, Bible-emancipated race. Although still aware
of a great light and glow of warmth in the Book, I stood outside
shivering in the cold.
In one third the higher critics, like the modernists, however,
overreached themselves, in claiming that the Gospel of John was
not written in John’s time but well after the first century,
perhaps as late as 150 A.D. Now, if any part of the Bible is
assuredly the very Word of God speaking through His servant, it
is John’s Gospel. To ask me to believe that so inexpressibly
marvelous a book was written long after all the events by some
admiring follower, and was not inspired directly by the Spirit of
God, is asking me to accept a miracle far greater than any of
those recorded in the Bible.
Here I took my leave of my learned friends to step out on another
path, to which we might give the
modern name of Pragmatism, or the thing that works. Test it, try
it, and if it works, accept it as a guiding principle.
So, I put my Bible to the practical test of noting what it says
about itself, and then tested it to see how it worked. As a
short, possibly not the best method, I looked up “Word”
in the Concordance and noted that the Bible claims from Genesis 1
to Revelation 22 to be God’s personal message to man. The
next traditional step then was to accept it as the authoritative
textbook of the Christian faith just as one would accept a
treatise on any earthly “science,” and I submitted to
its conditions according to Christ’s invitation and promise
that, “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the
doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself” (Jn. 7:17).
The outcome of such an experiment has been in due time the
acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God inspired in a sense
utterly different from any merely human book, and with it the
sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ as the only begotten Son of
God, the Savior of the world.
By Howard A. Kelly