Reflection: Confidence in the Bible

Many of the churches in the Western world have lost confidence in the Bible as the Word of God.

Contemporary culture and ideas would seem to contradict the claims of the Bible and so the church is in retreat.

But we should be wary of thinking that the conclusions of contemporary culture are arrived at in an unbiased way.

The starting-point of many people’s thinking is that God doesn’t exist, didn’t create the universe and that miracles do not happen.

If you start with a false premise, then you are not going to be able to arrive at the correct conclusion.

Unfortunately, this error has also crept into the church’s thinking. 

If God really is the all-powerful creator of the universe, should we be surprised that He can predict events hundreds of years beforehand, or that Jesus, His Son, healed people in miraculous ways?

Science cannot say that miracles do not happen, because by definition, miracles are exceptional events, and science is founded on the consistency of repeatable experiments. Just because I have not seen a miracle myself, I cannot conclude that miracles never happen.

In “The Nature, Faith and Order of the United Reformed Church”, we say “The highest authority for what we believe and do is God’s Word in the Bible”.

Let us dig into the rich treasure of the Bible with confidence, because it tells us all we need to know about our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
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Kevin Haigh