If the Bible had been written by one individual, or even two, the argument we are about to adduce would not be so powerful, but when we reflect that the Bible is not one consecutive Book, but is composed of sixty-six books, and that in spite of that fact it is indeed one Book, each contribution fitting like stones shaped and polished into a symmetrical whole, each contribution complementary of the rest, we are obliged to believe that there is a Master mind behind it, in short that the Bible is God-breathed, inspired, that God Himself is its Author.
Bind together sixty-six medical works, or political works, or even theological works, and you would find one writer affirming what another denies; one writer praising what another blames; one writer stating what he believes to be exalted truth, another denouncing it as utter folly.
Sir Charles Marston, F.S.A., says:
"As human knowledge is enlarged, the apparently assured facts of but a few years ago become the proven fiction of today " (The Bible is True, p. 58).
When we reflect that the writers of the Books of the Bible were about thirty in number, that their writings ranged from about 1550 B.C., or over 3,500 years ago, to about 90 A.D., or about 1,870 years ago, we must come to the conclusion that the Book could not possess a definite plan, as it undoubtedly does, without ONE Master Mind behind it. Moreover, in the nature of things these writers described events of which they could not possibly have any knowledge by personal observation. For instance Moses wrote of the creation of the world well over 2,400 years after the earth came into being as an ordered place for man's abode. This he could only have done by revelation, and that alone by the Mind who brought creation into being. Others prophesied of many events that still lay centuries off from fulfillment. These prophecies have been fulfilled to the letter. These men could not have foreseen these events. The prophecies must have been inspired by a Mind that looked down the centuries, and that Mind could only have been God's.
How came it about that one writer never contradicted another? They wrote in different centuries, unknown to each other with few exceptions, especially in Old Testament times. If they were uninspired the book would most certainly have been a jumble full of contra-dictions and absurdities, as is evidenced by the uninspired sacred books of heathen beliefs. But this is not so.
Consider the character of the different writers. They were all Jews with the exception of Luke, who wrote the Gospel that bears his name, and the Acts of the Apostles. They all, save Job and Moses, belonged to a little slip of country, 150 miles long by 50 miles broad, the land of Israel, Palestine, situated in Asia on the confines of Europe and Africa. There was Moses, "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians... mighty in words and in deeds"; David, a shepherd lad, who became King; Nehemiah, in exile a cupbearer to a heathen monarch; Daniel of royal blood, captive in Babylon; prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, Malachi; Psalmists such as David, Asaph, Ethan; Proverb-makers such as King Solomon, Agur, Lemuel; fishermen such as Peter and John; Luke, "the beloved physician," the only Gentile among the writers of the Bible; Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, learned, brought up at the feet of the renowned rabbi, Gamaliel. And yet these writers, to use the phrase of an old author, wrote " without collusion or collision." That phrase could not be rightly employed unless the Bible was inspired of God.
To believe that the Bible was uninspired would mean that we should be infinitely more credulous than the unbeliever, in thinking that uninspired men could reveal the unknown past, or unveil the unrevealed future. A French savant wrote: " I am not credulous enough to be an unbeliever." But such is the darkness that sin brings upon the human mind, that, even after such strong and irrefutable testimonies, men are found not believing the Bible.