How does confidence in a book "happen"? What finally impels a person to trust the Bible so much that he will, voluntarily and joyfully mold his life, give up immediate rewards and gratifications, because of what he reads in a book whose authors he never met? How does the Bible become the "final word"?

Every generation since the first disciples that has passed on the good news about Jesus to those who knew him not in flesh and blood has had to answer this question. Where does a person begin? Must all the evidence be in, all questions answered, before a Christian can have confidence?

In most areas of life, knowing with certainty is not important. If someone is asked, "How many dogs are there in the United States?" he probably would reply, "I don’t know for sure." And we are not disturbed because we agree, it doesn’t matter. We may not know, or really care to know, just where a kidney stone is or how to get at it, but we trust that someone else does and can get at it with dispatch. Many important matters in life we can leave to others who have far more certainty than we may have.

But there are some matters we must know with unquestioning confidence, such as whether God answers prayer, or whether there is really power somewhere to live nobly and unselfishly, like Jesus lived. Or are we using mere poetic language or symbolic words?

How do we know we are reading truth? Is it something that we only feel? Is it safe to trust in spectacular upsurges of elation and ecstasy—even phenomenal, spontaneous radical changes in attitudes and feeling? Subjective certitude requires objective certainty if an idea is to have any lasting convincing credibility.

The only times when men and women have known the truth about life have been when God spoke to them "in many and various ways" (Heb. 1:1 RSV). In such manifestations, or revelations of himself, God put himself on record before the human race, saying over and over again: "I am like this"; "Remember how I kept my promises"; and so forth. Human research has never come up with a God like the Lord of the Holy Scriptures for the simple reason that it could never come up with one on its own.

Men saw him act, heard him speak, trusted his counsel, and observed the validity and vindication of his principles as the years went by. All this they wrote down in documents that finally became the Holy Bible. The apostles did not ask men merely to trust them as to who Jesus was. But they did ask men to stand where they stood and listen to what they heard. After our Lord’s ascension, the apostles asked their hearers to join them in listening to the voice of Jesus as he spoke, through the Holy Spirit, to their souls. Their letters became a telescope bringing the unknown to earth.

However, telescopes are not to be evaluated by how elegant they are; they are not made to be looked at and to have all their specifications memorized as compared to other telescopes. Telescopes are made to be looked through. And look and listen they did! Think of what happened to Galatia, Corinth, Philippi, Athens, and so forth! Peter described the response of these second- and third-generation hearers: "Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. At the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls" (1 Pet. 1:8, 9 RSV).

In declaring Jesus to be our Lord, we receive his declaration that we are forgiven sons or daughters; we commit ourselves to him in trusting obedience, and we call all this "faith" In the New Testament, faith is man’s Yes to God’s Yes.

Ellen White, in making probably the clearest statement I have ever read as to how confidence in a book is born, quoted 1 John 1:1–3:

The beloved John had a knowledge gained through his own experience. He could testify: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life—the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us—that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full."

So everyone may be able, through his own experience, to "set his seal to this, that God is true." He can bear witness to that which he himself has seen and heard and felt of the power of Christ. He can testify:

"I needed help, and I found it in Jesus. Every want was supplied, the hunger of my soul was satisfied; the Bible is to me a divine Saviour. I believe the Bible because I have found it to be voice of God to my soul."

He who has gained a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience is prepared to engage in the study of natural science.…

He who has a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience has a settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures. He has proved that God’s word is truth, and he knows that truth can never contradict itself. (Ministry of Healing, 461, 462)

After twenty-years of translating the New Testament into modern English, J. B. Phillips wrote a remarkable testimony to his experience as a translator, called Ring of Truth:

The [the New Testament] has the proper ring for anyone who has not lost his ear for truth.…It is not magical, nor is it faultless: human beings wrote it. But by something which I would not hesitate to describe as a miracle there is a concentration upon that area of inner truth which is fundamental and ageless. That, I believe, is the reason why millions of people have heard the voice of God speaking to them through these seemingly artless pages. (20)

And then in words that virtually parallel Ellen White’s, Phillips wrote: "The laboratory check for spiritual experience is life itself, and it is exactly here, sometimes in the most appallingly dangerous and painful situations, that I have found faith both sure and radiant. In short, I have seen the experience of God described in the New Testament occurring again and again in our modern world" (55, 56).

He concluded his book, saying: "It is my serious conclusion that we have in the New Testament, words that bear the hallmark of reality and the ring of truth" (125).

Phillips and Ellen White witness to the self-authentic reliability of the Bible that a long line of grateful Christians have also found in their "settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures." For these millions, they know where the "final word" may be found.

Whatever the Bible says about Jesus and what he can mean to me is exactly my experience—and that is where unshakable confident in the Bible rests. Safely.

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