At the outset, let it be clear that man is not only a special creative work of the Lord but becomes more special as God loves him and wants to have a very close relationship. When we go through the scriptures, we learn that God spoke to Moses face to face. Subsequently, he spoke to his people through prophets. In recent times, the Lord manifests himself through dreams and visions. The bottom line is that God wants to reveal himself so that He is better understood and a better relationship and understanding can be forged.
Revelation is God's self-disclosure. It is God making Himself known to men. This disclosure is given in I Corinthians 2:11-12 “For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.” But the Bible is a form of special revelation. The Bible is a "special" revelation in the sense that it goes beyond what may be known about God through nature. It is divine in origin since in the Bible God makes known things that otherwise could never be known.
The Bible as an instrument of the revelation of God goes beyond inspiration. The Bible becomes the holy source of what and how God communicates to man. It is like a letter written in His own hand giving a very personal and caring touch. Every one of the books in the Bible is God-inspired, and it means God-inspired in every part of every one of them. Further, it means much more than it is inspired in its words than it means inspired in the thoughts of the men who wrote it. Often the thought in the mind of the men who wrote the Bible goes beyond our understanding as the words they wrote were from God, and it is verbal inspiration. When the Holy Spirit of the Lord came upon them, like in a trance they penned what they did not know until revealed.
The prophies mentioned in the Bible and their fulfillment is also a pointer to divine inspiration. The book of Daniel was written in 605-536 BC. It gives the entire account of the kingdoms to come right to the end of the world and also how the world will come to an end to be replaced by the kingdom of God. The four major kingdoms identified by Daniel while interpreting the dream of Nebuchadnezzar were Babylon, Medo – Persia, Greece, and Rome, followed by the kingdom of God. This prophecy has more or less been fulfilled barring a few. Future as told in the Scriptures unfurls with the passage of time.
The Bible can be corroborated by history. In Exodus chapter 14 is recorded the historic parting of the red sea to enable the Jews to cross over. Till very recently this was taken with a pinch of salt. In 1853, Dr. P. A. Stanley discovered six ancient, Aramaic inscriptions on the cliffs of the Wadi Sidri in the Peninsula of Sinai. The inscriptions recorded the historical crossing of the Red Sea. The book of Genesis gives the account of the flood and Noah’s ark. The ark was discovered on Mount Ararat in Turkey. Like these, there are many historical facts that testify that what is written in the Bible is fact and not a figment of imagination. Considering the fact, that it has also predicted the future prophies with accuracy, lends credence to the fact the Bible is surely inspired.
Dr Ashwin Drummond