The Divine Power of the Bible

The Bible possesses divine power to produce faith. Faith is the gift of God, but it is by His Word that God imparts this gift. It is not merely a statement of the Bible “that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God;” (Romans 10:17), it is also a fact of experience.

It is the Bible itself that transforms men from sceptics, unbelievers and agnostics into believers, that is to say, believers in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and believers in the Bible as the word of God.

The Bible has a self-evidencing power that no other book possesses. Books on Christian evidence are very good in their place, but if you can get a sceptic or agnostic to honestly and thoroughly study the Bible itself, it will quickly convince him that it is of God. In the days of the writer’s utter doubt and darkness, books of Christian evidence were helpful, but the unwavering, abounding faith that he enjoys today in the Bible as the absolute word of God has come more from the study of the book itself than from anything else, and this is the testimony of all who have honestly and thoroughly studied it. One book in the Bible, the Gospel of John, has in the writer’s experience with sceptics and agnostics been used to lead very many out of the darkness of unbelief into the light and joy of an assured faith in Jesus as the Son of God. It is as certain that the Bible has power to produce faith in the heart of one who really desires to know and obey the truth as it is that food satisfies hunger and water quenches thirst.

The Bible also has power to produce the faith that asks and gets great things in prayer, and the faith that attempts and achieves great things in service.

George Müller stands out as the one man above others in our day who has worked wonders through his prayers, a poor man who got together nearly eight million dollars for the Lord’s work by simply asking for it; this was only part of what he achieved. This mighty man has left us in no doubt as to the secret of his power in prayer. He tells us that, always before praying, he pondered the word of God, and his prayers were rooted in God’s Word. As he pondered the word, his faith grew strong enough to lay hold of God for great things, and he got them. Where is the mighty man of prayer that modern Bible critics have produced?

The power of prayer is not some theoretical speculation but is a demonstrated product born out of deep and thorough Bible reading.