The Miracle of Revelation
To call the Bible "a literary miracle" simply on the evidence of its unified message may seem to be a use of words which devalues the genuinely miraculous. But there are also other indicators of the Bible's superhuman origin, not least of which is the evidence of fulfilled prophecy. Men often guess about the future, but they cannot predict it with any degree of accuracy -- and least of all the distant future. Yet the God of the Bible offers precisely this ability to foretell long-distant events as evidence of His existence and of the reliability of His Word. "Ask me of things to come", said God through the prophet Isaiah, for "I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done" (Isaiah 45:11; 46:9- 11). Even the Bible's strongest critics will admit that the Old Testament was in existence long before the birth of Christ. Yet the writing$ of Moses, of the Psalmists and of the prophets contain the most detailed predictions of the life and work of Jesus. Just look, for example, at Genesis 3:15 and, especially, at Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, and ask yourself honestly how you can explain away the fact that such clear prophecies about Jesus came to be in the sacred Scriptures of the Jews, who do not even yet recognise him as their Saviour. Similarly, it is possible to show that the unfolding misfortunes of the Jews, as well as the fate of the leading nations of the world, were outlined long before they happened, in prophecies of quite extraordinary detail (Deuteronomy 28, Ezekiel 26 and Daniel 2 are just three examples out of many). Yet such predictions are precisely what we should expect from the omniscient mind of a God Who sees the whole of human history in a moment of time. They are clear evidence of the truly miraculous, revelatory character of the Bible.

We need to be clear also about this important point: revelation, if it is properly understood as meaningful communication from God to man, is by its very nature miraculous. Like any miracle, revelation involves the exercise of God's power, His Spirit; it does not merely 'happen' in the ordinary course of events, and it is not achievable by men without the aid of God. The Bible exhibits all these characteristics of a miracle: its writers are continually reminding us that they were the instruments of revelation, not the originators of the message. "Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit", explains the apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:21); and even the Lord Jesus himself, "the Word made flesh", admitted that he too had been the subject of this miraculous work of God: "For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak" (John 1 2:49).

This miraculous work, most often referred to as inspiration, can be seen in operation throughout the pages of the Bible. For whether through dreams, visions, prophets, apostles, or angelic messengers, the Spirit of God is presented as the moving force behind the message. It is this, above all, that explains why the Bible has so much to tell us which, as human beings, we simply would not otherwise know. It is the miracle of revelation which brings the things of God into the arena of human understanding. The Bible is the Word of God made print.

The Miracle of Providence
People often wonder when it was that the contents of the Bible were fixed in their present form, and by whom and on what grounds. Implicit in such questions is the feeling that if human selection has decided what is called 'the canon' of Scripture, then the choice cannot be relied on as infallible. It is sometimes wrongly suggested in reply that the final form of the Bible was determined by the decision-making processes of church councils from the second to the fifth centuries A.D., and that the canon of Scripture must therefore be faithfully accepted on the authority of the church alone.

Instead, there is clear evidence to show that it was the character of each Bible book, as inspired and revealed, which ensured its more or less immediate inclusion in the growing body of Divine Scriptures, which were committed as they grew first to the Jewish nation and ultimately to the early Christians (see Romans 3:2 and 2 Timothy 3:15). There is much internal Bible evidence to indicate that this process went on steadily in both Old and New Testament times alike (see 2 Chronicles 34:14 and 2 Peter 3:15-16 for just two examples). The councils of the Jewish and, later, of the Christian churches did not so much choose what was to be included or excluded from the Bible as confirm what had already been long accepted as the Word of God.

We can rest assured in all this that the contents of the Bible have not been left merely to the fallible choice of men. It is, after all, not unreasonable to expect that an all-powerful God should safeguard through the centuries, by providential means, that which He had already brought into existence by miraculous revelation. "My Word", said God, "shall not return unto me void." (Isaiah 55:11).

God's continuing care for the preservation of His Word has clearly extended also to the manner in which it has been transmitted from age to age. We do not now possess so much as a single original Bible manuscript; and yet the centuries of scrupulously devoted copying which have preserved the text of the Bible as we know it today have done far more than simply safeguard the overall integrity of the Divine message. For God has ensured, through the labours of generations of gifted and painstaking men, from the early Jewish scribes to the later Massoretes and the monastic copyists of the Christian era, that the text of His Word has remained remarkably free from substantial change or corruption. In this respect too the Bible is without parallel in ancient literature.

The discovery in 1947 of the Dead Sea Scrolls has illustrated in particularly spectacular fashion just how accurately the manuscripts on which our English Bible is based correspond with copies from a much earlier date. The miracle of providence enables us to say with confidence that we have a Bible text "so near to the original as makes no difference in any vital respect".

"Every man in his own tongue"
When the miracle of 'tongues' enabled the apostles on the Day of Pentecost to preach the Gospel in many foreign languages to thousands of Jews from all over the Roman world (Acts 2:1-11), it was a sign that Christianity was on the march. Not many years later, too, the apostle Paul -- whose mission as the apostle to the Gentiles was to evangelise the nations beyond Judea (Acts 9:15) -- was supernaturally gifted with the ability to preach in many languages (1 Corinthians 14:18). These were clear indications of the important role that the translation of God's Word into foreign languages would have to play in later years in the spread of its influence into the lives of millions who could not understand the original Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek in which God's prophets and apostles were inspired to speak and write.

An inspired text does not, of course, require an inspired translator for its meaning to be accurately conveyed into another language. And once the text of the Bible had been completed and the Spirit-gifted apostles had passed off the first-century scene, it was necessary only that this collection of Divine revelations be preserved for subsequent generations to read or to translate for others to read also. The knowledge of languages and the ability to translate them are skills which can be learned over a period of time and without direct miraculous aid. Yet the history of Bible translations, from the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Old Testament in the third century B.C. to the many English translations of our own twentieth century, is a testimony to the providence of God in helping men to learn and practise their human skills so well.

The life stories of great scholars like John Wycliffe (1320-1384) and William Tyndale (1494-1536) in particular bear all the hallmarks of Divine oversight. By their dedication and scholarship they were able to translate into English the very thoughts of God, which had hitherto been jealously hidden from the common people in the Latin of the Romish priesthood. Privations, persecution and even torture were unable to prevent the diligent labours of such men from spreading the understanding of the Word of God more widely than ever before.

The advent of printing with movable type (1454) -- perhaps the greatest, and certainly the most far-reaching technological innovation of all time -- was also the spur to many others who followed them. It made the Bible available on a scale previously unimagined, and helped to realise Tyndale's ambition to make even the humble ploughboy familiar with the text of Scripture.