Hi JMH,
Glad to have you among us. For me, the truth of the Scriptures, and therefore the truth of God, became clear to me by the prophetic nature of the Scriptures. There are events foretold in the Scriptures, sometimes hundreds of years before they came to be in reality, that no human being could have had knowledge of. I believe the most telling example is Daniel's prophecy of the time of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus. Once I was convinced that the prophetic nature of the Scriptures could only have come from one who knows the end from the beginning, as God says of Himself, then naturally the rest of what the Scriptures said became even more important to understand.
A second reason to consider that the faith described in the Scriptures is true, as opposed to all of the other ways of faith that are before us, is the writing of the Scriptures. Most all other ways of faith find their foundational truths in the writings and musings of one person. The foundational truths being compiled during that person's lifetime. The old covenant Scriptures were compiled over a span of some 1,500 hundred years by many and various writers. Throughout all of these writings we have the same God described and explained as having worked with each of the individual writers.
The only other faith to come close to rivaling this phenomenon found in the Jewish Scriptures is the Islamic faith. That's for good reason. The Islamic faith does hold to the truth of some of the same writings of the very early Jewish faith. However, the Islamic faith fails at the most important point of the faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Islamic faith denies that God has a Son. Yet the faith of the Jewish faith does tell us that God has a Son and that it is by and through this Son that man can even find forgiveness for sin and eternal life. Denying God's Son denies that God has forgiven our sin. Following the Islamic faith means following a works based faith with no clear explanation of exactly what works will provide anyone eternal life. Just that we live a good life which is all relative to what we think 'good' is.
The faith of the Hebrew Scriptures becomes very clear to us as we move into the new covenant writings. One can gain eternal life only through the acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.
Yes, there are many 'faiths' that vie for our attention and acceptance as the 'truth' of our existence. There have always been these many faiths with more and more added as time goes by. Yet, for me, only the faith carried forth to us through the Jewish Scriptures is complete and clear in its explanation of 'who' God is; 'what' God has done; and what is expected of each one of us. The last option for us is to just say that they are all made up religions of men, but such a faith then brings into question just how did all these amazing prophecies come to be written?
Could it really be just the luck of the Irish that Daniel foretold to us that at a point in time of which he could not possibly have had any knowledge of, a clock would start ticking. That at the end of that ticking clock, some hundreds of years later and precisely on time, God's Messiah, our Savior, would be walking about the earth. For me, such precision is impossible through only the knowledge and wisdom of any man.
God bless you as you seek for Him,
In Christ, ted
