I have a question about our faith. I am asking where our faith in the Bible as the Word of God comes from. I have only found this statement in the New Testament in one of the epistles, basically reading that all scripture is the Word of God. So I have two questions. One is that I am hesitant to believe that the author of the epistle considered his letters to others, as well as the letters of his contemporaries, or even the Gospels themselves, which were still being written, as scripture. Wouldn’t he only be referring to the Old Testament
Which leads to my second question. If we then have to take the rest of the Bible as the Word of God on faith, then, from an objective point of view, how is this faith different from faith put into anything else?
You’re right in saying that when Paul wrote that all Scripture is the Word of God (2 Tim. 3:16), the New Testament had not been completed, much less compiled. But since the Bible is a timeless document and since Paul was writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (who knew the New Testament was coming) it is logical to assume he meant the whole Bible.
The Bible is different from all other so-called holy books in that it offers justification for asking that we believe it. This justification comes in the form of fulfilled prophecy.
For 4000 years God has been saying he would do something and then doing it, without fail. In Isaiah 44:6-8 He explained to us that this is the way we can tell He is the only God and there is no other.
By the way, He has done this in both Old and New Testament times. The life of Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies, and a dramatic example of a prophecy fulfilled in our lifetime is the re-birth of Israel. There are hundreds of prophecies yet to be fulfilled that concern the end times.