All we know about God is by God’s revelation. A rarely discussed, but important attribute of God is His attribute of self-disclosure. He is a God of revelation. He is revelation as much as He is love, merciful or righteous. He has revealed Himself to mankind through a multiplicity of ways. His creation testifies of Him as well as He has spoken to men by audible voice, visions, dreams, and angelic messengers. Some of those who experienced these self-revelations of Deity were led by the Spirit of God to record them. It is these written revelations called authoritative revelation because they were carefully inspired by God to be recorded and preserved as His word to man. This written record is called Holy Scripture.

When discussing the Bible eventually one must talk about the canonization of the Bible. The word canon is derived from the Greek to mean rule or standard. The word was also used to denote a boundary or sphere. Therefore, the term, the canon of Scripture came to mean the authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture.

The question is how do we know that what we call the Bible is in fact the Bible? How do we know that the canon of Scripture is indeed complete and finished? Do we really have the complete written revelation of God, and how do we know it cannot be added to? These questions should not make a Christian fearful of what he might discover. If the Bible is the word of God, then it should have the answers to these questions and prove itself to indeed be the inspired revelation of God.

How to Know We Have the Full and Finished Revelation

There are religious groups and individuals who claim that there are more inspired documents other than what is considered the Christian Bible, while there are others who believe not all of the books of the Bible are inspired. There are several tests we can apply to know if we have the full and finished revelation of Scripture.