Unknowable Proofs
Inspiration is proven in several layers
August, 2025
A common theme in Bible questions is why God didn't include clear "from the future" information. For instance, concepts of physics or biology. Wouldn't those prove that His message was divine?
As many will already note, God does, in fact, offer some "unknowable" information. The most straightforward are prophecies: predictions of future events. “God predicted this” is an understandable idea which can be verified later. Predictions can also be falsified (Deuteronomy 18:22). Like the debatable parts of Genesis and Revelation, they usually don’t need to be understood in the most perfectly accurate sense, in daily life.
There will never be archaeological proof of David’s encounter with Saul in the cave. That's “unknowable” in a different way. Conversations between Moses and God, or Jesus and Nicodemus, and other private events, others would have no way to learn other than the writings. But they can’t be verified or falsified, either, so those don’t do much in the way of proving faith.
The most potent information—the kind most are looking for—would be something no one in that time could have known, but the Bible records, and which turns out to have been a true aspect of reality all along. The idea of the non-eternal, expanding universe is one of those. Scripture says there was a “beginning,” and scientists thousands of years later found hard proof of it. The Word says God arranged “kinds” of creatures and made humans unique; modern science learns more about how a Designer is necessary for what we see in biology.
Human limitations make it difficult for us to expect much more. Scripture must be relevant to its original audience. If the words make no sense to them, they’ll dismiss them as gibberish. If the Bible contained terms or complex ideas the original audience clearly did not understand, later generations would dismiss it as a hoax written recently. That’s exactly how skeptics brush aside prophecy.
Virtually everything “unknowable” to people in the past requires layers of understanding. There are terms and definitions which didn’t exist at that time. Moses wasn’t in a position to be told about nuclear fission, because the whole concept of molecules, atoms, and such wasn’t part of human knowledge then. If God explained all those layers, the people of Moses' era would be lost in useless information. Modern people would simply assume that humans deduced those facts and pretended it was from God. Or, more likely, they would assume the text was a later forgery.
Consider if Scripture tried to explain viruses: maybe-living tiny organisms that infect cells. What metaphor would work without being taken too literally? People would insist on believing that tiny spiritual demons were living in their veins. Instead of setting us up for confirmation later, we’d be confused and moving in the wrong direction. Then, when viruses were understood, people would dismiss the Bible’s references as too vague to take seriously.
The Bible constantly offers evidence of knowledge, without that knowledge being stated explicitly. An example are Biblical instructions for basic sanitation (Leviticus 2:13, 7:17, 7:19, 13:2-6, 13:46, 15:2-13; Deuteronomy 23:12-13). Those are more than just compatible with modern germ theory. They’re frequently on par with modern best practices for hygiene and sanitation.
Consider Numbers chapter 19. It describes those who touch a dead body as unclean and imposes a ritual washing process. Believe it or not, until the mid-1800s, physicians not only ignored this concept, but they frequently went from autopsying dead bodies to operating on the living without washing their hands! Once this changed, of course, hospital mortality rates dropped considerably. Further, the materials described in Numbers 19 include ingredients like hyssop, which is a natural antibacterial, wool ash, which is gritty, and cedar, an irritant that would encourage repetitive rinsing. Go into hospitals today, and you’ll see doctors washing with gritty, antibacterial soap and lots of water.
The people of Moses’ era knew nothing of bacteria, or antibacterial substances, or germ quarantine. But whoever wrote those instructions seems to have known. Examples like that are all we can really expect when it comes to God including “unknowable” information in His Word. We’re simply too prone to misunderstanding and error. Anything too specific, we’d claim was already known. Or we’d write it off as a hoax. Anything too poetic and we’d chase interpretations instead of reality. Prophecies are one of the few kinds of “unknowable” facts which God can offer, with reduced room for those mistakes on our part.
--Editor
