Scriptures selfattesting authority question doctrine truthfulness Scriptures

Pondering Pascal’s Wager 173
confidence in God’s word and never have even heard the term “glory of
God.” One may never have heard of terms such as “self-authenticating”
or “internal testimony” or “compelling and irresistible evidence” or the
like. The experience of seeing God’s self-attesting reality in Scripture is
vastly different from being able to explain that experience. They are
not the same.
Millions of people have come to a well-grounded confidence in the
Bible and have not been able to find sufficient words to describe that
experience. I do not even claim that the words I am using here are sufficient
to do it justice. So let it be clear: the miracle of seeing “the glory
of God in the face of Jesus Christ” through the Scriptures can happen to
a person who never will be able to explain sufficiently why he trusts the
Bible. His trust may be well-grounded without his knowing how it is.
The Conversion and Execution of Tokichi Ishii
For example, take the story of the conversion and execution of Tokichi
Ishii—a man who was hanged for murder in Tokyo in 1918. 2 He had
been sent to prison more than twenty times and was known for being
as cruel as a tiger. On one occasion, after attacking a prison official, he
was gagged and bound and his body suspended in such a way that his
toes barely reached the ground. But he stubbornly refused to say he was
sorry for what he had done.
Just before being sentenced to death, Tokichi was sent a New Testament
by two Christian missionaries, Miss West and Miss McDonald.
After a visit from Miss West, he began to read the story of Jesus’s trial
and execution. His attention was riveted by the sentence, “And Jesus
said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’” (Luke
23:34). This sentence transformed his life.
I stopped: I was stabbed to the heart, as if by a five-inch nail. What
did the verse reveal to me? Shall I call it the love of the heart of
Christ? Shall I call it His compassion? I do not know what to call
it. I only know that with an unspeakably grateful heart I believed. 3
2
This story is taken from John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, rev. ed. (Colorado
Springs: Multnomah, 2011), 147–48. It is recounted in Norman Anderson, God’s Word for God’s
World (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981), 25.
3
Ibid.