Why I Believe the Bible Tells the True Story of the World
I always enjoyed the stories my dad would tell me about Krishna and the Hindu gods. Although he did not believe in them, he was curious about where these stories came from. I was curious too. And this brings us to one of the most surprising discoveries I made in Scripture: the reality of God’s heavenly council.
God’s Heavenly Council
The Bible teaches that God’s world is far richer and more layered than we often imagine. It speaks not only of the physical realm we see, but also of a spiritual realm filled with beings God created long before humanity. These beings form what Scripture calls God’s heavenly council — the “sons of God”. They are spiritual rather than physical, similar in some ways to the angels spoken of in Islam and even sharing certain traits with the Muslim understanding of jinn. But there is one crucial difference: in the Bible, these spiritual beings have free will — and some chose to rebel against God. Once you see this, the entire storyline of Scripture becomes clearer, and many ancient myths suddenly make sense.
The Rebellion Before the Flood
Before the great flood, some of these sons of God left the place God had given them and came down to earth. They crossed a boundary God had set by mixing with human women in a way God did not allow.
Their rebellion produced offspring called the Nephilim, described in the Bible as the “mighty men of old”, famous figures remembered in many ancient cultures (Genesis 6:1–8). This rebellion filled the world with violence and spiritual corruption. Because of this, God sent the flood as judgment, preserving only Noah and his family.
After the Flood: When God Disinherited the Nations
After the flood, only a few generations after Noah stepped off the ark, people gathered at Babel and rebelled once more, saying:
“Let us build a city and a tower that reaches the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves”. — Genesis 11:4
God confused their language so they could not understand each other, and people spread out across the earth.
At this moment, God disinherited the nations. He placed the different nations under members of His heavenly council, but He kept Israel for Himself (Deuteronomy 32:8–9).
Thus, the seventy nations from Babel, according to the number of the sons of God, became the roots of all peoples on earth.
The Fallen Rulers of the Nations
So, this is where things become very interesting. The Bible tells us that some of these divine beings turned against God and became corrupt rulers over the nations. They accepted worship for themselves, demanded sacrifices and created religions that led people away from the true Creator.
Psalm 82 paints the picture of God standing in the divine council and condemning them for ruling the nations unjustly: showing favour to the wicked, ignoring the weak and the fatherless, and failing to protect the needy. Instead of guiding the nations under their care, they deceived them and led them away from the truth.
As punishment, God declared:
“I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.’” — Psalm 82:6–7
Why the Rebellion Matters
When you read the Bible, you begin to see one big story running through every book — creation, rebellion, promise and redemption. All these parts link together. This is especially amazing when you remember that the Bible was written over thousands of years by many human authors. It makes you realise that only one true Author could have guided it: God Himself.
So when it comes to the story of the rebellion in Genesis 6, it isn’t just a strange old story. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible shows a long spiritual conflict centred on God’s promise to send a Saviour. The fallen beings tried to harm the human family line by taking human women — a direct attack on God’s plan. Revelation 12 shows the same idea:
“The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it.” (Revelation 12:4–5)
Their actions created the Nephilim and filled the world with evil, which led to the flood. But even then, God protected the human line through Noah, who came from the righteous line of Seth. This is why the Bible gives long lists of names and generations. They are not extra details. They show how God kept the family line safe — the line through which the Saviour, Jesus Christ, would come.
All of this leads to one key promise God made in Eden: that the “seed” of the woman would one day defeat the serpent.
The Significance of the “Seed”
So, what is meant by the term “seed”? In Hebrew, the word zera (“seed”) is normally used for men and this is the case in most culture also where the family line is traced through the father. Even science supports this idea, because the father’s genetic contribution determines the biological sex of the child: the mother always provides an X chromosome, while the father provides either X or Y — meaning the male chromosome decides whether the child is male or female.
The Bible speaks about a man’s seed more than a hundred times — but only once about a woman’s seed. This unusual wording in Genesis 3:15 did not go unnoticed by ancient Jewish interpreters. Classical Jewish commentary recognised that zera is almost always associated with the male line and therefore the phrase “her seed” is not just exceptional but also appears to be very deliberate.
Genesis 3:15 may not directly teach the virgin birth, but it certainly hints toward a Saviour who would come through the woman in a way that breaks the normal pattern.
Isaiah, however, provides a more explicit prophecy:
“The virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel (‘God with us’)” — Isaiah 7:14
What makes this even more remarkable is that Isaiah wrote this over 700 years before Jesus’ birth, which is exactly what the New Testament writers point towards (Matthew 1:22–23; Galatians 4:4).
So hopefully by now, I have been able to show why humankind needed the Messiah to defeat the fallen powers and reclaim the nations for God, just as the prophets like Isaiah foretold.
Why Jesus Had to Come Into the World
Jesus is connected to more than 300 prophecies and signs in the Old Testament. Not all of these are direct predictions; many are patterns, symbols or stories that point forward to Him. The writers of the New Testament recognised that Jesus completed and fulfilled these earlier hints.
His death and resurrection would break the authority of these corrupt powers, fulfilling God’s ancient promise that the serpent’s head would be crushed by Eve’s seed, even though His heel would be bruised.
A clear example of this is the story of David and Goliath. The Quran briefly mentions David killing Goliath, but it does not explain who Goliath was or why the battle mattered. In the Bible, Goliath is linked to the same rebellious line from Genesis 6 (the Nephilim), which makes David’s victory part of the bigger spiritual conflict running through Scripture. David defeating the giant becomes a picture of Jesus defeating the true enemy of God’s people. It is both history and a sign pointing forward to Christ. Many Old Testament stories work in this same way.
Prophecy becomes clear only in hindsight, and when we look back at the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we see that He fulfils every pattern and foreshadowing God placed in Scripture. Yet when we turn to the Quran, we often find only fragments of these biblical stories—pieces of the narrative without the redemptive meaning they were meant to carry. This contrast becomes especially important as we return to the moment when God disinherits the nations and assigns them to the sons of God (Deuteronomy 32:8–9), a theme that shapes the biblical worldview and sets the stage for the Tower of Babel.
The Tower of Babel
Although the Quran does not explicitly recount the Tower of Babel story set in Mesopotamia, it presents a parallel narrative in Surah 28:38 and Surah 40:36–37. In these passages, Pharaoh commands Haman to build a tall tower so that he might “reach the heavens”. The imagery is strikingly similar — a ruler attempting to ascend to the heavens in defiance of God — yet the Quran relocates the story to Egypt and removes the theological meaning that Babel carries in the biblical narrative.
The Quranic version is also unsupported by historical evidence, as there is no record of an Egyptian official named Haman in Pharaoh’s court. The only Haman known in ancient literature is Haman the Agagite, a Persian official serving King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), which supports the biblical account that Haman lived more than a thousand years after Moses. Even Muslim scholarly discussions acknowledge this point — for example, Examining Islam notes that most Muslim apologists respond by saying that similar names can exist in different cultures and as such there were “two Hamans” and that the Quranic Haman is simply another man with the same name. While these are possible explanations, they raise an important question: why would Allah use a name already well known from the scripture of the People of the Book, without giving any sign that this Haman was a different person?
But then architectural details deepen the problem. The Quran describes Pharaoh ordering baked bricks to construct a tower reaching the heavens. But Egyptians did not build tall brick towers. Their monumental architecture was made from stone — limestone and granite blocks for pyramids, temples and obelisks. In contrast, Mesopotamians — especially in Babylon — built ziggurats, stepped brick towers designed specifically to rise upward toward the heavens. These structures match the biblical description of Babel perfectly. So, the Quran’s description aligns with Babylonian architecture, not Egyptian. It preserves the picture of a tower reaching heaven, but not the place, the culture or the meaning of the original story.
And here is an interesting side note: our modern English word “babble” — meaning to speak in confused or nonsensical ways — comes from this very event. It reflects the moment when God confused human language at Babel, leaving people unable to understand one another. The story shaped not only theology and history, but even the vocabulary we use today.
Coming Back to the Biblical Framework
So, we can now come full circle. The Bible’s framework — the fall of mankind, the cosmic rebellion and the nations turning to other gods— explains many things at once:
- where the nations and languages came from
- why false religions exist
- why ancient myths sound similar
- and most importantly, why humanity needs a Saviour who is more than a prophet
Israel, even though chosen by God, often failed to stay faithful. God revealed His name to Moses — Yahweh, “I AM WHO I AM” — a name that sets Him apart from every competing spiritual claim. Yet they worshipped these gods “whom they had not known and whom He had not allotted to them”. (Deuteronomy 29:26).
This exposes the root problem: Israel’s persistent inability to remain faithful through external law alone. God promised something far deeper — He would give them a new heart and a new spirit, removing their heart of stone and placing His own Spirit within them so that they would walk in His statutes (Ezekiel 36:22–28).
This brings us to the heart of the biblical story: salvation can come only from God. External law could never change the human heart, so the rescue had to come through His Spirit — the One who gives a new heart and a new nature. The New Testament declares that God accomplished this through Jesus Christ, and no amount of good works can ever save us.
Why the Quran Tells a Different Story
When we compare the biblical framework with the Quranic one, it becomes clear why Christians and Muslims often talk past each other. The two faiths begin from completely different starting points about who God is and what God must do to save humanity. This means the disagreement is not only about Jesus — it is about the human condition itself.
I have written a post explaining the biblical concept of sin called “Why Good Deeds Cannot Save Us: The Real Problem of Sin”. Together, that post and this one show why the Bible teaches that God Himself must enter the world as a man to defeat evil, reclaim the nations and save humanity through His own death and resurrection — an idea found nowhere else in world religion.
Across many cultures, you may find stories of gods visiting the earth, taking human form, or interacting with people. But none teach that the Creator must step into His own creation to rescue humanity. The Quran does not contain this idea either. Instead, it operates within a completely different theological framework, retelling fragments of biblical stories in simplified form to teach moral lessons about obedience, warning, judgement and submission to God.
This is why Muslims should ask important questions:
- Why was Jesus born of a virgin?
- Why is Mary so highly honoured?
- Why does the Quran call Jesus the Word of God?
- Why is He given miracles, including creating life from clay (Surah 3:49)?
- Why is Jesus the one who returns at the end of days — and not Muhammad?
In the Bible, the virgin birth is essential: the Saviour had to enter the world in a way untouched by the spiritual corruption that came through the rebellion. It is part of a coherent storyline that begins in Genesis and reaches its fulfilment in Christ. And throughout the Gospels, demons consistently recognise Jesus’s true identity long before many humans do — calling Him “the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:23–24; Luke 4:33–34), “Son of the Most High God” (Mark 5:6–7), and “O Son of God” (Matthew 8:28–29). Unclean spirits fall before Him declaring, “You are the Son of God,” until Jesus silences them (Mark 3:11–12; Luke 4:41). Their involuntary confession shows that the spiritual realm knows exactly who Jesus is: the divine Son who has come to judge them and fulfil God’s promise of redemption.
By contrast, the Quran acknowledges the virgin birth but does not connect it to any deeper purpose. And when we look at Surah 5:110 — one of the most detailed passages about Jesus — we see that He is given miracles and abilities no other prophet receives: creating life from clay, healing the blind and the leper, raising the dead, speaking as a baby, and being strengthened by the Holy Spirit. These are not ordinary prophetic signs. And although the Quran repeatedly adds the phrase “by Allah’s permission”, the nature of the miracles themselves demands deeper reflection. Why would Allah grant Jesus alone these divine level acts if He remains merely human?
Take the clay bird story, for example (not found in the biblical canon but appearing in early apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). It describes Jesus creating life from clay — an act associated with God alone in the Bible. In Islamic theology, allowing a human to participate in creation would normally be considered shirk (associating partners with Allah), yet in this story Jesus is uniquely permitted to do so.
This creates a clear tension: the Quranic framework elevates Jesus far beyond other prophets, yet explicitly denies His divinity. And “permission” alone does not explain the ability to perform divine acts.
The biblical answer resolves this tension perfectly: Jesus is God incarnate — the Word made flesh, the Life Giver and the Messiah who enters the world to save humanity.
For more on this, see my post “Understanding the Trinity and Why It Matters.”
A Final Thought
Many Muslims sincerely believe that the Quran is the final and perfect revelation, and therefore wherever its accounts differ from the Old Testament, the Quran must be correcting earlier errors. I once accepted this without question — but only because I had never actually read the Bible. When I finally did, I discovered something I had never expected: the Bible is astonishingly coherent. It tells one unified story from Genesis to Revelation, every part connected, every theme fulfilled in Christ.
By contrast, the Quran felt like isolated stories without context — familiar names and events, but without the deeper narrative of creation, fall, covenant, Messiah and redemption. It preserves shadows of biblical stories, but not their meaning. This contrast became one of the main reasons I left Islam and embraced Christianity.
And through that journey, something else happened quietly and unexpectedly: the Holy Spirit began to work in my life. As a Muslim, I had no concept of the Holy Spirit’s presence or power. I did not know He could convict, comfort, guide or open the heart. Yet He was the one drawing me to Christ long before I realised it.
C. S. Lewis once wrote, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
Anyone — Christian or not — can appreciate the weight of that statement. If Jesus Christ is truly who He says He is, then His truth calls for our whole lives. And this is exactly why I am sharing this with you now. It is worth everything.
So I invite you to read the Bible for yourself. See its story. Follow its thread. Let it speak. And discover, as I did, the God who has been telling the true story of the world from the very beginning.