Tough Questions 4

Tough Questions

Part 4

Q: How Can We Know That The Bible Is Really The Word Of God?

One of the great proofs is the amazing unity of the Bible on so many different levels. Keep in mind that it was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different authors, yet they all agree as if they’d gotten together in a room and decided what to say!

First there is the Unity of doctrine:

One God

Creation—God as Creator

Nature of man being tripartite (Gen. 1:26; 2:7; Eccl. 12:7; Mt. 10:28; 1 Thes. 5:23.

The importance of shed Blood in redemption (Gen. 4:4; Lev. 17:11; Mt. 26:28; John 19:34.)

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Then there is the Bible’s Historical Credibility.

It is not mythology, but presents real persons, real events, real places that are historically verifiable.

Its claim of a universal Flood: 250 and 300 flood accounts have been discovered.

Another example would be in the late 1800's, Sir William Ramsey, a scholar who was skeptical of the authenticity of the Book of Acts, set out upon an archaeological expedition in Asia Minor with the declared intention of disproving the historicity and accuracy of the Bible. After years of research, literally digging up evidence, he completely reversed his views. He became convinced that Luke had authored Acts. He wrote: "Luke's history is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness...Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense...this author should be placed along with the very greatest of all historians.”

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Then next there is the Bible’s Scientific Accuracy.

The Bible claims that:

The earth is spherical in shape (Isa. 40:22). “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and all its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” The Bible NEVER claimed the earth was flat, man did.

Is suspended in space (Job 26:7). “He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing.” Next to the Pentateuch, Job is the oldest book in the Bible. And here he is, telling us something about earth LONG before the day of telescopes or other astronomical, scientific equipment. He did it by Divine revelation!

That there are paths in the seas (Psa. 8:8). In the 1800’s, a man named Matthew Maury, a Bible believing former naval officer, determined to discover the paths in the seas and the wind circuits, utilizing the charts and log books he had at his disposal. He did discover and plot many of the wind circuits and currents, such as the great Gulf Current, 40 miles wide and 2,000 feet deep that comes out of the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic; the Japanese Current, the California Current, and others. Utilizing this information, the sailing ships of his day plied these currents and wind circuits, reducing by as much as three weeks the time required to cross the oceans. By simply believing the Word of God, Maury was able to bless mankind with faster ocean travel!

That there is an endless water cycle (Eccl. 1:7). “All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; to the place from which the rivers come, there they return again.”

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Another proof the Bible is the Word of God is its teaching on Biology:

Life does not arise spontaneously (Acts 17:25). “He (God) gives to all life, breath, and all things.”

Living things reproduce according to the laws of heredity (Gen. 1:11,12,21,24). Long before Darwin or modern science, the Bible taught genetics, and that living things produce after their kind.

The Bible rightly claims there is a basic difference in the cell structure of the major classes of living things (1 Cor. 15:39). “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.”

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Another proof the Bible is God’s Word is found in its early understanding of medicine long before microscopes and laboratories!

In the book of Leviticus we find that:

Sanitation laws infer an understanding of germs (Lev.11:29-36; Deut. 23:12-14). The sanitation laws instituted by Moses—not touching dead things, etc—reveals an understanding of germs long before science put them under a microscope.

Life is in the blood (Lev. 17:11). Already covered.

All nations share a common physical unity (Acts 17:26). “And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.” We all come from the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve, not a random, evolutionary process.

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And then there is the amazing evidence of Prophecy. For instance, regarding Christ alone the Bible predicted:

Christ's lineage in Prophecy. He would come down through the lineage of Judah, a prophecy made 1,400 years before Jesus.

The events connected with Christ's birth, such as Virgin born Isa. 7:14, that He’d be born in Bethlehem Micah 5:2, the slaughter of innocents predicted by Jeremiah in Jer. 31:15, His escape to Egypt from which He would return Hos.11:1; Mt 1:15, His character, predicted by Isaiah in 42:1-4 and fulfilled in Mt. 12:15-21, His betrayal, rejection, death and resurrection—all predicted centuries before Jesus’s arrival and fulfilled perfectly.

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And then there is how the Bible stacks up against other ancient writings regarding reliability.

All ancient manuscripts were written on papyrus, which didn’t have much of a shelf life. So people hand copied the originals to maintain the message and circulate it to others.

The more copies we have of an ancient writing that agree with one another, the more confident we are that we have what was originally written!

For instance, few people doubt Plato’s writing of “The Republic.” It’s a classic, written by Plato around 380 B.C. The earliest copies we have of it are dated 900 A.D., which is a 1,300 year time gap from when he wrote it. And there are only seven copies in existence.

Yet ask any college professor if he believes we have the original words of Plato!

Another example would be Caesar’s “Gallic Wars” that were written around 100-44 B.C. The copies we have today are dated 1,000 years after he wrote it, and we have ten copies. But do modern scholars believe we have the original words of Caesar? Yes!

But when it comes to the New Testament, written between 50-100 A.D, we have more than 5,000 copies! Not 7, not 10, but 5,000 copies. And all of them are within 50-225 years after their original writing!

Further, when it came to the copying of Scripture, scribes (monks) were meticulous in their copying of original manuscripts for they feared God. They checked and rechecked their work to make sure it perfectly matched.

What the New Testament writers originally wrote is preserved better than any other ancient manuscript. We can be more certain of what we read about Jesus’ life and words, than we are certain of the writings of Caesar, Plato, Artistotle and Homer all combined.

And as for the Old Testament, in an exchange with the Sadducees regarding the resurrection of the dead, Jesus asked them if they had not read what the Old Testament said about the resurrection of the dead. "Have you not read that which was spoken by God? (Matt. 22:31)

Thus we have Jesus totally affirming that the Old Testament Scriptures are the word of God. They were "spoken by God." This quote from Jesus also affirms that the Old Testament had been faithfully preserved up to His day and time.

Dr. Robert Wilson, a Bible scholar who mastered 45 languages in his lifetime, made a careful study of the Old Testament. As a result of his research he said:

"We are scientifically certain that we have substantially

the same text that was in the possession of Christ and the

apostles, and so far as anybody knows, the same as that written by the original composers of the Old Testament documents.”

Indeed, the Bible shouts from many vantage points and proofs that it is the inspired Word of God!

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Q: How old is the Bible?

A: The earliest writing is that of Moses, who wrote the first five

books during the 15th Century B.C. (Only Job could perhaps be older.) So if you start with the first 5 books of the Bible written in the 15th century up to today, the Bible from its inception is approximately 3,500 years old.

If you want to calculate the age of the Bible from the time the last book (the book of Revelation) was written making the whole Bible complete, the Bible is around 2,000 years old.

The actual writings of the Bible beginning with Genesis and ending with the Revelation took place over 1,500 years with 40 authors contributing.

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Q: Some people claim that we don't have all the Bible; is that true?

A: This question is likely referring to what is called The Apocrypha, which is a Greek term that means "hidden", or "secret things.”

The Apocrypha consists of 14 books that were written at various times from about 300 B.C. to 30 B.C.

These books are as follows:

1) 1 Esdras

2) II Esdras

3) Tobet

4) Judith

5) The Rest of the Book of Esther.

6) The Wisdom of Solomon

7) The Wisdom of Ecclesiasticus

8) Baruch

9) The Song of the Three Holy Children

10) The History of Susanna

11) Bel and the Dragon

12) The Prayer of Manasses

13) I Maccabees

14) II Maccabees

Some of these books are valuable as history, particularly the

books of Maccabees, but they are not inspired books. This can be seen from the fact that the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament hundreds of times, but never from the Apocrypha!

The 16th Century reformer, Martin Luther, included the apocrypha in his German Bible (1534), but printed them separately, asserting that they were not inspired, but profitable.

There is no internal or external evidence which would cause us to include the apocrypha as scripture.

We can be confident that we have all God intended for us to have in our Bible.

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In closing, Bible scholar F.F. Bruce writes, "We can only stand in awe of the Providential preservation of the sacred text of the Word of God. Yes, we can trust the Bible. It is a book by which we can both live and die.”