The Evidence From The Word Of God
THE EVIDENCE FROM THE WORD OF GOD
This is really the ultimate apologetic in giving evidence to the existence of God. We know that God is there because He has not been silent. He has spoken to man. It is hard to maintain that someone does not exist when he is talking to you. Can you imagine someone saying to you, “Will you please stop talking so that I can tell people how you don't exist!” Not only has God spoken, but He has put down what He wished to say into a book so that He could communicate to all men in all time. This is the most extraordinary book ever written. It has been translated into more languages than any other book in the world. No other book has ever come close to the Bible in its impact on human history. The Unity of the Bible. In considering the unity of the Bible as to its message and composition, we must first note the diverse conditions under which it came about. The Bible was written in three different languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The Bible was written by nearly 40 different human authors.
These human authors wrote over a period of 1500 years: From about 1440 B.C. to A.D. 70.
These human authors came from different strata of society: Kings, priests, prophets, a shepherd, fishermen, a tax collector, a physician, a cup-bearer.
These human authors wrote from different parts of the world: Israel, Egypt, Rome, Babylon, Ephesus, Greece, Syria, Assyria, the island of Patmos.
These men wrote on hundreds of different topics, many of which were highly controversial. In spite of all of these factors, the Bible is a unified book. It contains no contradictions in any of its teachings. That is not to say it is always easy to read, but that its teachings form a coherent whole.
If I were to take any ten people at random and ask them to write a paper on ten specific subjects, I would likely be guaranteed to have ten conflicting opinions. When we examine the diverse backgrounds and settings of those who penned the pages of the Scriptures, we are forced to conclude that there was a single guiding force behind this writing. The Indestructibility of the Bible. No book in history has come under such violent and thorough attack as the Bible. The Old Testament king Manasseh attempted to obliterate the Bible. He succeeded in leading the people in the worship of the false gods of the Canaanites, but he could not destroy the Scriptures. It was after his death that a copy of the Scriptures was found in the Temple and served as the basis for Josiah's revival.
Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king who reigned in the days of the Maccabees, declared it illegal to own a copy of the Scriptures.
Now on the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-fifth year, they erected a desolating sacrilege upon the altar of burnt offering. They also built altars in the surrounding cities of Judah, 55 and burned incense at the doors of the houses and in the streets. 56 The books of the law which they found they tore to pieces and burned with fire. 57 Where the book of the covenant was found in the possession of any one, or if any one adhered to the law, the decree of the king condemned him to death. (1Ma_1:54-57, RSV). The penalty for owning a copy of the Scriptures was death. But Antiochus failed to obliterate the Scriptures and he was ultimately driven from Israel by the Hasmonean Revolt. In A.D. 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered all Bibles to be burned. Within a few years Constantine came to the throne and, not only legalized Christianity, but also ordered 50 copies of the Bible to be hand-written at the expense of the state. The Synod of Toulouse forbade translations of the Bible into the common language as well as private ownership of copies of the Bible. However Christians continued to work at translating the Bible, even though they often paid with their lives. The French atheist Voltaire proclaimed that within a hundred years from his death the Bible would be a forgotten relic. It is reported that a hundred years later, the printing press in his house was being used to print Bibles. The Prophetic Accuracy of the Bible.
One of the greatest evidences that the Bible is the Word of God is in its prophetic accuracy. The Scriptures themselves refer to this type of evidence.
“Present your case,” the LORD says. “Bring forward your strong arguments,” the King of Jacob says.
Let them bring forth and declare to us what is going to take place; as for the former events, declare what they were, that we may consider them, and know their outcome; or announce to us what is coming. 23 Declare the things that are going to come afterward, that we may know that you are gods; indeed, do good or evil, that we may anxiously look about us and fear together. (Isaiah 41:21-23).
God presents this challenge to any who would claim divinity. He calls on any false gods to meet His argument. He presents predictive prophecy as proof of who He is. He will predict the future and it will come to pass with complete accuracy.
There is no other book in the world that contains the sort of prophetic substantiation that we find in the Bible. For example, consider the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah. For the sake of brevity, we will mention only a few.
He would be born of a virgin: Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14).
He would be a descendant of the Royal House of King David: “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, "When I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.” (Jeremiah 23:5).
He would be born in Bethlehem: But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago, from the days of eternity. (Micah 5:2).
He would be preceded by a messenger: A voice is calling, “Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness; make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.” (Isaiah 40:3).
He would teach in Galilee: But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. 2 The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. (Isaiah 9:1-2).
He would enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; He is just and endowed with salvation, humble, and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zechariah 9:9).
He would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver: And I said to them, “If it is good in your sight, give me my wages; but if not, never mind!” So they weighed out thirty shekels of silver as my wages. 13 Then the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter, that magnificent price at which I was valued by them.” So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them to the potter in the house of the LORD. (Zechariah 11:12-13). Note that the prophecy even goes so far as to specify what would become of the money used for this betrayal. His hands and His feet would be pierced and lots would be cast for his clothing: For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. (Psalms 22:16-18). And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced (Zechariah 12:10 a).
He would be buried in a rich man's tomb but would die with the wicked: His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death (Isaiah 53:9 a).
He would not remain in the grave: For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay (Psalms 16:10).
These are only ten prophecies out of an estimated 300 that deal with the coming of the Messiah. The chances of only these ten being fulfilled by any one man are astronomical. The conclusion with which we are left is inescapable. This is the Word of God. The Scientific Accuracy of the Bible. This is probably one of the biggest areas of attack against the Bible today. It is often argued that the Bible does not agree with science. But I must ask the question, “Which science? Is it the science of Plato and Aristotle? How about the science of the Dark Ages? Is it the science of a hundred years ago? How about the science of twenty years ago?”
Since is always changing. Science is always finding itself in need of a n update. Its errors always stand in need of correction. A science textbook of even ten years of age is completely outdated. It needs to be rewritten. The Bible is not like science. It has gone for nearly 2000 years without any need for corrections or revisions. It has stood the test of time. It is as accurate today as it was on the day in which it was penned. That is not to say that men's interpretation of the Bible have always been correct. There have been erroneous interpretations of the Bible that were contradicted by proper science. When Galileo stood against the church and maintained that the earth revolves around the sun, he was contradicting the church and its interpretation of the Bible, but there was no such contradiction with the Bible itself.
It is of interest to see what the Bible does not say. The Bible does not contain any of the false cosmologies that were taught throughout the ancient world. The people of ancient India believed that the earth was a huge tray supported on the backs of three giant elephants who stood on the shell of a great turtle who swam in a cosmic sea. The Egyptians taught that the sky was a heavenly Nile along which Ra, the sun god, sailed each day. The Babylonians described a disk-shaped earth surrounded by a moat of sea. Beyond the sea, the inverted bowl of the sky held its borders. In contrast to such views of the “modern science” of that day and age, what does the Bible say about the nature of the earth?
It is He who sits above the vault of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in. (Isaiah 40:22).
Other translations have translated this same passage a bit more literally:
KJV|It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth|
NIV|He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth|
RSV|It is he who sits above the circle of the earth|
LXX|o` kate,cwn to.n gu/ron th/j gh/j| But that is not all. Not only do we see the Scriptures presenting the concept of the circularity of the earth, but Job adds an additional aspect.
He stretches out the north over empty space,
And hangs the earth on nothing. (Job 26:7). The fact that the earth was supported in empty space was taught in the Scriptures at a time when “modern science” taught something completely different.
Thus we find that when scientists, in their endless search for the truth, climb their way up the towering heights of knowledge, they finally reach a pinnacle only to find that theologians have been patiently waiting there for hundreds of years. The Historical Accuracy of the Bible. The Bible has come under countless attacks as to its historical accuracy. This has been especially the case among archaeologists. Yet the father of modern archaeology, Dr William Albright, although himself an unbeliever, had this to say about the Bible: The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible by important historical schools of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, certain phases of which still appear periodically, has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of innumerable details, and has brought increased recognition to the value of the Bible as a source of history. (William F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine, 1960). The Bible has been shown to be historically accurate, even when modern historians have not. For example, the Bible describes a great nation of warriors known as the Hittites (2 Kings 7:6). For hundreds of years, the existence of the Hittites was denied by secular historians and critics of the Bible. It was not until 1906 that Professor Hugo Winckler discovered and translated certain tablets found in modern-day Turkey that historians began to recognize the existence of the great Hittite Empire that ruled Anatolia for nearly a thousand years. A more recent example is seen in those minimalists who maintained that King David was only a mythological figure with no basis in reality. Beginning in the 1990's, archaeologists began to uncover several different inscriptions referring to dwd-tyb, the “house of David.” The Subjective Evidence of the Bible.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence for the Bible is the way in which it has changed the lives of men as no other book ever has. It may be argued that this sort of evidence is by its very nature subjective. But we have already seen that the Christian has an objective reality to back up and to provide the basis for his subjective experience. Josh McDowell gives this illustration: A student comes into the room and says, “Guys, I have a stewed tomato in my right tennis shoe. This tomato has changed my life. It has given me peace and love and joy that I have never experienced before, not only that, but I can now run the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds flat.”
It is hard to argue with a student like that if his life backs up what he says, especially if he runs circles around you on the track (1972:339).
Perhaps you have never experienced the work of God in your life. You can. This is the message of the Bible. It is that God sent His Son to the world to die for sins so that we could come to Him For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). This is where Biblical Christianity departs from every major religion in the world. Instead of an outward action, God demands an inward attitude. Good works are not the issue. Church membership is not the issue. Not even sin is the issue. Jesus Christ is the issue. You are called to come to Jesus Christ today. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life (John 6:47).