WTY-5 Is the Bible Trustworthy?
CHAPTER V IS THE BIBLE TRUSTWORTHY?
Here is a vital and paramount question. If the Bible contains mere speculations which may or may not be true, or if there should be falsehoods found in it, we would forthwith lose rock-bottom and sink into quicksand. On the other hand, if it can be proved that the Bible is true, we too can exult with St. Peter: “We have not trusted in cunningly devised fables, but in a sure prophetic word I” We may in a general manner infer the veracity of the Scriptures from the fact that often in it Appeal is Made to Men’s Experience
Moses writes, Deuteronomy 11:7 : “Your eyes have seen all the great works of Jehovah which He did.” Now, suppose that God had not led them out of Egypt by an outstretched hand; suppose that the Egyptians had not drowned in the Red Sea; imagine that the people had not been fed with manna from heaven and satisfied with water out of the rock, and Moses had told them: “Your eyes have seen all these things”—would they have had the stupidity to receive all that Moses wrote as unquestionable truth? So also the apostles, when speaking of the resurrection of Christ, refer to eye-witnesses yet living, who might be consulted as to the truth of the things stated in their Epistles. (Hebrews 12:1; 1 Corinthians 15:6). The Character of the Statements
These statements made also indicates the incontestable truth of the Scriptures. They are in large part so mortifying to human pride, so humiliating and offensive to those to whom they were addressed, that they would never have been received and promulgated if they had not been known to be true. For example Abraham was the father of the Jewish nation; but the Bible records that a heathen king chided him for telling a lie. Jacob was another patriarch; but the sacred pages relate, among other things, that he cheated Esau out of his birthright. Aaron, too, was renowned as coleader with Moses yet the Bible narrates his making the golden calf in Horeb. David was the Israelites’ great and illustrious king; but the Scriptures in no wise cover up his adultery.
Now, would the Israelites ever have received the Old Testament and have clung to it even unto death had they not been fully assured that the things rehearsed therein were facts? In the Fulfilled Prophecies
Here we have the most irrefutable proofs of the exactitude and veracity and reliability of the Scriptures. “There shall not be one remaining to the house of Esau” (Obadiah 1:18), say the Scriptures; and the descendants of that Esau before whom Jacob of old had to flee have perished from the face of the earth. Their very name has been forgotten in the country they lived in. In like manner the doom of extinction was pronounced against the Philistines (Ezekiel 25:15-16), ancient enemies of the Israelites. When one today seeks for them, they can no more be found.
Against Egypt Ezekiel thundered that it should no more lift itself above the nations, but that it should be diminished, that its foundation should be broken, that the pride of its power should come down, and that “there shall be no more a prince out of the land of Egypt” (Ezekiel 30:13). When in these days we open the pages of ancient history we read: “From about the middle of the fourth century B. C. to the present day no native prince has sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs.” (Myers.) As against nations, so the Bible is full of prophecies regarding ancient cities, which have all been fulfilled. Tyre was to be cast into the midst of the sea and become a place “for the spreading of nets” (Ezekiel 26). The historian of today can find no better words to describe its appearance.
Thebes was to be “broken up” (Ezekiel 30:16). Strabo (25 B. C.) testifies to the fact that it was; and even now the once majestic city is broken up into nine hamlets.
Memphis was to be destroyed together with its idols and images (Ezekiel 30:13). The traveler who today visits the place finds, beside two broken statues and a few large rubbish heaps, not a trace of the temple-city once so renowned.
“Ekron shall be roted up!” cried Zephaniah, and the place where it once stood is now a region of plowed fields, “and the only evidences that a city ever existed there is found in the stones of hand-mills and the ancient cisterns which are occasionally met with by the cultivator.”
“Baldness is come upon Gaza,” declared another prophet (Jeremiah 47:5). The event proved that the words were no mere threat. Gaza is now a series of sand-hills and so bald that not even a blade of grass grows upon it.
Babylon, “the beauty of the Chaldeans’ excellency,” was to become heaps and should never again be inhabited. It is simply startling to find how clear and minute these prophetic pictures are.
Archeology As another source of testimony archeology might be mentioned. I confine myself to but one interesting find. In Exodus 1:11, we read that the children of Israel built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses. In connection with the building of these cities the oppression of the children of Israel reached its climax. When Moses came to lead them out of Egypt, Pharaoh supposed that not enough work had been assigned them and commanded that no more straw should be given them, but that they should go and gather stubble for themselves. This they did. Finally, when even the stubble failed, they were commanded to make brick without straw.
Critics formerly impugned this story. They do not so today. Why not? Because the cities have accidentally ben uncovered, and a perfect circumstantial confirmation of the Bible account has been obtained. Investigation proved that the lower layers were built of brick which contained straw, the midle layers of brick in which stubble instead of straw had been used, and the upper layers of brick, without straw altogether. The Science of Astronomy This too, affords proof for the truthfulness of the Scriptures. Let us note but one thing. In Jeremiah 30:22, we are told: “The host of heaven cannot be numbered.” This was not the sentiment of astronomers. They all thought that they could be numbered. Hipparchus, living about 150 B. C., counted 1,022 stars. Ptolemy at the beginning of the second century of the Christian era said there were 1,026. We can with the naked eye on a clear winter’s night see about 1,160; or in the whole celestial sphere some 3,000. But when Galileo some three centuries ago pointed the telescope toward the sky he counted hundreds of thousands. Next came Lord Rosse with the great mirror. Now the number of visible stars increased to nearly 400,000,000. Presently John Herschel and other modern astronomers resolved the nebulae into suns, and found in the scarf about Orion “a gorgeous bed of stars the Milky Way, too, they tell us, is but a grand complex of stars without number. Who revealed this fact to Jeremiah millenniums ago?
Evidences in the World Around Us
It is a fact that all the nations relate a story of a universal flood. We have a minute record of this flood in the Bible. Some have said that the occurrence was merely a local inundation. But how does it happen that neither the races of the world nor the Scriptures narrate any story of a universal earthquake? There have probably been more local earthquakes than local inundations, yet we nowhere find it so much as hinted at that there was ever a universal earthquake.
Again, a most singular mode of propitiating and worshipping the Deity prevailed over the whole earth. Even today traces of it may be found in Mexico, India, Africa, and other parts of the world. I mean that of bloody sacrifices. Whoever established this mode of worship? Man? Never! It is against all reason.
Some time ago it happened that a man in my hearing pronounced the sacrifices with which the Old Testament abounds as foolish, absurd, and ridiculous. The mere light of reason and nature would never have led to such a mode of worship. There is no possible connection in man’s reason between the killing of an innocent dove and the acceptable worship of the Most High. Yet this mode of worship prevails universally. How are we to account for this strange phenomenon? Reject the explanation which the Bible gives, and who can give us another?
Turning to the Jews we find that they even today celebrate a festival called the Passover. Suppose they had never been led out of Egypt as the Scriptures relate, would they ever have commemorated the event? As little as America would commemorate the Fourth of July if American independence had never been declared!
Take also the early and almost universal division of time into weeks. Who decreed that it should be instituted? There are natural reasons why time should be divided into months and years; but there are no natural reasons whatever why it should be divided into periods of seven days. Reject the explanation of it which Moses gives, and again you are at sea.
Still, these external arguments in favor of the veracity of the Scriptures are but crutches. There is one remaining which is decisive to him whom it concerns. It is the testimony of the Spirit! A Christian knows the Bible to be true from his own experience. He knows that a great moral change has taken place within him, that a new force has entered his life. Proofs? He needs none. "He has the witness in himself.” .