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Why is the Bible the Word of God?

"Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth" John 17:17

As I see it, there are at least five reasons to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. They are: sincerity and validity of the Biblical writers, prophecy, scientific accuracy, historical accuracy and bibliographical consistency.

The sincerity and validity of the Biblical writers argument is best presented in some postings that I submitted to the soc.religion.christian newsgroup.

Click here to read. I think this argument is probably even more powerful than my arguments listed below.

The following is a brief address of the remaining four:

Prophecy

There are many prophecies in the Bible that have already been fulfilled. Here is a list of just a few:

Many people try to discount these prophecies by post-dating them beyond their foretold events. But most scholars who studied the subject, disagree with post-dating due to the fact that the septuagint was written in the first half of the third century. The septuagint is the greek translation of the Old Testament, so it obviously contained all of the old testament prophecies.

Ezekiel 26-28 describes the destruction of the ancient city of Tyre, hundreds of years before the actual event. It gives details which include:

This was a daring prophecy. It would equivalent to saying that the modern city of New York or Detroit was going to be destroyed and never rebuilt again. The ancient city of Tyre was a prosperous city which controlled Phoenicia from the reign of Hiram I. It was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The inhabitants fled to an island off of its coast. Alexander later came along and built a land bridge, by throwing the city's rubble into the sea, in order to get to the inhabitants' island. Today, fishermen can be seen casting their nets at this location.

One of the most amazing prophecies in scripture is Daniel 9:24-27, the prophecy of the 70 weeks. I encourage you to study one of the Biblical commentaries on this scripture available from the Bible search tools (click on the Bible above) to learn more about this exciting prophecy. But in a nutshell, this prophecy covers 490 years, (each week is a week of 7 years) accurately predicting the timeline events up to Christ's crucifiction. Only 7 years of this prophecy are left to be fulfilled in the coming 7 year tribulation. The Bible has shown itself to be right about 483 years of this prophecy, so the chances are good that it will be right about the last 7.

Scientific Accuracy

It may surprise many that the Bible is scientifically accurate. It is true that the catholic church fought against Galileo, arguing that the earth was the center of the universe, but the church had no Biblical basis for such a belief but rather, held this view as a result of Aristotle's influence. Isaiah 40:22 clearly states that the earth is round (see below). I fear that today's church makes the same mistake by surrendering Biblical doctine in favor of secular teachings, especially in the realm of science.

Here are some scientific truths which the Bible stated before they were discovered.

"Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, [and] the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night....... If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD [then] the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD. - Jeremiah 31:35-37

"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured: so will I multiply the seed of David my servant, and the Levites that minister unto me." - Jeremiah 33:22

The Ptolemaic view, held by the greeks, was that there were 1031 stars in the heavens. The Bible spoke of the vastness of space which wasn't affirmed until the advent of the modern telescope.

"......he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which [is] as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, [and] rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.........His going forth [is] from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it......" - Psalms 19:4,6

Scientists used to scoff at this scripture saying that the sun was not orbiting in space, but they're not scoffing now. The sun indeed travels a circuit in space, along with all of the other celestial bodies.

  • "[It is] he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof [are] as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:" - Isaiah 40:22

    This scripture, as mentioned earlier, states that the earth is round, but it is also interesting that it says, as well as many other passages such as Isaiah 44:24 and Zechariah 12:1, that God has "stretched", or even is "stretching" the heavens. The discovery of the Doppler shift by Edwin Hubble has confirmed the theory that space (the heavens) is expanding. The Bible was over 2,000 years ahead of its time!

    That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it? It is turned as clay [to] the seal; and they stand as a garment." - Job 38:13-14

    The ancients used to sign documents by placing a cylinder, which had a stamp of the signature, in clay and then rolling it on the target document. This scripture is using this imagery to describe the earth's rotation on its axis.

    "......[He] hangeth the earth upon nothing" - Job 26:7

    This is one of my favorities. Job, unlike the greeks to follow, didn't believe that the earth was supported by Hercules, or pillars. He rightly recognized, long before space exploration, that the earth is suspended in space!

    I find the next verse fascinating also. Job 26:8 says:

    "He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them."

    It is now known that strong updrafts allows water to be contained inside clouds. And when it rains, clouds do not rip as the ancients believed. Once again, the Bible was ahead of its time.

    Historicity

    "Hebrew national tradition excels all others in its clear picture of tribal and family origins. In Egypt and Babylonia, in Assyria and Phoenicia, in Greece and Rome, we look in vain for anything comparable. There is nothing like it in the tradition of the Germanic peoples. Neither India nor China can produce anything similar, since their earliest historical memories are literary deposits of distorted dynastic tradition, with no trace of the herdsman or peasant behind the demigod or king with whom their records begin. Neither in the oldest Indic historical writings (the Puranas) nor in the earliest Greek historians is there a hint of the fact that both Indo-Aryans and Hellenes were once nomads who immigrated into their later abodes from the north. The assyrians, to be sure, remembered vaguely that their earliest rules, whose names they recalled without any details about their deed, were tent dwellers, but whence they came had long been forgotten."

    "It stands absolutely alone in the ancient literature without a remote parallel even among the Greeks. . . .'The Table of Nations' remains an astonishingly accurate document....(It) shows such remarkably 'modern' understanding of the ethnic and linguistic situation in the modern world, in spite of all its complexity, that scholars never fail to be impressed with the author's knowledge of the subject." - Finkelstein, Louis (ed.). The Jews, Their History, Culture, and Religion. Vol. 1, 3rd ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960.

    The following is a list of non-biblical sources attesting to the historicity of Jesus.

    "These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries." - Encyclopedia Britanica, 15th edition, 1974.

    Bibliographical Consistency

    The following web site is an excellent resource explaining the bibliographical consistency of the new testament

    Let me just add that there are over 4,000 Greek extant manuscripts (13,000 copies of portions of NT) more than any other text of antiquity. Only 1/2 of one percent of the text is in question compared to 5 percent for Homer's Illiad. This means that 99.5% of the New Testament text is bibliographically consistent.

    Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seemed that the Old Testament was no more reliable than any other ancient text, but this perception has obviously changed. Among the scrolls was found the oldest complete copy of the book of Isaiah. When compared to other copies, only 14 letters were in question, all but 7 pertained to differences in spelling and the remaining letters was due to the omission of the word "light" which didn't significanly affect the meaning of the text.

    For more information on the reliability of the Bible, check out the following web sites:

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