DOESN'T GOD WANT ME TO BELIEVE IN THE BIBLE WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE? DOESN'T THAT SHOW THAT I HAVE MORE FAITH?
Why do we want to prove the authenticity of the bible?
TO BE ABLE TO GIVE A CREDIBLE ANSWER CONCERNING OUR FAITH
(Col 4:6) Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt,
that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.
(2 Tim 2:25 26) 25 In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; 26 And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.
(1 Pet 3:15) But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:
TO GIVE STRENGTH TO YOUR SALVATION AND TO MAKE YOU A STABLE CHRISTIAN
(Isa 33:6) 6 And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: the fear of the LORD is his treasure.
(1Thes 5:21) Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
DID MAN WRITE WHAT HE THOUGHT A GOD WOULD SAY,
IF THERE WAS A GOD TO SAY IT?
(1) Man wouldn't have wrote the bible if he could, because it goes against what the natural man wants to do.
(2) Other religions have one man (the leader of there religion) who wrote the religious book that they study from, but The bible was wrote by over 40 men and woman during a span of some 1500 years. Many of which had no idea of what the other was writing, and yet the whole has perfect union of thought, as though written by one.
[kings; prophets; business men; peasants; men; and women wrote the bible.]
(3) Archeological Finds have never unearthed something that would prove the bible to be incorrect. But thousands of artifacts, sites, and locations have been unearthed that correlated perfectly with what is written in the bible.
a. Solomon's stables b. City of Tyre c. The Jericho Walls
MANY CRITICS OF THE BIBLE HAVE SAID THAT THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE JEWS WERE EVER IN EGYPT AS SLAVES.
(Exod 5:10 12) 10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.
11 Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it: yet not ought of your work shall be diminished. 12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw.
Archeological Note! Naville and Kyle in 1908 found at Pithom Egypt that the lower courses of brick were filled with good chopped straw, while the middle courses were with less straw and that mixed with stubble plucked up by the roots. And the upper course had no straw whatsoever.
FOR A LONG TIME THE BIG LAUGH FOR CRITICS OF THE BIBLE WAS THE STORY IN JOSHUA OF THE ISRAELITES BLOWING ON RAMS HORNS, AND THE WALLS OF JERICHO FALLING DOWN FLAT.
(Josh 6:2 5) 2 And the LORD said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho, and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour. 3 And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days. 4 And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns: and the seventh day ye shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. 5 And it shall come to pass, that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.
Archeological Note! But in 1936 Dr. John Garstang, director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem excavated the ruins of the city of Jericho. He found pottery and scarab evidence that the city had been destroyed around 1400 BC. Dr. Garstang found that the city had two walls that were about 15 feet apart. The outer wall was 6 feet thick, and the inner wall was 12 feet thick. Both being about 30 feet high, with connecting walls between the two and houses built on the walls, (such as Rahab's). He found that the outer wall fell down flat outward, and down the hillside, dragging the inner wall and houses with it.
Prophecy, above everything else, proves that the bible could not have been written by mortal man.
SCRIPTURE: (Isa 46:9 10) 9 Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done,.....
(Isa 42:9) Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.
(John 13:19) Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am he.
(2 Pet 1:21) For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
PROPHECY FULFILLED: Jesus fulfilled over 333 prophecies by the time he went to the cross. Prophecies that could not have been fulfilled by him on purpose.
(1) The town where he would be born. (2) The killing of the children (3) His coming out of Egypt. (4) Being crucified between two malefactors. (5) Not a broken born.
(John 19:36) For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled,
A bone of him shall not be broken. (Ps 34:20) He keepeth all his bones: not one of them is broken.
COMMENT: Jesus could not have brought this to pass even if he wanted to, because it was the Roman Solders that decided that he was dead and there was no need to break his legs. So here we have pagan solders, who knew nothing about Jewish prophecy, and yet they were the one's fulfilling God's word.
JESUS WALKING WITH TWO DISCIPLES ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS SHOWS THEM WHERE HE (JESUS) WAS A FULFILLMENT OF O.T. PROPHECY.
(Luke 24:25 27) 25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: 26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? 27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
HERE IS JUST TWO OF MANY SCRIPTURES THAT HE SHOWED THEM
(Ps 16:10) For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. (Corruption means decaying of the body, death)
(1 Cor 15:4) And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
SOMEONE MAY SAY, THESE PROPHECIES
WERE WROTE AFTER THEY ACCRUED.
ISRAEL A PRESENT DAY FULFILLED PROPHECY
Scripture: (Ezek 36:24) For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.
(Amos 9:14 15) [AMOS prophesied in Israel sometime around 750 BC - about 2,750 years ago.] 14 And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. 15 And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God. [fulfilled in 1948]
COMMENT: People may criticize the other scriptures as being wrote after they happened, but in 1948 against insurmountable odds the Jewish people defeated all of the combined Arab forces that were planning on destroying them, and brought to pass the prophecy of Ezekiel 36:24 and Amos 9:14 &15.
THE PROPHECY OF ABRAHAM
There are few places in this whole world that you could go and people would not know the name of Abraham. And yet thousands of years ago, when Abraham was nobody, God made a prophecy that He was going to make Abraham’s name great, and out of him would a great nation be birthed.
(Gen 12:1-2) 1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
This is a fulfilled prophecy that we can see right now with our own eyes. If there have been 24 billion people in the world since the world began, the chances of this happing by accident would be one chance in 24 billion, quite impossible.
HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT THE BIBLE IS FROM
GOD THE CREATOR AND NOT MAN?
THE BIBLE CODES: The Hebrew Institute in Jerusalem has discovered that there are thousands of astonishing hidden coded messages in the Hebrew bible. The equal distance letter spacing method of decoding is what was used. And as of date no one in the secular world, with all of our technology have been able to duplicate this great phenomena. The Statistical Science magazine tested it in 1994 and said that it was a phenomena that could not be explained.
EXAMPLE: (Isa 53:10) Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
In this passage of prophecy referring to our Lord Jesus Christ suffering for our sin, the researchers started at the second Hebrew letter yod and counted forward every 20th letter and found that it spelled out Yeshua - Shmi which means Yeshua (Jesus) is my name. Mathematical experts calculated the probability of this astonishing combination of, Yeshua (Jesus) is my name, occurring by chance in this Messianic prophecy about Jesus, as one chance in 50 quadrillion. The only way that this precise mathematical formula of encoded messages could occur, is if all the letters of the bible are precisely correct. Any letters out of order would through the whole bible code out of order. Now listen to what scripture says about this:
(Ps 119:89) For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.
(Isa 40:8) The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall
stand for ever.
(1 Pet 1:25) But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
(Ezek 12:25) …I say the word, and will perform it, saith the Lord GOD.
(Matt 5:18) For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
SOME EXAMPLES OF IMPORTANT EVENTS IN OUR GENERATION WHICH WERE FOUND TO HAVE BEEN HIDDEN IN THE BIBLE CODES.
(1) Egyptian president Anwar Sadat's assassination. (2) Adolph Hitler, the Nazis, and the death camps were encoded. (3) The Pursuren Gulf War, and thousands of others.
(John 1:1) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
MY PRAYER TO YOU: Father God in heaven, I pray that this life giving, Spirit filled word of yours, will burn within us, to the effect that it will cause us to live, not unto our selves, but onto you. May this word of yours bring great faith in all that read it, and let the word be a spiritual sword that gives us victory over all the works of the Devil.
May the grace and love of Christ Jesus be with you all.
