Why Believe The Bible?
We believe that the words of scripture are God’s own words, they are God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3:16 says,
2 Timothy 3:16a (NKJV)
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, …
“Inspiration” means God-breathed. “All scripture is breathed by God…”
2 Timothy 3:16b (NKJV)
16 …and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,
We believe the writers of the Bible added form only – no content. The words are God’s words. It is inerrant. There are no errors in the original manuscripts – not one contradiction. The Word of God is infallible. It is never wrong – period. That’s what we believe. If the enemy knew the same thing, what do you think he would do about it?
Well, in Genesis we have the first direct quote from anybody, besides God, in the Bible and that quote is from the devil. This is the war between God and Lucifer, the enemy. Genesis 3:1 says,
Genesis 3:1a (NKJV)
1 Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field…
He was a cunning serpent and what did he attack first? He said to the woman:
Genesis 3:1b (NKJV)
1 …Has God indeed said, “You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
First Satan questions and then he changes. God never said they couldn’t eat of every tree. Eve clarified it and said, “No. It’s just the tree in the middle, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that we can’t eat of or we’ll die.” Then in verse 4, it says,
Genesis 3:4 (NKJV)
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”
The first sign that we see of the enemy is to question God’s word, to change God’s word, and to deny God’s word. Why do you think he would change his approach? He knows what is in God’s Word. That’s why the first time we see him, he is questioning it. That’s why he does it today.
What I want to do for you is look at basically three areas that are outside of scripture but are foundational to prove scripture from the worlds of science and history. We are going to look outside scripture and ask, “Why should we believe God’s Word? Is there some logical reason that we can say we know that this is the infallible, divine, miraculous, supernatural Word of God?”
Let’s start with science. In Genesis 2:7 it says,
Genesis 2:7 (NKJV)
7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.
That is a scientific statement. That is not an analogy. That’s not a picture. That’s not a type. That’s a statement. God took the dust of the ground and breathed into it. It’s literal. By the way, Jesus took the Bible literally, so that’s why we do. He said, “Not one jot or tittle, not one apostrophe, not one punctuation will pass away until it’s all fulfilled.”
So, when Genesis 2:7 says that God formed man from the dust of the ground, that’s how he formed man. Well, guess what? Scientists laughed at that for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. It has only been through about a hundred years of scientific research that scientists have just recently acknowledged that every single element in the human body is also in the ground – every single one. Isn’t that strange? What a coincidence.
In Job 38, there is a whirlwind, scientific, one-sided conversation between God and Job. Job’s listening, believe me, and God is speaking and he is letting Job have it. It’s a fabulous chapter. Here is a quote from Dennis Lindsay’s book, “Harmony of Science and Scripture.”
There are 70-plus scientific questions in God’s whirlwind conversation with Job in Job Chapter 38. They were asked in order to expose just how limited was Job’s bit of knowledge. Quite a number of these questions in Job 38 have been investigated scientifically. All of the answers found so far harmonize perfectly with God’s Word.
There’s not one scientific contradiction in the Bible. Job 26:7, for example, says,
Job 26:7a (NKJV)
7 He stretches out the north over empty space,…
There is a phenomenon in space, astronomers will tell you, that to the north of this planet there is darkness – very, very few stars, especially once you get out of our close atmosphere. It’s just dark to the north. Job 26:7 says He stretches out the north over empty space, and then it says,
Job 26:7b (NKJV)
7 …he hangs the earth on nothing.
Now, Job’s contemporaries – or the scientists, if you will – of Job’s day knew for a fact that the earth rested on the back of an elephant that was standing on the back of a turtle and that was how the earth hung in space. One hundred years ago, scientists knew without a doubt and were absolutely sure that the earth was suspended in ether gas. The only way it could stay up was to be suspended in ether gas. Guys, that was a hundred years ago. The Bible was around. They could’ve found out because Job 26:7 says he hangs the earth on nothing. That’s the type of scientific proof that the Bible has.
Do you know what the Koran says about the sun? The Koran says that the sun rests in the meadow at night so that it has the strength to come up the next morning. Guys, there’s not one scientific statement in the Bible like that – not one. Again, Lindsay states in “Harmony of Science and Scripture,”
One thing is certain. No verse in the Bible has ever been found to violate any known law of science. God’s Word does not contain one scientific inaccuracy, contradiction, absurdity, nor blunder. The absence of error in the Bible is truly remarkable since all other ancient books and even many recent ones contain scientific blunders and mistakes. There are many theories contradicting scripture, but there has never been found one scientifically established law denying any biblical passage, verse, or precept. Everything about the universe coincides with the Bible, pointing with overwhelming force to a personal Creator whose mind and power are infinite.
Those are the facts. I won’t go too much into evolution but just know this. Dr. Henry Morris is a noted creation scientist, researcher, scholar, engineer, has a fabulous mind, and is the author of fifty books on the subject. He says that there has never been any scientific evidence found to substantiate evolution. There are billions of fossils on this earth. Not one has ever shown any type of evolution. In a paraphrase of one of his quotes, he says,
No one has ever found any fossils showing incipient or transitional structures leading to the evolution of more complex species.
Let’s talk about archeology. Today on this earth, there are 25,000 documented, archeological discoveries that support the Bible – not one that supports evolution. A girl came up to me after speaking on this subject in a seminar. Crying and very moved, she said, “I was brought up as a Mormon, and I wrote to the Smithsonian Institute and asked them if there was any historical or archeological evidence of the things of the Book of Mormon because the Book of Mormon talks about all kinds of wars, and talks about steel before steel was created, and talks about all this stuff.”
She went on to say the Smithsonian Institute responded to her, saying, “We do not use the Book of Mormon for any research work. However, we do use the Bible and we do have numerous things from the Bible that have been substantiated and are in the Smithsonian Institute today.” Archeology proves the Bible 25,000 times over.
When we were in Israel, we’d be driving down the road and the guide would say, “That’s this chapter over here” and “That’s this book over here.” We’d drive on down the road and again he’d say, “There’s another one there and another one there.” We’d be doing 40 miles an hour and he’d be pointing out archeological discoveries that support the Bible.
Here’s one more quote from Dennis Lindsay.
There does not exist today one archeological find that proves the Bible to be in error at any point, and there are over 25,000 archeological finds that substantiate the accuracy of the Bible.
Science and archeology support the Bible in every documented find – period. There are no contradictions in the Bible that can be substantiated by science or by archeology. That’s a fact.
Let’s move to history, shall we? You can call it prophecy if you want, or maybe pre-history. Ezekiel 38:8 says this:
Ezekiel 38:8 (NKJV)
8 After many days you will be visited. In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all of them dwell safely.
That is pre-history in Ezekiel, otherwise known as prophecy. On May 14, 1948, it became history because what the Bible said was going to happen, happened. When Israel declared statehood on May 14, 1948, and became a nation, within twenty-four hours they had three separate Arab countries in a full-scale attack against them. Guess who won? Israel won, and they’re still winning, and they will continue to win because God’s already written the book that cannot change. In Ezekiel 22:19 it says,
Ezekiel 22:19b (NKJV)
19 …I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem.
Well, in 1948, Israel wasn’t occupying the city of Jerusalem. So, between 1948 and 1967 someone might say, “God must have been wrong there.” No. God’s not wrong. The time hasn’t come yet, because in 1967 there was the “Six-Day War.” Guess what Israel captured. All of Jerusalem – all of it. They’ve given most of it back, but just as God had written in pre-history in Ezekiel 22:19, Israel was brought back from all of the nations, called “Aliya.” The Jews are coming back to Israel from all over the nations and into Jerusalem.
One more – Zephaniah 3:9, again prophesying of Israel, says,
Zephaniah 3:9 (NKJV)
9 For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve him with one accord.
First of all, the nation of Israel didn’t exist for almost 2,000 years. From the end of the revolt in about 73 A.D., Israel stopped existing as a nation until 1948. The Hebrew language was already basically headed out even in 70 A.D., and it ceased to exist in the first century – period. Nobody used it. It was gone. It was a dead language, but if you go to Israel now, it’s the common language. It’s like English here. It is Hebrew everywhere. Hebrew is the common language.
Why? Because God wrote the pre-history book and said, “I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they may call on the name of the Lord.” No nation has ever lost their language and regained it. Phenomenal, historical facts – historical, meaning done, documented previous to the event in the Bible, documented by history outside the Bible in perfect sync.
Let’s look at Jesus Christ. There are 1,817 predictions about Jesus Christ in the Bible on 737 separate matters. That comes from the “Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy.” 1,800 prophecies about 737 matters – 300 of them were in the Septuagint about Christ’s life when he lived on earth.
It’s very critical that we understand the Septuagint. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. It was finished (written in black and white, if you will) in about 270 B.C., written over a period of fifteen years by seventy scholars. That’s why it’s called Septuagint. 270 years before the birth of Christ, there were 300 prophecies written about him. Now, I was amazed to find out that we still have four copies (and if we put them all together, we can make a whole copy) of the Septuagint existing in the world today. You can go to Germany and see three of the four copies today from 270 B.C. And in those copies that exist today, there are 300 prophecies about Jesus Christ. Every single one was fulfilled in his life. Not one was missed – pre-history written 270 years before it happened.
Let’s just take a look at eight of them. Let me just rattle them off to you just to boggle your mind.
In Micah 5:2 (NKJV), the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. In Zechariah 9:9 (NKJV), the King would be presented to Israel on a donkey. The exact day, by the way, is given in Daniel 9:25 (NKJV), and Jesus came in on the Triumphal Entry on that exact day. In Zechariah 11:12 (NKJV), he’ll be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. In the next verse, Zechariah 11:13 (NKJV), it says the betrayal will occur in the Temple, but the money will end up in a potter’s field. That’s a pretty unique prophecy. Zechariah 13:6 (NKJV) says he’ll have wounds in his hands. Isaiah 53 says he’ll be charged with a capital crime and plead no defense. That doesn’t happen very often. Isaiah 53:9 (NKJV) says he’ll die with criminals, but he’d be buried with the rich. Psalm 22, which was written in 800 B.C., 700 years before the crucifixion was invented, describes the crucifixion of Christ in exact detail, including the way a person dies being crucified – 700 years before crucifixion was used as capital punishment.
Some of you have heard me use the probability of eight of these 300 prophecies. Much of this information you can get in a book called, “Learn the Bible in 24 Hours” by Chuck Missler. You have to use what is called composite probability because these eight events have to occur one on top of another. This person has to meet each one. In a composite probability mathematical equation for one person on the planet to meet these eight of the 300 prophecies that Christ met is 1 to 10 to the 17th power. That’s 1017- the chance of one person meeting those prophecies. So, what does that probability mean to us?
Chuck Missler says the best way to view this is to get a bowl and fill it with silver dollars and mark one of the silver dollars and put it in there. The chances of Christ meeting these probabilities are the same chances of you reaching into that bowl and grabbing that marked silver dollar. The only question is, how big does the bowl have to be to fit this number of silver dollars? 10 to the 17th power. The bowl has to be the same size as the State of Texas, two feet deep in silver dollars, one silver dollar marked. You can fly over the State of Texas, reach down and grab one at chance, and the chances of you grabbing the marked one is the same chance that Jesus Christ met eight of the 300 prophecies that he met. Phenomenal!
Those 300 prophecies are written in the Septuagint to prove that Christ was the Messiah. That’s why they’re there – to give us proof that this is the Christ.
Then, guess what happens? Jesus Christ continually quotes the Septuagint. If we use the Septuagint to authenticate Jesus Christ and then, once we understand who Jesus Christ is, we use Jesus Christ’s quotes to authenticate the Septuagint (the Old Testament), guess what the Bible has done? It has cross-authenticated itself. There are 165 direct quotes from the Old Testament in the New Testament, authenticating the Old Testament.
So, how reliable is the Bible? It starts with three Hebrew texts called the Vorlage that date back to the Ezra-Nehemiah days, the days of the scribes. That’s about 400 to 500 B.C. The three Hebrew texts called the Vorlage were used in 285 B.C. by seventy scholars to write the Septuagint to turn the Hebrew text into Greek. We have four partial copies of the Septuagint that make, in essence, a whole copy in existence today. It took fifteen years to translate. That’s, in essence, 300 years before Christ (270).
Now, skip ahead over 2,000 years to 1947 for me in a little place called Wadi Qumran near the Dead Sea. In Qumran, there are a series of caves where 2,000 manuscripts were found in one cave and another close to 2,000 in a second cave – included in which there were 200 clear Biblical manuscripts, all buried prior to 70 A.D. Most of them have been dated between 63 and 66 A.D. But now we’re in 1947.
Now watch the purpose of all this. If we compare the Book of Isaiah, we have today, in the original language, to the scroll of Isaiah from the Dead Sea that’s dated 66 A.D., there are nine letters different. Nine letters – there’s not one word different from the Book of Isaiah we use today to the one found in the Dead Sea scrolls in the caves of Qumran that are over 2,000 years old. That’s how reliable the Bible is.
Every book of the Old Testament was found in the Dead Sea except the Book of Esther – two complete copies of Isaiah, and most of every other book. As scholars compare the original language of our Bible to the Dead Sea scrolls, they have given it a ninety-five percent accuracy. And the other five percent are all punctuation, spelling errors, miscopy errors – no significant errors. Zero.
The scholars of the biblical manuscripts put less than one percent of our original manuscripts under dispute – only one percent. There is no doctrine in the Bible that is under competent dispute from the manuscript scientists – not one. And only one percent under competent dispute total. By the way, also found in the Dead Sea scrolls is the Messiah scroll that names Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah of Isaiah 53, written before 70 A.D.
Why do people say there are disputes in the Bible? Part of it is the language. Hebrew is a very dense and deep language. It is phonetic and pictographic. The letters are pictures and they men things, almost a little bit like Chinese. Greek is even worse. Every Greek verb has five aspects to it – tense, mood, voice, person, and number. English doesn’t, so it takes sentences to describe what Hebrew and Greek do in a word. Often, the pictures that Hebrew and Greek paint, we don’t even have the words to describe. That is most of your difficulties.
So, when you read something in the Bible and you think, “Wow, that doesn’t sound right – that seems like a contradiction,” if you will dig into it, it will become a revelation, not a contradiction. All you have to do is dig into the original language and your mind is just blown because it’s perfect. There are no real contradictions.
I need to wrap this up, but let me just tell you that there is a thing called a “hepatic structure.” A hepatic structure is a structure of sevens. It’s a coding that’s in the Bible, and it’s a phenomenal thing if you’re an analytical, engineer, math type. Both Chuck Missler, in his book “The Cosmic Codes” and Grant Jeffries, in his book “The Signature of God” write about these codes. This code is a phenomenal, hidden, authentication code. If you take the genealogy of Matthew, it matches this hepatic code structure perfectly. Chuck Missler says the chances of that happening by coincidence are 1 in 40,000,000 for that code to work by chance.
We can believe the Bible. We can believe the Bible scientifically because there is not one contradiction. We can believe the Bible historically because every historical fact in the Bible either has been proven or we’re just waiting for it to be proven. We can believe the Bible archeologically 25,000 times over with not one contradiction. We can believe the reliability of the text because God has preserved texts that are 2,000 plus years old. They still exist. That’s a miracle for God to tell these Essene Jewish Rabbis to go hide 4,000 scrolls in the caves before the revolt ends so that we can find them in 1947 and say that the Bible is ninety-five percent accurate and the other five percent is punctuation and miscellaneous misspellings. That’s phenomenal for 2,000 years of mostly hand-copying – phenomenal.
The Old Testament authenticates Christ. Christ authenticates the Old Testament. The integrity of the design of the Bible is supernatural. The New Testament is taught in Genesis 22 when Abraham takes Isaac onto the highest point of Mt. Moriah, which is where Jesus Christ was crucified. The Book of Revelation has 800 references to the Old Testament. You can learn the Old Testament by studying the Book of Revelation. It’s one design. Sixty-six books, forty men, fifteen hundred years, one supernatural design. It is inerrant, it is infallible, and we have mountains of proof that we could build our faith on.
Let me just say as I close, there are still millions of people who don’t believe because the enemy’s approach is to question the word, to change the word, and deny the word – and that’s why people can’t see through the facts.
Let me read you four verses.
Isaiah 40:8 (NKJV)
8 The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.
Matthew 24:35 says,
Matthew 24:35 (NKJV)
35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will by no means pass away.
Psalm 138:2 unbelievably says,
Psalm 138:2 (NKJV)
2 For you have magnified your word above all your name.
And John 7:17, which is the verse you should take home, says,
John 7:17 (NKJV)
17 If anyone wants to do his will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on my own authority.
Let me just finish with a quote from my daughter, Danielle. I’ve quoted a lot of people, so let me give you a quick bibliography.
Chuck Missler “Learn the Bible in 24 Hours”
Grant Jeffries “The Signature of God”
Chuck Missler “Cosmic Codes”
Dennis Lindsay “Harmony of Science and the Bible”
Fabulous, fabulous books. But I’ll end with my daughter Danielle’s quote. She said this in a paper that she wrote for school.
The Lord has given to everyone questioning the Bible real proof of its accuracy. He wants only the acknowledgment of his children that he alone is God, that he has designed everything in history, archeology, and science, and that he is, as Hebrews 1:3 (NKJV) says, upholding all things by the word of his power.
That’s all God wants. It’s all God wanted from Job. It’s all he wants from us. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, God Almighty, we have a phenomenal, phenomenal foundation, Lord, for believing who You are, for believing that Your word is supernatural and divine. God, we pray that the enemy would not influence us, Lord, that we would not hear him question or change or deny Your word, but Lord, that our faith would be built upon the rock-solid foundation that you have left for us. Lord, we say we believe. We believe Your word. It is inerrant and infallible. It is God-breathed. It is profitable for every area in our life. Lord, we believe it. We pray that You would give us the faith and the courage to obey it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Please consider reading these additional articles at gotquestions.org
Is the Bible Truly God’s Word?
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-God-Word.html
Is there Proof for the Inspiration of the Bible?
http://www.gotquestions.org/proof-inspiration-Bible.html
What does it mean that the Bible is inspired?
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-inspired.html
How does Archeology Support the Bible?
http://www.gotquestions.org/archaeology-Bible.html
Does the Bible Contain Errors, Contradictions, or discrepancies?
http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-errors.html
Does the Inerrancy of the Bible only apply to the original manuscripts? http://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-inerrancy.html
Why are there so many different Christian interpretations?
http://www.gotquestions.org/interpretations-Christian.html