The Bible is the Inspired Word of God by Ken Hamilton 8/20/10
ByThe Bible says “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…” (2 Timothy 3:16). The Greek word used here is theopneustos, and literally means, “God breathed.” Simply put, the Bible came straight from the mouth of God.
The following are ten Supernatural considerations that offer proof the Bible, is in fact, the Word of God:
The First Supernatural consideration is the Bible’s amazing unity.
The supernatural unity of Scripture is demonstrated both positively in its unified message throughout all 66 books and negatively in its complete lack of any contradictions. This unity is achieved in spite of the some 40 authors and their various occupations of approximately 19 such as prince, general, priest, king, queen, housewife, farmer, scribe, prophets, physician, fishermen, carpenters, tentmaker, etc.
This unity of the Bible was achieved in spite of the long period of time involved in its writing. More than 15 centuries elapsed between the writing of Genesis and Revelation. Nearly 400 years elapsed between the close of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.
This unity is achieved in spite of the different geographical places where the Bible was written: On 3 different continents; Asia, Africa and Europe.
This unity is achieved in spite of the many different styles of its writing; history, prophecy, biography, autobiography, poetry, prose, as song, as law, in symbolic form, in proverb form and in doctrinal form.
This unity is achieved in spite of the different types of times of writing; in times of war, peace, persecution, sorrow and depression, times of great joy, in palaces, in wilderness and deserts.
This unity is achieved in spite of the 3 different languages in which it was originally written; Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
This unity is achieved in spite of the various religious backgrounds of the writers; Jews, Gentiles, Pagans and Christians.
This unity is achieved in spite of the hundreds of controversial topics covered such as; the natures of God, Satan, heaven, hell, good, evil, suffering, sin, angels, man, creation and morality.
The second Supernatural consideration is its indestructibility.
It survived in spite of political and religious persecutions from those who tried to destroy it from as early as 303 AD.
It has survived in spite of philosophical persecution by such men as:
Voltaire, French atheist, who once said “Another century and there will not be a Bible on Earth.” Result – the century has passed and there are literally billions of Bibles on earth.
Thomas Paine, a famous political and atheistic writer during the American and French Revolution, who once said, “I have gone through the Bible as one would go through a forest with an ax to fell trees. I have cut down tree after tree; here they lie. They will never grow again.” Result – Paine thought he had demolished the Bible, but since he died neglected and as a social outcast, the Bible has leaped forward as never before.
Stalin and Lenin of Russia for over 70 years through Communism waged the greatest all out war ever on the Scriptures in history with a combined attack with brainwashing, slaughter, torture, imprisonment, and persecution. The result, Communism has fallen and Christianity is exploding within Russia.
The third Supernatural consideration is its historical accuracy.
Ed Nelson Glueck, the renowned Jewish archeologist wrote “No archeological discovery has ever contradicted a Biblical reference.”
William F. Albright, some say “the greatest archeologist who ever lived” and who began as an avid critic of the Scriptures until the facts of archeology convinced him otherwise wrote “The reader may rest assured: nothing has been found to disturb a reasonable faith, and nothing has been discovered which can disprove a single theological doctrine… We no longer trouble ourselves with attempts to ‘harmonize’ religion and science, or to ‘prove’ the Bible. The Bible can stand for itself.”
Halley’s Bible Handbook, which lists some 112 examples of archeological discoveries, when combined with Unger’s Bible Handbook of 96 lists of examples of archeological discoveries, results in a comprehensive summary that prove the historical accuracy of the Bible.
The fourth Supernatural consideration is its scientific accuracy.
The fact that the earth is round “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth…” (Isaiah 40:22) The Bible records this fact 22 centuries before man made this discovery.
The fact that the earth is suspended in space “He stretcheth out the North over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” (Job 26:7)
Job is perhaps the oldest Bible book written around 1500 BC when scientific theories concerning the earth was that our planet was flat. The Bible records this scientific fact over 33 centuries before man made the discovery.
The fact that the stars are innumerable (Genesis 15:5). For centuries man believed the total number of stars to be a little less than 1,200, the number visible to the naked eye. The Bible records this scientific fact 21 centuries before man made the discovery.
The fact that there are mountains and canyons in the sea was recorded in 2 Samuel 22:16 and Jonah 2:6 about 29 centuries before man discovered this. As recently as a century ago, the ocean was still viewed as a watery bowl deepest in the middle. However, some of the highest mountains and deepest canyons are located on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
The fact that there are springs and fountains in the sea was not known until after WWII when researchers discovered that 10,000 underwater volcanoes add some 430 million tons of water to our ocean each year. God describes these fountains in Genesis 7:11 and Proverbs 8:28, over 35 centuries before man discovered this.
The fact that there are watery paths (ocean currents) in the seas was recorded in Psalms 8:8 some 27 centuries before man made the discovery and it was only because of the Bible that man made the discovery when he did. Upon hearing the Psalm, the American Matthew Fountaine Maury exclaimed, “It is enough – if the Word of God says there are paths in the sea, they must be there, and I am going to find them.” He proceeded to do just that and soon charted for the first time all of the major sea lanes and currents. Matthew Maury is considered the father of modern oceanography and his statue stands at Annapolis Academy with sea charts in one hand and a Bible in the other.
There are many more scientific Supernatural considerations, too many to mention here such as weather cycles, health, sanitation and medical science, the human bloodstream, the two laws of thermodynamics (energy conservation & energy deterioration).
The fifth Supernatural consideration is in its Prophetic accuracy.
Prophecies dealing with the nation of Israel, Gentile nations, specific cities, particular individuals, prophecies fulfilled by Jesus during His earthly ministry.
None of the other world religions have a single line of predictive prophesy. The only exception is Muhammad (Islam/Muslim) who only gave one self-fulfilling prophesy, that he would return to Mecca.
There are over 2,000 Old Testament prophecies alone which have already been fulfilled in history. In fact, if these prophesies are broken down into all of their individual elements, rather than each being considered as a whole, there are over 10,000 fulfilled Old Testament prophecies.
A full ¼ of the Bible was predictive prophesy when it was written. ½ of these prophecies have already been fulfilled. The rest concern things yet future, which will all be fulfilled just as accurately as past prophecies have been.
There is not one prophecy in all of Scripture which went unfulfilled (Deuteronomy 18:18, 22; Isaiah 46:9-10).
The sixth Supernatural consideration is the Bible’s universal influence upon civilization.
The Apostle Paul’s second missionary journey, Acts 16:9, proliferated the teachings of Jesus so that the Western civilization is founded directly upon the Bible and its teachings. The moralities such as; sanctity of life, marriage, womanhood, childhood and freedom are all the foundations of Western civilization and are directly founded upon the Word of God.
The world’s calendar and most of the holidays stem from the Bible. The Bible has influenced the advancement of all of the fine arts such as literature, art and music, all rooted in the Word of God.
The Bible has produced the law and government of the Western world. English common law, the Bile of Rights, the Magna Charta, and our Constitution are all rooted in God’s gift to Moses on Mt. Sinai.
Note: “Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian… This is a religious People… This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to this present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…that this is a Christian nation. (Supreme Court Decision, 1892. Church of the Holy Trinity V. United States).”
The first official act of the Congress of the United States was to order the importing and printing of Bibles.
All of the Ivy League colleges were founded to teach the Word of God. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth in America and Oxford and Cambridge in England were founded on the Bible.
The stated purpose of the founding of the Public Educations System in America was to teach every American child how to read the Bible.
Our founding documents clearly state that all of our laws are based upon the fact that “all men are CREATED equal” and our “inalienable rights” are all “endowed by their CREATOR”.
The seventh Supernatural consideration is its care and copy over the years.
No book in history has been copied as many times with as much care as has been the Word of God.
“The Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved…they kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word, and paragraph… Who ever counted the letters and syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca?” Bernard Ramm’s Protestant Christian Evidence pp. 230-231.
“They counted, for example, the number of times each letter of the alphabet occurs in each book; they pointed out the middle letter of the Pentateuch and the middle letter of the whole Hebrew Bible, and even more detailed calculations than these. ‘Everything countable seems to be counted,’ says Wheeler Robinson”. F.F. Bruce’s The Books And The Parchments p. 117.
The Talmud (a collection of 63 books containing the body of Jewish civil and canonical law) lists many rules for copying the Old Testament.
We now have over 5,300 ancient Greek Manuscripts of the New Testament
Including the early versions, we have almost 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament.
The earliest Greek manuscript is within 25 years of the originals. By comparison, note the number of manuscripts and years between the earliest manuscript and their originals with those works upon which we base almost all of our knowledge of ancient history and which no one questions:
a. Caesar 10 MSS 1,000 years
b. Plato 7 MSS 1,200 years
c. Tacitus 20 MSS 1,000 years
d. Suetonius 8 MSS 800 years
e. Herodotus 8 MSS 1,300 years
f. New Testament 24,633 + MSS 25 years
Add to this the startling fact that even if all the manuscripts of the New Testament were lost, the entire text could be recovered from quotes in the writings of the Early Church Fathers, over 36,000 quotes in the first three centuries alone. The text could also be completely recovered from the thousands of early Lectionaries, (the books used for corporate bible reading in the early church). Thus, when any cult, liberal, or skeptic claims that we cannot be sure if the bible we have is what was originally written, we can be sure that they don’t have the faintest idea of what they are talking about!
The eighth Supernatural consideration is its amazing circulation.
The Bible is the number one best seller of all time:
The Bible is 2,000 years old and still outsells all other books in the world.
The Bible has far outsold the next top 5 books combined, and of these next top 5, 4 are about the Bible.
Today, there are literally billions of Bibles.
The Bible was the first major book ever translated. The Bible has been translated into more languages than any other book – over a thousand more languages than number two.
The Bible was the first book ever put into Codex (modern book) form, which was actually developed for the Bible.
The Bible was the first book ever printed.
The Bible contains the oldest written history in existence.
The Bible has inspired more books than any other book. Nothing else even comes close.
More books have been written on the life of Christ alone than could possibly be read in a lifetime.
The Bible was the first book taken to and read from space by American astronauts.
The ninth Supernatural consideration is its absolute honesty.
Pastor John Yates says “The Bible is not a book that man could write if he would, or would write if he could, because:”
Of the BAD things God writes about some of His friends:
Noah – Genesis 9:20-24
Moses – Numbers 20:7-12
David – This king is accurately accused of lust, adultery, lying, and cold-blooded murder. Who but God would write in such a manner?
Elijah – Pictured as running for his very life from a mere woman.
Peter – We read of Peter: “Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man”. (Matthew 26:24)
Of some of the good things God writes about some of His enemies:
Esau – Genesis 33)
Artaxerxes – (Nehemiah 2)
Darius – (Daniel 6)
Gamaliel – (Acts 5:34-39)
Julius – (Acts 27:1-3)
Of certain doctrines repugnant to the natural mind:
The doctrine of Hell
The doctrine of man’s total helplessness
The doctrine of final judgment
All of the moral restrictions which sinful man would never have placed upon himself.
The tenth Supernatural consideration is its life transforming power.
The Gospel message of the Bible has transformed countless millions of lives, from every conceivable walk of life, with a power unlike anything else on earth. They have been transformed into radically new creatures through Christ Jesus. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come. Now all of these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-20
Resources
Evidence Demands a Verdict – Campus Crusades, Josh McDowell
Faith Bible Institute, Pastor John Yates
The Holy Bible
Webster’s Dictionary
Willmington’s Guide to the Bible – Dr. H. L. Willmington
World Book Encyclopedia
