Check out this encouraging perspective on the Inspiration of Scripture by Jerry Poe, a volunteer minister of Chino Prison in California for over 25 years.
There are a great number of world views that exist today, but many of these world views are contrary to God’s holy Word.
Q. How are we to test what is true and what is false? How can we prove that absolute truth exists–seeing that many our college professors are convinced that it does not?
Our former neighbor Duane passed away on April 2, 2015, and he held the view that “when you’re dead, you’re dead,” that’s it, that’s all there is. When he was close to death, he wouldn’t let me pray for him.
2.
The Greeks of Paul’s day worshipped many gods and while he was examining their many objects of worship, he found an alter with the inscription, “To an unknown God.” They wanted to cover all the bases.
Then Paul said this in Acts 17:23, “…Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.” Paul goes on in verse 24 & 25, “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; neither is He served by human hands as though He needed anything since He himself gives to all people life and breath and all things.”
I believe our study here will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that ultimate truth exists, and that the Bible is the Divine inspired word of the One and only true and living God.
3.
This will be revealed to the person who is truly seeking the truth and is willing to look at all the facts and be intellectually honest. Remember the god of this world (Satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving. See 2 Corinthians 4:3-4
Hank Henegraaff of the Christian Research Institute has given us some very helpful information to assist us in determining the historical reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible. He uses the acronym “MAPS” to help us to remember these four words:
Manuscripts
Archaeology
Prophecy
Statistics
Let’s take a look at how each of these four words confirm the Inspiration of Scripture.
1. Manuscripts. How does the Bible compare with other ancient manuscripts which are accepted by skeptics of the Bible? Listen to Christian apologist (defender of the faith) Ravi Zacharias of RZIM:
“In real terms, the New Testament is easily the best attested ancient writing in terms of the sheer number of documents, the timespan between the events and the document, and the variety of documents available to sustain or contradict it. There is nothing in the ancient manuscript evidence to match such textual availability and integrity.”
Statements such as this are worthless unless we are able to provide supporting evidence and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are true.
4.
This is what Josh McDowell in his book “The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict” attempts to do.
2. Archaeology. Hank Henegraaf said: “For years critics dismissed the book of Daniel partly because there was no evidence that a king named Belshazzar ruled in Babylon during that time period. However later archaeological research confirmed that the reigning monarch Nabonidus, appointed Belshazzar as his coregent while he was away from Babylon.”
Hank continues, “One of the most well known New Testament examples concerns the book of Luke and Acts. A Biblical skeptic, Sir William Ramsey who was trained as an archaeologist, and then set out to disprove the reliability of this portion of the New Testament. However, through his painstaking Mediterranean archaeological trips, he became converted as one after another of the historical statements of Luke were proved accurate.”
5.
Regarding historical accuracy, many scholars who studied the ancient world questioned whether a people called the Hittites ever existed, even though the Bible mentions them nearly 50 times.
In 1906 things changed when the Hittite capitol was discovered by archaeologists about 90 miles east of Ankara, the capitol of Turkey.
An article in Time Magazine on October 18, 1976 (pg.63) dealt with discoveries of tablets in the ancient city of Ebla in northern Syria, that has brought to light a wealth of historical material that supports the Biblical record…
“Their discovery does more than provide documentary evidence of a little known kingdom that existed between 2400 and 2250 BC; it also provides the best evidence to date that some of the people described in the Old Testament actually existed.”
As time passes, the questions of the critics are being answered by reliable scholarships and findings of the archaeologists spade.
Nelson Glueck a Jewish archaeologist said, “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference.” (Rivers In the Desert: History of Neteg, pg.31)
6.
3. Prophecy is our third MAPS principle. The Bible records predictions of events that could not be known or predicted by chance or common sense…” The many predictions of Christ’s birth, life and death were indisputably rendered more than a century before they occurred as proven by the Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah and other prophetic books, as well as by the Septuagint Translation (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures) all dating from earlier than 100 BC.” The prophecies began in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sinned. We see this in Genesis 3:14-15.
“The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field, on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heal.’ ” –Genesis 3:15 (ESV)
7.
Dr. Norman Geisler speaks of a 2nd Century Greek writer named Lucian of Samosata who was a very vocal skeptic and critic of the Bible . His writings verified that Jesus of Nazareth was a true historical person and not just someone made up by so called “Christians.” Jesus was worshipped instead of the many Greek gods of that day.
The Christian’s faith in Jesus of Nazareth was so strong that they did not fear death and passionately followed His commandments.
Lucian also confirms the fact that Jesus was crucified. Dr.Geisler concludes regarding Lucian, “Despite being one of the church’s most vocal critics, Lucian gives one of the most informative accounts of Jesus and early Christianity outside the New Testament.”
8.
4. Statistics. Hank Henegraaff points out that our fourth MAPS principle “works well with predictive prophecy because it concerns the statistical probability that any or all of the Bible’s very specific, detailed prophecies could have been fulfilled through chance, good guessing, or deliberate deceit.
When you look at some of the improbable prophesies of the Old and New Testaments, it seems incredible that skeptics, knowing the authenticity and historicity of the texts, could reject the statistical verdict: The Bible is the Word of God, and Jesus Christ is the Son of God, just as Scripture predicted many times and in many ways.”
“The Bible was written over a span of 1,500 years by 40 different human authors in three different language (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) on hundreds of subjects. And yet there is one consistent, non-contradictory theme that runs through it all: God’s redemption of human kind.”
Let’s look at some statistics that have been carefully studied by H.Harold Hartzler, Ph.D, the Secretary-Treasurer to the American Scientific Affiliation. Dr.Hartzler says of professor Peter W. Stoners’ book “Science Speaks” where he gives the odds of eight Messianic prophecies coming true:
“The manuscript Science Speaks has been carefully reviewed by a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation members…and Executive Council…and has been found, in general, to be dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. The mathematical analysis included is based upon principles of probability which are thoroughly sound and professor stoner has applied these principles in a proper and convincing way.”
9.
What I’m about to share seems impossible, and is beyond our ability to grasp its magnitude. We are going to look at the odds of one person fulfilling 8, 16, and 48 prophecies.
Odds of Fulfilling 8 Prophecies:
Dr. Stoner says “suppose we took an atheistic professor, blindfolded him and covered the state of Texas two feet deep with silver dollars. Then we put a check mark on one of those silver dollars and mixed them all up. The odds of one person fulfilling just eight prophesies would be the same as this atheistic professor selecting the silver dollar upon which we have placed a check, in his first try.”
Odds of Fulfilling 16 Prophecies:
The state of Texas is now covered with four feet of silver dollars. If we could roll all of these silver dollars into a single ball, how large would the diameter be? According to Dr. Stoner:
“Its diameter would be thirty times the distance from the center of the earth to the sun.” (2 Billion 790 miles in diameter)
Let’s take that same atheistic professor, put a space suit on him, place a check on one of those silver dollars and shoot him out into space. Do you think he would pick the silver dollars with a check on it the fist time? (Remember he’s also blindfolded)
That is the chance of anyone fulfilling just 16 prophecies, and its been held among respected scholars that our dear Lord fulfilled over 100 prophecies!
10.
Odds of Fulfilling 48 Prophecies
The silver dollar is too large of an object to use for this illustration, so Dr. Stoner chose to use the electron. The electron is so small it takes 2.5 x 10 to the 15th power of them laid side by side, single file, to measure one inch in length. If we counted four electrons every second and counted day and night, it would take 19 million years just to count a line of electrons one inch long (that’s for 2.5 x 10 to the 15th power), it sounds totally impossible to do.
11.
The probability of 48 prophecies being fulfilled in one person is 10 to the 157th power. This contains 157 zeros!
How many electrons would there be if we were dealing with 10 to the 157th power of electrons? Dr. Stoner tries to help us grasp this number with this final illustration:
“Imagine one ant traveling at the speed of only one inch every 15 billion years. If he could only carry one atom at a time, how many atoms could he move in 10 to the 157th power of years? He would, even at that incredibly slow speed, be able to move all the atoms in 600,000 trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion universes the size of our universe a distance of 30 billion light years!
By the laws of probability it is impossible for 48 prophecies to be fulfilled by chance.”
There is no reasonable evidence in existence that could disprove that Jesus Christ is the Divine Son of the Living God, and the World’s only Savior.
What are you going to do with this Jesus who is called Christ?