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I. The proof by logic
А. Authorship
B. Moral tone
C. Content
D. Availability
II. The proof by its completion
А. The writers
B. The number “seven”
C. Truthfulness
D. The perfect law
III. The proof by its prophecies
А. Concerning Christ
B. Concerning Israel
C. Concerning Tyre
D. Concerning Sidon
E. Concerning Babylon
IV. The proof by its power
А. In gospel preaching
B. In changing behavior
C. In sensitizing the conscience
V. The proof by people’s love toward the Bible
А. Persecution by the Roman Empire
B. Persecution by the Roman Catholic Church
VI. The scientific proof
А. The round and rotating earth
B. The unlimited number of stars
As Christians, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God given to man. The entire Bible does three things: it manifests God, exposes man, and unveils Christ. First, it shows us that the God who blesses us is loving, righteous, and faithful. Second, it shows us that man is nothing, has nothing, and can do nothing. Man is filled with sin; thus, he is only good to be crucified and nullified. Third, it reveals Christ, the hidden mystery, as the Savior, the life, the life supply, and everything to fallen man. By believing and receiving Christ, man may come back to God to be filled up with God and express God as one corporate man.
We believe not because of outward proof but because of a living touch with God the Spirit by praying in our spirit with the Word. Although we do not need any outward proof to believe, it is still good to know a few crucial facts. It is good for us and for our friends. But never forget that people believe by the spirit, not by the mind. Doubt is in the mind; faith is in the spirit (see note 2 of 2 Cor. 4:13).
This lesson and the following lesson are based on a Chinese book entitled Is the Bible Inspired by God? by Y. L. Chang, published by the Taiwan Gospel Book Room in 1982.
Since there is a God in this universe, and since He created man, He must want to reveal Himself to man. He is very great and man is very small. What is the best way for Him to reveal Himself to man? He must use the way man communicates — speaking and writing. Thus, there must exist on this earth a book through which God can communicate with man. There are so many books on the face of the earth; which one is God’s book to man? How do we know? We can expect God’s book to meet the following suppositions:
Let us consider all the books in this world. There are only three books that claim divine authorship — the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon. The Bible states more than two thousand times that it is spoken by the Lord God. Immediately, we eliminate all the other books.
What about the moral tone of these three books? The moral tone of the Koran is too low. Its heaven is full of lusts and flesh. God could never write a book with such licentiousness and immorality. The Book of Mormon is also substandard in moral tone. It tells men that they will have many wives when they go to heaven, and it promotes bigamy on the earth. Only the Bible has the highest standard of morality. It disallows divorce. Marriages of divorced people are considered adultery (Matt. 19:3-9). The Bible further states that even lusting in the heart is equivalent to committing adultery (Matt. 5:28). This standard exceeds that of any other book on earth. It also teaches people not only to forgive from their heart (Matt. 18:35) but also to love their enemies (Matt. 5:44). It condemns hatred as murder (Matt. 5:22; 1 John 3:15). All books on ethics deal with outward behavior; only the Bible deals with the heart to produce a moral living.
Only the Bible tells us about God, His purpose, His reason for creation, man, man’s problem, solutions to man’s problem, and the destiny of creation and man. We will talk about these matters in subsequent lessons.
The Bible is readily available to man. It has been translated into approximately two thousand languages. In 1989, six hundred million Bibles were sent out to a world population of 5.5 billion. Within ten years, the number of Bibles sent out will surpass the population of the world. This means that most of the people on the face of this earth will have an opportunity to read a Bible.
As you can see, there is only one book that is qualified to be God’s book to man, and that is the Bible. All other books on earth do not pass the test because they are not written by God to reveal Himself to man. How we praise Him for giving us the Bible and letting us find the Bible. How much we need to treasure the Bible and see God revealed in the Bible!
The way the Bible was completed proves that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible was not written by God in heaven and sent down to man, nor was it written by one man. The Bible took nearly 1,600 years to complete, and it was written by over forty people.
The many writers of the Bible had diverse backgrounds. David and Solomon were kings. Daniel was a governor. Ezra was a priest. Moses was a general, architect, and ruler turned shepherd. Paul was a lawyer. Matthew was a tax collector. Peter and John were fishermen.
The writers’ professions, knowledge, personalities, perspectives, cultures, and habits were all different. They wrote in the wilderness of Sinai, on the hill of the good land, in the temple of Jerusalem, in jail in Rome, in a school in Bethlehem, by the river of Babylon, on the Island of Patmos, in the palace of Persia, and in many other places.
How can more than forty people, in various places, with different backgrounds, take 1,600 years to write one book without it being disjointed and inconclusive? Is there another book written like this? Webster’s dictionary took thirty-six years. That may be the second-longest time required to complete a book. It must be the Spirit of God who led these forty writers to write one book in 1,600 years that has a central thought, a beginning, a development, and a conclusion. This has to be the book of God.
Imagine asking forty doctors from different countries to take 1,600 years to write a book on medicine. The later writers would discard the former parts. It would be difficult to find a cohesive theme or to derive some practical benefit. What about a computer book?
The number seven in the Bible is frequently used to signify completion in God’s move; e.g., seven Spirits, seven churches. Ivinpanin, a famous mathematician in Russia, knew that every character in Hebrew represents a number. He added up the numbers of every word in the Old Testament and discovered that the sum of every word is divisible by seven. Consider the probability of this; it is beyond the likelihood of occurrence and humanly impossible. Only God could have caused the Bible to be written in such a way.
The truthfulness of the Bible also proves that the Bible is the Word of God. The Bible contains a record of human history, especially of the children of Israel. If the Bible was written by man, they would never have recorded the sinful acts of their forefathers (Judg. 19:1-30; Matt. 1:6). People may talk about the sinful acts of others but not of their own forefathers.
The perfectness of the law also proves that the Bible is the Word of God. There is no country throughout human history that has ever had a set of laws as good as the set given in the Bible. Which country has a law against coveting (Exo. 20:17; Rom. 7:7)? Whose law states that people should not collect interest when they lend money to others (Lev. 25:37; Luke 6:34-35)? It is also said in the law of the Bible that people should not pick up what is left in the field from the harvest, but that they should leave it so that the poor will have food to eat (Deut. 24:19). Biblical law establishes every fiftieth year as the year of Jubilee, when slaves are freed and purchased land is returned to the original owner (Lev. 25:8-17). Only the law in the Bible is given out of a loving heart and is fair to all the people. The laws of most countries are not impartial to class, so the poor usually suffer. Today, most western countries have used biblical law as a base to develop their own set of laws. Because their heart is not like God’s, their law is much inferior. The perfectness of the law of God proves that the Bible was written by God.
The Bible is not written by man. The Bible is the breathing out of God (2 Tim. 3:16). It is the speaking from God through men borne by the Holy Spirit. It does not convey to us human concepts; rather, it reveals to us the loving and righteous God. It exposes our shortcomings and unveils our Savior Jesus Christ. What a marvelous book!
Prophecies are the strongest proof of the authenticity of the Bible as the Word of God. To prophesy is risky. Once a prophecy is not fulfilled, its source is discredited. There is a prophetic word in every four verses of the Bible. There are more than one thousand individual prophecies. The fulfillment of the prophecies proves the existence of God and the Bible to be God’s Word.
People may not believe the miracles recorded in the Bible. They may say that they were merely myths and legends. It is indeed hard to prove that the miracles happened. Prophecies, on the other hand, are great miracles that can be substantiated and therefore cannot be denied. God knew man’s inclination to doubt and disbelieve; that is why He put so many prophecies in the Bible.
A prophecy should meet the following five criteria: 1) it should be announced before things happen; 2) it should be beyond human foresight; 3) it should explain in detail; 4) the duration of time between prophecy and fulfillment should be long enough so that the fulfillment cannot be of human manufacture; and 5) the fulfillment should be clearly manifested. Let us proceed to see some of the biblical prophecies that have been fulfilled.
There were many prophecies concerning Christ: His person in His divinity (Isa. 4:2a; 6:1, 3; Micah 5:2), His person in His humanity (Isa. 4:2b; Psa. 45:7), His incarnation (Isa. 7:14; 9:6), His youth (Isa. 53:2a; Hos. 11:1), His appearance (Isa. 52:14; 53:2), His suffering (Isa. 53:3, 8, 10), His living (Isa. 42:1-4), His death (Isa. 53:5-10, 12; Dan. 9:26), His burial (Isa. 53:9), His resurrection (Psa. 2:6-7), His ascension (Isa. 52:13), and His second coming (Isa. 62:11-12; 64:1-5; 66:15; Dan. 7:13-14; Zech. 14:3-5). All these prophecies were spoken between 700 and 4,000 years before Christ. The earliest prophecy of Christ’s coming was spoken by God to Adam in Genesis 3:15 immediately after the fall of man. That was recorded about 1,500 years before Christ came. Except for His second coming, all the other prophecies concerning Christ were fulfilled about two thousand years ago.
There were many prophecies concerning the children of Israel and the nation of Israel: the formation of the nation (Gen. 15:5; 18:18), the slavery of the people (Gen. 15:13-14; Exo. 3:8-10), the exodus (Gen. 15:13-14), the possession of the good land (Gen. 12:7; 15:18; Deut. 11:8, 24), the building of the temple (2 Sam. 7:12-13), the falling away (Deut. 31:29), the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem (Jer. 26:6; 27:11-22), the captivity in Babylon (Jer. 25:8-11), the rebuilding of the temple and the city of Jerusalem (Dan. 9:25a), the destruction of the temple and the city again (Matt. 24:2; Luke 19:41-44), the restoration of the nation (Matt. 24:32), the repossession of the city (Jer. 16:14-15; 23:3; 29:10; 30:1-3; Luke 21:24), the rebuilding of the temple (Dan. 11:31), the deception of the Antichrist (Dan. 9:27; Rev. 19:20), the salvation of Immanuel (Gen. 3:15; Isa. 7:14), and the age of the restored kingdom of Israel (Isa. 65:17-20; Zech. 14:16-19; Rom. 11:26).
The prophecy about the nation of Israel was first spoken around 2000 B.C. It was recorded in Genesis 12:2. God prophesied to Abraham that a nation would come out of him even though he did not have a son. This prophecy was fulfilled about five hundred years later when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, where they had been enslaved.
The prophecies concerning the possession of the good land and the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple were first fulfilled between 1500 and 500 B.C.
The nation of Israel was reformed in 1948, about 2,600 years after she had been conquered by the Babylonian army. Jerusalem was returned to Israel in 1967.
The Jewish people currently have all the material ready to rebuild the temple. This prophecy should be fulfilled soon. Following the rebuilding of the temple, the Antichrist will break his covenant with Israel, the nation of Israel will be besieged, and the Lord will come back to save His people. Finally, the restored kingdom of Israel will begin.
The Lord prophesied at around 600 B.C. in Ezekiel 26:3-5, 12, 14, “Behold, I am against thee, O Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against thee as the sea causeth its waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of Tyre, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her a bare rock.” “...and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the waters.” “And I will make thee a bare rock; thou shalt be a place for the spreading of nets; thou shalt be built no more: for I Jehovah have spoken it, saith the Lord Jehovah.”
Tyre was an ancient city near the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The inhabitants were Phoenicians. They were famous for sailing, trading, and exploration. The city wall was very thick. It was strategically located in the ancient world. At a time when the city seemed invincible, the Bible prophesied concerning its destruction because of the sinful practices of its inhabitants.
The fulfillment of this prophecy took place in three different stages. First, the Babylonian army besieged Tyre for thirteen years beginning in 587 B.C. The city was totally destroyed. The new city of Tyre was built on an island one mile from its former site. Second, 240 years after the Babylonian siege, Alexander’s army laid the stone, timber, and dust from the ruins of the old city of Tyre into the water, constructed a road to the island, and attacked the new Tyre. Third, after years of being washed by rain, the bare rock appeared and fishermen used it as a place for spreading their nets.
The Lord prophesied in Ezekiel 28:22-23, “Behold, I am against thee, O Sidon; and I will be glorified in the midst of thee; and they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her. For I will send pestilence into her, and blood into her streets; and the wounded shall fall in the midst of her, with the sword upon her on every side; and they shall know that I am Jehovah.”
Sidon was surrounded by the Persian army in 35 B.C., and forty thousand inhabitants chose to die rather than to surrender. They burned their own houses and died in the fire. Hundreds of years later, Sidon was caught in the middle of a struggle between the Crusaders and the Muslims. She was also the battleground in the conflicts between the Druses and the Turks and between Turkey and France. In 1840, she was bombarded by the armies of England, France, and Turkey. Sidon has historically been a war-torn city; thus, the prophecy in Ezekiel was fulfilled.
Although Sidon was only fifty miles from Tyre, its treatment was different. Tyre was completely eliminated from the face of the earth; yet, after passing through much affliction, as prophesied, Sidon still exists. Only God could have predicted that two such similar cities would have such dissimilar fates. This, again, is strong proof that the Bible is divinely inspired.
The Lord prophesied in Isaiah 13:19-22, “And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the Chaldeans’ majesty, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: it will no more be inhabited forever; it will not be dwelt in from generation to generation. And the Arab will not set up his tent there, nor will the shepherd make his flocks lie down there. But desert animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of wild dogs; there ostriches will dwell, and wild goats will prance there; hyenas will respond in their citadels, and jackals in their exquisite palaces. Her time is about to come, and her days will not be prolonged.” This prophecy was fulfilled soon after it was spoken.
The limited space of this lesson does not allow us to enumerate the many biblical prophecies which have been fulfilled. There are also many unfulfilled prophecies that remain to be fulfilled one by one. God’s word will not pass away until every one is fulfilled.
There is no other book on earth that can positively change people as dramatically as the Bible can. Scientific books cannot improve a person’s disposition; on the contrary, some scientific advancements, such as the manufacture of modern weaponry, make it easier to destroy rather than improve humanity. Language books, instead of uplifting the readers’ character, may just make them proud. Only the Bible dispositionally changes people in a positive way.
The Bible exhorts Christians to disciple all nations. The gospel needs to be preached to the uttermost parts of the earth. Many Christians defy all odds to fulfill this commission. Christians have brought the gospel from Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to Asia Minor, to Europe, to Africa, to America, to Asia, and to remote islands. Wherever the gospel went, the broken-hearted were healed, drunkards became sober, prodigal sons and daughters returned home, and evil people turned to God. Some did not regard their lives and were martyred for the Lord. What other book has such power to affect the lives of men?
One time, an American merchant in Africa saw a native reading a Bible under a tree. He said to the native, “This book is not popular in America. It is not worth anything.” The native pointed to his stomach and said, “If it were not because of this book, you would be in here by now.” The native had been a cannibal.
Another time, a person believed in the Lord after hearing the gospel. Later in the day, he stole a bun and ate it. That night, he felt so bad that he could not sleep. The next day, he came back to the brother who had preached to him and said, “I did not get saved yesterday, because I stole something.” The brother said, “Before you received the Lord, did you feel bad when you stole?” The new believer said, “Before I received the Lord, the more I stole, the better I could sleep.” Then the brother said, “You are really saved, because the Lord in you bothered you when you stole. You need to repent to the Lord and to the store owner.”
These are only a few of the millions of stories of people who have been changed by the gospel in the Bible. The Bible has the power to change people’s lives.
Christians love the Bible. Some love it so much that they would even die for it. In the secular world, governments usually ban evil books and promote good ones. The Bible is definitely a book of love, a book of salvation, yet there has been much opposition to the Bible and persecution of its readers. Within three hundred years of the Lord’s walk on this earth, the emperors of the Roman Empire tried their best to destroy the Bible and everyone who read and believed the Bible. In one instance, 150,000 Christians were killed. Some were burned to death, some were bound together and thrown into the sea, and some were devoured by lions in the Coliseum in Rome as entertainment for twenty thousand spectators.
After a few hundred years, the Roman Catholic Church also persecuted the readers of the Bible. The so-called Christian church opposed the reading of the Bible by Christians. What a pity! The Pope was afraid that, by reading the Bible, the Christians would find out that the teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church were not biblical. Bible-loving Christians were thrown into prisons. Some were hung and some were burned; this was done in order to force them to stop reading the Bible and to reveal the names of others who also loved the Bible. The ones who did not yield to these demands were tortured and killed. Some were sawn in two; others were covered with wax and burned like candles.
People loved the Bible more than their own lives. How much we should treasure the Bible while we can read it freely!
The Bible is scientifically correct. Scientific theories are not always correct. Theories are updated when new discoveries are made. When theories are modified to match what the Bible says, they become correct, and there is no need to improve them any further.
Just over five hundred years ago, it was generally believed that the earth was flat. Some thought that ships would fall off the edge of the ocean somewhere beyond the Strait of Gibraltar. Some even thought that the earth was held up by four big turtles; others thought that it was held up by a giant called Atlas. You may laugh at these theories, but they were very real to people at that time. They took these theories so seriously that anyone who insisted that the earth was round was considered a heretic and burned at the stake. We all know that the earth is round, but they, strangely, believed otherwise. About five hundred years ago, explorers of the oceans proved that the earth is indeed round.
The Bible revealed that the earth was round over 2,500 years ago. If man had carefully read the Word of God, they might have discovered the truth much earlier. Job 26:7 says, “He (God) stretcheth out the north over empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.” Isaiah 40:22 says, “It is He (God) who sits above the circle of the earth.” The word circle here in Hebrew denotes a sphere. You can see that the Bible clearly stated that the earth was a sphere in space. Job 38:14 says, “It (the earth) is changed as clay under the seal.” The word changed here in Hebrew means revolved. The clay here is talking about the printing clay roller of Mesopotamia. It has an axle in the middle to turn it around. This is exactly what people discovered thousands of years later — that the earth is revolving around its own axis.
Jeremiah 33:22 says, “The host of heaven (stars) cannot be numbered.” Before the telescope was invented, Kepler, a famous astronomer from Germany, said that there were a total of 1,005 stars. With the invention and continual improvement of the telescope, this number keeps climbing. The most recent figure that scientists have calculated is 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. The number will go up again as soon as a better telescope is developed. Remember, the Bible says that the stars cannot be numbered.
Scientific books are updated all the time. The books of the Bible have remained the same since they were written. Why? Science is merely man’s study of what has been created by God. Man’s theories need to be updated; God’s word is eternal. Matthew 24:35 says, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall by no means pass away.” Praise the Lord! We need to be filled up with His living and abiding word (1 Pet. 1:23).
