How Do I know the Bible is REALLY from God? (very long)

[GUNWOUNDS]

How Do I know the Bible is REALLY from God?

This is very long but if this subject interests you it should be a good read !!  ;) ;)....

If you truly want to be able to make a real judgement on the Bible

[GUNWOUNDS]

continued ....

To have sixty six books written by about forty authors, from kings and nobles to fishermen and soldiers, in three languages and on three continents, be of the same mind is just not humanly possible. Why, the editorial writers in our newspapers can't even agree when they come from the same culture and similar educational backgrounds.

To demonstrate the remarkability of this accomplishment, we can propose an experiment. Imagine a classroom of thirty students at the high-school level. The teacher has decided on the class writing a novel for a class project. Each student will be assigned one chapter and they will then gather the papers together to assemble the finished work. The topic chosen is "Why God is important in man's life," but there is no outline and there are no rules as to what that statement means. Because the students are all the same age and live in the same area at the same point in time, they have a tremendous advantage over the Biblical writers, but to expect a congruent work is ridiculous. The fact that the Bible is a unified message shows that its origin comes from beyond man.

Because the Bible claims it is the word of God, it requires of itself a stricter assessment. The Old Testament is filled with the authoritative phrase "Thus sayeth the LORD" . The fact that men recognized it from the time it was first penned as authoritative gives it a measure of strength. The laws that were required of the Jews were very arduous. Because they chose to accept them as commandments from God before any significant length of time had elapsed to mythicalize them shows that the people believed with their lives that these documents were from God. Jesus Himself validates the Old Testament by regarding it as the word of God and authoritative in all things.

The Biblical Test for Inspiration

The last point in demonstrating the inspiration of the Bible is one we have not yet mentioned. The Bible itself gives a test to all messages claiming to be from God, and you are to judge the merits of the message by that test. Deuteronomy 18:20-22 states:

"But the prophet who shall speak a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he shall speak in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. And you may say in your heart, 'How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?' When a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is the thing the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him."

This passage shows the yardstick by which all revelation is measured: prophecy. The Bible stands alone as a book stuffed with prophecy. It is the very heart of Scripture. With prophecy, God gives the faithful hope by promising better things in the future. Likewise, the wicked are warned of impending judgment if they don't change their ways. The Bible is unique from all other religious texts because it gives specific, detailed prophecies that were fulfilled just as written. Let's look at a few prophecies to demonstrate their precision.

The coming of the Jewish Messiah is the focus of the Old Testament. There are over 300 separate prophecies about the "Holy One of Israel" found there. They are so specific as to predict the city of Jesus' birth (Micah 5:2), His nature (Isaiah 7:14), His works of healing and miracles (Isaiah 35:5-6), His betrayal for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12-13), His suffering (Isaiah 53), His style of execution (Psalm 22) and His resurrection (Psalm 16:10, Acts 13:35) amongst other things. These prophecies were written anywhere from 400 to 1000 years before Jesus' birth, yet they describe His life with the accuracy of an eyewitness. The odds against a living person meeting even a few of these predictions is so astronomical it is considered an impossibility.

Another prophecy given in the book of Isaiah was to the man who would conquer the city of Babylon. In Isaiah 44:27 and following the Lord says,

"It is I who says to the depths of the sea, 'Be dried up!' and I who will make your rivers dry. It is I who says of Cyrus, 'He is My shepherd!' and he will perform all My desire"Thus says the LORD to Cyrus, His anointed, whom I have taken by the right hand, to subdue nations before him, and to loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him so that the gates will not be shut. I have also called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor though you have not known Me. I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God"

This prophecy was written around 690 BC. History tells us that in 538 BC a Persian general named Cyrus had devised a plan to overtake the impregnable city of Babylon. He dammed up the river running through the city and sent soldiers under the gates. When he got to the front gates, however, he found them unlocked and took the entire city without a problem. In one night the most secure empire in the world of that time was overthrown. It was described by God to Cyrus, and addressed to him by name, 150 years before he had even been born!

One other prophecy we can examine is one that has been fulfilled in modern times. Israel is an amazement sociologically. Never in the history of mankind has a nation been overthrown and obliterated for 1900 years and then come back into existence. Yet, this is exactly what has happened to the nation of Israel, and they reside in the same geographic area as they previously possessed. We turn again to Isaiah, chapter 11 which states,

"In that day the Lord will reach out His hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of His people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; He will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (vss.11-12)

Notice, that the passage in Isaiah was written before the Babylonian captivity, so it refers to a second regathering. That implies that there would be two dispersals. Yet, after the second exile, it also promises that the nation of Israel would be put back together from "the four corners of the earth", which is an unequalled feat. Just think of how many Hittites or Philistines we find today. People who are exiled for an extended period of time generally assimilate into the culture in which they're placed. In no other instance has this ever happened.

In Jeremiah 16:15, God promises that the Israelites will dwell "in the land I gave their forefathers", and Ezekial chapter 36 describes the incredible transformation of the land itself into a major agricultural center. We still have documentary footage of how the land of Palestine was transformed from a mosquito-infested swampland to the breadbasket of Europe. It is now the sixth largest producer of fruits in the world!

When all the evidence is studied, it leads to an inescapable conclusion: the Bible must come from a source other than that of natural man. It is a reliable document that faithfully records history and in that record it documents God intervening in the lives of men. The New Testament verifies that the Old Testament is the word of God, and Peter verifies that the writings of Paul are Scriptural; that is from God(2 Peter 3:16). Peter also states, "No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.(2 Peter 1:21)" This is a consistent message throughout the Bible.

In any field of study, when people examine the objects of their study, they classify them by their attributes. A bird fits the definition of an animal with feathers that lays eggs. Every animal that has those attributes is considered a bird. A mammal must be warm-blooded, have hair, and suckle its young. In examining all the religious texts of the world, only the Bible exhibits all the attributes of a God-inspired message. I hope you will appreciate the Bible more from our discussion, and let me know if I've assumed something that doesn't make sense to you. May you be greatly blessed in your pursuit of Him.

http://www.comereason.org/cmp_rlgn/cmp005.asp

[Khan]

Sorry? What in God's name is the point of this?

[ordos45]

Well given the historical references from outside the Bible, I would say to justify it in a secular context.

[nemafakei]

Not yet read all of this, but I must comment on the comparison between Bible (NT, I presume) and Iliad. The Iliad is composed in Homeric Hexameter - those who were educated were hence able to know it off by heart, and there was little need to write much of it down. It is filled with vocabulary found only in Homer, the first writing since the Dark ages, and it is no wonder there are 400 lines that are unclear (I note that the author above fails to note that lines of verse are shorter than lines of prose). It is a stoery developed from the bardic tradition, so precision was not particularly necessary: indeed, it was the priveledge of the bard to adlib as he saw fit, his skill in doing so supposed to be divinely granted. The same applies for the Odyssey, and some of it for the Aeneid. Nothing comes anywhere near as close to the bible in terms of its 'holiness'.

The NT, on the other hand, was preserved presicesly because it was considered to be a holy and unalterable text (still circular logic - just in a different place). It was copied more often because it was written in slightly unnatural and certainly difficult-to-memorise greek - though the vocabulary itself is mostly simple and easy to correct using a dialect spoken by half the Roman empire, unlike the Homeric dialect, which was spoken by no-one, but was either a deliberate attempt to stilt and make archaic the post-dorian greek so as to give it a more Mycenean feel, or at least full of archaisms in phrases handed down from bard to bard.

Edit:

"To have sixty six books written by about forty authors, from kings and nobles to fishermen and soldiers, in three languages and on three continents, be of the same mind is just not humanly possible. Why, the editorial writers in our newspapers can't even agree when they come from the same culture and similar educational backgrounds."

Well, if they didn't agree, they wouldn't be grouped together, would they? The Bible would not contain works by anti-christian authors!

"Each student will be assigned one chapter and they will then gather the papers together to assemble the finished work."

Well, I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with the same thing, if the person doing the first chapter read theirs out on front of the class before the next person started, which, to a certain extent, is what happened with the bible: the writers of the NT were not unaware of the OT, and Matthew relied heavily on it (e.g. 1.2 ff)- so no wonder they agree.

As to reliability, I'm not suggesting the authors are lying, but consider this situation: A devoted believer in Jesus, who believes that he is the fulfillment of the prophecies hears he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot. It is reported to him that Judas was paid off. Perhaps the word αργυριον - money - was mentioned. Αργυριον also means silver. So would this person not think: "Ah, I remember the prophecy: since I know Jesus is the fulfilment of that prophecy, I take it that Iscariot was paid 30 pieces of silver!"? This man then tells the authors, in all honesty, that Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver. The same process may have happened to any piece of information... it happens to other historical records, too. If I say "fire of Rome", you will probably say "Nero did it". Well, as it happens, the first (chronologically) evidence we have is from Tacitus, who says Nero was in antium at the time, and begins with the default position that it was by chance, but then implies that there is another option, "seu iussu" - the fire was by imperial order. Of course, he never actually states it outright, he just gives a number of options. Suetonius later looks at Nero's character, and thinks "corrupt and destructive", and reads Tacitus and comes out with the impression that Nero is the sort who would torch his own capital to build his Golden House, and so uses it as fact, honestly believing it to be the case.

"It is I who says to the depths of the sea... besides Me there is no God"

Where in the bible is this, by the way? I can't make head nor tail of it: subjects seem to be running amok.

[Tio_Holtzmann]

although there is rhyme that might validate the new testament, apparently if jesus' parables are translated back into aramaic, they read like poems with rhyme and metre.

[nemafakei]

Interesting - but even so, I doubt they would have been learnt in aramaic; the text would still have to be copied for reference.