How Can I Know that the Bible is the Word of God?

1. HOW CAN I KNOW THAT THE
BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD?
A p r e s e n t a t i o n b y D r . P e t e r H a m m o n d

3. EVIDENCES for
Skeptics

4. WHAT EVIDENCES DO YOU
HAVE THAT THE BIBLE
IS THE WORD OF GOD?
A p r e s e n t a t i o n b y D r . P e t e r H a m m o n d

5. Some people see Christianity as some kind of intellectual suicide.
A blind leap of faith.

6. However, Christianity is a reasonable Faith.
It is based on incontrovertible, historical facts.

7. Christianity is
not a blind
leap into
the dark.
It is an
intelligent
step into
the light.

8. There is nothing virtuous about gullibility. We are not
proclaiming faith in faith. It is all too possible to be sincerely
wrong. Our faith needs to be in the facts that God has
revealed in Scripture and in Creation.

9. Any skeptical enquirer is to be commended for wanting to examine the
foundations of our faith. And the Bible forms the solid foundation for
our Faith. The Bible stands as the greatest Book ever written.

10. THE GREATEST
BOOK IN THE
WORLD

11. One cannot speak of the Bible
without speaking in
superlatives.

12. Incomparable

13. It is unique in its circulation. The first book to ever be
printed was the Bible. No other book has been translated
into so many languages.

14. It is the
most
widely
read book
in the
world.

15. It has continued to be the number one
best-selling book in all of history.

16. It is the most valuable book in the world.

17. (A single copy of a Gutenberg
Bible was sold for over $5
million. One copy of William
Tyndale’s original printed New
Testament was sold for over
₤4.5 million).
The Bible is the most inspiring
book in history and it is the
most important book in history.

18. There is no question that it is
the most life-changing book ever written.

19. The Bounty’s Bible

20. On 28 April 1789, Fletcher
Christian staged the most
famous mutiny in history, on
the English ship HMS
Bounty, in the South Pacific.
The captain, William Bligh,
and those loyal to him, were
set adrift in an overloaded
lifeboat which they
miraculously navigated
across the Pacific Ocean
3700 miles to Timor.

21. The mutineers on the
Bounty immediately
began quarreling about
what to do next. Fletcher
returned to Tahiti, where
he left some of the
mutineers, kidnapped
some women, took some
slaves, and travelled,
with the remaining
mutineers 1,000 miles to
the uninhabited Pitcairn Island. There the group quickly unraveled.
They distilled whiskey from a native plant. Drunkenness and disorder
characterized their colony. Disease and murder quickly took the lives of
each of the men, including Fletcher. Soon only one man was left –
Alexander Smith. Smith found himself the only man on the island,
surrounded by an assortment of women and children.

22. Then Smith found the Bounty’s
neglected Bible. As he read it, his
heart was transformed and he
began to instruct the survivors of
their community. He taught the
Scriptures and helped to
implement it’s instructions. The
message of Christ so transformed
their lives that, 20 years later, in
1808, when the crew of the Topaz
landed on the island, they found a
joyful society of Christians living in
peace and prosperity, free from
crime, free from disease, and
without murder and mutiny.

23. That Bible that
transformed the
people of Pitcairn
Island resides on
display in the
church in Pitcairn
as a monument to
it’s transforming
message.

24. The Foundation of Western Civilization

25. The impact of the Bible upon Western civilization has been absolutely
enormous. Western civilization is founded upon the Bible. Professor
William Phelps of Yale observed: “Our civilization is founded upon the
Bible. More of our ideas, our wisdom, our philosophy, our literature,
our art, our ideals come from the Bible than from all other books
combined.”

26. The Bible has inspired the greatest literature,
the greatest art,

27. the greatest achievements of architecture (the Cathedrals),

28. the age of exploration,

29. world missions,

30. the rule of law,
the separation of
powers,
Checks and
balances,
representative
government,

31. the sanctity of life, and so much more.

32. It is to the Bible that
we owe our legacy of
the rule of law.
It is the Bible that
ushered in an era of
compassion, charity,
liberty and justice.
The Ten
Commandments are
the moral and legal
foundation of
Western civilization.

33. Most of the world’s languages were
written down by Christian
missionaries.
The first book in most languages in
the world was the Bible.

34. John Flavel wrote: “The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the
noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.”

35. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer,
who gave his life for the
message of the Scriptures,
declared:
“The Word
of God is
above the
Church.”

36. American Founding Father Patrick Henry
declared: “The Bible is worth all the other
books which have ever been printed.”

37. General Robert E. Lee
wrote: “The Bible is a
book, in comparison
with which all others
in my eyes are of
minor importance;
which in all my
perplexities and
distresses has never
failed to give me light
and strength.”

38. President Theodore Roosevelt declared: “Every thinking man, when he thinks,
realizes that the teachings of the Bible is so interwoven with our whole
civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure
what life would be like if those teachings were removed. We would
lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and
private morals; all the standards to which we, with more or less
resolution, strive to raise ourselves.”

39. The Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, declared:
“Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the Book widens and
deepens with our years.”

40. Educationalist Noah Webster declared:
“The Bible is the chief moral
cause of all that is good, and
the best corrective of all that is
evil, in human society; the best
Book for regulating the temporal
concerns of men, and the only
Book that can serve as an
infallible guide…the principles of
genuine liberty, and of wise laws
and administrations, are to be
drawn from the Bible and
sustained by it’s authority. The
man therefore who weakens, or
destroys, the Divine authority of
that Book may be accessory to
all the public disorders that
society is doomed to suffer…”

41. Noah Webster taught: “The moral principles and precepts contained in the
Scriptures form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws…all the
miseries and evils which men suffer from – crime, ambition, injustice,
oppression, slavery and war – proceed from their despising or
neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

42. Noah Webster taught:
“Education is
useless
without the
Bible.”

43. President Theodore
Roosevelt declared:
“A thorough
knowledge of
the Bible is
worth more
than a college
education.”

44. R.A. Torrey said: “The truly wise man is he who always believes the
Bible against the opinion of any man.”

45. Scientist John Newton declared: “I will put down all apparent
inconsistencies in the Bible to my own ignorance.”

46. Even Napoleon Bonaparte admitted: “The Bible is no mere
book, but a living power that
conquers all that oppose it.”

47. German scientist Professor Wernher von
Braun, who pioneered rocket science and
oversaw the Apollo Space Project,
observed: “In this age of space flight
when we use the modern tools of
science to advance into new
regions of human activity, the
Bible…remains in every way an
up-to-date Book. Our knowledge
and use of the laws of nature that
enable us to fly to the moon, also
enable us to destroy our home
planet with the atom bomb.
Science itself does not address the
question whether we should use
the power at our disposal for good or evil. The guidelines of what we
ought to do are furnished in the moral Law of God.”

48. The Foundation of Modern Science

49. All of the great pioneer scientists who laid the foundations of modern
physics, astronomy, calculus, dynamics, oceanography,
anesthesiology, and every other branch of science, confirmed the
Bible as the foundation and inspiration for their work.

50. This included Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Isaac
Newton, Karl van Linnius, Charles Babbage, Blaise Pascal, Samuel Morse,
Matthew Fonteine Maury, James Simpson, George Washington Carver,
and many, many more.

51. Sir Michael Faraday,
one of the greatest
scientists of all time,
who discovered
electromagnetic
induction and
invented the
generator,
observed: “The
Bible, and it alone,
with nothing added
to it nor taken away
from it by man, is
the sole and
sufficient guide for each individual, at all times and in all
circumstances…Faith in the Divinity and work of Christ is a gift of God,
and evidence of this faith is obedience to the commandments of Christ.”

52. The Rule of Law

53. The foundations of the Common Law were made by King Alfred the
Great of England who introduced his code with the Ten
Commandments, the Case Laws of Exodus, The Golden Rule of Christ,
and other Biblical principles.

54. The Magna Carta of 1215 was the first statute, the first written
restriction on the powers of government. It was written by a pastor and
thoroughly saturated with Scriptural principles.

55. The Forbidden Book
It is unique in its
survival. No other book
has been so viciously
attacked throughout
history as the Bible.
In AD 300 the Roman
emperor Diocletian
ordered that every Bible
be sought out
and burned.

56. Diocletian was determined to destroy Christianity
by destroying the Scriptures it was founded on.
Anyone caught with a Bible would be executed.

57. War Against God
Throughout history other tyrants have
waged a war against God, seeking to
annihilate the Christian Church..

58. Just in the 20th century alone well over 60 million
Christians were killed by atheistic regimes.

59. Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union closed down or
destroyed over 48,000 churches and imprisoned more than fifty
million Russian Christians.

60. Mao Tse Tung’s Marxist regime in Red China also
sought to annihilate the Christian Church.

61. Enver Hoxa declared
Albania the first truly
atheistic country in
the world after closing
every church and
killing every minister
in the country. Every
Bible was destroyed
and people were
imprisoned in labour
camps for merely
mentioning
the Name of God.

62. Samora Machel similarly attempted to turn
Mozambique into
the first truly atheistic country in Africa.

63. Yet, despite the most extraordinary campaigns
to destroy Bibles,
the Bible has survived to continue to be the world’s
Number One best selling book of all time.

64. Unique
Despite the intensive campaigns over many centuries to destroy the
Bible, there are still an incredible 24,000 manuscripts of the New
Testament dating back to the time of the early church. By way of
comparison there are only 7 manuscripts of Plato’s Tetralogies,
49 manuscripts of Aristotle’s Ode to Poetics,
8 copies of the Historian Herodotus writings.

65. By these standards of antiquity, the Bible is in a class of its
own. No other ancient writing has as many manuscripts,
and certainly no other book has been so scrutinised
and subjected to such critical analysis,
and yet survived the most withering campaigns of criticism.

66. Impressive Credentials
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in cliff top caves at Qumran, in
1949, provided manuscripts dating from the 3rd Century BC to the 1st
Century AD. It included a complete book of Isaiah and thousandsof
fragments representing almost every other OldTestament book of the Bible.

67. Students were astounded to find that the manuscripts and translations
which we have available to us today were accurate and reliable in every
way. The Bible, on any level you might wish to examine it, is the most
impressively credentialed work of ancient literature.

68. Now, you may say, that’s all very well, but
how can I know that the Bible is the Word of God?

69. A Critical Test
The Law of God sets up a litmus test for prophecy: “When a prophet
speaks in the Name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen, or come
to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet
has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”
Deuteronomy 18:22

70. Prophecy
It is a fact that, of the twenty six books of the world, that either claim to
be, or have been proclaimed to be, Scripture, the issue of specific
prophecy is glaringly absent. You do not find specific prophecies
concerning events, far in the future,
in the writings of Buddha, Lao-Tsu, Confucius, or Muhammad.

71. However, the Bible is absolutely unique in that, in the Old Testament
alone, there are more than two thousand specific prophecies that have
already been fulfilled. There has never been anything else in all of
history to compare with the Bible’s prophecies.

72. Egypt
You may say, weren’t they just lucky guesses, or vague generalities that
could be interpreted in any way? Well, you be the judge.
Consider these:

73. EGYPT
Atthetimewhen
Egyptwasthegreatest
nationinalltheworld,
thekingofnations, the
richestcountryon
e a r t h , E ze k i e l
prophesied:
“There shallnolonger
beprinces fromthe
landofEgypt”
(Ezekiel 30:13).

74. It is a fact of history that, until a few decades ago when the
monarchy was overthrown, Egypt was always ruled by a
prince, but during the 2,500 years since this prophecy
was given, the princes of Egypt were never Egyptian.

75. Their kings and queens have been Persians, Macedonians, Romans,
Greeks, Arabs and Ottoman Turks. Egypt has even been ruled by the
English. But since the prophecy, given through Ezekiel no Egyptian
monarch has ruled over Egypt. When Egypt was the world’s superpower,
no one would have predicted that.

76. Babylon
Iraq has been much in the news lately, so let us consider the Biblical
prophecies concerning Babylon. The Bible contains
over 100 specific prophecies concerning Babylon’s fate.

77. Babylon was not only the greatest empire in ancient times, its capital
city was the greatest city in the world. The historian Herodotus
recorded that the city consisted of 196 square miles of the most
beautiful architecture, hanging gardens, palaces and temples.

78. The walls were 15 miles long and 200 feet high. The towers were 300
feet high. The walls were 187 feet thick at the base. Every authority at
the time would agree that the city of Babylon was impregnable. Yet the
Word of God came that: “The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly
broken …it shall be desolate forever.” Jeremiah 51:58-62

79. Now, the Great Wall of China is not nearly as wide, nor as strong, as the
walls of Babylon were, and although it is older it still stands today.

80. The walls of Jerusalem still stand. But today there is no doubt that the
walls of Babylon have been destroyed.

81. Determined to make this the capital of his worldwide empire, Alexander
the Great decided that he would rebuild Babylon. Alexander issued
600,000 rations to his soldiers and ordered the rebuilding of the city of
Babylon. Yet, Alexander died at the age of 32
and his enterprise of rebuilding Babylon was abandoned.

82. In the 4th Century AD, Julian the Apostate, who attempted to restore
paganism to Rome was engaged in a war with the Persians. To prevent
the Persians re-establishing the defenses of Babylon, Julian ordered the
remnants of the wall of Babylon completely broken down.

83. In this surprising way, one of Scriptures greatest antagonists of all time
became the agent to fulfilling one of the clearest and most repeated
prophecies in the Old Testament.
“Because of the wrath of the Lord it shall not be inhabited, but it shall
be wholly desolate …it shall be no more inhabited forever.”
Jeremiah 50:13,39

84. Today the ruins of Babylon are a wilderness inhabited only by scorpions
and snakes. Although the fertility of the lands around Babylon were
legendary, today it is a barren desert.

85. Tyre
The city of Tyre was to the sea what Babylon was to the land.
Tyre was the greatest port city in the ancient world.

86. Yet, at the height of its power, God declared that this city would be
destroyed, that its towers would be broken down, and that its stones
and timber, and even its dust, would be laid in the midst of the water
and it would become like the top of a rock, a place for the spreading of
nets in the midst of the sea (Ezekiel 26:4-14).

87. This very strange prophecy began to be fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar
of Babylon marched his army to the walls of Tyre and for 13 years
besieged the city. When finally the walls of the city crumbled before the
persistence of the Babylonians they found that many of the inhabitants
had moved to an island half a mile out into the Mediterranean.
There they built an even more impregnable city.

88. For hundreds of years one might have said that the prophecy given
through Ezekiel was not completely fulfilled. Then Alexander the Great
came, defeated the Persians and demanded the surrender of the port
cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. Tyre alone refused to open its
gates to him, so Alexander then conceived the boldest
and most daring plan in siege history.

89. He ordered a causeway built across half a mile of the Mediterranean Sea
to the island of the new Tyre. All the walls of Tyre were torn down, the
timber, the stones, the rubble and the logs and they were cast into the
sea. They scraped the very dust of the city itself into the sea to make
this highway to destroy the new island city of Tyre.
In this way the prophecy in Ezekiel 26 was completely fulfilled.

90. Sidon
The prophecy against Sidon (Ezekiel 28:21-23) was that the inhabitants
would be decimated, but the city would continue. History records that
the city of Sidon was attacked, betrayed by its own king, and 40,000 of
its inhabitants were killed. But the city of Sidon continues.

91. Samaria
The Scripture records a prophecy that Samaria, the capital of the
Northern kingdom of Israel, would be destroyed, it would be turned
into a vineyard and its foundations would be uncovered (Micah 1:5-6).
In fact the walls of Samaria were cast down and today vineyards grow
where once stood the capital of the Northern kingdom.
Archeologists have excavated to expose the foundations of the city.

92. Jerusalem
There were numerous other prophecies, that Jerusalem, the capital of
the southern kingdom of Judah would be destroyed, its inhabitants
carried away and its wall broken down (Jeremiah 24:9; 29:21; 35:17).
There were further prophecies that the city and the walls would be
rebuilt and the people would be brought back (Isaiah 4:3-6).
History records that all of this indeed happened, as prophesied.

93. Petra
When Petra was one of the great cities of the ancient world, and Edom
was a powerful nation, the Word of God came to Edom:
“I am against thee, and I will stretch mine hand against you and I will
make thee most desolate. I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be
desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord …I will make thee a
perpetual desolation, and thy cities shall not return;
and ye shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel 35:3-4,9

94. Tovisitthedesolate
land that once was
Edom, and the
deserted ruins of
Petra today it is
hard to imagine the
power and prestige
that these places
once had when the
prophecywasgiven.

95. “Remember the former things of old; for I am
God, and there is no other; I am God, and there
is none like Me, declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times things that
are not yet done.” Isaiah 46:9-10

96. Incomparable
Those people who say that the Bible was just written by men
are simply expressing their own ignorance on the subject.

97. There is nothing
comparable to the
Bible
in all the literature
of the world.
The power revealed
through the
Scriptures
is none other than
the power of God.

98. Photo Album
by Joshua

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