1. 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

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

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

5. Christianity is not
a blind leap
into the dark.

6. It is an intelligent step into the light.

7. There is nothing virtuous about gullibility.
We are not proclaiming faith in faith.
It is all too possible to be sincerely wrong.

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

11. Incomparable

12. It is unique in its circulation.

13. The first book to ever be printed was the Bible.

14. The Bible has been read by more people,
than any other book in history.

15. The Bible has been printed more times than any other book in history.

16. No other book has been translated into so many languages.

17. The Forbidden Book
It is unique in its survival.
No other book has been so viciously attacked
throughout history as the Bible.

18. In AD 300 the Roman emperor Diocletian ordered that
every Bible be sought out and burned.

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

20. As Dr Martin Luther declared: “It is a miracle how God has so long
preserved His Book! How great and glorious it is to have the Word of
God!”

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

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

23. Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union closed down or
destroyed over 49,000 churches and imprisoned more than fifty
million Russian Christians.

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

25. 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.

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

27. Yet, despite the most extraordinary campaigns
to destroy Bibles,

28. the Bible has survived to continue to be the world’s
Number One best selling book of all time.

29. Unique
Despite the intensive campaigns over many centuries to destroy the
Bible,.

30. There are still over 1,700
Hebrew manuscripts of
the Old Testament still
exist.
And there are over 5,800
Greek manuscripts for the
New Testament, 8,000
Latin and 1,000 other
ancient versions of the
New Testament in
existence.

31. So there are 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.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

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

38. 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

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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:

42. AtthetimewhenEgyptwasthegreatestnationinalltheworld,thekingofnations,
therichestcountryon e a r t h , E z e k i e l prophesied:
“ThereshallnolongerbeprincesfromthelandofEgypt” (Ezekiel30:13).
Egypt

43. “ThereshallnolongerbeprincesfromthelandofEgypt” (Ezekiel30:13).

44. It is a fact of history that, until a few decades ago
when the monarchy was overthrown,
Egypt was always ruled by a prince

45. but during the 2,500 years since this prophecy
was given, the princes of Egypt were never Egyptian.

46. Their kings and queens have been Persians, Macedonians, Romans,
Greeks, Arabs and Ottoman Turks.
Egypt has even been ruled by the English.

47. But since the prophecy, given through Ezekiel
no Egyptian monarch has ruled over Egypt.

48. When Egypt was the world’s superpower,
no one would have predicted that.

49. Babylon
Iraq has been in the news, so consider the Biblical prophecies
concerning Babylon. The Bible contains
over 100 specific prophecies concerning Babylon’s fate.

50. Babylon was not only
the greatest empire
in ancient times,

51. its capital city was the greatest city in the world.

52. The historian Herodotus
recorded that the city
consisted of
196 square miles
of the most beautiful
architecture, hanging
gardens, palaces and
temples.

53. The walls were 15 miles long and 200 feet high.
The towers were 300 feet high.

54. The walls were 187 feet thick at the base.

55. Every authority at the time would agree that
the city of Babylon was impregnable.

56. 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

57. 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.

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

59. 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.

60. In the 4th Century AD, Julian the Apostate, who attempted to restore
paganism to Rome was engaged in a war with the Persians.

61. To prevent the Persians re-establishing the defenses of Babylon, Julian
ordered the remnants of the wall of Babylon completely broken down.

62. 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

63. 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.

64. 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.

65. 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).

66. 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.

67. 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.

68. 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.

70. 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.

71. 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.

72. But the city of Sidon continues.

73. the city of Sidon continues

74. Samaria
The Scripture records a
prophecy that
Samaria,
the capital of the
Northern kingdom
of Israel,
would be destroyed,

75. Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom of Israel,
would be destroyed

76. it would be turned into a vineyard and its foundations would be
uncovered (Micah 1:5-6

77. Samaria
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.

78. 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).

79. Jerusalem
There were further prophecies that the city and the walls would be
rebuilt and the people would be brought back (Isaiah 4:3-6).

81. Jerusalem
History records that all of this indeed happened, as prophesied.

82. 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
Ezekiel 35:3-4

83. Petra
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: 4,9

84. Tovisitthedesolate land that once was Edom,
and the deserted ruins of Petra today

85. it is hard to imagine
the power and
prestige that these
places once had when
the prophecywasgiven.

86. “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

87. The Bible is the most valuable book in the world.

88. (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.

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

91. In 1988, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hinted at what would
happen to Post-Truth Britain.

92. Pointing to the secret of Britain’s earlier greatness, she said:
“We are a nation whose ideals were founded on the Bible.

93. Also it is quite impossible to understand our literature without
grasping this fact.

94. That is the strong practical case for ensuring that children at
school are given adequate instruction in the part which the
Christian tradition has played in moulding our laws, manners
and institutions.

95. How can you make sense of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott,
or of the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century
in both Scotland and England,
without such foundational knowledge? . . .

96. there is little hope for civilization
if the hearts of men and women in societies
cannot be touched by a call to
something greater than themselves.

97. Political structures,
state institutions,
collective ideals
are not enough. . .
[Healthy democracy requires]
the life of faith. . .
as much to the temporal
as to the spiritual welfare
of the nation.”
(Quoted in
Christianity and
Conservatism,
the Rt. Hon Michael Alison MP and
David I. Edwards, eds. London,
Hodder and Stoughton, 1990,
p.337-338)

98. The Iron Lady could have expanded her comment about the
source of British laws. ‘Rule of Law’ is the practical source of
liberty. It is one of Britain’s greatest gifts to the world.

99. The Prime Minister and the Queen have power, but only to do
good. They have no authority to violate a citizen’s rights, for they
are servants of the King of kings. God is the King. God’s children
are “kings” (sovereigns) in God’s kingdom.

100. As Britain’s early political philosophers from Samuel Rutherford to
John Locke realized, God’s Son gave his own life to give God’s
children eternal life. Therefore, Providence gives to governments
power only to serve the sovereign citizens.

101. Mrs. Thatcher could have
easily gone beyond
Shakespeare
and English literature
to discuss the creation of
the English language itself.

102. It was Literary English that made the Bible’s worldview
Britain’s worldview.
For literary English is a product of Bible translation.

103. And the Geneva Bible (1560) and King James Bible (1611).

104. Mrs. Thatcher realized
that Great Britain’s basic
philosophical/ethical
assumption that words
can and ought to
communicate truth
came from the Bible.
Paganism, Buddhism,
and Postmodernism
reject that assumption
because they do not
believe that the Word
(Logos) existed before
humans did.

105. If words, rationality,
thoughts are products
only of “flesh and blood”
(brain chemistry) then
the best they can do
is to express our feelings,
not truth.

106. Mrs. Thatcher could have gone on to explain that the Bible’s logo-
centric worldview made Britain an educated, thinking and scientific
civilization.

107. Without the Bible, Britain could not have become the birthplace of
the Bill of Human Rights, a pioneer in compassionate/scientific
health care, and Industrial Revolution.

108. Without the Bible Britain would not have
hurt its economic interests by abolishing
slave-trade and slavery.
Without the Bible she could not have discussed family
and the empowerment of women and children.

109. For it was the Bible that prevented a British Monarch from having
more than one legal spouse.

110. It’s sexual ethic and philosophy of marriage required powerful
monarchs to seek the Church’s permission to divorce a spouse.

111. Mrs. Thatcher had to be brief. But the point she made is so
profound that I am writing a four-volume work on how the Bible
created the modern world.

112. The relevant point is that the
Prime Minister wasn’t giving
a new revelation.
She simply confirmed
what Britain already knew.

115. Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II coronation June 2, 1953.

117. During the Service, immediately after taking her Oath of Office,
she laid her right hand upon a Bible and said: “The things which I
have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me
God.”

118. The Queen then went on to kiss the Bible, signed the Oath and
returned to her chair. Then, as the photo shows, the Archbishop of
the Church of England and the Moderator of the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland presented the Bible to her,
saying:

119. “Our gracious Queen:
to keep your Majesty
ever mindful of the Law
and the Gospel of God
as the Rule for the whole
life and government of
Christian Princes,
we present you with
this Book,

120. The most valuable thing that this world affords.
Here is Wisdom; This is the royal Law;
These are the lively Oracles of God.”
Vishal Mangalwadi, author of "This Book Changed Everything"

122. The Bounty’s Bible

123. 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.

124. 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

125. 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.

126. 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.

127. 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.

128. The Foundation of Western Civilization

129. 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.”

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

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

132. the age of exploration,

133. world missions,

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

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

136. 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.

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

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

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

140. 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.

141. Photo Album
by Joshua

143. Do you have the Bible in your home?

144. Do you
have the
Bible in
your
heart?

146. Reformation500
1521 - 2021

152. www.FrontlineMissionSA.org

153. www.FrontlineMissionSA.org

154. www.FrontlineMissionSA.org

160. Dr Peter Hammond
Reformation Society
P.O. Box 74
Newlands, 7725
Cape Town, South Africa
Tel: (021) 689 4480
Fax: (021) 685 5884
Email: info@ReformationSA.org
Website: www.ReformationSA.org