Jesus And The Fisherman
Isn’t the Bible just the writings of men?
This is a question that I know I have been asked several times. So I am going to just give a couple of reasons why I personally believe the bible is the word of God.
I can certainly understand why a lot of people say the Bible is not the word of God because it was written by man. For example if someone asked me who wrote the Book of Acts? I would say Luke wrote the Book of Acts. So how can I name a man as the author and then turn around and say that it is the word of God? In theological circles they call this verbal plenary inspiration. In plain English all that means is that God used men to convey exactly what he wanted to say while still allowing for some of the personality and thoughts of the writer to come through.
Now that is quite a claim and it is certainly reasonable to question whether that is true or not.
It is the characteristics about the bible that are beyond mankind’s capabilities that make it convincing. First of all the bible is not just one book. The Bible actually contains 66 books.
It has at least 40 different authors. It covers a time span of at least 1500 years. It was written on 3 different continents, Africa, Asia and Europe. The authors of these books were from different backgrounds or lifestyles. For example we have a doctor, kings, fisherman an ex-Pharisee etc. as authors. You would think that these people from different backgrounds covering a 1500 year time span would have different world views. In theory it should be impossible to get them to agree about controversial subjects like God, sin, salvation and so on. Yet they do agree on these controversial subjects so much so that all 66 books from the various authors are cross referenced.
Just try to go out on the street and find 40 different people with different backgrounds that all live in the same time period and get them to write their views on these same controversial subjects and see if they all agree. Even if you picked the 40 different people from the same church denomination you would have some discrepancies. Now if they all worked as a group you might be able to get some clarity. The authors in the Bible could not get together as a group. The writing covers a 1500 year time span on 3 different continents. Now I personally find that thought provoking!
Most people reject the bible because it records things about God, judgment and miracles. The thing of it is that these types of things are woven all throughout actual history. Now the history has repeatedly been verified even in the areas that skeptics declared the Bible was wrong. I will give you one example. There are those that did not think Sodom and Gomorrah existed because nobody had found the ruins of these cities. Well that might be because God destroyed them!
Well anyway there was an archeological discovery where they unearthed the city of Ebla. Now Ebla is not mentioned in the Bible. What is interesting about this is they found lots of clay tablets. In these tablets they found that Ebla had actually traded with Sodom and Gomorrah. This proves they did in fact exist and it is an example of the Bible being historically accurate clear back to the book of Genesis. You can read about this in DR. Clifford Wilson’s book called the Ebla Tablets.
Since what we can verify is indeed verified why would we reject it? Are we to reject it just because it records miracles as well? Who is to say that miracles do not happen? There are even accounts today of miraculous accounts that are documented.
There are other things in the bible that are beyond mankind’s capabilities. I know that the Bible is not a textbook on science yet there are things in there that declare scientific facts that nobody in that time period knew. For example Job lived a couple of thousand years before Jesus was born. Job said in chapter 26 that God hangs the earth on nothing!
This idea that the earth was suspended on nothing was not even thought of by scientist for thousands of years after Job. Now with our satellites and trips into space we know this to be true. But that was not known in Job’s day. How did he know that? There are many other examples that are similar where the Bible declares things long before mankind actually discovered they were true.
Another area that is beyond mankind’s writing capabilities is prophecy. There are hundreds of prophecies in the bible. Many of these prophecies have already been fulfilled. So we can just look at what the Bible said would happen and then look to see if that is indeed what did happen. For example in the Bible Daniel foretold a few hundred years of major world history before it even happened. Daniel told that Babylon would be conquered by the Medes and the Persians and that they would in turn be conquered by the Greeks. Then Daniel tells us of a divided empire which would replace the Greek empire. In history that was the Roman Empire. What I did on my website is I quoted what the Bible said would happen then I quote encyclopedia articles to show what actually happened in history.
So I just touched on a few things that are beyond mankind’s capabilities that convince me that the Bible is not just a book, but rather it is what it claims to be the written word of God.
Last, but not least is that I can say I have had personal experiences as well through answered prayers and circumstances that I cannot prove, but I know are true. God is has been and still is at work in my own life.
Is the Bible more than just the writings of men? Yes it is the written word of God!
About the Author
Robert Kiser is the author of several Free PDF Books and the http://ReasonableAnswers.org/ website. Topics include Explaining and Defending Christian Beliefs and Cults. (L.D.S & JW)
Jesus Calls The Fishermen
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