As the fruit is in the seed, so is the destiny of mankind in God’s word, the Bible.

Can we have confidence in the Bible as God’s guide to humanity?

This month I would like to conclude our theme, “The uniqueness of the Bible.” There is an eerie quietness, the voices of those, and there were many, who vehemently attacked the Bible in past centuries are all hushed, not even a whisper, for they lie motionless and silent in their graves; hundreds, yea, thousands and millions have all vanished; from innocent child to militant, violent devotee only a silent requiem hangs over the clod where they lie. But the beaten and battered Book lives on, growing from strength to strength as if nothing had transpired. And more than that. The dark prisons, the chains that held both the Bible and those that loved it dearly fastened to the shadows of death and destruction, the pyres that burnt to cinders both man and Book are all relics of history; the places where they stood have become buildings, roadways and gardens, and the pyres glow no more.   

        In these buildings Bibles have been housed, on the roadways thousands of Bibles are driven to farthest ends of the earth, and in the gardens humanity may find peace and shelter to meditate on the on the Divine Word.

        As we peer deeper into the Bible’s uniqueness we find that the Bible is unconquerable because God is eternal and unconquerable. In Deuteronomy 33:27 we read, The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms; He will thrust out the enemy from before you and will say, destroy them.  And in the New Testament we note, Rom. 16:25, 26, Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith. 

The Bible and Prophecy

As regards prophecy, Wilbur Smith, who compiled a personal library of twenty-five thousand volumes, wrote, whatever one may think of the authority of, and message presented in the Bible, there is universal agreement that in more ways than one it is the most remarkable volume ever written in these some five thousand years of writing on the part of the human race.  It is the only volume ever produced by man or a group of men, in which is to be found a large body of prophecies relating to individual nations, to Israel, to all peoples of the earth, to certain cities, and to the coming of One who was to be the Messiah. 

        The ancient world had many different devices for determining the future, known as divination, but not in the entire gamut of Greek and Latin literature, even though they use the words prophet and prophecy, can we find any real specific prophecy of a great historic event to come in the distance future, nor any prophecy of a saviour to arise in the human race. (Smith, IB, 9-10)

        Geisler and Nix concurringly write in their A General Introduction to the Bible, (Geisler/Nix, GIB ’86, 196), No unconditional prophecy of the Bible about events to the present day has gone unfulfilled. Hundreds of predictions, some of them given hundreds of years in advance have been literally fulfilled. The time (Daniel 9), city (Micah 5:2), and nature (Isa. 7:14), of Christ’s birth were foretold in the Old Testament, as were dozens of other things about His life, death and resurrection (see Isa. 53). Numerous other prophecies have been fulfilled, including the destruction of Edom (Obadiah 1), the curse of Babylon (Isa. 13), the destruction of Tyre (Eze. 26), and Nineveh (Nahum 1-3), and the return of Israel to the land (Isa. 11:11). 

        Other Books claim divine inspiration, such as the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and parts of the (Hindu) Veda. But none of those books contain predictive prophecy. As a result, fulfilled prophecy is a strong indication of the unique, divine authority of the Bible.

        No wonder the God of the Bible challenges anyone on earth to predict a prophecy or prophecies and have it or them come to pass that we know that they are god.  Here’s what He wrote, “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executes my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.” Isa. 46:10, 11. 

        And again: “Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth and shew us what shall happen: let them shew the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Shew the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together” Isa. 41:21-23

The Bible and History        

First Samuel through 2 Chronicles in the Bible presents approximately five centuries of the history of Israel. The Cambridge Ancient History (vol 1, p. 222) states: “The Israelites certainly manifest a genius for historical construction, and the Old Testament embodies the oldest history writing extant.”  Professor Albright in his classic essay, “The Biblical Period” has these observations: “Hebrew national tradition excels all others in its clear picture of tribal and family origins.  

        In Egypt and Babylonia, in Assyria and Phoenicia, in Greece and Rome we look in vain for anything comparable. There is nothing like it in the tradition of the Germanic people.  Neither India nor China can produce anything similar, since their earliest historical memories are literary deposits of distorted dynastic tradition, with no trace of the herdsman or peasant behind the demigod or king with whom their records begin.  Neither in the oldest Indic historical writings (The Puranas) nor in the earliest Greek historians is there a hint of the fact that both the Indo-Aryans and Hellenes were once nomads who immigrated into their abodes from the North.  The Assyrians, to be sure, remembered vaguely that their earliest rulers, whose names they recall without any details about deed, were tent dwellers, but whence they came had long been forgotten. (Finkelstein, JTHCR,3)

        As Regards the reliability of the “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10, Albright concludes: “it stands absolutely alone in ancient literature without a remote parallel even among the Greeks. . .. “the Table of Nations” remains an astonishingly accurate document.  (Albright, RDBL, 70, 71).

The Bible and Character

Lewis S. Chafer, founder and former President of Dallas Theological Seminary wrote, “The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could or could write if he would”.  The Bible deals very frankly with the sins of its characters, even when these sins bring shame on God, His people Israel, their leaders, and the biblical writers themselves. There are the sins of the Patriarchs mentioned (Gen 12:11-13; Gen. 49:5-7).  King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent attempt to cover-up is revealed (2 Sam.11-12).  

        And the disorder within the New Testament church exposed (1 Cor.1:11; 1Cor. 15:12; 2 Cor. 2:4). You see, the Bible is a book that focusses on reality and not fantasy.  It presents the good and bad, the right and the wrong, the best and worst, the hope and the despair, the joy and the pain of life.  And this should be the case since its ultimate author is God and “there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open before Him to whom we must all give an account (Heb. 4:13).  God leaves no stone unturned in His effort to forgive, pardon, and reclaim us to the family of God in His vast universe. Won’t you let Him, dear reader?

Bible’s unique influence on Literature

Cleland B. McAfee writes in The Greatest English Classics: “If every Bible in any considerable city were destroyed, the book could be restored in all its essential parts from quotations on the shelves of the city public library.  There are works, covering almost all the great literary writers, devoted especially to showing how much the Bible influenced them (McAfee, GEC, 134).  

        Gabriel Silvan writes, “No other document in the possession of mankind offers so much to the reader-ethical and religious instruction, superb poetry, a social program and legal code, an interpretation of history, and all the joys, sorrows, hopes which well up in men and which Israel’s prophets and leaders expressed with matchless force and passion.” He goes on to add, “since the dawn of civilisation no book has inspired as much creative endeavor among writers as the “old” Testament, the Hebrew Bible.” (Sivan, BC, xiii, 218).  In his classic, Anatomy of Criticism, World -renowned literary critic Northrop Frye observed that “Western literature has been more influenced by the Bible than any other book.” (Frye, AC, 14).

The Bible’s Uniqueness in its influence on Civilization.

Grady Davis, in The New Encyclopedia Britannica, writes, “The Bible brought its view of God, the universe, and mankind into all leading Western languages and thus into the intellectual processes of Western man…since the invention of printing (mid-15^th century), the Bible has become more than the translation of an ancient Oriental literature. It has not seemed a foreign book, and it has been the most available, familiar, and dependable source and arbiter of intellectual, moral, and spiritual ideals in the West.” (Davis, EB, 904, 905). 

        We started these two months on the uniqueness of the Bible with a reference to Voltaire, the French philosopher who vouched that he would destroy the Bible and Christianity. Today he is dead and gone but the Bible lives on in strength and power.  I shall close these two articles with reference to another French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, he wrote, “Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?”

        Let me proffer an answer to Rousseau’s question as we close off this article, I say with a loud voice, “the Bible is not merely the work of man!” You see, friends, the Bible is the Creator’s amazing grace offered to his rebellious children because of His non-reciprocal and illimitable love for you and for me.  One day soon He’s coming back for those who have accepted this gratuitous offer of pardon and restoration to the family of God. Won’t you, my dear readers, give Him your complete allegiance before it is too late?  Please, do not let these three thousand years of Jesus (Woodward, “2000 years of Jesus,” Newsweek, March 29, 1999, p.52) be your last.

If you have any comments or questions, please contact Pr. Ron Henderson at ronhende@outlook.com.