Do you trust the Bible?  Do you believe that every word of it is the Word of God in every area of its content?  Or are you, like many, selective in what you believe of that which is written in it?  Perhaps you have been led to believe that only certain parts of the Bible really came from God.  A broadcast commentator recently stated the idea that the “Gospels are not history, but just stories to teach us about truth.”  If you believe him, then your confidence in Jesus Christ is devastated because you must doubt His virgin birth, miraculous feats and His resurrection from the dead.

As we saw in Lesson 1, the Bible declares itself to be the Word of God.  It states without hesitation, without reservation, and without limitation, that it is all inspired (breathed) by God.  From the first verse which states unequivocally, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…” to the last chapter which says,  “And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come…and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely…” – the Bible never hints that there is any part of it that isn’t exactly and completely true.  In fact, it openly declares that “Thy Word is true from the beginning.”  (Palms 119: 160)

Yet some people still confidently assert that they know this to be false.  Surprisingly, even numerous professors of Bible colleges and seminaries do not believe the Bible to be completely true, and they teach their unsuspecting students to disbelieve its truthfulness and accuracy.  And of course, atheistic scientists assert that none of it is true so public school teachers pass this dogma of doubt on to their students.  Perhaps saddest of all is the fact that many Christians who say they believe the Bible, actually don’t act like they believe it.  This is especially true when they disregard the clear factual teaching and preaching of it.

This writer believes that the Bible reveals the Author to be God.  Now if God is the Author of the Bible then it should reveal this as fact.  Over the course of my own quarter century study of the Bible, I have found that the Bible does reveal itself to be the Word of God in all of the areas of its revealed knowledge.  Contrary to the false assertions by many, the Bible is accurate in its statements that concern matters of the physical world.  Though the Bible is not intended to be a science textbook, it does, during it discourses, make statements about the physical universe (nature).  It speaks of outer space, of earth, of the seas, of man and animal life.  As one studies some of these statements of science in the Bible, it becomes clear that the men who were the penmen of Scripture possessed knowledge that preceded man’s scientific knowledge.  This is as one should suspect if the Bible is written by the all knowing Creator of the universe!

History is another area that we can examine to determine the authorship of Scripture.  Unlike the Muslim Koran or other ‘holy books’, the Bible devotes itself to extensive discussions of events that actually occurred.  Though the historical accuracy of the Bible has been widely mocked, time and discovery increasingly show the historical events described in your Bible to be accurate just as you would expect and demand if it indeed is authored by God.

Finally there is the matter of prophecy – the prediction of future events.  The Bible is the most analyzed and discussed writing in human experience.  It has occupied the intellectual energy of the greatest minds that humanity has produced.  As the result, today we know a great deal about the history of its writing.  We know when most of the men who were its penmen lived and so we also know with reasonable accuracy when most of the books were written.  For example, we know that King David lived about 1,000 B.C. and that his son, Solomon, lived about 900 B.C. and so we know when Psalms and Proverbs, the books authored by these two ancients, were each written.  This is vitally important because it gives us knowledge about the time when the prophetic portions of their books were written.  Knowing these things, we can examine the prophecies of Scripture penmen and then examine whether those predictions came to pass as stated.  Since no mortal knows the future with precision, a fulfilled prophecy could only come from knowledge given to the prophet by God Himself.

This lesson will only present a small sample of those things which can be discovered from Bible.  Vast numbers of books and videos are available to thoroughly present the full body of knowledge about what the Bible reveals relating to its perfections in these three major areas of knowledge.  At the end of the written lesson material will be a list of resources where you can obtain more information.  Our church library is stocking some resources and our inventory will continue to grow in this and other areas of preserved biblical knowledge.

Matters of the Physical World

This is what we normally call “science”.  Science is merely a means for discovering how the physical world operates.  Science consists of data obtained by research.  Then this data is interpreted by “scientists”.   Each scientist has his/her own personal philosophy and this determines how they will interpret the data.  A scientist who rejects God will hold an evolutionary view point.  Other professional scientists who accept the reality of the Creator will interpret the data to fit the biblical perspective.

For more than a century, atheism had essentially owned the realm of scientific thought.  But starting about 50 years ago, a strong movement among professional scientists began who believe that the world was created by the supernatural God as described in the first two chapters of Genesis.

This movement has created an enlightenment that is as profound as the enlightenment that occurred 500 years ago when such scientists as Galileo first proposed that the earth revolves around the sun rather than visa versa.  The modern creation scientists have taken a fresh look at the Bible in relation to the scientific data and that look has been exciting to the Bible believing Christian.  Contrary to the notion that the Bible is antiquated in the field of science knowledge, it is increasingly understood that the Bible has always revealed accurate scientific truths about the earth and all life found on it.

What would you think about a person who had advanced knowledge about the mysteries of nature several hundred or even several thousand years before human science discovered the same things?    If such ancient persons had knowledge that a mortal could not have possessed in their own time, would that suggest that the person was more than a genius?  Indeed, we would conclude that such persons were informed by a higher Being Who had passed knowledge on to Bible writers out of His own creative design.

The Bible does reveal knowledge that was not known by mankind in the time of its writing.  In other words, the Bible possessed advance knowledge about science that the writer could not have read or heard from anyone living in his own time.  We will examine a few of the advanced biblical revelations about science in this lesson.

The Earth’s Shape

This has long been a subject of great interest and debate.  We are all aware that in A. D. 1492, Christopher Columbus excited the imagination of his contemporaries by proposing to sail west fromSpain farther than anyone believed possible.  According to the popular thought of his day, the world was like a flat table with an edge over which a ship would plunge into some abyss.  It is reported that Columbus had reasoned that the world was spherical out of the simple observation that the horizon at sea always spanned a limited distance.  From any point, one could not see past the horizon and this could only be explained by a spherical shaped earth.

Thinkers of that day could have turned to the Bible for insight about this question, for it definitely spoke on the subject.  If the reader will turn to Isaiah 40:22 you will see what God said about this before man discovered the spherical shape of earth:  “It is He that sitteth upon the circle of the earth.”   Here the earth’s shape is spoken of as a circle.  Isaiah, the penman of this verse, wrote about 700 B.C., which was 1400 years before Columbus and 2,000 years before our time.   Though it is true that a circle need not be a sphere or globe, it is also true that every sphere is a composite of many circles of equal diameter and circumference.  A circle is certainly suggestive of a sphere to the discerning Bible reader.  So the Bible was the first to reveal that earth is a sphere.

The Earth’s Support

The question of what supports the earth had long mystified the ancients.  In some parts of the world,  people pictured the world sitting on the back of a giant turtle.  And several hundred years before Christ, the Greeks had invented a god upon whose back the earth supposedly rested.

The Scriptures suggested no such foolish inventions.  Turning to Job 26:7 we read: “…He [God]…hangeth the earth upon nothing.”  The ancients of Job’s time surely didn’t know about the mysterious force that we know today as gravity.  In fact it wasn’t until Isaac Newton, some 300 years ago, that man was able to think about an invisible force that acts over a distance upon a solid object such as a planet.  That force explains how the earth is kept in a circular orbit around the sun.  The earth is at the perfect distance from the sun to prevent it from being pulled into the sun but the gravitational force is sufficiently strong to prevent the earth from escaping, and so it does the only other thing possible – travel perpetually around the sun.

We know today how refreshingly true the Bible has spoken all along about this incredible arrangement – for indeed the earth hangs in the nothingness of space!    We should wonder how this ancient writer could have known about this fact thousands of years before the discovery of gravity.  Serious consideration will bring us to the inescapable conclusion that God was His mentor and gave him the knowledge to write accurately.

The Orbit of the Sun

We are long past the idea that the sun orbits around earth as the “established scientists” once thought.  Today we understand that the opposite is true, that the earth rotates around the sun.  Our solar system consists of our sun around which nine planets (with their moons) revolve.  In this arrangement we picture the sun sitting in a fixed position in space with the planets whirling about it.  Is this so?

It is not.  Please turn to Psalm 19 and examine verses 1-6 which read in part as follows: “The heavens declare the glory of God [v. 1]…In them hath He set the tabernacle for the sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.  His going forth is from the end of heaven, and his circuit [circle]unto the ends of it…” [vs. 4-6].

In these remarkable verses the sun is described as traveling on a circuit (circle or orbit) through the heavens (space), just as a strong man would run a race on an oval race track!  It is known in modern astronomy that our sun is not fixed in one position but is in fact traveling along a great circular path through the Milky Way Galaxy.  As it travels this great circular path, it carries the nine planets, including earth, with it.  So we are in effect traveling piggy back with the sun through the galaxy just as the writer of Psalms long ago stated.

Isn’t that amazing?  Remember that the Psalms were written by King David of Israel a thousand years before the birth of Christ, long before man had any scientific inkling of this astronomic fact.  None of the ancients of David’s day could have had any clue about this from their general observations of the constellations.  Where then could David have learned this marvelous truth?  Only from God, the author and architect of the heavens!

The Watery World

Ours is a watery world with about 70 % of the earth’s surface covered by seas.  It has been said that even today we know more about outer space than we do about the world beneath the surface of earth’s oceans.  Each year, new creatures are discovered that modern oceanographers previously had no clue about.

How much could the ancients have known about the undersea world?  With no submarines, diving suits, underwater cameras, or remote mapping equipment, how would they know anything about the form of the ocean bottom?  They might have thought the oceans to be shallow or bottomless, mountainous or flat.  Most of what we know today about the oceans is less than 60 years old.  Let’s now consider what was recorded in the Bible about the watery world of earth more than 3,000 years ago.

First we direct our attention to Psalm 8:8 where the Bible uses the term “paths of the sea”.  We know what a path is – something like a narrow roadway where people or animals travel along an established route with definite boundaries.  The Hebrew word from which this word path is translated means a “well trodden road”.  This is an accurate description of the ocean currents which were first discovered by human science about 150 years ago.  Ocean currents are highways of water with edges that are defined well enough to be approximately mapped.  These currents are indeed highways of life because the vast bulk of marine life,  from the microscopic plankton to the great whales, routinely navigate these waters while traveling around the world.

Plunging now beneath the sometimes violent and sometimes calm surface of the oceans to their always tranquil mysterious depths, we will glide downward past great mountain ranges into deep canyons with vertical walls that plunge thousands of feet beneath even the floor of the oceans.  What could the Bible writers, if they were not inspired of God, have known about such submarine topography?  And yet we hear David, three-thousand years ago, use the term “channel of the sea”(II Samuel 22:16).  The translators of the King James Version chose the word channel from a Hebrew word which meant tube, bed or valley.  Whether in English or Hebrew, the Scriptures here do accurately describe the topography of the submarine depths.  The descriptions certainly would create an accurate picture in the minds of Bible readers.

Before leaving our journey to the bottom of the sea we should check out some additional wonders.  Scattered across the floor of the ocean there exist numerous places where hot gases from within the earth escape through “vents” as they are called by oceanographers.  These vents are actuallyundersea geysers where superheated water and gases are released from the crust of the earth into the ocean depths.  The Bible writer knew about these as well.  In Job 38:16 the ancient writer spoke of the “springs of the sea”.   A spring is where water gushes up out of the earth to the surface of land.  So a spring in the sea can only be the same except it bubbles up at the very bottom of the oceans.    From where, we should consider, did this writer gain such modern knowledge about the undersea geysers on the floor of the ocean?

The Earth’s Creatures

The Bible also contains revelations about earth’s creatures that have long preceded scientific knowledge.

Let’s start in I Corinthians 15:20 where Paul the Apostle stated the following:  “All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another of beasts; another of fishes, and another of birds.”  The reader may regard this statement as self evident but it was not evident to medical scientists early in the twentieth century who attempted to transplant tissues and blood serum from animal to man or between people.  The results of these efforts were disastrous because the immune systems of the recipients of such attempted transplants rejected the foreign tissues with disastrous complications.  Today, such transplants are only successful when powerful immunosuppressant drugs are used to suppress the immune system’s natural rejection of the foreign tissues.  Those researchers of a hundred years ago were like the sea captain described in Acts 27:10-11 who would not listen to a man inspired from God and so suffered great disaster.  Once again, the Bible was first in truth!

Let’s now think about the ancient creatures that we call dinosaurs.  The discovery of dinosaur fossils several hundred years ago perplexed many Bible believers and caused many to reject the Bible on scientific matters and still others completely lost confidence in the Bible on any matter. It is supposed to be axiomatic that dinosaurs must have lived millions of years before any humans.  We wonder how humans could have even lived with such creatures as Tyrannosaurus Rex with its six inch teeth and enormous size.  Other dinosaurs such as the Brontosaurus with its gargantuan body and treelike tail seem to be equally out of place among humans.

And yet we now know that dinosaurs did not sneak up on the ancient Bible writers.  If the reader will turn to Job 40:15-24 we will examine a creature that lived in the time of Job.  Accepting the tenets of evolution, some Bible expositors have interpreted this creature to have been a crocodile, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephant, or whale.   Which is it?  Or is it any of those things?  That’s easy to discern with just a little thought.  What is the creature described in these verses?  The Bible writer calls him “behemoth” which refers to an immense creature.  Certainly any of the above might fill this description if we only consider size.  But we need to interpret all of the data that the Bible lists here.

This creature has the following characteristics:  it ate grass, had an enormous tail like a cedar [tree], and it lived on land, probably along the edges of water where reeds grew.  The description of this animal indicates that it wasn’t just large like a crocodile or even a rhino or hippo or elephant, but it was incredibly huge with enormous strength in its abdominal muscles and huge bones as strong as iron.

At any rate we can eliminate all of the above proposed animals as being Behemoth.   Since the creature was a land dweller the whale is eliminated.  Since it ate grass the crocodile is also eliminated.  The hippo, rhino and elephant are left.  However all of these must also be eliminated because none have a tail that is anything comparable to a cedar [tree].   Now what is left?  Nothing that we have ever seen in the flesh.  But this Bible animal does perfectly fit the description of an enormous plant eating dinosaur such as Brontosaurus. Notice also that the Lord told Job (verse 15) to ‘behold’ or see this creature.  That would be ludicrous if Job had not actually seen such a creature.  And if he had seen the creature, then it lived during his time.

Long before the first dinosaur fossil was discovered the Bible had already described at least one major type of these marvelous, now extinct creatures.  And the reader may be surprised to know that human footprints have been discovered inside or alongside fossilized dinosaur footprints.  You may actually see these for yourself by visiting the Creation Evidences Museum in Glen Rose, Texassouth of Ft. Worth.  This museum has conducted careful X-ray studies on these human footprints and showed that they were not carved or artificially placed.

For More Information…

There are hundreds of books and videos produced by creation scientists around the world that reveal the amazing accuracy of the Bible on matters of science.  These scientists are fully professional scientists who received advanced degrees from the same universities that evolutionary scientists studied at.  The materials are written or produced for the general audience with other technical materials increasingly being written for professional scientists.

One excellent organization for these materials is the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).  (You can visit their online store at www. icr.org or call at 800-628-7640 for a brochure.)  CaprockBaptist Church will be stocking some of these books and videos in the church library.

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I recommend that you start with materials from ICR because these are unconditionally recommended because of the professional qualifications of the writers.

Matters of Prophecy

Each evening’s weather report is man’s attempt to tell the future by means of science and experience.  The weather person says, “I think that we may have thunderstorms tomorrow…”, because he/she doesn’t know for sure what will happen.  We can make an educated guess at what the future will bring with some accuracy based upon our experience and knowledge, but no humans can know it exactly.  The future is knowable only by the supernatural which is not constrained by time.

Prediction of the future is called prophecy in the Bible.  If the writers of the Bible were instructed by God then we would expect that the Bible would accurately predict events in advance and we expect those events to occur as stated.

Does the Bible show such advance prophetic knowledge?  The answer is a definite YES!  The Bible is filled with prophecies which we can see fulfilled in stunning detail.  Some of these biblical prophecies were originally written hundreds or even thousands of years before fulfillment.  Often, the Lord would repeat the prophecies at intervals of years through His chosen writers and so there is a prophetic countdown in the biblical passages as the final fulfillment nears.  Some times the prophecies were given a few years before the fulfillment so we can see the fulfillment today in history.  Some prophecies have been partially fulfilled in history but remain to be fully completed.  For these, we have confidence that fulfillment will occur based upon the record of success in other biblical prophecies.

The rule of biblical prophecy is demanding as set down by God through Moses as follows:  “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.” Deuteronomy 13:22   In other words, prophecy that doesn’t come to pass as written is not of God – God’s predictions do come to pass!  We will now examine a couple of biblical prophecies that were given hundreds of years in advance so there is no question about them being recorded after the fact of their occurrence, yet they are far enough back in history that we can know of their completion as written.

Prophecy of Tyre’s Destruction

This prophecy concerned the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre which was a mighty ancient trading city located on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean sea.  Tyre was the hub of a vast trading empire of the famous Phoenicians and the city is well known in the documents of ancient history. Tyre was actually built in two parts:  one part was a fortified city on the coast and a second part located on an island a few hundred yards from the mainland.

Ezekiel was the prophet of interest here and his prophecy concerning this city is found in Ezekiel, chapter 26, verses 1-14.  The reader is invited to turn to this passage and read it through carefully.  The basics of the prophecy is that this city would be destroyed, that it would be scraped as flat as a rock, and that it would be a place suited only for drying of fishermen’s nets.

Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry lasted 22 years beginning in 592 B.C. and ending in 570 B.C.  This particular prophecy was written during this period, probably the earlier part of it.  The prophecy predicts the future destruction of Tyre which would be an unbelievable idea to people alive at that time.  The prophecy is presented in two parts as can be seen by a careful study of the passage.  The first part (vs. 7-11) specifies that the city would be attacked by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar.  Note the specificity here in the naming of the king.  Then verses 12-14 seem to describe a second stage of Tyre’s destruction.

Archaeological records confirm that Tyre was attacked by Nebuchadnezzar in 572 B.C. which is only about 20 years at most after the prophecy was given.  The historical records tells us that this king attacked the mainland part of the city and succeeded in doing great damage to it.  However, the people of Tyre withdrew to the island city which was out of his reach since he lacked naval forces needed to attack the island.  At this point an observer might think that the prophecy was not fully complete.  For the next two-hundred years, Tyre continued as a mighty trading hub as it operated out of the island city.  Then came 330 B.C. when it was again attacked by Alexander the Great, the great conqueror from ancient Greece.  The defenders of the island city must have been amused as they saw Alexander’s forces draw up on the mainland as had Nebuchadnezzar’s two-hundred years earlier.  Their amusement must have turned to bemusement as his soldiers began to collect stones from the old mainland city and throw them into the water.  Their bemusement must have turned to amazement as the stones began to pile up and take shape as a roadway that was steadily advancing out to them.  Then their amazement must have turned to horror as siege machines were brought across the causeway that was built out of the very stones of the old city.  In the process of this, Alexander’s army scraped the old city flat as a rock exactly as the early prophecy had specified.  Alexander succeeded in defeating and destroying this island city.

Yet Tyre was hard to kill because after Alexander she arose again.  We read of her again in the New Testament as being a viable city in the time of Christ, though probably not to her former glory.  Had Ezekiel’s prophecy that Tyre would become a place where only fishermen’s nets would be spread, failed?

History was not finished with Tyre and neither was the prophecy of Ezekiel.  A full millennium passed after Jesus Christ to a time when Islam was trying to conquer the world for their god.  In 1291 A.D., (Unger’s Bible Dictionary) the Moslems attacked Tyre and finally destroyed it forever.  Today, the old site of Tyre is occupied only by a few fishermen where they spread their nets to dry and the old city has  been scraped flat as a rock – in exact accordance to Ezekiel’s prophecy written 1,800 years earlier!

Prophecies of Jesus Christ

The Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Micah and others spoke many times about the coming of Israel’s Messiah (Deliverer).  Their individual prophecies can be organized into a table such as one below.

Old Testament Messianic Prophecies

This chart contains just eight of the dozens of prophecies of Messiah that are written in the Old Testament.  Any man who claimed this distinction had to have satisfied all of these prophecies plus all of the others not here listed.  Briefly, Israel’s Messiah would be a man who was born inBethlehem, of the Tribe of Judah and the family of David, he would enter Jerusalem and be hailed as a king, but then be crucified and buried in a tomb originally intended for a rich man.

Prophecy also dictates the time of Messiah’s death ( # 8 on the chart).  According to Daniel 9:25, Messiah would be killed after 69 weeks of years had elapsed following the command to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  That command was issued by King Artaxerxes in the year 445 B.C., according to every historical authority that I have read.

(Verse 26 states the intervening weeks to be 62, or 434 years, but this refers to the interval starting after the walls were completed until the death of Messiah.)

Let’s do the math to calculate the predicted year of Messiah’s death according to this prophecy.  A  Jewish year was only 98.63 % as long as our year (360 days instead of 365) so multiply .9863 X 483 years and we get 476 years on our calendar from 445 B.C. to the predicted year of Messiah’s death.  Doing the math we actually subtract 476 from 445 to get, -31 which corresponds to 31 A.D. as the predicted year of Messiah’s death.

Now we ask, did anyone having the prophetic qualifications of the Jewish Messiah, die in or about that year?  The answer is YES!!   THAT PERSON IS JESUS OF NAZARETH as attested by the vast majority of ancient historical experts.

The accuracy of Daniel’s prophetic calendar of Messiah’s death is almost convincing in itself but we can go farther in certainty that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed Israel’s Messiah and thus Saviour to the world.  Knowing that Jesus of Nazareth satisfied all of the above prophecies some might wonder whether this was just by chance.  We can get an idea about this question by calculating the probability that any one man could satisfy six of the above prophecies about Messiah.  This calculation is made by multiplying the individual probabilities of each of the above events.  The answer is the probability that one person could satisfy all by chance alone.  Some of the individual prophecies such as the triumphal entry and burial in the tomb of a rich man are difficult for me to determine an individual mathematical probability for so I will not use them in my calculation.  The following calculation is made on the basis of the following probabilities for the following six events:

*  Estimate based on Israel growing from 1 family when it entered Egypt to 57 families after 400 years (Numbers 26) it seems  reasonable thatIsrael would increase to about 250 families during 1500 years between entering the promised land to the time of  Christ.

**  Since there were 483 years from the command to rebuild Jerusalem to the death of Messiah,  the probability includes the chance that any man might have died in any one of those 483 years.  It wouldn’t be unreasonable to make this probability even greater such as 1:500 or 1:1000 since a man might have died after the 483 years.  That would greatly increase the final probability calculation but I have stopped at 483 for the calculation.

____________________________________________

The calculation to determine the odds against any person fulfilling just six of the above messianic prophecies by blind chance is made by multiplying the second part of each probability together as follows:   2 x 100 x 12 x 250 x 10 x 483 = 2,898,000,000!

The results of this calculation show that there is only 1 chance in nearly 3 billion that one person could accidentally fulfill just six of the Messianic prophecies.  This is a very conservative estimate since two of the probabilities in the table were not used.  Though I could not assign a realistic probability to those two events they are still real events that enter the equation making it even more improbable that Jesus of Nazareth satisfied those prophecies by random chance.  Also remember that we haven’t even considered all of the Messianic prophecies and so the odds against accidental fulfillment are thousands of fold higher than the above calculation.

With all this said, we can clearly and objectively say that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah that was predicted all through the Old Testament times of thousands of years. Jesus of Nazareth is Jesus the messiah; Jesus the Son of God and God the Son; Jesus the Saviour of mankind; Jesus the Resurrected One; Jesus the soon returning King of Earth; Jesus the coming Judge of your entire life and your eternal soul; Jesus the Lord; Jesus the Creator and Eternal God, Coequal with God the Father and God the Hold Spirit!!!!!!    AMEN

By Gene S. Foster, M.S.

This lesson is designed for the person who has little or no experience with using the Bible. The more advanced person may want to skip the following information and go directly to the questions to follow. If you miss very many of the questions you need to go back and study the material.
The goal of this lesson is to acquaint you with the books of the Bible in the order of their occurrence so you may use the Bible more proficiently. It will greatly increase your enjoyment of reading and studying the Word of God and decrease your embarrassment of fumbling through the Bible in church when a certain Scripture is called out for you to turn to.
This lesson also has some basic information about the organization of the Bible into sections of particular subject matter. You will also learn how to interpret a written Scripture reference so you can look it up in your Bible.
The Table of Contents
All Bibles have a table of contents that give the page number for the start of each book. It is far better to use this aid than to randomly fumble around the Bible which embarrasses and frustrates you and reduces the benefit of your reading. Be aware that the page numbers where a certain book, chapter or verse is found is different in different Bibles because of variations in the size of the Bible and the size of the print.

THE NEW TESTAMENT

SUBJECT MATTER BY SECTIONS OF BIBLE

OLD TESTAMENT

Pentateuch

• Creation & Flood
• Abraham
• Tribes of Israel
• Law of Moses
• Israel from Egypt to Promised Land

• Israel’s arrival in Promised Land
• Wars
• Good and bad leaders and their effects on Israel
• Israel’s breakup into northern and southern kingdom.
• Israel’s captivity and return to Jerusalem

Poetry

1. Job – suffering saints
2. Psalms – David, a picture of Christ
3. Proverbs – Solomon’s wisdom
4. Ecclesiastes – Solomon’s regrets
5. Song of Solomon – Lessons about love between man and God

Major Prophets (long prophetic discourses)

1. Pictures of Christ
2. Woes to Israel & other nations
3. Suffering servants of God
4. Israel in captivity & related history
5. End time prophecies

Minor Prophets (shorter prophetic discourses)

• Rebukes from God to Israel
• Lessons in faithful service
• End time prophecies
• Israel’s final word from God

SUBJECT MATTER BY SECTIONS OF BIBLE

NEW TESTAMENT

Gospel

• Birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ
• Ministry of Christ – events, miracles & teachings
• Calling and training of future Apostles
• Each Gospel is named after its human penman

Acts

1. Early history of the Christian church
2. Doctrinal operating principles for churches
3. Ministries of Peter and Paul

Epistles

1. Letters from Paul, Peter, John, Jude and James to churches or believers
2. Historical events, especially the missionary journey’s of Paul
3. Doctrinal principles and details

Revelation

• Letters of rebukes and exhortations to 7 ancient churches
• Prophecy of the Great Tribulation; the antichrist; end of man’s rule and Satan’s influence.
• Second Coming of Christ; Thousand year kingdom of Christ; final judgment of lost sinners; eternal glory.

THE CATHOLIC OLD TESTAMENT

The Catholic Bible contains seven ancient books in addition to the 39 already listed for the Old Testament. The Jews knew about these books but uniformly rejected them as Scripture because they didn’t meet the test of Scripture. God did not witness to their hearts about these books being Scripture so they were rejected by the Jews throughout all the centuries when the Jews were exclusively preserving the Word of God.

The Roman Catholic Church decided to include these books as Old Testament Scripture in 1546. The books in question are:

ORGANIZATION OF BIBLE

FLOWCHART…FROM THE GENERAL TO THE PARTICULAR

 Do you know the process by which the Bible was written? Twenty years ago I was still a new Christian when I realized that I knew nothing about how this grand Book came into existence. I had never heard any lessons in churches about this so I began to personally research the subject. This short article is to set out the basic manner in which the Bible was written. The subject is a vastly complex one that has kept many brilliant scholars busy for their life times. I will start at the beginning of its writings and touch only on the basics. This article will not explore the issue of the controversy of English translations.

 What the Bible Is

Inspiration – God’s Manner of Writing

This process involved human writers working as penmen who were instructed how and what to write by the supernatural God. Since God is all powerful and everywhere present, He can communicate His thoughts and words to people of His choosing. A few verses of Scripture amply demonstrate this process in action.

In these verses we see that the Lord instructed His writers to write words of God’s choosingin a book. Two New Testament verses further explain the divine writing process:

“All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable…” II Timothy 3:16.

 When the Writing Started

Roll the Presses

The Old Testament

When we speak of Moses or other writers writing a book of Scripture, we always mean that the man was the holder of the pen but God was the giver of the words written. We know that God communicated with man: by direct voice, by dreams, by visions and other methods that we don’t understand. The important thing that everyone can understand is thatGod got written what He wanted written! In this process of inspiration, God directed Moses what to write from the records of Adam, Noah and others. Then God also added entirely new things from the body of words that God had spoken to Moses over his long life of service to God. The end result was the Pentateuch in exact words of God’s choosing.

Over the next twelve hundred years, God worked in similar ways to cause other selected men to write more of His words in other books. The list includes Joshua and Samuel; David and Solomon; Jeremiah and Isaiah; Ezekiel and Daniel; then at least eleven of the so called “minor prophets”. It is true that we don’t know the authors of some books but this does not remove the place of such books from the canon of Divine Scripture.

The Old Testament writings ended about 400 years before Christ with the book of Malachi. Now in this we have a marvel that only God could produce because over twenty men were the penmen of the Old Testament over those 1200 years. The marvel is that though thesewriters were vastly separated by centuries and further separated by the gulf of culture, occupation, education, station in life and circumstances of their lives, these men managed to write 39 Old Testament books that possess one common non- conflicting theme. Imagine a book written today by twenty authors on any given subject. The product would be a book without purpose or plan; a book containing sharp disagreement in purpose, principles, conclusions, and methods. It simply would not have been possible for human beings to write a book with a cohesive, unified theme under the conditions that the Old Testament was known to be written. Those are the circumstances under which the Old Testament was written yet it is a perfectly unified, logical, and consistent picture of Jesus Christ and His works for man.

In this single unity of the Old Testament we find Jesus Christ promised in Genesis 3:15. We find Him pictured as a substitutionary ram in Genesis 22:13. His perfections find form in the Tabernacle. We hear His prophetic voice crying from the cross (1,000 years before He was born) in Psalm 22. As the Old Testament proceeds during the centuries of its unfolding revelation, it becomes increasingly

vivid in its depictions of Christ. Isaiah 53 describes his manner of physical life and death as the Lamb of God. Daniel 9:24-27 establishes a precise

calendar for His physical death. Other passages carry the reader even further into the future as they describe God’s kingdom of earth.

The New Testament

Jesus Christ was born during the reign of Herod the Great. Technicalities of our calendar place His birth to be about 4 B.C. and His death to be about 30 A.D. His ministry lasted only three and one-half years but these were years that even unbelievers have to admit have set the course for mankind these past two millennia.

As Jesus Christ walked among men, He spake the Word of God. The Bible (John 1:1-14) declares Him to have been the Creator who then came in human flesh among men. The words of Jesus were recorded by His disciples then later the Spirit of God directed chosen men to write the words that were to become New Testament Scripture. The Lord Jesus also said many things that God did not choose to put into Scripture (John 21:25) but every word that He spoke was the Word of God because He was, and still is, the very God. Then God began to direct chosen men to write the New Testament.

The Book of James is thought by many scholars to have been the first New Testament book actually written, being produced about 50 A.D. By 96 A.D. we can say with certainty that its last book, Revelation, was completed. With the completion of Revelation the Lord added a warning against anyone who would be bold to either add or subtract from the words (see Revelation 22:18-19). This is how we know that God’s inspired Word came to a place where God said, in effect, “The End”. Any writings or declarations claiming to be new messages from God after the Revelation of Jesus Christ are not from God and are to therefore be ignored as far as Scripture is concerned.

The New Testament contains the Gospels which are the record of Christ’s ministry; Acts, the early history of His church; Epistles, letters which outline events and doctrinal principles; andRevelation, the prophetic declaration of end time events.

Preservation of God’s Word

Let us stop and think about this for a moment. If God can create all things from nothing and then miraculously transfer His words into the mind of

mortal men who then wrote with perfection as He did – why do some think that He cannot preserve through time what He has written?

In fact the Scriptures say that He has preserved His written Word:

“The words of the Lord are pure words…Thou shalt preserve them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” Psalm 12:6-7

Now we must question the scholars who “know” that the Bible today has errors in it. This question is based upon another declaration of the inspired psalmist:

 “Thy Word is True from the beginning: and every one of Thy righteous judgmentsendureth forever.” Ps. 119:160

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness…” II Timothy 3:16

Copying

God’s Word, Old and New Testaments, was preserved by ancient copyists. For the Old Testament, the Jewish scribes were the copyists and we owe these ancients a deep debt of gratitude. Then the loyal people of the churches of the Christian era became the copyists of New Testament scripture.

These copyists were not infallible in their copying so we don’t claim that they couldn’t produce errors. But preservation of both Old and New testaments was achieved because of the uncompromising checking process and unrelenting devotion to word perfect preservation of the inspired originals to which the biblical copyists subjected their work. We must first understand that these people knew that they were not copying the writings of man. Instead, they were keenly aware

that they were copying the very words of God and that they were held responsible by God for the quality of their work. These men were exceedingly careful in the copying and checking process and so they developed a procedure to catch errors as small as a single Hebrew letter. For example, the Old Testament Jewish scribes would count letters and words on each original page and then they would count the letters and words on the copy. If the numbers on the copy did not tally with the original, the entire page was discarded. They had many other editing techniques that produced perfect copies for generation after generation and century and century. The New Testament copyists were no less careful and no doubt employed similar techniques.

Some have questioned whether the copyists were honest. How do we know that they didn’t fudge things, leaving some embarrassing things out and/or adding things that they thought would embellish the writings? We know that they were honest because of the content and consequences of their writings. Concerning content, it is clear that they were honest since both Old and New Testament copyists faithfully recorded things that were shameful to the major figures of the testaments. Old Testament scribes, for example, recorded the idolatries of Israel and God’s bitter denunciations against them. They also recorded the moral and spiritual failures of their great heroes such as Abraham, Moses and David. Yet for century after century those copyists never failed to preserve that which God had originally given in Scripture, however embarrassing it was to these copyists. The New Testament copyists also had cause for embarrassment as they recorded the childish arguments of the disciples of Christ and such blights as Peter’s denial of Christ. And yet, there they are still – the embarrassments, humiliations and shame -still preserved after centuries of copying and recopying.

There is also the matter of the consequences that those copyists and their loved ones paid for what they wrote. Would you write lies if you knew that it would cost either yourself or your closest loved ones their lives or bring suffering upon you or your family?

Very often, these copyists did experience persecution and martyrdom for what they wrote. Therefore we know that they had every motive for honesty. People demonstrate rank ignorance when they accuse the preservers of God’s Word of dishonesty and carelessness. Dear reader, would you die for a book which you had carelessly copied or even purposely counterfeited? And if you say yes to that, would you be willing for your family to die for your conspiracy or carelessness? Why would you expect these people to be different in their feelings and fears than you?

We have many other reasons to believe that our Bible was inspired by God and providentially preserved by Him as He enabled the copyists to preserve His Word.

Finally, we must remember that these copyists did not work without aid from heaven. Though they were not infallible, the Spirit of God placed a inexhaustible fervency in their hearts and minds that refused to accept anything

short of perfection in their work. These copyists were not inspired as had been the original writers but they were illuminated by the Spirit of God. This means that the Spirit gave them fervency, wisdom and skill as they worked, and from that illumination they produced perfect generations of copies to preserve God’s original Words.

Who Decided What Books Would Be In The Bible?

In answer, we can positively say that since God promised that He would preserve His Word we know that there are not any lost books of the Bible. The same God Who created all things decided which books would be His Holy Scripture and He has preserved every one of them in our present Bible! Yes there are indeed many ancient writings which have a spiritual theme – but age alone of a writing does not make it Holy Scripture! Neither did a writing become Scripture just because of apostolic or prophetic authorship. This should be clear since, as already noted, not even all the Words of Jesus Christ that He spoke during His earthly ministry were intended by God to be part of written Scripture even though all of His Words were certainly the Word of God. Since this is true, then certainly we should be able to understand that not everything that Peter, Paul or other notables wrote was intended by God to be Scripture.

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As far as the individual books chosen for the Old and New Testaments, we should remember that God is supernatural. He is able to communicate His will in writing by impressions that He has made upon the minds of those who knew Him. Can we imagine that He could not, or would not, clearly impress upon the minds of His people the particular books that He wanted man to recognize as Holy Scripture? Of course He can – and He did!

The manner by which God did this has been called, “The Witness of the Spirit”. This means that the Spirit of God impressed upon the collective minds of His people through the centuries the particular books that were to be Scripture. The Old Testament Jews and New Testament Christians knew instinctively what books were Scripture and they ignored all other writings that falsely claimed the status of Scripture because the Spirit of God witnessed to their minds and hearts.

By the time of Christ, the Jews (who were the divine guardians of the Old Testament) had long been satisfied as to which books belonged in the Old Testament. The Spirit of God had quietly settled the issue in their hearts hundreds of years before Christ and more than 1,000 years before there was any such thing as the Roman Catholic Church which later claimed certain other old writings to be Old Testament. Today, they still make such an absurd claim.

Now, to the New Testament. It is has be shown that Christians already recognized our current twenty-seven books as the New Testament canon by 200 A.D., some 250 years before the Catholic Church was fully formed. Any quick review of early Christian history will confirm this. The early Christians did not get their recognition of the New Testament books from the Roman Catholic Church because that organization did not exist until approximately 450 A.D. even in its earliest forms. If the reader still doubts this then let him read the New Testament. You will search in vain for any figure like the Catholic Pope; Christians praying to or through Mary; Christians using beads as a prayer aid; or Christians baptizing infants!

In this silent but profound witness, the Holy Spirit impressed upon the collective hearts of believers those books that God intended as Scripture. These impressions by the early Christian scholars were buttressed by certain objective criteria that they used to help determine which books to consider as Scripture. One such objective criterion was whether the writing was by an apostle. Yet not all of the apostolic writings passed the test of canonicity. For example, even certain writings of Peter and Paul were considered but rejected by the collective voices of Christian scholars in hundreds of churches. In the final analysis, only those books

that received the approval of God’s Spirit became accepted as Scripture in the hearts of early believers. We know these things because we possess the early writings of Christian scholars. These wrote many doctrinal treatises with Scripture references. And these references tell us which books were, and were not, considered by them to be Scripture by 200 A.D.

The New Testament canon was not settled by late church counsels. The books of the New Testament were settled by the witness of the Spirit of God into the hearts and minds of His people by approximately 200 A.D.

Languages and Translations of the Bible

The Old Testament was written and preserved in the Hebrew and Aramaic languages. TheNew Testament was originally written in a common Greek form.

It was only a matter of time before people of other languages would want to read Holy Scripture in their own language. And so today, God’s Word has been written in many languages. The conversion of Scripture from its original languages to other languages is called a translation.

Many people have the strong unfounded opinion that translation necessarily corrupts the original Scriptures. It is true that translators are often faced with enormous problems because a receiving language, such as English or Spanish, may not have a word that directly corresponds with a word in the original languages of Scripture (Hebrew or Greek). The translator must possess the linguistic skills and be illuminated by the Holy Spirit to know how to make the translation while still preserving God’s full original message.

I am not a linguist and so I cannot describe how God’s Word may be precisely preserved in a translation. But I do believe that God is the Master of languages. And I take note that when Jesus Christ gave His Great Commission (Mark 16:15) to His churches that He said, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” In saying this, He surely understood that sending His Word into all the world meant translating His Word into the various languages of the world. If God’s Word could not be preserved in a faithful translation, then the Lord gave His people an impossible task. But since He did give this command we know that the original languages of the Word of God can be accurately translated into many other languages.

Summarizing, we do have God’s Word faithfully and accurately translated into many languages today. The King James Version (1611), is that translation for English speaking people and we recommend it above all other English versions.

The reasons for this are well documented in many books, a few of which are listed in the suggested reading list below. A future article will explore this issue.

One Example of Preservation

As described, during the Old Testament era the books were continuously copied and recopied by Jewish scribes. About 200 years before Christ a copy of the book of Isaiah was placed in a cave with some other documents near the Dead Sea. In 1946 A.D., this cave was discovered and the ancient documents that had been in it undisturbed for 2,200 years were discovered.

When the Isaiah scroll was carefully unrolled it measured 23 feet in length. With great excitement, the scholars read the scroll and compared its words to other copies of Isaiah that had been produced hundreds of years after it. They anticipated that there would be many differences between this copy and later copies because they assumed that errors would have accumulated in the copies that were made after this scroll.

To their astonishment, the copy of Isaiah from the cave was identical to the later copies! In other words, the process of copying through the centuries did not produce errors in the vast majority of later copies!

In passing it should be said that there are a few ancient copies that are different from the vast majority of copies. These copies were made by men with less than perfect motives or at least less care than the high amount of diligence that has been described. This produced a few flawed copies that have survived today. Unfortunately, the producers of translations after the King James Version of 1611 have decided to use these flawed manuscripts rather than those historically reliable ones. The result of this today is about one-hundred modern translations that distort or omit cardinal truths of the Word of God. In these translations, the deity of Christ is often undermined by the omission of such titles as “Lord” before the name Jesus; the virgin birth is denied when His mother is called “young woman” rather than “virgin”; and when the atoning basis of the blood is denied by omission of the word “blood” in references to God’s plan of human salvation.

You can be confident that God has preserved His word in a translation available to you today – the King James Version (1611). As a final note, I do not recommend the New King James Version which claims to be the same as the old King James Version with only minor changes of words. Careful examination of the New King James Version reveals that it has many of the same flaws already mentioned for all other versions produced after the King James 1611. A future lesson will present further details about the English Bible translation issue.

We hope this brief article helps you if you are just beginning your search into the eternally vital matter of how the Bible was written. There are many good books written on varying levels of technicality that students of God’s Word can obtain to learn more. If you would like to learn more about this subject you will find books available in Christian bookstores or in various mail order or internet sources. I have included a list of some books that have been very helpful to me though some of these may be out of print.

Questions to Build Your Knowledge

Answers to Questions

Suggested Reading

1. How the Bible Became a Book, by Terry Hall, Victor Books (1825 College Avenue,Wheaton, Illinois, 60187), 1990.
2. The Identity of the New Testament Text, by Wilbur Pickering, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980.
3. The Battle for the Bible, by Harold Lindsell, Zondervan, 1972.
4. The Answer Book, by Dr. Samuel C. Gipp, Bible and Literature Missionary Foundation (713 Cannon Blvd., Shelbyville, Tn., 37160), 1989.
5. Believing Bible Study, Edward F. Hills, The Christian Research Press (P.O. Box 2013,Des Moines, Iowa, 50310), 1977.
6. The Future of the Bible, Jakob Van Bruggen, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1978.
7. The Inspiration of the Bible, B.H. Carroll, Christ for the World Publishers (P.O. Box 3428, Orlando, Fl., 32802),

Questions to Build Your Knowledge

Answers to Questions

The Study Questions are in PDF format. You will need free Acrobat Reader to view this file. If you do not have Reader, click here to download from Adobe’s site.