The Bible is it True or Not Page 1

The Bible: Is it True Or Not?

Is the Bible from man or from God? Is it myth or Truth? Did you know that the Bible itself claims to be directly inspired by God, and claims to prove this by accurately telling the future?

Isaiah 44:6-7 (NIV) “This is what the Lord says-Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come- yes, let him foretell what will come.”

Sam Harris, author of the national bestseller, “The End of Faith”, says the Bible can’t support these claims:

“… just imagine how breathtakingly specific a work of prophecy would be, if it were actually the product of omniscience. If the Bible were such a book, it would make perfectly accurate predictions about human events… The Bible contains nothing like this. In fact, it does not contain a single sentence that could not have been written by a man or woman living in the first century.” (“Letter To a Christian Nation”, 2006, p. 60)

Who is right? Can the Bible tell the future or not? Read on and find out!

There are three broad categories of beliefs about the Bible:

1) There are those who believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.
2) Another group would be those who consider it to be their own religious tradition (to varying degrees), but do not believe it necessarily applies to everybody. This group often thinks of the Bible as a form of spiritual truth imperfectly passed on by fallible humans who were looking through the distorted lens of their own culture and belief systems.
3) The third group are those who believe it is completely false, a man-made myth or hoax.

The question is: Who is right?
We can disqualify the second category right off the bat. What those in the second category don't know or don't understand is: the Bible claims to be miraculous. It CLAIMS to be written by people who were in direct communication with God, who gave them the ability to accurately tell the future. This doesn't leave us with any middle ground. It was either written by people who were in communication with God, or it was written by people with mental problems or as a hoax.

So we are left with two options: either the Bible is true, the word of God, OR it is false, a man-made tradition. But we are still left with the question: Is there any way for us to find out who is right? Well, let's look at:

The claims:
In the Bible, God challenges anyone to foretell the future as accurately as He does:
Isaiah 44:6-7 (NIV) "This is what the Lord says-Israel's King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come- yes, let him foretell what will come."

To be in Category 3 (those who believe the Bible is a myth or hoax) you must begin with the assumption that the Bible doesn't contain actual prophecy. However, if the Bible can be shown to accurately tell the distant future, its claim to be inspired by God would be proven. Here's the logic- it is impossible to tell the future according to the laws of the physical world as we know them, so if someone could accurately tell the future, they could reasonably claim a supernatural (beyond the natural) origin for this ability.

The good thing is, we don't have to take anyone's word about whether or not this is true, we can check it for ourselves.

Wait! Don't be gullible- In order to show the Bible can really predict the future, we have to be able to show it can accurately predict things that are very unlikely, in the distant future, and they have to be things over which people could have no control. If we can't show all of these things, then we cannot prove the Bible is not a myth or a hoax.

Prophecy: Fact or Hoax?

The following are Bible prophecies written in or before the 4th century A.D. (Old Testament manuscripts date from the 3rd century B.C. and complete New Testament manuscripts date from the 4th century A.D). The fulfillment (or lack of fulfillment) of these are a matter of historical record and/or current events. What we must determine for each one is: is it Accurate, Unlikely, Distant and Uncontrollable?

• The Bible predicted the nation of Israel would be scattered to the ends of the earth and then regathered. Thousands of years ago, Old Testament prophets foretold the nation of Israel's inhabitants would be regathered from the ends of the earth. When this prophecy was written, the inhabitants had not been scattered to the ends of the earth yet, making it an unlikely prophecy: Isaiah 11:12 (NIV) "He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth." Stop and think about this. What an odd thing to predict. It would be much more reasonable to forecast the people would move a short distance away, maybe to the surrounding countries, before coming back a short time later. Why prophesy something as unlikely as its inhabitants being scattered to the ends of the earth and then coming back? But this is exactly what happened. It is quite impressive and unprecedented in any other culture that the Jews retained their identity for thousands of years, until they regained a homeland in 1948.

• The Bible predicted Israel would be born in one day. The Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament contains a very strange prophecy about the rebirth of Israel: Isaiah 66:8 (NIV) "Who has ever heard of such a thing? Who has ever seen such things? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children." This is exactly what happened. The nation known as Israel was occupied and destroyed by the Romans in the 1st century AD. Almost two thousand years passed. Then, in the 20th century, the United Nations devised a plan to divide what was then called Palestine (it was then under a British high commissioner) into a Jewish State, an Arab state, and an international zone. The Jews accepted the plan, but the Arabs rejected it. As the British began to withdraw, Arabs and Jews prepared for war. Israel was proclaimed a nation on the day the British high commissioner for Palestine departed, May 14, 1948. So, Israel was born in a day. Let's not be too easily taken in though. A person or group of people in power could have read that prophecy, and could have made it happen, for their own purposes. Perhaps some members of the UN decided to help it along, for their own reasons. But, at the time this prophecy was made, political entities like the United Nations that could create countries in one day without first having a war to decide it, didn't exist, did they?

• The Bible predicted Israel would become a country before it was fought for: Let's look at the Bible verse right before the one above: Isaiah 66:7 "Before she goes into labor, she gives birth; before the pains come upon her, she delivers a son".This verse talks about Zion (Israel) giving birth before she goes into labor. What could this possibly mean? We saw the verse above that talked about a country being born in one day, but what does it mean when it says she then went into labor? In his book, The Case forIsrael, Alan Dershowitz gives a description of what happened to Israel right after she became a nation: "As soon as Israel declared its independence, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon attacked it, with help from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Libya. Arab armies, with the help of Palestinian terrorists, determined to destroy the new Jewish state and exterminate its population." At the time that this prophecy was made, were any countries made before they were fought for? Doesn't a war usually happen before a country is born? What a strange and yet accurate prophecy! Israel indeed did give birth before she went into labor.

Prophecies which have NOT happened and are impossible:

•Correction- they have not happened yet and they were impossible at the time they were predicted- But they are now literally possible.

• The Bible predicts near world destruction caused by people: The Bible predicts a time of near world destruction: Matthew 24:21-22 "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now-and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened." Nowadays, we are aware of at least a few catastrophic scenarios, including nuclear war and global warming. But at the time this was prophesied, global warming was not an issue, and nuclear war didn't exist yet, of course. They were still fighting with swords. The book of Isaiah contains an unusual description of a war involving Israel: Isaiah 29:4-5 "Brought low, you will speak from the ground; your speech will mumble out of the dust. Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth; out of the dust your speech will whisper. But your many enemies will become like fine dust, the ruthless hordes like blown chaff". What kind of description of a war is that? People becoming dust? Where are the swords and the chariots? Thousands of years ago, what person would write this? And yet, what an incredibly accurate prophecy. The atomic bomb was first used in war three years before Israel became a nation again. But maybe we are making too much out of a few verses. The "people becoming dust" could be meant symbolically. It's just a lucky coincidence, because it doesn't specifically state how this would happen. Perhaps it's just speaking symbolically, poetically. However, we missed a verse: Revelation 11:18 "The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come ...for destroying those who destroy the earth." How was it possible, almost two thousand years ago, for people to destroy the earth??? This wasn't possible even one hundred years ago...But, of course, it is possible now.

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