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I'll summarizes some of the main points of the video here. This is largely a question of if the authority of Scriptures, the reliability of the translation of Scripture, the infallibility of Scripture (as communicated by God the Holy Spirit to the original authors) and the clarity with which God communicated His message to His intended audience. I typically follow the Historical-Grammatical approach to Biblical Interpretation (see How to Interpret the Bible which speaks of the various approaches to biblical hermeneutics). With that in mind, a key verse here would be Exodus 20:11 (the justification for the fourth commandment), "For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." This leaves no room for Progressive Evolution, The Gap Theory, or any other Theistic Evolution model that tries to insert millions, billions, or even trillions of years into the Bible (what some people call "deep time").
Without the creation account of Genesis 1, the story of Adam and Eve which gives the foundation of law, government, family, and the good work that God calls us to to "keep" (protect and cultivate) His creation don't make sense. We then also can't explain the existence of sin and death which are explained by Genesis 3, and then the whole gospel falls apart because if there is no First Adam, there is no need for a Second Adam. Also, the end of Revelation doesn't make much sense without a literal interpretation of Genesis as the end is a better version of the beginning. We see the Tree of Life as bookends of the story--Adam and Eve are kept from the Garden so that they might not eat of the Tree of Life after they sinned, but the Tree of Life is available for all to eat freely in the New Heavens and New Earth. The video makes other good points, but these were a few that I wanted to highlight.
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This is the companion to the other blog I wrote today called "Why We Can Trust the Bible-The Old Testament." I'll point you back there if you have questions about what is the Old Testament and how we can know that it is reliable. Here's a link: http://www.danielwestfall.com/blog/why-we-can-trust-the-bible-the-old-testament?fbclid=IwAR35nI6e3amUT4xy_JN2tU79RBYF1uSVb5ZOwe2DveI91pIfXY7E99CHlxc
With that said, the attacks against the New Testament are usually different than those against the Old Testament and therefore the arguments presented here are also a little different. There is no doubt historically from contemporary secular sources to the time of Jesus' birth, His miraculous deeds, teaching, His identity as "the Christ," and his trial death and resurrection according to the Scriptures. "About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared." Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3[ So, right out of the gate, I'm going to tell everyone that I'm not going to argue with skeptics that deny history. Even a Jewish historian said that Jesus was the Christ and while I believe his Jewish faith kept him from coming right out and saying that Jesus was God in the flesh, he came as close as he dared to saying this (which could have been considered blasphemy--a crime punishable by death by the Jewish law). Notice how he said, "if indeed one ought to call him a man." What else is there other than a man but to assume that Josephus knew that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (God in the flesh)? My argument doesn't solely hang on this testimony. the New Testament also meets the criteria used by most scholars for textual criticism when it comes to reliability of the text and that is numerous copies in close proximity to the date of the original publication. The closest partial manuscripts of the New Testament are approximately 50 years past when they were supposedly written. The earliest complete copy of the New Testament is about 225 years old and there are 24, 633 partial or complete manuscripts (hand-written copies) of the New Testament according this video posted by Josh McDowell on July 2, 2012. So, we have testimony to the historical accuracy of the events told in the gospels and we have more manuscripts than we can shake a stick at to show us that indeed the words we have in front of us today are reliable both in terms of authorship and the words that be believe were originally penned by the author. I encourage you again at this point to go watch the videos that I posted in the last blog (I'll repost them here) for additional evidences and to do your own research. If you seriously want to know that God exists, that His Word is true, and that He and His Word can be trusted, simply ask Him and seek him out with sincerity. He promises that He will answer you--just maybe not in the way that you expect (see the book of Job as an example of this). Proverbs 8:17 New International Version (NIV) 17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. Jeremiah 29:13 New International Version (NIV) 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Matthew 7:7-8/Luke 11:9-10 New International Version (NIV) 7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. James 1:5-8 New International Version (NIV) 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do. Take God at His word and ask and seek Him and see if He doesn't follow through. It is His character and name that are on the line, and He will deliver what He has promised. The Bible: Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225 Is the Bible Reliable (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850 Is the Bible True (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51 Is the Bible Accurate (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B (some videos may appear in more than one playlist) Let me first say that in this post when I refer to the "Old Testament" I'm referring to the books of Genesis through Malachi in Bible (39 books) or the 24 books of the TNK in the Hebrew Bible, but I'm not referring to any interdepartmental books, nor am I referring to the other books of the apocrypha that claim to be missing pieces of the story. If I mention the New Testament I'm talking about the books of Matthew through Revelation in the Bible and again am not referring to any of the the other books that may sometimes be argued to be part of the Bible. The Bible as I'm going to talk about it is 66 books in total, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. I thought it important to define these terms before I get started on these blogs.
Many today take the "Old Testament" as being unreliable because it is "old" or some take this to simply mean that it is "outdated" and no longer has anything to teach us. Neither could be farther from the truth, nor can we we say that we have something to learn from it but it's simply a lot of "Bible stories" that have moral principles to teach us, but have not basis in history or fact, as we know that Jesus himself quoted from the several passages as historical fact on many occasions. With those precepts in mind, let's talk about the "textual criticism" that so many in higher education fall victim too today. It sounds like a great idea, but it just doesn't hold water. First, let's talk about why the intellectuals want to believe in textual criticism. It denies the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring men to write and speak on the behalf of God throughout the ages to communicate His message to His people and the surrounding nations while validating their message through miracles and other signs such as prophecy that was fulfilled in their time and prophecy that was yet to be fulfilled. So, let's first start with something important to me. The Bible is historically accurate. I can't expound any one of these points too much, but I encourage you to see how archeologists have used the Bible as a map to where civilizations should be and found them exactly as described where described and it even lead to discoveries such as finding oil in the Middle East (because where there is tar and pitch, there is oil-see Genesis 14:10 and Exodus 2:3 for example). also more recent things such as the description of how the nation of Babylon fell in a single night and was taken over by the Medes and Persians. There is so much that was once doubted and we were told that we couldn't believe the Bible because it talked about a people group that no one could prove existed...but that's not how it works. You believe someone is telling the truth until you can prove that someone is lying to you. I'm not aware of a single archaeological discovery that contradicts anything about the historical record given in the Old Testament. Because of it being historically accurate in the parts we can confirm, then that only solidifies that the other historical narrative in the Bible is probably also accurate. I can't imagine that such care would have been taken to get the facts so right hundreds of years after the supposed events happened or that someone just making up "moral stories" would care so much about getting the names and locations of civilizations so right. If you were making something up and you knew it, you'd want it to not be falsifiable--you wouldn't add details like the 63 or so Old Testament passages that say "to this day".....and tell people to go look for the altar or monument that was built, or to look for the ruins of a destroyed city, or explain why the name of a city was changed due to a great event that happened there. Don't all those things sound extremely verifiable? Let's continue that theme now, but let's move away from the historicity aspect but build upon it. Now we have to approach topics like prophecy--especially that which has already been fulfilled. Are we willing to treat it in the same way? Namely, are willing to put forward the assumption that the telling of the story about when and how these messages were conveyed is also just as accurate as the other historically verifiable items in the text around them? There would be little reason for me to doubt the veracity of the authors that have already been proven right on so many other issues, also let's be clear about what the punishment was for someone who was a false prophet according to the Old Testament--the punishment was the death penalty as prescribed in Deuteronomy 13. Certainly there was no reason for them to lie about things that would happen near-term and be found out, nor does it make sense that any such prophet would continue to be included in the Jewish Scriptures if that prophet was proven to be a false prophet who said they heard a message from the LORD and it did not come to pass (see Deuteronomy 18). We again though can look at the number of things that have already been fulfilled and make a logical leap of faith that the other things that have not happened yet are still going to come to pass because these prophets so far have never lied to us. We then have many passages in the New Testament that go back and point to the prophecies in the Old Testament to tell us what was fulfilled and how it was fulfilled and even why it was fulfilled in the way that it was. It would be nearly impossible for any person or group to intentionally try to manipulate the events of history at a certain point to make sure that prophecies were fulfilled to point to a false Christ/Messiah. Many people try to take the other track to say that means that the prophecies must have been written after their supposed fulfillment, but I'll cover that in the next section. For years we've been told that there is no way that the Old Testament could have been written concurrently with the events of the time. We know from certain passages already mentioned that there was a writer that either wrote the oral stories down later or annotated some of the writing later with statements such as "and to this day...." With that said, there isn't evidence that the scribes manufactured new Scriptures during or after the time of the Exile (the period when the northern 10 tribes were captive to Assyria and all traces of them have been lost historically and when the southern two tribes were sent into captivity to Babylon, which was later taken over by the Medo-Persian empire). In fact, quite to the contrary, every scrap of Scripture and every scroll that we find that is older than the list known copy has been as close to an exact copy as anyone could expect. It was the job of the scribes to copy the Word of God word for word. This was their entire life's duty. When a scroll was getting to the point where it could no longer be read and could be misread and therefore misinterpreted, a new word-for-word copy was made and the old copy (the original) was burned as were any copies where mistakes were made in the process. To avoid mistakes the scribes came up with a system of numbering the words and letters to make sure they didn't miss any. This has given rise to some of the ideas of numerology where there is somehow a "hidden code" and that these numbers themselves hid a deeper meaning, but it seems that they were simply a way to check and make sure that they didn't add anything or leave anything out and got the Word of God exactly right, because they didn't want anyone to have an inferior copy of the Word of God. Those are the best arguments that I can make for now for the historicity, the fulfilled prophecy, and the word-for-word accuracy of the Old Testament which makes up about 2/3 of the Bible. The arguments for trusting the Old Testament are somewhat different (though sometimes similar) and will be covered separately. For anyone who is genuinely interested in the evidence for some of the statements that I've put forward or simply has more questions about the Bible, let me refer you to a couple of video series from a Christian apologist that I think will give you more than enough evidence. The Bible: Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225 Is the Bible Reliable (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850 Is the Bible True (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51 Is the Bible Accurate (playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B (some videos may appear in more than one playlist) “Where did I come from?” is a bigger question than it may seem. The easy answer might seem to be on that’s purely physical....ovulation, fertilization, gestation, etc. In some sense this answer would make us sound “like any other mammal” which is what many of us are taught in our Life Sciences class. However, is that ALL that we are? Are we simply physical? What about the part of us that is spiritual/eternal? Where did that come from? Just as the physical part of us is made “in the image of” our parents, are we somehow made “in the image” of someone/something with these eternal, spiritual attributes as well? We speak of body (physical), soul (spiritual), mind (mental), and heart (emotional). Which of these (if any) are unique to humans, or do all creatures share some or all of these with us? What makes something living vs non-living? Do non-living things still share a common ancestry? If “life comes from life,” then is there any “first life” that all living things come from, and how is it that possible....could something living come from something non-living to become the first living thing, or must there be something both living and eternal which could be the source of all life?
Let’s look at the book of Genesis for some biblical answers about the origins of everything. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1). This verse says a lot in just few words, but that’s not all that the Bible tells us about origins. It is true that Bible is not a Biology textbook, but we can learn a lot about where we come from within its pages. This first book of the Bible, Genesis, is literally “The Book of Beginnings/Origins.” It answers questions like:
It is important to answer where we come from because this directly leads into the questions of Meaning, Morality and Destiny. If we were a “random accident” then we are without purpose, without destiny and without any reason to live by any moral code. We have no way no fixed reference for right/wrong, good/evil, etc. Yes, our belief about our origins is vital to the formation of the rest of our world view. Were we designed with a purpose beyond the physical act of conception or is meaning something we have to strive and make for ourselves and morality something we define for ourselves? We’ll talk about these things and more as we continue, but for now, I encourage all of you to read the Book of Genesis. It’s 50 chapters that is historical narrative, meaning that it should be ready like a biography....real stories about real people in real places. Also, let me stop here and say even though I used the word “stories” that is not to imply anything such as “fable” or “fiction” or “fantasy.” No, this is a true, historical account, so I encourage you to read it that way. That doesn’t mean that the book of Genesis won’t challenge you as you come across supernatural elements (even through somewhat natural means sometimes) where God intervenes in ways that cannot possibly be explained apart from His intervention (such as Abraham and Sarah having Isaac in their old age). We begin to see that all of this is His story that He works all things together for His plan...even the things that we meant for evil (see the story of the life of Joseph for that one). This note is not meant to give answers to all of your questions or even to give evidences or proofs for the statements that I made here, but instead to show that what we believe about Origins determines a lot about what we believe. I think I’ve made it clear that I believe in the account six-day account of “special creation” told in the book of Genesis. That may lead some of you to ask me several questions and while I may not have all answers, I don’t need to understand everything to know from what I see around me that the universe shows design and order that to me can only be explained by a designer and law giver. Nor can I explain man’s soul by purely physical means...there must be something else...someone else that gives us that life and puts eternity in our hearts and give us the desire to even think about the existence of God, to try and know Him, and even to worship Him. Such things do not make sense at all from a Naturalistic perspective...even life itself cannot truly be explained by that model as living things are clearly more than the some of their physical parts. The information in our DNA is a code much like a computer program or even a language....we’d never look at a computer program and say “Isn’t it amazing how those commands just happened to come together in a meaningful way where the computer could understand them and so that it would perform this function.” We’d never say that even for the simplest of programs because we that design and information have to come from a designer and intelligence. This is much the same argument that can be used on a much larger scale (see Romans 1) on how all of creation tells us of God and His invisible attributes and those who reject the account of creation do so because they desire to reject Him and His authority over their lives, not because of a lack of evidence or proof. This is the story of man that we see in Genesis that he wished to be God and know good and evil and make his own destiny, and so little has changed since then...we’ve just found new ways to be evil, but thank God for His plan of redemption and salvation and His giving of Jesus Christ so that we who were dead and without hope could find the answers to life, meaning, morality and destiny in Him. |
ABout This SectionThese articles will cover topics about the Christian worldview. They will largely address the questions of Origins, Meaning, Morality, Destiny and Identity, but they may also have more practical applications to our orthodoxy (what we should believe) and our orthopraxy (how we should live out our faith). Nothing is off the table here as if we are Christians we should be Christians in everything we say, do and think. Archives
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