Search the Scriptures Daily Program #3701a:
Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael; we’re glad you could tune in. Coming up in this week’s broadcast, in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their exploration of the gospel of John and “Did Jesus really walk on the water?” In Religion in the News, “Islam teaches peace and tolerance.” We’ll take a look at that story and revisit some of the questions from our recent special live broadcast. We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry The Berean Call offers many teaching materials including books, tracts, audio and video tapes and copies of our weekly broadcast on tape or compact disc. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter which we make available free of charge. We will let you know how to order later in the program. Now, this week’s cover article: We continue our discussions based on Dave Hunt’s book from Harvest House, with the 15 th installment of In Defense of the Faith and along with Dave Hunt, here’s T.A. McMahon:
Tom:
Thanks Gary . You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him. Our topic for today’s program is the reliability of the Bible which we’ve been discussing for a number of weeks. We’ve been taking our time and carefully considering how trustworthy the Bible truly is, because if it is not truly reliable then we—meaning you, Dave, I and everyone else on the planet have no sure way of hearing from God.
Dave:
Unless there’s some other way now Tom. Now don’t eliminate other religions now; other holy books like the Qur’an.
Tom:
We’re going to get to that.
Dave:
Okay. Alright, pardon me.
Tom:
We don’t need the Bible to know or prove that God exists, we’ve been over many programs dealing with that, but it’s imperative it seems to me, that we have some objective way of knowing that he’s communicating specific information to us.
Dave:
Yes, because the Bible tells us things creation can’t tell you.
Tom:
Right. If we have no such reliable way and we are left with whatever an individual decides, figures out, guesses at, so forth, well then we change the name of the program. We would call it “Search our best guess daily.” What do you think about that?
Dave:
Tom, I wouldn’t be interested at all. And yet that’s pretty much what these scholars say. They say the Bible isn’t reliable, and yet they study it. That baffles me.
Tom:
We’re using Dave’s book, In Defense of the Faith as the source of questions related to our topic, so let’s get right to our first one. “Since there are so many sacred books of various religions, all of which claim to be true, how can anyone be sure that the Bible is the true Word of God without first examining all the others? Even though another sacred writing might be mostly false, couldn’t it still have enough truth in it to make it worth the time and effort to examine all religious writings?
Dave:
Well Tom we’ve—
Tom:
That’s a lot of time and effort.
Dave:
Yes, a lot of time and effort. We’ve talked about that in the past. You couldn’t live long enough—you have to become an expert on every religion out there? There may be some obscure religion some where off in the jungle that we haven’t even heard about and they’re the ones that really have the truth. Well you don’t arrive at truth by a process of elimination. Truth is truth. If it’s truth, it ought to bear witness to itself. Now I have a little bit of a mathematical background. I wouldn’t know what to do with a partial differential equation if it hit me over the head right now.
Tom:
Say again?
Dave:
But once upon a time I could solve partial differential equations.
Tom:
Dave, I’m having trouble just following those words, let alone the math involved!
Dave:
That’s harmonics. That’s how you know a bridge would wiggle and wobble in the wind and why the one up there at the narrows collapsed and so forth. The engineers didn’t do a good enough job. But anyway, nevertheless, mathematics can be very simple too, and you don’t have to examine every possible combination of numbers to know that 2 + 2 = 4. I think you can prove that. Likewise, you don’t have to examine every lie in order to know what the truth is and you don’t have to examine every religion to know whether the Bible is true or not. And of course, we’ve been talking about this for sometime. The Bible proves itself and in fact the Bible claims—it makes this claim, narrow-minded, dogmatic claim, but it makes the claim that all other scriptures are false. All religions out there are false. All Gods out there, except the one true God are false. Now that’s a narrow minded, dogmatic statement. However, it’s like saying that 2 + 2 = 4. That’s all there is Tom, you can’t turn it into 5 or 6, okay? That’s dogmatic too.
Tom:
Dave, it seems it gets even tougher than that. It says check me out if there are any errors, any mistakes. Then I am invalid.
Dave:
You’re say (I am) meaning the Bible?
Tom:
Yes, the Bible, right. Now part of this question is that even though another sacred writing might be mostly false, couldn’t it still have enough truth? Now Dave, what is that? Mostly false, enough truth?
Dave:
Well yes, people do contradict themselves and a person could make a statement in philosophy for example, if the one part of the statement doesn’t depend on the other part of the statement, part of the statement could be true and the other part of it false. So I can understand what this person is saying. Maybe there’s some truth in there.
Tom:
But Dave, this is from God.
Dave:
But wait a minute; they are talking about other religions.
Tom:
Well that’s right, but other religions claim to be—you mentioned the Qur’an. This is a miraculous book; it can’t have any error in it.
Dave:
It claims to be, right.
Tom:
Yes, it claims to be. So that’s my point. And then let’s take it a step further. Who decides which and on what basis?
Dave:
Right, but Tom, that’s what a lot of people say about the Bible of course. The modernists, the liberals, they say well, the Bible contains the Word of God, but it isn’t the Word of God. Now that could be possible. There could be some parchment out there that is partially true and partially false. Now why couldn’t that be the case with the Bible? We’ve got to address a couple of things here. Why we don’t have to search around and dredge through all the muck and mire of the lies out there to find out maybe there’s a little bit of truth in there. You remember the old poem, have we quoted it on this program? Well, I won’t quote the whole thing but it ends like this—we have quoted it on this program, but it goes like this: “Who would leave the fountain head to drink the muddy stream where men have mixed what God has said with every dreamer’s dream.” So I don’t have to dredge through all the ideas of men to come up with some nugget of truth. The Bible claims to be God’s Word. Furthermore, now why wouldn’t the Bible have some truth and some error why wouldn’t that be a possibility? Well as you said, who’s going to decide which is which? So we become the authors, not God. But the Bible is a book that hangs together. One part of the Bible depends on other parts of the Bible. So if one part of the Bible is wrong, the whole thing is suspect now. But the Bible supports itself. That’s one of the marvels. We’ve talked about that before. Forty different writers, most of them didn’t know one another. [They] lived in different times in history; different cultures. And yet they don’t make any mistakes. None of them contradicts any of the others. So for every writer you could say every one of the 40 writers you have 39 others backing him up. Now that’s pretty powerful compare [with] you mentioned, the Qur’an. The Qur’an was written by one man. He claimed to receive this revelation from heaven, oh actually from the angel Gabriel. He did not write it down. It was written down on leaves and pieces of parchment or bark, or whatever was at hand, some of which was lost, and disputed and argued over and finally put together years after his death. In fact, a new caliph had everything else destroyed and he determined what was the true revelation that Muhammad had received and had been written down. In fact, Muhammad’s favorite wife Aisha, she declared that (I forget the passage now) but one particular passage when Muhammad was alive, when they had written it down, it originally had 124 verses and somehow in the final copy it was missing 70 verses of those 124 or something like that. Now we have a book that only came through one writer, and it’s of uncertain origin and preservation whereas the Bible, is by 40 different writers. Each one compliments and checks out on, and coincides with you know, they all tie in together. Furthermore, the masoretes for example, the copyists of the Old Testament, they were so careful they counted the letters on every page. They considered this to be God’s Word. They worked carefully.
Tom:
Dave, even prior to that, prior to the masoretes, they had to bathe themselves—this was a holy, sacred, religious duty and they took it seriously.
Dave:
Right, to make copies.
Tom:
Because, the claim is it’s God’s Word. Now before you go on, the criterion that we’re talking about has to be the same for every book that claims to be the Word of God.
Dave:
Exactly, exactly. We’re not playing favorites.
Tom:
No.
Dave:
We’re not going to give the Bible an easier test than we would anything else.
Tom:
What’s the point? Either we’re hearing from God or we’re not. And if we’re not, as I said, we change the name of the program, or go fishing, or do something.
Dave:
And I know you love to fish Tom, and exactly as God says, this is his Word. If it isn’t his Word, we’ve got troubles. You’ve said that. I mean we’ve got nothing, forget it, it’s just peoples’ opinion, but if it really is, and this only makes sense. If God intended to communicate with man, and if in fact he did so, I think that God would make certain that it was preserved. That he spoke clearly, that he spoke in a way that men could know that he had spoken. They could examine this and they could be confident that he had spoken and that what was preserved was indeed God’s Word. If not, what was the point of God going to the trouble to inspire prophets, if he did, if we wouldn’t have any way of checking up on them and really knowing? So this is what the Bible offers us. You can check it out, you can test it, and no other book stands up to those criteria.
Tom:
Yes, Dave we keep saying this over and over again. The name of this program is “Search the Scriptures Daily” and we just did—I know this show is taped, but earlier this week we did a live broadcast in which we took questions. One of the things that concerned me, whether they be people that encouraged us in what we are doing, or some who called were taking issue with the Bible and now correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t you ask a person if he had ever read the Bible? Somebody who had objection to it and said well just a little bit here and a little bit there? We encourage people to read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. You talked about 40 authors, men inspired by God to—
Dave:
That was their claim.
Tom:
That was their claim. Now you’ve got to check one out against the other. One writing a thousand years before another. Compare them. And it’s not that—my point is Dave, we want to encourage people to read God’s Word. It’s not that difficult. They can start with the New Testament, go to the Old Testament to Genesis, but if you want to know what God has to say, you’ve got to read his Word. You’ve got to get into a practice of it.
Dave:
You have to read the whole thing actually.
Tom:
Absolutely.
Dave:
I’m tempted to quote that poem again about reading the Bible through, but—
Tom:
Quote it again! That’s what we’re here for. Some people have heard it before, some haven’t, but I’d like to hear it. I’m impressed by your memory Dave, that you are able to put these things together and draw them out.
Dave:
I may not have this exactly right because I don’t think I ever saw it in print. But the man who led me to Christ, I did hear him on several occasions quote this and I think I remember it.
Yes, I thought I knew my Bible, Reading piece-meal hit or miss, Now a bit of Psalms and Proverbs, now a verse in Genesis. Certain chapters of Isaiah, certain Psalms, the 23 rd , 12 th of Romans, 1 st of Proverbs. Yes, I thought I knew the Word, but I found that thorough reading was a different thing to do and the way was unfamiliar when I read my Bible through. You who like to play at Bible, dip and dabble here and there, just before you kneel aweary and yawn through a hurried prayer, You who treat the crown of writings as you treat no other book, just a paragraph disjointed, just a crude impatient look. Try a worthier procedure; try a broad and steady view. You will bow in very wonder when you read the Bible through, and through, and through.
Tom:
And Dave, that’s not for scholarship, that’s for getting to know him. We had a lot of great questions in our two hour program earlier this week. Dave, we took a lot of calls and the people had questions. These are questions, they didn’t have to ask you about, or ask me. If they had an understanding of the Bible they would have had their own answers. They were relatively simple things that they could know by being familiar with the scriptures.
Dave:
See the reason why we need to be familiar Tom and we need to read it through is because the Bible is a unique book as we just said. Forty different authors, but they compliment one another. It all hangs together. You understand the New Testament by knowing what the Old Testament says. Because the Old Testament is the foundation for the New Testament. You understand the Messiah for example, by knowing the prophecies concerning the Messiah and so the whole thing hangs together and it’s like a painting you know. You look at just one part of the painting, you don’t get the perspective. You don’t get the overall picture.
Tom:
Right and again, it’s like a rich tapestry. You get to see the whole composition in front of you, but then when you begin to look at detail you see how these things interweave and compliment one another and it’s fantastic.
Dave:
Right.
Tom:
Dave, let me just keep going down that line because here’s a good example of what I mean. There were some people out there—these were Christians that were calling in and they were a little concerned because although the issue was jihad, holy war, and what Islamic fundamentalists were doing, you know the attacks and so on. They came back and said well wait a minute, didn’t God in the Old Testament, didn’t he send the Israelites out and didn’t they destroy these people and destroy that people? Well, you came back and said, rightly so, you can find what God did with regard to having people go into the land of Canaan and you established that this was specific for a particular reason. God didn’t just say now go in, he waited 400 and some years to the iniquity of the Amorites and so on.
Dave:
Right, it was because of the wickedness and he never told the Israelites to take over the rest of the world. He gave them particular land, right.
Tom:
But people would—my point is people wouldn’t know that.
Dave:
But you know it Tom, but you know we read things in the Bible, but sometimes we don’t put them together.
Tom:
Right.
Dave:
The Bible must be read with some rational understanding and logic and one part of the Bible helps us understand another part of the Bible.
Tom:
Absolutely.
Dave:
But now getting back to the Bible itself. It claims to be God’s Word. It makes that claim. In fact, “thus saith the Lord,” or “the Word of the Lord came unto me,” things like that; statements like that of divine inspiration are found about 3800 times in the Bible.
Tom:
Yes, you could just look at the Book of Ezekiel, starting with each chapter it says, “The word of the Lord came unto me…, the word of the Lord came unto me….” It’s either true, or this whole thing is a fraud.
Dave:
Right and if it is true, then other books, other sacred writings are false, because this book claims to be God’s Word and it definitely contradicts the Hindu Vedas for example, it contradicts the Qur’an—
Tom:
The Book of Mormon.
Dave:
Oh it certainly does. The Qur’an contradicts the Bible. The Qur’an for example says that one of Noah’s sons, Sam, refused to get in the ark and was drown. But the Bible says they all got in. That he had three sons and they had three wives, each had a wife and so forth. There are so many contradictions. It has—the Qur’an for example has Mary giving birth to Jesus under a palm tree out in the desert somewhere and her husband isn’t even there. The Bible says no, Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem and it tells you why. Because there was a decree from Augustus Caesar that the world would be taxed and Joseph had to go to the city of his origin, not under a palm tree. So either the Bible is truly the Word of God, which we can prove, then these other books are not the Word of God.
Tom:
Right, especially where they contradict, where they take issue—well for example, Muslim scholars in defense of the Qur’an, say that the Bible is corrupted and they are straightening the information out.
Dave:
Now we have a problem there Tom, because in the early part of Muhammad’s inspiration from Gabriel, he sites the Bible as being authoritative. In fact Gabriel, if this is Gabriel really talking to him, Allah speaking to him, says that when he wants an understanding he should consult the people of The Book because they have the understanding. But then later on he contradicts the Bible, he turns against the Bible when he turned against the Christians and the Jews because they did not accept his claim of inspiration. So then if the Bible is corrupted it had to be corrupted between the time when Muhammad wrote the first part of the Qur’an saying you should consult the people of the Book because they have the understanding and when he later began to contradict the Bible. But we have manuscripts that date way back, long before this.
Tom:
Well we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Old Testament laid out, the Book of Isaiah.
Dave:
And New Testament manuscripts as well, long before Muhammad.
Tom:
Well people should understand that the Qur’an was written in the 7 th century A.D.
Dave:
Right.
Tom:
Dave, our point here is that the Qur’an was written after the Old Testament and the New Testament, for people who don’t know that.
Dave:
But it still could have been the truth. They say that Muhammad was the 28 th prophet that Jesus was 27 th and Muhammad came to perfect and to correct the errors. That is only if there were errors. That is only if the Bible is not true, but if the Bible is true and Qur’an contradicts it, or the Book of Mormon, or the sayings of Confucius, or whatever, or you and I. That’s why we say “search the scriptures”. Check us out as well. We must have an authority. We must have an authority that is valid and that can only be God himself and his Word. Check us out from the Bible
