Nuggets from Seeking and Finding God—Comparing the Bible’s Claims | thebereancall.org

Dave Hunt

Each religion offers a system of belief and practice taught by its founder whereby one supposedly gains acceptance with God. No religion claims that its founder died for the sins of the world and was resurrected. Nor is it essential to any of the world’s religions that its founder be alive. Christianity, on the other hand, depends entirely upon Christ himself having died for our sins and being resurrected, presently alive, and living by His Spirit within His followers. Jesus said, “Because I live, ye shall live also” (John:14:19).

Another unique feature of the Bible is its authorship. It was written by some forty different men over a period of about 1,600 years. Living in different cultures and at different times in history, most of them never knew one another. Yet the Bible comprises one intricately integrated message from Genesis to Revelation—without any internal contradictions. The continuity and remarkable content of the message can only be explained by inspiration from a supernatural Source. As the Bible grew, subsequent revelations were always consistent with what went before, supplementing, enlarging, and building thereupon.

These forty authors had only this in common: each claimed to be inspired by the one true God. If this claim is not true, the Bible is the greatest fraud imaginable and has done incalculable harm to billions. Yet it bears the unmistakable stamp of truth in many verifiable ways, and its unequaled moral effect for good could hardly be the fruit of fraud.

The oldest part of the biblical text dates back about 3,500 years and the newest about 1,900 years, yet it remains as valid and relevant as when it was written. Not a word or concept is outdated by the progress of civilization or science. One can find no other literature of the same time period of which that can be said.

There is not one word in the Bible that reflects the ignorance or superstition of the culture or the time in which it was written. Moses, for example, who wrote the first five books of the Bible, lived around 1600 B.C. He was raised in Pharaoh’s palace and given the best education available in the Egypt of that day. That means he was schooled in many grossly unscientific notions that were fully believed by Pharaoh’s counselors at that time. Yet not one of these errors appears in the writings of Moses. Instead, there is a wisdom and understanding foreign to, and far beyond, the culture of that time—something that could not possible be the case had he not, as he claimed, been inspired of God in what he wrote.