The Bible Is God’s Word But How Can I Be Sure It Is Inspired By God?

The Bible Is Inerrant It is without error, mistake, contradiction or falsehood. It is true, reliable, trustworthy, accurate, infallible.

The Bible Is Inerrant  Every Word of God is True – Titus 1:2; John 17:17.  The Bible Is God’s Word – 2 Timothy 3:16.  The Bible Is True (Inerrant) – John 10:35.

God Promised The Bible’s Inerrancy  Guard the Apostle’s memories – John 14:26.  Believe “all” the prophets spoke – Luke 24:44.  Believe “everything” in the law / prophets – Acts 24:14.

Why Should We Believe The Bible? It’s Fulfilled Prophecies.  Accurately Predict Future Events – Isaiah 41:21-23, 26; 46:9-10; 48:3,5.  OT Events / People – Isaiah (700 B.C. ) predicted Cyrus of Persia (539 B.C. ) would release Jews from Captivity (44:28ff.; Ezra 1:1f.) Cyrus the Great

Why Should We Believe The Bible? It’s Fulfilled Prophecies.  Accurately Predict Future Events – Isaiah 41:21-23, 26; 46:9-10; 48:3,5.  OT Events / People – Isaiah (700 B.C. ) predicted Cyrus of Persia (539 B.C. ) would release Jews from Captivity (44:28ff.; Ezra 1:1f.)  Messianic Prophecies – 300 prophecies about Jesus in the OT. At least 7 of them were beyond His or the apostles control.

Why Should We Believe The Bible? It’s Fulfilled Messianic Prophecies.  Place of Birth – Micah 5:2 in Matt. 2:1.  Betrayal – Zechariah 11:12 in Matt. 26:15; Psalm 41:9 in Matthew 10:4.  Crucifixion – Psalm 22:16-18 in Luke 23:23 and John 19:23-24; Zech. 12:10 in Jn. 19:23.  Burial – Isaiah 53:9 in Matthew 27:57-60.

“we find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in ” Suppose “we take silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man, from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them in their own wisdom.”

Why Should We Believe The Bible? It’s Historical Accuracy.  Assyria was destroyed in 612 B.C. and not rediscovered until A.D  “…almost from the first turn of Layard’s spade, the city (Nineveh) began to surrender hundreds and then thousands of informative clues to the past. For centuries the only knowledge that such an empire existed was to be found in…Scripture…the skeptic jeered the scriptural accounts. So complete was Assyria’s extinction.” -George Meisinger

Why Should We Believe The Bible? It’s Historical Accuracy.  The Fall of Babylon to Persia in 539 B.C. is recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder.  “The Babylonian Chronicles report that Nabonidus left his son Belshazzar as coregent in Babylon. The Bible refers to Belshazzar as king, and for all practical purposes he was.” -Alfred Hoerth and John McRay

The Cyrus Cylinder records the Fall of Babylon in 539 BC. “…He delivered into Cyrus’ hands Nabonidus, the king who did not worship Marduk….” Daniel 5:7 – Why third ruler in the kingdom, and not second? “Nabonidus…had departed for Tema and left his son Belshazzar to rule.” – Bible Archaeology, Hoerth and McRay, 134

Inscribed c. 830 BC by Mesha, King of Moab (2 Kings 3:4-5) in the Moabite language. Lines 4-5: “Omri was king of Israel and he oppressed Moab for many days, for Chemosh was angry at his land.” Line 31: “and the house of [Da]vid dwelt in Horonem” (southern Moab). A. Lemaire, “’House of David’ Restored in Moabite Inscription,’ Biblical Archaeology Review, 20.3 (1994) 30-37

The Dan Inscription, a Syrian stele of victory over Jehu, BC. The fragment, found in A.D , is the first recognized extrabiblical reference to the “house of David.”

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser IIII, King of Assyria ( B.C. ). The second panel from the top shows Jehu, king of Israel, bowing before Shalmaneser III. The inscription says: “I received from him silver, gold…” and lists various golden vessels. Assyria marched against Israel in 841 B.C., at the beginning of Jehu’s reign.

Sennacherib’s Prism, 686 B.C. from Nineveh. A description of the Assyrian campaign against Judah in 701 B.C. “As for Hezekiah the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke, 46 of his strong walled cities…I besieged and took….Himself, like a cage bird, I shut up in Jerusalem, his royal city…..As for Hezekiah, the terrifying splendor of my majesty overcame him…. and his mercenary troops… deserted him.”

When the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah that were left, Lachish and Azekah, for these were the only fortified cities of Judah that remained. (Jeremiah 34:7, ESV ) Lachish Letter #4 indicates that only Lachish was left at the time of writing. “And let (my lord) know that we are watching for *[fire] signals of Lachish, according to all the indications which my lord hath given, for we cannot see Azekah” (Pritchard, The Ancient Near East).

Jehoiakim, King of Judah, B.C. died shortly before Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, B.C., besieged and captured Jerusalem. Jehoiachin, Jehoiakim’s son, was carried into Babylonian captivity in Kings 24:10-15; 25: Evil- Merodach released Jehoiachin from captivity in 561 B.C.

In 1962 this stone from a temple in Caesarea honoring the Emperor Tiberius contains the only archaeological evidence of Pontius Pilate. It is a dedicatory inscription in Latin: “Pontius Pilate Prefect of Judea.”

In Acts 17:6,8 - Luke calls the city rulers “politarchs.” Critics of the Bible called this a mistake. No known literary use of this word has been found. But in the archaeological excavations of Thessalonica this term was found on the arch of the city gate.

This inscription pavement stone in Corinth reads: “Erastus, for the office of aedile, laid [the pavement] at his own expense.” In Romans 16:23, Paul refers to a man by this name who was the city treasurer of Corinth.

Why Should We Believe The Bible? Scientific Foreknowledge.  “The life of the flesh is in the blood”(Leviticus 17:11-14).  “Because red blood cells carry oxygen, life is made possible….each human red blood cell is capable of carrying 270 million molecules of hemoglobin. If there were any less, there would not be enough residual oxygen available to sustain life after, say, a good sneeze, or a hard pat on the back….How was Moses so accurate? Just a lucky guess? -Bert Thompson and Wayne Jackson Human red blood cells

Why Should We Believe The Bible? Scientific Foreknowledge.  Circumcision on the 8 th day. (Gen.17:12). “…vitamin K is responsible for the production of prothrombin…it is only on the 5 th through 7 th days of the newborn male’s life that vitamin K begins to be produced…it is only on day eight that prothrombin climbs above 100%...The best day for a surgical procedure… Another lucky guess?” -Thompson and Jackson “In human beings the level prothrombin in the blood stream increases after birth and typically peaks on the 8th day after which the prothrombin level lowers to normal levels.” -S. I. McMillen, None of These Diseases prothrombin

“If we can trust the Bible when it’s telling us about straightforward earthly things that can be verified, then we can trust it in areas where we can’t directly verify it in an empirical way.” -Norman Geisler in Lee Strobel, The Case For Faith, 127 The Bible “has been proven to be accurate over and over again in hundreds of details, the burden of proof is on the critic, not on the Bible.” –Norman Geisler, The Case For Faith, 138

The Bible Is God’s Word “Let us walk by the same rule” – Philippians 3:16