One Incredible Book – The Bible
What 3,400-year-old book can you cite that is errorless in its prophecies, flawless scientifically, spot-on historically, up-to-the-minute both sociologically and ethically– all the while being as current as today’s newspaper?
The Bible is all of that, and much more.
There are 1,800 prophecies in the Bible and not one has ever been proven wrong. Being that the Scriptures are Yahweh’s inspired words, nothing in the original autographs could be anything but totally true, accurate, and irreproachable.
Psalm 12:6 tells us, “The words of Yahweh are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” In other words, perfect.
Everything the Scriptures give us in terms of direction in life is absolutely faultless. John 17:17 tells us, “Thy Word is Truth.”
The Word itself also claims inerrancy. Proverbs 30:5 and 6 tells us, “Every word of Elohim is pure.” It is thoroughly accurate.
The oldest texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls were produced about four centuries before Yahshua, and they validate the faithfulness of later manuscripts that were used for the translations of the Old Testament. Compare them with one Hebrew manuscript after another and you find them amazingly accurate.
The Bible Is Perfect and Complete
There has never been anything in the Bible proved false. The Bible is way ahead of its time in every category.
The Bible is also complete, with nothing more needed for the believer. From Genesis through Revelation all 66 books are comprehensive and nothing is to be added or removed from the text.
At the beginning of the book, Yahweh cautions, “You shall not add to the Word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it,” Deuteronomy 4:2. In the middle of the Scriptures, we read, “Every word of Eloah is pure…Add not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar,” Proverbs 30:5-6. At the end, in Revelation 22:18-19, we find the same prohibition against introducing any additions or deletions.
The perfection of the Scriptures also perfects us. Paul told Timothy in 2Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by Yahweh and is profitable for instruction, for correction, for reproof, for training in righteousness that the man of Elohim may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” It is sufficient. Nothing more is needed as to proper, spiritual training for salvation.
No special revelation from on high to individuals is required. Yahweh doesn’t need to buttress His Word in that way. Neither is Yahweh’s Word open to personal, private interpretation, 2Peter 1:20.
Scripture is authoritative and final for the entire universe. Isaiah 1:2 says, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for Yahweh has spoken.” Psalm 119:89 verifies, “Forever, O Yahweh, Thy Word is settled in heaven.”
This imperious book comes to us in the form of many commands. It reveals blessings when we follow it and sufferings when we don’t.
The Word even predicts that many won’t accept it or Yahweh’s laws as His standard of behavior today. The natural mind has innate resistance to obedience. The Bible calls it enmity in Romans 8:7:
“Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward Elohim; for it does not subject itself to the law of Elohim, for it is not even able to do so,” New American Standard Bible.
Man Naturally Dislikes Limits
We live by laws that regulate our everyday existence. We can’t survive without law. We see law operating in what we eat, how we move, and how we drive; law is behind what we live in, it regulates our finances, our government, our activities. Laws keep us healthy and safe.
Natural laws also make life possible–everything is controlled and kept in order by natural law–macro life or micro life, it all responds to and is limited in well-defined, fixed ways.
When we move to the moral realm, however, in the minds of the obstinate there is no absolute law. They want the wild West where you can do whatever you want with impunity.
That’s impossible. There are built-in moral principles and restraints in life. Serious social problems result when moral laws are ignored or violated. Prisons are filled with violators of moral-ethical laws.
Break Yahweh’s spiritual laws and you will get kickbacks and consequences just as when breaking physical laws like jumping from a skyscraper or ingesting poisons.
Paul clearly taught that law is always in effect, New Testament-focused doctrine notwithstanding, Romans 7:1.
How many know that the Bible contains over 250 passages in the Old Testament as well as 55 passages in the New Testament that require obedience to everything that is commanded in Scripture? In addition, there are 1,050 New Testament passages that speak of obeying Yahweh in His commands, statutes and judgments (Dake’s).
The Bible is an incredible book that explains the way to true happiness. Get in line with it and your life will be filled with hope and deep-down joy and satisfaction. Go against it and you will be miserable and suffer consequences. The Creator who put in place natural laws is the same one Who established moral and spiritual law.
The Bible is Scientifically Accurate
The Scripture presents the only viable explanation for the universe. And it has not been proved false in anything it says. Not a single statement is in error. No human work can do that.
Why don’t some brilliant professors who believe nothing produced everything write a book detailing the universe, the nature of man, and hundreds of long-range prophecies. Then, 6,000 years from now we’ll compare and see if everything they wrote is still true and accurate as the Bible.
The Bible speaks of the nature and behavior of man that is the same today as at the dawn of man’s existence. Man’s basic nature doesn’t change and that’s why the Word is as fresh as the day it was written.
In the physical world, the Bible affirms that mass doesn’t go out of existence. It can alter form but it doesn’t disappear. Communities found that out when they burned trash at city dumps. You didn’t really get rid of the trash, you simply changed its form, going from land pollution to air-polluting smoke.
The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the universe remains constant,
Does the Bible know anything about that?
Note what Isaiah said thousands of years ago, “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth,” 40:26.
Here we find not only that all the stars and planets are named, but also a confirmation that their matter cannot go out of existence. Nehemiah 9:6, also reads, “Thou hast made heaven, the earth and all things therein, the seas and all things therein and Thou preservest them all.”
Ecclesiastes 1:10, “Is there anything of which it may be said…See, this is new? No, it has already been from of old.” The Bible has been proclaiming this for thousands of years.
The Bible also affirms another law which says, left to themselves things break down, become disordered. They don’t become more complex, more sophisticated, more organized. Build a sand castle and eventually wind, waves, and rain will flatten it out. Erect a skyscraper and it will in time rust away and collapse. It won’t evolve into a space shuttle.
The law of increasing disorder (also the Second Law of Thermodynamics) alone disproves evolution because it says things start from order and go to disorder, not the other way around. In other words, everything put together will eventually fall apart on its own, not become more complex and sophisticated.
Disbelievers want to believe in evolution because they don’t want a Creator; because then they’d be subject to His commands and be under His judgment. So just eliminate Him with a theory that everything happened all by itself! That’s lunacy.
Incredibly, supposedly “smart” scientists believe it! Scripture even addresses them in Romans 1:22, 25: “Professing themselves wise they became fools…They exchanged the truth of Yahweh for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised,” NIV.
Evolution focuses entirely on created things, trying to find a link between them that would support their hypothesis.
Romans 8 presents this to us in very clear terms. Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote before any scientist had come up with it. “The creation was subjected to nothingness.” Evolution has to begin with something. It can’t run on nothing.
When the Bible talks about scientific things it is totally accurate. Even science fails to explain where the primordial soup came from. Where the spark came from that supposedly began life and all of the other impossibilities inherent in this theory.
The Book of Job in 26:8 and 36:27-28 describes a great deal about the scientific workings of the earth, including evaporation and condensation. Ecclesiastes 1:7 gives the water cycle.
Wise, Foolish Man
Man professing himself wise is but a fool. Old ideas about the earth and about the solar system were very strange. Before 500 years ago many thought that the earth was a CD, a flat disk.
When Copernicus came along in the 15th century he presented the idea that the earth was in motion. He asserted that the earth rotated on its axis once daily and traveled around the sun once yearly: it was a fantastic concept for the times. People first thought he was crazy when he said the earth was spinning at 1,000 mph because they couldn’t feel the motion.
Hippocrates – another “great” mind – said there were one thousand and twenty-two stars in the sky. Ptolemy said, “No, there are one thousand and fifty-six.” And Kepler said, “You’re both wrong, there are one thousand and fifty-five.”
Why didn’t they read Jeremiah 33:22, which says the stars can’t be counted. Give it up, fellows, they are too numerous to be counted. Estimates today reach into a hundred billion stars and planets in our galaxy alone, and there are billions of galaxies!
Job says Yahweh hangs the earth on nothing. How did he know that? One ancient Eastern book says it rests on seven layers of sugar, honey and butter. The Hindu says it rests on the backs of elephants. And when Job says He turns the earth like the clay to the seal, he’s simply saying it rotates on an axis.
How did Job know that? In fact he uses the word klug, which speaks of the circle or sphere of the earth as does Isaiah 40:22. How did he know it was a sphere? Job said Yahweh imputed weight to the wind. It wasn’t until the seventeenth century that anybody realized that a column of air had weight.
It’s said that George Washington died after doctors bled him to death trying to cure a viral infection. They used to bleed you for healing until they finally figured out what the Scriptures had been saying for thousands of years: “The life of the flesh is in the blood,” Leviticus 17:11. Blood carries life. When Yahshua shed His blood for us, He gave His life for ours. Blood for blood.
Astronomical Chances for Accuracy
The Bible has made amazing prophecies that have already been fulfilled.
No human could predict with such exactness what the Bible prophesied about Yahshua’s identity, name, birthplace, and burial all 700 years before He was born. The likelihood that 48 prophecies about someone were accurately fulfilled would be 1 in 10 followed by 157 zeros. Yahshua fulfilled more than 300 prophecies about Himself, made 150 years before He was born,
Isaiah predicted where Cyrus, king of Persia, would be born, what his name would be, and his act of releasing Israel from captivity. In addition, King Josiah was named 300 years before his birth, 1Kings 13:2.
Prophetically the Bible is without peer. No human could write such pre-history and come even close to the precision as in the Word. Nobody on earth knows what the future holds. But Scripture does.
The Bible refers to the Hittite people 36 times. Because no outside record could confirm their existence, skeptics said the Bible couldn’t be trusted. Excavations in Turkey now have shown that the Hittite empire was extensive.
The same non-existence was claimed of the biblical cities of Ur, Sodom, and Gomorrah until the Ebla tablets were found in the 1960s.
No other book of any other major world religion answers the question about the origins of the universe, the human race, why there is suffering in the world and how to eliminate it, and what man’s destiny is. Only the Bible does.
Nothing explains all of this except that Yahweh wrote it.
Nothing else explains its scientific accuracy.
Nothing else explains its prophetic accuracy.
Nothing else explains its spiritual and penetrating power and its ability to transform lives.
Nothing else explains its miracles which are from front to back in the Word – verified by many eyewitnesses. Being that the Bible is proven totally true and accurate on many levels, let alone that it is the very key to life, who would not want to learn it for the sake of their own salvation?
One of the biggest hindrances to Bible study is when we come to Scripture with presuppositions and force the Bible to conform to those beliefs.
Time for Proper Study
You can’t learn Scripture if you don’t know what it says. Begin with prayer, asking Yahweh for His guidance.
One effective way to learn the Word is to take a book like Acts and read it. Read all of the book. Then read it again. Read it 30 times in a row until you know the book. You’ll know where certain verses are by location on the page in your favorite Bible (like the RSB!).
Look at chapter headings in the RSB. Memorize what those chapters are about.
In 2 Timothy 2:15 we have a starting point biblically that gives us a mandate to study the Scriptures. It says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to Elohim as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.”
So how do we handle it accurately?
Appreciate the Language
As we know, the Bible was not written in English. The Old Testament was written in a more ancient Hebrew with some passages in Aramaic, spoken during the time of Yahshua among the Jews.
Right at the start, we face a problem. Not only was the Old Testament written in Hebrew but it was also written in a kind of Hebrew that isn’t spoken today. Hebrew changed over time as languages do. And the New Testament was translated into a Greek language that is different from the Greek of today.
It’s even called koine Greek which means common Greek and it was different from the more sophisticated or literary Greek.
To know the Bible well knowing the language is very important. Somebody has to know the language. If you as a Bible student don’t know it you need to have somebody who does know it informing you about it. That’s where commentaries come in and word aids, as well as lexicons and studies, like: Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New and Old Testament Words, Gesenius, Brown Driver Briggs Hebrew Lexicon, Thayers Greek Lexicon. There never was a time when we had more opportunity to be good students of Scripture because there have never been more study tools available.
Another difficulty we face is the culture gap, which deals not with the speech but with the customs. Speech is connected to custom.
Idioms – Language Landmines
Speech is idiomatic. We’re familiar with certain English idioms that make the language difficult for foreigners.
Imagine a foreigner trying to figure out what you mean when you use the following idioms:
“I smell a rat”
“Pay through the nose”
“Knock your socks off”
Imagine the problems of trying to learn English that’s filled with these strange idioms!
When you deal with ancient language you’re also dealing with idiomatic speech, and you’re dealing with expressions that are reflective of an ancient culture, and knowing the culture is crucial. You can’t re-create the setting biblically unless you know the culture.
Understanding many things about culture – Jewish culture, Greek culture, pagan culture – is key to interpreting some passages.
Another hurdle is the geographical problem. For example, Deuteronomy 16:1 discusses Abib as the first biblical month. What occurs at this time in this area of the world? Barley ears of grain are green, and “green” is where the word Abib derives.
Hebrew-Greek Differences
It has been said that the best way to learn your own language is to study a foreign language.
Hebrew is not as complex as Greek. In fact, there’s no single Greek verb that is uniformly regular. Which means that in learning Greek you do a lot of memorizing of irregular verb parts and every verb has a myriad of forms. Each time you change any of the grammar in the sentence the form of the verb changes.
If you understand the mechanics of language, you can better understand its meaning.
If you want to study Hebrew or Greek be prepared to do an immense amount of memorization, and Greek more so than Hebrew. In Hebrew virtually every word is tied to a three-letter root. You can understand a variety of related words just knowing the one root word.
Another issue we confront in Bible understanding is the culture gap. How did the Hebrews think? How did the Greeks think? When Paul is writing to the Corinthians in 1Corinthians 11 he gets into long hair and head-coverings.
One of the things Greek women were doing in Paul’s day was demanding liberation. They were shaving their heads. Understanding that background, when Paul talks about a woman’s hair being her glory your understanding is enriched.
Historical context is also key, as in understanding, for example, why Pilate tried so hard to get the Jews to release Yahshua, why he washed his hands of the whole sham after finding Yahshua innocent, and yet impaled Yahshua anyway.
Realize that Pilate was already up to his neck in trouble with the Roman Empire because of at least three major mistakes that he made while he was governor. And the Roman Caesar wanted Pax Romana, Roman peace in the Empire, and all Pilate kept doing was getting hostile Jews angry with Rome.
The Jews realized this when they finally pulled their trump card and said to him, “If you don’t impale Him, we’ll tell Caesar.” Knowing the back story provides greater depth of insight.
To understand 1Corinthians 12 to 14 in regard to speaking in tongues you need to realize the meaning of two words in the Greek language, enthusiasmos and ekstasia, which is enthusiasm and ecstasy transliterated into English.
Those words defined the nature of worship in the mystery religions, which included whipping the people into ecstacy and enthusiasm, both of which were sort of altered states of consciousness in which you flipped out and did bizarre and wild things. To the pagans this was sort of mystically how you connected with the deities.
We at Yahweh’s Restoration Ministry are dedicated to returning to the faith once delivered. That includes preaching the Word without fear or compromise. We know that to do so is not popular, even among those who should know better. Yet, we can do nothing else if we are to be faithful to the Word. If you would like to join in that goal in these last days, we would be greatly blessed to have your help in any way.
We pray that this article on The Bible was a Blessing to you, For all of our other articles please check out our main articles page
