Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
March 13, 1983
Why I Believe the Bible
Isaiah 46:9-10, KJV
Is the Bible God's word or merely a human document? This is a crucial question and one which is very much disputed today. It is not, however, the most important question in evangelism.
Many Christians think they must prove the Bible is God's word before they begin to witness. This is not the case. The crucial issue in salvation is one's relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, not your view of the Bible. After a conversation with a believer a person should realize that the issue is, "What do you think of Christ?" rather than, "What do you think of the Bible?"
The Bible is the Word of God regardless of what a person may think about it. Fortunately you can consider what the Bible has to say before the question of its inspiration has been settled in your mind. I can still remember the first Bible I received. I was in the second grade and went to Sunday school at a Presbyterian Church in St. Louis that year. They gave me a King James Bible with pictures in it. I looked at each picture then shoved it in a bookcase, never to be opened again.
Years later, in high school, a friend witnessed to me and gave me a New Testament in the Living Bible version. I did not believe it was God's Word but I read it. In that Bible I found out about Jesus Christ for the first time in my life and I ended up trusting in him as my Savior.
There are other reasons for accepting the Bible as God's word. For one thing, that is what it claims to be - God's word. Turn with me to 2 Timothy 3:16. It says:
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."
The word inspired is not to be confused with the way people use it today. We say Shakespeare was inspired to write great plays or Beethoven was inspired to compose great symphonies. Inspiration in the Bible is different. The word translated inspired in 2 Timothy actually means God-breathed. It refers not to the writers but to what is written. Matthew was not inspired - his gospel is.
2 Peter 1:20-21 is another important statement. It reads:
"No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but of holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, or Spirit."
Here, again, the divine origin of the Scripture is emphasized.
There are many other places where the Bible claims to have a supernatural origin. Prophets knew they were God's mouthpieces and spoke as such. "The Word of the Lord came unto me" is a frequent phrase in the Old Testament. King David says in 2 Samuel 23:2 -
"The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me, and His word was in my tongue."
Jeremiah said:
"The Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, 'Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth!'"
And Amos cries out:
"The Lord hath spoken, who can but prophecy?"
The New Testament writers claimed the same prophetic authority as the Old Testament writers. In Corinthians 14:37 the apostle Paul claims:
"If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord."
Most significant of all, however, is Christ's view of the Scripture. What did he think of it? How did he use it? What was our Lord's attitude toward the Old Testament? He states emphatically in Matthew 5:18:
"Verily, I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law, till all be fulfilled."
Jesus quoted Scripture as the final authority and spoke of himself and of events surrounding his life as being fulfillment of prophecies in the Scripture. Perhaps his most sweeping endorsement and acceptance of the Old Testament was when he declared the finality in John10:35 -
"The Scripture cannot be broken."
If, then, we accept Jesus as Savior and Lord, it would be a contradiction in terms if we rejected the Scripture as the Word of God. On this point we would be in disagreement with the One whom we acknowledge to be the eternal God, the Creator of the universe. Just because they claim it, is it proof? Accept or reject it but don't sidestep it.
A further indication that the Bible is the word of God is the remarkable number of fulfilled prophecies it contains. Many people have despised the prophecies of God because they have not examined them to determine if they are reliable and true. The Biblical prophecies are quite specific, real and genuine. They are unique because they do not exist anywhere else. In all the writings of Buddha and Confucius you will not find a single example of predicted prophecy.
In the Muslim Koran (writings of Mohammed) there is one instance of a specific prophecy - a self-fulfilling prophecy that he, Mohammed himself, would return to the city of Mecca. This is quite different from the prophecy of Jesus who said he would return from the grave. One is easily fulfilled and the other is impossible to any human being.
Let us examine some of those who make prophecies today. Jeanne Dixon is probably the most famous prophet in America. Does she foretell the future? She makes some clever guesses but do they accurately come to pass as do the prophecies of Scripture?
In the decade of the fifties there were three presidential elections: one in '52, one in '56 and another in 1960. During that time Jeanne Dixon prophesied who would be the candidate for each of the major parties in all three of these elections and who would win the election. How did she do? She missed all of the candidates, all of the parties and all of the winners of all the elections.
In 1978 an article in the National Enquirer contained the predictions of the ten leading prophets in the world. They gave sixty-one predictions of events that would happen in the next six months. Do you know how many of them were actually fulfilled? Not one! You would think they would be lucky enough to hit at least one. Perhaps God wanted to show people how incapable they are of predicting the future. The prophecies of the Bible, on the other hand, must be exactly fulfilled. If it wasn't, the person giving it was a false prophet. As it says in Deuteronomy 18:22 -
"When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follows not, nor comes to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him."
The prophets in the Bible predicted the exact opposite of the natural expectations of people. They were not written after the event had already happened, as a fake prophecy because in hundreds of instances the fulfillment of the prophecy did not happen till hundreds of years after the prophet's death. Some are still being fulfilled today.
Consider the prophecies concerning Tyre and Sidon, two great cities north of Israel. Tyre was one of the wealthiest cities in the world but at it's height of power the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel declared the city of Tyre would be destroyed, never to be rebuilt and never again to be inhabited. He warned the city of Sidon that the inhabitants would be decimated but the city would continue. The facts are that the city of Sidon was attacked, it was betrayed by its own king, 40,000 of its inhabitants were killed but the city of Sidon continues until this time. As a matter of fact, the Israeli army occupied it during its invasion of Lebanon in 1983.
What happened to the city of Tyre? These are some of the specific prophecies about it as well. Turn to Ezekiel 26. When Tyre was at its height Ezekiel says in verses 4 to 5:
"And they shall destroy the wall of Tyrus (Tyre), and break down her towers. I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea, for I have spoken it, saith the Lord....
Go down to the last part of verse 12:
... And they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.
Now down to verse 14:
... and I will make thee like the top of a rock, thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon, thou shalt be built no more.
A few years after writing of this prophecy the great King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon brought his army to Tyre and laid siege to it for thirteen years. Finally the walls of the city crumbled and the hordes of the Babylonian army poured into the city and slaughtered every living soul in it. Thousands, however, had fled into the sea by boat to form the new city of Tyre on an island half a mile out in the Mediterranean Sea. The prophecy was fulfilled, therefore, only in part.
Centuries went by. Two hundred and fifty years later, when Ezekiel had long been moldering in the grave, most of the walls of Tyre still stood jutting into the sky - mute testimony to the fact that the prophecy had not been fulfilled. Millions of tons of stone, rubble and timber were left and yet God had said the city would be scraped clean like the top of a rock. Then in 300 BC a mighty conqueror appeared on the horizon. Alexander the Great attacked the dominant Persian Empire and gave the Persian king his first crushing defeat. As the might Persian army fled, Alexander turned south to conquer the ports of the Mediterranean. One after another, the cities capitulated and surrendered. Finally, Alexander came to the new Tyre, built with impregnable walls a half mile out in the Mediterranean. He commanded the city to surrender. When the inhabitants laughed at him, Alexander conceived one of the boldest and most daring plans in the history of warfare - they would build a causeway across the half-mile sea to the island of new Tyre. Where would they get the materials for such a causeway? The order was issued by the great king; "Tear down the wall of Tyre, take the timbers and the stones, the rubble and the logs and cast them into the sea." So the army of Alexander obediently began to fulfill the word of God.
History tells us that they scraped the very city itself to get everything they could to make this highway in order to destroy the new city of Tyre. It was finally besieged, destroyed and leveled. But the prophecy was still not completely fulfilled.
God had said he would destroy Tyre and make her like the top of a rock. It would be a place for spreading nets. More armies fought over the site until the Moslems destroyed it completely in AD1291. It died forever and was never rebuilt.
If you go to Tyre today, you will find it is a bare rock. Many tourists have taken pictures of the fishing nets which are spread out to dry there. The odds on this prophecy being fulfilled have been calculated at one in 75,000,000.
If you are an unbeliever - Explain it.
As it said in Isaiah:
"I am God, and there is none like me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done; saying, My Counsel shall stand."
The Bible claims to be the Word of God. The two thousand prophecies it contains prove it. Jesus Christ applied many of these to himself.
Do you believe the Bible? If you do, you should realize it was written to lead you to salvation. Jesus said:
"You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me."
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Much of the material in this sermon is derived from "Why I Believe the Bible," by Dr. James Kennedy [Thomas Nelson]. Similar material is in Josh McDowell's "Evidence That Demands A Verdict." The validity of the argument on fulfilled prophecy concerning Tyre and Sidon is disputed at several sites on the internet including <<http://blondguys.net/1997/may97/0059.html>> and <<http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/prophecy.html>>
Typed on January 5, 2006, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
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Another version of this sermon from 1990 in outline format:
Rev. David Holwick I
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
March 11, 1990
Isaiah 46:9-10
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I. Bible: God's Word or human document?
A. Crucial question, much disputed.
B. Not most important question in evangelism.
1) Don't have to prove Bible before witnessing.
2) Relationship with Jesus, not Bible, brings salvation.
C. Bible can be accepted before doctrine of inspiration is.
II. Reasons for believing in inspiration.
A. It claims to be inspired.
1) Direct statements.
a) Views of OT prophets.
b) Views of NT speakers.
2) View of Jesus.
B. Fulfilled prophecies.
1) Secular and religious prophecy.
a) Does not prophesy, or...
b) Fails at prophesy.
2) Biblical prophecy.
a) Ezekiel and cities of Tyre and Sidon.
III. Example of exact Biblical prophecy. (From Josh McDowell)
A. Sidon.
1) Ruin, but survival.
2) Fulfilled to present.
B. Tyre.
1) Total destruction.
2) Fulfilled over hundreds of years.
a) Nebuchadnezzar.
b) Alexander the Great.
c) Moslems.
IV. Conclusion.
A. Study of scriptures should lead to faith in Jesus.
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