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Bible Basics
For Smart People
Who Do Not Want To Be Dummies
About God and the Bible
(Parts I, II, III)
By J. George Cover
Lesson 2 - What About the Bible? (Cont'd.) (Text Version)
3. Why Did God Give Us A Book Instead Of Some Other Means To Know These Things?
- It is reasonable and to be expected that these things would be written to preserve their truth. To pass things on by word of mouth can confuse what was originally spoken.
- It was God's command that these things be written.
- It is a way that all of us can have access to this all-important knowledge. It is the most reliable way to share it with other people.
4. How Do We Know That It Is Inspired Of God And True?
It is reasonable to believe that it is true for many reasons:
- The miracle of its existence in the first place.
- The wonder of its persecution and opposition through the centuries although its effects and influence was only good and good for mankind.
- Its preservation in spite of its many enemies and dangers of being destroyed over so many centuries.
- It is relevant throughout all the centuries.
- It is of interest and relevant to all ages of people, young or old, of all backgrounds, cultures, and nations. It has the interest of both the small child and the most educated scientist or doctor.
- The wonder of its circulation. It has been translated into so many hundreds of languages. Millions of copies of it are printed and sold every year.
- The wonder of its language. The New Testament was written in Greek, yet it was not written by Greeks; it was written by men who lived in Palestine, in Nazareth, in Galilee. The men who wrote them were not university men, or scholars, or original thinkers.
- The wonder of its inexhaustibility. It has infinite depth. Millions of readers and writers, age after age, have dug in this unfathomable mine, and its depths are still unexhausted. Most books will be read once and put aside but the Bible can be read and studied with interest during a whole lifetime. I began reading it soon after I could do so but at age seventy, it is more exciting and interesting than when I was young.
- The wonder of its authoritativeness. A person will sense that if he reads and studies it. Five hundred times in the first five books of the Bible one can read, "The Lord said," or "The Lord spake"! Three hundred times in the following books it also says that. In the prophetical books, twelve hundred times again such expressions are written as, "Hear the word of the Lord," or "Thus saith the Lord," or "The mouth of the Lord has spoken it." It challenges the will of every soul that ever lived with its stupendous claim: "God spake these words, and said." No other book addresses the universal conscience. The strange thing is that men in every age and place acknowledge it. They know that the book speaks to their inner consciousness with an authority like the authority of God Himself
- The wonder of its prophecies and their fulfillment. It shows things to come. Its predictions of what would happen to many nations and people have been fulfilled to the letter: Moab, Edom, Sidon, Tyre, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon are some examples. The predictions and fulfillments regarding the Jewish people are most amazing and only God could do it? No other people have survived 1900 years of being scattered into a nations of the world and re-gathered into their homeland to become a nation that all the other nations of the earth are so concerned about. God, in the Bible, all those many centuries ago, said that He would do it. The predictions of details of the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus were written hundreds of years before His birth on earth.
We Had Better Learn It And Learn To Obey It!
"Please tell me more."
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