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The characteristics of God's revelation
So how would God authenticate His message so that skeptics could be sure the Bible was truly from God and not just the writings of mere men? Here are several key points.
1. The Bible was written by about 40 different authors (the exact number is not certain) over a span of 1600 years.
You've seen those story starters that ask you to continue the story. Imagine the result of different people continuing a story starter like this over centuries resulting in one unified message. It would be almost impossible for that many people to write one continuous story containing a single message without contradiction unless inspired by God. Imagine a group of doctors over a thousand-year period writing on the subject of medical practice. They would quickly be discrediting previous authors as new discoveries are made. Even when a few authors write about a single event, such as WW2, a number of contradictory accounts are created. Yet the Bible contains no accounts that have been proven to be genuine contradictions. Only a few minor questions can even be raised about specific points that are mentioned by certain writers and left out in other accounts.
Naturally, God chose one group or family of peoples to record and carefully guard His message to the world. He chose the Jewish people, a small defined race that maintained its identity over many centuries. Through a unique, highly sophisticated language, these writers maintained a remarkable level of accuracy as these accounts were transmitted over many generations.
God's divine communication to the human race was transmitted by divine inspiration to individual writers, but recorded in a permanent written form capable of being examined and read by the writer's contemporaries and every generation from every race that was to come in the future.
2. The Bible contains information that could not have been written by any person without divine inspiration.
Hundreds of detailed prophecies were fulfilled exactly as described up to hundreds of years after those predictions were made. Some were calculated to the exact day of the future event. No one but God can predict the future.
3. God inspired biblical writers to record His infinite wisdom and truth.
The wisdom of the Bible continues to transcend all of man's wisdom, even today. None of the guidelines for living contained in the Bible have been proven to be less than ideal at any point in human history, by any civilization.
4. The writers of the Bible present themselves with all their faults and weaknesses.
This is significant, because it runs against human nature to find authors revealing themselves with such candor. Authors recording typical human history always try to present themselves in the best light possible. In addition, the biblical revelations contain intricate details that have been verified with secular archeological records, proving the overall truthfulness of the historical accounts.
5. The Bible contains advanced medical and sanitation knowledge that was thousands of years ahead of its time.
This medical knowledge from the Bible continues to be corroborated by the most sophisticated new medical science. Hundreds of the commands revealed by Moses refer to sophisticated medical knowledge of bacterial infection and other issues.
6. There continue to be hundreds of times as many original manuscripts of the biblical records as there are of any other historical book from equivalent time periods.
This fact demonstrates not only that the Bible was the most significant book at any point in history, but that it remained completely unchanged throughout all the centuries. Over 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament alone exist today despite the fact that the Roman emperors attempted to kill all Christians and burn their books.
7. A careful study of the original Hebrew manuscripts reveal unique mathematical designs.
These sequences are so complex that no human could possibly have produced them. Although some mathematicians are convinced that these codes are simply random occurances, and many Christians reject the idea that they exist, no relevant codes of this type have been found in other books despite numerous attempts to do so. Since many different authors wrote the books of the Bible, there is no human explanation for these mathematical intricacies except divine inspiration.
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