Today we are going to enter into one of the most interesting, fascinating, and perhaps controversial series that we will ever do that we are entitling, "War of the Worlds". Actually, you could even call it, "War of the World Views." World views act just like contact lenses; if you've got the correct prescription for contact lenses or for glasses then you can see the world clearly and correctly. A world view should provide the correct prescription for making sense of the world just as wearing the correct prescription for your eyes brings things into focus. As we begin talking about the importance of a world view and how it is going to impact all that we are going to talk about over the next several weeks there are several things to keep in mind about world views.
Everybody has a world view. Everybody has a set of assumptions and presuppositions that determine the way they look at the world, their place in the world and what they think in the world is really important.
There are only two basic world views - the Christian world view and non-Christian world views. These world views are radically different at practically every point of debate. Whether it is answering the questions of why is there something rather than nothing? How do you explain human nature? How do you determine what is right and wrong? How do you know that you know? What happens to a person at death? The Christian worldview gives answers radically different from every other non-Christian world view.
Every world view is based on faith. Everybody on this planet looks at this world through assumptions and presuppositions, some of which can be proved and some of which cannot. For example, the Christian has a world view based on the belief that God exists. The Atheist has a world view based on the belief that God doesn't. The Christian cannot prove that God exists, but the Atheist cannot prove that God doesn't. Both world views are based on faith. The question is - which worldview has the strongest evidence to support their faith?
Every worldview's faith is only as valid as the evidence upon which it is based. As we talk of the "War of the Worlds", this is where the battle is raging and this is where the war is being fought. Chuck Colson put it this way, "The culture war is not just about abortion, homosexual rights, or the decline of public education. These are only skirmishes. The real war is a cosmic struggle between worldviews - between the Christian worldview and the various secular and spiritual worldviews arrayed against it." [[1]]
There are basically three components to every worldview. Every worldview seeks to answer three key questions. In this series we are going to take several messages to answer those three questions. Here is the first one. Who are we and how did we get here? Where did the world come from?
The second question is - Why is there evil, war and suffering in the world? What is our major problem and what is its source?
The final question is - What is the solution? How can this world be set right again?
It is here that we come to the real heart of the entire matter where we have to decide in one word what will determine everything else we believe and that one word is - TRUTH. Which worldview is true? Which worldview gives the best answers to those questions? In short, the Christian world view answers those 3 key questions with 3 key words - Creation, Fall, Redemption. [[2]] To the first question, the Christian worldview says, "We were created by God." All other worldviews deny this concept.
To the second question, the Christian worldview states the problem is sin created by the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. This sin corrupted the entire human race as well as the world in which we live. The non-Christian view denies that sin has anything to do with our problem.
To the third question, the Christian worldview says, "We need a Savior to remedy the sin problem and to give mankind a new heart and a new mind that is truly centered on God." The non-Christian worldview denies the need for personal redemption at all.
This raises the question of where we get the Christian worldview? Where do we get the idea that God created us, that because of the fall of man, sin entered into this world and ruined it and that Jesus Christ came to die and was raised from the dead to make this world right again. We get it from the Bible. The Christian world view is based on what we believe, not only to be truth, but the ultimate truth found in the Bible.
Many of us as children can remember the song that goes like this -
"Jesus loves me, this I know
For the Bible tells me so."
That raises "the" big question - Why believe the Bible? It is one thing to say the Bible is true, but how do you know it is true? We must answer that question, before we go any further in this series, because everything I am going to say to you in the next 6 weeks, whether is it about evolution, evil, hell, war, heaven or the certainty of going to heaven is based on the Bible, so we must answer the question - "Why believe the Bible?"
Now suffice to say it is an explosive question. Most of this world denies that it is important at all to believe the Bible or even to understand it as being anything as just another book. Just this past week, the Colorado Supreme Court threw out the sentence of a man given the death penalty because jurors consulted the Bible in reaching a verdict. The court said this constituted an improper outside influence and a reliance on a "higher authority." [[3]]
Now in essence, what the Supreme Court of Colorado was saying was it is improper to consult the Bible because it is just another book.
To many non-Christians the Bible is no more than an antiquated collection of myths and fables. To others it is a good book, but it is not God's book.
On the other hand, 2 billion people, 1/3 of this world, claim to believe in the God of this book and believe that this is the book that God wrote. Indeed, even the men who wrote it believed they were writing the very words of God.
The biggest single fact that people have to deal with concerning the Bible is this - it claims to be not the words of men, but the Word of God. In the Old Testament alone, phrases like, "God said" or "God spoke" or "The Word of the Lord came" occur nearly four thousand times (700 times in the first five books, 40 times in one chapter.) Hundreds of years later, the Apostle Paul said this about the Bible, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right." (II Timothy 3:16, NLT)
The ultimate statement was made by the greatest man who ever lived, by common consensus, Jesus Christ, and here is what He said about the Bible, "Your word is truth." (John 17:17, NASB)
Jesus believed the Bible was totally, completely, absolutely true and was indeed the Word of God. If that is true, then there should be compelling reasons why we ought to believe the Bible and indeed there are. I am going to share four with you today.
I. I Believe The Bible Because It Is Historically Reliable
Let me ask you a question. What would happen if you chose 10 different people from the same city, with the same culture, with the same educational level, speaking the same language, apart from each other, never talking to each other, never consulting with each other, to write a book about one controversial topic such as - the meaning of life. What are the chances they would be absolutely totally in agreement? You and I both know the chance of that happening would be absolutely zero.
Then imagine this. Here is a book that is actually 66 books in one, written over a period of 1500 years, by 40 different authors, living in 3 different continents (Europe, Africa and Asia), writing in 3 different languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic), writing on many controversial topics and yet they all wrote on one theme and they all said exactly the same thing.
Think about this. The first book of the Bible begins in a garden in paradise. In that garden is a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When you go to the last book of the Bible, Revelation written 1500 years later, you end up again in the paradise of God where there is also another tree - the tree of healing for the nations. In Genesis, man is driven out of the garden, because of his sin and forbidden to eat of the tree. In Revelation, he is invited to come in and partake of the tree that he might live forever. In Genesis, there is a river which flows from the garden. In Revelation, there is a river that flows from the throne of God. The golden thread that runs from Genesis to Revelation is the redemption of sinful man, by the grace of God through faith in a Redeemer, named Jesus Christ.
So far, so good, but how do we know that all that the Bible says actually happened? How do we know it is fact not fable? How do we really know there was a Moses and a ReaSea? How do we really know there was a Goliath that David killed? How do we really know there was a Daniel in the lion's den? How do we really know there was a Jesus, who died on a cross and came out of a tomb three days later?
I want you to understand, nobody can prove or disprove what has taken place in the ancient past. All I can do is present the evidence. I can't prove there actually was a man named George Washington, who was the first President of the United States. All I can do is present the evidence. Here you need to keep two things in mind.
The trustworthiness of any historical account is based on the evidence for that account.
The evidence must come from ancient documents and manuscripts. All ancient history is based on documentary evidence. Remember, 1000, 2000, 3000 years ago there were no videos, televisions, cameras or tape-recorders. There wasn't even any FOX news!
Furthermore, quite frankly, we are at a disadvantage because we don't have any of the original accounts. We don't have the original manuscripts that were first written when all these things took place, so the question is - how do we know we have the right stuff? In your teenager's high school history books they read about Julius Caesar. They read about Plato. They read about Homer and his story of the Iliad. No one questions any of those historical figures.
Have you ever thought about how many copies or manuscripts we have of these historical figures and how close they are to one another. Have you ever thought about what the time span is between the copies that we do have and the original copies that must have been written? Let me just give you the manuscript evidence for the ancient writings related to these 3 historical figures I just gave you.
Julius Caesar - earliest manuscripts 1000 years after Caesar lived - only 10 manuscripts exist.
Plato - earliest manuscripts 1300 years after Plato lived - only 7 manuscripts.
Homer - earliest manuscripts 500 years after Homer lived - 643 manuscripts.
In fact, Homer's Iliad is the most well supported overwhelmingly confirmed ancient text in the world next to the Bible. It has 643 manuscripts, the oldest of which comes 500 years after he actually wrote it. Consider this, in the New Testament alone there are over 5,300 Greek manuscripts, the earliest just 35 years after the Book of Revelation was written.
Have you ever heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament were found in these scrolls and they were dated approximately 150B.C. which is only 200 years after the last event of the Old Testament took place. There is no other book in the world that has as much manuscript support or is as closely tied to the original event than the Bible.
Putting together all of these manuscripts and comparing them with the version of the Bible we have today, we now know that we have at least 99.5% of what would be considered the original document. No other historical source or book in the history of the world can make that claim, but that still raises the question - How do we know they got their history right?
If I read a history book and it says that Custer's Last Stand took place at the Varsity while he was eating a chili dog in 1998, I would be disinclined to believe that history book. There is one tool that we have to verify the historical accuracy of a document and that is archeology.
I could give you hundreds of examples of the historical accuracy of the Bible. I will just give you one. Everybody knows the story about Jericho and how the walls "came tumbling down". For many years critics laughed at this story. They said, first of all, you just don't walk around a city and have the walls fall down flat. Second, they said there is no way the Israelites could have marched around that city seven times in one day, because the city would have been too big and there was not enough time.
When Professor John Garstang, a British Archeologist, discovered the site of ancient Jericho, he discovered two things. First of all, he discovered the walls of the city had indeed fallen so completely that the attackers were able to climb up and over the ruins into the city. Why was that so unusual? Walls do not fall outward. When they are attacked, they fall inward, but for the only time the archeologist ever found, in this case, the walls fell outward - just like the Bible said, because God made them fall.
Furthermore, I have been to the ancient site of Jericho fifteen times. Jericho was actually smaller than the site on which this church is sitting right now. I can walk around Jericho seven times in one morning and then go play golf before lunch!
I can give you hundreds of examples of this, but let me just quote a man by the name of Dr. Nelson Glueck, the greatest modern authority on Israeli archeology, who said this, "No archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference...archeology continues to confirm a clear outline or in exact detail historical statements in the Bible."
Jesus said "Your word is truth." (John 17:17)
II. I Believe The Bible Because It is Scientifically Realistic
The Bible is not a science book, but if it is true and if it is God's Word, then just as you expect it to be historically reliable, you would expect it to be scientifically realistic. Another striking evidence that this book is truth and it is God's Word is found in the fact that many of the principles of modern science were recorded as facts of nature in the Bible long before any scientist every confirmed them experimentally.
For example, thousands of years ago most of the world believed the earth was flat. In fact, Columbus had to overcome this popular opinion in order to discover America. Do you know why Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain with no fear he would sail over the edge of the world? As a Christian, he knew what the Bible taught about this earth, that it was not a flat disk; it was rather a rounded sphere. Where did he get that idea? From this verse in Isaiah. "It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in." (Isaiah 40:22, NASB)
Thousands of years ago scientists thought that winds blew always in a straight direction. Of course, meteorologists now know that wind travels within circuits. They are called "jet streams". That is exactly what the Word of God says. "Blowing toward the south, then turning toward the north, the wind continues swirling along; and on its circular courses the wind returns." (Ecclesiastes 1:6, NASB)
In ancient times, doctors saw no need for washing their hands and many people died from the hands of doctors themselves, because they carried on those hands the germs that killed. Later on, doctors began to wash their hands in still water, but people were still dying because of infection they got from the hands of the doctor. Today, any doctor will tell you, you always wash hands in running water to make sure that every germ is totally washed away. Guess what we read in Leviticus 15:13?
"Now when the man with the discharge becomes cleansed from his discharge, then he shall count off for himself seven days for his cleansing; he shall then wash his clothes and bathe his body in running water and will become clean." (Leviticus 15:13, NASB)
Jesus said, "Your word is truth." (John 17:17, NASB)
III. I Believe The Bible Because It Is Prophetically Right
No other book on this planet can match the staggering accuracy of foretelling future events like the Bible. Thirty percent of the Bible consists of prophecy and not one of its prophecies has ever been shown to be false.
In fact, the prophecies of scripture are so specific and so detailed; they have to be exactly fulfilled. Not only do many of these prophecies speak of things of which there was no likelihood that they would ever come to pass, many times they predicted the very opposite of what a human being would normally expect. In hundreds of instances, the fulfillment of the prophecy did not take place until after the prophet had already died.
In the Old Testament alone, there are over 2000 prophecies that have already come to pass. Nothing vaguely resembles this in any other book in the world. Twenty-six volumes of books claim to be divine scriptures just like the Bible, but not one of those 26 volumes has any specific predictive prophecies. Jesus Christ alone fulfilled over 300 prophecies with His life, His death, His burial and His resurrection.
The Bible even gives detailed predictions concerning entire countries. Let me give you one fascinating example that I just came across.
At one time, Egypt was the greatest nation in the entire world. It was the king of nations. It was the richest country on earth. In one prophecy about Egypt, the Prophet Ezekiel said this, "There will no longer be a prince from the land of Egypt." (Ezekiel 30:13b, HCSV)
Until a few decades ago, before Egypt went through a more so called democratic form of government, Egypt was always ruled by a prince. But guess what? During the nearly 2500 years between this prophecy and Egypt's change to their present form of government, none of their princes were ever Egyptian. That would be like prophesying today that an American will never again be President of the United States and then having 2500 years go by with no American president. How could anybody ever have predicted something like that could happen - only God, who knows the truth before it even happened. Jesus said, "Your word is truth." (John 17:17, NASB)
IV. I Believe The Bible Because It Is Personally Relevant
I want you to understand exactly what I mean when I tell you why I believe the Bible is true. When I say the Bible is true, obviously I mean the Bible is factual, that is, it accurately records historical events. It is scientifically true. It is prophetically true, but truth goes beyond accuracy. Something can be true and factual, but have no significance. I can tell you the truth about how many buttons I have on this shirt that I am wearing right now, but who gives a rip? When I talk about the Bible being true, I mean it is significantly true, because it answers the three key questions of not only any worldview, but of life itself. In fact, how it does so is amazing.
The first two chapters of the Bible begin by answering the first key question - Who am I and how did I get here? The third chapter of the Bible answers the second key question - What is wrong with this world and why is there evil and suffering? The rest of the Bible answers the third question - What is the solution? How can this world be made right again and how can I be right with God?
If you doubt that this book has that kind of power, listen to what John Adams, the second President of the United States wrote in his diary. "Suppose a nation in some distance region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! ... What a utopia, what a paradise would this region be." [[4]]
Who can deny that if every country in the world did what John Adams said this world would not be a radically different and far better place? I have been told the word, "Bible" is really an acronym that stands for -
B – Basic
I – Instructions
B – Before
L – Leaving
E - Earth
It is these basic instructions that teach us the truth both about this life and the life to come. I love the words of the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, who said this, "I am a creature of a day. I am a spirit come from God and returning to God. I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God Himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God. Let me be a man of one book - this book, the Bible." [[5]]
Everybody on this planet, including you, has to make a decision. Since you have all these religious books out there and they all say different things about God, heaven, hell, creation, and Jesus Christ, there are only two options. Option 1 is - they are all wrong. Option 2 is - one is right. The Bible could be just a bunch of myths and fairytales, but based on the evidence, I don't know how you can believe that. Some other religious book may be the real truth and not the Bible. Based on the evidence, I just don't believe that. All of these books may be wrong, but they cannot all be right. As for me, I am going to go with the man that came back from the dead, who said, "Your word is truth". I am going with the Bible.
[1] Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live?, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndelhouse, 1999) p.17
[2] I take this concept from Nancy Pearcey in her book, Total Truth, (Wheaton, IL, Crossway Books, 2004) p. 128.
[3] "ColoradoCourtBars Execution Because Jurors Consulted Bible," Kirk Johnson, The New York Times, March 29, 2005.
[4] John Adams, February 22, 1756 in a diary entry. L H Butterfield, Ed,.Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, (Cambridge, MA:Belknap Press of Harvard Press, 1961) Volume 3, p 9.
[5] Daniel Fuller, "I Was Just Thinking", Today's Christian, September 1977