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Is The Bible Inspired Of God?
In our day and age a lot of people are questioning whether or not the Bible is really reliable, that is to ask whether or not it is inspired by God. Many believe in the Bible simply because their parents believed in it, but they don't know why. Many want to believe in it, but don't really know why they should. Some don't believe in it at all, but don't know why they don't or think they know why, but don't know what evidence there is for its inspiration. And there are those who believe in it's inspiration knowing why they believe what they believe. This series of articles is designed for all four groups. Those who are having problems with the inspiration of the Bible will certainly benefit from this study because it will help them to see why they should believe. And as for those who believe with knowledge, it never hurts to go back and study those things that one already has down: "12 Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know [them], and be established in the present truth. 13 Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting [you] in remembrance" (2 Peter 1:12,13).
There is a concentrated effort in the world today to undermine the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. People (atheists) consistently and systematically work to shake people's faith in this book. We as Christians need to be armed for the battle with these people. They are after our children's minds and will stop at nothing to gain them. We see their influence in children's shows like "The Land Before Time" and others which teach that millions of years ago before man inhabited the earth the dinosaurs roamed the earth and then they died out before evolution (natural selection) selected mankind to evolve. Few children know of the Bible's references to dinosaurs in the book of Job: "15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. 16 Lo now, his strength [is] in his loins, and his force [is] in the navel of his belly. 17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together" (Job 40:15-17).
They have been taught the theory of macro-evolution as being factual for so long that many times they don't even question it when they are taught this in school or on their TV shows. One young man told a faithful and knowledgeable member of the church that it was impossible for dinosaurs to co-exist with man. The faithful and knowledgeable brother directed him to Job 40:15-17 and asked him what the behemoth was. The young man retorted that it was probably a hippo or something of that nature. To which the Christian asked: "have you ever seen a hippo or elephant move his tail like a cedar?" This startled the young man and he then began to question the theory of evolution and began to place more trust in the Bible. What could have been so big and had a tail so long and large that it would have to move like a cedar of Lebanon? Only two animals that we know of that have ever existed that could possibly fit this description. If you were thinking of either the Brontosaurus or the Brachiosarus you were thinking correctly. I believe that one of these is what the reference in Job is referring to. I don't know of any other animal that this could refer to. The hippo or elephant both have very short and tiny tails, and so does a giraffe. It had to be one of these two animals for nothing else would fit the description.
This gives rise to a new question. How could Job have seen either the Brachiosaurus or the Brontosaurus if they were extinct millions of years before Job was born? He couldn't have, it's that simply. Therefore a doubt is cast upon the thoery of macro-evolution.
We fail in teaching our children about these things, so when they go to state universities many of them lose their faith in the Bible as the inspired word of God. Brethren this just ought not to be. Teaching our youth to arm themselves for the arguments that the world will be throwing is just not that difficult to do. We can, prepare them for the years ahead if we will just do so. That is one of the main reasons for this series of articles. And it is what we will endeavor to do.
The law of excluded middle states that every precisely stated proposition is either true or it is false. There is no middle ground or gray areas. Either the Bible is the inspired word of God, or it is not. If it is not then it has no more value than any other book of antiquity. However, if it is the inspired word of God, then it is a special book that must be obeyed in order to make it into heaven.
When we make our argument for the inspiration of the Bible, we need to make sure that it is a precisely stated argument. It needs to be an argument that is valid (that is the form of the argument must be correct).
The argument must be a true argument. There is a difference between validity and truth. An argument might have the correct form, but be an untrue argument. An example of this would be the old argument concerning Dobbin. MAJOR PREMISE: If Dobbin is an animal then Dobbin is a horse. MINOR PREMISE: Dobbin is an animal. CONCLUSION: Therefore Dobbin is a horse. Now the form of the argument is a correct form, but the argument is not true because it is untrue. Just because Dobbin is an animal does not necessarily mean that Dobbin is a horse. This shows that an argument can have the correct form, but still be unsound. To make the argument a sound one, it would have to read this way: MAJOR PREMISE: If Dobbin is a horse, then Dobbin is an animal. MINOR PREMISE: Dobbin is a horse. CONCLUSION: Therefore Dobbin is an animal. All horses are animals, but not all animals are horses.
So the argument must be valid, but it must also be true. When you have such an argument you have a sound argument.
THE ARGUMENT
MAJOR PREMISE: All total situations the constituent elements of which are factual are total situations which are true.
MINOR PREMISE: The total situation described by my obligation is a total sitation which is factual.
CONCLUSION: Therefore the total situation described by my obligation is a total situation which is true.
All this argument says is that if all the parts of a position are factual, then the whole will be true. This is something that cannot be denied. We all recognize the fact that if all the parts are factual the whole will be true.
The truthfulness of this argument is not called into question, but whether or not all the parts are factual. This is what we need to look at in this series of articles. Let us look at the individual parts of this argument and see if they are indeed factual.
ELEMENT NUMBER ONE: "God Does Exist." I believe that a discussion concerning the existence of God is imperative in any discussion concerning the inspiration and/or the inerrancy of the Bible. In order to prove that the Bible is inspired by God one would first have to prove that there is a God. Now the question arises: "If I were debating a Mormon would I insist that the Mormon prove the existence of God before he could prove the existence of God? Well that all depends. If that person was a member of the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints (RLDS) then my answer would be "No, because he believes in the same god I believe in." However, if he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) then maybe yes and maybe no. The reason for the indecision here is because some members of the LDS church believe that Adam was actually a god who came from the planet (star) Cobalt (Those who remember the science fiction series Battlestar Galactica which aired in the late 70's will remember this place being referred to quite frequently. The reason for this is because the person who made this series was a member of the LDS church) and came to earth and created man himself. However, there are even those in the LDS church who don't hold to that idea, but hold to the belief of the God of the Bible and to them I would not insist that they prove God's existence before they could prove the inspiration of the Book of Mormon. However those who hold tha Adam was god, I would insist that they prove that he was god before they could assert that he wrote the Book of Mormon.
There is simply no way that I can give all the evidence concerning the existence God in all of the articles combined, because there is so much of it. However, I will give a few arguments and give evidence to back up those arguments and let the reader make up his/her own mind concerning the matter. The arguments that I will be using came from debates that brother Thomas B. Warren Ph.D had with Dr's Antony Flew, Wallace Matson and Joseph Barnhart as well as charts and books brother Warren has published.
THE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
MAJOR PREMISE: If there is even one characteristic, attribute or property of even one human being which could have come into existence only by the creative power of God, then that one human being constitutes proof that God does exist.
MINOR PREMISE: There is one characteristic, attribute or property of at least one human being which could have come into existence only by the creative power of God.
CONCLUSION: Therefore that one human being constitutes proof that God does exist.
PROOF FOR THE ARGUMENT: (1) Either human beings owe their ultimate origin to creation or to evolution. (2) If human beings owe their ultimate origin to creation then God does exist. (3) If human beings owe their ultimate origin to evolution then this evo lution could have happened only in one or two ways: [A] Either some human being was born of some non-human thing, or [B] some human being was transformed from some non-human thing. I submit that these are the only two ways it could have happened.
One atheist came up with a new alternative and that is that everything was partially human all along; a convienent doctrine which is not accepted even by the majority of the most radical atheists. This person also said that plants have human characteristics, thus making them part human. Oh boy...they have been screaming for years that plants are all that we could eat without being cannibals, but now with this new position we cannot even eat the plants. I guess we could all starve to death, but the plants would have no problem using our decayed bodies as food. How silly can they get?
Most of them hold to Richard Dawkin's position of gradual change in evolution. There are two types of evolution that we need to notice before continuing. There is micro-evolution which teaches that small changes can occur within a species (a fact that no one denies) and even with a species that is compatible with that species. This is truth. In this evolution you could take two different kinds of deer to make up reindeer, or two different kinds of cattle to make up what is called Charolais cattle. This is called evolution because the word "evolution" simply means: "a process of change in a certain direction" (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, p.394). However, this is not the evolution that atheists say happened (although they want to place both of them together) in the beginning.
Then there is macro-evolution which teaches that these small changes could occur between species that are not compatible. In other words you can cross a bird with a dog, according to evolutionists. Atheists want to take the characteristics of micro-evolution and use them to prove macro-evolution. The two aren't compatible. Just because micro-evolution occurs doesn't mean that macro-evolution occurs.
Richard Dawkins made the argument that over a period of billions of years these very small changes (between species that are not compatible) could explain the origin of life. He said that you don't know what could happen in several billion years. Well, in micro-evolution a lot could happen in a billion years, but in macro-evolution nothing could have happened.
There is simply no way that it is possible for two creatures who were not human (had no human characteristics whatever) to give birth to something that had even one human characteristic. In order for the offspring to have even one human characteristic one of the parents would have either had to have an active human characteristic or a recessive one. However, if neither parent had either there is no possible way that the offspring could have come up with the human characteristic. This is why most of them claim that this human characteristic was a mutation i.e., it did not receive this characteristic from its parents, it just mutated. However, this mutation would soon die out of the race unless each generation mutated or unless the mutation
caused a dominant gene to occur. This is what evolutionists say happened. There is a lot of guessing and what if's to evolution, as one evolutionist said: "There is a lot of room for whimsey here." (Continued) Jerry D. McDonald
Email: jmcdonald@ctwok.com
