Biblical Wisdom Proves the Existence of God

By D. Gene West

    The Bible displays more wisdom than any other book in the world. It sets forth the wisest principles found in literature read by man. The laws of the Bible exalt justice and truth above all other laws on the face of the earth. No other book affords so much dignity to human beings and no other book sets them up as being as valuable as the Bible. If the Bible is nothing more than a mere human production, why do we not find thousands of other “human productions” vying with it for the distribution of wisdom? Not only is there no book comparable to it, but there is none that even approaches it when it comes to the wisdom set forth on its sacred pages. Nowhere else in the world does one find the wisdom that is set forth in the Old Testament in that panel of commands that we call the “Ten Commandments.” How often we have heard people say, people who were not even religious, “the world would be a much better place to live if only we would follow the Ten Commandments. In the New Testament there is no more profound wisdom found than that which is set forth in our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount. What would life be like, if in this country alone, we practiced the Golden Rule—and “whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you even also to them”?

    In the Old Testament there is a book called “Proverbs.” In that book one finds literally hundreds of the wisest sayings known to humanity. As a matter of fact, that book makes this claim for the wisdom found in it and in all the rest of the Bible, “For the LORD gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding…” (Proverbs 2:6). Man is not the source of wisdom, but the recipient of it. That is the reason the Bible is so frequently quoted as the source of so much wisdom, even in politics! The ancient pagan gods were far too human to have a great deal of wisdom. For example, they made war among themselves, which is not the wisest thing to do since there is strength in numbers. They made love to human beings and produced babies that were half human-half gods, some were good, some were evil and some both, according to mythology. These are the characteristics of men—not God!

    When men of science were playing on the shores of intellectual achievement like little children playing on the seashore, it was not until they began to study the Bible and develop a deep faith in God that they began to advance scientifically. For example, Galileo Galilei, using his first “telescope” to study the stars which held so much fascination for him discovered the moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus which proved that all heavenly bodies, including the planet Earth, move around the same center. A hundred years earlier Nicolaus Copernicus had mathematically proved that all heavenly bodies, of which he had knowledge, orbited around the Sun rather than around the Earth. Galileo later proved this mathematical arrangement to be true by “empirical observation,” that is by actually looking at the planets to see what they were doing. Both of these men had deep faith in God. Galileo even wrote to defend his findings in light of the teachings of the Bible! While we are on the subject of the movement of heavenly bodies, another astronomer—Johannes Kepler—showed that the planets revolved around the sun in ellipses rather than in perfect circles. That information has been used to make all the planetary probes in modern times, as well as planning the trips of man to the moon. If the moon traveled around the earth in a perfect circle rather than in an elliptical orbit, the tides would not be controlled as they are. By showing these things to be true, Kepler overthrew the superstitions of the movements of heavenly bodies controlling the lives of people. He did so to demonstrate that the Bible does not teach that we are controlled by the stars as was preached by the astrologers of that day.