The
Bible is not a textbook on world history per se,
rather, it is a history
of the dealings of God with mankind in order to bring about our
redemption
through the death of Christ on the cross. However, when the Bible
speaks of
events that transpired in the course of the history of the world, it
always
speaks of those events accurately and in harmony with the best
historical and
archaeological research. This is one of the greatest evidences for
God’s having
revealed the Bible, for had that not been the case, one can only wonder
how
Moses would have learned of the cities and monarchs visited by Abraham,
and
hundreds of other details that are stated in the Bible that the writers
had no
way of knowing on their own.
It
cannot be claimed that these were oral traditions handed down, for,
oral
traditions handed down do not have the unity found in the Bible. The
Bible was
written by thirty-nine or forty authors over a period of approximately
sixteen
hundred years. Yet, the unity and historical accuracy of the Sacred
Volume
transcends its being a mere human production. To demonstrate that oral
traditions change from one society to another and one century to
another, just
look at the different accounts that have been found of the great flood
of Noah.
Different traditions say different things, and in different societies
different
things are emphasized, even to the changing of names and numbers. But
not so
with the Bible, yet these traditions all have common touchstones with
the
Bible, so that it is easy to see that the historical events of the
Bible did
occur.
Furthermore,
the Bible speaks historically of great nations of people that once
existed, of
which the world in general knew nothing until modern times. For
example, the
Bible refers some twenty-two times to a nation of people called the
Hittites.
For generations, because man had no historical records outside the
Bible of
these people, they declared the Hittites to be a biblical myth, a
nation of
people that never existed. However, in the late 19th
and early 20th
centuries, archaeologists examining that part of the world where the
Bible says
these people lived, found not only that they existed, but had a highly
advanced
society for their time. If one visits the British Museum
today, he can see evidence of the existence of the Hittites. This
example could
be multiplied showing that again and again, men have accused the Bible
of being
an inaccurate book of myths, only to later learn, much to their
chagrin, that
they were wrong and the Bible was right! Shame on us for doubting the
Sacred
Volume and the God who revealed it to us.
If
it is asked why so many people contest the sanctity of the Bible, we
can answer
only because they do not wish to obey its sacred principles, and they
think if
they can prove it false in any particular, they are not in any way
responsible
to the God of the Bible. Such reasoning, however, proves to be foolish,
for the
historical accuracy of the Bible has been demonstrated so many times,
one
wonders about the sanity of those who continue to challenge it.
Someone
may ask, “If the Bible is so historical, why do we not read
of China,
India,
America
and other great nations of the world?” This query has already
been answered. It
is not a general history of the world, but deals only with those
nations and
peoples who played their God-appointed roles in the bringing about the
conditions that allowed the Messiah to be born in the world for our
salvation.
One should notice that the Bible does not deny the existence of such
nations as
those mentioned above. It passes over those civilizations because they
played
no part in our redemption.
If
the Bible is historically inaccurate, we challenge the person who knows
that to
be true to publish, at my expense, the uncontested evidence. It does
not exist,
and cannot exist, because though the historicity of the Bible has been
challenged again and again, no challenge has been successful!
