Biblical Foundations - PowerPoint Presentation

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Biblical Foundations

Is There a God?Slide2

How can we know?

Christianity makes broad claims about our lives and our futures. It makes absolute claims about truth and morality – it claims that Jesus is the only

way to eternal life. What makes Christians so sure they are correct and everyone else is wrong? Slide3

The Short Answer:

There is so much evidence pointing to the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible it isn’t even really questionable, if you are being honest. Slide4

The Long Answer(s):

There are several different areas that lead us to believe that the Bible is completely inerrant and unquestionably accurate.For now, we will just focus on evidence found within the Bible itself.

HistoryScienceProphecySlide5

What we mean:

Biblical Inspiration is referring to original writings, not the countless copies made over the centuries. The original books, sometimes called

autographs, are what was the inspired word of God. Your Bible, as a copy, is not inspired: it’s a copy of an inspired book.

This means that over the centuries, some errors have crept into the Bible….Slide6

Biblical Errors

Biblical errors do exist, from copying the book so many times – it happens.

So how many errors are there, and were are they? How do we know what the error is, and what it was supposed to be? Slide7

Getting Technical…

Textually speaking, only 1/1000th of the Bible has any variations at all between copies – meaning the Bible is 98.5% identical from copy to copy.

NT is 99.5%....Even more, there are enough copies of close to original documents that we know with 100% accuracy what the original document was like – we have the whole Bible, in its entirety. Slide8
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What does all that mean?

There are 24,000 copies of just the New Testament written less than 100 years after the events that they describe

Witnesses to events still livingNO ONE at the time denied that any of the NT happened – they all knew it was factNobody dies for a story that was made up: but they might for something they watched with their own eyes. Slide10

In other words:

There is absolutely no excuse for anyone saying the Bible is a fraud, or a fake, or added to over the centuries so it’s not the same as it was originally. That’s why the modern critical “scholars” go to such great lengths to try and “prove” that the Bible is inaccurate…. Slide11

Being a Christian doesn’t mean that one has to believe that Jesus really walked on water, or really multiplied loaves, and so forth, And I think that a literalistic approach to scripture has in the minds of many Christians become a major obstacle.

-Marcus Borg

In terms of divine consistency, I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time, including Jesus, brings dead people back to life. The second coming will not be literal.  The second coming is what will happen when we Christians accept that there was only one coming and get with the program.

-John Dominic

CrossanSlide12
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Historical Evidence:

Within the Bible, there are many, many people groups discussed and identified. Factual information about cities where people lived, the nation-states that inhabited them, and the kings that ruled them.

Amalekites, Hittites, etc.Slide14

Hittites, for example…

Until about 100 years ago, archaeology refused to believe the Hittite people even existed. In fact, they were a famous argument atheists made against the Bible –

you say these people were a super powerful empire, yet there is no evidence for them, none at all….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HittitesSlide15

Other Examples

Ancient cities that were named have been discovered, right where the Bible said they would be, time and time again. Sodom and Gomorrah have been found for example, totally destroyed by brimstone and fire, just like the Bible said that they were. Slide16
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More History

External Evidence shows that Israelites were where they say they were, when they said they were there….Canaanite writings in Egypt, talking about being slaves

Archaeologists say there is no evidence at all that people from Israel were ever slaves in Egypt…. Slide18
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Even More Evidence

Following the descriptions of Mt. Sinai from the Bible, and the routes that were available to the Hebrews at the time, the real Mt. Sinai has been discovered – nowhere near the traditional one… Slide21
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Science?

Believe it or not, your Bible talks a lot about things that could not have been discovered when it was written, and science has only just learned how they work relatively recentlySlide26

Science In the Bible

Round EarthHeliocentric solar systemLife comes from Life

Cycle of WaterSanitation/Hygeine Slide27

Science in the Bible

Round earthWorld often referred to as being a “circle” Isaiah 40:22, for example, says the Lord sits above the circle of the earth.

Earth also described as floating in a void - the author of Job wrote that “God hangs the earth on nothing.”Slide28

Contemporary Views

Other cultures were very similar in their approach to the worldIt was often made of the corpse of a dead god

It was always flatAlways supported by something else (like a pillar) Round earth wasn’t firmly determined by science until the 1500s ADSlide29

Science in the Bible

Heliocentric – solar system with the sun in the middleNicolaus Copernicus, the scientist who proved the heliocentricity of the Solar System used the Bible as his starting point.

The Big C Church, which had bought into the “science” of the time branded him and Galileo as heretics for it – everyone knew that the earth was the center of the universe, it was “settled science…” Slide30

Science in the Bible

Life most certainly comes from life in the BibleGenesis states that animals produce animals, plants produce plants “according to their own kinds.”

Christ uses fig trees as examples – everyone knew a seed would produce a tree from it’s own kindSlide31

Contemporary Views

Life came from StuffPeople came from mommies and daddies, but mice, flies, fleas, and other things came from hay, garbage, dirty water, etc.

Ironically, this is the same thing evolutionists say, despite making fun of these views for being “unscientific…” Slide32

Cycle of Water

Genesis clearly states that God “divided the waters” above and below, placing land and air in between Scientists now know that clouds come from water that has been evaporated and floats in the air, only falling as rain when the density gets high enough. Slide33

Contemporary Views

Rain comes from… god? Water falling from the heavens was a gift from some fertility god or goddess, no one would have ever thought that it began in the ocean or a lake…. Slide34

Sanitation / Hygiene

Most laws in the OT refer to sanitary cleanliness, or have practical hygienic purposesGod orders sick people out of camp + don’t touch them

Don’t eat certain foods (pork has to be cooked at a very high temp…)Wash hands and body regularlyetcSlide35

Contemporary Views

Nobody knew diseases could be passed from one person to the next by contact, it was always seen as a god’s punishment for something or other. Nobody knew that food could get you sick if it wasn’t cooked properly – the reasons for this weren’t discovered until microscopes were in the 1800s…Slide36
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Prophecy

The Old Testament contains 1,239 individual prophecies (depending on how you count them…) Many of these have already come to pass

Many have yet to happenSlide38

Timing

Because we know when the various copies of the Bible were written, we know for a fact that many of these prophecies were given before the events they refer to took place

Prophecies referring to Christ could not be “faked” because there are simply too many witnessesSlide39

Examples:

Jeremiah 25:11-12 predicts Babylon’s rule over Judah, for 70 years. Written 626BC, fulfilled 50 years later. Isaiah 45:1 – predicts Cyrus the Great would destroy Babylon’s walls (300 ft high, 70 ft wide!)

Written 701BC, fulfilled 539BCSlide40

More Babylon Prophecies

Isaiah 14:23 claims Babylon would be turned to a swampland…When C

yrus destroyed Babylon in 539, the city never recovered. When archaeologists in the 1800s rediscovered it, they found they couldn’t dig some parts because the water table had risen over the yearsWritten 701ishBC, fulfilled 200 years later, plus some…Slide41

Prophecy about Nineveh

Nahum 3:15 – Nahum says Nineveh will be destroyed by fire, so badly it will never recoverArchaeologists in the 1800s discovered that all of Nineveh’s ruins are buried in a layer of soot and ash

Written 600BC, fulfilled 612BCSlide42
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Tyre’s Destruction

Ezekiel 26:12 – Tyre will be destroyed, and all its stones hurled into the sea

Alexander the Great needed a bridge to get his armies across to the Island of New Tyre. He took apart Old Tyre

(the Biblical city) and used its stones to build the land bridge, which still exists today. Written 587BC, fulfilled 333BC. Slide45
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Most Important?

There are 351 unique prophecies about Jesus Christ in the Old TestamentThese were written

at least 400 years before Christ lived, and we know that for a fact, no one disputes it. Slide48

Just one Example…

Daniel 9:25 – written 538BC“So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks of years and sixty two weeks of years.”Slide49

Enter Nehemiah

Nehemiah 2:5,6 – written 444BC “So it pleased the King to send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers tombs, to rebuild it.”

Exact Date – 1st of Nisan, 20

th year of Artaxerxes the king. 5th of March, 444BCSlide50

Now Christ…

Luke 19:38-40 – Christ urges his Disciples to call him Messiah“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Exact Date: March 30, 33ADSlide51

The Brainburner

Now let’s compare the date of the decree (March 5, 444 BC) with the date of Jesus’ declaration (March 30, 33 AD). Before we begin, we need to clarify the fact that the Jewish prophetic year was composed of twelve 30 day months. In other words, the ancient evidence indicates that the Jewish prophetic year had 360 days, not 365 days. Since Daniel states 69 weeks of seven years each, and each year has 360 days, the equation is as follows: 69 x 7 x 360 = 173,880 days. In nothing more than a simple mathematical demonstration, the number of days in the period from March 5, 444 B.C. (the twentieth year of

Artaxerxes

) to March 30, 33 A.D. (the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the donkey) can be determined at this point.The time span from 444 B.C. to 33 A.D. is 476 years (remember that 1 B.C. to 1 A.D. is only one year). And if we multiply 476 years x 365.2421879 days per year (corrected for leap years), we get the result of 173,855 days. Now let’s add back the difference between March 5 and March 30 (25 days). What is our total? You guessed it, 173,880 days, exactly as Daniel predicted

it…Slide52

Your Head

Asplode