CHAPTER 4: Why is the Bible a valid source
of truth?
So now we ask how we can tell that all this is
not just an interesting hypothesis? Astronomer, Carl Sagan, once proposed that
the universe itself could be the "First Cause", ie God. Like a bowl of soup, when you stir it,
everything in it changes, but it's still soup. Everything in the universe is a
finite process, but he believed that the universe as the First Cause, was
eternal. As such he saw no need for a personal God at all. This might be true,
as we said earlier, if you could figure out how life arose the first time on
finite, inanimate planets in this eternal universe. So far these questions are
totally without explanation. But, here's another twist. What if you were to
find in this universe, a source of information that accurately predicts the
future without error, enough times to be statistically incredible. How could
random events ever explain that? The source of those predictions would need to
be independent of the events it was predicting.
We might suggest that such a source of unerring predictions could indicate that it is possible to travel in time. However, that would introduce unlimited paradoxes, eg one could travel back in time and kill their parents before they were born. If they were never born, then they couldn't travel in the first place. If we find this source of predictions, it's actually more realistic to believe in a Thinker/Creator where everything is His thought. Only that Thinker knows what He will think of next, and it would then be very reasonable to find a large source of accurate predictions, which would reveal His intentions.
So, as if anticipated by the Thinker, don't you know we do actually have a book of predictions that meets this requirement. We call it the Bible. Its very existence demands explanation. Produce another source of accurate prophecy and we'll show it the same respect and reverence. As I see it, the Bible is unique, because of its prophecy, and this warrants special respect. To substantiate this, I refer to the "Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy", J. Barton, 1973, which documents thousands of the prophecies in the Bible.
At this point, I'd just like to mention the Old Testament itself curiously leads directly to the life of Christ as at least its partial fulfillment. It details involved traditions, which a particular race of people, the Israelites, followed specifically because of direction from their God. Why such a complicated system of rituals anyway? Yes, all the ancient cultures had rituals, but these Israelites win the prize for details. The whole concept of a "sacrificial lamb" amazes me. An unblemished lamb is the bearer of their sins. Its blood alone must be painted on their doorways, to save them from the angel of death, who takes the first born males from Egypt. So much importance is given throughout the Biblical accounts to the need for a future unblemished lamb to compensate for the sinful choices of mankind. These and more testify to a great Plan of a "thinking God", Who intended to fulfill the traditions and predictions Himself. Then the Life of Christ fits them perfectly, albeit it is easier to see this fit after the fact than while its happening.
At this point, I would like to insert a number of other major examples of Biblical predictions, which already came true, some that have come true multiple times, and some that are yet to come true, as well. I need to do that eventually, but I think this is another subject unto itself. I would like to refer at least to the Book of Daniel, which is full of prophecies, many of which have already come true. In particular read Daniel chapters 2 & 7. These chapters are simply astounding. In the 5th century BC they predicted a series of empires to follow Babylon, including Media-Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Papal Roman empires. Perhaps we’ll get back to a detailed look at these key prophecies in a future section, but not now. For now, I need to address one specific prophecy recorded in the Bible, where later, God admits that it did not come true as He forecasted.
Were all the prophetic predictions
fulfilled without error? One
can turn to several examples, but for the moment I’ll stick to Ezekiel. In
Ezekiel 26 we read that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city of Tyre, making
it like the top of a rock, and it would be built no more (v. 14). It would be
razed (v. 12). Its towers (v. 9) and walls (v. 12) would be broken down.
Nebuchadnezzar would ride into the city as a conqueror (v. 10). The fact is
that Nebuchadnezzar did not destroy Tyre. Even God admits this three chapters
later, when He admits that the prediction did not come to pass, and so He was
giving Nebuchadnezzar Egypt as a consolation prize (29:18-20).
Perhaps this is a
conditional prophecy that was only fulfilled to the point where certain
conditions were met. It’s almost
completely correct in that Nebuchadnezzar did lay siege to Tyre for 15
years. Only the final victory of
entering the city was unfulfilled for some reason. The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, seems to
ignore the part of this prophecy that was unfulfilled. The city was eventually
destroyed, but not by Nebuchadnezzar.
Alexander the Great succeeded in destroying it over two centuries later.
If the Bible is the Word
of God, this text indicates that God does indeed change His mind. Is that a problem? How are we to understand God changing
His mind? In section 6e we make a case
for God knowing all the possibilities but not knowing which choices we
free-willed beings will make. He
does not need to have it this way, unless He really does want to experience the
variety of outcomes that are only possible with free-willed beings. If He only had robots, He would already
know all the scenarios that would ever be played out and there would not seem
to be any reason to play them out.
I believe God is
indeed like a loving, wise Father.
Because He is open to our independent decisions, He has elected to not
control our choices and He is waiting to see what we’ll do. If so, then it makes sense for God to
give us warnings in the hope that we will avoid undesirable outcomes, which He
knows will happen if we make certain bad choices. In this passage about Tyre, God is doing exactly that. He is warning Tyre of the consequences
if they attempt to prosper at the expense of Jerusalem (Ez 26: 2). He warns them that many nations will be
brought against Tyre (Ez 26:3-6) to destroy that city and that it will never be
rebuilt, which happened. Then, God
says that Nebuchadnezzar, the king of the North, will siege the city, which
also happened. The issue is that
God also said that He would give the city to Nebuchadnezzar. In spite of 15 years of siege,
Nebuchadnezzar was not rewarded with entering Tyre.
So, over in Ez 29, we
find God mad at Egypt for such things as not coming to the aid of Israel when
they really needed help, and for their arrogance over possession of the Nile
river and its fertile valley. So
here again He tells them that He’ll send Nebuchadnezzar after them. He also admits that Nebuchadnezzar
never actually got his reward from Tyre for that campaign effort, so what does
that imply? I suggest that it
implies that God and Nebuchadnezzar had a relationship going. Clearly God had been using
Nebuchadnezzar to punish the Israelites, and perhaps to threaten the
surrounding nations as well. This
king seemed to have one of those “off and on” relationships with God that His
Israelites had. When he was in
sync with God, he won and when his relationship with God faltered, then so did
his war machine. If so, then the
bottom line on these prophecies is that indeed they are all conditional. They depend on how Nebuchadnezzar is
relating with God.
In another example, Ezekiel
also spent a lot of time (chapters 40-48) predicting a new temple—describing
how it would look and how a river would flow from it. These predictions were
never fulfilled. My answer is that these fulfillments are still in the
future after the Earth is made new in heaven. The entire city of “New Jerusalem
will then be a temple of God for all the universe to know of. This is the final
outcome of God’s magnificent salvation plan. It is never fully completed on this earth, but only in
heaven after the Sin Drama has played out here.
My conclusion in general is that God predicts the “consequences” with 100% accuracy for all the possible decisions. He knows which future will occur given certain choices that He asks us to make. He therefore knows the future, but there is still room for us to change that future by making different choices or repenting after a poor choice has been acknowledged. This is the Story of Mankind. Mankind is heading for certain self-destruction, but along the way the individual can make choices that will ensure himself everlasting life in heaven regardless of the fate of Mankind.
The Bible shows us that God is involved by the massive number of prophecies that were accurately fulfilled. We can explain the few prophecies that were not fulfilled as predicted, however, by noting that something changed in the process where humans were asking God to intervene to prevent the undesirable outcome or conversely humans decided themselves to break their part of the bargain. These are “conditional” prophecies, eg 2Chron 7:14 & Ps 81:13-16. I suspect that in some cases the conditional word, “if” was left out in the translation and it has to be implied from the overall context. I’m suggesting that in these cases where the prophecy is unfulfilled, God has been working with the subjects for some time and He is now outlining where their long-standing choices are heading. All along, they have had opportunities to change their fate, but now it is unlikely that they care enough to do so. However, the offer is still open if they have a change of heart, because God is foremost merciful. The thing about the Bible that differs from other Books, eg the Book of Mormon, in this area is that the Bible records the “rest of the story”, giving enough information to show why the outcomes differed.
Jonah 3:4 is one example where God had His prophet (Jonah) predict a disaster (Nineveh), which was averted by repentance. Instead of showing that God cannot always predict the future, this shows me that God can and does change His mind. For example, Lev 26: 9-39 outlines God’s expectations for His first covenant with the Israelites. Lev 26: 40 – 46 describes how they can rectify a set of bad choices. He gives us the formula for getting Him to do that. These examples really show us that God will listen to our decisions and act accordingly. What we decide will make a difference. We should be able, therefore to look through the Bible or other reliable historical references to find out why some aspect of a prophecy was not fulfilled as God predicted. We should be able to find the cause to be a legitimate reason for God to have changed His mind, which is consistent with His character.
I’m not saying that I know these legitimate reasons in every case yet, but I think we can derive them if we work at it.
PS: Here’s a note from the next chapter on this subject:
The perspective of God is from outside our
timeline. He alone sees our end from our beginning,
predicting events in the Story of Mankind 100% accurately. He provides us with landmarks in the
Story of Mankind, for which He is certain of the outcomes. We use these landmarks to identify the
events in our timeline by key historical happenings that no historian would
miss, eg the rise and fall of major empires. He does
not predict the fate of His free will beings in the same way, because He is
leaving options open for the individual to choose from. Instead, He lays out choices and
consequences for individuals to choose from and then leaves the decision up to
them. He never violates their free
will. Even when He
tells the Pharaoh that his first born son will die, the Pharaoh has the option
to preclude that event. It’s his
ultimate choice.
21 August 2001, updated 15 November 2001, 10 May 2003
For more on this and a response to any questions, please email any comments to nasamike@nasamike.com