Lesson 1
Today, we live in what is
considered the most enlightened age in the history of the world. We are a favored people by living in these United
States, a nation of the highest culture in all the world. And yet, there is among us the greatest religious division to be found on the face
of the earth. Does it not seem strange that we live in the highest civilization and yet in a land
that is most confused in matters of religion? What is the cause of this division? It is not caused by lack of sincerity nor of spiritual desire.
The division is caused over the standard which we accept to guide us in the religious matters.
As we launch our study into denominationalism, we must first begin with our belief and acceptance of the Word of God. To even go further than that -
our belief and acceptance of the existence of God! If the Bible is not what it claims to be, then all of these different religious bodies and
religious matters are of little importance to us. There have always been unbelievers when it comes to Christianity.
For example, Tom Paine's book, The Age of Reason, is kept and used by many unbelievers today.
Before Paine’s time, man also wrote against the Bible maintaining that it's miracles were simply myths; that some of its characters were not historical characters at
all; that contradictions were to be found therein; and that it represented God as doing and endorsing absurd and immoral things. Unbelievers have made those charges against the Bible for centuries.
People chide us for our acceptance of the supernatural and believing in the miraculous events recorded in the Bible. They
claim that Bible characters were men of history, not of faith. Of course, the supernatural
things mentioned in the Bible are facts, but we have to accept them by faith. Our faith today rests upon a historical foundation
of supernatural events. If you take the supernatural out of religion, you have nothing at all but human wisdom. What makes the Bible so unique is that it is not
from human resource (I Corinthians 2:10,13; Galatians 1:11,12; II Timothy 3:16-17). God does not ask us to believe blindly, but He has
placed in His book, and round about us, evidences sufficient to prove, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, that Jesus Christ is the King of kings in all religious matters.
People who do not want to believe in the Bible do so because they do not accept that which is not natural on what
they cannot see. This idea is popular today. If you don't believe this is so, pick up a science
book used in science classes today as a text book and observe what it says. In most science books you will find no mention of God. God is
left out of the development of the world and all that is in the world. All you see is attributed to natural forces in the
world. When you read history books, you will find that they make no mention of God. They rule out God and simply state that life is a human system.
In the field of religion, the average "religious leaders" doubt God. Even if they do not deny God outright, they doubt
God's authority. In other words, if people do not want to know the truth, they are not going to seek the truth, whether it be in the existence of God or any religious matter.
FULLNESS OF TIME
Time is irrelevant to God! "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day" (II Peter 3:8). Many people don't believe in creation because of
the time difference in the Bible and in the world. The Bible is only a few thousand years old, but the world is much older. "In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). No man knows, and the Bible does not
attempt to explain how long a period of time is involved in the expression, "in the beginning". So, in reality,
there can be no argument with the extent of time.
Many people say that the Bible is a result of the various cultures of the world and that God is not the author of the
Bible. They say the standards of life set forth in the Bible are conceptions of men, and these cultures were borrowed and recorded
in the Bible. The miracles as recorded are not supernatural but are simply legends that have been handed down from time to time by
the various men of the world, so they say. Let's see if this is true! For example, in the book
of Genesis, written by Moses, we find that Moses spent a great deal of his life in Egypt. He was reared in Egypt, and taught in all the
wisdom of the Egyptians. But when he recorded the book of Genesis, he did not put any of his own ideas or his culture in it. The Egyptians believed that the earth was hatched
from a winged egg. Yet, Moses knowing this, wrote and said "In the beginning God created...". So he did not borrow
from the Egyptians ideas on creation. The Egyptians also taught that man came from the white worm that was found in the slime of the
Nile and it evolved into a man, yet Moses said, "God created man" (Genesis 2:7). The Old Testament record could not be
borrowed from the culture of the Egyptians.
The Babylonians
believed that the earth was a sleeping monster covered with feathers and scales in the
form of trees and rocks. Then they said man was an offspring from this monster. There is no such story recorded in the bible as to this. Both
of these nations worshipped a multitude of gods, but Moses said "There is one God" "I am that I am"
(Exodus 3:14). So the conception that Moses borrowed from the culture round about him cannot be true.
The universe is operated by a great intelligence, and this is something we must realize!
A Great Mind and a Great Lawgiver are behind all the universe. You cannot have law without a lawgiver. We live in an ordered world. If you doubt the supernatural, just look up in the
skies. You see law, and you see order. Scientists tell us that there are 250,000,000
solar systems. There is one solar system with which we are particularly acquainted, OURS! Now
if you doubt God, if you doubt the supernatural, just look up. Mercury revolves around the sun as does the earth,
and travels at 29 miles per second. It takes the earth 365 days to go completely around the sun. It
takes Jupiter l2 years and it takes Neptune l65 years to go around the sun. It takes Pluto 250 years to make the circuit. Now do you mean to look up at this great solar
system and see it functioning perfectly, in order, without a mishap, so exact that the
astronomer can sit down and tell to an exact minute: when there will be an eclipse of the
sun or the moon, or when a certain star will appear. It is illogical to believe that this is just a matter of accident, that there is
not any law, that there is no system, and that it ALL is a matter of chance?
What about the salmon? We are told that salmon hatch in a stream up in
Canada, go to the ocean where they spend years, and then come back to spawn. They will come back to the very river from whence
they went out, go up the river on the same side of the stream and into the same tributary
where they were hatched. And then, the little salmon will go back to the ocean and the cycle will continue. How do they know to do that? Is it all accidental?
Another example is the eel. The eel is a strange creature. Eels will leave every stream in America, and they
will leave every stream in Europe and will go to the depths beyond the Bermuda Islands
where they breed and die. The young that are born will find their way back to the stream from whence their parents came. They have never been there, but somehow they make
it to the home of the parent eel. Scientists tell that not once has an American eel been found in European waters nor a European eel in
American waters. Who gave those little creatures that knowledge? Is it just a matter of chance?
These are just a few of the evidences that show the Divine order. God, in His infinite wisdom, has not only revealed Himself through nature, but He
has seen fit to reveal Himself through His Word.
UNIQUENESS OF THE BIBLE
The Bible is absolutely a unique book. It is like no other book in the world. It contains such profound teachings and attains to
such lofty heights that even conscious imitations of it, such as the Muslim Koran or the Book of Mormon utterly fail in comparison with it.
MORAL PURITY
The uniqueness of the Bible is seen in the purity of its ethical teachings.
One question we need to ask is: can the world claim to have passed on
beyond the ethical standards of the New Testament and to have disproved
the perfection of those standards? I think any honest person must confess
that man would be happier and more blessed by living according to the
ethics and morals of the Bible. Everywhere in the Bible, righteousness
is commanded and sin is condemned. Even great figures of the Bible, such
as Abraham, David and Peter, were condemned without hesitation when they
fell short of the righteousness of God. Moses, the author of the first
5 books, wrote of his own condemnation in Numbers 20 when he sinned before
God and Israel. Do you think that these authors would record their own
downfalls and miscomings if they wrote to impress their readers or to
exalt themselves? The righteousness demanded in the Bible is always the
true inward righteousness of the heart and not the outward appearance
of righteousness (Psalms 51:17; Isaiah 1:10-17; Matthew 5:21-48).
The morality revealed in the Bible is even more unique when it is compared with the moral conditions of the world when
it was written. The Egyptians, among whom the Israelites lived as slaves for 400 years, did not even have a word for "sin" in their language. They had words for "mistakes" and
"errors" but they simply lacked the moral understanding necessary to see themselves as sinners. And the Canaanites, the people among whom the Israelites
lived for over l000 years, had sunk to the very depths of immorality. They had made prostitution a part of their religion. Homosexuality
and adultery were practiced in many of their temples. Despite all of this ungodliness, the Bible proclaimed, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus
20:l4). The presence of such a high standard of morals demands an explanation if it came not from God, because clearly we can
see it did not come from the people who surrounded the Israelites. And there is no reason to think that the
Israelites themselves invented such moral purity, for they also were guilty of such
ungodliness (Exodus 32). The explanation is given in the Bible. The Bible reveals the moral standard of God, and
not the morality of men.
IT'S ACCURACY
Another area in which the uniqueness of the Bible is shown is in it's historical trustworthiness. Critics of the Bible constantly portray it as
nothing more than an unreliable fable or legend. But the truth is, the Bible is regarded as a reliable source of history of the Israelite
people and the events of the New Testament by some of the world's most eminent archaeologists and historians. The Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. had this to say about it. "The
Bible, particularly in the historical books of the Old Testament, is as accurate historical documents as any that we have from antiquity and are in fact more accurate than
many of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, or Greek histories. Those Biblical records can be and are used as are other ancient documents in
archaeological work. For the most part, historical events described took place and the peoples cited really existed." (Department
of Anthropology - Sil 76 May l990).
Sir William Ramsey, another prominent archaeologist and historian of New Testament times began his work as a skeptic
but was overwhelmed by the historical trustworthiness of the book of Acts in the New Testament, and eventually confessed his faith in Jesus Christ.
There are numerous examples of Biblical events confirmed by the work
of archaeologists which include: the existence of the Hittite empire,
Exodus 3:1 (skeptics used to deny such a nation ever existed); the reign
of Belshazzar in Babylon, Daniel 5 (again skeptics used to deny he ever
lived); the digging of a water tunnel by Hezekiah, II Kings 20:20 (the
tunnel itself has been discovered); Sennacherib's invasion of Judah, II
Kings 18:13 (Sennacherib's own account has been dug up); and the imprisonment
of Jehoiakim in Babylon, II Kings 24:12 (his name has been found on a
list dug up in Babylon). One of the most significant finds is a rare coin
found in Asia Minor in an ancient town of Apomaea in Phyrgia. The coin
has Noah and his wife departing from the ark, which has the Greek name
Noe on it. Also it has a dove with an olive branch flying about the ark.
If Noah was just a Jewish legend, then why would he be on a Greek coin
dated back to 250 B.C. whose culture was ungodly and completely foreign
to the teachings of Judaism?
In spite of all of these evidences, there will always be critics of the Bible who will continue to dispute the
trustworthiness of the Bible, simply because the story of the Bible will never agree with how they believe things must have happened. But
the fact remains that the Bible stands unshaken by this criticism. It demands an explanation.
IT'S UNITY
The uniqueness of the Bible is seen in it’s unified composition. It is not surprising for a book written by a
single man or a group of men at a single time to exhibit a carefully planned unity. But when a book written by nearly 40 different men
over a period of l600 years, written in several different languages, in many different
countries, and by men on every plane of social life from herdsmen, fishermen and kings,
exhibits such a unified structure, we must ask, how can this be? Such design and order must have been guided by a
one single mind.
SURVIVAL
Finally, the uniqueness of the Bible is seen in it’s ability to survive. As we think of the Bible as
literature, consider the wonder of its survival. It is a wonder that the Bible ever saw the light of the twentieth century! During the period of l600 years in which the Bible
was being written, Bible lands were ravaged by a series of fierce wars, great libraries were destroyed by fire and whole civilizations appeared and disappeared. In spite of all these adverse things, THE BIBLE
HAS SURVIVED!!
Before the coming of Christianity, Antiochus Epiphanes, who became the
ruler of Syria in 175 B.C., sought to break the morale of the Jews by
destroying their temple, selling many of the citizens of Jerusalem into
slavery, doing away with their sacred scriptures and forcing Greek culture
and religion on them. But, his efforts to destroy the sacred Old Testament
writings failed. God saw to their safekeeping.
In the third century A.D., the Roman emperor Diocletion, undertook the destruction of Christianity. All church buildings were destroyed, Christian
assemblies were forbidden and their copies of scriptures were confiscated. In fact, he boasted that he had wiped out
Christianity. Diocletion is now an insignificant figure of history, and the BIBLE STANDS!
The Bible has not only survived the persecution heaped upon it by its enemies, but it has overcome the many perversions
and abuses heaped upon it by its professed friends: Judaism, Catholicism, Protestantism,
and Modernism. All of these groups, ranging from the Jewish Rabbis of Christ's day to modern liberal theologians of our time, have
claimed to believe and love the Bible. Nevertheless, they have perverted it, corrupted its simplicity and twisted and warped it to suit their
sectarian goals.
What other piece of literature can begin to be favorably compared to the Bible? There
is no other book in the world like it. It is the world's most remarkable book. Can you say that by mere chance we have such a book? NO!! It is no doubt that by
the providence of God that we have His Word.
QUESTIONS
