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Transcript 529A — The Veracity of the Bible
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Good evening. I called earlier this week and suggested that we can hypothesize that the creation and the inspiration of the Bible were the work of the devil.
HC: Now let me ask you this question, I remember your call. Where does this idea come from, this hypothesis that you're speaking of, that Satan is the creator?
CALLER: Well, I think it's a natural question.
HC: I know, but it's important where it came from. In other words, it came out of your mind. It's a hypothesis that came out of your mind. And therefore it has no more authority than your mind. It is no more valid than your mind. And of course your mind is circumscribed by the way God created you. Your mind and my mind are exceedingly limited. We know very very little about this earth. That we know for sure. We don't have to hypothesize about that. We know very very little about this earth and about the universe. And certainly we know a lot less about who would have created this earth and this universe.
And therefore, any hypothesis that comes out of our mind immediately is rather worthless. Now that's the reason that it's so marvelous that we have the Bible, because the Bible didn't come out of my mind. The Bible exists.
CALLER: The act of accepting the Bible is an act of the mind.
HC: Yes, but the Bible however was not written by my mind. The Bible here stands and claims to be the Word of God, and it has stood the test of 2000 years. When I begin to examine the Bible and see its marvelous cohesiveness, when I see the fact that it has prophesied certain things would come to pass, and they did indeed come to pass, when you read, for example, a passage like Isaiah 53, which definitely was penned hundreds of years before it happened, and then you study the Gospels and see exactly what happened in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, you realize how marvelously accurate that prophecy was. You begin to sense that this is something else than the work of man. It is the work of God.
And again and again in the Bible you will find prophecies that were written hundreds of years before they took place, and later on in time they were fulfilled in exact agreement with the prophecy.
CALLER: Now you have said three important words here. You've said that when you examine the Bible, you said that when you study the Gospels, you said then when you sense these things to be true, aren't these processes of the mind?
HC: No. You see, when we look at one and one and it adds up to two, that is a fact. We can agree on that. There's no problem. There's no hypothesis there. That's a fact. And when we open the scriptures and we read one word following another, these are words that are facts that are before us, that can be examined, as any authority can be examined.
CALLER: But this is the problem. How do we know that these things in the Bible are facts and not illusions?
HC: Well, first of all because they have been proven again and again to be historically accurate. And any time the Bible has been attacked, let's put it in another way. Anything that the Bible has spoken of in history has never been disproved. It always is a true fact of history. When you, for example, read your history book, and this is always very interesting to me. People, for example, will read a history book and they'll say that Columbus discovered America in 1492, because they read it in a history book. Now they accept that without any question. Columbus discovered America in 1492. Nobody questions whether that's an illusion or whatever. They just assume that is correct, even though the history book doesn't hold a candle to the Bible.
But when they read the Bible and God gives a fact of history there, then they begin to question. Well, can we trust the Bible? Is the Bible this or is the Bible that? But the fact is that the Bible is infinitely more accurate from every aspect than any history book is.
CALLER: But this isn't universally accepted. And people will read the Bible critically and say that there is some doubt for this, that this isn't necessarily truth.
HC: Yes, they can do that. But you see, we have to start somewhere. And I don't trust my mind at all. I do have a document in front of me called the Bible, and wherever I have been able to test it it has always been proven correct. And it is the only book that's available in the whole wide world that has a definite straightforward presentation of the very beginning, the only book that really describes who God is and tells us why we have the conditions in the world today. And from whatever vantage point I test it, it always comes out and makes sense And again it has made many prophecies that have literally been fulfilled.
For example, in Luke 21:20, to give you an illustration, it says there, "When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, know that its desolation has come nigh." Now that's an interesting statement. The context, when you read it very carefully, cannot be talking about the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, if you read the context carefully. We do know from history that Jerusalem was destroyed then, but here we see today that Jerusalem again is surrounded by armies who wish to destroy it. And this was predicted 1900 years ago. This can only be because it is the Word of God.
CALLER: People such as Erasmus and DaVinci have also made prophecies that have come true. Prophecies are the work of men, not necessarily God.
HC: No. These men never made prophecies like the Bible has done. They have never made those kinds of prophecies, not at all, where every one has come to pass. This just has not happened. And no one else has ever written like the Bible. There is not another book in the world that is written like the Bible, that has as many human authors as it has and yet has a cohesiveness that is just exquisite, being written over a period of 1500 years or longer, and yet it is just totally cohesive within itself. There is no book like it. Once you learn to respect the Bible, honor the Bible as the Word of God and really begin to study and surrender your will to it and let it speak to you, then you begin to see the power of the Bible as compared with any human book, any other book that you want to name in the world. There is no book in the world that even can hold a candle to the Bible.
Now my mind I don't trust for a moment. But when I read the Bible, I recognize, this has to be something very very special, and I'm willing to hang my life on it. There's nothing else that even begins to approach the Bible.
Now you can decide, well, Okay. I'm an agnostic. I don't trust the Bible. I don't know whether there is a God, or whatever. And you can try to find some other authority. You may do that. But I don't know where you're going to look. I have no idea where you're going to look. You try to find another authority that even begins to approach the authority of the Bible. And I challenge you to find some other authority. You go into the largest library in the country, and they'll have hundreds of thousands of volumes. You pour through those, and you find one book there that has the authority of the Bible. And you won't find it. There is none that exists.
CALLER: We know, for example, from the Book of Job that God has given Satan dominion over the earth. Now in the case of Job, God, who had previously protected Job, no longer protects him and Satan has complete power over Job. Suppose that God has given Satan power over men such that it was Satan who has inspired the Bible.
HC: No. You see, your hypothesis is all mixed up. You're starting with the Bible and using that as your authority, and then you're saying that the Bible is written by Satan. That's circular reasoning. That'll take you nowhere. You are correct of course. You are correct that God has said certain things about Satan in the Book of Job. But God says certain things in the same Bible about Himself. And He's said a lot more about Satan. And so your hypothesis, if you're going to start with the Bible, disappears immediately, because then you have to continue with the Bible.
CALLER: Okay. I'm saying that you believe that Satan has dominion over the earth.
HC: Only as God allows him to. God didn't allow Satan to do anything he wanted to Job. He limited him. He said you can do anything you want but you can't take his life. And the same is true. Satan has authority over the earth to some degree. But he doesn't have complete authority. God is still the King of kings and Lord of lords. And as a matter of fact, Satan is a defeated foe. He is destined for destruction because he has been vanquished at the cross. And Satan's limitations are very severe, even though God does allow him certain freedoms.
CALLER: And you believe this as an act of faith.
HC: Oh, absolutely. I believe the Bible is the Word of God. It is the Word of God. And it gives me answers to the meaning of life, it gives me answers as to where things came from and where things are going. It is the only book that begins to look like absolute truth, because it is absolute truth.
CALLER: Would you admit the possibility that it is because your own psychology needs answers, needs to know why, needs to have a purpose, that you believe the Bible, that it's a psychological phenomenon that leads you to have faith?
HC: Oh, no, it's not a psychological phenomenon. It's a very definite spiritual phenomenon that God opens my spiritual eyes and ears so that I have the faith that the Bible is the Word of God. This didn't come of myself, because only God would be able to do that. Of myself I would not want to come to God. Of myself I would be in rebellion against Him. It is only because of what God has done that I have this faith. And it's this faith that begins to really give essential answers to life, essential answers to the nature of life and the kind of life that ought to be, and so on.
Now you've got to find yourself an authority. Let's get right back to that question. You've got to find an authority to live under. And either you're going to find a book somewhere that is your authority, and you can lay that alongside the Bible and check it to see if it has anything like the Bible's authority, or you've got to check your own mind and let it be the authority. Then you know how limited you really are in your authority. But you have to have an authority. And frankly, I don't trust my mind, I don't trust any other book. But I do trust the Bible. And I'll lay the Bible alongside any book in the world. There's no book that even begins to sound like the Bible.
But thank you so much for calling. Good night.