This Sunday we will be continuing our journey through 1st Kings, chapter 7:13 to the end of chapter 8. Kings is one of those books the critics of the Bible have loved to attack. They rummage around searching for a supposed contradiction, and then hold it aloft and boldly declare they have proven the Bible is the fallible words of men and not the infallible Word of the Living God. How foolish they then look when that which they are holding turns out to be another valuable gem that reinforces the Divine inspiration of Scripture. On Sunday we will look at two examples of this.
It has been said the many a critics hammer has been broken on the anvil of God’s Word!
The world loves its ‘experts’. But one who surely deserved that title was the late Professor Robert Dick Wilson. He could read & write 45 ancient Semitic languages, and by the age of 25 could read the New Testament in 9 languages, had memorised the New Testament from Matthew to Revelation and also had many of the Old Testament books memorised… in Hebrew!
In his book, Scientific Investigation of The Old Testament, he said:
For 45 years continuously I have devoted myself to one great study of the Old Testament. In all of its languages, in all of its archaeology, in all of its translations.
The critics of the Bible who go to it in order to find fault claims to themselves all knowledge, all virtue, all love of the truth. One of their favourite phrases is ‘all scholars agree’. Well, when a man says that I wish to know who the scholars are and what they agree on? Where do they get their evidence? I defy any man to make an attack on the Old Testament on the ground of evidence that I cannot investigate.
After I learned the necessary languages, I set about the investigation of every singe consonant in the Hebrew Old Testament – there are about one million, two hundred and fifty thousand of them.
It took me many years to achieve my task. I had to observe variations in the text, in the manuscripts, notes of the masorites in all their various versions, parallel passages, and contextual emendations of critics; and then I had to classify the results of every character, every consonant, to reduce the Old Testament criticism to an absolutely objective science, something that is based on evidence and not opinion.
The result of those 45 years of study which I have given to the text has been this:
I can affirm that there is not a page of the Old Testament concerning which you need have any doubt!
For example, to illustrate its accuracy: there are 29 ancient kings whose names are mentioned, not only in the Bible, but also on monuments we’ve uncovered of their own time. There are 195 consonants in those 29 proper names. Yet we find that in the documents of the Hebrew Old Testament there are only two consonants out of the 195 that have ever been called into question. [The names] are all in exactly the same way as they have been inscribed on their monuments which archaeologists have dated and discovered. Some of these go back four thousand years. Compare this accuracy with the greatest scholar of his age, the librarian at Alexandria in Egypt, (200 B.C.) He complied a catalogue of the kings of Egypt, 38 in all. Of the entire number only three or four were recognisable. He also made a list of the kings of Assyria and in only one case can we tell who he’s talking about – and that one is not spelt correctly! Or take Ptolemy who drew up a register of eighteen kings of Babylon; not one of them is properly spelt. You could not make them out at all if you did not know some of the outside sources. If anyone talks about the Bible, ask him about the kings mentioned in it. There are 29 kings referred to, 10 different countries among these 29, all of which are included in the Bible and on the monuments. Every one of these is give their right name in the Bible, their right country and their right place in correct chronological order.
Think what this means!
If you live near to us, please join us on Sunday, if not, you will be able to download the teaching and notes after the weekend.
Every blessing,
Pastor Barry.