An overview of Bible prophecy
(Part 2)
In Part 1 appearing in this column last week (December 8, 2019), I said that no sacred writing can duplicate the amazingly perfect predictions in the Bible which came to pass with 100% accuracy. The predictions referred to as Biblical prophecies are God’s messages spoken through men who are called prophets. Because these prophets are speaking God’s messages, their prophecies are accurate to the minutest detail.
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These prophecies in the Bible were given to us in the Old Testament, the part of the Bible that was written hundreds of years before Jesus was born. The New Testament was written after the death of Jesus Christ. Unknown to many of us God outlined a roadmap in the Bible down through history by foretelling signs and conditions through men who were called prophets. Unlike other human messages, the prophets’ messages had an awesome and remarkable-feature — they were accurate to the minutest detail. In the Old Testament the prophets mentioned 2600 times that their words are the Word of God. In the New Testament, a similar statement was made 525 times.
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No other ancient writing or any other book for that matter matches the historical reliability and accuracy of the Bible. For one, only God foreknows everything that was written about the life and passion about Jesus Christ — his birth, his death, his resurrection, and his second coming.
* ** Archaeology has been a tool that has confirmed the historical accuracy and reliability of the Bible. Less than a century ago, critics of the Bible claimed hundreds of historical errors of the Bible. With the coming of archaeology, spades dug in the ruins of Biblical cities have uncovered ancient records that coincided exactly with biblical narratives.
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What is archaeology? It is simply a study of how the ancient men lived by examining the material remains of the things (artifacts) the ancient men used in their daily lives, like tools, weapons, utensils, or just charred bits of wood buried in the ruins of the places they lived in. Many archaeologists are attracted by a special type of archaeology — so-called Biblical archaeology which involves the excavations of ruins in biblical places like Palestine, Egypt, Babylonia, and other countries with which the Hebrews and the early Christians came in contact with.
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Diggings by archaeologists in recent years in mound ruins (elevated earth formations) in Biblical cities have uncovered ancient cities on top of other cities. These mounds which go up as high as 100 feet reveal the life and civilization of the people living during Biblical times. These mound ruins sometimes cover as many as 20 cities, each city being identified by a separate layer. With the passage of time, the mounds grew bigger in height and width due to continuous accumulation of the earth. ** *
One of the most vicious attacks on the historical accuracy of the Bible is the theory that writing was not yet existent during the time of Moses and therefore, there was no way that the events in the
Book of Genesis could be recorded. Some
Biblical critics go as far as saying that the Old Testament merely narrated myths that had been passed down by oral tradition. This theory has been repudiated by the excavations of hundreds of thousands of inscriptions, marks, pictures, and other forms of writings found in stone and clay tablets in the ruins of Biblical cities antedating Moses by centuries and millenniums. Big libraries with thousands of books have also been uncovered in many cities in Babylonia as well as in other Biblical places like Ur, the early home of Abraham, father of the Hebrew nation. Dr. C.I. Wooley, a world-famous archaeologist, discovered in 1923 the so-called Annipadda Foundation Tablet in a cornerstone of a temple in Obeid, a place near Ur. This tablet, now in the British Museum, contains inscriptions which are considered the oldest historical document.
(To be continued) ***
This column continues to give out copies of the Holy Bible for free to those who cannot afford to buy their own copies. If interested, please send your letter-request to Ms. Nelly Favis Villafuerte, 5233 Fahrenheit St., Palanan, Makati City. Kindly mention if it is the Tagalog, English, Cebuano, or Ilocano Bible that is preferred.
Be joyful and forgiving!