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Friday, September 21, 2012

The Bible: The Unique Book of Books in its prophecies

Matthew 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. (KJV)

Yesterday we began noting the Bible's unique role as the Book of Books.  We noted that it alone is authoritatively God's Word, that it is inerrant or without error and that it is unified in its parts and whole.  Today we want to continue on considering further reasons as to why the Bible is uniquely the Book of Books.

The Bible is unique not only because of its authority, its inerrancy and its unity but also...

The Bible is unique due to its prophecies
The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 makes this statement under its article "The Bible": "It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore is, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried."

How can a book not only "be" but "remain" into the future the true center of Christian union? I have all sorts of books on my shelves that are constantly being updated to new editions.  Even the Baptist Faith and Message itself, as wonderful as it is in summarizing the Christian faith, has went through three revisions (1925, 1963 and 2000).  Creeds are authorities, but not final authorities.  They are confined to either the past or the present.

Science books also fall into this category.  Theories of the nature of physical reality are being constantly tweaked as new evidence comes in and replaces former understandings.  Again, science as a discipline is confined to the past or present and can at best attempt to predict the future. 

Scan what you can of every religious book. All of those books are confined to either the present or the past.  Not a single one contains any example of fulfilled predictive prophecy.  As much as Mormonism claims to be a revealed religion, not one example of fulfilled prophecy exists in its three main works (Book of Mormon, Pearl of Great Price nor Doctrine and Covenants).

So what of the Bible? Does it have predictive prophecy? Consider the facts below:1
-1/5 of the Bible is about Bible Prophecy
-1/3 of Bible prophecy is about Jesus Christ and His second coming
-There are over 600 prophecies
-109 are confirmed, fulfilled prophecies that were fulfilled in Christ's first coming
-224 prophecies point to His second coming
-Of the 46 Old Testament prophets, 10 speak of the 1st coming, 36 speak of the second coming.
-There are over 1500 Old Testament passages and 1 out of every 25 New Testament passages that speak of Christ's second coming

Did you catch that? Hundreds of examples of fulfilled predictive prophecies exists in the Bible.  Outside of text of scripture, not one example can be found.  You tell me, which book in all the world is not confined to the past and present, but also is accurate about the future? I'll tell you - the Bible!

No Doubt, the Bible is the Unique Book of Books
The Bible is the Book of Books due to its hundreds of fulfilled predictive prophecies.  Is it no wonder that Matthew wrote what he wrote in his opening section of his Gospel? In fact, even in his work there is already the appearance of prophecy as early as Matthew 1:21, where the name of the Christ child was to be Jesus: "since He will save His people from their sins." 

The Bible as a Book of Books is uniquely authoritative.  Again Matthew assumes this to be so, otherwise he would not had wrote what he did in Matthew 1:17 - "So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations."

Thirdly, the Bible is uniquely authoritative due to its inerrancy.  Matthew trusted the text of the Old Testament to compile his geneaology.  Jesus Himself in Matthew 5:18 and 24:35 asserts biblical inerrancy (without error). 

Then finally, the Bible is unique due to its unity.  In Matthew's opening statement, the time from Moses writing about Abraham to Samuel's writing about David represents over 400 years, from David to the deportation is nearly 300 or so years and from the deportation to Jesus' day would had been nearly 600 years.  In our English Bibles we have 39 books in the Old Testament.  These are the works from whence Matthew drew.  To see all of that history presented so seemlessly in its diversity and unity is possible only if the Book itself is Divinely authored through the 40 authors.  

End Notes
I got these stats from a sermon I heard preached by Dr. John MacArthur.