Hi everyone, in today's video we are going to look at the divine origin of the Bible. The Bible says that it is not just a human composition, but it is God's message to man. And there is some evidence for this. There are evidences that can be classified into two types. So internal evidence means the evidence that comes out of the pages of the Bible itself, as external evidence means evidence that comes from outside the Bible. There are events that are features of our world. And you can correlate those events and characteristics of the world that we live in with what the Bible says. And this constitutes evidence that the Bible is the Word of God. So that's going to be the topic of this video.

Before we get started into looking into the Bible, this is a news item in which the government in India predicted that there would be zero new Covid-19 cases by May 16, 2020. And actually, what happened is on May 16, we had the greatest number of new COVID cases up till that point of time. Now, the purpose of me telling you this is just to illustrate a simple fact that we all know, and that it is very difficult to predict what is going to happen in the future. It is very difficult to predict the future accurately. In this case, there was a prediction made just about the next month, and was made with the best data and the best analysis that was possible. But the prediction went completely wrong. This illustrates how difficult it is to be accurate in predicting the future.


Fulfilled Prophecy
This is Albert Einstein, the most famous person in the world of physics. Jan Kuhn, the person who started WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg, the person who started Facebook. This is Joseph Stiglitz, one of the most influential economics that the world has seen. Garry Kasparov is one of the all-time greats in the field of chess. And Chiara Epstein is an all-time greatest fighter pilot. He has the maximum number of kills to his credit. And this is Henry Kissinger, an all-time famous and influential statesman and diplomat. This is Bob Dylan, who dominated the pop music scene for an extremely long time. So you have these various people who are kings or who are unparalleled in their own field. Now there's one thing that's common among all these people, and that is they all are Jews; they all are Jews.

Now, what is that have to do with the Bible? If you read the Bible, you may be surprised by the amount that it speaks about the Jews or known as Israelis mean Jews who are citizens in Israel, are called Israelis. The Bible has a lot to say about people of Jewish ancestry. In fact, in the Bible, God promises the ancestor of all Jews, his name is Abraham. And God promises him that I will make a few a great nation. And if you look at the world that we live in, you see that the pioneers that have been the most influential in all the fields that are there today have been Jews. They have been at the bottom of some of the greatest endeavors that mankind has done, has been able to do successfully. And this is fulfillment of a prophecy that God made in the Bible 4000 years ago. We had an example where a one-month prediction went wrong, but 4000 years back, God predicted that the Jewish nation would indeed be a great nation. There are so many things that distinguish the Jews, do the research yourself. There is no way of explaining this phenomenon except this, that this is a fulfillment of the prophecy that is there in the Bible.

This is a newspaper article, which speaks about the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. Now, this was shortly after the Second World War as most of us know, during the Second World War, Adolf Hitler, the German dictator, killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. So the Jews had a very traumatic time and after that the Jewish nation was born. Now, what does this have to do with the Bible? The prophet Isaiah writes like this, who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things, shall the earth be made to bring forth and one day, or shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children so after the travail of World War Two, came the birth of the Jewish nation-states, the modern state of Israel. Here again, we see prophecy from the Bible being fulfilled.

These are Egyptian warplanes that were destroyed in an Israeli attack. Now one of the strange things about modern Israel's recent history is that it had it has recently it has repeatedly being attacked by Arab nations from all around, like this map shows the path taken by various Arab armies in the 1973 War. So there were multiple fronts, all the surrounding nations attacked Israel. And yet, the strange thing that we see is that Israel not only managed to defeat these enemies, but the defeats were decisive. The defeats were against all odds. In fact, it has become a stuff of military legend that Arab armies falter and stumble and fall when they fight. against the State of Israel.

What does this have to do with the Bible? That is a prophecy from the prophet Zechariah. He says, Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of staggering unto all the surrounding nations when they besieged Judah and Jerusalem. Now strictly speaking, this refers to a time that is yet future, but we see the warm-up to that situation. The Prophet Zechariah says that when surrounding armies, surrounding nations come to attack Israel, it will be as if they have drunk some intoxicating drink, and they are not able to march, or they're not able to walk properly, and they stagger and fall like a drunk person. And that is what we see. This is a figurative description of the stunning debacle of the Arab armies as they attack Israel. And this was unthinkable when Zachariah wrote these words. Now, 2500 later, we see this being fulfilled.

This President Donald Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, with the Trump PEACE Plan, which was an attempt by Donald Trump and his administration to bring peace to the Middle East. Of course, Trump is not the first person to attempt something like this. The attempt has not been successful. But Trump has not been the first person to try and also to fail in bringing peace. If you look at the past presidents of the United States, all of them have taken such initiatives. Here is President Obama before him, that was Bill Clinton.

All of these American presidents tried to bring the Arabs and the Israelis together to the negotiating table and get them to strike some deal, which would bring in peace. This is the former vice president John Kerry, again with Israeli and Arab leaders. It goes on and on before that Jimmy Carter and there was George Bush. Not only American presidents, but the heads of state of various nations. This is a picture of the Quartet, an initiative by four nations to bring peace to the Middle East. So what we observe is that all nations of the world, the top leaders of the world are trying their best to bring peace to the Middle East to bring peace to Jerusalem, but they are failing. In fact, behind the Quartet, you can see the logo of the United Nations. The whole world is behind this effort, but this effort is not successful.

Look at what Zechariah says. He says, at that time, I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. Jerusalem is a big headache for the nations of the world. They are all trying to solve the problem of Jerusalem. It says all that burden themselves with it shall be cotton pieces, so all the people of the earth gather against it. So you have people hostile towards Israel, pressurizing Israel to make concessions. We have lots of efforts being put to bring in peace, but none of it succeeds. This is a list of the UN resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine. It says here that the 45 resolutions comprised almost half of all countries specific resolutions passed by the United Nations.

Just think about it. Half the resolutions are concerning a tiny country which is hardly visible in a world map. And here regarding this list, the authors say that it is incomplete, and it needs to be expanded. So the list goes on and on. The United Nations spends the greatest amount of its time trying to bring peace and trying to solve the problem of Israel and Palestine. In other words, just trying to solve the problem of Jerusalem. The problem does not get solved. This is just as was spoken by the prophet 2500 years ago. So fulfilled prophecy is proof that the Bible is true.

There are many, many other prophecies in the Bible, not all the prophecies concerning Israel. There are prophecies about the Middle East. There are prophecies about the Messiah, about Jesus Christ. And we have eyewitness accounts about the Lord Jesus Christ, who recorded his life, which show that He fulfilled these ancient Messianic prophecies. So, as we, as we know very well, it's not possible to predict the future, yet the Bible manages to predict the future accurately. This shows that there was a divine author behind the Bible.


The Most Loved Book
From the markings that are there on this Bible, you can make out that the person who owned this Bible, studied it a lot. That person's name was George Mueller. He was an English man who lived in the 19th century. And this is what he once told to a gathering of young people. He says now I have been doing this for 47 years. I have read through the whole Bible about 100 times. I always find it fresh when I begin again. Thus, my peace and joy have increased more and more. Now, from the picture, we can understand that Muller not only read his Bible, but he also studied it, and he studied it intensely. And he says that he has read the Bible about 100 times, and at the end of his life it had become about 200 times. Now he was not trying to break some world record because he not only read the Bible, he studied it, and he even distributed it. He arranged the distribution of around 100,000 copies of the scriptures. Now what we observe here, or what this example is trying to illustrate, is that the Bible is the most loved book on the planet.

Now we all are well aware of this that when we pick up a book, we love to read it and then after we have read it once, we are very hesitant to pick it up again. And yet, it is very common for devout Christians to read the Bible again and again. I myself have read the Bible from cover to cover about 20 times. Now, we are not doing this because we think we can earn God's favor. That's probably the first thought that might come to the mind of a person when he hears how Christians read their Bible. We don't believe that God will look favorably upon us or God will reward us with access to heaven because we read the Bible. We are reading it because we find the Bible life changing. We find the Bible helpful. We find that the Bible ministers to our soul. So this is the most loved book.

And what we're going to do now is we're going to look at different parameters or different way in which love for a book can be expressed. Now, one of the ways you express love is by reading it again and again. A loved book or a most loved book will sell well. And if you look at the list of bestsellers, the Bible just doesn't have any competition. The second best-selling book in the world is the Mao's Little Red Book, we can add that it's now an outdated book. Nobody reads that book. And it sold many copies because Mao was the atheist, communist dictator of China. And he forced people to buy copies of that book. He hijacked all the printing presses to print only his book, and that's how he managed to come at rank number two. The Bible simply has no competition when it comes to books, copies of the Bible being sold.

Now, why is it that many people buy copies of this book because it ministers to the soul in a way that other books can't In fact, if you look at the other books that are there, at least a few of them have significant biblical influence in them. If you read Lord of the Rings, you have biblical themes in it. If you read the alchemist, there are allusions and phrases that are being borrowed from the Bible in it. And so the Bible is most loved in terms of the number of copies that it sells. What we also need to know is that all the other books in this list are losing out. They had their prime time, and they are losing out now, whereas the Bible continues to sell.


The Most Translated Book
Another way in which we measure the love for a book is the number of languages into which it is translated. Now, portions of the Bible have been translated to nearly half of the world's nearly, 7000 languages. So there are around 3000 languages into which at least some portions of the Bible have been translated. The New Testament has been translated to around 1500 languages. And again, you'll see that the Bible has no competition. In fact, the next few ranks are taken by books that are influenced by the Bible or that have something to do with the Bible. So this is the most not book in the world.

And the remarkable thing here is that it has an appeal to people from all corners of the world. People from every language, every culture, they find something special in this Bible, and they are able to appropriate this Bible as their own. When the Bible was translated into German; it became a cherished book in German. When the Bible was translated into English; it became a cherished book in England. And that's what the Bible does to every culture that it goes to. Now, my point here is that it is not possible for human authors to produce a book like this. Only God can make something that has universal appeal to the human heart.


The Most Distributed Book
Bible is also the most distributed book. I mean, would you give huge amounts of money to distribute a book. If you really think that a book is so helpful to people, then perhaps you wouldn't give money if you're incredibly selfish. If you're not incredibly selfish, you still wouldn't bother to give money or contribute to have copies of a book produced and distributed if that book is not making a difference in your life. But the Bible has touched so many lives that people who have read the Bible and have been impacted by it are motivated to contribute money, and to put in their time and effort to have copies of the Bible distributed to people who have yet not experienced its greatness.

So the Bible is the most distributed book in the world. This picture is of one organization called the Gideon's. There are many organizations that distribute Bibles. There are many individuals who do it just on their own in their own capacity. But the Gideons is one organization, and they have distributed more than 2 billion copies of Scripture, in more than 95 languages.

The Bible is the most downloaded book from the internet, from the app stores that are there. If you search for a Bible app, you will get the endless number of apps made with different features trying to cater to different audiences. Again, why are so many Bible apps made? Just because there is a demand for them. So this is just one app of the Bible, which boasts of more than 100 million downloads.


The Most Studied Book
The Bible is also the most studied book in the world. So this is one software that is used to study the Bible. Now if you look here, you can see that the biblical text is read or is displayed here in Greek, in English, in Hebrew, and those are the original languages of the Bible. There are dictionaries, which tell us the meanings of the Hebrew and the Greek words. There is a lot of study that has been done of the ancient Hebrew and Greek grammar. We have interlinear Bibles, we have books written about the Bible. We have institutes that have been set up in order to study the Bible. In fact, some of the top universities in the world today had their beginnings as Bible colleges. So it is the most studied book in the world.


The Most Cherished Book
The Bible is also the most cherished book in the world. When I say cherished here, I mean, held on to or propagated despite opposition. So this is John Wycliffe, who lived around seven or eight hundreds years ago. He was the first person to attempt a translation of the Bible into English, and he nearly paid with his life for it. He had powerful friends to protect him. But the Catholic Church tried to kill him. They couldn't, but they managed to exhume his grave. This was William Tyndale. He was the first person to complete a translation of the New Testament from Greek into English. He lived around 500 years ago. He is called the architect of the English language because his translation of the Bible into English did a lot to improve the English language. And he was betrayed by a friend, and he was arrested.

He was killed. He was condemned to be burned alive. Just imagine being willing to translate a book at the risk of being burned alive. William Tyndale did that. And he was caught, and he was condemned, and the executioner had mercy on him, and he was strangulated instead of burn. Now, Robert Estienne is one of the people who made the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament. He also did this at a lot of risk and danger to himself. He had to flee for his life. So all these people have either tried to spread the Bible or study the Bible or keep copies of the Bible with themselves, despite the fact that doing so would lead to great personal danger for them. They had to suffer because of the standard they took for the Bible. Nevertheless, they took that stand. So in this way, the Bible is the most cherished book in the world.

This is a place in England. Now the beauty of the place sort of hides the gory past that was there. This is the burning of John OldCastle. And he was a Lollard. Lollards were the disciples or students of John Wycliffe, whom I showed in the previous slide. So John Wycliffe, translated the Bible into English and Lollards would copy these English Bibles or English Bible potions, and they would go around distributing these potions and teaching people the Bible, and they did so at great risk to themselves. At that time, England was under the power of the Catholic Church. And the Catholic Church burned these people alive, just because they read the Bible, they studied it, and they spread it to the common people around them.

So this place today is known as Lollard’s Pit. The notice here says that it's the site of a place of execution of heretics and other offenders in the 16th century. From the Catholic point of view, a heretic is anyone who does something that the Pope does not approve of. And at that time, the Pope did not approve of the Bible's being distributed to common people. But people, like John OldCastle, were willing to do this because the Bible had changed their own lives. So everyone promotes books that they like, authors and publishing companies will do some promotion. But nobody, distributes a book. Nobody copies out a book and gives it to others, knowing that this is the fate that awaits them. So the Bible is the most cherished book in the world.


The Most Hated Book
This person's name is Arun Shourie. He was a journalist and writer. In India. This is Porphyry, who was originally from Lebanon, and he lived during the Roman Empire. So these two people are separated by around 18 centuries. This is Daya Clayton lived around the same time as Porphyry, a little bit after him, Daya Clayton was a Roman emperor of the third century. This is Christopher Hitchens was prominent towards the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, just like Richard Dawkins. Now all these people have one thing in common, they wrote, or they put in efforts extensively against the Bible. Four of the people shown here that is except Emperor Daya Clayton use the pen to fight against the Bible, of course today perhaps nobody knows about Porphyry.

But Porphyry was once a famous person. And the book that he wrote was also famous. The book that he wrote was called against Christians and his primary argument in that book was that the Bible is false, or the Bible is a bad book. Now, the people here have also written against the Bible. Well, Daya Clayton was not an author. He was an emperor and what he did is that he mobilized all the resources of the Roman Empire, just to obliterate the Bible, and those who would follow it. And he was not the only Roman emperor to do so. But here what we see is that the Bible is a book that has also evoked the strongest negative response.

This person's name is Bertrand Russell, is a well known philosopher, mathematician and writer from 19th century England. And he says there's a Bible on that shelf there, but I keep it next to Voltaire, poisoned and antidote. So there are a lot of obscene books in the world. There are a lot of books that promote hatred. There are a lot of books that spread lies. Lies that incite hatred in people against some section of humanity. There are a lot of books that have been written to mislead or deceive people. You know, Bertrand Russell does not say these kinds of words against those books, but he uses the word poison for the Bible.

So what we understand from here is that the Bible is the most hated book on the planet. These are a few individuals, but there are many, many, many people who have devoted huge amounts of effort to disproving or discrediting the Bible. Now, Bertrand Russell says here that Voltaire is an antidote to the Bible. Voltaire was one of the leaders in the French Revolution. And he says like this, that the Bible is what fools have written, what imbeciles commend, what rogues teach, and young children are made to learn by heart. He wrote a book trying to discredit the bible - La Bible Enfin Explique. He claims that this is a complete explanation of the Bible, and a complete deconstruction of the Bible. Well, needless to say, Nobody reads his book today. The Bible continues to sell more than ever before. Now, Voltaire said that 100 years from today, the Bible will be a forgotten book.

So here you can see from an individual a huge amount of hatred against this book. And what we need to ask is that why is it that this book elicits such a strong negative response? On the one hand, it's the most loved book in the world. On the other hand, it's the most hated this but if you and I were to write a book, it'll probably be ignored by most people, but the Bible does not get ignored. There are people who hate it. There is a little bit of trivia here that whereas Voltaire predicted that the Bible would vanish. After his death, the Geneva Bible Society purchased his own house, and they started using their house to print and distribute Bibles. But that's how the Bible is it's like you, you keep hitting against it; you will die, but it lives on. Perhaps the most hated book in the world.

This is a map of the world which shows the countries in which the government made specific efforts to get rid of the Bible. So the light shaded areas are the countries in which this was a past policy and the dark shaded countries, places where that is still a policy of the government. Government is atheists, and the government actively persecutes people who will follow the Bible. It tries to get rid of the Bible, to some extent because of economics, things have changed. In China, for example, we have the world's largest printing presses for Bible printing. And most of those copies are exported. So there is a lot of money to be made by printing the most best-selling book in the world. But nevertheless, the policy of the government has been to suppress the Bible. It's the most hated book on the planet.

And to the north of China you can see that big country once upon a time it was the biggest country in the world, the USSR and the symbol of communism. It was also a symbol of hatred towards the Bible. This is a Soviet era poster, a propaganda poster which tries to express hatred towards the Bible. In the poster, there is a man whose face and eyes are covered by the Bible. And there are two people who are coaxing him. So the Soviet Communist atheist government wanted to show that, you know, religious people or people who read the Bible, are prevented. They're blinded by the Bible, and they cannot see things as they really are. Now, the Soviet government not only made posters against the Bible, but it imprisoned and tortured and killed people just because they read the Bible or just because they followed the Bible. Now, one such person who got arrested was Richard Wurmbrand.

He was a Christian who lived in Romania. He was arrested by the communist authorities. And while he was in prison, he wrote a book called ‘The answer to the atheist’s handbook’. So the communist atheists wrote a book called ‘The atheist's handbook’ for the purpose of refuting the Bible. Again, you might have not heard that book. Nobody reads that book today. But it was written to discredit the Bible. And Richard Wurmbrand wrote the answer to this atheist handbook while he was in prison. And this is what he says that many banned books are published in the USSR, but they don't have to be banned. People simply stopped reading them. Why does the proletariat have to ban the Bible and even write a book trying to refute it. Yeah, that's a good question, isn't it? Why does this book elicit so much hatred? If it is such a bad book, it will just fade away? After all, most books do not last more than a few years.

Now there is a preacher of the Bible who has given an answer. You might not like that answer, but the preachers name is Gypsy Smith, and he says like this, the reason you don't like the Bible, you old sinner, is because it knows everything about you. That's why people hate the Bible. It exposes them for the evil inside them, but again, this is something which only God could do. I mean, I couldn't write a book that people would hate so much. Even if I tried, people might probably ban it, and they will ignore it, and it will just fade away. But the Bible continues to elicit a strong response from people all over the world.


Book That Transforms Lives
Now, if this person looks like a terrorist, yes, he was a terrorist. He writes like this in his biography, “Many times I cry - ‘Allah I want to kill Christians. I want to kill Jews’. We plan a lot of things, evil things for the Christian world, cruel things for the Jewish world. But then he adds, it is by the grace of God that I'm here.” His name is Daniel Shayetseh, and he is from Iran. What I want to point out here is that the Bible is a book that transforms people. Here is a man who wanted to kill other people, and he was driven by that agenda. And in fact, he had a possibility for the Bible, and those who would call themselves by the Bible, but then in some point of his life through a certain turn of events. He came across the Bible. He read it, and this book changed his life. No human author could write a book that could change people's lives like the Bible does.

This is Nicky Cruz, who recently passed away. He was a native of Puerto Rico. And at a young age, he came to New York, and he got involved with the gangs there. And he became a notorious gangster, and he was in and out of prison many times. And in this biography, he writes like this that a prison psychiatrist, a police official once told him that you know, I have seen many criminals, so I know what criminals are like, but I have never seen someone who is hard like you, you're an animal. You're not even human. Nobody, nothing can change you. And yet, the Bible changed Nicky Cruz. At some point of time, he came across the message of the Bible, he responded to it, and his heart was changed, and he became a new person.

And he set up an organization called ‘Teen Challenge’, which even today tries to help troubled teenagers all over the world. So the Bible is a book that transforms whether you're a terrorist whether you're a gangster, or whether you're just one of those people who look very good and respectable on the outside. Whoever you are, wherever you are in your life, the Bible can transform you. Now, if I were to write a book and give it to a criminal, I don't think that book is going to change that criminal's heart. So here you'll see that the Bible is a special book, special in the sense that when a person reads it, there is an author who's actively involved. No other book can make this kind of claim. God changed Nicky Cruz's heart through the Bible that he read.

Now, This is Chrissy Morin, and she is a porn star, or actually, she was a porn star. And she eventually quit the porn industry. Now, why did Chrissy Morin quit the porn industry? Again, the answer is the Bible. She came across the Bible. She read it. She understood that what she was doing is wrong and a dishonoring to herself, dishonoring to her family, dishonoring to God, and she made it made this very difficult decision to get out of the porn industry. Her life was transformed. And this is a picture of Chrissy Morin on her wedding day. So again, you have people from different backgrounds, but whatever be the person's background, the person is transformed by the Bible.

This person’s name is John Newton, and he was a sailor, living around 300 years ago in England. In those days, there was a British slave trade, and he used to go to Africa, in his ship, and he would transport slaves from Africa to England. He was a very, you know, very promiscuous character, and he would take a lot of risks. He would attempt to get himself into a lot of trouble. He was that kind of foolhardy character. And he even for some time, he himself was enslaved by an African Queen, and he served the queen as a slave, but then eventually he managed to escape out of that.

Now this is what his tombstone has to say. It says John Newton, once an infidel, a libertine servant of slaves in Africa was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed the faith he had long labored to destroy. So this man did everything against the Bible. He had a devout Christian mother, who taught him the Bible and prayed for him, but he but she had an early death. So he grew up as a very hard young man. He lived his life, doing all the things that the Bible says should not be done. But then he came across this book, he read it, and this book changed his life.

And this is a scene from the movie ‘Amazing grace’, and the person on the left is John Newton. The person on the right is William Wilberforce. And William Wilberforce was a member of the House of Lords, and here he is gone to visit John Newton at his home. And John Newton is here telling William Wilberforce about the horrors of the slave trade because he himself was a slave trader. He himself ran it, he was a sailor in whose ships the slaves would be transported. And he tells William Wilberforce, the Member of Parliament, about the realities of the slave trade. William Wilberforce also was the person who revered the Bible. On the basis of his biblical convictions.

When William Wilberforce found out about the evils of the slave trade. He tried and eventually succeeded in getting a law passed in the English Parliament against the slave trade. And that's how the British slave trade came to an end. S you see here, the Bible changes the heart of a person. It changed the heart of John Newton. He was no longer just another rough sailor. The Bible changed the heart of William Wilberforce. He was no longer, you know, one of those opportunistic politicians, but he was a politician who acted according to his conscience acted according to the principles of the Bible, and that is how the slave trade of England was put to a halt.

This is a man whose name is ‘Nate saint’, and the person next to him has been nicknamed George, but that's not his actual name. He is. He was a savage now it might sound disrespectful to call a person a savage. But these were people who live very violent lives. This is set in the rainforests, the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador. George belonged to a tribe that is now known as the Wow Dhanis. Wow Dhanis means people. But in those days, the neighboring tribes used to call them all Ocars, and Ocars means savages. So they were a warlike, aggressive tribe. And this is Nate Saint's first meeting with George. But unfortunately, a few minutes later, George and his friends, his other tribal friends, they came, they speared, Nate saint and his four friends to death. And this is a search and rescue party that is examining the aircraft that Nate Saint had used.

Now, the story does not end there. As incredible as it might sound. The wives of a few of these missionaries went and actually stayed with the same Ocars people who had murdered their husbands. And now you may be able to notice that this looks like a Christian ceremony. Someone who is reading the Bible. This is actually a baptism ceremony and who is baptizing whom; it is the tribal people who are baptizing the sons of the missionaries whom they head earlier speared to death. So these orca people lived very violent lives and their population was decimated. They were living in a very bad condition. They were spearing each other to death. Families were broken, because a very simple, very mundane quarrel would get escalated into a spearing battle, a spearing duel, and people would die. But this tribal society was transformed. And bottom left you have the son of Nate saint, that is Steve Saint. And he is here grown up and on a visit, and posing with the very people who killed his father. So the Bible transforms individuals. The Bible also transforms communities.

These are people from the New Hebrides. The New Hebrides Islands, which are now known as Vanuatu. So, before these people came into contact with civilization, they were cannibals. There was a person called John Paton from England. He decided to go to Vanuatu. Why would an English man decide to go to an island which is inhabited by people who did not speak his language who were hostile, and who were cannibals ? Why would anyone do that? The first foreigners who landed on this island were killed, cooked and eaten within an hour of landing on the island. Now, after hearing that, why would a person like John Patton go and try to live on this island? Well, he did that because he believed in the transforming power of the Bible.

And he had a lot of adventures there, which is not our subject right now. But this is what he writes later. He says, Recall… what the Gospel has done for the near kindred of these same Aborigines. On our Aneityum, 3500 cannibals are being led to renounce their heathenism. And he goes on and gives lists of people from different islands. These are all Pacific Islands. And on every island, there were people who came to Jesus Christ, people who agreed to follow the Bible. And when they did that, the Bible changed them, and they stopped being cannibals. They stopped being violent, they became civilized. The indicators of quality of life improved in these Island societies. But this again illustrates the capability of the Bible to transform a community.

This is the Hmar tribe in northeast India. They were headhunters. So a head-hunting tribe means a tribe that would go on raiding expeditions, and they would kill their enemies, and they would hang their heads because that is what they priced. I mean, in our society, perhaps we may price skill and entrepreneurship or in the technical fields or an art or something. But in their society, it was the ability to kill people that was priced. And you had to have proof that you have killed people to get married and to have some standing in the community. And here they are exhibiting some of their traditional dancers. Now, one of the most illustrious names from this community is Mr. Rachunga Podaite. He was the first person from this community to learn to read and write. He went to school, and then he went to college as well. So he was the first educated member of this community and after that, many people became educated. And the tribe changed.

But how did it happen? Well, there was a Welsh missionary who went to this tribe and managed to communicate the message of Jesus Christ to Rachunga’s father. At that point of time, these people were illiterate. Their language did not even have a script. But Rachunga’s father understood the message of the Bible, and it changed his life. Then he motivated his son to go cross the forest at great risk, because there were wild animals. There might have been hostile adults, but at great risk, he sent his 10-year-old son across the forest to a small town where he could go to school, and where he could learn to read and write. And then Rochunga got educated. He completed his schooling. He eventually went to the United States of America for further studies. And what did he do? He translated the Bible into his native language. So first of all, a script had to be developed. And then the Bible was translated to the native language.

So what does Rochunga have to say about the transformation of his headhunting tribe? The title says it all - ‘The Book That Set My People Free.’ As a member of the Hmar tribe, Rochunga knew the kind of bondage that his people were in. They were plagued with belief in spirits, all sorts of unhealthy unwholesome practices, extreme violence, alcoholism, broken families, so on and so forth. The Bible came, transformed them. And here is an insider saying, this is the book that set my people free.

So we have been looking at the divine origin of the Bible. Why do we believe that the Bible is not just a human product and that it is a message from God? Well, in this video, we saw a few reasons. The Bible is a book that contains prophecy. Only God can predict the future accurately. The Bible is the most intensely loved book on the planet. It's the most hated book on the planet. And it is a book that transforms individuals and communities. The Bible can transform your life as well. We highly recommend it with all our hearts. Thank you very much.