Hi everyone, in today’s video, we are going to look at the divine origin of the Bible, more specifically, the internal evidence for the Bible’s divine origin. Now, what’s so great about the Bible? Many people might feel like questioning those of us who are disciples of Christ, or believers in the Bible, as to why you give so much regard to a book that is so old. Well, you can get an understanding of the answer by looking first of all at what the Bible says about itself. There are many things that say about itself. One of the things is that it is not just the word of man, but it is God’s message, God’s word, or in other words, God’s message to the human race, the Bible claims to be divine in its origin. Now, the claims are well and good.

What do we have to show for these claims? One way to classify the evidence for the divine of origin of the Bible is external evidence and internal evidence. External evidence means evidence that originates from outside the Bible, or evidence that has to do a lot with events or places or things that are outside the Bible. Whereas internal evidence deals with features of the Bible inside it. This is not from coming from outside. But the Bible itself has certain features that we noticed when we read the Bible and that suggests its divine origin. When you read the Bible, you get this understanding you notice certain characteristics, which tell you that man either could not have written something like this or a man or a woman for that matter, would not have been able to, would not feel like writing something like this. Man wouldn’t do it, man couldn’t do it.


Unity in content
So let’s begin by looking at some of the authors of the Bible. This is a picture of a scene from the Bible, the apostle Paul, at the time, when this event took place, he was not a Christian. But then he had this vision of Christ. And then he became a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ. And then he was one of the authors of the New Testament. Now, in terms of his personal background, he was a scholar. He was not a very wealthy person, but he was high up in society in terms of education, and lineage and background and so on. This is a statue of the apostle Peter. Now, he was at another end of the spectrum in society, he was just a fisherman, not very educated, not very learned.

This is an excavation in Jerusalem, which is thought to be the remains of the palace of an ancient king in Jerusalem called David. King David is one of the authors of the Bible. He began as a shepherd, he, he then became a military officer, and then he eventually became king of Israel. This is the tomb of another biblical author called Joshua, he was a leader, or you could say, an administrative and military leader. Now, what I want to communicate from here is that the authors of the Bible, were from varied backgrounds, there were different kinds of people, people with different occupations, people with different tastes, living in different times. In fact, there is a lot that is different about these authors. There were about 40 different writers who wrote the Bible.

Now, if you do a social experiment, and you ask a few questions on any controversial subject to 10 different people, perhaps from 10 different ethnic groups, 10 different occupations, 10 different age groups 10 Differentiate socio-economic backgrounds, you will not be able to get agreement, you will get a variety of answers, a variety of viewpoints. Now this is important, because the first feature that we are going to look at in the Bible is the unity of the Bible. So the unity of the Bible is remarkable, considering the very nature of its authors, so 40 of them. They wrote in three different languages that are Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It took them more than 1600 years to write the Bible.

You can imagine how much of the culture or the political situation, the ethical viewpoints and economic conditions might have changed over the course of the century. But the Bible was added to and added to and added to and so on, and so forth. And then they also wrote in three different continents. There were writers who wrote in Asia, in different cities in Europe. And also there was one writer who wrote from Egypt, which belongs to Africa. So three different languages, three different continents, so many centuries. This is the very nature of the writers of the Bible. Now, when we look at this book, or rather collection of books, which is written by so many different people, one of the things that strikes us, and points to its divine origin, is its unity. Now, there are many examples of unity shown in the Bible, we are going to just look at one or two of these examples. In the book of Exodus, which was written in around 1500 BC, God told the people to make a sanctuary, a place of worship, a place where his presence would dwell. And one of the items in the sanctuary was a veil, which had four colors blue, purple, Scarlet, and fine twine linen, which was white in color.

Now, nearly 16 Centuries later, one of the last few books of the Bible to be written was the Epistle to the Hebrews, that is the Jewish Christians. And they’re the author says that this veil symbolizes Jesus Christ in his physical body. So you have an item, which is mentioned very long ago. And then you have a later writer alluding to that item, and explaining its significance. Somewhat in between these two writers, we have the prophet Ezekiel, and he had a vision of God, and He says, I saw the glory of God, I saw living creatures, these living creatures were surrounding God’s presence. Four of them had the face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. So it’s interesting that we have for occurring many times in the Bible, in the sanctuary, there was a veil representing Jesus Christ, which had four colors. And here, in connection with the presence of God, we see a living creature having four faces. This living creature also appears in a later vision that takes place in the last book of the Bible called Revelation. And in the New Testament, when we read about the Lord Jesus Christ, we see that there are four gospels of four biographies concerning his life. So you have this pattern of four that is occurring repeatedly in the Bible.

So let’s list down these things that have been mentioned. The faces were of a lion calf, a man and an eagle. The colors mentioned in Exodus for the veil are linen that is white, blue, purple, and Scarlett. Now, strangely enough, there seems to be a connection between these colors. And these living things. Both purple and the lion, are symbols of royalty, the lion is known as the king of all the animals. And in the ancient mandolins, purple was a royal color that was worn by kings, the calf or the bullock, was used for labor, it was also used for sacrifice in ancient Israel. And of course, scarlet is the color of blood sacrifice involves bloodshed. Then, in the Bible, linen, or white color is a symbol of purity. It’s a symbol of righteousness, a symbol of moral goodness. And here we have a man, which seems to suggest an ideal man. So you have this idea of a pure or a perfect or an ideal man, the eagle flies in the sky, and blue is the color of the sky. So both blue and the eagle refer to something that points upward towards God or towards the heaven. Now, I also said that in the New Testament that our four gospels are for biographies of Jesus Christ, and many people ask this question as to why, why are there four stories about Jesus Christ?

Would it not be enough if there was one account of the life and death of the Lord Jesus? Now when we examine these four gospels, we find that They narrate many same things, or many similar things, about the Lord Jesus Christ. But there seems to be a difference in the emphasis. The first gospel, namely, the Gospel of Matthew, presents Jesus Christ in his role as the king of Israel. Now notice that the line symbolizes a king. Purple is a color of royalty. In Mark, the Lord Jesus Christ appears as someone who is laboring a lot, serving God working very hard for God. And in the Gospel of Mark, he also makes the statement that I have come to give my life as a ransom for many. In other words, the sacrificial aspect of the Lord Jesus Christ is emphasized in Mark. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus Christ appears as the exemplary man. If you’re a human being, you should definitely be asking this question, How am I supposed to live as a human being? What’s the right way to be the human, be the perfect human? And Luke answers this question through the life of Jesus Christ. Whereas in the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus is presented as the Son of God.

The author repeatedly refers to him as someone who was there in the beginning, someone who came down from heaven. Jesus Christ also says, I’m the living bread that came down from heaven. And he speaks a lot about his intimacy with God the Father. So you have this amazing correlation between the faces of the living creatures in the prophetic book of Ezekiel, the colors in the sanctuary, and the four Gospels, they all have similar themes, and they all point to Jesus Christ. So in fact, Jesus Christ is a central character in the Bible. And the central story in the Bible is God’s glory, revealed in the redemption of man. So many Bible students put it this way, there is a scarlet thread of blood-red thread that runs throughout the Bible. So when we look at this book, written by different authors in different times, and places from different backgrounds, and they are writing about controversial topics, and then when you see the unity and the correlation that they show, that suggests that there is a divine hand behind the writing of the Bible.


Use of nature for object lessons
Another interesting feature of the Bible is that it uses things in nature as object lessons. Now, as I said, In this video, we are only going to scratch the surface, we’re only going to see one or two examples. But the Bible is replete with different examples of things from nature used to communicate a spiritual lesson, or a moral lesson. And for those of us who teach we are, we like to use examples to convey things. And when we find a concept that is difficult to understand, or a concept that can be mixed, that can be missed, we look for examples, and then we find something and then use it as an illustration. When you read the Bible, you get the feeling that God has literally made many things in the world, just so that those things could be used as examples to teach us the things that he wants us the human race to know.

The lion is used in the Bible as a metaphor for one of the tribes of Israel, that is God’s chosen earthly people, the nation of Israel. They consisted of 12 tribes. And Judah was one of these tribes. Judah was the tribe, that from which the kings of Israel came. So it was the royal tribe. It was an illustrious and a powerful, and a numerous tribe. And here it is denoted, or it is represented by a lion. The lion is also used as a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is called a lion of the tribe of Judah, because when he took birth as a human being in this world, it was in the tribe of Judah. Now, of course, those of us who don’t believe in God, we believe that all lions and all other organisms have evolved over the course of millions of years.

And one of the guiding principles behind this evolution is supposed to be natural selection. And the principle of natural selection is this that those traits in any organism that enhance survival, these are the traits that are propagated down through the generations. This is what the theory of evolution says. But then, when we look at lions, there are some surprising observations. As you can see, the big male line is much bigger than the female. What do you think big size is good for hunting? Well, the strange thing about lions is that it’s the females who do most of the hunting, there are these loner bachelor male nomads, they may have to hunt for themselves. But in mainstream line life, which is in the pride or in the family, it’s the females who do the hunting. And what do the males do?

Well, most of the time, they're just lazing around, they are showing off. And they are guarding their territory, guarding their territory from home, just other lines. They behave like kings, they behave like very authoritative figures. Look at the mane on the lion’s back, the mane makes the lion looks very good, very impressive, majestic, the lion looks royal. But the strange thing is the main does not enhance the survival. The main works against camouflage. And therefore the female lions are much better at stalking on the prey than the males. So what we observe in the lions is that the very features that are required by the biblical use of lions, extremely aggressive, strong, powerful, guarding their territory, proud, majestic. These are the features that lions have. These are the features that are helpful for the biblical illustration of lions. These are not features of lions that really enhance their survival. So this is a strange principle that we see that the Bible is full of object lessons from nature, and nature seems to have the very characteristics that are needed to fulfill the role that these natural things have in the explanation of biblical lessons.

Another of the many, many things in nature referred to in the Bible is the stars. First of all, it’s interesting to note a promise that God made to a person called Abraham who lived 4000 years ago. God told them that your descendants will be numerous, like the sand grains on the seashore and the stars of heaven. Now, if you look at the ancient records, you see that most ancients believed that there are a few 1000 stars, they did not understand that the number of stars is very, very large, comparable to the number of sand grains or a seashore. But here in the Bible, that fact is written, again suggesting divine origin. And now we see that in the Bible, repeatedly, God uses the stars to communicate a point about himself other things he does. For example, in the prophet Isaiah, God says, lift up your eyes and see it is God who calls the stars of heaven by name, not one fails because of the greatness of His power.

Now, if there were a few 1000 stars, there would be nothing remarkable about God calling the stars of heaven by name. But today, we know that the number of stars in the universe is something like one followed by 22 zeros. Therefore, to say that God calls every one of them by name, God controls all of them is an amazing and a stupendous testimony about the power of God. Stars move with precision, there is periodicity and regularity in their motion. And God is using that as an object lesson of his faithfulness. He says, if the sunlight during the day and the starlight by night will seize them, and only then will the Jews cease to exist as a people. It’s interesting that more attempts have been made to exterminate the Jews than any other ethnic group in this world. But God says that they are going to survive. You know, if the sun can stop rising in the east, then the Jewish people will be exterminated.

That’s what God says in the Bible. Another very interesting statement coming from an ancient writer in the Bible is that every star is different from another in its radiance. Now, this might not have been a very interesting to say interesting thing to say in the ancient times, because at that time, people probably would look at the sky and perhaps some stars would look brighter than the others and that’s all, but today, we know that there is a bit During array of stars, you know, we have red giants. We have main sequence stars, we have dwarfs, we have blue giants, we have neutron stars, we have black holes, we have white dwarfs, and there is an endless variety of stars.

And when you look at these stars and understand their different characteristics, suddenly the statement that is made in the Bible long before the advent of modern science suddenly comes to light. So God uses the variety in the stars, to explain the different ways in which God will create things, there was an old created order, there is a new created order in there that there is our present life, but there will be a resurrection, different people will rise up and have differentrewards and have different positions of glory. And the stars are used as object lessons of that. So when you look at the Bible, and you see these object lessons from nature being repeatedly introduced, it really looks as if the one who wrote the Bible is also the one who created all these things. And he created them with characteristics so that they could fit into his main purpose.


Record of Hero’s failures
Another specialty of the Bible, when you compare it with other ancient writings, is that it reports the failure of its heroes, or the people who were in powerful positions. In today, we all live in democracy, we live with freedom of the press, and you’re allowed to say anything bad about anyone. But that was not the case. In ancient times. If you look at other ancient books, you will find that they never say bad things about the kings that were ruling at that time. But that’s not the case with the Bible. This is a scene from the life of David. Now, David himself was involved in the writing of the Bible.

So this is not somebody writing something in secret against David. David himself is an author of the Bible. And he was a devout man of God. But he had one big failure in his life. He, he saw a woman, and then he had an extramarital affair with her, and he also killed her husband, so that he could marry her. So this was David’s adultery and murder. And this entire episode, along with David’s repentance, along with God’s chastisement on him is poignantly told in the Bible, David was confronted by a prophet of God, a prophet who respected David because David himself was a man of God.

This is a church in honor of Peter, a church building in honor of Peter, one of the writers of the Bible. This is in Jerusalem. And near this church in the premises of the church, there is this, this statue. Now in the statue, you see there is Peter warming his hands over the fire, that is a woman who’s talking to him, that as a soldier standing by, and there is also a rooster perched on top. Now, this is supposed to remind us of an incident in Peter's life. Peter told the Lord Jesus Christ that I will never leave you, I will never forsake you. And I am so devoted to you, I love you so much that I’m willing to die for your sake. But Jesus told Peter that before the rooster crows, tonight itself, you’re going to deny me three times. And that is exactly what happened when Peter was confronted by the people who arrested Jesus and wanted to crucify him.

So he was taken up with fear, because he thought that if he was identified with Christ, then he might also end up on a cross. So because of this, he denied that he even knew Jesus Christ, He swore, and he used abusive language. And all this is after spending three years with Jesus Christ, and telling him just a few hours ago, that I’m never going to leave you my devotion to you will never fail. Now, later on, Peter went on to be an important church leader. And you can imagine the situation as the books of the New Testament are being written when Peter is a leader in the church. And this is the kind of stuff which is being written about Peter, he made a total fool of himself. Now, if the Bible was written, based on human motivation, then such a scandalous thing about a church leader would not find its way into the mainstream writing. But that is exactly what happened.

And that shows that the authors of the Bible were being guided not by human motivation. But it was God who was inspiring them to write what they wrote. This is the tomb of a prophet of the Bible called Ezekiel. And like many other prophets of the Bible, Ezekiel was very harsh in his condemnation, or in his reprimand of his own countrymen, that is the people of Israel. Now, if I’m writing a book, I’m from India, and if I’m writing a book, and I want Indians to adopt that book, I want them to buy it, read it, recommend it to others, and so on, the n I will not criticize Indians, I may criticize Indian politicians. But I will not criticize the rank and file of Indians, if that is the intended audience of my book.

But that is exactly what is killed it. And despite all the extremely harsh criticism that Ezekiel holds on Israel, the very same people of Israel, accepted this book as the word of God. There were things in this book, which showed them that it is indeed a message from God. So these features of the Bible in which it is able to criticize its heroes, able to criticize its target audience, it points out the failures of the important prominent people in the Bible. This is a feature that suggests that there was something beyond human motivation involved in the writing of the Bible.


Willingness of authors to die
Now, every author does something to promote his book. But what the biblical authors have done is unique. They travelled far and wide, all of them were Jews. And they travel to different countries in ancient times, proclaiming the message of the Bible. So these are the names of some of the disciples, and the places that they went to remember, all of them originated from Israel, which is like the left top corner of this map. So Thomas came all the way to South India and other disciples like Matthew and Bartholomew, went to other places, Bartholomew and Nathaniel went to Armenia.

And Matthew went to other parts of Arabia and so on. ‘JAMES THE GREAT’ is one of the disciples who remained in Jerusalem. He is called ‘JAMES THE GREAT’ to distinguish him from another great. Peter went to Babylon that is in Iraq. And some of them went to Rome. This place in Rome is called the Via Apia, the Apian Way, and it’s the site of the martyrdom of Paul and Peter. So here, there’s a writer called Clement, who is from the late first century, he was one of the members of the church in Rome. And he writes like this, through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars of the church have been persecuted and put to death.

Set before our eyes is the illustrious Peter, when he had suffered martyrdom, he departed to the place of glory due to him. So Clement, a first century writer, tells us that Peter died for his faith in Rome. Similarly, Dionysus of Corinth, writing in the next century, he says that Peter and Paul, they were here in Italy, and they suffered martyrdom, at the same time. Tertullian, who lived around 8200 says, like this, that it was in Rome, where the apostles poured out, not only they are teaching, but also their blood. If he says here, Peter, and your passion, like is Lourdes. In other words, Peter was crucified, just like Jesus was crucified. And Paul, when one has crowned in a death like that of John the Baptist, John the Baptist was beheaded. So Tertullian is indirectly saying that Paul was beheaded in Rome.

So here, the authors went out of the way to spread their message. And they were also willing to put their lives on the line for this message. And it’s true that they have been martyrs for various causes in the world. But there is something unique here, the authors of the Bible, were not just becoming martyrs, just because of their beliefs. They were not just saying that, you know, I believe this is true, and therefore I’m going to die for this cause. What they were saying is that we have seen the risen Christ with our eyes, and we cannot deny the things that we have seen or heard. So, this willingness of God others to die for their writing is something that makes the Bible, unique among all the books of the world.

And this willingness to die, was an example, was a case of eyewitness testimony. It was not just mere sincere or devout belief. So these are the places where different authors of the New Testament died. Not all of them are authors. But all the people mentioned here were either authors or the original 12 disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. So here is a list. While it is true that there are some uncertainty in the exact locations of martyrdom, the exact mode of death and the exact year in which they died. There is a very good certainty for the fact that all the original authors of the New Testament suffered martyrdom, except for John. John, who was one of the disciples of Christ, he was imprisoned, he underwent a lot of suffering, but he died a peaceful death. Everyone else died a martyr’s death for their eyewitness.


Unusual emphasis
Another strange feature of the Bible is the unusual emphasis that it gives. For example, the Bible spends one chapter that’s the first chapter or the first page of the Bible to describe the creation of the universe. Now, the universe is so vast, and there are so many things about it. And for those of us who are scientifically inclined, when we read the Bible, we feel like asking, you know, God couldn’t you have given some more details about the way you created this universe. But the account is very brief, a systematic, but it’s very brief. On the other hand, there is a structure, a sanctuary called the tabernacle, that God asked the people of Israel to construct as a place where his presence would dwell.

And there are 15 chapters of the Bible that are devoted to the construction of this structure, which is just, it’s like a small compound or a small tent. So you have one page for the, for the creation of the whole universe, and you have 15 chapters for the construction and the making of this small sanctuary. When you look closer, you realize that God gives more time to the things that are more important for Him. He devotes more space for the things that are more important to him. So the tabernacle is associated with God’s story of redemption, and God making Himself known to us, God bridging the gap between us and God. And so you have more space devoted to this. Now, this would not happen if there was human agency behind the writing of the Bible.

If I was writing a book, and I wanted it to be a general account, then I would give a general focus on all things, I would try to be comprehensive and devote equal space for equal things. But the Bible is very skewed in that matter. The same thing applies for the biographies, or the Gospels, which are accounts of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament. So there are four gospels. Now, after reading these four accounts, you might feel that you know, I would get a total picture of Christ, yes, we get a total picture of Christ. But it is total in the sense of what God wants us to know. It’s not total in the sense of what we as humans normally want to know about another people about other people.

For example, 90% of the gospel material is devoted to the last three years of the life of the Lord Jesus. I mean, if I was writing a biography, I would space it equally. Not only that, around 25% of the material focuses on the last week that the Lord Jesus spent with his disciples before He was crucified, so much of the space is devoted to Jesus talking about his impending death, and the way in which that death was carried out without trying to be sensational and sentimental. The writers of the Gospels gives so much time to so much space to the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, of course, nobody likes to talk about death. And yet, exactly what we don’t expect is emphasized in the Gospel narratives. If you get no person, wouldn’t you want to know how this person looks?

We live in an age today where we are surrounded by pictures, pictures of ourselves and pictures of others. What are His favorite colors, His favorite foods, His favorite places that He likes to go to. The things that He wants to do this is what you normally expect to find about a person. Are there any interesting incidents in his life, the Gospel writers present Jesus Christ as God incarnated as a human. So Well, if God comes down to earth, surely there might be there might have been some dramatic displays of his part, some unusual signs of brilliance. There is lot that can entertain on human minds. But we don’t find the writers answering any of these questions. So there is no catering to human curiosity. And that is exactly the feature that suggests that this was written not with human motivation.


Detailing
Another remarkable feature and sometimes boring feature of the Bible is the detail that is there in it. Especially if you’re a new reader of the Bible, you might be bewildered by the long lists of things people, places, etc. In the Bible, for example, we have genealogies, there is an account of who gave birth to whom, and who was the son of whom, and the grandson or the Father, of whom, and so on, and so forth. You have chapters and chapters of the Bible, devoted to these things. Now, if I was writing a book that I wanted people to read, I will try to make it as interesting as possible. I would not like to bore them with long lists of people who live long ago, people whose names are even difficult to pronounce, but that is the kind of detail that we see in the Bible.

Now, when you spend a long time with the Bible, you gradually begin to appreciate the importance of these genealogies. But it’s a risk. In some ways, we can say it’s a risk for a book to have these kinds of features, because these can turn off readers. We saw the tabernacle earlier, a lot of chapters are devoted to it. Then around 500 years later, the people of Israel under King Solomon, they made a temple, God also gave instructions for that. So a lot of space in the Bible is devoted to giving the measurements and the specifications of the temple to so much of detail, especially new readers of the Bible would feel like skipping these things. But the Bible has this kind of detail. Now, when it comes to detail and reputation, I think this passage has got to take the first prize, or it’s the icing on the cake.

This is an account of offerings made by the tribal leaders of the nation of Israel. And here in Numbers, chapter seven, verse 12, says that the first person to offer was Nahshon, of the tribe of Judah, and his offering was one silver charger, and so on and so forth. So many items are mentioned, the weight, the materials, the animals that he offered for sacrifice, and so on and so forth, which is well and good. Now, come to verse 18. On the second day, Nathanael, the prince of Issachar offered, which is well and good. But now reading verse 19 onwards, you find the same things are repeated, the same things that the first Prince offered, the second prince also offered.

Now, there weren’t only two tribes in Israel, there were 12 tribes. And so you have these 12 princes that come 12 main officials, each one offers exactly the same list of things. And all these things are repeated 12 times, and they are written, and this is written around 3500 years ago, it was being handwritten. There was obviously no copy and paste at that time. Why did the writer of the Bible choose to write 12 things again, and again. It seems very strange, it seems unexplainable. You know, when you spend a lot of time with the Bible, these things begin to show their significance. But on the face of it, it seems highly unlikely, highly unusual for an author to choose this way of writing. If you give a long list of animals and vessels and materials and then repeated 12 times, you know, that is a sure way to turn off any reader.


Writing without understanding
Yet another interesting feature of the Bible is that the writers seem to be writing things about which they might not have had much understanding. This doesn’t mean that they’re writing nonsense, but they are writing about things which perhaps made sense at later times. But it wouldn’t have made sense at that time. For example, King David, who lived around 1000 BC, writes like this, they pierced my hands and feet. Now, nobody pierced David’s hands and feet. Now he was writing something symbolically about himself, but it refers to somebody else, but who would pierce anyone’s hands and feet in David’s time you know, violent conflict would take place in the form of war.

And if you were defeated in war, there was a chance that the enemy soldiers would perhaps chop off your head, so you would be beheaded. Or maybe you would be speared to death, your hands and feet specifically wouldn’t be pierced. If you were convicted of a crime in Israel and convicted for death penalty, then you will be stoned to death, no question of having your hands and feet pierced. This statement does not make any sense, especially since it is written by the most powerful person in the country. But then, a few centuries later, the Phoenicians if I remember correctly, it was the Phoenicians who, who started using this to develop this practice of crucifixion. The Persians also used it, and it was adopted by the Romans. And then 1000 years after David, when Jesus was condemned by His own countrymen to die. They did not stone him to death, they handed him to the Romans, and Jesus Christ was crucified and his hands and feet were pierced.

Now, fulfillment of prophecy is another subject. That’s not our topic in this video. But here, I want to stress upon this fact that the author was writing something that ordinarily would never make sense to him. Zechariah was a prophet in 500 BC, and he says, and he writes like this, at that time, that is, during the end times, I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. Now, at the time that Zechariah is writing these words, Jerusalem was a city, a small, humble city that was slowly being rebuilt out of its ruins, it has been destroyed. And now there were a few people who returned to Jerusalem, and they were trying to rebuild the city. Now, how could this city become a burden stone for all people? This did not make sense in any way in 500 BC, but it makes sense today.

Today, the Israel-Arab conflict is centered in Jerusalem. And it is indeed something that leaders all over the world are trying to solve. So it makes sense today, it did not make sense when it was written. This is Psalm 83. And this is written by a man named Asaph. And again, when you look at Asaph and the times that he lived in, this does not make any sense. The psalm does not make any sense, because Asaph was living during the time of King David, when Israel was very powerful, and they had crushed all their enemies. And what Asaph is saying is that, you know, help, oh God, because we are surrounded by enemies, everyone around us has ganged up against us. Now he mentions various ancient people. Now, it’s interesting that these ancient people can be correlated, to some extent, to people who are living today. So you have the tabernacles of Edom, the tents of Edom, the people of Edom initially lived in the southeast of Israel, but then they migrated inside Israel.

So today other than the people of Israel in the same land, we have the Palestinians living the Ishmaelites in the Bible lived in what is today Saudi Arabia, then there is more, more of an Amman, which are Jordan and Amalake again, one of the tribes living in Saudi Arabia, there is Tyre here mentioned that is Lebanon, I should also is joined with them. The place of Ashore or Austria is in modern day Iraq. So everyone around us is uniting against us, and we are facing difficulty. This is the prayer of Asaph who lived in a time when such a thing never happened. in the ancient times, all the surrounding countries never united against Israel, and there was no possibility of them doing so. But today, we know that this is exactly the condition. All the nations around Israel have united, and they are united in their animosity towards Israel. So here again, you find the writer of The Bible writing something that wouldn’t have made sense in his time.

This is from the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 38, verse 2 says, Son of man set thy face against God, the land of Magog, and the chief prince of Meshech, and Tubal, and prophesy against him. So God is giving a prophecy against certain nations. And there is a long list of nations mentioned here. And it and it, the Prophet goes on to say that these nations are going to unite and come to fight a war against Israel. Now, the nations mentioned here are from some of them are from Eurasia, there is Persia mentioned that is Iran, there is Ethiopia that is the biblical Ethiopia includes Ethiopia, and Sudan. And some of the other places mentioned here are in Russia. Now, during the time of Ezekiel, which is 2500 years ago, there was no question of Russia and Iran, invading Israel, and that too accompanied by so many other countries. Such a thing could never have happened in ancient times. Now, we can imagine such a thing happening today. So again, the point is, it’s not happened. But the point is that the writers of the Bible are writing things that would not make sense during their time.


Asymmetric authorship
The Lord Jesus Christ had 12 disciples, and after he died, and rose again and then went back to heaven, the New Testament was written, and who do you think should write the New Testament? Well, those 12 disciples, they are the closest people to him. But what we find is something else, there are two disciples who wrote accounts of his life. Peter, and John also wrote, epistles, that are instructive letters. And the other books were written by other people. In fact, there’s this person called Paul, who has written the most number of New Testament books, and these 12 original disciples of Christ, they accepted this newcomer, they accepted that he has been given even greater revelation than him.

Now, this is something that goes beyond human motivation. As human beings, we always want to steal the limelight, you try your best to get the limelight, if you feel that you have not been treated fairly, you have not been given your fair share of limelight, then, you know, you go against the others, you try to start your own movement, you protest, you criticize the others, and you try to show that, you know, hey, I was also one of the original men, you know, you should listen to me. That is not what we see here, we see harmony, and yet we see a strange symmetry in the authorship.


Easy falsifiability
Another amazing characteristic of the Bible is its easy falsifiability that is, the Bible has statements, saying that you know this will happen or this will not happen. If you make the opposite to happen, the Bible will be proved false. For example, the Bible says that Egypt will be a base nation, this is being said in 500 BC. Now before, in the centuries before 500 BC, Egypt was one of the great civilizations. And now the prophet Ezekiel says that Egypt is not going to exalt itself over other nations anymore, which means that if Egypt becomes a superpower, if Egypt becomes like England, or Germany, or Japan, or the United States, then the Bible will be proved false.


Counterintuitive teaching
The Bible is full of counterintuitive teachings. For example, the biggest story in the Bible is this, that God the Creator, Himself came down, and he came down as a man, and then he allowed his own creatures to crucify him. Of course, this was not just something that happened. Just like that as an accident, it was done with a purpose. And yet it is incredible to think that God would come down and do this, if I was writing a book that I wanted people to believe in. This is not the kind of story I would include. Many people complain about Christianity because they say that some of its concepts are complicated, and elusive. They almost sound contradictory. The Trinity is one of these, the Bible teaches us that God is one being in the form of three persons.

Well, if you want to have one God, why don’t you just have one God and be done with it? And if you like to have many gods and goddesses, that option is also available, but the Bible presents something which is very difficult to wrap our minds around. Impossible to fully understand. This is not something that a human author would invent. The Lord Jesus said, that you if you want to be exalted, you need to humble yourself. Now this goes against every, every principle that you will find taught in the world. Lord Jesus said that if you want to ultimately gain your life, you will have to lose it for his sake. He says that we have been healed through his stripes. So, there is so much of contradiction or paradox in the Bible.


Breaking before making
Another strange teaching of the Bible is that when God wants to use a human being to fulfill His purpose, he breaks them. And none of us like to use broken utensils. But human beings are compared to vessels in God’s hands. And the Bible says that God breaks people before he uses them. These are not the kind of stories and principles that human authors would invent. And so these counterintuitive teachings show that the Bible has a divine origin.


Conclusion
So, that brings us to the end of this video, we looked at various features in the Bible that show that the guiding motivation, or the guiding ability behind the writing of the bible, was not human. Humans could not produce a book like this, and that suggests that this book has come from God, as the Bible claims. We hope you enjoyed watching this video. And we hope that this helps you to have a better appreciation and understanding of the Bible. Thank you very much.