Why I Believe the God of the Bible is the Higher Supreme Being Who Created the Universe

In my previous post, I presented a few reasons why I believe in the existence of a higher supreme being. If a higher supreme being truly exists, then what information can be known about this higher supreme being? Since science simply seeks to use “observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena,”[1] it’s not going to be our best starting point. Instead, every world religion claims to know this higher supreme being (or multitude of higher supreme beings). This makes religion the best place to look for answers to these questions.

Not All “Gods” Are Equal

I’ve often heard it said that all religions ultimately point towards the same higher supreme being or “god”; when put together, they form a complete picture of this higher supreme being. If each world religion is really worshiping the same god, then we should see consistencies in the characteristics of this god within the different religions, specifically in the areas of overlap. Otherwise, this god would be schizophrenic. However, this is not what we see.

For example, although Islam’s god, Allah, and Christianity’s god, Yahweh, have quite a bit in common such as being omniscient, merciful, king, sovereign, and holy, there are some differences between them. One such difference is that, according to Muhammad, Islam’s Apostle, “The most awful name in Allah’s sight on the Day of Resurrection, will be a man calling himself Malik Al-Amlak (the king of kings).”[2] According to Paul and John, apostles of Yahweh and two of the biblical writers, Jesus, the son of Yahweh, is called the “King of kings.”[3] And according to Jesus, as recorded by John, Yahweh loves Jesus.[4] If Allah and Yahweh are one in the same god, then this god is schizophrenic because in one breath he said he loves his son and in the next breath, he said his son’s name is the most awful name. These two statements don’t align.

I don’t have the space to write about it here, but if we were to dig into every other world religion, we would find contradictions between the god of the Bible and the gods of every other religion. Having said that, it is possible that the Bible’s claims of Yahweh could be incorrect. So let’s take a look at the reliability of the information written in the Bible.

The Reliability of the Biblical Manuscripts

The Bible is compilation of apparent “revelations from Yahweh” to 40 people over a 1,500 year period of time. It is broken down into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written completely during the time period before Jesus’s earthly life and the New Testament was written completely during the time period after Jesus’s earthly life. Having been written so many years ago, we have to ask whether the Bible we have today is an accurate representation of the original manuscripts which were written many years ago. Let’s take a look.

Historical records indicate that Jewish scribes who copied texts were very careful and meticulous to ensure that their copies were extremely accurate. But how do we really know that this is true? Arguably the best case study came for this is in the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls in 1947. The Dead Sea scrolls are a set of manuscripts containing portions of every Old Testament book of the Bible except Esther which were probably written between 250 BC and AD 135.[5] Most notably, they contained an entire manuscript of the book of Isaiah. When Old Testament scholars compared the Dead Sea scrolls manuscripts to the earliest ones they had available (Masoretic text dating to the early eleventh century AD), they concluded that 95 percent of the Old Testament is textually sound. The other 5 percent of variations are relatively insignificant in relation to key doctrinal matters.[6]

As much data as is available to affirm the reliability of the Old Testament, there is even more data to support the reliability of the New Testament. All of the New Testament books were written by either eye-witnesses of Jesus or close associates of eye-witnesses of Jesus as opposed to the stories being passed down from generation to generation. As of 1998, there had been about 24,000 manuscripts discovered which contained portions of the New Testament, some in Greek (the original language in which the New Testament was written) and some in other languages such as Latin, Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian.[7] This is more manuscripts than any other work of antiquity. The next closest is Homer’s Iliad with 650 manuscripts.[8] Biblical scholars Norman Geisler and William Nix wrote, “The New Testament, then, has not only survived in more manuscripts than any other book from antiquity, but it has survived in a purer form than any other great book–a form that is 99.5 percent pure.”[9] And once again, none of the variants impact major theological doctrines.[10]

My conclusion: The entire Bible, both the Old and New Testament in the form we have today, are reliable transmissions of information.

The Reliability of the Biblical Authors

Although the biblical manuscripts available today are believed to be very similar to the ones originally written thousands of years ago, this fact doesn’t prove that the people who wrote them were actually attesting to the true nature of the higher supreme being who created the universe. It’s possible that they could’ve made it all up. Therefore, we need to take a look at the reliability of the biblical authors. The way I’m going to test the reliability of the biblical authors is to test their historical reliability. Do archeological discoveries and outside writings document the same historical events as the biblical writers?

One example of such corroboration is the tradition of a worldwide flood which occurred at some point during ancient human history. A flood story is documented in ancient cultures on every inhabited continent around the world. The most notable accounts of this story are found in the Bible and in the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the biblical account of the flood, Yahweh calls Noah to build an ark which is 450 feet long by 75 feet wide by 45 feet tall. As a comparison, the Titanic was 883 feet long by 92 feet wide by 175 feet tall. Based on these dimensions, engineers built a smaller model of the ark with the same proportional dimensions and ran tests on it to determine its stability during a raging storm. They observed that the ark was capable of remaining stable in a storm and was able to withstand wave torque to the degree that they were unable to capsize it, even when they subjected it to stronger waves than a storm could’ve created.[11]

Another example can be found in the Babylonian historical records of the various attacks on the city of Jerusalem. The Babylonian Chronicles detail an attack on Jerusalem in 597 BC in which Nebuchadnezzar took the king (Jehoiachin) prisoner and placed another king (Zedekiah) in his place. This is the exact same information that is recorded in 2 Kings 24:8-17.[12]

In the New Testament, Luke, who is credited with writing 25 percent of the New Testament, has been proven to be very historically accurate over and over again. One example is his accurate accounts of specific Roman rulers such as Pontius Pilate (Luke 23:1), Herod the tetrarch of Galilee (Luke 23:7), Governor Felix (Acts 23:26), and Herod Agrippa (Acts 25:13).

Lastly, traditionally, the events and writings of the Bible have been held by both Jews (Old Testament) and Christians (the whole Bible) as having actually occurred in history rather than being myths which were concocted to communicate life lessons such as is the case with fables. It is believed that the biblical writers wrote down the things they saw and heard as accurately as possible.

My conclusion: Although proving the historical accuracy of the biblical authors doesn’t completely prove the accuracy of what they wrote, it does give their writings some degree of credibility which would not be there otherwise is the events couldn’t be proven to have actually occurred.

Faith

As I mentioned in last week’s post, even though the evidence for the reliability of the Bible is very convincing, there’s still not 100 percent proof that it is reliable. None of us were physically present to hear Yahweh speak to Abraham, Moses, or Isaiah. None of us were alive when Jesus was teaching, healing, and raising dead people to life. We don’t have the original manuscripts that Jeremiah, John, or Paul wrote that we can read. Therefore, I can’t say that with 100 percent certainty that the Bible is true. Once again, that’s where faith comes into play. Nonetheless, although I can’t 100 percent prove the reliability of the Bible, I believe that it’s writers truthfully documented the things revealed to them by Yahweh.

What Does the Bible Say about the Origin of the Universe?

The Bible begins by making a claim about the origin of the universe. In Genesis 1:1, it reads:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. – Genesis 1:1

Since I am confident that the Bible is a reliable source, I take this claim seriously and therefore conclude that Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is the higher supreme being who is the architect/engineer mastermind behind the creation of the universe.

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What do you think? Do you think the God of the Bible is the higher supreme being who created the universe?

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[1] “The Definition of Science: What Is Science?”, Science Made Simple, n.d., accessed March 15, 2017, http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/science-definition.html.

[2] “Sahih al-Bukhari,” Vol 8, Book 73, No 224, http://www.sahih-bukhari.com/Pages/Bukhari_8_73.php.

[3] 1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, 19:16.

[4] John 3:35, 5:20.

[5] B. K. Waltke, “Old Testament Textual Criticism,” in Foundations for Biblical Interpretation, ed. D. S. Dockery, K. A. Matthews, and R. Sloan (Nashville: B&H, 1994), 162.

[6] B. K. Waltke, “How We Got the Hebrew Bible: The Text and Canon of the Old Testament,” in The Bible at Qumran: Text, Shape, and Interpretation, ed. Peter W. Flint (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 158.

[7] Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998), 65-66.

[8] Ibid., 63.

[9] Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, revised edition (Chicago, Moody Press, 1980), 361.

[10] Strobel, The Case for Christ, 68.

[11] H. M. Morris, The Biblical Basis for Modern Science (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984), 295.

[12] “Archaeological Evidence and the Captivity in Babylon,” Bible History, n.d., accessed March 21, 2017, http://www.bible-history.com/map_babylonian_captivity/map_of_the_deportation_of_judah_archaeology_and_the_babylonian_captivity.html.