Evidence For The Biblical God

You can make a reasonable case for the existence of God simply by examining the world around us. The amazingly benign environment Earth provides for life and the staggering sophistication of life itself is almost an argument for a creator without further comment.

The skeptic will deny this of course and typically offers the most ingenious ways to escape the force of the argument. The abundance of evidence and the rationalists determination not to notice it are both remarkable.

Suppose however that every last skeptic decided to admit this general evidence, would it really be a great advance? I am inclined to answer ‘No’. Believing in a God of some kind does not automatically make any noticeable difference. We can live, love and die vaguely believing in a God who is too polite to interfere.

Such a God is not the God of the Bible! The Bible reveals a God who walked with our first parents (Adam & Eve) but becomes alienated when they rebel. He is revealed as creator, friend, judge, redeemer. He raises nations and crushes nations. He floods the Earth but saves just one family. He chooses one small nation and passes over many.

Finally and most remarkably he takes on manhood himself. This is the biblical God, an interventionist God. This God cannot be ignored. If Jesus Christ really lived and really is who the Scriptures claim him to be, we cannot safely live, love and die without him, to do so is the height of foolishness.

So the really important question is not whether God merely exists but rather, is the God of the Bible true? If not we can perhaps eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. If on the other hand he is true, surely it is of the greatest importance to find out what he requires of us?

What evidence could there be?

• Historical Evidence
• Internal Evidence
• Evidence of Authority

There is plenty of evidence affirming aspects of the Old Testament. I was reading the other day about King Hezekiahs tunnel for example. Kings such as Omri and Ahab appear in histories outside the Bible. This is a large subject I dont know all that much about so I will skip over it for now. I may revisit it at a future date.

As Jesus is the epicentre of Christian belief it makes sense to examine his historicity (i.e was Jesus a real historical figure and did he do the things claimed). There are extreme skeptics that deny Jesus existed but even the New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman affirms this so we can safely ignore that objection.

It's important to understand that there are historical figures mentioned in the Gospels. Their involvement tends to fix the dates of important events to within a few years. Thus Jesus is a historical figure that lived in a certain time and place in history.

It makes little sense for the Gospel’s to claim his crucifixion if it didn’t happen. The crucial question then is was he resurrected? Clearly if he was then claims of the Gospel need to be considered very seriously.

For a moment let us consider possible explanations other than the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

• He was never raised and the resurrection claims developed mythically over time.
• He was never raised but the disciples fabricated the claims for some kind of gain.
• The disciples deceived themselves about his resurrection perhaps motivated by their grief at the traumatic events.

The problem here is simply the lack of time. Jesus had been crucified in approximately 30AD but Christians were being executed in Rome by 64AD. The emperor Nero blamed Christians for starting the fire in Rome and had some of them executed. This demonstrates that there was a sufficiently large number of Christians for the emperor to have heard of them and that there was a Christian community in Rome. It hardly seems reasonable for a myth to be spread and grow to this extent in 34 years?

The problem here is to identify a motive for them to do this. For people to lie they normally need a motive. The typical motives would be things such as money and power. Given that Christians are taught to be generous with wealth it was not going to gain them riches. Christianity really had no earthly power until the time of Constantine (almost 300 years later) so again this objection fails.

For a group of people to be collectively deluded in this way is difficult to credit. If a single person made these claims and the group believed them delusion would be possible yet the gospels record Jesus appearing to the disciples as a group, to a couple of disciples and to Mary Magdalene. Paul even claimed that 500 people had witnessed him at once! Multiple appearances to different combinations of disciples is an obvious problem here.

You can see by this quick survey the difficulties that any ‘rational’ explanation faces. The one remaining option of course is that Jesus really was resurrected from the dead!

This is the evidence within the Bible itself of consistency. Bear in mind that the Bible is far from one book written by one human author. If the Bible is inspired we should be able to find evidence of consistency between different books. We can also look for 'Evidence from embarrassment' where the Bible reports something that makes its heroes look bad and therefore tends to confirm its truthfulness.

One obvious example is the comprehensive history, the Bible begins with Creation, proceeds to the calling of the Jewish people through Abraham. From within the Jewish people it then records prophecies of a future messiah and also records an emerging line to the Messiah. The New Testament then records the appearance of the Messiah himself fulfilling many Old Testament prophecies. Finally we see the emergence of the Christian church and Gods plan to create a people for himself.

Keep in mind that this record is the summation of many different books written by a variety of authors at different times, no single individual could organise it and yet the story emerges from the Bible as a whole.

Many other examples could be cited, one example begins with Abraham in Genesis where it is stated Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness 1 Genesis 15:6 . This is of central importance to the Christian Faith where believing in Jesus is the key requirement. To the best of my knowledge no other faith emphasizes belief in God as opposed to external actions in this way.

As far as evidence of embarrassment is concerned there are many examples. The greatest example of course is the death of Jesus on the cross. Had Jesus died a heroic death fighting a battle (or something similar) it might make sense to advertise it yet the way Jesus submitted to an apparently humiliating death at the hands of a foreign power ought not (humanly speaking) to be a basis for the staggeringly influential faith that Christianity became.

Another example would be the failures of the Bible heroes. For example Abraham putting his own wife's virtue at risk to save himself or David's monumental sin with Bathsheba. There are many other examples, each showing the Bible's willingness to risk its own cause by being truthful.

This is the evidence that the Bible exercises authority over those that read it. Many Christians can testify personally to this.

One way to see this is through various attempts to suppress it. William Tyndale paid with his life for his determination to translate the Scriptures into English. In North Korea today you could pay with your life if you are caught owning a Bible. If the Bible posed no threat why is this the case?

I distinctly recall a radio host appealing for less Scripture quotations from callers, it seems they made him uncomfortable.

It is usually said that Western law codes tend to be based upon the law of Moses. It is reasonable to ask why does the Bible exercise such power many centuries after it was written?

You might think even from this little article that claims for the Biblical God are much stronger than the typical skeptic would have us believe.

If you find these arguments convincing or at least worthy of further investigation I would encourage you to look into it yourself most especially by reading the Bible. If you suspect the God of the Bible might be true it would be foolish to ignore it.