The Book You Can Trust

According to CBC’s Doctrinal Statement, “We believe the Bible to be the verbally inspired word of God, without error in the original writings.” Everything the Bible says is true and accurate and our faith rests upon this fact. Even when the Bible deals with history or science, it is without error. A single error would cast doubt on the entire Bible. Now I am not saying there are not difficulties in the Bible where there are apparent contradictions, yet many of these have been solved through new information as our understanding of history and science catch up with what God has said all along.  

For instance, in history class we were taught that, until Christopher Columbus discovered America, people thought the earth was flat. Many early scientists even believed this. Yet we read in Isaiah 40:22, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” Science had to catch up with the truth of the Bible, not the other way around.

Another example is King Belshazzar who is mentioned first in Daniel 5. He is the king of Babylon who saw the “handwriting on the wall” which told him his kingdom will be overthrown, and that very night the Persians overthrew Babylon. The difficulty lies in the fact that Belshazzar, up until the mid-1800s, was nowhere mentioned in any sources outside of the Bible. This caused some to chalk the Bible up to be full of myths and inaccuracies historically. Then in 1854, a British archeologist, J.G. Taylor, discovered four cuneiform cylinders that reference Belshazzar as a son of the last king of Babylon before the Persian invasion. Belshazzar reigned when his father was away and was second in command. No wonder Daniel was made the “third” ruler in Babylon after he interpreted the writing on the wall. (Daniel 5:16,29) Bad news for Belshazzar, good news for us. Again, man’s history had to catch up with God’s history, not the other way around. All truth is HIS truth, and all history is really HIS story. Trust the Bible.

Pastor Phil Newby