Elyse Fitzpatrick's thoughts: "We must ask ourselves, does the Bible give us reason to believe or to doubt?
One of the ways we can know that the Bible is God's Word is because it is filled with prophecies that have come true. Of the approximately 2,500 prophecies in the Bible, about two-thirds have already been fulfilled. Some of the prophecies are so specific that anyone with a reasonably open mind would be convinced that the Bible is uniquely inspired. Here are just two examples:
1. Isaiah prophesied about a man named Cyrus, who would conquer the Babylonia empire and let the Jewish exiles go. This prophecy was uttered 150 years before Cyrus was even born and 80 years before the Jews were even taken into exile (see Isa. 44:28; 45:1, 13). That Cyrus lived and accomplished all this is a fact proven by archaeology. The probability of this being just a chance fulfillment is 1 in 10 to the 15th power, which is one chance in 10,000,000,000,000,000. Do you have reason to doubt with those odds?
2. The Old Testament foretold that the ancient Jewish nation would be conquered twice and that the people would be carried off as slaves each time, first by the Babylonians (for a period of seventy years) and then by another kingdom (see Deut. 29; Isa. 11:11-13; Jer. 25:11; Hos. 3:4-5; Luke 21: 23-24). These prophecies were fulfilled exactly. The probability of this being a chance fulfillment is 1 in 10 to the 20th power."
Candy's thoughts: I think these statistics are pretty impressive! Even a skeptic or atheist might be surprised by the mathematics of the Bible. As believers, then, we should brush off doubts as soon as they reach the surface of conscious thinking. Let's doubt our doubts before we doubt God and His Word.
God is so good to give great certainty from His Word to those who would believe!
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