Pat and I have been professional journalists and authors for over 40 years. In that time we have striven to write and speak the truth. Since we found that the Bible contains the ultimate truth and is God's word to His creation - the Maker's handbook - we have used our skills to illustrate that The Holy Bible is wholly true. That's why we are proud to be called "Fundamentalists." I teach at churches in America and Britain that are hungry for the truth and one of my themes is false faiths- and that includes evolution. What bothers me is that many Christians believe in the evolutionist claptrap.

Even today some misguided man e-mailed to tell us how we are wrong and that the earth is really millions of years old. That's not what God says, and if you disbelieve Genesis then you are calling  the Lord Jesus a liar, for he taught it as fact and Genesis is the most referenced book in the New Testament. And yes, the flood was indeed worldwide and evidence for it is all round the world with references to it  found in cultures worldwide. Science, archaeology and recorded history all back the Bible, rather than the Darwin delusionists. We will be replying publicly on this website to this e-mail, with a full defence of Creationism, as time permits.

Pat has a B.Sc degree (Cum Laude) and I studied geology at college, but this doesn't make us experts, of course. For that you need to go to the best Creationist websites where all the answers are given in great detail to those who sincerely want to find the truth. They are: CreationOnTheWeb.com and AnswersInGenesis.org - there are many others as well. However, I believe that all Christians should be able to give an account of  their faith, why they believe the Bible is truth and a defence pf  the fundamentals of Christianity, as set out in The Fundamentals: A Testimony To The Truth, written by Protestant conservative theologians between 1910 and 1915.

 I am proud to be a Fundamentalist, believing in these major doctrines:

. The inerrancy of the Bible.

.The virgin birth of Christ.

. The substitutionary atonement of Christ.

. The bodily resurrection of Christ.

. The authenticity of Christ's miracles.

The first point is directly related to belief in Biblical creation as an historical narrative, not a fable and  something which our Lord believed to be true. If you believe otherwise you are saying that the Bible is not accurate, that six days of creation really meant something quite different and so on. You are creating a bible of your own imagination - not the Holy Bible, rather an unholy mess.

Furthermore, the pseudo science of evolution is based on fantasy- it is a fairy tale for grown-ups, but with  more serious repercussions in that it destroys faith and lets secular humanism become the basis for our society- a main reason why society is falling apart. If there is no absolute truth, then we may as well make up our own truth. Your truth is as good as mine, your morality is as true as mine, there are no absolutes etc. etc.

When I speak I base everything on God's word, which I accept as 100 per cent true. Now it's Pat's turn and this is one of her chapters from our joint work: Goodbye America, Goodbye Britain. Copies are available from the webshop on this site.

Can We Trust the Bible?by Pat Franklin “…Thy word is truth…”  John 17:17 

Our faith is based on the assumption that the Bible is infallible. Is it?  If we cannot trust the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, our faith is a fairytale and we are wasting our time.  But the truth is we can trust the Bible and we are most definitely not wasting our time.

The Bible is God’s library, which He has graciously given to mankind so that we can know about Him.  It is a collection of 66 books written over about 1500 years by 40 authors, each of them inspired by the Holy Spirit. God warns us at the end of the Book of Revelation not to tamper with His great book, because in the original languages it is absolutely perfect, each word inspired by the Holy Spirit.  We are not to add anything or take anything away.  It is complete.  Genesis and the Book of Revelation stand as two great pillars at either end, the strong bookends, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, absolutely solid and totally trustworthy.

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, if any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book.  Rev 22:18-19

The best proof of all that the Bible is true and trustworthy is prophecy.[i]  God has put prophecies in the Bible so that we know without doubt that the Bible is really His book, and that it is all true.  He says in Isaiah 42:9:  “Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare:  before they spring forth I tell you of them.”   The Bible is full of prophecy, and this subject would take volumes to examine. No other book can tell you the future (and please do not refer me to the occultist Nostradamus; instead get the Ray Comfort video “The Secrets of Nostradamus Exposed” which totally debunks his nonsense). 

Only God knows what is going to happen, because He is outside time.  He knows the end of all things.  He knew you before you were born.  He can see all of human history at once, from the beginning to the years stretching ahead.  He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the all in all.  We, His creatures, are limited by time and we struggle to comprehend Him and His ways because we live in just this moment, the present.  He operates in another dimension; indeed He created all the dimensions, the ones we know about and probably some we can barely imagine.   If only people would seriously study Bible prophecy, they could not rationally deny the existence of God or that Jesus is God.[1]  The irrefutable fact that many specific prophecies have been fulfilled in history is hard evidence – a level of evidence way beyond what is required in a court of law to establish the truth.

Prophecies concerning the Lord Jesus fall into two groups.  The first group speaks of a lowly, humble Messiah who would be rejected, suffer and die – these are the first advent prophecies.  The second group points to a Messiah who will reign on the earth in glory and power – these are the second advent prophecies.  Looking at the first group, each prophecy was literally fulfilled in the life of the Lord Jesus.  For example, centuries before He was born it was foretold by the ancient prophets of Israel that the Messiah would be of the tribe of Judah,[2] of the line of David,[3] born of a virgin,[4] born in Bethlehem.[5]   Those things were true of Jesus.  Had He not fulfilled each one of those predictions (and many more), He would not have been the true Messiah.

Jesus also had to be alive before the tribe of Judah lost its tribal identity and its power to pass the death sentence because of the prophecy in Genesis 49:10: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come…”  The Jews had a certain amount of self government, with their own judges, even under the Romans, but when Jesus was 12 and was brought to the Temple, the kingdom of  Judah, the last remnant of Israel, became part of the province of Syria and lost the ability to pass the death sentence.  The sceptre departed from Judah.  Religious Jews of the day mourned, thinking that the prophecy had failed, and that “Shiloh,”[6] a term for the Messiah, had failed to come.  Had they trusted God, they would have known the prophecy could not possibly fail.  Instead of throwing ashes on their heads and going wailing around Jerusalem, which is apparently what they did, they would have been rejoicing, knowing that since the sceptre had departed, Shiloh had to be there, somewhere among them.  They would have been watching for Him, staying on the alert, trying to make themselves as pure and holy as possible so as not to be ashamed when He revealed Himself to them. (Just as we should now be getting ourselves ready, because the second advent prophecies are starting to unroll.)

The time of the Messiah’s death is pinpointed in Daniel 9:25,26.:  “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks…And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself…”  With “weeks” meaning multiples of seven years, the Jews understood this.  “Seven weeks” is seven times seven years, equals 49 years, the time it took to rebuild Jerusalem after the exiles returned from Babylon.  “Threescore and two weeks” is 62 weeks of years, times seven, equals 434 years. Then add the two totals, so 49 plus 434 is 483 years.  The death of Messiah then was to occur 483 years after the decree of a Persian king ruling in Babylon, Artaxerxes Longimanus,  (Neh 2:1-8) to rebuild Jerusalem.  That ancient prophecy was made by Daniel, a Jewish captive in Babylon, and it should have given the Jewish leaders of the Jesus’ day the timeframe.[7]  They should have realised that if the Messiah was to be killed in a certain year, He would have been revealed to Israel in the years previous to that, and would have to be born in that generation.  They should have known when Messiah would come, and should have had the red carpet all ready to unroll as soon as John the Baptist pointed out exactly Who it was.

When John the Baptist spoke the words:  “Behold the Lamb of God,” (John 1:36), their hearts should have leapt with joy.  They should that very day have begun following Jesus around, making sure He was the right one, checking to see if He fulfilled the other prophecies.  Was He of the tribe of Judah?  Yes.  Was He of the line of David?  Yes, on both Mary and Joseph’s sides.  Where was He born?  There were two Bethlehems – was He born in the right one, Bethlehem Ephratah near Jerusalem?  Yes.  Was He born of a virgin?  Yes, people had been whispering and gossiping about Him and Mary all His life, but many knew the truth.  Could He give any signs that He was really the long-awaited Redeemer?  Yes, in great abundance. 

As the Jewish leaders of the day realised that Jesus ticked box after box, their hearts should have burned within them, hoping against hope that this was indeed the long-awaited Holy One promised by God.  They should have been listening to Him, learning from Him, showing Him love and giving Him honor, doing everything they could to make His life on earth easier.  The disciples behaved like this, but not the leaders of the nation.  If only they had!  If only they had had the prophecy of Daniel foremost in their minds, they would have known the Messiah was there somewhere, living amongst them.  But no.  They had all the information, but they failed to see it.  We have far, far more information because we have the New Testament, but what of people today?  How many even read the Bible, let alone study it?  We too have prophecies, and they are being fulfilled now, in our day.  Who today knows that the Messiah is coming again?  Who is getting ready?   Precious few.

Go back further in time from Daniel.  Go back to the book of the prophet Isaiah, written over 700 years before Jesus came.  There we find the famous Chapter 53.  This tells us that Israel’s Messiah would be – not walking down a red carpet in majesty, but despised, rejected, wounded, chastised, whipped, stricken, bruised for our iniquities, “cut off” (killed).  We learn that the holy and longed-for Messiah would die with criminals, and yet would be buried in the grave of a rich man.  Each of these prophecies was fulfilled in Jesus’ life, His passion and His death for our sins.

Go back even further to the time of David, shepherd-king of Israel, living at about 1000 BC.  In David’s Psalm 22 we learn the horrible details of Messiah’s suffering, the humiliation and torture of the Holy One, while wicked people actually laughed at Him.  They are not laughing now.  This Psalm tells us His hands and feet would be pierced, His garments divided and that people would cast lots for one particular garment.  All these prophecies and many more had to be fulfilled to the letter in the life of the true Messiah.  According to The Amplified Bible twenty-five detailed prophecies concerning the betrayal, trial, death and burial of Our Lord were fulfilled within 24 hours!  It adds that the mathematical probability of an accidental fulfilment is one in more than 33 million.[8]

Scholars have found 333 prophecies[9] dealing with the Lord’s first coming, all precisely fulfilled during His time on earth.  Dr Dave Reagan says that many of the prophecies are repeated for emphasis in different parts of the Bible, but even if you don’t count the repetitions, there are over one hundred different, specific prophecies relating to Messiah’s first advent.[10]  If any one had not been fulfilled, Jesus would have been an impostor.  In recent years some people have claimed to be the Messiah; I wish their followers would check their hands and feet, and look up their birth certificates to see if they were born in Bethlehem – the right Bethlehem!  Those 333 prophecies are like eye witnesses in a trial.  If you were on a jury and sat through the testimony of 333 reliable witnesses who all agreed, you would have no doubt about the verdict to bring in.  The prophecies are far more reliable than any human witness!

Chuck Missler has a marvellous teaching on the mathematical probabilities of one person fulfilling those prophecies, made hundreds of years earlier by different writers, some of whom lived hundreds of years apart.  For anyone who has taken maths and learned to work out probabilities, the number crunching here is awesome.  There is no chance, no way, not the remotest possibility that one man could fulfill even a handful of those prophecies – no way unless the Bible is God’s book.  No one could know hundreds of precise future events unless that Person was outside time, unless it was Someone to whom the future is as clear as the present; Someone who could inspire men over centuries to set down specific predictions with perfect assurance that those events would occur exactly as described.

The prophecies, inspired by the Holy Spirit, were all carefully written down and the true Israelites, who cherished these holy scriptures, watched and waited and prayed.  Then the great day dawned; the prophetic time line began to unroll.  The Lord Jesus Christ, the Creator of this world, the King of Glory, the Holy One of Israel, was born of a virgin in Bethlehem.

The prophecies started coming true, one by one, with the conception and birth of our Savior.  This verifies the Bible completely.  It is God’s stamp on His book, the stamp only He can apply, because no one else knows the future. It is like a divine watermark running through the pages of the Bible, a watermark that can never be faked or copied.   You might be able to ponder on the future and guess a few things right now and then, but hundreds of specific events, prophesied by dozens of different men over centuries?  It is impossible, dear friends.  No man or group of men could have planned the Bible.  It is God’s book.  By the way, if over 100 distinct prophecies relating to the first coming were all literally fulfilled, do you not think the prophecies of Jesus’ Second Coming will also be literally fulfilled?  There are far more than 100! I am quite sure they will be, down to the last jot and tittle.

 The liberals are not at all happy with Bible prophecy.  They huff and they puff and they try to blow it down, and I will be interested to see what sort of defence they try to stammer out when they stand at eternity’s bar, face to face with the Lord God Almighty, the One they said couldn’t possibly exist and whose prophecies they ignored.  They really stub their toes on the book of Daniel.  They just can’t accept that so many precise prophecies could be made long before the fulfilments, but there they are!  Huff and puff as much as you like, but the Lord Jesus referred to Daniel as a prophet (Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14), which is good enough for me.  

No criticism by arrogant academics can ever dent my Father’s book.  Sorry, guys.  God knew what was coming, and in that book of Daniel He gave us an overview of human history.  Dr. Noah Hutchings’ book “Daniel The Prophet” (Hearthstone Publishing, Oklahoma) explains the important revelations in that book which are so relevant for today.

Liberals also dispute the book of the prophet Isaiah and say that because of changes in the style of writing and vocabulary, it is the work of two or even three “Isaiahs.”  These mythical Isaiahs are “deutero-Isaiah” and “trito-Isaiah.”   I don’t think so!  A single writer can write differently at different times, using different terminology; it is not hard to do.  Mark Twain wrote both “Tom Sawyer” (in ordinary prose) and “Huckleberry Finn” (in dialect).   No one would claim there had to be two Mark Twains, one a sophisticated townie and the other a redneck hayseed.   My husband Alan used to freelance for the major British newspapers, selling stories every day to the whole range of papers.  For papers like The Times he would write serious, straight prose.  For the tabloids, the same story would be written in a shorter, snappier, wittier format.  Same writer.  “Trito-Isaiah?”  No, there is one Isaiah the prophet in Heaven and he is worshiping the One he wrote about, the One he said would be wounded for our transgressions.

Oh, but surely the Bible is full of errors and contradictions?  No, it is not. The so-called contradictions are seeming contradictions which become clear when you begin digging in and studying with the first rate Bible teachers God has provided for these end times.  Our daughter Anne, a Cambridge graduate in Hebrew Studies writes: “God delivered His Word perfect into the hands of men.  Manuscripts of biblical texts were amazingly preserved, more than any other historical manuscripts in history.  The scribes took amazing care over copying, but some copyist errors did creep in, even in the original languages.  The oldest manuscripts that were available for a long time were the manuscripts of the Masoretic Text (MT).  Then, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, they had manuscripts based on a completely different manuscript tradition that dated to about 1000 years earlier than the MT.  They found that the closeness of two completely different manuscript traditions, 1000 years apart, shows an unequalled preservation of accuracy in the biblical manuscripts over a long period of time. 

“As for copyist errors, the scribes were so careful that when they noticed the slightest mistake, even if it seemed obvious that it was a simple error, they would not correct or change the delivered text, such was their respect for it.  Instead, they would suggest a different reading by their addition of vowels (the original text has no vowels) or by making a marginal note.  In their fear of making a mistake by attempting to correct the text, they scrupulously preserved mistakes in the text also.  Besides all these things, points that are disputed in the Bible text never affect doctrine or give you a different view of God’s character, or are crucial in understanding a Bible truth.  Important doctrines are stated clearly and many times through the scriptures.”

As Dr Larry Spargimino once said to us:  “The liberals will always take a pop at the Bible, but there is always an answer.”  God’s Word is unassailable, a strong tower, and the fiery arrows of the liberals cannot dent it.  The problem is that our inadequate Bible knowledge often leaves us trying to stammer out a defence of the truth of scripture.  We should just say, “Well, I don’t know the answer to that, but I am going to find out, because I know without any doubt that the Bible is true.”

For example, in Britain I heard an Easter radio program in which a panel of highly intelligent men, some ministers and some academics, discussed the resurrection of Jesus and all seemed to agree that you could not trust the Bible when it came to history.  After all, didn’t one gospel say that Jesus, when He rose, instructed Mary to tell his disciples to meet Him in Galilee? Then, next thing you know, He was appearing to them instead in Jerusalem.  It didn’t seem to follow, therefore the erudite men on the panel concluded that the Bible wasn’t true history!  They were prepared to deny the veracity of the scriptures in public rather than go to the trouble of finding out the truth of the matter!

Galilee-Jerusalem - another apparent contradiction, I thought.  I have a mental shelf where I put these seeming discrepancies.  I know that the Bible can be trusted, in historical matters as well as every other matter, but I pray for the answer when I encounter things I don’t understand.  Then I wait.  The answer may come soon, or it may take years, but it will eventually be resolved, because those who seek really will find.  The Galilee-Jerusalem problem was on that mental shelf until one day I heard a teaching by Dr Arnold Fruchtenbaum  saying that yes, Jesus instructed Mary to tell the disciples to meet Him in Galilee – but they did not go!  They hung around Jerusalem and Jesus, as always, dealt so graciously and patiently with them that He appeared to them there.  Eventually they got their act together and did go to Galilee.  

We can rest assured that the gospels are true history. The apparent discrepancies have answers for those who truly seek them.  The resurrection is a historic reality and on it our faith rests secure, on a Rock more solid than the Rock of Gibraltar.  Give me the Rock of Ages any day!  Stand on that Rock and you will not be moved. 

The ascension too is true history, rejected by many today.  But I have never heard of even one investigation questioning the alleged night journey of Mohammed, when he is said to have flown through the air on the back of a strange animal and then climbed a ladder of light up to Heaven, possibly leaving his footprint on the rock which is in the Dome of the Rock.  Why are there no learned panels of academics from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Cambridge on the radio commenting on the historicity of all that?  There were many eyewitnesses when Jesus ascended in broad daylight.  Mohammed’s alleged ascension was at night.  (According to the Islamic religion he came back the same night with instructions on how to pray.  He is buried at Medina.)

Also, none of the brilliant scholars of Oxford and Cambridge are raking through the Book of Mormon.  No one puts that under the electron microscope.  Why?  Because the claims are ludicrous.  The events described in it are not history; they never happened and the academics know that very well, so they don’t even bother to knock it.[11]

Only the Bible is subjected to the most minute critical examination.  Why?  Because it is true, but the world does not want it and will not believe it.   The liberal academics are like termites wasting their lives trying to undermine the Bible.  They nibble away here and there, awarding each other doctorates and honors, but their mental labor is in vain, because termites can’t damage a stone structure.  They would be gnashing their teeth!  Our faith is reasonable and provable, and we are secure forever on our Rock.   I was a termite once, but the Lord Jesus changed me and now I am a living stone, built into His structure, the church.

Another way we know that the Bible is true is that God Himself says so and He should know!  I am sure you can find many other scriptures to confirm this, but here are a few verses which settle the matter.

• …thy word is truth…John 17:17
• Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven.  Psalm 119:89
• Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.  Mat 24:35
• All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.  2 Timothy 3: 16-17
• Thy word is true from the beginning, and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever.  Ps 119:160
• O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken…  Jesus’ words to the two travellers on the Emmaus road, Luke 24:25.
• Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.  2 Tim 2:21

But what about Genesis Chapter 1 and six day creation – surely we can fit millions of years in there somewhere?  No, God didn’t need long ages.  He is capable of creating everything in six days; it was no problem for Him.  And He is capable of telling us how long it took.  Six days, evening and morning, means six days, evening and morning.  It’s just as plain as day.

Another way we know that the Bible is to be relied upon is the evidence from archaeology and I hope one day to have time to look into this more.  The Bible is historically factual.  Our faith is based on real happenings and the proof is there, on monuments, in ancient manuscripts like the Dead Sea Scrolls, in cities buried under sand.  It is not like the Book of Mormon, describing fictitious populations and battles for which there is no evidence and never will be.  Their archaeologists must suffer from terrible depression, because they never find any evidence in the ground, since it isn’t there.  Some of the archaeological evidence for the Bible can be found in the British Museum.  At one time critics claimed there were no such people as the Hittites, that Sargon (in Isaiah 20:1) [12] never lived, that Daniel was wrong about Belshazzar being a Babylonian king, etc, etc. As archaeologists dug deeper, in these cases and many more, the Bible has been proven right and the so-called “higher critics” are left with egg on their faces. Some apparently doubted that Pontius Pilate ever existed, but a carved stone slab was found in the ruins of Caesarea, and it just happened to mention Pontius Pilate! You can go there today and see the stone, as we did, but critics have fallen silent on that subject.  Critics must have rubbed their hands in glee when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. 

At last they could lay the Bible in the dust!  Ummm, no, actually, sorry guys, the scrolls verify the truth of scripture.  If they want to disprove the Bible, they had better stop digging in Israel, because the spadework there just backs up what the Lord put in His Word.  At one time interest in the truth ran so high that crowds of men would gather outside the British Museum waiting to get in and see for themselves the new discoveries which proved the Bible!  Much precious truth has since been unearthed and catalogued, but men have long since deserted the museum – and God - for the football stadium and the pub.

But the Bible cannot all be true - surely you don’t think Noah’s Flood really happened?  Oh yes I do, and it did!  Academics just love to sneer at the Flood, but evidence for it is all over the world.  When Almighty God gave the order and “all the fountains of the great deep”[13] were torn open in one day, you better believe it left some scars!  There was sudden and colossal devastation, massive land movement, an enormous volume of water gushing up and flooding all over the globe, even as the rain started to fall in sheets.  That global catastrophe on a scale never experienced before or since left not traces, but whole mountain ranges, on land and under the seas,   It left sea trenches seven miles deep proclaiming the day of disaster.  It left the bones of men, women and children, and land, air and sea creatures in fossils by the billion.  I haven’t noticed many fossils being formed today.  

Evidence for the Flood is here, in superabundance.  I keep a look-out for Flood formations if we go anywhere new.  It is exciting knowing that you can trust God’s book.  For example, on the Isle of Wight there is a beautiful cliff of colored sand which is a leftover of the Flood.  Have a look at Alum Bay if ever you are on the island.  It is so delicate with its array of colors that you are not supposed to touch it, and yet it has supposedly been around for millions of years…yawn.  No not millions, just about 4,500 years, when the waters of Noah’s Flood deposited those minerals in bands and then shoved those proud cliffs up where we can appreciate their beauty.

 On holiday in the north of Israel we marvelled at the Rosh Hanikva coastline, with chalk cliffs, some of which look like ice cream bulging out of a machine.  The pure white cliffs are studded with lines of small dark stones.  I’ve seen the same sort of brilliant white cliffs, also punctuated with lines of dark stones, on the Isle of Wight and also on mainland Britain. I marvel at the power of the Flood that left such monuments.  The Flood left seashell fossils on mountain tops.  It left silt layers eight feet deep in the Middle East, with no artefacts in the layer, but lots of men’s bones underneath the silt – men drowned in the Flood, and buried deep as the silt was deposited over the following year.[14]  Yes, the Flood really happened and the evidence is with us still.  The trouble with believing in the Flood is that, um, God actually intends to destroy the earth again, not with water, but with fire next time.  Not so nice to think about.[15]    

For detailed examinations of creation and flood evidence, please get a subscription to Creation magazine from Answers in Genesis and go to their website.  If you are not convinced by the distinguished scientists who write for the magazine, it is because you refuse to be convinced. Read their brilliant findings (in their web archives) to do with the walls of Jericho – it will thrill your soul.  Jericho’s walls really did come down – except for one small portion of them where no doubt the harlot Rahab lived – and she was going to be saved![16]

God’s book, the Bible, is true; it is utterly reliable and we have no reason to fear any “experts” who take a potshot at it.  If we don’t know the answer to their objections, we can study and find out, because the answer is surely there.  Let’s not turn tail and slink off in defeat from debates.  We are the ones on solid ground.  The liberals are the ones on sinking sand. 

At one time our daughter Annie used to get up early and listen to Jacob (Yacov) Prasch’s teaching tapes as she was getting ready for school.  Then off she would go. More than once the tape provided her with the truth of a disputed point of scripture.  Occasionally a teacher would say something like, “The Bible contradicts itself here.”  But Annie, having just heard Jacob explain that very point, was able to raise her hand and say, “But that is because etc….”  The answers are out there, folks.  You may not have found the right teachers yet!   You need to get clued up, with the right teachers and the right books.

Another time, Annie was going for an interview at Cambridge University.  A  theology candidate hoping for a place at one of the renowned Cambridge colleges said to her: “Of course the Bible is full of contradictions; everyone knows that.”  “Name one,” said Annie.  Duhhhhh.   He couldn’t name even one, but had swallowed the prevailing philosophy of unbelief.  My question to him would be why in the world he wanted to spend years of his life studying a book he didn’t believe was truthful. 

Then, after Annie started studying at Cambridge, she had to read a book that listed “mistakes” in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus.   One “mistake” was that Rahab seemed to be listed as the mother of Boaz.  The smart-aleck book pointed out that the prostitute Rahab lived about 200 years before Boaz, so she was unlikely to be his mother.  Then there was a list of other “mistakes.”   We emailed the list to our friend Dr Larry Spargimino at Southwest Radio Church in Oklahoma.  Larry teaches at a Bible college as well as being a writer and broadcaster (log on to swrc.com).   Back came a detailed email from Larry answering every objection.   The best bit of all this is that Larry used this episode as the subject of a radio program, so all across America listeners heard (on Southwest Radio Church) a detailed look at the liberal objections to Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus, with every argument refuted.  Bible 10, liberals 0.  That is the score and will always be the score. We who know the truth must just delve deeper to find the answers to tough questions.

By the way, let’s look at Rahab. Larry said that the liberals knew very well that the scripture included a figure of speech.  Boaz was “of Rahab” in that she was one of his ancestors, just as Jesus was the “son” of David and the Jews were “sons” of Abraham. 

Personally, I just love the Lord all the more for making sure Rahab was listed among His ancestors.  Most people would try to hide the fact that they had a dodgy ancestor.  Not the Lord Jesus! He deliberately had the former prostitute named in His family tree and now we sinners today can be all the more certain of His mercy.  No matter what we have done, His mercy can cover us.  Rahab was saved.  Her faith saved her.     You too can be saved, dear reader, simply by putting your faith in the Lord Jesus.  Or then again, you can go to hell, while a former prostitute enjoys the bliss of heaven.   It is entirely up to you.  The door of heaven is still open now, but a day is coming when my Father will shut that door.  Get right with God while there is still time by admitting that you are a sinner and accepting His beloved Son Jesus as your Savior.  It is the best decision you will ever make.  Obviously you have to know what you are agreeing to believe.  You have to have an understanding of what it is God wants you to know.  The best way to get that understanding that leads to saving faith is simply to read God’s Word, the Bible, asking Him to help you find the truth.  All you have to do is believe what it says. It’s so simple, far too simple for anyone puffed up with intellectual pride.  Ditch that stupid pride; read God’s Word and meet in the pages of the Bible the One who took all your punishment and who offers you a clean slate, a new beginning and an eternity of joy.  A pretty good deal, wouldn’t you say?

Oddly enough, our wicked society even recognizes the truth of the Bible.  Every witness in a courtroom is invited to swear on a Bible.  Then, of course, many of them go on to lie on the witness stand.   Christians will often refuse to swear on a Bible, since the Bible itself tells us not to swear by anything, but to let our “yes be yes and no be no.”  Instead they “affirm,” which means they promise solemnly to speak the truth, and they get on the witness stand and tell the truth.  But the very fact that our courts still use the Bible indicates to me that even secular men know in their hearts that it is all true, and that the Bible is like no other book.

So yes, dear friends.  We can trust the Bible, which is the same thing as saying that we can trust God, because He is the author of the Book.  Isn’t it time you trusted Him today?