Reason To Believe

by WILLIAMSON, D. | Category: N/a | Mar 2008

I met a man who was standing by the road and asking for help. He had been climbing one of the 13,000 foot mountains in Colorado and had lost his backpack containing phone, wallet, keys and food. He had made it back to his car, but was helpless without keys, so we gave him a ride and fixed him up with a locksmith and some food for his extended day. In the course of our conversation we learned he was a retired physicist from a local university and had no 'need' for God. Over time we have had a few more conversations with him on this subject which included an interesting statement from him: "What I don't understand is how Christianity has endured over time with intelligent people believing this stuff." Can Bible-based Christianity withstand this challenge?

Well, one of the points raised as we think about the legitimacy of Scripture is the fulfilment of prophecy, as compared with what is documented in other historical writings. Isaiah 46:9-10 states:

�"Remember the former things long past,

For I am God, and there is no other;

I am God and there is no one like Me,

Declaring the end from the beginning,

And from ancient times things which have not been done,

Saying, 'My purpose will be established,

And I will accomplish all My good pleasure'."�

So God speaks through His prophets and because of His existence and authority, His word as He declares it, comes true.

Take as an example the prophecies concerning the city of Tyre. In the 6th Century B.C. Ezekiel wrote, �"... thus says the Lord GOD, 'Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and I will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. And they will destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers; and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock'."� (Ez. 26:3-4). A few years after the writing of the prophecy, the army of Babylon fought against the city and after thirteen years the walls fell and the inhabitants were mostly destroyed. Some fled to an island a half mile out into the Mediterranean Sea to rebuild a new Tyre. Now God had said in verse 12 that they (i.e. others, not just the Babylonian king) would throw its stones, timber and debris into the water. Well, some 250 years later, Alexander the Great came to the new Tyre which had been rebuilt in the sea. There was still evidence of the old mainland Tyre and he gave orders to �"Tear down the wall of Tyre, take the timbers and the stones, the rubble and the logs, and cast them into the sea."� They built a roadway to new Tyre and in 332 B.C. completed the siege and destruction of the new island Tyre, by using all the debris from the previous mainland site of Tyre, leaving it like a bare rock � as it still is today. Ezekiel was in his grave a long time before the prophecy was complete, but it was completed because God had spoken it (Ez. 26:5). Now some sceptics have disputed these things, because Tyre is still in existence today, but this is to confuse matters. What is indisputably true is that the original Tyre, against which the prophecies were spoken (the old mainland city), has never been rebuilt but is even reported TODAY to be a place where fishermen spread their nets in the sun to dry them � precisely as God had predicted through Ezekiel before he died some two and a half thousand years ago!

God's Word is true, and God is true, and so we can have great confidence in all His promises to us. Let's be sure to act as though we really believe it and go out to tell this dying world about our living Christ!

WILLIAMSON, D. | Mar 2008
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