|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:50-51, ESV).
What’s amazing about the Bible is that it gets the details right.
Considering that the Bible is 66 books, written by 40 differing authors, over a period of 1,500 years, with accounts of places, cities, cultures, rulers, and just about everything pertaining to daily life, that’s a lot of details. And the Spirit, who inspired the Bible, pays close attention to these details.
Often, the Bible has been challenged as inaccurate because there is no archeological record of a particular place, and then, uh, oh, skeptics, the place is found.
For example:
John 5:2-9 describes Jesus healing a paralytic at the Bethesda Pool. This pool is described as having five porticoes. But for centuries, a pool with five porticoes had not been found in Jerusalem. So, many questioned the Bible’s accuracy.
However, a pool was discovered in the late 19th century but was not adequately excavated until over 100 years later, in 1956. It was then given a closer examination and found to have five porticoes.
The Bible gets the details right! Now, let’s consider the earthquake mentioned in Matthew 27:51.
Some scholars have concluded that Jesus died on Friday, April 3, 33 A.D., based on information, including the historical dates of Herod’s reign and the gospel account that Jesus died just before Passover on the 15th day of Nisan (the name of the Jewish month).
Are you following?
Jesus died on April 3, 33 A.D. – and the Gospel of Matthew says that an earthquake occurred at the time of Jesus’ death. Does Matthew get this detail right?
Now three names: Jefferson B. Williams, Markus J. Schwab, and A. Brauer. Few people knew their names, including me, until I read about them recently. But they are geologists. And what did they find in soil samples around Jerusalem?
Come on, go ahead and guess.
They found evidence of soil disturbance caused by an earthquake that could have occurred on April 3, 33 A.D.
Time and time again, scientists, archaeologists, historians, and geologists have proven the Bible to be reliable. It seems that every week more and more verification is discovered that proves the historicity of the Bible.
We must conclude that if the Bible gets the details right with history, it can be trusted to get the details right about our eternity as well.