July, 2001

Dear Ministry Friends,

Do you know people that just don't believe in God, Jesus, or the Bible — whether they consider themselves an agnostic, an unbeliever, or perhaps simply a heathen? Perhaps they are a family member, a co-worker, or a neighbor. Have you ever wished you had some information, a comeback, or logic to help persuade them (or at least defend yourself)? This information exists! And I have spent 20 years collecting it into a good, presentable form.

Many Christians respond to unbelievers by saying they believe in God and the Bible just because they know it in their heart. That's good, but we don't need to stop there. There is plenty of verifiable proof that the Bible is a supernatural and true book, pointing to the reality of God. I will briefly touch on ten reasons here:

(1) - FULFILLED PROPHECIES IN THE BIBLE: Isaiah 46:9-10 says, "God declares the end from the beginning." The Bible is the only "religious manual" in the world that contains prophecies. That's because only the God of the Bible knows the future! In contrast, Jean Dixon falsely "prophesied" who would be candidates for major parties of presidential elections in '52, '56, and '60, and who would win. She missed everything! The 1978 National Enquirer had 61 predictions of 10 leading "psychics" for the last half of '78. They missed them all! The Bible contains over 2,000 specific predictive prophecies that have already been fulfilled. 332 specific prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus as Messiah, 56 in 1 day per Gary Hedrick of the Christian Jew Foundation. The odds of this happening accidentally are less than 1 chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000! according to Josh McDowell in More than a Carpenter.

(2) - PROOF FROM PATTERNS IN ORIGINAL HEBREW & GREEK TEXT: The original Hebrew & Greek languages of the Bible used their letters also for numerals. Therefore, each letter and word has a numeric value. A Russian mathematician, Ivan Panin, discovered in 1890 amazing patterns of sevens in the numeric value of letters and words in the original Hebrew & Greek text. The statistical probability of just Genesis 1:1 having these patterns of seven by accident is 1 chance in 33 trillion! [Bible Numerics Foundation, Box 206, Waubashene, Ontario, Canada, L0K2C0] Another amazing phenomenon is equal distance sequencing patterns in Hebrew text. For example, "Yeshua" is spelled out every 50th letter all through the first five books of the Bible. Original research in this area is from the book Yeshua: The Name of Jesus Revealed in the Old Testament by Yacov Rambsel. No one has been able to locate detailed, meaningful Bible codes like this in any other Hebrew literature outside the Bible including the Jewish Talmud, the Mishnah, and the Apocryphal writings of the Maccabees.

(3) - THE SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE: This is truly amazing in light of how old the Bible is, and how little people knew scientifically in those days. Yet so many statements now prove to be scientifically accurate. For example, the Bible taught that the earth was round in Isaiah 40:22 and Job 26:7 thousands of years ago, when even Plato & Aristotle thought earth was flat! In Lev 12:3, God told his people to perform circumcision on the 8th day. Holts Pediatrics, a modern medical school manual, says blood clotting agents prothrombin and Vitamin K peak on the 8th day!

(4) - REALITY OF HEAVEN & HELL FROM AFTER-DEATH EXPERIENCES: Dr. Maurice Rawlings, M.D., is a cardiologist who interviewed and studied people=s experiences when they had clinical death and were resuscitated by CPR or other medical intervention. He found amazing testimony of people seeing either Heaven or Hell (published in To Hell and Back: Life After Death).

(5) - SUPERNATURAL HEALING MIRACLES AND ANSWERED PRAYERS: Many people know someone who has documented before and after evidence of a miracle healing! When people pray, things happen! For example, there is a documented medical study in the Southern Medical Journal of the recovery rates of cardiac patients who were prayed for — which proved prayer made a major difference in recovery. One pastor was asked by a journalist if answered prayers could be just coincidences. He replied, "I know that the more I pray, the more 'coincidences' happen!"

(6) - PROOF OF INSPIRATION FROM THE WISDOM OF RELATIONSHIP, BUSINESS, & GOVERNMENT PRINCIPLES IN THE BIBLE: The Bible is full of principles that, when applied in real life, produce outstanding success in many areas. One interesting example is how our founding fathers set up our greatly successful "three branched" American government (Judicial, Legislative, Executive). They studied the Bible for the design of our new government, and found Isaiah 33:22 — "the LORD is our Judge, the LORD is our Lawgiver, the LORD is our King."

(7) - PROOF FROM THE MARTYRS: History is full of Christian martyrs that gladly laid down their lives out of love in testimony of the reality of Jesus. Eleven of the twelve Apostles willingly gave their lives as martyrs when they could have easily recanted if it had all been a hoax or a lie. There are well-known martyrdoms of Christians like Ignatius, Polycarp, John Wycliff, John Huss, William Tyndale, Jim Elliot, all the way up to the Columbine school martyrs like Rachel Scott.

(8) - PROOF FROM THE SUPERNATURAL PRESERVATION & CONTINUENCE OF THE NATION OF ISRAEL: God promised to bless the nation of Israel (Gen. 12:2-3). It rose to great affluence under David and Solomon. However, due to their sins, God said He would drive them from their homeland (Deut. 28:64-66, Jer. 24:9, Hos. 9:17) but preserve them (Jer. 30:11). God said He would bring them back after "many days" (Hos. 3:4-5, Ezek. 37:21, Isa. 11:11-12). Even after many people groups have deliberately tried to exterminate the nation of Israel for about 2,000 years, they have retained their national identity, language, religion, and culture; and returned to full nation status in 1948 on their original homeland! The nations that have blessed them (America and England), God has blessed. And the nations that have tried to destroy them (Babylon, Assyria, the Romans, Nazi Germany, and Russia) have been defeated and humiliated. Of more than 225 nations on the earth, no other nation has experienced this unique preservation in spite of thousands of years of world-wide persecution and attempted extinction.

(9) - THE REMARKABLE IMPACT OF CHRISTIANITY WORLDWIDE: Someone once wrote that about 2,000 years ago, a person was born into a poor family who was a minority group in one of the smallest countries of the world. He did not travel extensively, did not have a higher education, his relatives had little influence, and he died like a criminal at the age of 33. His public influence only lasted about 3 years, and his followers who promoted his message were mainly uneducated commercial fishermen. Yet in his infancy, he arrested the attention of the king, as a teenager he astounded the religious leaders, as an adult he healed the multitudes without charging any fees. He never assembled an army or fired a weapon, but has made more violent men and women surrender their lives than all the generals of history. He never wrote a book, but there are tens of thousands of books written about him, and his Bible holds the record as the best seller in the history of printed material. He never founded a college, but all the colleges in the world put together don=t have as many students as this man. He did not practice psychology, but has healed more broken hearts than all the doctors of the world. The historian H.G. Wells said this man has made the most permanent impression on world history than anyone else. We date our calendars from his birth, and about 2 billion people worldwide identify themselves as his followers — and assemble together on a weekly basis to pay homage and respect to him (nearly 2,000 years after his death). His enemies have not destroyed his influence after continual attempts. He has risen to the highest position attainable by a man. This Jesus the Christ is adored by saints, feared by demons, and is proclaimed by billions as the Messiah, Lord, and Savior of mankind.

(10) - THE PROOF OF CHANGED LIVES: Perhaps the greatest proof of the supernatural nature of the Bible is its power to radically change people's lives for the better. Millions of people have voluntarily testified how a prayer to ask Jesus Christ to forgive them and be their Lord and Savior has tremendously altered their lives from that moment forward. Changing the way a person behaves and thinks is a tremendously difficult task to accomplish for anyone — even over a period of decades (whether by a spouse, an employer, or a government). But the Bible and its Jesus Christ has accomplished this hundreds of millions of times — in a single moment. As a contrast, where are the lines of people who say that Islam, Buddhism, or Hinduism has delivered them from drugs or alcohol, restored their marriage, healed their mind or body, or basically made them a model citizen when they were an enemy to society? Therefore, Christianity exhibits a unique power to radically, supernaturally change a person on the inside that no other religion can demonstrate.

Proclaiming the Truth,

Dale Leander