The Bible claims some amazing things for itself. I'm going to give you seven of them. These are things the Bible claims for itself and this will help you foundationally to understand what you're dealing with. You have in your hand one book and yet divided into two testaments, the first testament divided into 39 separate books, the second into 27, one called the Old Testament, one called the New Testament. You're familiar with that. You're familiar with Genesis to Revelation and places in between. But do you understand this document's supernatural character? This is not a human book, though it was written over a period of about 1500 to 1800 years and there were over 40 different men whose actual pen was placed on the parchment to write down the words, it is singularly authored by God and those men who wrote these various books at various times in various places wrote under the direct inspiration of the Spirit of God who was conveying to them the revelation of God from His mind to that pen so that what was produced was the very word of the living God. This is not a human document, this is a supernatural book.

And it makes some supernatural claims. First of all, it claims for itself to be infallible...infallible. That is to say that everything that it affirms is absolutely true...

...The prophet said it is like silver tested seven times in a furnace, all that could be imagined to be of dross is burned away and it is absolutely purely true. Everything it says historically is true. Everything it says prophetically is true. Everything it says spiritually is true. Everything it gives us in terms of direction in life is absolutely true. It is infallible. That is why it has always been called the standard for life for faith and practice...

...The same God who ordered science wrote this book. And whenever it talks about scientific things or matters in the physical world, it speaks with accuracy...

...It presents the only viable explanation for the universe...creation, catastrophism, the instantaneous creation in six days, the Noahic flood, reshuffling the surface of the earth, explains all the fossil record, explains all the strata in the rocks, explains everything. That's all you need to explain it. It's absolutely scientifically accurate...

...The Bible affirms one of the basic laws of science which is called the first law of thermodynamics...the first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of mass and energy...

...The Bible also affirms the second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics says this...while there is the conservation of mass and energy, the atoms that make up that mass and energy tend toward disorder, break down into chaos so that the longer the universe exists the more chaotic it tends to become...

...It's the law of increasing disorder. And it disproves evolution alone because it says things start from order and go to disorder, not starting from disorder and ascending to order...

...There is never a real loss of mass, there is never a real loss of energy, but there is a declining ability of it to produce because it breaks down and order becomes disorder...all processes will ultimately wind down and cease and the universe ultimately go out of existence. The Bible is very clear about this...

...Some people might think that when they turn their facet on new water is being created. No...there's not new water there. This is God's process of hydrology...the sea, the evaporation, the clouds, they move over the land, rain, snow down into the land, rushing into the streams, the streams into the rivers, the rivers into the sea and that's the cycle. Not until the seventeenth century was this believed...

...You say, "Well what does the Bible say about that?" Read Isaiah 55 verse 10, read Ecclesiastes 1, read Job 36 verses 27 and 28. Job is the oldest book in the Bible and it describes evaporation and condensation. Whenever God spoke in His Word about something scientific, it was clear. Isaiah 55:10 gives you the water cycle...

...And then a fascinating study of astronomy...Hippocrates of a great mind said there were one thousand and twenty-two stars. Ptolemy said, "No, there are one thousand and fifty-six." And Kepler said, "You're both wrong, there are one thousand and fifty-five." Why didn't they read Jeremiah?...

...Job, the oldest book in the Bible, says God hangeth the earth on nothing. How did he know that?...

...Herbert Spencer wrote..."All that is knowable falls into these five categories...time, force, action, space and matter." Everything in existence falls into one of those five categories...time, force, action, space and matter.

Well Herbert did very well. But Herbert was real late in coming to something that the first verse of the Bible made clear. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning--that's time, God--that's force, created--that's action, the heavens--that's space, and the earth- -that's matter." Every classification of the knowable is placed in the first verse of the Bible. The genius of the mind of God is beyond anything man could conceive...

...when the Bible speaks to the scientific realm, it doesn't speak ignorantly, it speaks accurately. You know what they used to do to sick people maybe a hundred years ago or more? When somebody went sick, got sick, they took you in and you know what they did? They took out your blood. They bled you. Now what they do is they give you blood because they finally figured out what was in Leviticus 17:11...

...And what about the prophecies of the Bible? Wow, a hundred and fifty years before he was born the Bible predicted there would come a man named Cyrus...

...One of the great cities of the ancient world was a city called Tyre which was on the north coast of the land of Palestine. Ezekiel chapter 26, the prophet Ezekiel predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would come in verse 7 of that chapter, that Nebuchadnezzar the great Babylonian emperor would come and destroy the city. He predicted that Nebuchadnezzar would destroy the city and that the city would be leveled to the ground and then it would be cleared of all its rubble and scraped clean and thrown into the sea and it would never be rebuilt again and it would be simply a little place where people dried fish nets...

...And Ezekiel said the city would never be rebuilt. It never has been rebuilt. And just to make a comparison, Jerusalem has been rebuilt seventeen times...

...The Bible predicted the destruction of Ninevah which is the capital of Assyria. Had a hundred foot inner wall fifty-feet thick, towers two hundred feet high, fifteen gates and a one hundred and fifty-foot moat. The city was seven miles in circumference, a double wall, two thousand feet outside the inner wall. Reached its high point in 663 B.C. Nahum says it's going to be destroyed. It was. The Medes, the Babylonians they came, entered, took it, never rebuilt...

...The Bible makes amazing prophecies and you can verify that they have already come to pass. So much more you could say about this book. You look it and its scientifically accurate. Prophetically there's no explanation. Nobody can write history. Nobody knows what the future holds. But this book does. This book nailed it to the very tee over and over...and I've only given you two of dozens and dozens and dozens of prophecy.

Why do I believe the Bible? I believe the Bible because of its scientific accuracy. I believe the Bible because of its prophetic accuracy. I believe the Bible because of its historic accuracy. Archaeologists have found all kinds of verifications of the absolute accuracy of the Scriptures. I believe the Bible because of its experiential accuracy. You want to know something? It tells me about me and I know it's right. It cuts into my heart and opens me wide up. I've experienced its power in my life. But more than anything, I think, dominating all those reasons why I believe God wrote this book is because of the one singular theme of this book, the Lord Jesus Christ. Forty plus authors writing over fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred years all over the place in all different circumstances writing on their own could never have maintained the continuity of glory and majesty and honor that is given to the Lord Jesus Christ from Genesis to Revelation. This is a book written by one author about one person. Jesus said, "Search the Scriptures for in them you're going to find out about Me." Every book...every book points someway to Christ, from Genesis all the way to Revelation He is the theme. He Himself on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 opened the Bible and began to speak of things concerning Himself out of the Scripture, the law, the prophets and the writings. You go into the law and He is the one that the law points to. He is the one who will fulfill all law. He is the perfect sacrifice who will bear all sin. He is the one of whom the prophets spoke. He is the one who is to be praised in all the holy writings. He is the one who is wisdom personified. He is the theme of the gospels. His coming life, death, resurrection are the subject of the epistles and He's the returning King of Revelation.

The dominating theme of Jesus Christ speaks of divine authorship. And I'll tell you why. Because human beings could never conceive of such a person. It's beyond human capability. Look at the gods of the nations, look at the gods of pagan religions, their like men. There's no explanation for Jesus Christ other than He is who He said He was, He is who God said He is and that He is God in human flesh. There's no explanation of the Bible other than that God wrote it. Nothing else explains its scientific accuracy. Nothing else explains its prophetic accuracy. Nothing else explains its spiritual and penetrating accuracy and its ability to transform lives. Nothing else explains its miracles which are from front to back in this book and verified by eyewitnesses. And nothing else can explain Christ. This monumental, inexplicable, inconceivable personality who could not be the figment of any human imagination, let alone the collective imaginations of over forty different writers all over the place. This is God's Word. It is alive, it is powerful. And until you come to grips with what this document is, you're never going to be able to give to it the diligence that is required to learn all that is written in it so you can make your way prosperous and have good success...