\u201cThe Old Testament Connection\u201d<\/a> you know that the message of the Bible is about human failure and the need for God\u2019s help.\u00a0 This is very offensive to people that want to believe in man\u2019s goodness or ability to do everything.\u00a0 Other people are insulted by the idea that there is only one way to God.\u00a0 Others don\u2019t like the idea of right and wrong or they don\u2019t like the specific right\u2019s and wrong\u2019s in the Bible.\u00a0 For some reason though people cannot just ignore the Bible.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t like it why not just blow it off?\u00a0 \u201cHey, why can\u2019t we just coexist?\u201d some people say.\u00a0 But they are usually unwilling to do that, they want to disprove the Bible every way they can.\u00a0 Of course this has been going on for a long time.\u00a0 Satan tempted Eve not to believe what God had told them.\u00a0 When Jesus\u2019 body came up missing the religious leaders paid the guards to say Jesus was stolen (Matthew 28:11-15), and when Paul started talking about the resurrection to a group of listeners they made fun of him and left (Acts 17:32).<\/p>\nThat is where a list like this becomes very interesting.\u00a0 One way people down through the ages have tried to discredit the Bible is by attacking the geography or archaeology in it.\u00a0 \u201cThis guy never existed.\u00a0 That city was never there.\u00a0 Those people never existed.\u201d\u00a0 Those sorts of statements are made all the time.\u00a0 The problem is that the world is a big place, even a territory as small as Israel is still a big place.\u00a0 And these events happened a long time ago.\u00a0 Cities were built on certain locations because of things like tactical advantage (high and unapproachable or hidden) resources (like fresh water, good farm land, a harbor) or perhaps other reasons.\u00a0 When a city was destroyed by a calamity (like fire, flood, or earthquake) or by an invasion it would often be rebuilt on the same site maybe even reusing some of the same materials.\u00a0 But things like tablets from a destroyed library would not be salvaged.\u00a0 Later on writings on skins or paper would have been destroyed all together, at least by a fire.\u00a0 This stuff would be buried and forgotten.\u00a0 If evidence of people and places still exists it may very well be buried still.\u00a0 Archaeology is discovering new stuff every year.\u00a0 So to say another place or person never existed because we haven\u2019t found any evidence is inappropriate.\u00a0 And to say the Bible is inaccurate or false because it mentions theses places is also premature.<\/p>\n
On the other hand the kind of detail in a list like this could disprove the Bible if it could be proven false.\u00a0 If a verse in the Bible said that a person \u201cwalked from Jerusalem toward the setting sun until he reached the Jordan River, a journey of two hours\u201d we would know that the verses was a lie.\u00a0 The Jordan is east not west of Jerusalem.\u00a0 If a person wanted to go west from Jerusalem to the Jordan River it would take much more that 2 hours and they would have to do a lot of swimming.\u00a0 If the Bible were made up by men they probably would not include so much detail and would be very sure of the detail that they did include.<\/p>\n
But the part of the detail that I like the best is how specific God is with giving the land to the Israelites and how much land there is.\u00a0 Two stories in my life will help you know why I like the detail.\u00a0 First, most mornings I get up and weigh myself.\u00a0 I have the scale in the same place.\u00a0 I use the same scale.\u00a0 I step on the scale the same way.\u00a0 I try to be wearing the same clothes.\u00a0 Sometimes I will step on the scale and realize I have my keys in my pocket or I left my socks on.\u00a0 I will get rid of the extra items and reweigh.\u00a0 Once in a while a whole pound will disappear because I put my keys down or took my socks off (I love it when that happens).\u00a0 Now my keys or socks do not weigh a whole pound.\u00a0 What I am seeing is the effects of the precision of the scale.\u00a0 It only weighs to the nearest \u00bd pound.\u00a0 If I get rid of something that weights right around \u00bd pound it can drop a whole pound. These stories in the Bible are very precise.\u00a0 Abraham was promised all the land he could see from a certain place (Genesis 13:14-14).\u00a0 Not very precise.\u00a0 In Joshua the division of the land is very specific.\u00a0 Now for the second story.\u00a0 Several years ago there was a news story about Israel.\u00a0 There was talk about a treaty between the Israelites and the \u201cPalestinians\u201d.\u00a0 And they were talking about land on the \u201cWest Bank\u201d.\u00a0 They were talking about land on the west side of the Jordan River.\u00a0 At the time I remember thinking, \u201cThe West Bank?\u00a0 That all belongs to Israel, or should.\u201d\u00a0 Even a dummy like me knew that there should be no dispute about that land being part of the land promised to the Israelites.\u00a0 God\u2019s description is much more exact than \u201call the land you can see\u201d or \u201cthe west bank\u201d.\u00a0 God\u2019s division, which he had Joshua and Eleazar (Numbers 34:16-29) do was city by city, valley by valley.\u00a0 The lines were very exact.\u00a0 And the timing of the ownership was very exact too, forever (Genesis 13:15, Exodus 32:13).\u00a0 And even now 3400 years later while we dispute the boundaries of the land that Israel should own God knows exactly where every town was, every valley, every tree or stone or what ever made up the boundaries.\u00a0 For us things change but God remembers.<\/p>\n
Israel does not have all the land, I\u2019m not sure they ever actually controlled all of it.\u00a0 Throughout their history they may have come close but really I think they are still waiting.\u00a0 And that\u2019s OK.\u00a0 There\u00a0 is a lot of waiting in the Bible.\u00a0 God is patient (2 Peter 3:9), the Old Testament prophets and others were patient (Hebrew 11) and we need to be patient too.\u00a0 And we can be because the Bible is accurate and everything that we can verify has checked out.\u00a0 God is 100% on His promises so far and we should be sure that he will be 100% on all of them, down to the smallest detail.\u00a0 When men make promises we paint big pictures to give ourselves lots of room for mistakes.\u00a0 But God is very detailed and is faithful and powerful to finish exactly what he started.\u00a0 Thank you Lord for being so specific.\u00a0 The fact that so many details are included in your plan gives me a lot of comfort.\u00a0 I know that your promises are not fortune cookie promises.\u00a0 \u201cSomething good will come to you soon\u201d then a plastic bag shows up on my porch to fill with stuff for Good Will.\u00a0 You have promised eternal life, peace, resurrection, and so much more.\u00a0 Thank you for loving me<\/span>.\u00a0 And thank you for loving others, every single person in the whole world.\u00a0 Thank you for using your power so specifically for us.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joshua 13:1-23. I hope that you all stay with me through this section of Joshua it is very detailed.\u00a0 Actually the detail is what is interesting to me today.\u00a0 Over the past several days, actually extending back into our reading in Judges, I have tried to stay up with the geography.\u00a0 I have used the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=570"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/570\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/deltaforcedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}