It never ceases to amaze me how much people will go out of their way to attempt to discredit the Bible but each time their philosophies, hypothesis or theories fail it gets little or no publicity compared to their initial accusations. Better yet, when archeological discoveries validate the Bible it’s often treated as some sort of newly attained knowledge and the fact that the same information has been recorded in the Scriptures for thousands of years is just coincidence.
Here’s an example. Archeologists in Israel have uncovered the ruins of a Philistine temple in the ancient city of Gath. The temple dates back to the 10th century B.C. and has brought validation to many of the stories recorded in the Old Testament.
The Bible records the Philistines as the enemies of Israel and even mentions the City of Gath as the home of Goliath (the giant whom David struck down). This dig shows that the philistine temple had two main support pillars. We didn’t need archeology to reveal this to us though if we were to simply read the Bible. Judges 16:29 gives us a layout of a Philistine temple and records the two central pillars.
Judges 16:29 29 Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood. Bracing himself against them, his right hand on the one and his left hand on the other,That’s not all this dig has shown us though. The team has also uncovered evidence of a major earthquake that struck the area in the 8th century B.C. Again this event was recorded in the Bible in Amos chapter 1.
Amos 1 1 The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa—the vision he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.These are both discoveries that have been unearthed just this summer but they aren’t the end of the Biblical evidence to be found in Gath. On other thing that was unearthed this summer was the evidence of the destruction left behind when King Hazael attacked the city in 830 B.C. Again we have this event recorded for us in the Old Testament in the book of II Kings.
2 Kings 12 17 About this time Hazael king of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem.We currently live in a culture of people who are desperately seeking truth. We want something to believe in! We’ve learned the hard way that we can’t believe in our government, some of us have discovered that we can’t believe in our friends or family and we’re seeking something that withstands the scrutiny and testing of life. The answer is the Bible. It is so much more than the book of fairy tales your atheist friend would have you believe it to be. It records God’s design and desire for His creation. It records the path to contentment in life and the consequences for not following that path. It provides hope, peace and joy to those who study and believe in it. Finally, it provides truth. We are consistently being told that God is not real and the Bible is a lie. However, these same people wouldn’t want you to see articles like this one because they don’t want to have to explain how archeological discoveries support a, “book of lies.”
