Joshua And The Children Of Israel Take Jericho Are Confirmed By Archaeology

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

The interpretation of archaeological finds is always controversial because so much is based on assumption and presupposition. Secularists are often eager to disprove the Bible and Christians are convinced that archaeology and all science will confirm the Scriptures. Now, we find archaeology confirming this particular Bible story. There has never been an archaeological discovery that showed a Bible story to be in error. That is exactly what Christians would expect.

The archaeologists found the fallen walls of Jericho. They found the evidence of the burning of the city in thick layers of ash. All this is just what the Bible says they would find. They found evidence that a new culture had built on top of the old city of Jericho, and that is what the Bible says happened. The walls appear to have fallen outward by themselves—Kenyon assumed that it was by an earth quake. There is evidence that the city was then attacked and burned.

Between 1930 and 1936, Garstang, and Kenyon from 1952 to 1956 excavated the ruins of Jericho. These two didn’t believe in the infallibility of the Bible. Garstang felt that the invaders were the Jewish people, but Kenyon was convinced that they were not. Both saw that the previous culture was completely overtaken by the new culture and that the new culture was not skilled at building. The new culture left evidence that they had been desert nomads, living in tents. They were peaceful people, yet they wiped out all the existing inhabitants of the land. They were religious tribal people. They were a very advanced civilization. Jericho was rebuilt later, but remained uninhabited for a long time. All of this is what the Bible says, except that Kenyon was convinced that all this happened 600 years before the Jews came.

Actually, as a result of Kenyon's opinion and the opinion of some other archaeologists, stories have been run in newspapers stating that the Biblical account is false. In fact, those opinions are not based in fact but in assumption and presupposition, so the newspaper's stories are radical and not good journalism.

The dating methods that are used to say when things have happened are, as it works out, very shaky. Much of what is called science is actually based on unsupported assumption and presupposition. Of course, experts must appear to be very sure of themselves, so they will argue over issues about which they know little or even nothing at all. There is much dispute regarding the dates and scholars do not agree. The reason that they can disagree is that their opinions are based on things that they simply make up. The dates that are most in question are the dates of Israel in Egyptian history, but it must be remembered that some of these scholars give a false impression that they are dealing with facts when they are dealing with opinions.

The facts fit the Biblical account perfectly. Some opinions also fit the Biblical account while the opinions of some other scholars (for whatever that might be worth) differ from the Biblical account.

Joshua And The Children Of Israel Take Jericho Are Confirmed By Archaeology

How can we know anything about anything

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