The Holy Scriptures Wholly True
Since the days of the Glorious Reformation, the people of the British Isles in particular, and of Anglo-Saxondom in general, have been known as the people of the Book, and that Book is the Bible. Few indeed are the homes in our land which are without a copy of the Holy Scriptures, whilst our Bible translators and missionaries have carried the Word of Life to every nation and tribe upon the face of the earth, that each might read in his own tongue the marvellous truths of the Sacred Page.
We can say without hesitation that the Bible is like no other book in the history of mankind, in fact it is not merely one book but a library of some 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. It was written over a period of some 1,700 years by some 40 different authors, each and every one differing in education, occupation and background. Just think of some of them for a moment; Moses the legislator, trained in all the wisdom of Egypt. Samuel the judge, David the shepherd boy who was to be King of Israel, Amos the vine-dresser, Daniel the Prime Minister, Peter the fisherman, Matthew the tax collector and Luke the physician. Think again of the various lands where the Scriptures were written; the wilderness of Sinai, the Promised Land of Canaan, by the Rivers of Babylon, in Rome, capital of the then known world, and on the rocky isle of Patmos. What a great variety of writers, of lands, of circumstances and situations, yet all speaking with one voice to produce a library of Divine origin, containing History, Poetry, Prophecy, Law and Wisdom, what a variety and yet what a harmony. There can be but one explanation, that is, that although the writers were many there was but one Author, the Ever Living God of Israel, who inspired every word of the Sacred Scriptures as given in their original languages, from the first “in” in Genesis, to the last “amen” in Revelation. So we shall look first of all at: The inspiration of the Scriptures
Unlike any other book associated with the great religions of the world, the Bible is the only one to claim inspiration for itself. Genesis, the first book in the Bible, contains the words’ “God said” nine times in its first chapter alone. Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament Scriptures contains the expression “Thus saith the Lord” some twenty-three times. As for the other Old Testament prophets, Isaiah on over forty occasions uses the expression “the Lord spoke”, an expression used some sixty times by Ezekiel, and on one hundred occasions by his contemporary Jeremiah. Our blessed Lord Himself said: “Heaven and earth will pass away but my words shall not pass away” Matthew 24.v.35
However we must in all sincerity, as seekers after truth, ask is there any other way in which we can demonstrate and substantiate the Inspiration of the Scripture, other than the claim it makes for itself. I personally believe that there is, for in these “last days” when knowledge is being increased in every field, God permitted a young Russian named Ivan Panin to make some wonderful discoveries around the turn of the last century. Panin, who had once been an unbeliever, noticed that every letter in the Greek and Hebrew alphabets signified a figure, and that therefore every word in Greek and Hebrew is the sum of some number. Not only this, but Panin also discovered that all the words contained in Holy Scripture from Genesis to Revelation are so arranged as to form a deliberate mathematical scheme or pattern. Panin found that certain patterns of prime numbers such as 11, 13, 17 and especially 7 appeared in groups or clusters. However in a small article such as this we have only space to give two examples of Panin’s work, one from Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament, and one from Matthew, the first book of the New Testament.
Let us now look at the first five verses in Genesis: the numerical value of the vocabulary to this passage is 6,188 or 17 x 7 x 13 x 2 x 2; a multiple of thirteen as well as of seven. Now the number of words in the passage is 52 or 4 thirteens which occurs in 39 forms or 3 thirteens. Moreover the numerical value of the vocabulary 6,188 or 476 thirteens is thus distributed: The five words with which each of the five verses begin have 1,950 or 150 thirteens, and the remaining twenty eight words have 4,238 or 326 thirteens and the remaining twenty-eight words have 4,238 or 326 thirteens. The five letters with which the verses begin have a numerical value of 26 or 2 thirteens with a vowel whilst the remaining twenty one words or with a vowel, whilst another forty two words or 6 sevens 3 sevens begin with a consonant. Some seven words end through the passage.
Now let us look at the first eleven verses of Matthew. Here we find the vocabulary has 49 words or 7 sevens. Twenty eight words in the passage, that is 4 sevens, begin with a vowel, whilst the remaining twenty-one , or 3 sevens, begin with a consonant. Some seven words end with a vowel, whilst another forty-two words or 6 sevens end with a consonant. The entire forty nine words have 266 letters or 38 sevens, and out of these 266 letters some 140 or 20 sevens are vowels, and 126 or 18 sevens are consonants. In addition of the forty nine words, fourteen or 2 sevens only occur once, whilst thirty five or 5 sevens occur more than once, and forty two words or 6 sevens are nouns whilst 7 are not. The remaining common nouns have exactly forty nine letters or 7 sevens, whilst there are fifty six male names in the passage of 8 sevens. Thus we see a pattern of sevens throughout the passage. Concerning this genealogy. Panin reckoned that Matthew would have had to work eight hours a day for seven months to construct such a numeric pattern deliberately. Without doubt Panin’s discoveries, which he submitted to the Nobel Research Dept., prove the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures.
