The Holy Bible, Wholly True

                        by Winkie Pratney

   The Bible isn't like any other book that has been written. The
claims of the Bible are unlike any other book -- it's NOT a human
book! Unless you have a rock-solid commitment to the truth, it will
not change your life -- it will only be so many words in a sea of
words. God called His Word living. You can't mess with it, it's too
heavy!

   You know, many of the Eastern thought forms use Scripture. That's
because the book is so powerful -- you can't ignore it. If you don't
use it, you can't capture people's hearts. God has built life into His
Word, and all of the strong cults rip it off -- steal bites out of the
Bible and use it. They use the truth of it to try to justify the lies
that they are talking about. Just the fact that pieces taken out of
context are powerful enough to draw men's hearts should tell you what
the WHOLE Word, used under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can do!

                           Credentials
                           -----------

   So what are this book's credentials? I could say to you, "I have
just written a book, and it is the Word of God. It's a great book,
took me a year to write it." And you would have every right to say,
"PROVE IT!" There are 30 or 40 books in the various world religions,
each one claiming to be a superior revelation. Jesus said, "Heaven and
earth will pass away, but My words shall not pass away"  (Matt.24:35).
How important do you think the earth is? Well, Jesus says, "Heaven and
earth will pass away..."

   The Bible does not attempt to defend its inspiration. You will not
find any verse that says, "This book is really true, so you better
believe it!!" But here is an interesting thing. Genesis opens with the
words, "God said," 9 times in the first chapter. The statement, "Thus
says the Lord" appears 23 times in the last Old Testament book --
Malachi. So you have "God says" from Genesis to Malachi. "The Lord
spoke" appears 560 times in the first five books of the Bible alone.
Isaiah claims at least 40 times, his message came directly from the
Lord; Ezekiel, 60 times, and Jeremiah, 100 TIMES! And at least 3800
times in the Old Testament, "The Lord spoke" appears. And the Lord
Jesus quoted from at least 24 different Old Testament books -- that's
right, He just quoted.

   These are facts that will be valuable for a person with an open
heart -- not that you have to throw your head away in order to believe
these facts; but, if you do not want to believe, nothing will convince
you. Voltaire, 250 years ago, held a copy of the Bible in his hand and
said, "In 100 years this book will be forgotten, eliminated." What is
hilarious is that 100 years later, to the day, his house was made the
headquarters of the Geneva Bible Society, and they were distributing
Bibles out of his house! God has an incredible sense of humor!

   Say you were going to write a book, and this was how you had to
write it: take 40 different writers for a start, totally different
writers -- some highly educated, even doctors. Then get some farmers.
Go and dig a guy out of a ranch and say, "I would like you to help me
write a book." Then you find some fishermen -- you go down to the
wharf -- a couple of guys from San Francisco, and say, "Hey! listen,
help us write a book." And they say, "Sure, fine...we will help you."
And then you get them to write on the following things: religious
themes, poetry, ethics, science, philosophy, the creation of the
universe and where it's going (throw in a few things about where they
think it will all end.) You collect all that, and then ... oh, by the
way, you have to separate these people so they can't communicate by
phone or telegram...only possibly word of mouth, passed down over the
years. Ah yes, years...you collect all this stuff over about one and a
half thousand years, and compile the whole thing in one book. What
would you have? I suggest you take a biology textbook from 60 years
ago, and compare it with one today. And that is just 60 YEARS! I know
what you would have, you would have the most motley junk you have ever
seen in your whole life -- with people totally contradicting each
other! But that is not what you have when you read your Bible. The
more you read this book, the more incredible the unity of it. Because
the more you get into it, the more incredibly detailed it is, and you
find there are not 40 people who wrote it, but one person.