God knows what He’s doing. I know that is most likely obvious to you, but let me give you a personal glimpse of how God revealed that to me more than 40 years ago.
I was a scoffer. I did not believe in God and wanted the world to know it. Since I had a daily radio talk show in a major market, I had a way of letting a part of the world know what I thought about people who believed in God. I thought they were stupid. God was about to show me how smart His people can be.
I saw an advertisement in a local newspaper about Dr. Henry Morris coming to town to speak about searching for Noah’s Ark. I invited Dr. Morris on my show for a two-hour interview. My plan was to blow Dr. Morris’ theory out of the water. God’s Plan was to get my attention. He did. Dr. Morris was a brilliant scientist and showed me there were many things about science I did not know.
The next step in God’s Plan was for me to see a newspaper ad for a Christian Drive-In Ministry. I thought it would be fun to find out how a Christian was using a drive-in theatre to preach the Gospel. I invited Evangelist Terry Lytle to be on my program and found him to be a kind and engaging person who knew what it meant to life by faith in God. We continued to talk after the show and I often stopped by his office to ask him questions. That’s where I met Dr. Ed Hindson. Ed worked with Terry and helped answer my many questions about God and the Bible. Dr. Hindson’s book about the Philistines and the Old Testament had been published just a few months before we met, so he introduced me to Biblical Archaeology. He showed me how archaeologists had uncovered so many ancient places and people that were witnesses to the truthfulness of the Bible.
Archaeology – The Study of Ancient Things
Archaeology is the systematic study of past human life and culture through the process of uncovering and examining material evidence found in graves, tombs, buildings, pottery, and tools. The built-in dictionary on my computer defines archaeology this way: “the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.” Biblical archaeology is the study of human history of the biblical lands “through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains.”
The writing of the Bible covers more than 1,500 years, but the history contained in the Bible goes back to the beginning of time. What began with one man and one woman in a large garden grew into many millions of people living around the world. Hundreds of generations lived and died. That process of life and death left hundreds of millions of artifacts and bones that archaeologists have been uncovering.
Many people call Cyriacus of Ancona, from the 15th century AD, the “father” of archaeology, and Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie the “father” of modern archaeology. The “father” of Biblical archaeology is thought to be William Albright. Other well-known Biblical archaeologists from the 19th and 20th centuries AD include Sir William Ramsay, Sir Fredrick Kenyon and his daughter Dame Kathleen Kenyon, G. Ernest Wright, Frederick Jones Bliss, Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, Frank Moore Cross, M.A. Meyer, Nelson Glueck, and Yigael Yadin.
Each of these archaeologists discovered hard evidence that supports the historical accuracy of the Bible. In the next part of our study, we will look at several of the most important of those discoveries and what they mean to the trustworthiness of the Bible.
In Christ’s Love and Grace,
Mark McGee
Faith Defense
Building Confidence Through Evidence
“Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”
Faith & Self Defense 