Does life across the world today raise many questions in your mind that you would like answered with certainty? Questions like the ones above and man’s unwillingness to treat the environment responsibly and his inhumanity to other people. We have invited you to join us to investigate how to find reliable answers to these and some of your questions. That is, if you give us any questions to answer.
If at any time you want to ask a question anonymously, just type it in this box and press send. We will then give our answer within a day or two at the end of this article.
If you want a personal answer, then please include your e-mail, phone number, or address as you choose for our answer. Again, we will then give you our answer within a day or two.
So, how do we recommend we answer the questions at the head of this article. Many of our readers will know! It is like this.
Why is the Earth here?
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1
How the earth came into being? It is His creative work. Not a mystery, a matter of chance, or out of nothing through a ‘Big Bang’. It is as the Bible tells us many, many times.
28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. Isaiah 40
This immediately leads to more questions that we will answer from the Bible. But some of our readers will possibly say something like, “Wait a minute. Many experts, scientists notably, tell us the Bible is not a reliable authority, especially for scientific questions like the origin of the earth. You might then ask, “Why should we believe the Bible””. Well, that is a very reasonable question. We will show you a couple of the many answers to it.
Why should we believe the Bible?
We need to know the Bible is true because the all wise, all powerful Creator and Sustainer of all life has caused the Bible to be written for our guidance and benefit.
11 Thus saith the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker, Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me. 12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded. Isaiah 45
God even invites us, through the apostle John, to test the messengers who bring His words to us to make sure they are His genuine messengers.
1 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. 1 John 4
The way God proves the Bible is His word is by the prophecies He has revealed and that have been reliably fulfilled. Let us give you an example. It concerns the birth of Jesus but we won’t go into detail about the context here as it is not our subject.
Just after Jesus Christ had been born, although those involved did not know of his birth at the time, the High Priest was called by Herod to answer a question.
4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. 5 And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, 6 And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Matthew 2
If you turn to the Old Testament, that is what the prophet Micah, who historians tell us lived at least 700 years before Christ, foretold us in the Old Testament.
2 But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Micah 5
So, the key question is, were these and many other prophecies about Jesus Christ in the Old Testament certainly written well before his birth?
An amazing sequence of events that proves this is true began in 1947 when a young Arab shepherd was collecting his flock and saw one of his goats up on the rocks.
He did not want to climb up the rocks to try and retrieve the goat, so he picked up some stones and started to throw them ahead of the goat to try to direct him down. One of these stones went into a cave ahead of the goat, and the shepherd heard a crash from inside that sounded like something breaking.
This puzzled him and he decided to clamber up the rocks to see what was inside the cave.
There he found some large clay pots, like the ones in the picture below. His stone had broken one of the pots, inside which were some parchment scrolls, again, a bit like the one inset on the left. The account of what happened next is a long and detailed one.
Let a few facts from the Wikipedia online encyclopedia summarise the significance of these scrolls.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish religious manuscripts that were found in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert.”
We learn 981 texts (scrolls) were discovered in 11 caves, but not all of them are of the Bible.
“There are 225 Biblical texts of the Hebrew Bible included in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is around 22% of the total”. The youngest of the Hebrew Bible manuscripts is dated at 150 BCE.
“Scholarly consensus dates these scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE. The texts have great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the second-oldest known surviving manuscripts of works later included in the Hebrew Bible.” (Old Testament). “The Dead Sea Scrolls contain parts of all, but one, of the books of the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible.” The book of Esther is the only one not represented.
You may be surprised to know that this is not the only external proof the Old Testament existed before Jesus was born.
How is your history? Have you heard of the Alexandria library in Egypt? We go again to Wikipedia, but all the well known encyclopaedias will tell you the same for both these subjects.
We can read in Wikipedia … … “The Great Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was one of the largest and significant in the ancient world. … … It may have been proposed by Demetrius of Phalerum, an exiled Athenian statesman living in Alexandria, to Ptolemy I Soter, who may have established plans for the Library, but the Library itself was probably not built until the reign of his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The Library quickly acquired many papyrus scrolls, due largely to the Ptolemaic kings’ aggressive and well-funded policies for procuring texts. It is unknown precisely how many such scrolls were housed at any given time, but estimates range from 40,000 to 400,000 at its height.”
The reason we are interested in this Egyptian library is because the emperors there wanted to create a library of all the world’s books of knowledge and learning in Greek, including copies of the Hebrew scriptures, called the Tanakh, known to us as the Old Testament. So let us return to Wikipedia again, this time to the article on a book called the … …
Septuagint.
“The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint … … from the Latin: septuaginta, lit. ’seventy’; often abbreviated 70; in Roman numerals, LXX, is the earliest extant Koine Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. … … ‘The Translation of the Seventy’ derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas that the Hebrew Torah was translated into Greek at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) by 70 Jewish scholars or, according to later tradition, 72: six scholars from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” “Modern scholarship holds that the Septuagint was written from the 3rd through the 1st centuries BCE. … … The translation process of the Septuagint and from the Septuagint into other versions can be divided into several stages: the Greek text was produced within the social environment of Hellenistic Judaism, and completed by 132 BCE. … … “
Thus the Septuagint version’s importance is also because it was completed well before the birth of Jesus Christ and many prophecies in the Old Testament were fulfilled in New Testament and later times.
Now you will see why we wanted you to know, if you don’t already, about the Dead Sea scrolls and the Septuagint version of the Bible. Many scholars and scientists, Christian and non-Christian are agreed that there is overwhelming evidence that the youngest books of the Old Testament were written at least 150 years before Jesus was born, and that there are many manuscripts of earlier books that are older than that.
This means that, certainly, there is a God Who is in control of this world because no man or woman could have known about the birth and life of Jesus before it happened except by reading God’s Word in the Old Testament. Notably, there are many other prophecies about people, nations, and events, that happened after The Old Testament was completed. Therefore, logic tells us all the words that God instructed the Hebrew prophets to write about Himself and His purpose are absolute truth. We go to Isaiah 45 again
5 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: 6 That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. 7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. … … 18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. 19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob*, Seek ye me in vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that are right. Isaiah 45 *One of the forefathers of Israel
What is more, as God created the universe and controlled the writing of His words, we can be sure that He has preserved its truth through the centuries. Historians give us fascinating details of efforts of the enemies of Bible truth to destroy God’s words and the amazing measures that were taken to protect it by the Jews who wrote and copied the manuscripts as they wore out because God says,
2 Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. Deuteronomy 4
So having confidence in the truth of the Bible makes it easy to answer the questions we posed at the beginning, and many, many more.
Why are we here?
11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. Revelation 4
But, how can we give God pleasure?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. Luke 10
This, of course, means doing what he asks us to do!
1 Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. 2 Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, and that seek him with the whole heart. 3 They also do no iniquity: they walk in his ways. Psalm 119
Why is there so much injustice?
You may be surprised to be told that injustice exists because God wants men and women to love Him! Let’s go back to the beginning of Genesis and God’s last act of creation.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 1
This means that He needed thinking beings that able to understand Him. The word ‘image’ in the original Hebrew צֶלֶם means ‘similar’, not identical to God and the similarities He gave men and women included a mind that could think, reason, and have emotions in the same way as God, and be able to communicate with Him.
Above all He wanted the more perceptive of human beings to grow to love Him and obey him as best they can. God told his people of Israel through Moses,
19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20 That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them. Deuteronomy 30
So love involves a matter of choice. to choose to love, obey and be blessed with life, or to choose not to love and disobey, be cursed, and lose your life. And disobedience will be loving self and not God. That is why Paul warned all followers of Jesus so we come to a closely related question why is there so much killing … …
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5
So we come to a similar question … …
Why is there so much killing?
1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4 … …, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. James 4
Sadly so many people today do not want to be responsible to God.
2 Give unto the LORD the glory due unto his name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. … 11 The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace. Psalm 29
Too many people want live their life their own way. They want things that aren’t theirs and they want power over others like Putin today in Ukraine, and many leaders throughout history who invade other nations lands and take them. But these are not profitable or encouraging subjects for us to discuss. Surely we want to know … …
Will peace ever come to the Earth?
Fortunately, we have seen that there is a God who created the earth for a wonderful and beneficial reason. As He tells us through the prophet Habakkuk … …
2:14 For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.
It is probably difficult to imagine the Earth without any of the desecration that man has spread far and wide, with the climate perfectly balanced, and the animal Kingdom at peace,
11 The LORD will give strength unto his people; the LORD will bless his people with peace. Psalm 29
3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. Isaiah 51
1 The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. 2 It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God. Isaiah 35
It is hard to imagine having a new eternal body free from sin and death,
42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. . 1 Corinthians 15
Hard to visualise all the world’s people’s minds and bodies free from pain and suffering physical and mental, reflecting only matters relating to God’s glory and purpose.
4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21
The animal Kingdom at peace together as it was in the Garden of Eden.
6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. 7 And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. Isaiah 11
There is so much more to know about God’s coming Kingdom fat, that is only a start to the good things promised for when Jesus will reign over all the earth, but that will have to be for another time. We hope that the wonders we’ve already shown you are such amazing truths, totally beyond any experience we have ever had are to come for those who trust in God and faithfully follow His son with the best of our ability – a glorious Earth, the animal Kingdom at peace, and all the people living in harmony with a new eternal body, free from sickness, sin, sorrow, and sadness, with their mind filled with wisdom, totally in tune to the wishes of their Heavenly Father. This is the priceless nature of the reward God offers, compared to the worthlessness of what the world can offer.
44 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field. Matthew 13