Description
THIS IS A DIGITAL (PDF) FILE – paperback edition available here
Contents
Chapter One: Skeptics Are Welcome Here … page 1
Chapter Two: Evidence of God in Prophecy … page 5
Chapter Three: The Prophecy Fulfilled, 1967 … page 9
Chapter Four: What Else Can Explain It? … page 17
Chapter Five: Now That I Know, So What? … page 23
Excerpt – Chapter One: Skeptics Are Welcome Here
If you are skeptical about the reality of the Living God of the Bible, but open to the possibility that his existence can be proven with evidence that you can verify for yourself, then I welcome you to this book. It has been written to present just such evidence to you. And, before we begin, I want to add that my welcome and respect for the skeptic in you is genuine, since I am by nature a skeptical person myself, not only in secular matters, but in spiritual matters as well.
Skepticism about God is good, especially the kind of skepticism that causes one to question the stereotyped and all-too-often distorted concepts of God one encounters in popular culture, media, and even in church or synagogue. It is also biblical. The Bible encourages us to be skeptics by stimulating us to think for ourselves, and it challenges us to ask deep questions about the meaning of things. Why else would it say “Come, let us reason together” if it did not intend to engage us in a serious discussion about the mysteries of life, death, and, as it claims, rebirth to a new life lived in fellowship with the Living God?
Since you are coming to this book as a skeptic who does not believe in the existence of God at all, or who, at most, is reserving judgment because you have not yet heard convincing evidence that would cause you to believe in the existence of an animate, sentient, transcendent God, it seems appropriate to begin by asking the most basic question a skeptic can ask, “Does God exist?” Or, restating the question as one that can be discussed knowledgeably and answered by me, “Is there any verifiable evidence that the God of the Bible exists?”
The short answer is “Yes, there is, in the Bible itself,” but only in one place. For the most part, the Bible is a book of faith that does not try to prove God’s existence. It assumes that the reader already senses God and wants to know more, and then it goes on to explain everything a person needs to know about having a relationship with God. However, since you are a skeptic, that approach will not work for you. Instead, you need no-faith-required evidence that God is real, so here goes.
As far as I can determine (and, believe me, I have looked long and hard for more examples), there is only one place in the Bible where a proof text giving modern and verifiable evidence that God really does exist can be found, so we will focus on that one example. It is recorded in the Book of Daniel, located in the Writings section of the Jewish Tanakh and in the Old Testament Prophets section of Christian Bibles, such as the King James and Douay-Rheims versions. The proof-of-God part comes in the form of a chrono-specific predictive prophecy recorded in the eighth chapter of Daniel, in verses 1-14. It is the fulfillment of that prophecy in 1967 a.d., more than two millennia after it was given, that provides verifiable evidence that the God of the Bible exists.
Chrono-specific predictive prophecies, such as those found in Daniel, are intended to testify to the Bible’s authority as the voice of God. Such predictive prophecies, each with its timely and exact fulfillment, offer powerful circumstantial evidence that proves the existence of God in space-time. The same kind of proof based on circumstantial evidence is used in astronomy for Black Holes, which, like God, cannot be seen directly, but their existence can be proven beyond doubt by the boundary events they cause, which can be observed and verified.
So it is with proof of God. In the next three chapters, the proof-of-God prophecy found in Daniel 8, which contains circumstantial but verifiable evidence equal in validity to the circumstantial and verifiable evidence used to prove the existence of Black Holes, will be expounded and interpreted in detail. Its precise fulfillment will be explained using Carbon14 dated manuscripts and academically verified documents of history that can be seen, examined, and verified by you in the here and now, using normal analytical skills. The resulting no-faith-required argument for the existence of the Living God of the Bible is one that should be convincing to any open-minded skeptic who examines the evidence honestly, without preconceptions and/or biases. As you read on, I hope that you will make a good-faith effort to do so.
—Dan Bruce, Author
