I don’t know if you’ve ever been to London, but if you go, don’t miss The British Museum. It will be an unexpected source of spiritual encouragement for you.
Patti attended a medical conference in Europe the last couple of weeks and I tagged along for fun. Besides maintaining her medical credentials, touring western Europe was a great way for us to celebrate forty years of marriage, as well as her upcoming retirement next year. Her sixteen hours of certification coursework left us plenty of time to do some sightseeing.
Europe has many sights to see, of course, but the highlight for me was a bookstore – the bookstore at The British Museum.
It’s located in a massive, brand spanking new indoor central courtyard. All the bookshelves are wide open and clearly visible to the hundreds of curious people passing by on their way to view such ancient relics as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the Moabite Stone, a Lachish Ostracon, the Cyrus Cylinder, and Codex Sinaiticus, all of which have direct relevance to events described in the Bible.
And there, smack dab in the middle of the courtyard, were two books that stood out like blinking neon lights: Evidence for the Bible1 and Through the British Museum with the Bible.2
I was shocked. I don’t normally visit museums expecting them to be apologists for my faith. But there I was, in one of the world’s most famous museums, perusing literature that clearly demonstrates the historical reliability of the Biblical record, with specific archaeological examples just a few steps away. For someone who has studied the Bible his entire life, I was deeply moved.
I was reminded once again that the stories we read in the Bible are accurate and reliable and describe real-time events. The Bible tells us that God is involved in concrete human history as we, his people, believe and obey Him, or disbelieve and disobey Him. The hyper biblical criticism of past centuries has been belied by the ongoing archaeological discoveries we see almost every week that prove it was based more on ignorance and a materialistic view of the universe than anything else.
It’s time for Western civilization to admit its mistake in turning away from the Word of God and return to its roots. Only then will it have a sure foundation for the future.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigagted everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.3
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
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- Evidence for the Bible, Clive Anderson and Brian Edwards.
- Through the British Museum with the Bible Third edition, Brian H Edwards. Another book that relates the Bible and the British Museum is The Bible in the British Museum: Interpreting the Evidence, T. C. Mitchell. The author is a former Keeper of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum.
- Luke 1:1-4, New International Version
