Monday, September 10, 2012

Book review: Has God Spoken? Proof of the Bible’s Divine Inspiration by Hank Hanegraaff



Hank has indeed written a commendable volume called “Has God spoken?". In this book, Hank uses manuscript evidence, archeology, predictive prophecy, and much more to memorably demonstrate that the Bible is divine rather than merely human in origin.

Hank indeed is a man of acronyms! There are acronyms within the acronyms; so much so that I will cherry-pick those I find useful.

To begin with, the Bible is not a single book, but a collection of 66 books (39 in OT, 27 in NT; note: "3*9" = 27), written by 40 different authors of various backgrounds ranging from kings, prophets, cupbearer, fisherman, etc over a span of 1500 years, in 3 different continents in 3 languages. With such diversity, we would expect the Bible to be a disjointed, chaotic account of stories packaged together in a book. Yet, this is not what we find despite most of the authors have not met each other due to the span of 1500 years. What is find is a coherent, cohesive message of a loving God in a rescue mission to redeemed fallen humanity through the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. In fact, Jesus is the central theme of the Bible.

In this book, Hank gave various examples of manuscripts, as well as various archeological findings as part of the external evidences supporting the reliability of the Scripture.

Of course, in that book, Hank expounded heavily on the preterist view of eschatology that he holds on to. I don't share his view on this. However, just because I do not agree to his preterism view, does not mean that this book is not useful to me. Quite the contrary! In fact, I find a wealth of knowledge for future references. From this book, I learned of the Comma Johanneum -  an insertion in 1 John 5:7-8. This was first inserted in the margins of several Latin manuscripts although none of the early church fathers used it for their defense on Trinitarianism against the Sabellians and Arians. It was then inserted into the Textus Receptus compiled by Erasmus of Rotterdam under intense pressure so as not to be seen to be opposing to the Trinitarianism doctrine (although Erasmus initially did not want to).
 
This book has also helped opened my mind to many other archeological evidences besides the Dead Sea Scrolls - something which I had not known before. As mentioned, there are so many acronyms in this book, some of which I do find to be rather cumbersome and redundant. However, my most favorited acronym in this book is the ABCDEFG of OT prophetic fulfillment in Jesus Christ:

A: Ancestry
B: Birthplace
C: Crucifixion
D: Date
E: Extraordinary miracles
F: Fulfill
G: Gentiles

(see also: http://christianity.about.com/od/biblefactsandlists/a/Prophecies-Jesus.htm for a list)

In short, this is a good readable book - a reference material in fact. Highly recommended.

******************
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this e-book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”








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