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Every profession has its textbook and the Christian profession is no exception. That textbook is the Bible.

The various branches of Christendom differ radically in many respects, but all of them have to appeal ultimately

to the Bible. They must come to terms with it eventually and for one very good reason. They profess to believe,

practise and make known the teaching of Christ. The only place where they can discover exactly Who Christ is

and what He taught is in the Bible.

Religion has produced many outstanding leaders and teachers and nearly all of them have left some writing

on record which sums up their beliefs and achievements, for example, Mahommed, who wrote the Koran, which

is the Bible of the Mahommedans. But the greatest Teacher that has ever walked this earth left not one word of

writing behind Him! This is remarkable indeed. The only time we read of Christ writing is when a sinful

woman was brought to Him and He wrote on the ground with His finger (John 8:6,8).

Consequently, without the Bible, the Book that claims to reveal Christ, we should know practically nothing

of Him. History could tell us such a Person once existed, for our calendar is marked A.D. - Anno Domini - in

the year of the Lord. But Who is He? And what did He teach? These questions would remain for ever

unanswered apart from the Scriptures. So to the Scriptures we must go if we want to embark on the greatest of

all quests, that of getting to know God, His character and His ways.

At the outset questions are sure to be asked. How can we know the Bible is trustworthy? Is it a worthy

revelation of God? Can we accept it as being truth?

First of all let us notice the great claim the Bible makes for itself. 2 Timothy 3:16 states `All Scripture is

given by inspiration of God' (literally God-breathed) and one of its titles is The Word of God. Thus, although

coming through human channels, it makes the stupendous claim of coming from God Himself and being a

revelation of His mind and His purposes. Some may feel that this is impossible and asking too much to accept

and believe. But before turning away, we would ask such to consider certain facts. These facts we will

endeavour to bring before the reader straight away.

Numerics - Underneath the Hebrew and Chaldee of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New

Testament there is hidden an extraordinary disposition of numbers which cannot be explained away on human

grounds. In order to understand this we must remember that none of these languages had symbols for numbers

such as we have (1,2,3,4, etc.). Instead of this they made use of the letters of their alphabet so that a=1, b=2 etc.

One can easily see then that a word could be looked at in two ways, either as a word or as a series of numbers

which could be added up to a total. For instance, the Greek for `word' is `logos'. If looked at from a numerical

standpoint its value would be l=30, o=70, g=3, o=70, s=200: total 373. The numerical value of `logos' is

therefore 373.

If we were to look at the Greek text of the first eleven verses of the New Testament (Matt. 1:1-11), we

should find an elaborate scheme of sevens underlying the words, which could not have been put there by

chance, or even arranged by any human cleverness on Matthew's part. These verses contain 49 words (7x7).

Of these 49 words, 28 (4x7) begin with a vowel, and 21 (3x7) begin with a consonant. These 49 words have

266 letters (7x2x19); this number is itself 38 sevens, and the sum of its factors is 28 (4x7). Of these 266 letters,

140 (20x7) are vowels, and 126 (18x7) are consonants. Of these 49 words 35 (5x7) occur more than once in the

passage and 14 (2x7) occur only once. Seven occur in more than one form and 42 (6x7) occur only in one form.

The 49 words are divided thus: 42 (6x7) are nouns (the name of something) and seven are not nouns. Of these

nouns, 35 (5x7) are names of people and seven are ordinary nouns. Of these names, 28 (4x7) are male ancestors

of Christ and seven are not. Thus, an elaborate system of sevens occurs in these few short verses of the Bible.

If Matthew was not writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, what a headache he must have had trying to

arrange all these sevens!

There is also a system of elevens in the Greek and Hebrew texts of the Scriptures and so wonderful is this

that the chance of these figures occurring by accident rather than design (that is by the inspiration of God) is 1 in

a number followed by 30 noughts, a billion million taken a million times! No one in his senses therefore could