THE SHATTER HEARD ROUND THE WORLD

It's 1947 and a young Bedouin shepherd, one we might call a good shepherd, left his flock of sheep and goats to search for a stray. He's in the region of the Dead Sea where David was once on the run from King Saul and Jesus was tempted "in the desert."

While on the hunt for the one stray, he comes across the crumbling limestone cliffs on the northwestern rim of the Dead Sea and there amid the cliffs, he finds a cave. As most youths, the cave intrigues him, almost as if its singing its siren song for his ears only. He picks up a stone and throws it into the cave. That's when it happened, the shatter heard round the world.

Expecting to hear nothing at the end of the flight of the stone into the dark cave, the sound of something breaking startles him. He goes into the cave and finds a mysterious collection of clay jars, most of them empty, but when he examines a few of them, he notes that they're intact, lids still in place.

When he opens the lids, what he's about to discover is the greatest archeological find of the 20th century. He has discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. But to him, at the time, he's thinking that he's only found some old scrolls, some wrapped in linen and blackened with age.

He and a few friends take the scrolls to an antiques dealer named Kando in Bethlehem who sends the shepherd and his friends back to search for more. They return with seven more. The shepherd sells four of them to Kando and three to another antiques dealer.

Eventually Professor Sukenik of Hebrew University in Jerusalem hears about the scrolls and finds the antiques dealer who bought the three. The professor says that when he started to unwrap them, and when he unrolled them and saw the beautiful Hebrew lettering, his hands began to shake as he realized that he was seeing what no one had seen for more than 2,000 years.

Since that shatter heard round the world, we have found 900 more manuscripts and we now know much more about them.

We know that the Scrolls contain portions of every Old Testament book except Esther. We know that the texts of those Old Testament books line up with 99% accuracy with our Old Testament. What makes this remarkable is that, prior to that time, our Old Testament was based on the Hebrew Masoretic text from the 10th and 11th centuries AD.

But we also know something else, something very, very important.

I mentioned that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain portions of every Old Testament book except Esther, but I didn't mention that the Dead Sea Scrolls do contain one complete book of the Old Testament. That complete book is in 54 columns and contains all 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah and is one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, taking us back a thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament we had before the discovery of the Scrolls.

 We now have 19 copies of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls and five commmetaries from the Dead Sea Scrolls on Isaiah. (Isaiah must have been the favorite book of the Qumran Community scholars believe was responsible for the the manuscripts.)

 And that's important because within those 66 chapters of Isaiah is Isaiah 53, the most complete and detailed prediction of the penal substitution and resurrection of the Messiah in the Old Testament. Of the 166 words in the Hebrew of Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of those letters are only a matter of spelling which doesn't affect the sense of the chapter. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjunctions, like our word, "and." So what we have is that after a thousand years of transmission of the text of Isaiah 53, there are only three letters in question and that one word does not significantly change the meaning of Isaiah 53! (Norman Geisler)

Today, the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Jerusalem in a special place called The Shrine of the Book. The temperature is expertly controlled as is the lighting. Two thirds of The Shrine of the Book is underground. Isaiah is so protected that no bomb yet invented can destroy it nor can it destroy the entire collection of the Scrolls.

Question: Did God superintend the wandering of that stray to the area of that cave?
Question: Did God have that good shepherd, concerned with only one stray, in place over that flock?
Question: Did God direct the trajectory of that stone in 1947?
Question: Does God protect the transmission of His Word?


What do you think?
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, and the author of Truthspeak, available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing sue.bove@gmail.com and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99"There is

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/helps_arthur.html#mpzMv1GyXYdlOVbq.99