Tradition
Tradition....
If it is one thing the military does well, is carry on traditions. Some are relevant to history, some of unknown origins and many are completely ridiculous. Nose art has been a long standing tradition for the military. From mean looking aircraft like the P40, to comic characters and even the well known pin-up girls. Every service has some pretty long standing traditions.
Traditions are a way of passing along acts or beliefs through a culture and is proven to be effective. However in many cases, why they are done is lost somewhere. The Bible has some cases where oral tradition causes for a lot of research to find out where the church gets it traditions.
A long standing belief of the church is the reliability of the Bible. However, most do not know how to reference its reliability or if there even is evidence to support it. Well, here is a little piece to help you out.
Isaiah is considered by Christians to be the first of the Major Prophets of the Old Testament. The book has so many specific references to Jesus Christ's specific birth, life and death that it is often referred to as, "The 5th Gospel."
First, its an old book and the oldest copy we had was dated about 900 A.D. Then in 1948 when the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, an exact copy of the book was found that was dated 1000 years earlier. This book predates Jesus Christ by over 100 years. The reliability of the preservation of the text was amazing. As a matter of fact, a revised version was being researched and written at the time of the discovery and found that the text was preserved almost perfectly.
Secondly, the number of very specific prophecies that Isaiah uses to describe Jesus make for a mathematic miracle. With hundreds of Jesus prophecies in the Old Testament, one third of the book contains prophecies of Jesus. Some estimates say that the probabilities of Jesus' life matching the prophecies is about 1 X 10 to the 17th power. The odds stand against Him, but Jesus proves through history that His is the fulfillment of scripture.
All this to say, our traditions are reliable. Our scriptures are reliable. You can rest in the fact that Jesus Christ is who He says He is.
“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken” Isaiah 1:2
