This amazing starting point provides a harbinger of what is to come in the biblical record. It contains a record of God s actions within His creation, especially His interaction with man. The Bible clearly delineates the decisive issues in the human struggle as a course of events in which God is everywhere active either in mercy or in judgment. This has been true from the time of the early Hebrews. In a world where others interpreted all that happens as cyclical process, the Hebrews with their awareness of God s active revelation in external human affairs instituted the very idea of history.
History is under attack from many quarters for many reasons.
Some . . . consider the past without value because they assume either that anything historical is insignificant or that anything temporal is relative, or that the present has evolutionary superiority, or that only the supertemporal and eternal has divine import or, more radically, that no God whatever exists to reveal himself in history. If such views were given credence, Christianity would no longer depend on the events on which it is based. Instead, it would be viewed as the product of the mythology that some claim for it. The record of God s work among us would be reduced to nothing more than the result of someone s vivid imagination. Of course a Christian who is mentally and spiritually vigorous will continue to affirm the authenticity of the history contained in the Bible.