Can The Bible Be Trusted?

Can The Bible Be Trusted?

Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.

2 Peter 1:20-21

I HAD NEVER BEFORE TOUCHED A BIBLE. I opened it with no thought that it might be true. It was foreign to me, something to be made fun of, and most of all, a fable. Maybe the Bible claimed to be the Word of God, but the members of Milli Vanilli claimed to be great singers. And people in Chicago claim every year that the Cubs are going to win the World Series. I knew how the story of Jesus would start: “Once upon a time there lived a man named Jesus.” Like any other tall tale, it would conveniently leave out the when and the where so no one could check the facts.

I turned to Luke, chapter three, verses one and two. “It was now the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea; Herod Antipas was ruler over Galilee; his brother Philip was ruler over Iturea and Traconitis; Lysanias was ruler over Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. At this time . . .”

What?

As I continued to read, I realized the Bible is full of whens and wheres. Turns out, Christianity is based on purported historical events.

The Bible was begging me to investigate. And I was into that kind of thing. I had always been into that kind of thing. That’s why I was about to go to law school. So . . . I decided to investigate.

I thought I might be the first person to ever do so. I could be the downfall of Christianity—or at least make fun of Christians for believing in something I could prove was false.

Evidence?

The first thing I wondered was whether anyone outside the Bible from back around the time of Jesus wrote about Jesus. I thought if Jesus was going around doing miracles and dying and resurrecting, then someone other than just the Bible writers would have written about him. I assumed Jesus was a myth made up by some guys with an agenda, so the only mention of him would be in the Bible.

Wrong.

Turns out there are at least thirty-nine authors of ancient documents outside the Bible telling about Jesus. These authors confirm about one hundred different facts regarding Jesus’ life, teachings, crucifixion, and even resurrection. So even if I could get rid of the Bible, I couldn’t get rid of Jesus.

But turns out I couldn’t get rid of the Bible. I figured it was pure fiction or full of legends that grew over time as they were handed down through the ages, kind of like the telephone game I played growing up. It didn’t take me long to realize my assumption was fatally flawed.

The issue is that the Bible writers wrote way too early, and there are way too many ancient manuscript copies, for legends to have grown over time. And not only were the Gospels written soon after the events happened, we also have a lot of copies of those manuscripts. That means we can compare them to each other and make sure they all say the same thing and that there was no telephone game happening. When I looked at the evidence, I just couldn’t doubt that what we have today is what was originally written way back then.

That was confirmed when I read quote after quote by people who had done the research and come to the same conclusion. Like John Warwick Montgomery, distinguished professor of law, vice president for academic affairs, and chairman of the history department at Wilfred Laurier University in Canada, who wrote, “To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient period are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament.” In other words, if you doubt that what we have is the original New Testament, you also have to throw out all of written history from the beginning of time to the time of Christ. Because the New Testament has far more evidence to prove it’s accurate than any other document up to that time.

Now I was confused. It was becoming hard for me to argue with the fact that the Bible was true. And I realized the Bible reads like it is true. When you read Greek mythology or American tall tales, they sound like made-up stories, featuring heroes with exaggerated power and goodness. But as I read the Bible, I noticed that all the main characters are presented with embarrassing human frailties. If people were just making up stories, wouldn’t they make the heroes sound better?

I knew the Bible was supposed to be full of contradictions, so I investigated those. It turns out the Bible doesn’t have contradictions. It has differences, different people giving different reports about the same events. Those differences sound, well, different. But they aren’t contradictions.

The confirmations of Scripture’s truthfulness aren’t just inside the Bible. If you look outside the Bible, you find that there have been over 25,000 archaeological discoveries that validate Scripture. Archaeological expert Nelson Glueck writes, “It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a Biblical reference.”

And the most convincing evidence of all was for the resurrection of Jesus. It has to be the most scrutinized event in history. More people have tried to disprove it than anything else, but it turns out Jesus really did rise from the dead. You can prove it.^a

Inspired

The Bible says about itself, “All Scripture is inspired by God.”^b

At one point I would have laughed at the idea that the Bible contained the very words of God. Today, there’s probably nothing I’m more convinced of. And not just because of the evidence, but because I’ve been reading and trying to live according to the Bible now for about a quarter of a century, and it has turned my life upside down.

It’s natural to have doubts, but you can trust the Bible.

It’s natural to feel intimidated, but you can have confidence when you talk about the Bible.

And you can be transformed by reading the Bible, because it is supernatural. It contains the very words of God.

Now What?

• Read 2 Timothy 3:14-17.
• If reading the Bible consistently is one of the keys for you to be transformed into the person you’re supposed to be, you should have a plan for reading the Bible. So what’s your plan? Do you have a regular time and place where you read the Bible? Do you have a plan for what you’re going to read? If not, why not commit to creating a plan?
• Your posture toward the Bible and knowledge of the Bible are keys to your spiritual growth. Ask God to give you a love for his Word and a desire to know it more and more.