WHY BELIEVE THE BIBLE?

Transcription

1 WHY BELIEVE THE BIBLE? 2 Timothy 3:14-17 In April of 1983, the German newspaper Stern announced the discovery of 60 small notebooks, purported to be the personal diary of Adolf Hitler, covering his rise to power in the 1930s and later years as Nazi leader and architect of the Holocaust. Journalist Gerd Heidemann was paid a small fortune for the diary, which he claimed had been recovered from an airplane crash shortly after the end of World War II. The announcement made headlines around the world, but once excerpts from the diaries were released, the story began to fall apart. It turns out, the Hitler Diaries were fakes, and bad fakes at that the handwriting didn t match, they had been created using modern materials and much of the content had been plagiarized. Nobody knows what happened to the millions of Deutsche Marks paid for the documents, but both Heidemann and his accomplice, forger Konrad Kujau went to jail. Fakes and frauds and forgeries have been around since ancient times. The Bible is an ancient Book. So why should we trust it? Skeptics argue: "You say that Jesus was God's Son sent to redeem us. But most everything we know about Jesus comes from the Bible. Is it really God's Word? Is it even a reliable historical document? Why should we believe the Bible and not the Qur'an or the Hindu Vedas or the writings of Confucius?" We can't answer with: "I believe the Bible because that's the way I was raised." Maybe you're a convinced follower of Jesus, but from time to time you've had your doubts about the Bible. So this is for saints, seekers, and skeptics. The Apostle Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:14-17) This passage claims that God Himself is the author of the Bible, and that by reading it, we can be made "wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." It states that God breathed out his word, using human authors who were guided by the Holy Spirit. They wrote on controversial subjects with total harmony from beginning to end - one unfolding story from Genesis to Revelation: deliverance through God's promised Messiah. It's about paradise lost and paradise restored - and all we need to know to live godly lives in response to His amazing grace.

2 We Can Trust the Bible Historically Critics of the New Testament argue that the record of Jesus' life was invented by the political winners. They say the virgin birth, the many miracles, and his resurrection were added much later by church leaders who just wanted to consolidate their power to fuel a movement. They claimed church leaders suppressed the evidence of the original Jesus - who was just a human teacher. But that's simply not fair - nor is it true. The way we respond to those charges is by applying the same criterion to the New Testament that scholars use to prove the authenticity of any other ancient text. The Early Dates First of all, the New Testament accounts of Jesus were written much too early to be labeled as legends. The Gospel writer Luke claims to have carefully investigated everything, including eyewitness interviews. Written about 30 years after Jesus' resurrection, he challenges his readers to check his sources. Anyone could have fabricated stories two or three centuries after all the eyewitnesses were dead and gone. But you couldn't say Jesus was crucified and resurrected when thousands of people were still alive who could deny it. If Jesus hadn't been crucified and raised to life, yet public documents claimed he had, Christianity would never have gotten off the ground. But that's exactly what the Apostle Paul did in 1 Corinthians 15:6 when he implicitly challenged readers to interview the eyewitnesses of Jesus' resurrection for themselves. In Philippians 2 the Apostle Paul quoted a hymn of praise, celebrating Jesus' divinity. Since his letter was written only 25 years after Jesus' ministry, we know that people were already worshiping Jesus as God. They believed his claims to be God, his miracles, his crucifixion and the resurrection appearances. Of course you could undercut that whole argument by showing that the Gospels and Epistles were written much later - but the critics can't - the evidence is in. A few years ago, (funded by Hobby Lobby's Green family) a fragment from Mark s Gospel was discovered that some date back as early as 1st century! With this fragment, we may have a document written while some first-generation Christians were still living - before the New Testament was even completed. A fragment of the Gospel of John (Rylands Papyrus P52) dates back to 120 A.D. - only 30 years after the Apostle's death.

3 Brutally Honesty Skeptics argue that church leaders made stuff up about Jesus so that people would believe - all in order to grow their movement and extend their own power. But the New Testament text is too absurdly honest to be the stuff of legend. If you were inventing stories to grow your movement, would you really include that awkward glimpse of your Hero praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, asking his Father to get him out of the events that were about to unfold? Would you really include the part where he cries out to His Father from the cross "Why have you forsaken me?" Stuff like that is puzzling and uncomfortable for us today - how much more must it have been for that first generation of readers? And if they were making it up, how about the choice to include women as the first eyewitnesses to Jesus' resurrection? That's so counter-productive! Women at that time were not permitted as witnesses in a court of law because of their low social status. Yet all four gospel accounts include it! If you were trying to grow your movement and consolidate your power with clever stories, you'd never include women as eyewitnesses...unless it was true! And why would you portray as weak, foolish, and cowardly the supporting cast in this drama? Jesus' disciples often appear clumsy, clueless, and contentious. The only possible explanation for exposing these weaknesses in the storyline is because they are true. The New Testament documents are simply too embarrassingly honest to be legends. Non-legendary Form In the first century, legends weren't written the way the Gospels are written. They'd never start a myth inviting the readers to examine the evidence carefully. Read Beowulf or The Song of Roland. Read the Greek myths, the Roman myths, anything from the ancient world. They don't start out the way Luke does with a direct assertion that after carefully researching the amazing story, he was presenting it in an orderly sequence. Manuscript Evidence But can we know that the material that the original guys like Matthew, Peter, and Paul wrote is what we hold today in our hands? If the manuscripts we have are just handwritten copies of handwritten copies, can we be sure of their accuracy? That's a good question. The copyists had all kinds of built-in protections to ensure

4 accurate copies. They knew exactly how many words and letters were in each line and how many lines were in a book. They even knew the middle letter of each line and the middle word of each book and they'd double-check these to make sure it was correct. PLAY THE VIDEO: The Bible is Full of Errors Maybe you still don t believe this process of hand copying could be too accurate. In the summer of 1947 a young Bedouin shepherd lost track of one of his goats in the region of Qumran, in southern Israel, along the hillsides overlooking the Dead Sea. When his goats wandered into a cave, the boy chased it. He threw a rock into the cave hoping to scare it out - when he heard the sound of pottery breaking. Upon investigation, he found several clay pots containing scrolls. The scrolls eventually found their way into the hands of Israeli scholars, whose exploration discovered over 20 caves full of scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest manuscripts of the Old Testament ever discovered - every book in whole or fragments except Esther. This amazing find proves that there was no substantial difference between ancient scrolls and the Old Testament and the words you and I have in our Bibles today. The N. T. is the best attested work of any ancient document, and it's easily proven by three simple tests: the number of copies, the early date of the copies, and the consistency of the copies. Among ancient documents, The Bible easily has the most copies or portions of copies, with almost 5700 Greek manuscripts and 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic languages available for study. New Testament scholars face an embarrassment of riches compared to the records the classical Greek and Latin scholars have to work with. The average classical author s existing copies total no more than twenty. There's more than a thousand times the manuscript data for the New Testament than for the average Greco-Roman author like Plato, Aristotle, Julius Caesar, Virgil, or Homer. Because the copies are so numerous, they can be cross checked for accuracy... and they are very consistent. Not only are there many more ancient copies of the New Testament in scholars hands today, but the copies of the average classical author are no earlier than 500 years from the lifetime of the alleged author. (See Chart on Power Point slide) If critics dismiss the New Testament as unreliable information, then they must also dismiss the reliability of the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Caesar, Homer, and the

5 other authors of the ancient world. But if they acknowledge the historicity and writings of those other individuals, then they must also recognize the historicity and writings of the New Testament. After all, using the exact same criterion, the evidence for its reliability is far greater than the others. Even if we didn t have a single shred of manuscript evidence, there are enough quotations (86,000 of them) from the early church fathers within 200 years of the time of Christ that scholars could still reconstruct all but 11 verses of the entire New Testament! Can we trust the Bible? In August 1949, at a Bible conference in southern California, Billy Graham reached a point a crisis point in his ministry. He had experienced good success as a preacher for Youth For Christ and with his evangelistic team, but criticism and a challenge from his dear friend and fellow evangelist Chuck Templeton rocked his world. Templeton was leaving the faith, unable to trust the Bible as the Word of God. One evening Graham went out into the woods, wrestling with the decision he needed to make in his own heart. He came to a tree stump where he knelt down, with his Bible on the stump in front of him. And he prayed: "O God! There are many things in this book I do not understand. There are many problems with it for which I have no solution I can t answer some of the questions Chuck and others are raising." Though praying sincerely, he could tell something was still unresolved. And then he said the Holy Spirit finally enabled him to pray: "Father, I am going to accept this as Thy Word by faith! I m going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts, and I will believe this to be Your inspired Word." "When I got up from my knees at Forest Home that August night, my eyes stung with tears. I sensed the presence and power of God as I had not sensed it in months. Not all my questions were answered, but a major bridge had been crossed. In my heart and mind, I knew a spiritual battle in my soul had been fought and won." (Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham, pp ). The Los Angeles campaign that followed had been scheduled for three weeks, but was extended to eight weeks. During the campaign Graham spoke to 350,000 people. By the end, 3,000 of them made professions of faith. It was subsequently described as the greatest revival since the time of Billy Sunday. After this crusade Graham became a national figure in the United States. He has preached to multiplied millions over the decades. Only eternity will reveal the results of the men and women who have come to Jesus Christ under his preaching. Perhaps you've had a similar crisis with the Bible. When you take the time to study God's Word, you'll see how Jesus taught that the Old Testament was completely

6 true; how He affirmed the stories of Noah and Jonah as having actually happened as described in the Old Testament. And you'll see that the Bible itself claims to be the perfectly true Word of God. There are compelling reasons to believe that the Bible is true and trustworthy. It's not a collection of stories to encourage you to try harder to be good. It is God's Word to us about a Savior who died for sinners like you and me. It is a story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, Struggle, and Glory. All of us are included in the "Creation" and "Fall" part of the story. But redemption and glory? That's only found in Jesus, the central figure of the Bible. And He is embraced by faith. Are you trusting him today? Won't you commit yourself to reading this book on a regular basis? Will you let it speak to you? Will you see it as a mirror to your heart? Will it become a light to your path? Will you hide it in your heart so that you might not sin against God? "Ancient words ever true, changing me and changing you..." (Michael W. Smith)