Why I Trust the Bible
You might wonder, especially if you have not grown up in a Christian environment, why some people who otherwise seem pretty intelligent and well-educated actually take the Bible seriously. Or maybe you are under the impression no one who is intelligent or educated possibly could! Well, there are actually reasons some of us trust the Bible, and it’s not just attributable to sentimentality or being sadly unsophisticated. This blog is an overview of some of those reasons, but for a deeper dive there will be a link at the end to full notes from a six-part lecture series called, “Why I Trust the Bible” Here is a what is covered:
Part 1 explains why Christians are obligated to take a high view of the Bible, i.e. accept that it is a special revelation from God and therefore a reliable source for answering life’s biggest questions. Why is it illogical to claim to be a Christian and hold another view? Read part 1 to find out, and more importantly, to understand exactly what the Bible claims for itself.
So, you don’t really care about that part because you don’t claim to be a Christian? Then Part 2 will probably start getting into why you clicked on this blog. Maybe you’ve heard the objection that since the writings making up the Bible were composed long ago– long before printing presses could crank out accurate copies of things– that it’s foolish to assume what people tote to church today is even a remotely accurate representation of what the authors originally wrote thousands of years ago. Well, in this part we examine that objection, as well as throw out some serious food for thought about the Bible’s absolute uniqueness, uncanny unity, and apparent indestructability.
In Part 3 we get into a problem unbelieving critics have, whether they realize it or not. It’s the inconvenient truth that there is simply information in the Bible human authors could not possibly have known at the time it was written. Biblical authors say they got this information from God, and I’ve never heard another reasonable explanation for it. This part goes further to begin looking at the Bible’s accuracy through the lens of archeology. The discoveries, and research into them, are piling up evidence that biblical accounts scoffed at as unhistorical only a generation ago, have to be acknowledged now as historically fact.
Part 4 continues with recent finds by archeologists that confirm key people told about in the Bible are who it says they were and lived where and when it says they did. Critics of the Bible for decades did their best to convince whoever they could that it was just a lot of legends, fantastical stories about people and places that did not exist. If those critics are still alive at this point (and are honest) they are eating a lot of crow! When the scientist who has overseen more Bible related archeological digs than anyone else says this: “Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by the archaeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denies one word, phrase, clause, or sentence of the Bible, but always confirms and verifies the facts of the biblical record.”—then critics of the Bible’s accuracy may want to proceed with a little more humility.
Part 5 opens with the question, “How difficult is it to predict the future?” The weatherman has trouble telling us what’s going to happen day after tomorrow. The smartest financial experts constantly disagree about whether you should get in or out of the stock market. Truth is, change is so constant and events so apparently random that no one knows what’s going to happen next week, much less decades from now, or certainly centuries into the future . . . except for some strange reason the Bible has many, many specific prophecies that have been, and are currently being, fulfilled! Think I’m exaggerating? Read this part for some stunning examples of prophecies regarding the death, rebirth, and future of the nation of Israel for evidence of that. They are amazing!
Or, even more undeniable, Part 6 continues with specific prophecies about Jesus’ birth, his extraordinary life, his specific kind of death, and his impossible physical resurrection —all written hundreds of years before they occurred. Looked at through the science of probabilities, these are—dare I say– frankly proof of the Bible’s divine origin. The Bible puts itself on the line unlike any other “religious literature” with scores of very specific prophecies. Many have already been precisely fulfilled. Others are coming true right NOW. More are still ahead of us. Are you even aware of what they are?
Thanks for reading this far! We’re not here to argue, and we are not here to sell you anything either. We are just here to explain why it’s reasonable to trust the Bible. That’s it. If you’ve never carefully considered this fascinating and critically important question before, it’s very well worth your while to do so now because, if the Bible is what it claims to be, and what an awful lot of evidence points to it being, then there’s obviously no more important book in the world to become familiar with. — PRN
