Proving the New Testament's Reliability

Speaker 1 0:01

Hello everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast and, as always, this is another one of those Bible Breakdown Extras. Now, if you're just now joining us, what we do is we take the 30th of every month, we take a break, we call it a catch-up day, but it's also an opportunity for us to dig in a little bit deeper and kind of work on it instead of in it, when it comes to our Christian faith. Because here's the thing the Bible is so important for us to learn, but it's not just about knowledge acquisition, but it's about growth and wisdom in the things of God. So, in other words, as we learn more about God's word, we need a day every once in a while to let it settle a little bit and to deepen our understanding of who God is. And so, over the course of our Bible breakdown extras, we talk about prayer, we talk about fasting, different things. That just deepens our relationship with God and it's one of those things that's just a continual process and it's important for us to do that. One of the things that's important for us to do as part of our walk with God is 1 Peter, and in the book of Jude, it talks about defending our faith. Now, defending doesn't mean always arguing our faith, but it's being able to describe our faith, being able to talk about our faith to other people in a way that makes a lot of sense, which is why we're going through.

Speaker 1 1:11

We're taking 12 months and we're going through 12 points that show Christianity is true, by Dr Norman Geisler of mine, and I've read a lot of the stuff he's written Not all of it he's got a lot of stuff out there but one of the things I love about Dr Norman Geisler is he says that it is not wise of us to start with the Bible when trying to prove Christianity is true. Now, if we lived in a Christian society where everybody automatically believed the Bible was true, well, that would be easy enough. Right? We start with the Bible and we go from there. We don't live in one of those environments. We live in a very pluralistic environment where people believe there's a lot of roads to truth and anything's possible and everything's on the table. So he wants to start all the way back at the very beginning and work his way up into proving that Christianity is true, and I love that approach and, as I have learned the 12 steps, or 12 points, it has helped me to be able to then figure out where somebody is on the process and go from there. So I want to give you because we're going to be in chapter six today and I'm going to give you the first six and we're going to talk about number six and this is one of those where you're really going to need to get the book for, because there's so much good information that I'm really going to give you some basic highlights and I'm going to encourage you to go to some resources online. But here's how Dr Geisler teaches us to help prove Christianity is true.

Speaker 1 2:36

And he says always start with number one truth about reality is knowable. We can't even have a conversation unless we can agree that it's possible to know truth. And for some of you you're like, well, yeah, but it's not everybody. Especially in the world of relativism we live in, we think, well, everybody has their own truth. It's not true. Everybody has their own opinion about the truth, but truth has got to be something that doesn't move. Truth is objective, observable reality.

Speaker 1 3:04

And how do we find out what the truth is? With the three laws of logic. The three laws of logic say we use like term A and B to be two different things. A or B is true. A and B cannot be true at the same time and in the same circumstances. Number two is there is no middle, and that is, something is either A or it's B. There's nothing in between. And number three A is A and B is B. Now, that's the way that we determine it. And the number one way we determine something is that something can't be true and not true at the same time. The first law of logic and that's why he is saying truth about reality is knowable.

Speaker 1 3:41

Once we can agree that truth is knowable, then number two opposites cannot both be true. Therefore, all roads don't lead to God, because you look at a lot of different religions, some of them are very, very different, and so they can't all be true. If they are, then God's got a split personality out there, right? He's not God. So then, number one truth is knowable. Number two opposites cannot be true. Number three it is true that the theistic God exists. In other words, if you remember, there are three different basic beliefs about God. Atheism there is no God. Deism there is a God, but he's not involved in our lives. Number three there is a God and he is involved in our lives. Number one truth is knowable. The opposite of truth is false. Number three it is true, then, that a theistic God exists. There's plenty of proofs for that. Go back and watch that one.

Speaker 1 4:31

Number four miracles are possible. A miracle is a divine, supernatural event that interrupts the natural order that God has created. Number five miracles performed in connection with a truth claim confirm the truth of God through a messenger of God. In other words, what that means is is the way we know if somebody is telling the truth is because they're able to use the power of God, by God, to ratify it. That's why, in the book of John, every time Jesus would do a major miracle, john would say this was a sign to point to the message. That is the main reason why miracles happen in the Bible. You look in the book of Acts, you look in the Gospels. They didn't. Can I be really honest with you? They didn't do miracles so that people could get healed. They did miracles primarily to point to the gospel. The wonderful thing was is that the miracles did help people get healed, but that wasn't the main goal. The main goal was to point toward the gospel, and so that's how we know that the truth claim is true. So here's one more, and then we'll get to the one for today. Number one truth about reality is knowable. Number two the opposites cannot both be true. Number three the truth about a theistic God is true. I messed that up so bad. You know what I'm trying to say. Number four miracles are possible. Number five miracles performed in connection with a truth claim confirms the truth of God through a messenger. Here's the one today, and I love this topic. Number six the New Testament documents are reliable. The New Testament documents are reliable. The New Testament documents are reliable.

Speaker 1 6:06

Now, that's a big statement, because the inerrancy of God's word has never been under more attack than it is today, but it has been under attack throughout history. Now, what does inerrancy mean? Because that's important, because there's a difference between inerrancy and infallibility. Okay, inerrancy, the doctrine of inerrancy, means that the message of the word of God and the original manuscripts are infallible and without any error. There's no falsehood in it. Infallible means that there is no error, and so inerrancy means that God's Word is true, there is no falsehood, and that the original documents is without error.

Speaker 1 6:48

Now here's the challenge. There are people who've come against God's Word and they've said that can't be true. Well, why can't it be true? Well, because of one reason or the other, and they've all tried to do it. Well, here's the number one thing.

Reliability of New Testament Manuscripts

Speaker 1 7:00

Someone once said that there are more errors in the manuscripts than there are letters in the manuscripts. That's true. Well then, how in the world can it be infallible and inerrant? How in the world can we believe something that has errors in it? I thought God's word was inerrant. That's where people come from, that from, and they also say well, how in the world could it be true? Let me give you some things to help you. Okay, and I want to also give you a resource. There's a guy named Dr Dan Wallace he was one of my Greek syntax teachers and go on YouTube and look up Dr Norman Geisler and number six New Testament Documents for Reliable, and there's all kinds of statistics and all kinds of things, but I want to give you a few of them to kind of get you started. I've had people who really struggle with how can I trust God's Word if there's errors and stuff like that?

Speaker 1 7:46

Well, here's the thing when God's Word was written originally, it was written on this thing called papyrus, and it did not last forever. It was good to write on, it was cheap, it was available, but it didn't last very long. And what they would do when they would write these letters? So the apostle Paul, he's in prison and he'd write this letter and he would send it to that church. Well, as soon as the church would get it, and he would tell them to do this, he would say let the other churches read it. And so they would quickly make a copy, quickly make a copy of it, and then they would send the original or the copy out somewhere else. And as soon as that church would get it, they would make a copy and send it somewhere else. And send a copy and send it somewhere else. In the process of making copies they would misspell words, they would get one word backwards or one word over here, and that's where you get an error. It wasn't the original, it was the copies that would have those types of errors.

Speaker 1 8:40

But can you also see how, almost instantly, by divine decree, the Holy Spirit was able to ensure that God's word would stay untampered with? Because all of a sudden, you go from having one copy to, almost immediately, you have two, three, four, 10, 15, 25. All of a sudden you have all these different copies, and so, therefore, if you only had one copy, you could manipulate it. You could very quickly start to figure this thing out, and at first, when Christianity started and the Holy Spirit was doing all this, people didn't know what was gonna happen with this. They were, I mean, the ones who the ones who were following God. They knew, but not everybody else did so there was no reason to keep up with this. There was no enemies of the cross who were trying to stop all these letters, pass them out man who cares? And so, before they knew what they had, they're already copying, and copying, and copying, and so then, by the time, anyone would have had the idea of hey, we should get rid of all this, it's too late, it was already out there.

Speaker 1 9:36

But that's why, though, you have errors, is you have errors in spelling, errors where words are back and forth. We have 99.9% accuracy that we know exactly what the original copies, those are called autographs, the original autographs are. The reason why we don't say with 100% certainty is because of just the fact that there are where this word is misspelled here, this word's out of order here, but at the same time, if you have 5,000 documents and you've got 4,999 of them. That's got one word. You know all the words in one order and you've got one that's in a different place. Which one's wrong? The one that's out of place, or the 4,999 that says the same thing, and that's how they're able to find out. And so, yes, there are a lot of errors in the copies, but we know what they are and we don't hide them.

Speaker 1 10:29

There's actually a study Bible called the NET New English Translation. There's actually a study Bible called the NET New English Translation. I love that translation because it is an editor's translation. If there's a place where there's one word that was shifted around or something that was misspelt, they'll tell you. We don't hide what it is, but we know exactly what it says. As a matter of fact, we have so many copies that we call it an embarrassment of riches. We know exactly what it was. The only other document that has anything close to the same amount of copies. We have over 5,000 documents. That's not including Latin, that's just Greek Greek copies of the New Testament from around that time and afterward. We have so many copies. The only thing that's even close is Homer's Iliad. I think there's like 60, 60 copies, something like that, maybe a little bit more than that. I don't have that exactly right, but it's like very little, and so there's a little bit of that and so much more.

Speaker 1 11:24

So, historically, it's embarrassing that we know exactly what the Bible says. Also, one of the things we have is we have eyewitness accounts of what happened the reason why I believe and trust the Bible. It is a collection of eyewitness accounts written in the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. I love the idea that this wasn't written hundreds of years after Jesus died. This was written within just a few years after Jesus died, in the lifetime of other people who were able to talk about the veracity of what Jesus had to say. And so we know that. We know what the Bible says. There's all these other kinds of ways that we can go there, and so I want to encourage you to really go to this chapter where we can look at this and you can see all the other ways that we know exactly what the original documents say.

Speaker 1 12:17

But then the next thing is how do we know what they say is true? Well, I want to read to you the chapter summary of what Dr Geisler says. He said the historicity of the New Testament is based on more solid evidence than that of any other event in the ancient world, for no other event has based on more manuscripts that are more accurately copied, that were written by more people who were eyewitnesses or contemporaries of the events. Were it not for an ungrounded anti-supernatural bias of negative critics, the gospel accounts would be unquestioned as to their historicity, which indeed they were among biblical scholars for some 1800 years after the events. So, in other words, what you really need to do is you need to go to this book or you need to look up Dr Norman Geisler, the 12 points that show Christianity is true, and go to number six, because there's also so much evidence that the way that these were written were also written accurately.

Speaker 1 13:20

You have where there's, because there's so much time involved. We have this idea that there were four guys who were sitting in the same room and they're writing all these different accounts and so we got the four gospels. That's not how it happened. These people were all over the place and they're writing different gospels in different places, and they don't know what this other guy had written. Now there are some that say that Matthew and Luke may have had access to Mark's gospel and so they might have looked at it, but we don't even know that for certain. And so they're writing these things and they don't conflict. Now there may be part where one person tells this part of the story, where this person tells this part of the story, but then they are complementary to one another.

Speaker 1 13:55

And also, when you look at it, there are so many things about the historicity and accuracy of the way Luke wrote the book of Acts. It's amazing. It's amazing and you also can look at the different things that Luke says and the different things that Paul says and you can line it up with historical events that was going on at the time. But it's amazing that what we have and that's what we don't see and that's what we don't hear in a lot of our history classes, a lot of our things and I'm not making fun of any Christian or, excuse me, any history teacher. I love history, but it's because I love history that I will say that a lot of times in history, when it comes to a lot of things, especially when it comes to knowing about the Bible, it is amazing to me how much things have been altered and changed to cast doubt on the Bible.

Speaker 1 14:41

Here's the thing you may not believe what the Bible says. But it is historically so very unprofessional of people to try to say that we don't know what it says and that at least they believe what it said, and then you have to grapple with what it said. But they said this is what happened and it was in the lifetime of the enemies. Who could have come out and said, no, jesus didn't do any of that? But there is no historical account where the Bible, where someone came out and they said yeah, we heard about that and that's not true. It didn't happen. No, not at all. As a matter of fact, it even says that they admitted Jesus was a miracle worker. It admitted that they killed Jesus and then there were 500 people that saw Jesus rise from the dead. I mean, it's historically reliable and it's amazing when you truly start to study it. And that's why I think it's so important for us to do some research Because, as I've told you as I get ready to end our time together, when I was grappling with my own season of doubt, one of the reasons why I was grappling with it is because one of the questions that came up to me was what if the Bible is not true?

Speaker 1 15:47

What if it's not accurate. What if they really did mess with it? Muslims are taught from a young age that Christians tampered with the Bible and corrupted it. Was it possible? Could they have? And I was really struggling with my faith. And so when I started to do some research and I started to read and I started to look and I want to encourage you look up J Warner Wallace, look up John Lennox, look up Dan Wallace especially Dan Wallace and read and listen to their information. There's a teaching Dr Dan Wallace does, called Is what we have Now, what they Wrote. Then Listen to it. It's blow your mind. Blow your mind that we have with 99.9% accuracy.

Evidence for Bible's Historical Reliability

Speaker 1 16:28

We can tell you exactly what they wrote. What you got to do is figure out if you're going to believe it, but at least you know that's what they said. And there's something about what happened that these guys who wrote this that when Jesus died on the cross they were hiding somewhere. But then something happened that they went from hiding in a back room somewhere to standing up on the day of Pentecost and declaring to the ones who had put Jesus to death you killed him, but he's alive. Only seeing someone who was dead and back to life would do that to somebody, to the point that when all of these disciples the 11, not Judas, the one who betrayed him, but the 11 disciples spent the rest of their life sharing the gospel, to the point that they would rather die and they would I don't want you to kill me, but I can't deny what I saw. They were willing to die for it. That's amazing, and what we have now is what they wrote them.

Speaker 1 17:27

And so I have confidence and I believe and trust the Bible, because it is a collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. They speak to miraculous. During the lifetime of eyewitnesses. They speak to miraculous, fulfilled prophecies and they spoke of the king who came, who died and who rose again. And so you've got to grapple with that, and when we're talking to people who are not Christians, we help them and we lead them from. Truth is real, miracles are possible. Miracles help prove the veracity of what someone is saying, and the New Testament documents are reliable, and from there we're going to go into. In the New Testament documents talk about Jesus, who claimed the Son of God and proved it by miracles. I can't wait to see you. We'll get back to our Bible breakdown. On our next 30th, we'll talk about number seven, on the 12 points that show Christianity is true.