Reasons We Can Trust God's Word

In my previous post, I explained that we can trust God's word to give us life and salvation. While that is all well and good, people still wonder and ask if that isn't begging the question. In other words, they would argue (quite rightfully) that we're using the Bible to explain the truthfulness of the Bible - that's circular reasoning. But there is other evidence to support our position that what the Bible has to say concerning life and salvation is indeed true.

While there are a plethora of reasons out there, I like to boil it down to three reasons:

Reason 1 - Prophecies that have come true
The Bible is full of prophecies, both secular (check out the book of Daniel; which we will cover later on in our journey) and Christo-centric; but it is the prophecies about the life of Christ that I would like to focus on.

Just for some quick background, remember that the books of the Tanakh (the OT) were already written and codified centuries before Jesus arrived on the scene. For some perspective: Psalms was written somewhere around 1,000 BC, while Isaiah was written somewhere around 700 BC. Now, imagine how much time that is... Imagine how different our society was 100 years ago; 300 years ago; 1,000 years ago. Next, imagine the probabilities that a specific prophecy written 500 years ago would come true today. Tough to wrap your mind around? Yup, me too :)

Now, let's be blunt to begin with. There is a possibility that Jesus knew the Tanakh inside and out, and so he could easily have developed a Messiah complex (whether it be mental instability, or just plain arrogance and pride) and used these prophecies to proclaim himself the Messiah. He would have known the prophecy from Zechariah and so he could have made up his mind and rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Easy enough, right?

But what floors me every time is the number of prophecies that came true that Jesus had no part in fulfilling. Let's look at Psalm 22. Here are some verses from that psalm, and notice how most of them were fulfilled by other people. And as an extra bonus, each was noted by a different gospel writer:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?" (Psalm 22:1)
"About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' (which means 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?')" (Matthew 27:46).

"All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. 'He trusts in the Lord,' they say, 'let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him'" (Psalm 22:7-8).
"The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar" (Luke 23:36).

"Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet" (Psalm 22:16).
"But [Thomas] said to them, 'Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe'" (John 20:25).

"They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment" (Psalm 22:18).
"And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get" (Mark 15:24).

So, you can easily see that events and words separated by 1,000 years have that remarkable cohesiveness and unity that lends tremendous support for the belief that events recorded in the Bible are indeed true.

Reason #2 - The accuracy and sheer numbers of the copies of the Bible that we have
To illustrate this idea in confirmation class, we played a game of Telephone. Surely you remember that game of transmission where a phrase is given to a person, that person then whispers it to another, and down the line it goes until the final receiver speaks the phrase and it ends up being nothing like the original. Now, in my previous post, I fully believe that the Bible was scribed by humans limited in vocabulary and comprehension (as well as being imperfect). But here's the neatness of this 'game of telephone' from what God originally inspired, and what we humans have today.

Neat fact 1: We now have over 5,000 reliable copies of the New Testament in its original Greek (the language of the land of the time). Why is this important? Check out how many reliable copies we have of other important works from which we derive our knowledge of ancient Greece. The Bible has nearly 9x more documents that are reliable from that time period. This collection of books spread like wildfire! So much so that...

Neat fact 2: Our earliest-found gospels and Pauline letters were dated to no more than 100 years after the events occurred. Again, look at the chart. The longest span of time between the copies we have of any other material from ancient Greece and from the dates when it happened, is 500 years. In other words, these words of the New Testament were considered authoritative and extremely important for all intents and purposes... immediately! (Quick side note: And that's why the so-called 'Lost Gospels' are never included in canon; because they came on the scene 100-200 years later, well after the established canon.) But with such a widespread transmission of a work, one might expect more errors. After all, the faster that you rush through your work, are you not prone to more errors? Well...

Neat fact 3: Of those 5,000+ known copies of the New Testament, the scribes took extreme care in copying and re-copying those manuscripts. They were so careful, that the reliability rating of the copies of the New Testament reaches 99.5%! Not to mention, of that 99.5%, there are no contradictions in theological points. The 0.5% that is not as reliable are, in essence, spelling and grammar errors.

So, as you can see, the scribes found these words to be so incredibly important, that extreme care and caution was taken in writing and re-writing these words. Would you put in the same amount of care in a project that wasn't important? Didn't think so... :)

Reason #3 - Many eyewitness accounts
For an example of this concept, think of the Apollo Program that sent astronauts to the moon. Think of how many thousands of people worked on this mission: mission room controllers, scientists, politicians, engineers, astronauts... the list seems endless. Now, imagine if one of them would come forward and could provide reliable, provable evidence that the moon landing never happened. The whole house of cards would come falling down. There is so much evidence that the moon landing did in fact happen, that anyone who says otherwise is (and rightfully so) branded a conspiracy theorist.

Now imagine yourself in ancient Palestine around the time Jesus ascended into heaven. How easy would it have been to produce proof of Jesus' death and non-resurrection if that happened...? "Here's the tomb; here's the body; case closed." In other words, much like the Apollo mission, if there were credible evidence to the contrary, Christianity would never have prospered.

Yet, no one was indeed able to come forward - in fact, quite the opposite happened. The 11 disciples saw him; more disciples saw him; even 500 people saw him all at once! And notice the statement Luke puts in from Paul in Acts: "The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner" (Acts 26:26).

And what happened when they saw him risen from the dead? They died for their belief! Tradition holds that 11 of the 12 disciples died for their belief. Would you die for anything that wasn't the truth; something you knew from the start to be a lie? And thus began the church, that through their martyrdom and the true message they died for (that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not), the Church was not able to be vanquished and is here to this day and until the end of time.

So again, like I've said, there is plenty of external evidence for the belief that we can reasonably believe God's word to be truth and life. However, when all is said and done; no amount of evidence can truly work faith in us. It is only the Holy Spirit that can begin this faith, gather us, enlighten us, and sanctify us (Small Catechism, 3rd Article and Its Meaning). Thankfully, that is a gift that is free :)