High Rolling

How can we know that the Bible is accurate and trustworthy? There is a lot riding on this question. Either the Bible is God’s word to us or it is not. It is either God’s eternal instructions to us or it isn’t. Is it the absolute truth leading us into a relationship with a divine God or one of the biggest hoaxes since the beginning of the world?

This is one of the biggest and most important investigations of your life. It may alter the entire course of you destiny. Careful and exhaustive investigation should be made into the validity of the Bible so that there is no question left unresolved in you mind and your heart.

Questions about the validity, truthfulness, and accuracy of the Bible have been raised and a few of them occur below.

If the Bible was passed down through oral tradition (word of mouth), how can I trust that the stories are pure, accurate, and unchanged?

Aren’t there a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies in the Bible? I don’t want to follow a book whose authors can’t even agree with one another.

Doesn’t the Bible include a lot of myths and crazy stories like someone getting swallowed by a big fish, Noah’s ark, and Daniel in the lion’s den?

Without copy machines and printing presses, isn’t it possible that the scribes who were copying the documents could have made a lot of mistakes during the hundreds of years the documents were copied?

Since there are no original documents, how can I know the Bible is accurate?

Couldn’t people have made mistakes when they decided which books to put in the Bible and which books to exclude?

If it was written thousands of years ago, how can it be relevant to me today?

With all the different translations, how can I be sure the Bible is accurate?

Aren’t there lots of holy books? Why should the Bible be more important than the others?

These are valid, important question to address. Trusting in the Bible as a guide to living and the basis of your relationship with God is no small thing. So with all that, how do we determine the validity of the Bible in a cogent, intelligent way so that we can have confidence in its writings?

Manuscript evidence. This is the tangible evidence of the manuscripts themselves. Several things play into the examination of manuscripts.
The sheer number of manuscripts available, the comparison of known manuscripts, their agreement with each other and the basic timeline between the oldest and the newest.

Scientific or Archeological Evidence. The validity of the Bible is also examined through archeological evidence. Since the Bible talks about people, civilizations and cultures, archeological evidence is used to validate or dispute the claims of the Bible. Location, location, location is used to place people and places and basically align the details in a historical record.

Historical Evidence. The Bible is a historical record. A human record of the acts and life of a divine God.

Internal Consistency. The Bible is a collection of sixty-six books written by about forty different authors over fifteen hundred years. Do these guys actually agree or are the Bible filled with inconsistencies or does it all point to the same place?

Anecdotal Evidence. The Bible claims to have the power to change lives. That’s a mighty claim that can either be proven or discredited. This is a different kind of evidence; it’s often the most powerful kind that a person can encounter in their study of the Bible and the claims of Christianity.

Over the next few days, we will look at each of these in greater details as they relate to the Bible. The stakes are high so keep an open mind as we examine the validity of the Bible.

What type of evidence has been the strongest for you as you consider the validity of the Bible?

Read Psalms 119:105-112