Video Transcript: Evidence of Biblical Accuracy

There is absolutely nothing in the world more certain than the Word of the living God. And so to find evidence for something which is already the most certain, and sure thing in the world might seem a little bit silly, the Bible itself being the Word of God is more accurate, and more certain, than any evidence that can be brought in favor of the Bible. 

But having said that, there are certain kinds of evidence that can confirm the evidence, the accuracy of the scriptures, as we look at confirming evidences. One fact is the way the one part of the Bible confirms the other. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New Testament. 

Another confirming evidence of the Bible is the findings of research and of archeology, different items that have been located, and that have fit what the Bible says. And I've even proved certain facts in the Bible. 

There's also the fact that we have reliable manuscripts that go very, very far back and give us added confidence in the Bibles that we have in our hands today. 

And then, of course, there is the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, perhaps the most important of all the things that confirm the Bible, the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired its writing in the first place. And that very same Holy Spirit of God is the one who makes the Bible ring true, and gives us minds and ears to hear what God is saying in the Scriptures. 

And then there is also the Bible's power to transform individual lives, and to transform nations, and to make cultures very different than they were before they had the Bible. And so all of these things together serve as confirming evidence for the Bible. 

What do we think of Old Testament prophecy and how it's fulfilled in the New Testament, I won't go into very much detail here, I talked about that elsewhere. But it's safe to say that hundreds and hundreds of prophecies that were made in the Old Testament were fulfilled in Jesus birth, in his life, in his death, in his resurrection. 

The Old Testament scriptures were pointing to many events that were yet to come, which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ, and which are described in the New Testament, predicting things centuries in advance, sometimes even more than 1000 years in advance, such as hands and feet being pierced, or someone's clothing being gambled for while he suffers, or a king riding into his capital city riding on a donkey, while people are laying down palm branches, and all kinds of other things that are said in the Old Testament and that are carried out in the life of Jesus Christ. 

These give us very good reason to take both the Old Testament which came earlier, and the New Testament and fulfillment very, very seriously. It's not just the predictions, though, the Old Testament also had various feasts and rituals and foreshadowings, of God's savior that were fulfilled in Jesus. Take just one example, at Passover time, Jesus was sacrificed. 

For a very long time, people had been sacrificing a Passover lamb, killing that lamb and taking some of its blood, putting it around the door of their homes in memory of how God had done that when he passed over the Israelites and rescue them from the Egyptians when he killed the firstborn of Egypt. And so this lamb, which helped the Israelites to be spared, was pointing ahead to a much greater lamb. 

And Jesus died right at that time of Passover showing that he was God's lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Just one more example, worldwide gospel preaching fulfills the original promises that God made way back in Genesis, that through Abraham's seed his offspring, all nations would be blessed. 

And so still today, we see God's prophecies being fulfilled. And that's an important way that the truth of the scriptures is confirmed.

Another indication of the truth of Scripture is in the findings of archeology. Now, there are very fat books about various archaeological finds and evidences for the truth of the Bible, I have a smaller book as well, that's just kind of a summary. And it gives 50 archeological proofs for Old Testament things.

And 50 archaeological proofs for New Testament matters of fact, and I'm not going to go through all of that, I'm just going to take a very small sampling of examples and show you the kind of thing that archeology is sometimes helpful with, in the face of skepticism about the Bible. There have been scholars throughout history, but especially starting in the early 1800s, who became more and more skeptical about facts that were taught in the Bible, some would say even that Jesus Christ never existed, and that it was all just made up. 

Now, nobody takes anything like that seriously anymore. But there have been people who would deny that not only Jesus, but other major biblical characters were just a myth. For instance, David, was just a myth. They said, Sure, there's stories in the Bible about David and things that claim to be history about David in the Bible. But we have no proof that any David ever existed or was king over Israel at that time. Well, that's what the skeptics said. 

And then there were some pieces of Black Bay salt stone that were found with inscription on it. And this was even from another country, referring to Israel as the house of David. Now, if David never existed, and yet 100 years later, the kingdom is called the House of David, somebody got something very wrong. Of course, what was wrong was the skeptics, not the Bible. And the house of David inscription proved it beyond any reasonable doubt even of those who didn't want to take the Bible seriously. 

Another example, was Pontius Pilate a real person. Once again, there are skeptics who say, Oh, those gospels that talk about Jesus, that stuff was just kind of made up, and especially many of the facts and people that are involved there. We don't have any Roman record of anyone who ever lived named Pontius Pilate who was a proccurator, a governor in the land of Judea. And so since we haven't been able to find such a record, it proves that there was no Pilot. Now, what does it really prove? It proves it after 2000 years, we didn't have anything that was left behind that spoke about Pilot except for the Bible. 

And we ought to pay very careful attention when the Bible says something. But there are a lot of things from 2000 years ago, that didn't leave a lasting trace, or what trace they did leave is buried under a whole bunch of dirt. Well, in the case of Pilate, in the face of all that skepticism, minds had to be changed because a piece of stone was found in scribed, dedicating a temple to Tiberius Caesar, and the dedication was by someone who the last few letters of his name or T-I-U-S, and his last name was Colossus, or Pilot, it looks all the world like Pontius Pilate, and in fact it was, Pontius Pilate, it just confirms that Pontius Pilate was, in fact, governor at that time, in that place during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, in which Jesus Christ was crucified.

 And we simply have it literally written in stone that Pilate did exist, and is confirmed independently of the Bible's record of him and once again, showing that the Bible knew what it was talking about. And the skeptics did not.

Another area of skepticism of some people who have approached the Bible has concerned the Gospel of John, the Gospel, according to John, some said, couldn't have been written by Jesus beloved disciple who knew Jesus firsthand, because they claimed that the Gospel of John included various claims to fact that simply weren't true that John didn't really know Jerusalem very well. And he didn't know Jesus very well. In the 1800s. 

Some skeptics said that the author of John had ever been to Jerusalem, and had zero first hand knowledge of the geography of Jerusalem and of events that might have occurred there. And some scholars also said that the Gospel of John was not a first hand account of Jesus. They said that it had to be written much later than Jesus lifetime, perhaps 200 years after Christ, because only a later writer they said, could have such an evolved Theology. 

John said in the beginning was the Word the Word was with God and the Word was God. And John quotes Jesus saved before Abraham was, I am. And Jesus opponents recognize that he's claiming to be equal with God. And the scholars said, Oh, none of Jesus original disciples could have viewed Jesus as God. And so John had to be written a long time later, after this belief had evolved, that Jesus was the Son of God. 

Well, the skeptics believed the limb too strongly in evolving. We do live in kind of an evolutionary age, and not enough in God's revelation. Because you see, the book of John is not a matter of any evolving Theology, but of divine revelation. And we have some things to even indicate that. Let's first of all, look at that claim that John just didn't know Jerusalem and he didn't know the geography of the area. He was just writing a long time later. We'll take this as an example, John 5:2 introduces a healing of Jesus located by the pool of Bethesda. 

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, a pool in Aramaic called the festa, which has five roofed colonnades and the skeptics said, Oh, the author of John, obviously had never been to Jerusalem. We've done some dating in Jerusalem. And there is no pool like that there is no pool with five columns are colonnades there. And John just made up that pool as a setting while he was telling these yarns about Jesus. And he gave the pool a somewhat mythical meaning. until late in the 1800s. 

Somebody was digging around Jerusalem, and found a pool, which they thought, ooh, this sounds an awful lot like that pool of Bethesda. And what do you know, there are five colonnades right there. And it seems to fit exactly John's description. Maybe John knew the Jerusalem of his day better than we know it. And so once again, archeology proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that John was right to that when he described a pool of Bethesda with these five colonnades, and so forth. 

Now, a wave here question is whether John actually knew Jesus, some skeptical scholars said that it was written his latest 200 AD because it spoke of Jesus as God as the word who was God becoming flesh, and they said, come on. The earliest Christians thought of Jesus as a great men are a powerful prophet, but not as God with us. Well, aside from all that, just remember how the gospel of Mark starts out which all scholars agree, was written quite early after Jesus life, death and resurrection. 

The very first statement in the Gospel of Mark is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, "the Son of God", "the Son of God". That's the very first sentence in Mark. And at the end of Mark, the Centurion says, surely this was the Son of God. So let's face it, it wasn't just John, who thought of Jesus as God or as the Son of God, at anyway, these folks thought that John had such a high view of Jesus deity of his being God, that it had to have evolved later, it couldn't have been written by somebody who knew Jesus personally, but had to have been written around 200 AD. 

Well, then, some people were digging, and they found a papyrus fragment in Egypt, dated by the pottery and other things that were associated with it and the papyrus itself to around 125 AD, And they found that this fragment was from John chapter 18. Well, now obviously, something that's written in 200 AD can't show up as a fragment in Egypt, a copy, dated 125. And the fact is, if you find a fragment on papyrus down in Egypt, dated that way than the actual writing of John had to be considerably earlier, he asked, because this was a copy, it had traveled all the way to Egypt. And obviously, it was being used as scripture recognized scripture by that point. 

So we have absolute proof that John was written much earlier, and was being copied and circulated as scripture, John, the New Jerusalem better than the skeptics. And John knew Jesus better than the skeptics. And we have proof that John was written much earlier than many of the skeptical scholars had tried to claim. 

Now I'm not going to go through all of the kinds of examples of this that I could. All I'm going to say is, when you listen to the Bible, do not be like skeptic thinks that everything is guilty till proven innocent, false until proved true. Again and again and again, items in the Bible that were doubted and challenged, and we were told couldn't be so turned out to be exactly right. 

And so we shouldn't depend on archeology, for our confidence in the very Word of God, we should depend on our faith in God and the fact that God speaks the truth and has conveyed it to us. But it's also true that the findings of archeology do serve to confirm the accuracy of the Bible. 

Another matter about the Bible is concerned that maybe even if the original texts of the Bible were accurate, what happened to them over the centuries? Could they have been corrupted? Could there have been a failure to transmit the Bible accurately? 

Well, there's a whole area of research called textual criticism, which works very hard to take different aspects of ancient manuscripts and compare them with one another, and then come up with an understanding of what the original said. And in the case of the New Testament, we have lots of such manuscripts. In the case of almost all other ancient writings about history or philosophy, or what have you. 

There's far less manuscripts out there, and far less certainty that we have an accurate transmission of them, then we have with the Bible take the writings of Plato, the great Greek philosopher, for instance, there are seven surviving copies of books by Plato. Regarding the New Testament and early manuscripts, there are more than 5700 copies of parts of the New Testament or of the entire New Testament.

Plato, the earliest copy we have is 1200 years after the originals were written. With regard to the New Testament, the earliest copy, and fragments that we have is dated less than 40 years after the original was written and many are dated within a few 100 years, we're only it would be a copy, of a copy, of a copy without much chance of mistakes slipping into the copying process. 

And the fact of the matter is, when you have all of these hundreds and hundreds and even 1000s of manuscripts, you find that the wording agrees 99% of the time, and where there is any disagreement, it's never on a major matter, or an important aspect of doctrine, that maybe in a variant spelling of a word or in stating something slightly differently. 

And usually you can tell very easily because if a vast majority of the earliest manuscripts have it one way, and only one difference from that is the oops, the the copyist maybe made a mistake on that and you can, you can trace with almost entire certainty and accuracy, what the original texts had to say. 

The fact of the matter is, if you can't trust the New Testament manuscripts, you can't trust any ancient document. Because whether you're talking about Caesar's Dalek wars, or about Tacitus, and Suetonius, the Roman historians, or about books by Plato, the manuscripts that we have are very few compared to the tremendous amount of manuscript evidence we have from the New Testament. If you cannot believe New Testament manuscripts, you can't believe any manuscripts. 

If you can't believe Bible history, you can't believe any history from ancient times, because there is a far more detailed and careful transmission of the biblical manuscripts than anything else comparable from the ancient world. And one of the great finds of archeology and of textual criticism was the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And these had a particular bearing on the Old Testament. 

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found according to the stories by a shepherd boy, throwing a rock into a cave and hearing kind of a crashing or smashing sound of some pottery breaking, and went into one of those caves and found more such jars and those jars containing manuscripts, very ancient scrolls and writings. And these writings were dated from the time of Jesus and before the time of Jesus. 

For instance, the scroll of Isaiah the prophet, almost a complete scroll of the entire prophecy of Isaiah was found in his data to be 100 to 150 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, and this scroll of Isaiah, is almost identical to the text that people had been using to translate from the Hebrew. 

Before the finding the Dead Sea Scrolls, the most ancient Hebrew manuscripts we have the Old Testament, we're from what is called the Masoretic text written by the massery. It's very careful Jewish scholars. And the oldest manuscripts that we had of the Old Testament were about from 1000 AD or so what you had with the Dead Sea scrolls, were some scrolls are actually 1100 years older than that. And it was found that the differences in most cases were just minuscule. 

And so you found that over 1000 years of time, almost nothing had changed. In the copying. It was a tremendous find. for other reasons, too, there are other scrolls and things in it besides just from the Old Testament, which reveal a lot about the time just before Jesus was born, and the times in which we he lived. And so it's valuable for those reasons as well. 

But the Dead Sea Scrolls show and help confirm the great accuracy with which the Old Testament was copied from one generation of manuscripts to another. So again, archeology has confirmed various artifacts, and then the science and scholarly discipline of textual criticism and research in ancient manuscripts tells us that we don't have to think that the, the texts from which our Bible translations today are made are very different at all, from the very original texts that were written 1000s of years ago, they've been copied with great accuracy. And we have strong evidence to show that God has preserved his Word in a very reliable manner. So we have the proof fulfillment of prophecy, the findings of archeology, the reliability of the manuscripts, and then two more things that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on, but that are enormously important. 

One is simply the inner testimony, the Holy Spirit, I usually don't try to talk people into believing that the Bible is the Word of God, I say, listen to it, read it a while and see what happens. When someone starts reading the book of Genesis, or they start reading the book of John, they realize that they're not just reading another book. And very, very often, the Holy Spirit Himself will testify in their heart that they're hearing something like they've never heard before. 

They're hearing the voice of a living God, the Holy Spirit, who inspired the original author's makes his voice heard in the hearts of those who are reading the scriptures. And this is a more powerful, and a more sure testimony, then even the researchers in manuscripts are the findings of archeology, or any other intellectual supports that we try to find for the Bible, the Holy Spirit, the author himself, makes sure that we know this book is from God.

And then look around at the fruit. When people really take the Bible to heart, when they hear its message of salvation, when they hear that God is love, that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control, Do to others as you would have them do to you greater love has no and that this that he lays down his life for his friends. And when they see how the words of God have shaped lives and transformed people, and given them hope, that being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and to see the joy and peace in people after they had been lost and hopeless. 

This in itself is tremendous evidence for the reliability and accuracy of the Bible, and to see what cultures were likely for the Bible came to them. And to see those same cultures centuries later, after the Bible had had its impact as Jesus described it, like yeast working its way through a whole batch of bread, or like a seed starting small and growing and growing, where the greatest freedoms and the greatest flourishing of human life have occurred in cultural settings has been where the Bible has been taken with the greatest seriousness. 

So put all of that together. And you have again, strong, strong evidence for the accuracy of the Bible, strong confirming evidence for taking it as the word of God. And now having said all that, let me say again, it is the inner testimony, the Holy Spirit, the quality of the Bible itself, and of the power of God working through his Word, which is the ultimate evidence, even if we weren't listening much to archeology or to manuscript studies or things like that. As the Bible itself says let God be true that remain a liar if there is a conflict between the Word of God and the word of man then it is the word of God which stands forever.