Can We Really Believe the Bible is True?

In 701 BC the southern kingdom of Judah faced a national crisis. Nations face crises all the time, we face various crises today in our nation—of leadership, economic, and potential military crises—which given any simple turn of events could bring unimaginable horror and destruction on life as we know it. And yet what stabilizes us is not our confidence in our political leadership, not our confidence in our military leadership, not a confidence in our technology, but we know that God controls history and that the Lord Jesus Christ has a plan and God is the one who protects a nation in order to bring about His plan in history.

Just as nations face crises we also face challenges and crises and all kinds of things in our own personal lives, and every single time we face a crisis in our personal life the issue is always the same as faced Hezekiah as he was challenged by the leaders of the Assyrian army in 701. The Assyrians were challenging Israel’s trust in God. This is always the ultimate issue in every single test, in every single adversity we face in life: are we willing to trust God? The leaders of the Assyrian army pointed out that no other people’s gods had been able to protect their nations from the onslaught of the Assyrians, so why did they think that their God would do so? Hezekiah had destroyed the temples of all of these gods so how could they trust any of those gods?

That is the same question, basically, that the serpent asked Eve in the Garden of Eden. When God had placed Adam and the woman in the garden of Eden He gave them a test, the test of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There was all kinds of fruit in the garden which was given them for their benefit and they could eat of any fruit of any tree. But God said there was one tree they could not eat of and that of they did eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would certainly die. That was the test as to whether they would obey God and submit to His authority or whether they would do things their own way and seek to determine first of God was right, which means that they would be placing themselves in a position over God—judging God as to whether He were true or false.

That became the key issue: is God’s Word true? When Satan appeared to Eve in the garden he said: “Has God really said you shall not eat of the fruit in the garden?” What he was doing was questioning the veracity of God. Does He really care for you; is His Word really true? Can you really trust Him in the clinches? That is the question that is being imposed to Hezekiah and the Jews in Jerusalem: can you really trust God and His Word?

Principles:

1. If the Bible is the objective revelation of God to us then there will be external confirmation. We will be able to verify and validated a number of things in that revelation—not necessarily everything, but that what we do discover historically, archaeologically, scientifically, it will comport with what the Word of God says to be true; it will not contradict it.
2. We know that there will be verification in the transmission and the preservation of the text of Scripture so that we have historical and archaeological confirmation; we know that the Hebrew text that we have and which lies behind the English translation of what we have in the Old Testament, the Greek of the Greek New Testament is one hundred per cent accurate. We have the Word of God, it doesn’t change over time. We know that it is confirmed by archaeological and historical confirmation, that there is also verification in the transmission and preservation of the text; and then generally we can look back and see that there are prophesies that have been fulfilled precisely and to the letter of what the original prophecy stated. As we look at the Scriptures we know there are a lot of questions that people ask. One is, isn’t the Bible just another human book subject to error and expressing different opinions about God? Some say: isn’t the Bible full of contradictions and errors? And we will hear people go to this passage or that passage, but they have an agenda; they have an assumption when they come to the text that there is a contradiction. Rather than going two inches below the surface and discovering that there isn’t a contradiction they stay at a superficial level.
3. People say: Hasn’t the Bible been changed over the years because it has been copied and translated so many times? The Bible is not a translation of a translation of a translation of a translation; translations all go back to the original Greek and Hebrew texts. Others will ask, How can we be sure the Bible we have today is the same as what was originally written? One clear example is that up until about 1948 with the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls the Massoretic Text that is the Basis for our Hebrew Old Testament was the oldest document we had—about the 9^th or 10^th century AD. That is really not that old as far as things go. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered the greatest discovery among the Biblical scrolls was the Isaiah scroll, which was complete, and there were a number of other books of the Old Testament that were there, and when the comparisons were made between the Massoretic Text and the Dead Sea scrolls, which basically covered the period from about 200 BC up to the first century AD it was found that there were very, very few differences and the vast majority of the differences were just updates in spelling, updates and modernisation of some terms over time. In many cases what was discovered was that the Massoretic Text was actually superior to the text that they had from the Dead Sea. Others raise the question: There are so many different interpretations of the Bible, how can we know which is right? Well that is where we learn how to do Bible study methods, how we learn to investigate anything, and of we are going to let a question like that put us off then let’s let everybody out of jail and quit investigating crimes. There are ways to investigate, ways to study and evaluate evidence so that you can come to a certain understanding of what the text says, probably 98% of the time. There are probably one or two texts that we are not sure of, they are a little obscure and it just takes a little more digging and time to study them. Another question people ask is: Isn’t the Bible a product of evolving religion that originated with the Babylonians and the Assyrians? That is just not true. When we look at what the Bible says over against any other religious system in the ancient world the difference is night and day. The Bible holds to a God who is a unified God who is outside of creation, and all of the other religious systems have a God that is part of creation and who is subject to the flaws of creation, and so ultimately they put matter ahead of God—like modern scientific theories of evolution. Then people say: Well doesn’t the Bible contain historical and scientific errors? That is not true.

Questions:

1. Does God exist? There are only two ways to answer that question: either no or yes. If the answer is no then life really has no meaning. There is no God and therefore everything is just a matter of random chance, and the only reason we are here is because there was some accident on some primordial piece of slime that caused an electronic reaction and one thing led to another, and now we are here. But it is all a matter of random chance And we are not any more valuable than a rug.
2. But if God does exist then the next question is: Can God communicate? If God can’t communicate then He is not much of a God, so when we answer that question, again, it can be no or yes. If the answer is no then He is not really much of a God. So, yes, we must assume that for God to be God He can communicate.
3. Can He communicate clearly? Anyone who is married knows that people can communicate but that doesn’t mean it is a clear communication; that you are able to communicate what you are thinking so that the other person can understand it. That is what clear communication is. If God is God He cannot only communicate but He can communicate clearly. He created human beings and if he wants to communicate with them doesn’t it mean He would be able to create us in such a way that we would be able to understand His communication? God cannot only communicate clearly but He designed man to be able to hear and understand His communication. If we don’t hear it is not God can’t communicate clearly, it is because we don’t want to listen. That is another issue.
4. If can communicate and communicate clearly, can God protect His communication so that it is preserved down through the ages so that everybody in the human race can hear it and can understand it? What we conclude, then, that if God can communicate (and He can, and communicate clearly) and can protect His communication, what would the characteristics of that communication be? It would have an inherent authority; it would be self-authenticating in terms of His voice. It would also be consistent; it would not have contradictions. Where it could be tested it would be accurate; it would be supported through various types of evidence: textual, historical, archaeological. In terms of its makeup in what it states it would not only be consistent but it would be internally logical and rational. The reason for saying internally logical and rational is because if we don’t accept the basic assumptions of the Bible—that there is a God and He exists and can communicate to man—we are going to look at the Bible as just a bunch of irrational, illogical mumbo-jumbo.
5. We then raised the question: Has God communicated to man? The answer is: If God created man He would communicate to man; He would create man in such a way as to be able to respond to that communication. The Bible claims to be that communication to man. It claims that in a number of different ways and in a number of different Passages. For example, 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 ^NASB “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” 2 Peter 1:20, 21 ^NASB “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is {a matter} of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” It is not their word about God; it is God’s Word through them. 2 Samuel 23:2 ^NASB “The Spirit of the LORD spoke by me, And His word was on my tongue.” Zechariah 7:12 ^NASB “…the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets…” Again and again and again there is this emphasis on the fact that it is God who is the author of Scripture and He speaks through the writers of Scripture. Numbers 23:19 emphasizes the veracity of that communication: ^NASB “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” Many, many times in the Scripture we have the phrase, “Thus says the Lord.” It is the Lord who is speaking. We have the phrase “God said” forty-six times in the Bible; we have the phrase “God spoke” twelve times in the Bible; we have the phrase “The Lord said” two hundred and thirty-three times in the Bible; we have the phrase “The Lord spoke” one hundred and thirty-three times in the Bible; we have the phrase “says the Lord” five hundred and two times in the Bible. And that doesn’t cover all of the various ways in which the writers indicate that God is the one who is speaking, but just among those five different phrases that is over nine hundred times throughout the Scripture we have the Scripture claiming that what it is giving us is the very Word of God, but not the word of man.
6. Is the Bible true? The Bible claims to be God’s revelation of Himself to man. The reason for emphasizing that is because a lot of people think that what the Bible is, is man’s record of his encounters with God. That is, these people had encounters with God and they wrote it down and that is just their subjective impressions, their ideas, not something that has been transmitted from outside of themselves, through them to us. That is what we believe: the Bible is God’s Word communicated through human authors to us. The Bible claims to be God’s revelation of Himself to man. We have two options. It’s either false or true. If it is false and the Bible isn’t God’s revelation of Himself to man then it is no better than any other book. If it is false then it really is a fraud and deceptive and should be completely rejected and destroyed because if the Bible claims that it is the Word of God and is going to give us absolute truth, and it is not the Word of God and it is all a lie, then it is a just a horrible, terrible wicked thing. So why in the world should we have it at all to just deceive and confuse people? This is the atheist’s agenda because they do believe that the Bible is a fraud, but that is because they hate God. By contrast, if the statement is true that the Bible claims to be God’s revelation of Himself to man then it is the unique book of human history, the unique book of the universe, and should be valued above everything else. Psalm 19 is a psalm that extols the value of the Word of God: Verse 10 ^NASB “… more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.” Nothing in life is more valuable than the Word of God.
7. What are some of the things that make the Word of God unique? The Bible was written over a period of 1500 years, at least, by over thirty writers from a wide variety of backgrounds. They write and discuss all of the most controversial subjects in human history and don’t disagree with each other. The Bible was written in a wide variety of styles and literary genre: poetry, history, law, prophecy, etc., and each of the books is written in then style and personality of its author. In its unity it is always focused on God’s redemptive plan. It is unique in its preservation. The Bible is unique in the way it describes its heroes, the people in the Scriptures. They are described complete with all of their flaws and failures. Lewis Sperry Chafer said of the Bible: “The Bible is not such a book as man would write if he could, or could write if he would.” The Bible claims for itself absolute authority and that it will be preserved. Isaiah 40:8 ^NASB “The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.” Jesus said in Matthew 24:35 ^NASB “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.” Matthew 5:17 ^NASB “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” Cf. Isaiah 59:1; 55:11; Matthew 4:4.

The Word of God is constantly attacked by rationalists and sceptics who seek to reject God, and they would like to say that there is absolutely no evidence of creation, no evidence of a flood, no evidence of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or Moses, the Exodus, no law from God, no miracles, no virgin birth, no resurrection, and because there is no God there is no salvation. And so what you get from liberal theology is a scepticism that from the get go rejects the fact that God exists and that God can communicate.

In contrast to that we have evidence that confirms the truth of Scripture. Archaeology again and again discovers things that confirm Scripture when there are numerous so-called scholars and academics who have claimed the opposite. When Nineveh was discovered in the middle of the 19^th century, the very existence having been doubted before that, once excavated there were discovered numerous libraries. A set of seven tablets were found called The Creation Epic that listed six days of creation and one day of rest. Other creation stories have been found. For example, the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation story which gives insight into how the original story of Scripture became perverted and transmitted into other cultures. But the Bible stands unique in terms of its literature. Often liberals say that the Bible just reflects these Assyrian and Babylonian and Egyptian myths. The reality is that the Bible came first and those myths are deterioration, distortions and corruptions of the truth of Scripture. The critics come along and say that the Bible was written this way and that way, and then was revised, rewritten and patched together from different documents. One textual writer comments on that:

All who suspect or suggest that borrowing by the Hebrews are compelled to admit large scale revision, alteration and reinterpretation in a fashion which cannot be substantiated for any other composition in the ancient Near East or any other Hebrew writer.

Nobody else did that kind of writing in any other field or endeavour, they just have to say that they did that in relationship to the Bible. In Genesis there is the story of the universal flood, and even though there are some Christians who debate that the flood was world-wide nearly every culture in the word has a flood story—the judgment of the gods that destroyed the earth at that time. The tower of Babel in Genesis chapter eleven is documented by various historical records related to the building of ziggurats in the ancient world. Sodom and Gomorrah which was destroyed by God because of the homosexuality and sexual perversity and the Scripture says that it was done by fire and brimstone that God rained down upon those cities. Philo, who was a first-century contemporary of Josephus, stated that the evidence of the destruction could still be seen in his day. Back in the 1930s and 40s William F. Albright believed that the cities were under the Dead Sea but later by 1960 it was discovered that it was most likely located on the east shore of the Dead Sea. There they found various charnel house and remains which indicated that these houses burned from the inside out, that the roofs were destroyed by fire and the fire then fell through the roof and collapsed and burned the insides of the buildings, consistent with the evidence of Scripture. We also have The Code of Hammurabi, a legal code written some three centuries before Moses. Nineteenth century liberals said that Moses probably couldn’t even write, certainly not anything as sophisticated as the Mosaic law, and yet here we have evidence that precedes that and shows it to be perfectly consistent with that time period.

It used to be that the liberals said in what was called the minimal list in archaeology that there was no mention of these biblical people in any archaeological record, so they would even deny the existence of David. Yet in 1993 an artefact was found in the northern part of Israel that had a statement in reference to the house of David. Other discoveries since then have also confirmed the existence of the house of David. The existence of the Hittites was doubted for many years until 1911-12 the remains of their capital in Turkey was discovered. There is evidence of Solomon, that he kept a chariot corps at Megiddo, there were stables there, and those have been discovered.

When we get into the New Testament there has been a lot of debate that there actually was anyone named Cyrenius (Luke 2:2), that there was a census at that time when he was governor and that this was what brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. That was doubted for many years but there has been a discovery that there was a Cyrenius who ruled as proconsul of Syria from 11 BC until 4 BC, and other papyri indicate certain census takings in the ancient world, they did mandate a return to the birth place, the home. There were also questions about the existence of Bethlehem but a discovery was made not too long ago of a mosaic in the lowest floor of the Church of the Nativity which read: “Lord, I came.” This was dated to about 100 AD indicating that by 100 people were making a pilgrimage to that site as the birth place of Jesus. When Hadrian defeated the Jews in the second rebellion he planted a grove of worship of Adonis over the site because he wanted to wipe out all evidence of Christian and Jewish sites at that time. The church father Jerome who translated the Vulgate did so at this particular location because this is where history says that the Lord Jesus Christ was born. Eusebius recorded that Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine built a church there in order to preserve that place of birth because of the evidence that she was given. We also learn of the existence of Capernaum where Jesus taught. Textual evidence has also been discovered mentioning the name of Pontius Pilate as a historical person. So we have all of these various things indicating that what the Scripture says historically about the time of the birth of Christ have been verified.

Illustrations