There are many different religions, and they all claim to have their religious writings. How can we be sure the Bible is the Word of the one true and living God? For this post, I have pulled together material from many different books, sermons, seminary classes, and apologetics sources. None of this is original to me. The evidence for the Bible is overwhelming and certainly will not all fit here. Highlights are below. You can also watch Sunday’s message here.
Historical Evidence
Psalm 33:4 says, “For the word of the LORD is right and true.” The stories of the Bible are not legends or fables. They contain real people in history who experienced the supernatural. The Bible has survived all attacks by emperors, scholars, scientific forces, etc. One of the worst attacks was by Diocletian in A.D. 303. After that, the French philosopher Voltaire predicted in 50 years the Bible would be forgotten. Two centuries ago, Thomas Paine attacked Christianity in his book The Age of Reason and asserted within a few years the Bible would be out of print. Two-hundred years later, Paine’s book was forgotten, and the Bible remains the all-time best seller! Three standards are necessary to be historically accurate and the bible meets all three: eyewitness accounts, recorded and copied with extreme care, and archaeological confirmation.
Archeological Evidence
For 1900 years there were no records of the Hittites. But in the early 1900’s they found hundreds of artifacts and references to the Hittite civilization. For years they said, “Moses could not have written the Pentateuch because he lived before the invention of writing.” Then archeologists discovered that writing existed many centuries before Moses lived. For years they said, “Abraham’s home of Ur does not exist.” Ur was discovered and a column has the inscription of the name Abram on it! For years they said, “The city Petra does not exist.” Petra was discovered. Over 25,000 sites have been discovered from the Old Testament period. There are many other sites you can even tour today from the New Testament period.
Scientific Evidence
They say you have to “trust the science.” But science changes. Just think of all the science that has changed from the COVID-19 pandemic. Many science books are now archaic! In 1861, the French Academy of Science produced a book, 51 Incontrovertible Scientific Facts that Prove the Bible Wrong. Now all 51 have been proven wrong. The Bible was right. Science for 2,000 years said the earth was flat. Isaiah 40:22 references it as a circle and the Hebrew word means sphere (where we get the word globe). For 4,000 years there was a myth that the earth had to be held up. Greeks, Hindus, and Egyptians all had their own theories on how this was done. Job 26:7 says, “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.” Science has increased their guess as to the number of stars that exist. Jeremiah 33:22 says the stars cannot be counted. Science eventually catches up to the Bible! Psalm 12:6 says, “And the words of the LORD are flawless….”
Prophetic Evidence
There are well over 2,000 predictive prophecies in the Old Testament that are very detailed. Prophecy is the predicting of future events with absolute accuracy. If the details are wrong the prophecy is nullified. Prophecy is absent in all the other religious books such as the Quran or the Analects of Confucius. Religions that do have prophetic writings, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism, are laden with false prophecies that did not come to pass. Peter wrote, “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20).
Thematic Evidence
The dead sea scrolls were found in 1947 at Qumran dating back 1,000 years older than any text that we had. The read identical. Any variant was a matter of spelling. Almost all 15,000 scrolls are held in the Shrine of the Book Museum in Jerusalem. We have more than 24,000 partial and complete copies of the New Testament. No other document of antiquity can even come close. For example, there are seven copies of Plato’s writings. The Bible was written by 40 people over 1,500 years in over a dozen countries on three continents in three different languages. It was written by kings, peasants, shepherds, tax collectors, poets, and fishermen, but in spite of the diversity, there is complete unity. It is not a mere collection of 66 books but one book with one theme. Only an omniscient, all-powerful, all-knowing God could providentially write a book in perfect harmony, so complete no one is to add to or take away.
As a follower of Jesus, what Jesus says settles it. Deconstructing the Bible is dangerous. If you get to choose what is right and wrong, you are not trusting in Jesus. You are trusting in yourself.
