As was Paul’s custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for three Sabbaths in a row he used the Scriptures to reason with the people. He explained the prophecies and proved that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead. He said, “This Jesus I’m telling you about is the Messiah.” … they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men. [Acts 17:2-3, 11b-12 (NLT)]
Proof of the truth is no substitute for our faith; nevertheless, it is important to know the truth of what we believe. At some point, we will ask ourselves how we can believe the validity of what we’re reading in our Bibles. Fortunately, we have Christian apologists to help us see its truth. Rather than offering apologies for the wrongs committed by evil people in the name of Jesus, apologists share the objective reasons and evidence that Christianity is true and should be believed. The Apostle Paul was probably the first apologist when he showed that Jesus’ fulfillment of Scripture’s prophecies proved He was the Messiah. Paul knew that the truth could stand up to scrutiny and it still does today. As for those prophecies: by conservative estimate, Jesus fulfilled at least 300 prophecies while on earth.
Most ancient works were written on perishable papyrus so we don’t have the originals of any ancient secular or sacred manuscript. But, with the New Testament, we do have more than 25,000 manuscript copies and fragments with a gap of less than 25 years between the time of the original manuscripts and the first existing copies! About 5,800 of these ancient copies were written in Greek and over 19,000 copies are in Latin and other languages. Running a distant second to the New Testament is Homer’s Iliad with fewer than 1,800 copies and a 500-year gap between the original manuscript and the first existing copy.
Unlike the Iliad copies, the New Testament’s manuscripts are remarkably alike. When those 25,000 plus copies and fragments are compared, they agree 99.5% of the time! As you’d expect with handwritten copies, there are some minor variations, most of which can be attributed to scribal error. Out of the 8,000 verses in the New Testament, only about two dozen (.3%) are in dispute and none of them affect doctrine. Moreover, even though we don’t have the original manuscripts or even the first copies, 2nd century church fathers, like Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp quoted from scripture so frequently that we could piece together about 95% of the New Testament just from their writings! We can be sure that the gospels and epistles we read today are nearly identical to those being circulated by the end of the 1st century AD.
How can we know Christianity isn’t more myth than reality? We can trust the writers because none of them had any motivation for perpetuating a lie. Rather than getting rich and powerful, they were persecuted and punished. They abandoned their long-held beliefs and practices, were banished from their synagogues, and (like the Apostles) suffered and died for their faith! Their words were written and circulated where Christ’s miracles occurred when witnesses to the events were still alive; they wouldn’t have succeeded if they were passing along a lie! Unlike the authors, liars wouldn’t put themselves in a bad-light by writing of denials, doubt, disagreements, and failures. Moreover, we have plenty of extra-Biblical documentation for Jesus in the ancient writings of Roman historian Tacitus, Roman governor Pliny the Younger, 1st century Jewish historian Josephus, Greek satirist Lucian, and even the Babylonian Talmud! In all, 39 ancient secular sources corroborate more than 100 facts concerning Jesus.
I’m not a religious scholar, historian, or an archeologist and I haven’t examined the Dead Sea scrolls or ancient papyri. Nevertheless, I do read the work of those who have. The more I study Scripture and the work of Christian apologists, the more certain I am that there is nothing unreasonable, irrational, or unfounded about my belief. The Bible can stand up to intense archeological and historical investigation so we have nothing to fear (and much to gain) when we look closely at God’s word.
As thinking Christians, we must never be afraid to ask questions and seek answers. When we seek the truth, as did Lee Strobel, we’ll be able to make a case for Christ. Like Josh McDowell, we’ll discover that Jesus was more than a carpenter and, like Tim Keller, we’ll know the reason for God. After atheist turned apologist C.S. Lewis examined the faith, he made the case for Christianity. After their research, Norman Geisler and Frank Turek didn’t have enough faith to be atheists! When forensic scientist J. Warner Wallace examined the claims of the Gospel as he would a cold case and lawyer David Limbaugh put Jesus on trial, our Lord withstood their intense scrutiny and cross examination. The closer we examine Scripture, the more we’ll believe that Jesus really is the way, the truth, and the life!
Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth having. We believe that the unexamined faith is not worth believing. [Norman Geisler & Frank Turek]
I came across an article questioning whether we have to believe certain things to be a Christian or is it enough just to trust God. The author believed that Christians don’t have to “assent intellectually” to the facts of traditional Christian teaching or agree with the Christian creeds. “Faith” to the author is simply placing one’s confidence in “Spirit” (not the Holy Spirit) and following Jesus’ teaching is more important than believing certain things about Him. Having nothing to do with dogma or creeds, Christianity was seen as a wisdom tradition and way of life rather than a belief. Claiming they were “man-made” and date from the 4th century and Emperor Constantine, the author believed Christianity’s creeds should be disregarded.
Those four verses are some of the most confusing ones in Scripture. Who are the sons of God, the daughters of men, the Nephilim, and how did they come to be mighty men (or as some translations say giants)? The Nephilim appear to be a race of formidable beings associated with extraordinary physical stature and fearful reputation. Mentioned briefly twice in Scripture, we find them in Genesis, just before the flood, and again in Numbers (post flood). Nephilim comes from naphal, meaning to fall. One school of thought holds that the “sons of God” were fallen angels who mated with human women (the daughters of man) and produced a hybrid race of giants called Nephilim. The apocryphal book of Enoch claims these offspring were giants standing thee hundred cubits (450 feet) tall. They had such insatiable hunger that they ate humans as well as one another. Having taught humans medicinal magic, astrology, divination, and other sinful practices, it was their evil ways that caused the flood! Written around 300-100 BC, the book of Enoch never was accepted as part the Hebrew Scriptures and never has been in the Christian canon.
After being asked, “How different would the world look if everyone got what they deserved?” I started wondering. Even as a child, I knew people didn’t get what they deserved. When I was ten, I watched on television as nine black students tried to enroll in an all-white school in Little Rock, Arkansas; they were blocked by the National Guard and an angry mob of 400 angry whites. Two years earlier, on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman. I grew up in Detroit and, while discrimination and segregation were more subtle than in the South, it existed. I lived in a large home with a big yard on a tree-lined street but any bus trip “downtown” told me that the people of color didn’t live in neighborhoods like mine. There may not have been “colored” drinking fountains or “white only” bathrooms but there was a six-foot high, one-foot wide, and half-mile long wall segregating one black community from a neighboring white one. Many other invisible and more impenetrable walls existed within our divided city.
As much as I enjoy reading the works of authors like C.S. Lewis, A.W. Tozer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and N.T. Wright, I admit to not always understanding exactly what they’re saying. Nevertheless, thinking me an expert, a friend sent me an article written by a well-known Christian theologian and asked for my thoughts. Unfortunately, I had none because I couldn’t make sense of it. When I reluctantly admitted my bewilderment, my friend admitted the same. Although we both tried to understand the author, neither of us could discern his point. He appeared to have used a great many fancy words to say very little. While another scholar might make sense of his words, we two reasonably intelligent believers couldn’t. Unfortunately, some pastors, theologians, Christian writers, and fellow believers unnecessarily complicate faith and our relationship with God.
This proverb about iron sharpening iron reminds me of Sunday dinners when I was a girl. After the roast beef was placed in front of my father, he picked up the carving knife and a steel rod. With dramatic flair, he would run the knife back and forth against the steel before carving the meat. For the perfect slice of beef, he used iron to “sharpen” iron.
Devotions of the Heart 