7 Questions God Isn't Afraid Of: Question 2 - Can I Really Trust the Bible?

In the last article,  we went back to the Garden of Eden and looked at the first question ever asked in Scripture. The serpent did not open with a lie. He opened with a question: "Has God indeed said?" This one question has a dilemma hiding inside of it, and I want to pull it out into the light today.

Before we can answer "did God really say," we have to settle something else first. We have to know whether the Bible that records what God said can be trusted at all. This is exactly where the enemy’s first question was leading. You see, if he cannot get us to doubt what God said, he will get us to doubt the Book that says it. And if the Bible falls, every promise in it falls along with it.

So today, let's deal with this conundrum head-on. Can I really trust the Bible?

How Old is the Bible, Really?

The Bible does not have one birthday, because the books inside it were written at different times. Scholars generally place the first book written, either Genesis or Job, around 1400 BC. The last, most likely Revelation, was finished around 90 AD. This makes the oldest part of your Bible more than 3,400 years old, and the newest part more than 1,900 years old.

For comparison, here is roughly where the other major religious texts sit:

• The Qur'an (Islam) was compiled around 650 AD

• The Vedas (Hinduism) were composed across roughly 1500 to 500 BC

• The Tao Te Ching (Taoism) dates to around 400 to 250 BC

• The Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism) dates to around 200 BC to 200 AD

The Old Testament of the Bible predates all of these other religious writings. No matter what conclusion you make, the Bible is not a new arrival.

The Book That Should Not Exist

Here is where it stops being trivial and becomes staggering. Facts about the Bible and how it came into existence cannot be dismissed as coincidence.

The Bible was written by roughly 40 writers. They were kings and fishermen, a physician, shepherds, farmers, priests, and prophets. These 40 men wrote on three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. And what’s more amazing is that they wrote across a span of about 1,500 years.

Most of these writers never met. They never could have. Most of them were separated by centuries. Which means there was no collaboration, no editorial committee, and no shared outline. And yet every single book tells one story.

Think about these facts for a minute and what they mean. Forty writers who never coordinated, spread across fifteen centuries and three continents, writing in three different languages, and the message never fragments. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The story builds.

The first book of the Bible, Genesis, promises a Redeemer, and the last book, Revelation, crowns the Redeemer as King. And all the pages in between point to one Person, Jesus Christ.

Try to organize that through human means. Get forty people from different countries, different centuries, and different languages to write sixty-six documents that assemble into one coherent message without ever speaking to each other. I promise you, you cannot do it. Not by planning or the finest coordination and certainly not by accident. Something held it together. Someone held it together.

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."

The most telling word in this verse is "inspiration." In fact, this word is the whole answer to the question. In the original language, it means "God-breathed." Forty men held the pens, but One Author breathed the words, and that is the only explanation that accounts for what we are looking at. The Book that should not exist does exist. Not because forty men were brilliant, but because one God was speaking.

The Prophecies

Now let’s add another factor to the equation. In his Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, scholar J. Barton Payne cataloged roughly 1,817 predictions in Scripture, and counted a substantial portion of them as already fulfilled exactly as written.

These are not vague, horoscope-style predictions that could mean anything. These prophecies are specific. For example, the town the Messiah would be born in is recorded in Micah 5:2 over 700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Another example is the manner of Christ’s death, which was written centuries before crucifixion was ever used (Psalm 22:16-18, Isaiah 53). Also, the price Judas received for the betrayal of Christ, down to the number of pieces of silver, was prophesied in Zechariah 11:12-13.

The Bible is one Book that contains hundreds of specific prophecies and predictions that have been fulfilled in detail, in history, and on record.

Truth Springing Out of the Earth

The evidence of the divine nature of the Bible is not only on the pages, but it is also in the ground. Psalm 85:11 tells us, "Truth shall spring out of the earth.”  Archaeology has repeatedly confirmed the people, cities, and events Scripture describes. Kings once dismissed as legendary have turned up in inscriptions while cities once called mythical have been excavated.

Perhaps the most concrete evidence of the Bible's authenticity was discovered in 1947 when a shepherd boy threw a rock into a cave near the Dead Sea. This one action changed biblical knowledge forever with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Among the discoveries were fragments of roughly 190 biblical scrolls, including a complete scroll of the Book of Isaiah that predated the oldest copy previously known by about a thousand years.

The mention of this discovery matters more than anything else in this article because the most common objection people raise is, "the Bible has been copied and translated so many times, it must have changed." The Isaiah scroll let scholars test that objection directly. They laid a copy from around 125 BC beside a copy from around 900 AD, with a thousand years of hand-copying between them.

And guess what happened…they matched. Not word-for-word identical in every spelling, but with no change to the meaning of the text. A thousand years of copying, and the message did not drift. This fact disputes the claims that the Bible has been changed and actually turns them into a measure of authenticity.

What God Says About His Own Word

The facts of the authenticity of the Bible are strong and solid, but we do not build our faith on manuscript evidence. We build our faith on what God says about His own Word:

• Psalm 119:160 - "The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever." 

• 2 Peter 1:21 - "Prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

• Isaiah 55:11 - "So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please."

• Isaiah 40:8 - "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever."

Notice in these verses that God never defends His Word. He doesn’t argue for it or produce evidence for it; He simply tells us what it is and what it can and will do. God's Word is truth that endures forever, given by His Spirit. It never returns empty, and it stands long after everything around it has withered.

So, Can I Really Trust the Bible?

Yes - and here is what that means practically.

Look at what we have stacked up in this article. We have a Book that is older than every other sacred text in the world. This Book was written by forty writers who never met, never coordinated, and never contradicted one another.

Hundreds of specific prophecies recorded centuries before they came to pass, and then fulfilled in detail, in history, on record. Cities and kings that scholars once called myths, pulled out of the dirt exactly where Scripture said they would be. A scroll from a cave that proved a thousand years of copying changed nothing. And over all of it, God's own testimony about His own Word. Notice that you were never asked to believe blindly. Faith in the Bible is not a leap into the dark.

When the question comes, and it will, you are not being asked to believe something weak. You are standing on the oldest, most tested, most archaeologically corroborated, most internally consistent document in human history, and God Himself says He breathed it.

So what does that change on an ordinary Tuesday? It means that when you open your Bible, you are not reading religious opinions collected by well-meaning men. You are reading what God actually said. It means the promise you underline is exactly as reliable as the God who made it. It means that when Scripture tells you that you are forgiven, you are forgiven, no matter what your feelings tell you that afternoon.

Peter put it plainly to people who were being told they had believed a fairy tale: "We did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were eyewitnesses of His majesty." (2 Peter 1:16)

The Bible is not a book of fables; it is God's own account, with trustworthy eyewitnesses. The enemy's whole strategy depends on you not being sure of its authenticity. However, you have no reason to be unsure.

So the next time that question comes at you, answer it the way Jesus did in the wilderness. He did not debate the enemy or argue the evidence. He said, "It is written," and that settled it all. You can stand on those same three words, because what is written has been tested more thoroughly than anything else you own.

This Week's Question Sheet

Reference Sheet 2, "Can I Really Trust the Bible?" is ready for you. It walks through what inspiration actually means, four reasons trust in Scripture is reasonable, how Jesus Himself treated the written Word, and every reference you need in one place.

If you have already signed up to receive the reference sheets, you can find them on the link to the hub in your email. If you have not signed up, you can grab the set by completing the information below. Each new sheet arrives as it releases:

The next article in this series will answer the question, why does God allow suffering? This one is harder to answer, and I won’t even try to soften it. Until then, have a blessed week. See you next time.

Blessings,

Amy

I'd love to hear from you. Has anyone ever challenged you about whether the Bible is reliable, and how did you answer? Share in the comments below.