A New Confidence for a New Year

            As the father of a toddler, I’ve been hearing the song “Jesus Loves Me” quite a bit lately. In fact, Adrianna wants to hear that song at bedtime every night, so I hear it at least once a day! The first line of that song makes a very important claim, one that many people today would reject. That line says, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” That may seem like just a simple children’s song, but its actually making an astounding claim—that we can know that a statement is true simply because the Bible says it is.

            That is a very significant claim, and its one that most people today would reject. In fact, many Christians are not willing to give whole-hearted approval to the claim that we can know that a statement is true simply because the Bible says it is. It is not popular in the culture at large to place that kind of confidence in the Bible; thus, it can be tempting for us to hesitate to place our full confidence in Scripture.

            So, should we be willing to say, “this I know, for the Bible tells me so?” Do we have good reasons to be so confident about what the Bible says? Today, I hope to convince you that the answer is “yes!” We’re going to look at a few of the most commonly asked questions about the Bible, and in my opinion we will find some very satisfying answers. These answers will take the form of an acronym that spells out the word MAPS, so that this little memory device will help you remember these answers whenever these questions might come up.

Let’s begin with a question that is common to virtually everyone who doubts the reliability of the Bible.

How do we know the Bible hasn’t been changed over the years?

            Virtually everyone who wants to challenge the reliability of the Bible will claim either that the Bible was deliberately changed at some point in the past or that it has simply picked up thousands of errors as it was copied over the years and thus can no longer be trusted. You will hear this claim from atheists on the one hand all the way to Mormons and Muslims on the other! So how do we know the Bible hasn’t been changed over the years? The answer is the word manuscripts. The “m” in that word gives us the first letter of our acronym.

            Manuscripts are the ancient, handwritten copies of the Bible that we have discovered through archaeology. These manuscripts are copies of the original writings that were meticulously copied and handed on from person to person and group to group. For the Old Testament, these manuscripts were copied by a group of Jewish scholars known as the Masoretes. These scholars took their work seriously—they knew how many letters were in each line, how many lines were to be on each page, and if they made a mistake they threw out the whole thing. Their work was so precise that when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered around 1950, they confirmed that the Masoretes work was nearly flawless.

            In the case of the New Testament, archaeologists have uncovered literally thousands upon thousands of manuscripts—far more, in fact, than any other ancient work of literature. The New Testament, as you might know, was originally written in Greek, and if we consider only the Greek manuscripts that we have found, we have over 5,000 manuscripts to work with—which is about 8 times more than the number of manuscripts that have been found of any other ancient book (#2 on the list is the Iliad by the Greek poet Homer). Archaeologists have found some copies of the New Testament that date to within 35 years of when the Book of Revelation was written. If that sounds like a long time, its not! In this field of study, 35 years is like a couple of days.

            But, if we also count the manuscripts that we have found that were copied into other languages, like Latin, we have over 24,000 manuscripts to work with! Manuscripts of the Bible have been found all over the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe, and when we compare them to each other, we find that the text of the Bible has always been consistent—there is no evidence at all of any sort of vast conspiracy to corrupt the Bible.

Now as far as the question of errors and mistakes in copying, it is true that these individual manuscripts have copying mistakes in them—a misspelled word here or there, or a word accidentally left out of a verse (you would make mistakes, too, if you were copying the entire New Testament by hand!). But, when we compare all of these manuscripts together, it is easy to spot these mistakes and ensure that they don’t creep in to our copies of the Bible today. The copy of the Bible that you hold in your hand is the result of painstaking work to compare all of the copies of Scripture we possess in order to root out the copying mistakes that were made. So you can confidently say that your Bible is not filled with mistakes and errors; instead, it contains precisely what the original authors of Scripture wrote with their own hands.

How do we know the events written about in the Bible actually happened?

            The answer to this question is the word “archaeology,” which gives us the letter “a” in our acronym. As archaeologists have done their work over the years, they have repeatedly found that the historical details recorded in the Bible are accurate and true. For example, archaeologists recently discovered coins from ancient Egypt that bore the name and image of the biblical character Joseph from the book of Genesis. One coin apparently also made reference to the dream that he interpreted for Pharaoh.

            We could mention thousands of other discoveries as well. Many cities and towns mentioned in the Bible have been found. Some of them are still being lived in, like Jerusalem, which still contains artifacts like the aqueduct built by King Hezekiah of the Old Testament or portions of the Temple in which Jesus walked and talked (perhaps you’ve heard of “The Wailing Wall”). All of these discoveries reveal that the people and places of the Bible were real people and real places.

            Let’s compare this for a moment to another religious book—the Book of Mormon. That book makes all kinds of claims about people who supposedly lived in North America many years ago and who became the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans. Archaeologists have never made a single discovery that backs up the story of the Book of Mormon. In fact, you won’t find maps in the back of the Book of Mormon like you do in the Bible because they can’t be produced! Mormons just have to guess about where those people supposedly lived because we haven’t found any proof that they actually existed.

            This observation raises serious doubts about everything that’s found in the Book of Mormon. If it can’t get the facts of history straight, why should we trust anything else it says? Perhaps you can see then how archaeology gives us confidence in the Bible. To paraphrase Jesus, since the Bible is accurate about earthly things that we can confirm through disciplines like archaeology, then we have good reason to trust it when it tells us about heavenly things—like the character of God and salvation.

How do we know that the Bible is more than just the writings of human beings?

            It is certainly true that the Bible didn’t just fall from the sky into our hands. The words of Scripture were actually written down on paper by human beings. But if that’s the case, then how can we claim that the Bible is anything more than just the opinions of human beings? Does it actually bear the mark of a divine origin?

            Yes it does, and we can see this in two ways, which will give us the last two letters of our acronym. The first mark of divine origin is predictive prophecy, which gives us the letter “p.”

            You might be familiar with the fact that the Bible has made certain predictions about future events, but what you may not realize is how specific some of these prophecies are. In general, the Bible’s prophecies are clear enough that their interpretation is obvious, and they could easily be proven wrong if they didn’t come true. Let me give you an example of what I mean—if I said, “We’re going to get an inch of snow tomorrow,” by the end of the day tomorrow it would be easy to prove whether or not my prediction had come true. But if I said, “A wintery sky will arise,” it would be more difficult to tell whether or not my prediction came true. What does a “wintery sky” even mean? Does it mean cold winds? Cold air temperatures? Also, it wouldn’t be particularly noteworthy to predict a wintery sky in December! Such a prediction wouldn’t show any special insight on my part.

            Most so-called “prophets” over the years have given only vague prophecies like my wintery sky prophecy. Nostradamus is a great example of such a prophet. Every so often, you’ll see a supermarket tabloid declaring that Nostradamus predicted some kind of world event, but when you read the so-called “prophecy,” its so vague that you could interpret it in a dozen ways.

            The prophecies of the Bible are very different. Many of them are very specific, and the fact of the matter is that they have come true. Some of the prophecies even give the specific names of kingdoms and people. [READ Daniel 8:20–22] [READ Isaiah 44:24–28]

            We can also look at the numerous prophecies that were fulfilled by the Lord Jesus. By some counts there were hundreds of prophecies that his life fulfilled, with such specific details as the name of his birthplace, the content of his personal character, and the treatment that he would receive in his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.

            The fact that the Bible has accurately and specifically predicted future events before they took place is a powerful proof that it is supernatural in origin. It could not possibly be a merely human book because human beings do not have the ability to predict the future with such accuracy.

            The second mark of divine origin is statistics, which gives us the letter “s” in our acrostic. The unique circumstances behind the way that the Bible was written simply defy all odds. The probability that we would even have a book like the Bible is all but impossible. Consider this: The Bible was written over a period of more than 1500 years on 3 different continents by 40 different authors from at least 19 different walks of life, yet it contains one continuous storyline and no contradictions. Most of these authors did not know each other and they were not working in collaboration.

            It is not as though the authors of the Bible got together in Jerusalem one day and came up with a plan for their writing. They worked independently of each other, yet their writings show complete agreement with the writings of all of the other authors. If we didn’t have a book like the Bible, I doubt we would believe that such a book could even exist.

           I believe we can see that the Bible is worthy of our utmost confidence. From this information, I believe that we can be confident that when we build our lives upon the Bible, we are building on a solid foundation. We can truly stand tall and proud when we say, “this I know, for the Bible tells me so!”