If you believe the Bible to be the
inspired word of God given to man for guidance and direction then you have to
ask yourself why He would allow it to become corrupted. Doesn’t He have the
power to prevent something like that?
Second, most of what you read about
the Bible’s authenticity is written by people who are trying to convince you
that it’s unreliable. The fact that they have a PhD in Theology makes no
difference. Many theologians don’t believe that the Bible’s really the Word of
God, because many seminaries teach them that. But the fact remains that it’s
the most thoroughly validated book in history.
According to Christian Apologetics and
Research Ministries (www.carm.org), New Testament documents are better
preserved and more numerous than those of any other ancient writings. There are
5,686 Greek manuscripts in existence today for the New Testament, thousands
more than for any other ancient text. Because the copies are so numerous, they
can be cross checked for accuracy. This process has determined that the
internal consistency of New Testament documents is about 99.5% textually pure.
In addition there are over 19,000 copies in the Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and
Aramaic languages. The total supporting New Testament manuscript base is over
24,000 manuscripts.
Do you realize the magnitude of the
conspiracy that would have to have existed over the centuries in order to pass
off an adulterated work as pure? Many of these manuscripts pre-date the
Catholic Church by several centuries. People who promote this kind of nonsense
are only able to do so because of our lack of knowledge about the Bible’s
origins and our lack of faith in God’s word.
Third, you’re concerned about the
claims of non-believers whose only source is a TV “documentary” that you’ve
never seen and whose authors you know nothing about.
But really, it all boils down to this.
If you believe the Bible and it turns out to be wrong, you can always tell God
that you took Him at His word. And if there is no God, you won’t be any worse
off for knowing that. You’ll only be as dead as when you found out. But those
who don’t believe the Bible and find out too late that there is a God, will
have to admit that they refused to take His word for things and will suffer an
eternity that’s disagreeable beyond imagining. In short believers have nothing
to lose by believing and may gain incredible blessings, and unbelievers have
nothing to gain by not believing and may suffer incredible punishment. Who are
the winners and who are the losers?
No comments:
Post a Comment