ARE THE 66 BOOKS OF THE BIBLE RELIABLE?

This past Sunday the sermon was from 2 Timothy 3:14-16. We saw there that Paul calls the Scriptures "sacred" and "breathed out by God" and are therefore authoritative, powerful, and profitable for our Christian lives. We might think of it as our daily bread. The Bible is our main staple. It is necessary for our spiritual health and growth. Yet, we have this bad habit of neglecting the Scriptures in our lives. (Click here to read the blog article I quoted from Sunday on our strange neglect of the Bible) Laziness? Ignorance? These are likely the reasons. Some say it's because the Bible is hard to understand. It can be but it can become easier if we learn how to interpret the Bible. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said,  “The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” Ultimately, the excuses we give for why we are not acquainted with the scriptures are just excuses that we need to stop making.

But perhaps there are some who feel it is hard to trust the Bible. They have seen the PBS and History channel programs about how the Bible came to be. How can we trust that these writings are not forgeries? How can we be sure we are not being duped into believing lies? I am about to say something shocking - in one sense you can't be sure. Don't misunderstand me, much can be said about the integrity (that the original text and meaning was preserved) and the authenticity (they are not forgeries) of the text. There are more ancient manuscripts of the Bible than any other ancient writing. Maybe you have seen the diagram below floating around on facebook? (Click here to see a larger version)

As you can see - the New Testament alone has not only more ancient copies, it also has the least amount of time between the actual writing and the oldest manuscript. No one questions if the Odyssey that Amazon.com offers for Kindle is authentic Homer, despite the fact there are only 600+ copies and the oldest is dated 500 years after Homer wrote it.

So we have good reason to trust it. But at the end of the day, we cannot reach 100% certainty simply by looking at the historical and textual evidence. We may agree Paul wrote Romans but why should we believe God inspired Paul when he wrote Romans? 

John Piper addresses this very question in a video blog. His answer is that we can trust the 66 books of the Bible because in the Bible we encounter Christ. Jesus reveals himself in all of Scripture and "vindicates his word in it's entirety." (Click here to watch the short video)

Our tendency is to demand a level of certainty before venturing out. We will not cross the rickety bridge until someone can assure us it will not collapse when we get halfway across. But can even 100 engineers assuring us the bridge will not collapse give us absolute certainty? Of course not. At the end of the day, you just have to start walking. Same is true of the Scriptures: start reading them and deeper the assurance and confidence that the Bible is God's word will come as you encounter the Lord Jesus Christ in the pages of Scriptures.