Is the Bible true?
The Bible has withstood attacks from critics for centuries, because we can easily make a compelling case for it’s complete accuracy.
Consider the astounding prophecies. The Bible recorded the downfall of cities like Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre and Sidon – predicting that the cities would never be rebuilt. Today, none of those cities exist. The prophecies of Daniel were so profound that critics complained that the book must have been written after the events took place. Unfortunately for the critics, secular historians mention the book’s existence shortly after Daniel said he wrote the book.
Archaeologists are powerful witnesses to the Bible’s accuracy. The early books of the Bible include the names of Egyptian pharaohs whose identities were unknown outside the Bible’s pages. Yet excavations done in the last fifty years have found ancient records confirming their place on the Egyptian throne. Lee Strobel was an agnostic reporter who intended to use archaeology to disprove the Bible. The result was his conversion to Christianity and his book “The Case for Christ” which documents how archaeology verifies the Bible’s timeline.
Isaiah recorded that the world was a globe (Isa. 40:22) and Job stated that the earth was suspended on nothing (Job 26:7). Yet most people believed the world was flat until the great explorers sailed around the world in the 15th century AD. Moses recorded that the blood was the source of life for mankind; it would take medical science until the 1600’s to understand this.
Until 1947, the oldest known manuscript from the Old Testament dated back to 900 AD. But then Bedouin shepherds discovered scrolls in vases hidden in caves near Jerusalem, a find now known as the “Dead Sea Scrolls”. Portions of every Old Testament book with the exception of Esther were found; and an examination of the scrolls made an astounding conclusion: the scrolls dated back before the birth of Christ – more than a thousand years older than the previous oldest text – and yet the texts were virtually identical. Examining the copies of the book of Isaiah, the researchers found that only a few Hebrew letters were different (none effecting the meaning of the text) even though the copies were written over a thousand years apart. God had truly protected His Word!
But the most powerful example of the Bible’s authority is evidenced by the changed lives of its readers. Each Sunday, churches in every city and town include men and women who will tell you that the Bible is unlike any other book in the world. The Words in the Bible are Living Words that bring hope, comfort and direction – just as the writer of Psalm 119:105 said to God, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”