Blind Faith – The Reliability of The Bible

(Message 3) Is the Bible full of errors? Is there any archaeological support for Bible stories? Is Biblical prophecy reliable? If you have similar questions, you do not want to miss this message on the reliability of the Bible! #GCBlindFaith

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Know Why You Believe What You Believe

The Reliability of the Bible – 3 Areas of Evidence:

The Text
The Archaeological Record
Fulfilled Prophecy

1. The Text of the Bible (over 24,000 copies of ancient NT manuscripts):

5800 Greek copies
10,000 Latin copies
9300 Other Languages

Homer’s “The Iliad”:

1757 Copies

Plato’s “Dialogues”:

250 Copies

Time between copies and the original manuscript:

The Iliad – 400 Years
Dialogues – 1200 Years
Gospel of John – 35 Years

“We could recreate the entire NT just using [quotes from] the Early Church Fathers.”

“Not a single variant affects our theology or a single doctrine of faith.”

The Text of the Bible:

There is more evidence for the Bible than any other classical work in the world.
If we can’t trust the Bible, then we can’t trust a single work from antiquity.

2. The Archaeological Record (see presentation link)

False claim: Moses couldn’t have written the Torah
Ur of the Chaldees
Customs of Abraham
Sodom and Gomorrah
Hittites
King David
Pontius Pilate
Caiaphas the High Priest
James, the son of Joseph, brother of Jesus
The More They Dig Out of the Ground – The More the Bible Proves to Be Right
Read the book by former Atheist, Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ

3. Fulfilled Prophecies

Isaiah 13 – The Fall of Babylon (200 Years Before)
Daniel 2 and 11 – Alexander the Great (500 Years)
Over 300 Prophecies about the Messiah
Malachi 3 – A messenger preceding the Messiah (430 BC)
Isaiah 7 – The Virgin Birth (700 BC)
Micah 5 – The Messiah born in Bethlehem (700 BC)
Zechariah 9 – The Messiah would enter Jerusalem riding a donkey (500 BC)
Isaiah 9 – Galilee would be the Messiah’s headquarters (700 BC)
Zechariah 11 – The Messiah would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver (500 BC)
Isaiah 53 – The Messiah would be suffer and die and be raised to life (700 BC)
Psalm 22 – Details the scene at the Crucifixion (1000 BC)
By conservative estimates Jesus fulfilled over 30 OT prophecies relating to the Messiah
- The chance of 1 man fulfilling over 30 prophecies is 1 x 10^100

What Would You DO if you KNEW the Bible was TRUE?

Next Steps: