Doctrine, Part 2
Todd Philips
Frontline
October 12, 2008
In this series called “Doctrine,” we’re looking at the historical tenets of the faith. Last week we talked about the inspiration of the Bible. We looked at the Bible’s own internal claim that it’s the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God without error in all its parts, utterly trustworthy in everything that it says. We agreed last week that the entire Christian faith rests upon the reliability of the Bible, because everything we know about God, everything we know about Jesus, heaven, salvation, sin, hope comes from the text of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
Not everyone agrees that the Bible is inerrant. Not everyone agrees that the Bible is what it claims to be. In fact, not just from outside the church, but some within the churches, some who attend church on a regular basis question the reliability of the Bible.
Here’s the main question for tonight. How can we be sure that those who question the Bible’s reliability are wrong? You may be asking, “Todd, is there any verifiable external evidence, stuff outside the Bible’s own internal testimony, that talks about the Bible’s veracity?” The answer is yes.
We’ve got a lot of information to go through, so I’m going to talk very quickly about the four external proofs of the Bible’s claim to be the actual word of the one true God. Let’s get right into it.
Number one is changed lives, the fact that there are changed lives. One of the greatest evidences of the divine origin of the Bible is the fact that billions upon billions of people have experienced their lives changed by the truth they find in the Bible when they respond to the reality of Christ and turn to Him for their salvation. Billions of people throughout history have believed and responded to the truth that the Bible provides regarding freedom from the power and the penalty of sin, salvation through Christ alone, the ability to speak to and hear from God in prayer, healing from disease and sickness and addiction, hate and hopelessness turning to love and hope, and hundreds of other promises that can be lived out just by following the words of the Bible, all by the power of Jesus as revealed through the Scriptures. In fact, God promises in II Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, and the new is come.” When we give our lives to Jesus Christ, we literally die to our old self, and a brand new creature, a brand new creation is birthed spiritually through Jesus Christ. We’re forgiven of all our sins, past, present and future. We now live a life under the control and the authority of Christ and Christ alone, and our lives are lived to the glory of God and no longer to the glory of self. That’s the reality of a changed life in Christ.
I was thinking about this just over the last couple of weeks. I mean, my life is just one example. Some of you have heard my testimony, my story about how Christ changed my life. Some of you have gone to the newcomer or connection point meeting and received one of the CDs; my story is on there. You know that my life has been changed by Christ in exactly the way that the above passage, II Corinthians 5:17, describes it. My life has been utterly and completely transformed by the reality of Jesus Christ in my life in exactly the way the Bible describes it would happen.
Now what’s interesting to me is that not only did my salvation come about in exactly the way the Bible describes, just like billions of others have experienced as well, but also from the point my life was changed by Christ, all of my choices in my life, both godly and rebellious choices as a believer have resulted in either blessings or conversely conviction by the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way the Bible says. It’s just unbelievable! It’s indescribable! When I sit down with people and talk about the reality about how the truth of the Bible plays out in real life on a daily basis from sunrise to sunset each day of my life as a follower of Christ, the Bible has proven itself to be true in essence, reliable in instruction in the Christian faith, and trustworthy in leading to an ever more intimate relationship with God as we follow the truth of its words. It has happened millions upon millions upon millions of times over and over again. I am one in a line of billions of people throughout history that have been transformed into new creations through Christ in exactly the way it’s revealed in the Bible.
Just think about this for a minute. I’m expecting a response, okay? How many of us in this room right now know the Bible to be utterly trustworthy because of the transformation in our own lives sitting here tonight, amen? (audience responds) That’s the reality of our lives. Most of us in this room have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, found out the truth about Jesus completely from the Bible, because the testimony of Christ is found there. Because of that testimony, we responded to it, and we are utterly new creations. The old is gone. Who we were before we met Christ is gone, and who we are now is here and alive in Christ. We’re new creations.
Now, you may be saying, “Okay, Todd, I get it. I mean, that’s really cool. I appreciate that very impassioned message about changed lives and all the tons of other people who say their lives have been transformed, but really, when it comes down to it, Todd, I know people who say their lives have been transformed by Islam, by scientology, by colon cleansing, by Ben and Jerry’s.” (laughter) “It just goes on and on and on. I see it, but give me more than the changed life argument.” I’ll be glad to.
Number two is manuscript evidence of the Bible. You’re going, “What is that all about?” Well, let me tell you. One of the assertions made by those who question the reliability of the Bible is that the Bible—this is what they will say—has actually evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions, so we cannot rely on the Bible as the Word of God. Have you ever heard that argument? People say that all the time, right?
I remember when I worked at Dell Computer back in Round Rock, Texas, just north of Austin. I was there for a year and a half, just before I went into ministry full time. One of the biggest arguments that I would hear is this one, that they’ve heard, read and seen on the Discovery Channel that the Bible has gone through all these revisions, so it’s not reliable.
Listen, let me just tell you before I give you the proof behind it, and let me say this with absolute certainty. This idea is nothing more than a popularized myth. In fact, the sheer number of manuscripts that we have of the Bible verifies with astonishing redundancy the bewildering accuracy of its word-for-word, letter-for-letter transmission through the ages.
Let me say this as well. This subject of the veracity of the Bible has been addressed and refuted so comprehensively by so many scholars that it proves once again that some people don’t want to be bothered with the facts. This is one of those areas that’s actually one of the strongest defenses of the Bible.
In trying to describe this to you, let me give you two very important factors to consider right here, two factors to determine the accuracy of ancient documents. These are by critics. These are by scholars. These are their own requirements for ancient documentation. Number one, an ancient document’s veracity is based on the number of manuscripts that exist today. So of the original documents, how many manuscripts do we have that exist today that we can compare to the original documents to see if it’s accurate? Number two is the time period between the original document and the earliest manuscripts that we have. Does that make sense?
So we look at how many manuscripts we have to verify the original intent of the author and then the time period between the time it was first authored and the actual manuscript copies we have today. In other words, the more manuscripts we have and the closer these manuscripts are dated to the original, the more effectively we can determine accuracy. Are you still with me? Two of you? (laughter) Okay, very nice.
Let me just give you an example. I bought this off amazon.com a couple days ago, Natural History by Pliny Secundus. We have seven copies from the original text. These seven sheets of paper right here actually tell us we have seven manuscripts of this book 750 years from the original writing. We have seven manuscripts of this book called Natural History that were written 750 years from the original writing. If you can imagine this stage as a timeline for just a moment, those speakers off to my right and your left are ground zero, the time when the original manuscript was written, and this is 750 years later.
This book is considered authentic and accurate, the one we get off amazon.com today, and we only have seven manuscripts written 750 years after the original document. There is no question about its accuracy, none by scholars today.
There’s another book you may be familiar with called The Iliad. Yeah, that’s very nice! Somebody got excited about that. (laughter) You can have this copy after the service. (laughter, laughs) I bought this on amazon.com. No scholars question the copy of this copy from amazon.com, and there are 643 manuscripts of The Iliad; that’s how many pieces of paper are right there, representing 643 manuscripts of this book. The closest of the 643 manuscripts we have to the original documentation over at the speakers there is 400 years. Not a scholar questions the authenticity of this book.
Now, let’s talk about just the New Testament, all right? For the New Testament, authored by God, we have 24,970 manuscripts of the New Testament. One of those manuscripts dates within 50 years of the original document. Whole books of the New Testament date within a hundred years, and we have the entire New Testament dated within 200 – 225 years of the original writing.
Yet listen to me. Nobody questions Natural History’s authenticity and accuracy. No one questions a word of The Iliad, but there are actually people who question the accuracy of a historical document that has 24,970 transcripts. Are you wrapping your mind around the reality of what God’s done, not only to inspire His Word but to transmit it accurately and perfectly through the ages? The further along we go in history, the further back in time archaeology takes us, and the more manuscripts we find. In fact, the further we go down the timeline, the more accurate we find the Bible to be. Isn’t that amazing?
Historians don’t question the accuracy of the copies of either Natural History or The Iliad, yet some scholars still attempt to debate the accuracy of the words in the New Testament. Listen, here’s the bottom line. There is very little question what the original documents said at all. In fact, the Bible’s original meaning has not been lost. It has been miraculously preserved throughout history with unparalleled accuracy. The Iliad is the second most well-documented ancient text. Nothing comes close to that in ancient writing. In fact, the Bible is unique in this way.
You say, “Okay, I’m listening. You’ve got my attention. What else have you got?” Let me tell you the third external proof, and one of the most exciting ones, is archaeology. One of the greatest proofs we have of the Bible being accurate in all that it says is historical archaeology.
So much of the Bible can’t be confirmed empirically; that is to say, it can’t be confirmed by scientific method or in a test tube any more than we can confirm that Abraham Lincoln lived. Are you with me? We have to look at historical documents and historical procedure, not test tube procedures, to try to find things that have happened in history. We can’t remake Abraham Lincoln in a test tube. We’ve got to trust, through history, that he existed and did what he said he did based on the documents. The same goes for the information that we have in the Bible.
It can’t be confirmed empirically, which is normal; however, there is one major area that we can subject the Bible to vigorous examination, and that is historical accuracy. Let me give you the logic here. I was talking at length about this to Lon, and it’s extremely important that we understand this foundation before we go any further. If we can prove that the Bible is historically accurate, then it’s logical to assume that it’s spiritually accurate. In other words, if we can verify that the Bible is accurate on topics that are not its main focus—for example, history, geography, anthropology, and all these other things—then it’s logical to assume that the Bible is accurate on those topics that are its main focus, such as the nature of God, condition of man, plan of salvation through Jesus Christ, and on and on and on.
The bottom line is that archaeological discoveries in the Near East, especially over the last century, have proven the historical accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible unlike any other time in history. Let me put it to you this way. Over the 1900 years prior to that, we have some archaeological evidence, but it’s been in the last hundred years, according to modern scientific and archaeological process that we’ve come up with a tremendous number, literally hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of archaeological proofs to the veracity of the information in the biblical text.
Let me just give you some examples. I’m going to knock these out real quick, but I want you to hear them. Critics of the Bible once claimed that writing was totally and completely unknown in the ancient Near East at the time of Moses, about 1500 B.C., so their argument was that there was no way Moses could have written the first five books of the Bible like he claims he did.
Now we know from archaeology that the people of the ancient Near East, even the slaves of the ancient Near East who were supposedly uneducated, did actually write all the way back to 3000 B.C., 1500 years prior to the time of Moses and literally thousands of documents have been unearthed to prove this without a shadow of a doubt.
Critics of the Bible once claimed that the Bible speaks often of this nation called the Hittites. We hear about them quite often in the Old Testament, but the critics would claim that we have no record of them at all in archaeology; therefore, the stories associated with them are in question.
That was what many critics of the Bible would say until 1906, when Hugh Winkler excavated a massive city in central Turkey and found it to be the capital of a huge Hittite empire, stretching across Asia Minor and Syria, just like the Bible said.
Critics of the Bible once claimed that Pontius Pilate never existed. Then in 1961, archaeologists found a stone slab in Caesarea with Pontius Pilate’s name on it, big as life, just like the Bible says.
Critics of the Bible said that the high priest Caiaphas, who tried Jesus, did not exist outside the pages of the Bible. Then in 1990, just some eighteen years ago, construction crews in Jerusalem accidentally found a burial cave. In it was a box with the name “Caiaphas, High Priest” inscribed on the side, verifying the Bible once again, just like the Bible says.
We found the synagogue in Capernaum just like the Bible says. We found the tunnel Hezekiah built under the wall of Jerusalem just like the Bible says. We found a royal seal belonging to Jezebel from the Old Testament just like the Bible says. We found Jericho, and guess what? The walls did, in fact, come tumbling down just like the Bible says.
Now guys, listen. Like Lon says, I could go on like the Energizer Bunny. We could just be here for hours talking, going and going and going when it comes to archaeological evidence. Hundreds and hundreds of these archaeological discoveries exist to verify the people, the cities, the battles, the nations of the ancient Near East at the time of the Bible as was recorded in the Bible with utter accuracy.
Here’s the point. After nearly two centuries of facing the most aggressive scrutiny of any document in all of history, after nearly 2000 years but specifically the last 200 years, without doubt the Bible has not only survived—and here’s the key—but it has been found to be trustworthy even under the critics’ own mark of credibility, historical accuracy. Archaeology has been one of the greatest things to happen to validate the Bible in all of history. The quote is, “The more they dig out of the ground, the more the Bible has proven to be utterly reliable.”
Now you might be saying, “All right, okay, Todd. Changed lives is compelling. Manuscript evidence is hard to argue. Archaeological evidence is nothing less than extraordinarily convincing. I mean, that’s some huge stuff, but none of this proves the supernatural origins of the Bible.” That leads us to our fourth external proof of the reliability of the Bible, fulfilled prophecy.
You’ve heard me talk about this at different times here at Frontline if you’ve been coming here for many years, but I want to mention this specifically in light of the external evidence for the Bible’s veracity. Listen, fulfilled prophecy is the greatest objective proof of the supernatural origins of the Bible. We could go on and on and on about this, but we don’t have time tonight to address the hundreds of prophecies that are in the Bible. Tonight we’re going to focus on the prophecies specifically about the person of Jesus Christ. I think this will be compelling enough to show the point.
Based on who you talk to and how they combine the different prophecies that we see in the Old Testament about Jesus, there are somewhere around 30 prophecies. Some of them overlap, so that’s why I’m saying somewhere around 30. Some give the same information out. Around 30 prophecies about Jesus exist hundreds to thousands of years before Jesus was born, which include born of a virgin (Isaiah 7), born in Bethlehem (Micah 5), and His Galilean ministry and the centrality of His ministry being in Galilee (Isaiah 9). The Old Testament even speaks of His betrayal by Judas for thirty pieces of silver in Zechariah 11. The crucifixion is spoken about in Psalm 22. Soldiers at the bottom of the cross gamble for His clothing, also in Psalm 22. Finally, the resurrection is spoken about in Psalm 16. These are just seven of those prophecies about Jesus that were fulfilled completely and perfectly in the single life of one man, the God-man, Jesus Christ.
I want to give you an example of how important this is that all those prophecies about Jesus came true in the one man. There was a professor, Peter Stoner, who published a work called “Science Speaks.” He was a professor of math and science for many years. He says that the number of prophecies that happened about Jesus in the Old Testament completely rules out the possibility of coincidence in reference to these prophecies of Jesus. This is amazing to me. He says, “We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled all eight”—he chooses just eight, much like I had a list of seven—“prophecies is one in 1017.” He uses modern statistical science to show this. That would be, of course, 1 with 17 zeros behind it. That’s the chance that eight prophecies would come true in Jesus.
Now, he says that in order to help us comprehend the staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that we take 1 times 1017 and lay them on the face of Texas. They would cover the whole state two feet deep. Now, you mark one of those silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly over the whole state. You blindfold a man and tell him he can travel as far as he wants, but he must pick up the one silver dollar and say that’s the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? The same chance that the prophets would have had of doing all these prophecies and speaking of Jesus.
This is what really blows my mind. Stoner then says, “Let’s take 48 of the prophecies”—the overlapping ones, all that we have total 48—“we find the chance that any one man would fulfill 48 of those Old Testament prophecies as 1 times 10157.” That’s this. (laughter) Have you got that? Do you need time to write that? (laughter) So it’s one in 10157.” Listen, this will blow your mind. The estimated number of electrons in the universe is 1079, so it should be quite evident at this point that Jesus did not fulfill the prophecies by accident. When you begin to look at the reality of these prophecies, we can come to only one conclusion, that God wrote this work from Genesis to Revelation.
You may be going, “Well, Todd, Jesus knew the whole Old Testament, right? He was a scholar. It says He was a rabbi, a Jewish teacher, so what He did was just live His whole life based on the prophecies He knew about the Messiah.” That sounds good, right? But let me ask you a question. How could Jesus have convinced Caesar Augustus, while Jesus was still in Mary’s womb, to take a census that would cause Him to be born in Bethlehem? He can’t. Or that Roman soldiers would gamble for His clothing while He was on the cross? Not so much. It goes on and on and on. The bottom line is that many of these prophecies happened when He was out of control of His own life, in the womb and on the cross.
“Okay, Todd. Maybe Jesus’ followers rewrote the Bible. They went back and rewrote the Old Testament.” You’ll hear that on television too, that they rewrote the Old Testament. Well, those television shows and anybody talking about that would have to completely disregard the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery of 1947. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a copy of Isaiah dating to 100 – 150 B.C., before Christ. So the Isaiah prophecies in Isaiah 9, 11 and 53 that speak to Jesus coming, that prophesy that Jesus is going to come, those Isaiah chapters that we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls from 150 years before Christ lived are the same exact prophecies we find in our Bible today.
The same is true for Psalm 22. We have a Psalm scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls dated at 50 B.C. It has the same prophecy of Christ’s crucifixion that our Bible has in Psalm 22 today. Do you see my point? There is so much study. We have incontrovertible proof that the followers of Jesus did not go back and rewrite the Old Testament; they weren’t even alive when these documents we found were in existence.
Here’s the point. We have a Bible that’s been written by a supernatural God. He did something that, by all modern scientific or statistical reasoning, could not be done by any human being or a multiplicity of human beings. We now call that the Bible. Because of this, we can have absolute and total confidence in what the Bible claims regarding Jesus, salvation, heaven, hell and everything else that it teaches us.
Look, if you’re in college, professors will try to mess with you and your belief in the Bible’s infallibility. Friends and coworkers will try to tell you that you’re not thinking straight and have missed the latest Discovery Channel show proving all this to be wrong. They’ll give you quotes from these TV shows and send you links to those things, but hear me. Until those people can untransform your life, until those people can find a way to undiscover 24,970 manuscripts validating the veracity of the Bible, and until they can undo 1 with 157 zeros after it, listen. You can rely on the biblical text. You can live with confidence according to its plan. You can live with confidence that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God, and you can live by its truths every day with confidence that God will work through it by the power of the Holy Spirit living inside you to guide you to the plan that He has for your life, because He has a plan.
Friends, we live in a day where people desperately need to hear these truths. We live in a day where the veracity of the Bible continues to be accosted, but remember this. For 2000 years it has stood the test of time. It’s accurate to every word. Its transmission is authoritative. God wrote it, and you can count on it. Let’s pray.
Father, I want to thank You. I thank You for allowing us all this information. Changing lives alone is enough. I mean, Father, I believe Your Word because I’ve been transformed by its truth. That’s all I need, and You know my heart, Father. But Father, You have also provided us the document called the Bible from Genesis to Revelation that is utterly trustworthy, that stands the test of time, that stands scrutiny from scholars from all backgrounds and all beliefs, and for that, we thank You. We thank You that we can submit our lives and our lifestyles to Your Word and Your truth and that we will be able to live a life according to Your Word, just as the Bible says. Father, as we continue to move forward and continue to dig further back in archaeology, as we continue to find more archaeological evidence and more manuscripts, help that to just be the icing on the cake of our faith, so that, Father, our trust in Jesus Christ and the transforming nature of what it means to be in relationship with You would be enough, for it is, Father. Father, also help us to use this truth to speak to our coworkers, our family members, our friends, and our enemies, that we might share the love of Christ in ways that they would understand. Use this information. Use our transformed lives. Use the service we provide in Your name to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ. Use us to change the world in Christ’s name for maybe one last time. Father, we thank You for tonight, and we look forward to the rest of this series, in Jesus’ name, amen.'"
I've heard so many times how I can't use the bible as fact, or use it to back up my beliefs, because overall, its 'unreliable,' a 'fallacy.'
Take a second, look at the FACTS.
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