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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. If everything of importance we know about God comes from the Bible, how can we know the Bible is true? Maybe you've asked that question yourself.
You've had children or grandchildren who have asked that question. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. Just look at the colors in a summer sunset or a field of spring flowers, and you can clearly see the fingerprints of a divine Creator. But how can we be certain that this being is the God of Scripture and not some other religion? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress explains why we can believe what the Bible says about God. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message.
Dr. Jeffress. Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. On today's program, we're answering another relevant question in our How Can I Know?
teaching series. The question at hand is, how can I know the Bible is true? This is a pressing issue in our day. Many people see the Bible as nothing more than a collection of creative fairy tales. But as Christians, we need to be prepared to defend the credibility of God's word with simple and easy steps. With simple and convincing facts. And we need to bolster our own personal confidence in the authority of Scripture as well. Let me probe a bit.
Can you give a clear and concise defense of the Bible? Well, because the answer to this question is so important, I want to send you my best-selling book called How Can I Know? So be sure to request your copy today. My book is yours when you give a generous gift to support the growing ministry of Pathway to Victory.
Again, the title is How Can I Know? And at the end of today's message, I'm going to extend an invitation for you to become one of our valued Pathway partners. In recent years, Pathway partners have become the financial backbone of our nonprofit ministry.
Their influence is growing and their impact on America is profound. More about Pathway partners later. But right now it's time for the next study in our series, How Can I Know?
My message today is titled How Can I Know? The Bible is True. It's one thing to acquiesce to the claim that somewhere out there, there's an intelligent being who's responsible for matter that exists around us and oversaw the complexity of the universe. But it's a giant leap to conclude that that intelligent being is the personal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, a God who implanted himself in the womb of a teenager in a remote corner of the earth and nine months later gave birth to the Son of God, a man who would die on a wooden cross to atone for the sins of all people, who would be raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion and is coming back again to earth to reward the righteous and punish the unrighteous. I mean, why couldn't the intelligent being who created everything be Allah of the Quran, of Islam?
Why couldn't it be the force from Star Wars? Why couldn't it be any number of thousands of gods who are out there? The answer is the Bible. It is through the Bible that we have the revelation of everything we need to know about God, who he is, his name, his attributes, his plan and purpose for the world, his desire for your life and my life.
Of course, there are a lot of religious books that claim to be the depository of truth about their respective gods. So the real question is, how do we know the Bible is true? If everything of importance we know about God comes from the Bible, how can we know the Bible is true? Maybe you've asked that question yourself. You've had children or grandchildren who have asked that question.
You know, they have normal doubts. I mean, is there any evidence, for example, outside of the Bible that the events of the Bible took place? What about the so-called contradictions in the Bible, in the Gospels and other places?
How do you explain those? How do we know that the copyist copied the original manuscripts correctly? How do we know we have the right books of the Bible? Why are there 66?
Why not 33 or 107? Who decided what's in the Bible? This is not just an intellectual discussion. If Satan ever wants to get a foothold in your life, he'll do it by causing you to question the validity, the veracity of the Bible. I had that happen in my own experience.
Many of you know my story. I grew up in a Christian home, grew up in this church, was called to the ministry when I was in high school, went to college excited, and then I heard some college professors, religion professors, who sowed seas of doubt about the veracity of the Scripture, talking about all the errors and contradictions in the Bible. I was tempted to turn my back, not just on my call to ministry, but on Christianity as a whole. I mean, if you can't trust the Bible, why even bother? You may be tempted in that way to doubt. You know, Satan's first line of attack, as I said, is to cause people to doubt the Word of God. Remember what the serpent said to Eve in the garden? Has God really said? And we all have to ask that question. Has God really spoken through the Bible?
And if so, how do I know it can be trusted? That's what we're going to talk about this week and next time, is we answer the question, how can I know the Bible is true? Now, first of all, we need to define what we mean by true. What do we mean when we say the Bible is true?
There are two words I want you to write down. One is the word inerrant, inerrant. That word simply means without error. Dr. Charles Ryrie, who was a great theologian and was a member of this church for many years, defined it this way. He said, when we say the Bible is inerrant, we're simply saying the Bible tells the truth. It tells the truth. Now, you have to define truth. You have to make sure you've got a broad enough definition of truth. Truth includes approximations. For example, if you said 10,000 people came to the game last night and somebody counted and said, well, it was really 10,007, did you tell a lie?
No, you were giving an approximation. The Bible includes things like that. Free quotations. Sometimes writers of the Bible paraphrase other scripture. They don't quote it word for word. That's not untruth.
We do that all the time. It includes languages of appearance. When the Bible talks about the four corners of the earth, it's not saying that the earth is flat. Today we use the language of appearance. Your meteorologist, weatherman on your favorite TV channel talks about the sunrise and the sunset, the time.
Is he lying? We know the sun doesn't rise or set. It's the language of appearance. You find that in the Bible as well. The controlling verse of scripture that talks about the Bible being inerrant is 2 Timothy 3 verses 16 and 17. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate and equipped for every good work. Inspired by God. That Greek word is theos nustos. Literally, all scripture is God breathed. Every word came from the breath of God that you have in your Bible.
As Dr. Crystal used to say, God doesn't have bad breath. Everything he says is good and can be trusted. That's what inerrancy is. The Bible tells the truth. That describes the product. The product you have, the Bible, is without error. There's a second word, and that is inspired. That word describes the process by which God communicated his message to us. Maybe you've wondered, how could imperfect people produce a perfect Bible?
Well, Peter answers that question in 2 Peter 1 21. For no prophecy of scripture was ever made by the act of the human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. God oversaw the process of inspirational. And that leads to the definition of inspiration I want you to look at. I've put it on your outline.
Inspiration, and this came from Dr. Ryrie, inspiration is God's superintending of human authors so that using their own individual personalities, they composed and recorded without error in the words of the original autographs, his revelation to man. That's a mouthful right there. Now, we're going to do something. For the next five minutes, we're all going to go to seminary.
Would you like to go to seminary just for five minutes? We're going to have a seminary crash course on bibliology, the study of the Bible, and we're going to use this definition. Let's take it phrase by phrase. Inspiration, first of all, involves God's superintending men. When we say the Bible is perfect, we're not saying the people who wrote it are perfect. Moses, Peter, Paul, all the writers of scripture were imperfect people, so how did they produce a perfect Bible? God oversaw.
He superintended the process. Secondly, God used their individual personalities. That refers to the dual authorship of the Bible. God's the one who initiated scripture, but he communicated through the individual personalities of those who wrote the Bible. He used the emotional outburst of King David, the angry rebukes of Moses, the skepticism of Solomon. He used the systematic reasoning of the apostle Paul. He used the individual personalities to produce the Bible.
How did he do it? He had these men compose and record. God composed and recorded the message. Let's look at that word, recorded.
That means dictation. Did you know some parts of the Bible were literally dictated from God to those who wrote the scripture? Think about the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, or think about in Revelation 2 to 3, the message that Jesus sent to the seven churches. He told John, the apostle John, basically, get a pen and a piece of papyrus and write this down word for word. That's how the message was communicated. But not all the Bible.
In fact, most of the Bible wasn't dictated. It was composed. For example, in Psalm 51, David cried out, be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness. He was desperate. Be gracious to me after this great sin I've committed. Be gracious to me, O God, according to your loving kindness. Now, was he taking dictation when he wrote that? God said, be gracious to me. Lord, is there a comma after me or not? Do you think that's how it happened?
No. He used the personality of the psalmist to produce that message. That's what we have in the Bible. Some of the Bible is recorded. Some of it is composed. But it's all used to communicate his revelation.
Now, pop quiz in our seminary crash course. Are there any lies in the Bible? How many of you would dare say yes?
How many of you would say no? I'm absolutely sure there are no lies in the Bible. Raise your hand if you're convinced.
Now, let me show you why you're wrong. There are lies in the Bible. The first lie came from Satan when he told the woman, you shall not die if you eat of the tree. Now, that was a bald-faced lie. But God's message included the lies of Satan. So, when we talk about God's revelation, his message, that has to be broad enough to include the lies of Satan.
It has to include research. For example, Luke didn't see Jesus up close and personal. His gospel wasn't based on eyewitness experience. He researched, he tells us, his material.
He went to the best sources to get his information. So, God's message has to include research, has to include emotional outbursts like Paul in Romans 9 verses 1 to 2. It even includes quotations from non-biblical sources. You know, every now and then I'll quote from somebody and I'll get an angry email. How could you quote from that person? Don't you know they're a pagan philosopher?
Well, guess what? Even Paul quoted pagan philosophers. In Titus 1.12, he quoted a pagan poet of his day to talk about how worthless the Cretans were. God's message included quotations from non-biblical sources.
It includes approximations, paraphrases of Scripture, the language of appearance. God communicated his message through these men. He did so, next, without error. That means there's no mixture of error with the absolute truth of the Bible. And finally, he did so in the words of the original manuscripts or autographs. When we say the Bible is without error, we're talking about the original manuscripts. That original letter Paul sent to Corinth. That original letter that John penned on the island of Patmos.
But here's the problem. We don't have those original autographs anymore. We have copies of them. There are over 25,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. There are more manuscripts of the New and Old Testament than of any other work of antiquity in history. And they prove the accuracy of the Bible. But the fact is, we don't have the original manuscripts.
So isn't this kind of a worthless argument to say the Bible is without error, but we don't have the books that were without error, we don't have the manuscripts? Not at all. It's very relevant to us today. For example, let's say you've got a $50 bill in your wallet or purse right now. You didn't give it an offering. You've got that $50 bill. Now, that $50 bill was produced by a plate, an engraved plate, according to the government specifications. Where is that plate right now? Well, you've never seen it. It's stored in the Treasury Department. It may have even been destroyed by now. But whether or not that original plate that you don't have, whether it was legitimate or counterfeit, has great relevance to whether your $50 bill is any good or not, it is impossible to have an errant or illegitimate original and have a perfect copy.
You just can't do it. It makes all the difference in the world whether or not the original manuscripts were produced without error. Is there any evidence that the original manuscripts from which our copies were derived are without error? Let me share with you several of the strongest evidences for the inspiration of the Bible that we can trust the Bible.
We're going to talk about three of those evidences today and a final one next time. First of all, consider the Bible's claims about itself. The Bible claims to be inerrant.
Now, you say that's circular reason. We say, I know the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true. I will admit it's the weakest argument, but it's important because we have to know, are we claiming something about the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim about itself? Are we hyping the Bible to say it's inerrant? I had seminary professors, college professors who said this idea of inerrant, the Bible nowhere claims to be inspired and without error.
That's just some man-made claim. No, let's look at the Old Testament. First of all, the Old Testament itself claimed that the Old Testament was inspired hundreds of times. The Bible says, and God spoke these words, or thus saith the Lord, or the words of Jeremiah to whom the word of the Lord came. Over and over again, the Old Testament says this is the word of the Lord. In Psalm 95, we read these words, verses seven and eight. Today, if you would hear God's voice, do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah in the days of Massa in the wilderness. Now, that Psalm was written about 900 B.C. A thousand years later, the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament quoted from Psalm 95.
Listen to how he quotes from it. Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, today if you hear God's voice and so forth, don't harden your hearts. We don't know who the human writer was. The writer of Hebrews says it doesn't matter. It was the Holy Spirit who wrote those words. The apostles themselves claimed that the Old Testament was inspired. Peter in 2 Peter 1 talked about no scripture came about by act of human will, but men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. Jesus himself believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament. The Old Testament was complete by the days of Jesus. He knew it.
He studied it. He believed it was inspired by God. You know what's really interesting is that Jesus seems to have gone out of his way to put his stamp of approval on stories that are ridiculed by liberals the most in the Old Testament. For example, biologists scoff at the idea that humanity came from one man and one woman. And yet, in Matthew 19, Jesus affirmed that. He was talking about the issue of marriage. He said in Matthew 19 four, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?
Singular, one man, one woman. By the way, who assigns gender to people? God does. He's the one who makes them male or female. What a foolish, ludicrous, stupid idea to think you can wave a surgeon's scalpel over somebody and turn them from a man into a woman or a woman into a man.
No person can do that. Only God gets to do that. And we don't hate transgender people. We shouldn't hate transgender people. We ought to understand that it is a confusion.
It needs to be treated compassionately, but it does need to be treated. That's just a little extra. It wasn't included in the sermon. The key part of this is God made them one man, male and female, Jesus said. Or think about his resurrection. Jesus attached his resurrection to the story of Jonah and the great fish. Again, skeptics say, in the belly of a fish for three days?
No way. But listen to what Jesus said. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so shall the Son of Man be there three days in the heart of the earth. Other people scoff at the idea that there was ever a man named Noah who built a giant ark in the middle of the desert and called for repentance. And God eventually sent a flood and destroyed the earth, except for those who were in the ark. And yet in Matthew 24 verses 37 to 39, Jesus attaches his second coming to the story of Noah. For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days there were before the flood, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark. And the flood came and took them all away, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. Jesus attached his second coming to Noah. A few years ago I was on a popular talk show.
It was the most popular talk show of its time. And the host said, you know, pastor, I believe the New Testament, but I just can't accept that story in the Old Testament about Noah. I just think it's a myth.
It couldn't be real. And I said, well, notice that Jesus attached his second coming to that story that you think is a myth. Just suppose Jesus had said instead, just as it was in the days of the Easter Bunny, so shall it be when the Son of Man comes again. If Jesus attached his second coming to the Easter Bunny, would you have any confidence he's coming back again? It makes no sense to try to link reality with a fictitious or a myth of an occurrence.
It just doesn't make any sense. The only way to prove reality is with other reality. My point is Jesus believed the stories of the Old Testament, but it didn't stop there.
He believed every word of the Old Testament was inspired by God. There's much more we need to cover while tackling this relevant question, how can I know the Bible is true? Maybe you know someone who needs to hear this convincing answer. Perhaps it's a friend or family member who's beginning to doubt the reliability of the Bible. At the beginning of today's program, I invited you to request a copy of my bestselling book, How Can I Know? Please don't allow the time to slip away without requesting your copy. Even if you have a copy of this book, another one would be a good gift, a good witnessing tool to share with somebody who needs it. Today's topic is just one of the seven questions I address in my book, How Can I Know? And a copy is yours when you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory. In this book, I answer other relevant questions like, how can I know Christianity is the right religion?
Or how can I know God is good with all the evil in the world? I know this book will prove to be a resource of clarity and comfort for you in these days of uncertainty. It's my privilege to send the book to you today along with the bonus resource, Is Christianity the Only Right Religion? As you support the ongoing ministry of Pathway to Victory with a generous gift. Today, I'm especially grateful for our growing Pathway Partner family. A Pathway Partner is someone who shares our convictions about the power of God's word and agrees to support us every month with a gift. Pathway Partners have been so faithful with their regular giving, and it's made a huge difference in these economically challenging times. Would you be among those who steps forward to join this essential group of supporters today? Thank you so much in advance for your generosity.
David. Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Our goal is to sign up 300 new Pathway Partners during the month of January. And you can help us achieve that goal when you follow the easy steps to sign up online at ptv.org. And when you give your first monthly gift or when you give a one-time gift to support Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you How Can I Know? It's the bestselling book by Dr. Jeffress. Now, when your gift is $75 or more, you'll receive not only the book, but also the complete collection of audio and video discs for the newly updated How Can I Know?
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Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins, inviting you to join us next time when Dr. Jeffress continues to answer the question, How Can I Know the Bible is True? right here on Pathway to Victory. Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas. Picture yourself relaxing aboard a luxury cruise ship as you sail the Mediterranean Sea on the Pathway to Victory Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise. This 11-day journey will take you to unforgettable destinations in Italy, Turkey, and Greece.
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