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Now, here's today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory. God's Word with you every day on this Bible teaching program. On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, there is more and earlier manuscript evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ as described in the Gospels. There's more evidence for Him than there is for Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great in ancient works of literature.
That's an amazing thing. Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor Dr. Robert Jeffress. In 2 Timothy, we read that all Scripture is God-breathed, but the Bible isn't the only religious text that claims to be divinely inspired.
So what makes the Bible different from all the others? Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress provides compelling evidence for why we can trust the claims of Scripture. Now, here's our Bible teacher to introduce today's message. Dr. Jeffress? Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory.
During January, we're featuring a practical teaching series that's perfectly suited for the new year. It's titled, How Can I Know? And it's specifically designed to answer seven of the most important questions in life. On today's program, I'm tackling another common question that people often struggle to answer. How can I know the Bible is true? You see, too many people have dismissed the Bible as just another religious book. If you're a grandchild who's on a secular campus, it's likely your student is surrounded by agnostic teachers who disparage biblical authority.
Tried and shallow answers don't help our students. We need to be equipped to defend the beautiful tapestry of grace and redemption woven throughout the Bible with clear evidence that Scripture is God's word to us. This issue is so important. In fact, I'm prepared to send you a copy of my bestselling book in which I answer, How Can I Know the Bible is True? Please be sure to take advantage of this resource. When you give a generous gift to Pathway to Victory, I'll send you a copy.
The full title, How Can I Know? Answers to Life's Seven Most Important Questions. In fact, when you respond today, I'll also include the very popular booklet I've written for you. It's called, Is Christianity the Only Right Religion? This resource is written to help you understand the distinctive qualities of your faith and how Christianity stands out as the one and only true religion.
Stand by for more details about these resources right after today's message. But right now, let's search for an answer to this pressing question, How Can I Know the Bible is True? Your eternal destiny depends upon what we're going to talk about for the next 35 minutes. Whether you spend eternity enjoying the pleasures of heaven or you spend eternity in hell separated from God depends on whether or not the Bible can be trusted. Is it telling the truth?
If you think that's an overly dramatic statement, just think about this. If the Bible is wrong, then it means we're on the wrong path to heaven. The Bible teaches Jesus is the way to heaven. If the Bible is wrong, then we're on the wrong road. And if that weren't bad enough, the Bible gives us no clue what other road to take.
There are thousands of different ways to heaven or so we're told, thousands of religions that claim to offer eternal life. If the Bible doesn't tell us which one to take other than Christianity, how are we to know the way? Well, I believe the Bible can be trusted. And that's why we began last time talking about how can I really know that the Bible is true? Last time we talked about what it means the Bible is true.
We use two words inerrant. That means it's without error. The Bible tells the truth.
It's talking about the product. It's truth without any mixture of error. And then secondly, we looked at the word inspired. 2 Timothy 3 says that the Bible is God-breathed.
Theos nousus. God originated the Scripture, but he did so. He poured his message into imperfect men who produced a perfect Bible. What are the evidences that the Bible is true? Well, first of all, we talked about the Bible's claim of itself. The Bible claims to be God's word. Now, that's circular reasoning. I know the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true.
But understand this. The Bible tells us that Jesus and the apostles believed in the truthfulness of the Bible. They believed it was inspired and inerrant. So when we say the Bible is true, we're not claiming anything for the Bible that the Bible doesn't claim for itself. Secondly, we looked at fulfilled prophecy. It points to the trustworthiness of the Bible. No other religious book, the Book of Islam, the Book of Mormon, none of those books contains fulfilled prophecy.
Prophecies that were written down hundreds of years before the fact and can be verifiably fulfilled. You don't have that in the Quran for Islam. You don't have that in the Book of Mormon or any other religious book. A third evidence for the reliability of the Bible is the unity of theme in the Bible. Other religious books were written by a single person over a short period of time, and yet there's not any unity in a lot of those books. But look at the Bible.
Think about it. It was written by over 40 authors from every background imaginable, most of whom didn't know one another. It was written over a period of 1,500 years.
It was written in a location of 2,000 miles separated. And yet, in spite of all of that diversity, it has a unity of theme. There is that scarlet thread of redemption through the Bible, through Jesus Christ. There's a unity of symbols that you find in Genesis and Daniel all the way through the Book of Revelation in the New Testament. Now today, we're going to look at two more evidences for the truthfulness of the Bible. The first is the early acceptance of the message, the early acceptance of the message. When you look at the rapidity with which the message, especially the New Testament, was embraced, it argues for the trustworthiness of Scripture. You see, one of the standard arguments by liberals is this. They'll say, now Jesus really did exist. There's a kernel of truth in that. He was a righteous rabbi.
He was a good moral leader. But after Jesus died, there were hundreds of years that elapsed before the Gospels were written. And so to keep the flame alive, to keep people interested in Christianity, the writers of the Gospel created all of these fictitious events, miracles that Jesus performed, the resurrection from the dead to try to make a good story better. Now, if that were true, if there had been a gap of hundreds of years between the actual events of Jesus' life and the recorded events, it's possible that myth could have crept in and corrupted the story. But here's the problem with that theory.
There was no interval. It used to be, I was even taught this early on, that the Gospels and the New Testament was written hundreds of years after the events of the New Testament. And yet liberal scholars now like John A.T. Robinson and others, they almost all concede that the New Testament was written between 45 and 60 A.D. That means you had the Bible being written within not centuries or even decades, but single-digit years after the events they purport to record. Now, here's the problem with that. If you've got no interval of hundreds of years, you don't have a chance for a myth to erupt.
Let me show you why that's true. Let's just say that today a book came out claiming that three days after President Ronald Reagan's funeral on June 11, 2004, three days later, Ronald Reagan arose from the dead. He arose from his grave in Simi Valley. And not only did he arise from the dead, but he was seen in a new resurrection body by 500 witnesses in Southern California.
And then the book went on to name those eyewitnesses to his resurrection. That book wouldn't last through a single printing. It would be laughed off the shelves. Nobody would believe such a thing.
Why? Because it's too soon after that event, after a mythological event, for it to gain credibility. I mean, there were people who were alive and were at the funeral. There were people who could dispute that anybody saw him in person. You could track down those so-called eyewitnesses and cross-examine them.
The theory would fall apart. And yet, think about how completely the New Testament was accepted with such speed. We're talking about just within weeks of Jesus' reported resurrection, thousands of mainly Jews were converted to Christianity.
You had 3,000 on one day, the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the resurrection. Thousands of Jews came to faith in Christ. And not only that, they gave up their most cherished traditions to embrace Christianity. They almost overnight changed their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday.
They discarded the sacrificial system that had been in effect for 1400 years. They changed the symbol of belief from circumcision to baptism. And they laid aside the Mosaic law that they thought was the way to heaven.
In fact, Paul would write in Colossians 2 17, these laws are simply shadows of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. How do you explain that earth-shaking change in Judaism that occurred over a short period of time? They embraced not a myth, but the truth. Finally, the evidence for the trustworthiness of the Bible is the archaeological evidence. Now, let's be real clear. Archaeology can't prove the Bible is true.
There are two reasons for that. The archaeological evidence is limited in size. I mean, if you were going to depend upon archaeology to prove the Bible is true, you would have to have archaeological confirmation for every name, every location, every event in the Old and New Testaments. And there's not that much archaeological evidence.
There's a lot of it, but not enough to completely prove the Bible is without error. It's limited in size, but the archaeological information is limited in scope. There are some things archaeology will never be able to tell us. For example, even if there is archaeological evidence for the great flood that destroyed the world, and let's say they find Noah's Ark someplace, that doesn't tell us who caused the flood, and it doesn't tell us what the purpose of the flood is.
It's limited in what archaeology can do. Nevertheless, and here's the important point, there's never been an archaeological discovery that has disproved any person, event, or location in the Bible. There is archaeological evidence for the trustworthiness of Scripture.
Let me give you a few examples. First of all, from the Old Testament. Take the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that were destroyed by fire and brimstone in Genesis 19.
Clay tablets have now been discovered at Ebla, that's northern Syria, that have manuscripts that date back to 2300 B.C. And in those ancient writings, you find the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah mentioned. Not only that, there's evidence of the tuminous pitch in the area and earthquake activity that together could explain the fire and brimstone, a volcanic eruption.
You say, well, that's a natural explanation. The fact that it happened at precisely the right time is what's supernatural, that God would use a natural event at a supernatural time to destroy the cities He said would be destroyed. Or take secondly the city of Jericho and the walls around Jericho in Joshua 6. There have been excavations in Jericho from 1930 to 1936 that reveal not only the wall that was around that city, but that the wall suddenly collapsed outward, just as the Bible said.
Or take the case of Ashpenaz, a man named Ashpenaz. Now, he's found in the Old Testament book of Daniel. No book has been criticized more than liberals as being mythology, other than the book of Genesis, more so than the book of Daniel. And the reason liberals want to try to debunk Daniel as legitimate is all of the amazing prophecies you find in the book of Daniel, down to the day that Jesus would be presented as Messiah.
The dates, the predictions that are made in Daniel are truly supernatural. And so the critics of the Bible want to disprove the reliability of Daniel, and they tried to do it in the first three verses of Daniel, because in Daniel 1-3, there's a man named Ashpenaz who's mentioned as the prince of the eunuchs. Now, we have a lot of material from ancient Babylon, and for hundreds of years, there was no evidence that there was any member of the royal household named Ashpenaz.
There was no evidence until there was. And a few decades ago, a brick was discovered in ancient Babylon with the name Ashpenaz written on it, and that brick is now in the British Museum. Or think about King David. He is a central figure in the Old Testament, the Davidic dynasty. Jesus would come from the line of David.
He was central. But the problem is, for 26, 27 hundred years, there was no outside evidence that David even existed. That is, until 1993, when a document was found in the city of David near Jerusalem that mentioned David as being not only king of Israel, but he was the leader of the Davidic dynasty. All of that was proven through ancient documents.
Guess what else was proven through these discoveries? Israel, the Jewish people, were in the land in 1000 B.C. That's when these documents were dated, 1000 B.C. And guess what the capital of Israel was? David changed it to Jerusalem. We now have archaeological evidence of that. Meaning, this idea that the Jews came and stole the land from the Palestinians, that is complete hogwash.
I don't know if that's a biblical term, but it describes what the Bible says. The Bible records and history records that Israel was in the land long before the so-called Palestinians. It's theirs.
It's theirs forever because God gave it to them. You find that through archaeology. How about the New Testament? Is there any evidence for the veracity of the New Testament? One example is the Gospel of Luke.
Sir William Ramsay was an archaeologist who was an unbeliever. He wanted to disprove the reliability of Scripture, so he centered on the Gospel of Luke. Why Luke? Because Luke contains more names, dates, references to world activities than any of the other Gospels. And he said, if I could just disprove one of these dates, one of these events, it would destroy the credibility of Luke. He spent several years researching the Gospel of Luke, and in the process became a Christian.
And he said Luke's history, quote, is unsurpassed in respect of its trustworthiness. Secondly, think about Caiaphas, the high priest, recorded in Matthew 26, 57. He was the high priest who presided over the first of six trials of Jesus after he was arrested. There was no confirmation of Caiaphas as a high priest until his tomb was discovered in Jerusalem in 1990.
Many of us have been to that tomb before. He was not only high priest, but the tomb indicates he was high priest during the time of Jesus' arrest and trial and crucifixion. Another figure in the crucifixion was Pontius Pilate, mentioned in Matthew 27, verse 2.
In 1961, an Italian archaeologist named Antonio Frava discovered an inscription on a stone slab at Caesarea by the sea that said Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator and gave the years which coincided with the trial of Jesus. Today, many of us have gone to Caesarea by the sea and seen that replica of what is called the Pilate stone that mentions Pontius Pilate. Or fourthly, think about the theater in Ephesus. You remember that in Acts 19, there was a great theater described in Luke chapter 19.
It was a place where the citizens came together. They were angry. They wanted to kill Paul and his associates because Paul was killing their business of making idols, where you can stand in that very theater where Paul's associates were threatened. Now again, the size and the scope mean the archaeological record can never prove that the Bible is true, but there's never been an archaeological discovery that has disproved any event, location, or person in the Bible. Now, we've talked about all the evidence, the internal claims of the Bible, fulfilled prophecy, unity of theme, early acceptance of the message, archaeology. Why do people object to the idea that the Bible is true? Let me mention today three common objections to the trustworthiness of the Bible. And remember again, whether what I'm saying is true or not determines your eternal destiny.
It determines whether we're trusting the right book to lead us to the right way to heaven. So why do people have trouble with the Bible? Well, one excuse is people say scribes must have made numerous errors in copying the text throughout the centuries. Remember the old game of telephone you used to play as a kid?
You'd get in a circle with your friends and the first person would whisper a message to the second person and on down the line it went to the last person and the last person would give the message and it was completely distorted from what the first message was. A lot of people think that's what happened with the Bible. They think, okay, the originals, which we don't have by the way, the original manuscripts were without error, but surely copyists made mistakes through the centuries.
Well, let's look at that possibility. First of all, in the Old Testament, there is a plethora of manuscript evidence for the reliability of the copyist. For example, do you realize that most ancient literary works had very few manuscripts to support them?
There are only seven manuscripts for Plato, eight for Herodotus, 10 for Caesar's Gallic Wars, and 20 manuscripts for the historian Tacitus, and yet there are over 10,000 manuscripts for the Old Testament. The most amazing of those manuscripts was discovered in 1947 in Qumran, the caves of Qumran near the Dead Sea. It was the discovery of what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. A young Bedouin accidentally discovered these clay pots that contained scrolls of most of the Old Testament, including a complete copy of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Now, what was amazing about the Dead Sea Scrolls is they were dated to be 100 B.C.
in age. They were copied 100 years before Christ. What is interesting is before the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest manuscript we had of the Old Testament was 900 A.D., nearly a thousand years later. A thousand years separated the Masoretic text, the text we had of the Old Testament in 900 A.D., and the Dead Sea Scrolls a thousand years earlier in 100 B.C. Why is that significant? Because it gave us the ability to see how accurate the copyist had been over a thousand years. Was there a lot of variation in the message?
Not at all. It's amazing. Ninety-five percent of the text of the Dead Sea Scrolls match what we had a thousand years later. Ninety-five percent. Take Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 53, a key chapter in the Old Testament. It has 166 words. The Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that out of those 166 words, there were only 17 letters in question. Ten of those letters could be explained by difference in spelling, four letters related to minor things over which conjunction, and or but.
I mean, minor things like that. Only three letters out of 166 words were in dispute, and those letters spelled blight, and they have nothing to do with the meaning of Isaiah chapter 53. It's just amazing how God has protected the manuscript through the years. There's much more I want to say about today's topic. The question today is, how can I know the Bible is true? Over the last few minutes, maybe God brought to your mind someone who needs to hear this material. Perhaps you have a doubter in your family. I've written a bestselling book for doubters. It's called How Can I Know? In my book, I tackle seven of the most important questions in all of life, such as, how can I know God is good with all the suffering in the world? And how can I know I'm going to heaven when I die? My book combines the best research available with the most persuasive biblical arguments.
Again, it's titled How Can I Know? And when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory, I'll make sure you receive your copy of my book. One last matter. Over the last few years, God has chosen to elevate Pathway to Victory to a position of national, even international, influence for the gospel. In doing so, Pathway to Victory is uniquely postured to bring solid answers to people who are worried and craving hope and comfort. But we couldn't provide this ministry without your support and the faithful month-by-month giving from our Pathway partners. Would you be willing to join this invaluable team of supporters today so that our influence for God's kingdom grows even greater? A Pathway partner agrees to give a gift every month, and in doing so, multiplies their impact by 12 over the course of the year. I look forward to hearing from you today.
David? Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. Today, when you give a generous gift to support Pathway to Victory, we'll say thanks by sending you Dr. Jeffress' best-selling book, How Can I Know? Plus, if you opt to make your gift a monthly donation, your generosity will have 12 times the impact over the course of one year. To request resources or to become a Pathway partner, call us toll-free at 866-999-2965 or visit ptv.org. And when you give $75 or more, we'll also send you a newly revised edition of the How Can I Know?
teaching series on both audio and video discs. So one more time, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could send your donation by mail right to P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. Again, that's P.O. Box 223-609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. I'm David J. Mullins.
There's more to cover on this important topic, so join us again next time when Dr. Jeffress continues to answer the question, How Can I Know the Bible is True? That's Friday, 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.
Plus, you'll have the option to extend your trip with additional adventures in Rome. To book your spot on the 2025 Journeys of Paul Mediterranean Cruise, go to ptv.org. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway partner, go to ptv.org slash donate or follow the link in our show notes. We hope you've been blessed by today's podcast, From Pathway to Victory.
