Christian Worldview Concepts

Basic Beliefs of the Christian Worldview - God Is and God Spoke

Five Evidences for the Authenticity and Reliability of the Bible

Authority of the Bible
The Bible claims to be the word of God (Psalm 119; 2 Timothy 3:16-17). This is not an artificial category constructed by evangelicals to justify their doctrines. It is a statement that echoes the Bible's own wording. Throughout biblical history the authors made bold proclamations in the name of the Lord. Their messages were consistent for 1500 years, from its original form given to Moses to the apostle John who wrote the last book of the Bible on the island of Patmos. It would be foolish to believe that the Bible is God's word if we found that the original authors never claimed this supernatural authority, but they do.

Textual Accuracy
Not only has God inspired the original message, He has watched over its transmission down through the centuries to prevent the corruption of the original wording due to copy errors. We have thousands of ancient manuscripts that corroborate the textual integrity of our modern Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1948 stunned the academic community when an ancient scroll of Isaiah was found to be nearly identical to our modern copies.

Prophetic fulfillment
Bible prophecy is a fascinating study. God gave his prophets incredible and detailed predictions of the future. Prophetic fulfillment is evidence of God's supernatural sway in the lives of the authors. Some prophecies regarding the history of Israel are so specific that skeptics think that the prophecies were written after the fact in spite of the internal evidence to the contrary. So much for objectivity!

Historical accuracy
Archaeology has confirmed many of the historical persons and events in the Bible. One of the most recent is the discovery of the ancient people from whom the Queen of Sheba came. For most of the 20th Century, skeptics dismissed the historical accuracy of the biblical account of the Queen meeting Israel's King Solomon. Other skeptics schooled in liberal institutions claim that King David of Israel was a myth, that there is no evidence of his existence outside the Bible. All of that changed in 1993 in Tel Dan when archaeologists found a portion of a wall that had once been part of a victory monument. This stele records a pagan king's victory over another king who was "over the house of David." This was the first mention of David outside the Bible. Since then, a second reference to the "house of David" has been found, verifying that the David mentioned in Scripture was a historical person.

Objectivity
The Bible does not try to hide the sins of its heroes. Its historical accounts objectively record their individual strengths and weakness. There is no airbrushing of warts and blemishes. We read about real people with real problems. Moses is kept out of the Promised Land for his carelessness. David brings ruin to his family and his kingdom because of a sexual indiscretion. Solomon's wives led him astray into idolatry. Jonah hated the Ninevites. Hezekiah trusted in his military budget and his political allies rather than God. Peter denied Jesus three times. Paul was a persecutor of the church. Later he had a falling out with Barnabas over young John Mark. Yet these imperfect people remain heroes. Of all the persons in the Bible, only Jesus remained unblemished.

Historic, Biblical Christianity has held that the Bible is the final authority for faith and practice. Modern Christians can be confident that the Bible they read and study is in fact the Word of God. God has spoken through His written Word.