Apologetics
WHY SHOULD I TRUST THE BIBLE?
By Henry Jaegers
“And without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)
This very short verse is part of the classic chapter on faith contained in Hebrews chapter eleven and is a summary of what the Christian faith is all about. You may wonder why I am using the Bible to prove that the Bible is worthy of our trust. First, faith must have a reliable object to connect to. Like a foundation on a house or an anchor for a boat, faith must be firmly attached to something reliable. Jesus taught this in His parable of building on a rock verses building on the sand (Matthew 7: 24-27). Jesus was talking about the importance of faith’s object. There are several things implied by the above verse that sets forth a standard to help us to understand what faith is.
Let’s analyze some of the obvious lessons on this verse:
“And without faith, it is impossible to please Him”
This portion contains a lot of information and it declares that:
I. There is a God.
This is not a fact that needs to be disputed. The whole world consists of people who assume a god or some higher being. All the multiple religions in the world reveal a people who are trying to find God. There must be something inwardly that causes people to believe in a power outside of themselves and they are trying to find out who He is and how to approach Him. The Bible is the only book that gives a clear definition to this quest.
The two evidences that reveal that there is a God are Creation and Conscience. These are what we call external evidences. The creation is truly an awesome communication about God. It tells us of His power, His ability to create with purpose, and reveals how everything harmonizes with every other part to meet specific needs. It is a true picture of an intelligent God.
We come to the second evidence and that is Conscience. Even without specific laws we know there are laws written upon our conscience, and when they are violated they cause feelings of guilt, If you have ever experienced guilt then you can understand how conscience works. When we act unkindly and selfishly towards others, our conscience comes in to play and confirms these laws.
In light of these two evidences there are two important facts that we wish to emphasize: That He is a God who is there. The second thing we wish to acknowledge is that He is a God who is not silent.
2. He Is a God who communicates.
Why is this necessary to know? If there was a God and He didn’t communicate about Himself, at best we would all be created as agnostics. In other words He would be a God that we knew nothing about, so what’s wrong with going the next step and becoming an atheist? If we could be comfortable living with a God who is unknowable, then why do we need God at all? (Except in dire emergency situations)
The rest of our verse explains that here is a God who Is not silent
“For he who comes to God must believe that He is”
Now if God really exists, there must be some solid foundation upon which we may anchor our faith. The Bible makes no assumptions about the existence of God. Faith merely examines the evidences and believes them. Faith is not some upper story leap into nowhere, hoping something out there will catch you. God promises that when we take that step of faith “He is there”. not to catch us but to direct us.
“and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”
If God is unknowable, then His promises to us are in vain and He cannot expect us to keep them.
As you can see we can engage in empty banter with such reasoning and miss out on many of God’s promised blessings by not knowing about them.
3. God has communicated specifically and clearly/
We will conclude this booklet by showing the various ways (besides creation and conscience) that God has communicated His person and His purposes for us. It is not out of sync with who God is and who we are that He would choose to communicate to us through the means of writing. At first, they were written on inferior materials which lacked in durability but through the centuries His word has been retained despite the decaying character of His creation. When we state that the Bible contains no errors or contradictions we must preface this with “in the original transmissions”. We are dealing with fallible humans in translating the originals and though the originals no longer exist, the purity of the Bible message has been retained. Consider briefly, the uniqueness of this book we call the Bible.
The word “biblios”, where we get the title for the Bible means “The Book.” Think about this book being a library rather than a book. It contains 66 books written by 50 or more authors taking about 1500 years or more to write. Each author has a different personality, background, education experience, personality trait, and yet through all of this has contributed to the wonder of the book we refer to as ‘THE WORD OF GOD.”
.
Consider all other books in the local library on one particular subject and you will find various opinions and contradictions. The Bible is not like that .Consider the people who wrote the Bible. In II peter 1: 20, 21. We are told “But know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of ones own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy spirit spoke from God” That means that God selected certain men with devout hearts of faith and loyalty to convey His word to us..
Just think about Moses who wrote the first five books of the Bible. If you ever read and tried to understand all of that you would know that this was no source of information manufactured in his mind. Now we have 50 other writers of scripture who similarly conveyed God’s message to us.
The greatest proof of all regarding the truth of the Bible is the lives that have been changed and literally transformed by its message. Truth changes people, whether it is truth from the scripture or any other kind. Truth if we are desirous of knowing it, will force us to face the lies that we hold to and change our direction. Roman 10:17 tells us that ” faith comes by hearing and hearing from the word of God.
Concerning the alleged errors in the Bible, I read this book expectantly every day and have studied its contents for over fifty years and I have never seen anything that would cause me to doubt its reliability. Everyone that I have ever encountered who claims that the Bible has errors has never produced one reason that he could substantiate through careful and diligent study of scripture itself. Usually their doubts come from the readings of other skeptics.
If God has truly spoken then His word must be in character with who He is: PERFECT
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