This is the companion to the other blog I wrote today called "Why We Can Trust the Bible-The Old Testament."  I'll point you back there if you have questions about what is the Old Testament and how we can know that it is reliable.  Here's a link:  http://www.danielwestfall.com/blog/why-we-can-trust-the-bible-the-old-testament?fbclid=IwAR35nI6e3amUT4xy_JN2tU79RBYF1uSVb5ZOwe2DveI91pIfXY7E99CHlxc

With that said, the attacks against the New Testament are usually different than those against the Old Testament and therefore the arguments presented here are also a little different.  There is no doubt historically from contemporary secular sources to the time of Jesus' birth, His miraculous deeds, teaching, His identity as "the Christ," and his trial death and resurrection according to the Scriptures.

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."
Flavius Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, 3[

So, right out of the gate, I'm going to tell everyone that I'm not going to argue with skeptics that deny history.  Even a Jewish historian said that Jesus was the Christ and while I believe his Jewish faith kept him from coming right out and saying that Jesus was God in the flesh, he came as close as he dared to saying this (which could have been considered blasphemy--a crime punishable by death by the Jewish law).  Notice how he said, "if indeed one ought to call him a man." What else is there other than a man but to assume that Josephus knew that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God (God in the flesh)?

My argument doesn't solely hang on this testimony.  the New Testament also meets the criteria used by most scholars for textual criticism when it comes to reliability of the text and that is numerous copies in close proximity to the date of the original publication.  The closest partial manuscripts of the New Testament are approximately 50 years past when they were supposedly written.  The earliest complete copy of the New Testament is about 225 years old and there are 24, 633 partial or complete manuscripts (hand-written copies) of the New Testament according this video posted by Josh McDowell on July 2, 2012.

So, we have testimony to the historical accuracy of the events told in the gospels and we have more manuscripts than we can shake a stick at to show us that indeed the words we have in front of us today are reliable both in terms of authorship and the words that be believe were originally penned by the author.

I encourage you again at this point to go watch the videos that I posted in the last blog (I'll repost them here) for additional evidences and to do your own research.  If you seriously want to know that God exists, that His Word is true, and that He and His Word can be trusted, simply ask Him and seek him out with sincerity.  He promises that He will answer you--just maybe not in the way that you expect (see the book of Job as an example of this).

Proverbs 8:17 New International Version (NIV)
17 I love those who love me,
    and those who seek me find me.

Jeremiah 29:13 New International Version (NIV)
13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Matthew 7:7-8/Luke 11:9-10 New International Version (NIV)
7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

James 1:5-8 New International Version (NIV)
5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. 8 Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.

Take God at His word and ask and seek Him and see if He doesn't follow through.  It is His character and name that are on the line, and He will deliver what He has promised.

​The Bible:  Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225
Is the Bible Reliable (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850
Is the Bible True (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51
Is the Bible Accurate (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B
(some videos may appear in more than one playlist)

Let me first say that in this post when I refer to the "Old Testament" I'm referring to the books of Genesis through Malachi in Bible (39 books) or the 24 books of the TNK in the Hebrew Bible, but I'm not referring to any interdepartmental books, nor am I referring to the other books of the apocrypha that claim to be missing pieces of the story.  If I mention the New Testament I'm talking about the books of Matthew through Revelation in the Bible and again am not referring to any of the the other books that may sometimes be argued to be part of the Bible.  The Bible as I'm going to talk about it is 66 books in total, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament.  I thought it important to define these terms before I get started on these blogs.

Many today take the "Old Testament" as being unreliable because it is "old" or some take this to simply mean that it is "outdated" and no longer has anything to teach us.  Neither could be farther from the truth, nor can we we say that we have something to learn from it but it's simply a lot of "Bible stories" that have moral principles to teach us, but have not basis in history or fact, as we know that Jesus himself quoted from the several passages as historical fact on many occasions.

With those precepts in mind, let's talk about the "textual criticism" that so many in higher education fall victim too today.  It sounds like a great idea, but it just doesn't hold water.  First, let's talk about why the intellectuals want to believe in textual criticism.  It denies the work of the Holy Spirit in inspiring men to write and speak on the behalf of God throughout the ages to communicate His message to His people and the surrounding nations while validating their message through miracles and other signs such as prophecy that was fulfilled in their time and prophecy that was yet to be fulfilled.

So, let's first start with something important to me.  The Bible is historically accurate.  I can't expound any one of these points too much, but I encourage you to see how archeologists have used the Bible as a map to where civilizations should be and found them exactly as described where described and it even lead to discoveries such as finding oil in the Middle East (because where there is tar and pitch, there is oil-see Genesis 14:10 and Exodus 2:3 for example).  also more recent things such as the description of how the nation of Babylon fell in a single night and was taken over by the Medes and Persians.  There is so much that was once doubted and we were told that we couldn't believe the Bible because it talked about a people group that no one could prove existed...but that's not how it works.  You believe someone is telling the truth until you can prove that someone is lying to you.  I'm not aware of a single archaeological discovery that contradicts anything about the historical record given in the Old Testament.  Because of it being historically accurate in the parts we can confirm, then that only solidifies that the other historical narrative in the Bible is probably also accurate.  I can't imagine that such care would have been taken to get the facts so right hundreds of years after the supposed events happened or that someone just making up "moral stories" would care so much about getting the names and locations of civilizations so right.  If you were making something up and you knew it, you'd want it to not be falsifiable--you wouldn't add details like the 63 or so Old Testament passages that say "to this day".....and tell people to go look for the altar or monument that was built, or to look for the ruins of a destroyed city, or explain why the name of a city was changed due to a great event that happened there.  Don't all those things sound extremely verifiable?

Let's continue that theme now, but let's move away from the historicity aspect but build upon it.  Now we have to approach topics like prophecy--especially that which has already been fulfilled.  Are we willing to treat it in the same way?  Namely, are willing to put forward the assumption that the telling of the story about when and how these messages were conveyed is also just as accurate as the other historically verifiable items in the text around them?  There would be little reason for me to doubt the veracity of the authors that have already been proven right on so many other issues, also let's be clear about what the punishment was for someone who was a false prophet according to the Old Testament--the punishment was the death penalty as prescribed in Deuteronomy 13.  Certainly there was no reason for them to lie about things that would happen near-term and be found out, nor does it make sense that any such prophet would continue to be included in the Jewish Scriptures if that prophet was proven to be a false prophet who said they heard a message from the LORD and it did not come to pass (see Deuteronomy 18).  We again though can look at the number of things that have already been fulfilled and make a logical leap of faith that the other things that have not happened yet are still going to come to pass because these prophets so far have never lied to us.  We then have many passages in the New Testament that go back and point to the prophecies in the Old Testament to tell us what was fulfilled and how it was fulfilled and even why it was fulfilled in the way that it was.  It would be nearly impossible for any person or group to intentionally try to manipulate the events of history at a certain point to make sure that prophecies were fulfilled to point to a false Christ/Messiah.  Many people try to take the other track to say that means that the prophecies must have been written after their supposed fulfillment, but I'll cover that in the next section.

For years we've been told that there is no way that the Old Testament could have been written concurrently with the events of the time.  We know from certain passages already mentioned that there was a writer that either wrote the oral stories down later or annotated some of the writing later with statements such as "and to this day...."  With that said, there isn't evidence that the scribes manufactured new Scriptures during or after the time of the Exile (the period when the northern 10 tribes were captive to Assyria and all traces of them have been lost historically and when the southern two tribes were sent into captivity to Babylon, which was later taken over by the Medo-Persian empire).  In fact, quite to the contrary, every scrap of Scripture and every scroll that we find that is older than the list known copy has been as close to an exact copy as anyone could expect.  It was the job of the scribes to copy the Word of God word for word.  This was their entire life's duty.  When a scroll was getting to the point where it could no longer be read and could be misread and therefore misinterpreted, a new word-for-word copy was made and the old copy (the original) was burned as were any copies where mistakes were made in the process.  To avoid mistakes the scribes came up with a system of numbering the words and letters to make sure they didn't miss any.  This has given rise to some of the ideas of numerology where there is somehow a "hidden code" and that these numbers themselves hid a deeper meaning, but it seems that they were simply a way to check and make sure that they didn't add anything or leave anything out and got the Word of God exactly right, because they didn't want anyone to have an inferior copy of the Word of God.

Those are the best arguments that I can make for now for the historicity, the fulfilled prophecy, and the word-for-word accuracy of the Old Testament which makes up about 2/3 of the Bible.  The arguments for trusting the Old Testament are somewhat different (though sometimes similar) and will be covered separately.  For anyone who is genuinely interested in the  evidence for some of the statements that I've put forward or simply has more questions about the Bible, let me refer you to a couple of video series from a Christian apologist that I think will give you more than enough evidence.

The Bible:  Fact, Fiction or Falacy (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16ABDCF6DB496225
Is the Bible Reliable (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB9B212FAE4985850
Is the Bible True (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL90208F780F552C51
Is the Bible Accurate (playlist):  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A9CF63233837F0B
(some videos may appear in more than one playlist)

​

Let's first start with why I'm so interested in all of these areas and how so many of the people involved in math and science were also involved in logic, theology, and philosophy.  Science at its core wants to understand the way things are around you and to understand the rules that nature plays by.  This naturally assumes though that there are rules and that they are consistent or at least predictable and knowable and that they can be found out empirically (through observation).  These assumptions come together in what we call "The Scientific Method" which is a way in which someone who is a "scientist" tests theories and "truth claims."  But can all truth be tested by way of The Scientific Method?  Certainly not, because, assuming The Scientific Method itself is true, it is not something that can be empirically tested.

So, there must be something bigger than The Scientific Method.  The same can be said for the laws of mathematics.  while these rules are more conceptual and reaching towards metaphysics instead of physics (thought instead of material), they are not yet sufficient in explaining the order that we see in the universe, but are simply just a language used to describe the patterns and nature of the universe that we see.

Philosophy is usually defined as the study of how to know that something is true.  There are many philosophies though that take the same facts and come up with drastically different conclusions.  For example Is the whole equal to the sum of its parts or is it greater than the sum of its parts?  Context may be necessary here, but it is going to require some more information that may not be a part of the problem itself--it may involve things from outside like presuppositions, axioms, undefined terms, postulates, and theorems.  These are all integrated deeply into the disciplines of math and science, but also other areas of our lives.  We just may not be as honest about how these things play a role in our view of things like economics, politics, law, or education.  What many people call a "philosophy" is actually a much larger topic called a "worldview."  It moves beyond simply how to know and identify truth and actually establishes a belief system and how you filter truth claims to decide if they are consistent or inconsistent with that system of beliefs and how you handle apparent inconsistencies.

All of these cases so far that we've been discussing--math, science, philosophy, and apologetics (as well as many other disciplines) first require us to have a common basis for forming and argument and knowing what the definitions of words like "true" and "false" are and under what circumstances are are statements going to take on a truth value of true or false.  If truth is relative and words can simultaneously mean different things to different people and there is no common "right" or "wrong" way to interpret the words that someone is saying, then communication is nearly impossible.  We therefore must establish some common ground rules which is where logic comes into play.  There are three main laws of logic which are assumed to be true for all future arguments and discussions (and have been assumed to be true up to this point as well):
1) The Law of Identity:  "If A, then A."  This may seem like a silly law but it necessary sometimes to make such a statement that something is itself.  This is not a statement of causality, but simply of identity.
2) The Law of Excluded Middle:  A "truth claim" (from hereon called a logical proposition) can have a truth value of "true" or "false" and nothing else.  If it has no truth value or you cannot say that it has a binary truth value of "true" or "false," then it is not a logical proposition.
3) The Law of Non-Contradiction:  A logical proposition cannot be both true and false (in the same way at the same time).

There are lots of materials on these laws, so I won't go into them very much, but this still leaves us at a place where we have something where we cannot use the laws of logic to explain themselves and there has to be something bigger than logic itself.  This drove many people in these fields to search for their answers in the disciplines of theology and religion, stemming from a belief that all law must come from a law-giver and that we best understand what is true and right when we understand the Creator as it is His nature and character that we see at work and things consistent with that nature and character are "true" or "right" and things inconsistent with that character are "false" or "wrong." Other words may also be used in other contexts such as "righteous" and "wicked."

It is here that we reach what appears to be the end result of our search.  God would seem to be the "Unmoved Mover" and the "Uncaused Cause."  While someone like Dawkins might sarcastically ask, "Who created God?" the simple answer is "No one, that is why He is God."  Genesis 1:1 tells us, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."  This short verse contains many profound truths:
1) There was a beginning--therefore matter is not eternal
2) God existed outside of time and is eternal
3) God created everything (and is therefore sovereign over it)

However, even our understanding of God relies on some presuppositions.  For instance, I'll be honest with what I just did.  I didn't tell you that I believed that God exists, He's knowable, that at least some truth is absolute and knowable, and that I believed that God revealed truth about Himself in the Bible so that we could know it and know more about Him.  I just quoted the Bible as a source of truth and I assumed you figured all that out.  You may not agree with me on those points, but if you don't then our conversation probably won't go very far because we're going to have a very difficult time coming to the same conclusion on anything if we can't agree on some of these foundational issues.

These types of discussions are often not encouraged in today's culture and people are usually afraid to ask the deep, probing questions about what someone believes and why they believe it and what kinds of underlying assumptions may have played a role in their coming to their conclusion.  I hope to be open and honest about my views with you and that this will inspire you to not only ask me questions but possibly for you to ask these questions of yourselves and others.  I believe in a God big enough to deal with the questions we need answers to (though He is not required to give answers and doesn't always answer our questions want in the way we want or in the time frame we want).

That brings me to my last point here and that is that there are some things in life that we know are true, but we may not be able to explain them to anyone else.  Hebrews 11 talks much about the subject of faith and those who had great faith.  Here are just a few verses from that chapter:
"1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible."

6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

There will be some things that are bigger than science or even my personal observations which I know to be true.  I can tell you that for sure there a thing called a "point" in geometry even though I can't define for you what it is.  All of us have faith in order to build the foundation for our belief system because every belief system has to start with something that is not provable by any of the other items built on top of those foundational items (axioms and undefined terms).  It's okay to reach a point in your worldview where you can't dig any deeper and say "I just know this to be true," but even those statements should be consistent and coherent with the rest of your belief system.
​