One of the most common questions I have been asked over forty years of ministry is, “Why do I believe that Christianity is the one true religion?”
It is a great and fair question and every Christian should have a compelling answer. As we live in a culture that claims there are no absolutes (which is an absolute, itself), we have the ability to present overwhelming evidence for the truth of Christianity.
I believe there are eight to ten incredible defenses for Christianity. For this article, I will give one that I believe to be one of the best, and that is the Bible, itself.
The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself. In it we learn about the nature and character of God, upon which Western civilization bases much of its morality. When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he said it was self-evident. This equality was not a physical one, nor a socio-economic one, but rather a moral one. Though men differ in many ways, we are moral equals. This new country was founded upon the idea that the man who cleaned the streets had the same moral worth as the most powerful man in the country. Where would the founders get such an idea? The Bible teaches in the opening chapter of Genesis that every person is created by God, in his image. Moral worth and equality come from God.
A few incredible facts about the Bible. It was written in three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It was written on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. It was written over a 1500-year period by 40 different authors. Think about that. These people could not have collaborated to create a religion. They didn’t all speak the same language or live in the same place or even at the same time in human history. But what we see in the Bible is a common theme from Genesis to Revelation. Man is created by God, corrupted by the Fall and in need of a Savior. The Bible teaches that man is not good. All of human history proves this truth time and time again, while every other religion and worldview says the opposite, opposing a grand canyon of evidence to the contrary. All throughout the Old Testament man is told that a Messiah is coming. He is told in over 300 Messianic prophecies what that Messiah will be like, where He would be from, and that He would conquer death through a resurrection. The one fact the Romans, the Jews, and the Christians all agreed upon was that the body was nowhere to be found. Remember, these people could not have collaborated, and yet all these prophecies point us to one person, who the New Testament reveals as Jesus Christ. The Bible reveals who the Savior is and how salvation happens; “confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). God reveals Himself in the New Testament as Jesus Christ, entering human history through a miraculous virgin birth.
The reliability of Ancient documents is evaluated through textual criticism, which is comparing copies of numerous manuscripts. Manuscripts were handwritten copies from the originals and then from other copies. External evidence is checking content against history, geography, and archeology. Internal evidence is the consistency within the writing.
To understand how incredibly reliable the Bible is as an ancient document, meaning that what we have today in our Bibles is what was originally written, let’s look at the second most reliable ancient document in all of history. Remember, this test doesn’t prove the truthfulness of the document, only that what we have today is what was originally written. Homer’s The Iliad, written around 900 BC, has around 1700 manuscripts and the earliest manuscript is from around 400 BC. 500 hundred years passed between its original writing and the earliest found manuscript and no scholar will argue that what we have today is not actually what Homer wrote. They will not say it got changed over time. The New Testament, by comparison, was written between AD 40 and AD 100. There are over 24,000 manuscripts, the earliest being around AD 125. This is only a 25- to 50-year timespan. This was enough time for eyewitnesses to refute what was written. If no one questions the reliability of The Iliad, no one (without an agenda) would question the reliability of the Bible.
The external evidence grows with every archaeological discovery. Sir William Ramsay was at first skeptical of the Bible and Christianity as a whole. He believed the New Testament to be a second century document with little historical value. He spent decades in Asia Minor investigating the historical accuracy of Luke’s writings, stating that Luke did not make any errors in his descriptions of 32 countries, 54 cities, and nine islands. Sir William Ramsays’ skepticism was won over by the accuracy of the external evidence. Other incredible external evidence is found in the writings of the Roman historian Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger.
The internal evidence is yet another miraculous proof of the Bible. A cross-reference is a note, symbol, or instruction in a text that directs a reader to another part of the same book or document. The Bible has over 63,000 cross-references. There is a flawless continuity in the Bible. It is one large continuous story throughout 66 books. These cross-references show intricate construction and sophisticated designs that could not have been orchestrated by the writers, most of them didn’t know each other. There are not many plausible explanations for such unity and continuity. The reader may not conclude that it is God, but neither can they conclude it was man alone.
The Bible. There is no book like it in human history. It is one of the greatest defenses of Christianity.
-by Jamie Ward
Co-Lead Pastor, Hillvue Heights Church
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