Genesis Apologetics K-8 Student Zone-Can We Trust the Bible? (6-8)

Well, hello and welcome to The Zone. I'm your host, Big Wave Dave. Today we're going to talk about can we trust the Bible. But first, if you're watching this video through our YouTube channel, you might want to check out our website.

In addition to the videos, you can download handouts and games and puzzles. You can even request an online or on-site presentation. Alright, let's get to our topic. If you were to go out in the public and ask a bunch of people, do you trust the Bible?

I'll bet you hear a lot of different answers. Now some people would say, yeah I do. I think a lot of people would say, I don't know. But I'm sure sooner or later you're going to run into these, scoffers.

Now what's a scoffer? A scoffer is a person who doesn't believe the Bible and they kind of get in your face about it. And they can be quite intimidating. So today we're going to look at three common objections and we're going to give you a tool to help strengthen your faith.

The Bible Is Trusted by Many but Challenged by Scoffers

Are you ready? Let's go. Okay, objection number one. The Bible was written thousands of years ago and has been translated over and over again. It must be filled with mistakes by now. It cannot be trusted.

Okay, it's time for our tool, MAP. So the M in MAP stands for Manuscripts. Now what is that? These are documents and writings. So the question is, do we have any evidence to show that what we have in our Bibles today is the same as was written thousands of years ago?

We do. Let's start with the Old Testament. So the Bible was originally written on things like parchment and animal skins and things like that. The problem was, is eventually that these materials would fall apart.

So a very special group of people called scribes would copy the information from the old scrolls onto the new materials. Now the scribes had so many different rules. For example, they were only allowed to copy one letter at a time.

They had to copy things letter by letter. They wanted to be really careful to make sure that they copied God's word absolutely correctly. And when they were done, they had this rigorous process to proofread.

Here's what they would do. First, they would count all the letters in each row. Then they would count all the letters in each column. After that, they would start counting the letters themselves. How many H's do I have?

How many N's? How many R's? And so on and so forth. Finally, they would find the very center of the scroll and check the letter there. If it didn't match the original, or if they found any mistakes at all, they had to destroy it and start all over again.

And you thought your teacher was tough? Wow! Okay, so that was a process, but do we have any proof that it worked? We do. Let me tell you the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So in 1947, a group of shepherds had lost a sheep and were out looking when they found these caves.

They were thinking, hmm, I wonder if my sheep is in those caves. But here's the problem. Wild animals love to hang out in caves, so to make sure it was safe, one of the shepherds picked up a rock and he threw it into the cave.

So instead of a roar or a growl, he heard something break. What was that? So when they investigated and went into the cave, they found a bunch of jars like this one. Eventually, they found several caves that had a bunch of these in them.

Inside the jars were fragments of scrolls that had sections of almost every book in the Old Testament in them. They even found one scroll that had the complete book of Isaiah on it. So here's what's cool.

When the experts studied and compared what we have in our Bible and the book of Isaiah to the scroll, here's what they found. It was over 95 the same. You know what that means? God has done a great job of preserving his word over thousands of years.

Okay, what about the New Testament? Fair question. So scholars, people that study literature and ancient writings, have two primary methods that they use to determine how accurate it is. They look at what is the period of time between when the original was written and the copies.

They also look at how many copies do we have. So these are some classic works of literature that people like to study. You can see from the time frame over here that the time between when the original was written and the copies ranges from 400 to 1400 years.

What about the New Testament? It's a much shorter time span, only 50 to 225 years. Okay, so that meets the first question. How many copies do we have? So Homer's Iliad by far has the most at 643. The other ones that really don't have many copies at all.

How many copies of the New Testament? Over 5 ,000. That is a lot of copies, dude. So what do the experts and people that study this say? Christians can take the whole Bible and have confidence that what they have in their hands is the same that was written thousands of years ago.

How cool is that? So as far as this objection goes, the manuscript evidence shows that what we have today is the same that was written long ago. We can trust the Bible. I bet you thought I was going to blow up that kitty, right?

Archaeology Confirms the Bible’s Historical Accuracy

No way. All right, let's go on to the next one. Objection number two. The Bible is not accurate. It's riddled with myths, mistakes, contradictions. It has nothing to do with historical fact. Let's go back to our map.

So the M stands for manuscripts. The A stands for archaeology. Over the years, scholars and skeptics have said that people like King Sargon and Pontius Pilate, the Hittites and Caiaphas the high priest, they weren't real people.

They didn't exist. That there's no proof. And they said, see, the Bible's wrong. Well, that's what they used to say until they found all of these. They have found proof that the Bible is accurate. Speaking of contradictions and scoffers, this is another one.

They claim that Belshazzar never existed, that Nabonidus was the last king of Babylon. Let's take a closer look at the story. So the story is found in Daniel chapter five. Now what's going on is that the Babylonians are at war with the Medes and the Persians.

Now the king, King Belshazzar, he's inside this walled city and he's not worried at all. He says, even though we're surrounded, ah, they can't get in. So he and his buddies, they're partying. They're inside and they're drinking and having a good time.

Belshazzar says, you know what? Let's do this. Let's go get all the holy cups and all the different things that we took from the Jewish temple and let's party with those. So they went and they got the goblets and they're starting to toast to the gods of iron, wood, of silver and gold.

They're just carrying on. Finally, God has enough. So a hand appears and writes a message on the wall. Now, I don't know about you, but that would freak me out to see a hand writing a message on the wall.

And the Bible tells us it scared everyone, including the king. In fact, he was quaking with fear. To make matters worse, nobody could understand what the word said. The king really wanted to know what the message said.

So he said, I'll tell you what, anybody that can read this, I'm going to make the third most powerful person in this kingdom and give them gold and all kinds of stuff. So first he summoned his magicians and wise men and chanters and none of them could read it.

So the king was getting even more upset. Finally, his wife said, you know, there's this guy named Daniel and he's a prophet of God. I bet you he could read it. So they summoned Daniel and he came into the room and the king said, hey, Daniel, if you can read this, I'm going to make you a powerful guy in my kingdom and give you all kinds of gifts.

And Daniel read the message and he looked at the king and said, keep your gifts. Here's what God has to say. Number one, God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Number two, you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.

And finally, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Wow. Talk about a message. Meanwhile, while this was going on, the Medes and the Persians had found a way into the city. So they snuck in that night and took over.

That very night, Belshazzar was killed and Darius the Mede took over. Okay. So here's the claim. Belshazzar never existed. Everyone knows that Mabinitis was the last king of Babylon. That's what they used to say until they found this.

They actually found four clay cylinders that had inscriptions or writings on them. And it contained a prayer to the moon God for my son, Belshazzar, the eldest son, my offspring. Now this confirms that Belshazzar was a real person.

And as the oldest son, he would be the heir to the throne. They also found this tablet here. Now what this tablet was is since the king liked to travel a lot, what he would do is he would put his son in charge.

All right. So what about the New Testament? There was a man by the name of Sir William Ramsey, and he was a famous archaeologist, but he didn't believe the Bible. So he decided one day, I'm going to disprove the Bible.

So he chose the book of Luke and the book of Acts because they have so many historical details. Sir William Ramsey thought, you know, it's going to be easy to prove that the Bible is wrong. But after studying it and going around and looking at different locations and doing careful research, here's what he said.

Luke is a historian of the first rank. In other words, Luke was writing accurately. He got it exactly right. So what about this claim? Is the Bible really full of contradictions and have nothing to do with history?

The fact is that archaeologists have uncovered many discoveries that confirm details of the Bible. No one has ever found anything that proves the Bible wrong. We can trust the Bible, my friends. Okay.

Fulfilled Prophecy Proves the Bible Is God's Word

Final one. Objection number three. The Bible is filled with fairy tales. Why should we believe it? Let's go back to our map. The M stands for manuscripts, the A stands for archaeology, and the P stands for prophecies.

So prophecies are predictions about the future and the Bible contains hundreds of them. And a lot of them have already been fulfilled. Let's look at a couple of my favorites. So the prophet Isaiah predicted that a man named Cyrus would rebuild the temple 160 years before it happened.

Now, what was so interesting is that when Isaiah made this prediction, the temple was still standing. It was right there. So people kind of look at him like, dude, you're kind of weird. What are you talking about?

Well, here's how it was fulfilled. In the year 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. Then in 539 BC, the Persians conquered the Babylonians. Now, shortly after that, a Persian king named, you got it, Cyrus gave the decree to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

So here's what's so amazing. Not only was the prediction about rebuilding the temple right, but even the name Cyrus. Wow. That's cool. All right. So here's another one. Book of Ezekiel says that the city of Tyre would be destroyed.

And he provided all kinds of interesting details like they will destroy the walls of Tyre and pull down her towers. And then I will scrape away her rubble and make her a bare rock. Wow. That's an interesting prophecy.

It was actually fulfilled in two different steps. First, in 573, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the mainland city of Tyre. That's when the towers and the walls were destroyed. So here's the thing though. It took Nebuchadnezzar years to overcome Tyre.

And while that was happening, a lot of the inhabitants of Tyre went out on an island about a half a mile offshore where Nebuchadnezzar could not reach them. They weren't able to escape forever. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great and his army conquered Tyre.

So here's what they did. They actually took the rubble from the mainland city and built a bridge out to the island. Now, since Tyre was putting up such a good fight, excuse me, Alexander the Great enlisted the Navy of nations that he had conquered to surround Tyre and bomb them with firebombs and all kinds of different things.

So you see, the Bible once again proved to be true. The Bible also contains hundreds of prophecies about Jesus Christ. So if you go onto the website here, you can download this list and I have here what the prophecy was and then where it was fulfilled.

I do hope you check it out. So let's talk about this. We have hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled in the Bible. What are the odds of one person fulfilling just eight of them? And that one person, by the way, would be Jesus.

What are the odds? Well, somebody really smart sat down and calculated out the odds. Here's the number. It's one in 10 to the 28th power. That's a 10 with 28 zeros behind it. Wow. That's a really big number.

Now, to give you a perspective of what that's like, let's do a little example, shall we? Let's say that I'm a weatherman and I'm going to predict the weather. So I say, well, okay, it's going to rain tomorrow.

Well, that's pretty easy, right? It'd be kind of like me shooting out a trash can lid with my trusty bazooka here from about 10 feet away, right? No problem at all. I guarantee you, I can make that shot.

But what if I said, you know, it's going to rain next Tuesday, a week from now. And it's, okay, it's going to rain in the afternoon. Now that would be like me hitting that same trash can lid with my trusty ball gun from about 30 feet.

Now I might be getting old, but I guarantee you I could take this shot. Okay. So those are pretty easy. But what if I told you it's going to rain on Tuesday, 400 years from now, it's going to start at one o 'clock and it's going to quit at 145 and it's going to rain half an inch and it's going to rain right here.

Now that would be like hitting this quarter a thousand miles away with this. Uh, not going to happen, right? Totally impossible. Which is the point. It is impossible for people to make predictions like these and have them come true, but not for God.

God sees the beginning from the end. And what he did is he told the prophets what to write down so that we would know that the Bible is truly God's word. Okay. So is the Bible filled with fairy tales?

How do we know that it's really God's word? Well, the answer is actually quite simple. Fulfilled prophecies prove that the Bible is God's word. All right, let's look at our map one last time. So the M stands for manuscripts.

The manuscript evidence shows that what we have in our Bibles today is the same that was written thousands of years ago. The A stands for archaeology. Archaeologists have uncovered many discoveries that prove the details of the Bible.

No one has ever found anything that disproves the Bible. And finally P, prophecies. Hundreds of fulfilled prophecies prove that the Bible is truly God's word. The bottom line and the good news is we can trust the Bible.

Responding to Scoffers with Gentleness and Respect

Okay, so what about these scoffers? I mean, how should we react when they get in our face? Should we like get in their face? Yeah. No, that's not what we want to do. In fact, in 1 Peter 3 .15 it tells us what we need to do.

First, we are always to be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks us. But here's the tough part. But do so with gentleness and respect. Well, how are we going to do that? Because people could be so rude.

Here's the answer. You have to ask God to send his Holy Spirit to help us. Remember, God loves everyone. All right, my friends. Well, that's all the time we have together. I'm Big Wave Dave. I hope to see you soon here on The Zone.

God bless you.