Words of Life:

The Credibility and Reliability of the Bible

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” John 6:68-69

I.       The Nature of the Bible: God is a God of revelation and He has revealed His nature and His work in human history in the pages of the Bible

II.      The Source of the Bible: God Himself through His work in human authors

III.    The Credibility and Reliability of the Bible: MAPS

1. Manuscripts

• 200+ manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls dating from before the birth of Christ
• Every book of the OT is found at Qumran except Esther
• The earliest portion of the Old Testament dates from 800 BC
• Approximately 800 manuscripts dating from before 1000 AD
• The earliest manuscripts date from 115 AD
• An incredible 60 years within the time written
• The Greek New Testament manuscript dates from AD 200

1. Archeology

• The Bible lists 47 kings from Egypt, Babylon, Syria or Greece
• Not a single history book mentioned even one of them
• But archaeologists found the names of every one of those 47 kings exactly in the places that the Bible said they had reigned
• Acts 14:6 and Sir William Ramsay
• Shechem: Baal Berith Temple and standing stone

1. Prophecy

• Over 1,000 prophecies of Old Testament have already come to pass
• Dozens of prophecies about Jesus prove He is the Messiah

1. Statistics

• Mathematician Peter Stoner who demonstrated that the chance of any one person fulfilling even eight of the OT prophecies as Jesus Christ has done was 1 in 10¹⁷