CA201

Ten Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith LESSON 02 of 10

Reason 2: The Reliability of Its Book, the Bible

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The Bible was written over a period of about 1,600 years by 40

different authors. This book on which the Christian faith rests
tells one story that begins with creation and concludes on the
threshold of eternity.

R. Douglas Geivett: Many people are interested in the question:
Why believe the Bible is the Word of God? And there are a lot of
interesting types of evidences that support the claim that the Bible
does come from God. Of course the Bible’s not the only book that
makes that claim. You have non-Christian sources of revelation
that people argue for the Quran as the revelation of God, as far
as the Muslim is concerned. And of course there are others who
believe that God has revealed Himself in other ways without even
relying on books through religious experience or what have you.

I think a fundamental question here is the question, why believe

that God has produced a revelation of any kind at all? Do we have
good reasons to expect God to try to make contact with human
beings, to communicate something that they need to know? I
believe there is evidence that God takes an interest in the human
condition and therefore can be expected to make contact, to
address these very questions that we all want answers to: Why am
I here? What is my life for? What is the diagnosis of the human
condition? There are real problems that we all agree are serious
problems, but we can’t agree on the solutions. Does God have an
interest in the matter? Does God have an opinion? Has He made
His opinion known to us?

I think it’s reasonable to expect that God does know what bothers
us and what’s wrong with the human situation. It is also reasonable
to believe that He wants us to know what He thinks.

J. Kerby Anderson: One of the things that’s interesting about

the Bible is that it claims to be the Word of God. Now that doesn’t
prove that it’s the Word of God, that it already separates it out
from other religious literature. You don’t find too many other

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Transcript - CA201 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith
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Lesson 02 of 10 Reason 2: The Reliability of Its Book, the Bible

religious works that claim to be the Word of God as the Bible does.
So immediately its claim sets itself up. Now the next question you
have to ask: Does it validate its claim? Well, you have lots of Old
Testament prophecies, which you know were written down. We
have copies of many of those prophecies written down then that
were fulfilled in the New Testament. A lot of them were fulfilled
in the life of Jesus Christ. Others were fulfilled in various nations.
You have nothing like that again in religious literature. You have
the prophecies about Jesus that were all literally fulfilled in Him.
And you have other prophecies in other historical statements.
Everywhere you go, whether you go to history or to prophecy,
whether you look at the person of Jesus Christ, or you look at the
statements about nations in the Old and New Testaments, it all
matches up. And so, in a sense, it makes the claim that it’s the
Word of God, and it validates the claim as we look at not only
the Bible but at historical literature to see that we really do have
God’s revelation in our hands.

J. P. Moreland: Many people today think that the Bible is very

hard to understand or that it is basically a mythological book. But
really neither of these things is true. If people will simply take
the time to read the Bible, they will discover that while there
are portions of it that require study and are a little difficult to
understand, a lot of the Bible is accessible to someone who will
pay attention to it and read it carefully.

J. Kerby Anderson: One of the things that is so striking about the

Bible, which I think argues for the fact that it was inspired, that it
was revelation is the fact that you have individuals writing over
about a 1,500- to 2,000-year period from various cultures, various
times in three different languages about a multitude of different
topics, and the Bible is unified. The Bible has a unity that you find
nowhere else.

J. P. Moreland: Furthermore, the Bible speaks to issues that are
extremely relevant today. The Bible speaks to how to get along
with people. It speaks to how to develop a family and a host of
other subjects that people wonder about.

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Transcript - CA201 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith
© 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.
Lesson 02 of 10 Reason 2: The Reliability of Its Book, the Bible

J. Kerby Anderson: Today if you were to get modern scholars to

write on one topic, all in one language, all at one period of time,
you would have more diversity than you would have unity. And
hundreds and thousands of years, you have various individuals
writing, and you have a unity from Genesis to Revelation. That
argues, I believe, for the inspiration of revelation of Scripture.

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Transcript - CA201 Ten Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith
© 2015 Christian University GlobalNet. All rights reserved.