J. Warner Wallace - The Top Three Reasons the Bible Is Reliable

another question that came in well what would you say are the top three reasons the Bible is reliable and as a guy who was really trying to answer that question for himself not quite sure if this was even true to me it really came down to I needed to know if the accounts in the scriptures were reliable could I trust what the Bible said and primarily I'm talking about as a Christian can I trust what the Bible says about Jesus that's really what it comes down to it so I took a similar approach that you would take with anybody when you're examining eyewitness reliability there were several reasons several things I had to know first of all were these witnesses writing early enough to have actually at been witnesses where they even present at the time that Jesus ministered on earth and that's going to be an important issue are they other Gospels dated early enough so they could have been written by eyewitness the second one of course is can be corroborated in some way is there some either archaeological evidence or some writing of non-christians I like Josephus Tacitus Tallis of people who in the first century would have written something even if all it does is corroborate the loose outline of Jesus's life that would be at least some evidential corroboration for the claims of the Gospel writers the third thing of course is how do we know hasn't changed over time so I want to examine this chain of custody the heel to toe story of Jesus from John to his students to their students - that's next student all the way down and when I got that snapshot of Jesus taken over the centuries or at least tell me if in fact the story had changed there's actually one more thing do I think that these folks had a bias because if what doesn't have a bias you can't trust them and so I had to look at those areas but primarily the issue of early dating I think there's more than enough good reason to believe that the Gospels are written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses it would it best explain the evidence for example of the missing destruction of the temple the siege is not described the deaths of Peter Paul and James the brother of Jesus are not described in the book of Acts you've got Luke writing his gospel before the book of Acts you've got Paul in two different locations either referencing Luke's Gospel directly or referencing the same issues that Luke is referencing in his gospel you can follow this back and tighten it in here you're now within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses so are they present I think they're arts a good reason to trust them are they corroborated I do think that the loose outline of Jesus's life is corroborated in the writings of non Christians from Josephus to some of the Greek writers at the time and if you know archaeological evidence also to support and corroborate those claims of Scripture and finally the issue of whether or not has changed over time is it still accurate when you examine the picture of Jesus taken by the disciples of John Ignatius and Polycarp take a look how do they describe Jesus how does their student Irenaeus describe Jesus how does his student Hippolytus describe Jesus if you keep on going down the chain of custody you'll realize that Jesus that most skeptics despise the Jesus that claimed to be God and worked miracles and rose from the dead is the earliest description of Jesus that's offered by both John and all of his students all the way down through history so those three areas or they present are they corroborated in some way and finally had they changed over time gave me great confidence that the eyewitness account is described in the New Testament is in fact reliable

Channel: Stand to Reason

Views: 24,312

Rating: 4.805068 out of 5

Keywords: J. Warner Wallace, Stand to Reason, Bible, Reliability, Apologetics, Christianity

Id: F6R29xwgENQ

Length: 3min 18sec (198 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 04 2013