When most atheists look at the Bible they think that they are
looking at a book which is filled with errors. At the outset it is easy to
understand how one might come to the conclusion that it is just a compilation
of flawed documents. I mean come on; the original New Testament (NT) writings
did not survive the past 2,000 years. The NT (originally written in Greek) was
just hand copied over and over again down through the centuries. Have you ever
played the game telephone? If you have, you know that what the message started
out as was not what it ended up as. Thus, how could NT today be even close to
what it was some 2,000 years ago? This resulted in over 5,400 early copies of
the Greek NT manuscripts which we have today. Let’s examine the evidence of
those 5,400 copies.
The results from comparing these 5,400 copies reveal that they are
“98% identical!”i The majority of these differences have no
significance: like spelling mistakes, slight word order differences or the
like. That brings the accuracy to an astounding 99.5%! No other writing from
history has that many manuscripts (the closest is Homer's Iliad with 643
manuscripts) with that high of accuracy. Furthermore, contained within these
minute differences, one finds not a single theological change in the NT.
“Simply put, if we reject the authenticity of the New Testament on textual
grounds we'd have to reject every ancient work of antiquity and declare null
and void every piece of historical information from written sources prior to
the beginning of the second millennium A.D.” ii
So what difference does all of this make? It means that the Bible
is trustworthy. It is God’s Word period! It is a book which is not based on
fairy tales but rather historical facts. It is a Declaration of Independence.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not
let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1).
Christ has freed us from the punishment which sin requires (Rom.
6:23). We are free of guilt and shame (Rom. 8:1). We are free to come to the
Father with our requests (Heb. 4:16). We are God’s children and coheirs with
Christ (Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15). We are free to love others (Gal. 5:13). It is on
account of our freedom in Christ that our lives produce the fruit of the Spirit
(Gal. 5:22-23). And Christ has freed us as Christians to be able to truly live
(John 10:10).
We are free to think. Atheism is a blind faith. It is believing
something which has no rational or historical evidence supporting it. While on
the other hand, the historical evidence supporting the NT is rock solid.
Therefore, this month as we celebrate the freedoms which we have in this
country, we as Christians can also celebrate the freedoms which we have in
Christ. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
In His service,
Matt
i Daniel Wallace, "The Majority Text and the Original Text: Are
They Identical?" Bibliotheca Sacra, April-June, 1991, 157-8.
ii Stand to Reason, “Is the New Testament Text Reliable?” by Greg
Koukl; available from http://www.str.org/articles/is-the-new-testament-text-reliable#ANCHOR19;
Internet; accessed 3 June 2013.
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