CAN WE TOTALLY TRUST THE BIBLE?
Three Main Proofs—the Bible is True and Trustworthy
(An apologetics tract by True-Way Tracts®
posted as a 2-part blog)
INTRODUCTION: No other religious book can compare to the Bible. For it claims to be, and proves to be, the complete Word of God given to humanity.1 
God’s handprint is evident across the entire Bible.
The Bible speaks of our Creator God’s agape love for every person. A love so great that His Son Jesus Christ sacrificed His life for us, to offer us the free gift of eternal life.2
The towering mountain of evidence for the truth of the Bible demonstrates that it is trustworthy and infallible.3 Three of the top proofs are:
● The Bible’s miraculous UNITY AND HARMONY
● The Bible’s amazing FULFILLED PROPHECIES
● The Bible’s remarkable MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
1. UNITY AND HARMONY
The Bible contains 66 historical books written over 1,500 years by 40 authors across three continents, and in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek). Yet remarkably, its 66 books fit together as one divine Masterpiece proclaiming one theme: Jesus Christ and His mission to redeem the human race.4
Those 40 authors were separated by centuries of time and vast distances. They also had different walks of life—such as fishermen, shepherds, prophets, kings, and priests. And they wrote on hundreds of subjects. So there’s no way they could have collaborated to write the harmonious Scriptures.
The Bible’s miraculous harmony and unity demonstrates that it had a divine Author outside of time—God’s Holy Spirit, who is all-knowing. He inspired and superintended the writings of the 40 chosen human authors, revealing God’s truths to them.5 Jesus Himself stated that every word of the Bible comes from the mouth of God, is without error, and is historically reliable.6 All Scripture is “God-breathed.”7
Jesus Christ is the Centerpiece—the central focus—of all Scripture.8 Jesus stated, “In the volume of the book it is written of Me.”9 The Old Testament (OT) repeatedly predicted a coming Messiah and included several appearances of Him before His birth (called “Christophanies”). The New Testament (NT) recorded Jesus’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, and foretells His future return and reign.
Thus, we see the Bible’s amazing continuity from start to finish. Both the fact and the message of the Bible are closely interconnected to reveal God’s Son and His part in human redemption.
THE BIBLE’S DEEP UNITY (A Scarlet Thread)
Woven throughout Scripture is a symbolic “scarlet thread of redemption.” It traces God’s unfolding plan of love to redeem fallen humanity. This red thread represents our need for an innocent blood sacrifice. (Starting in Genesis, an animal was killed to provide garments for Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God.) Ultimately, God sent his sinless Son, Jesus, to shed His blood on the cross at Calvary. There He paid the penalty for all our sins so we could live with holy God forever (see John 3:16).10
2. FULFILLED PROPHECIES
The Bible is the only book in the world to offer specific predictions hundreds of years in advance that were literally fulfilled. The Old Testament contains more than 300 predictions concerning the Messiah’s first coming. When Jesus Christ stepped into time and space centuries later, He fulfilled them all with 100% accuracy—61 of which are major messianic prophecies.11
The chart below highlights just eight of those prophecies. It shows their scriptural location in the OT and Jesus’s fulfillment of them hundreds of years later in the NT.12
8 EXAMPLES OF JESUS’S FULFILLMENT
OF MESSIANIC PROPHECIES
1 – The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem
(Micah 5:2) Fulfilled in Matt. 2:1, 4–6; John 7:42
2 – A messenger would prepare the way for His arrival
(Mal. 3:1) Fulfilled in Matt. 3:1–3; Luke 7:27–28
3 – His triumphal entry into Jerusalem as King on a
donkey’s colt (Zech. 9:9) Fulfilled in Mark 11:1–10
4 – Betrayed by a friend and would suffer wounds to His hands
(Zech. 13:6) Fulfilled in Matt. 26:48–50; John 20:25, 27
5 – Betrayed for thirty pieces of silver
(Zech. 11:12) Fulfilled in Matt. 26:14–15
6 – The betrayal money would be used to purchase a potter’s field
(Zech 11:13) Fulfilled in Matt. 27:5, 9–10
7 – The Messiah would remain silent while He is afflicted
(Isa. 53:7) Fulfilled in Matt. 27:12–14; 1 Pet. 2:22–24
8 – He would die by having His hands and feet pierced
(Ps. 22:16) Fulfilled in Luke 23:33, 46; John 20:25
The chance of just 8 of the 300 messianic prophecies (such as the 8 above) becoming fulfilled in the life of any one person is infinitesimal.13 According to the science of statistical probabilities, that chance is 1 in 1017 (or one in 100,000,000,000,000,000—one in one hundred quadrillion)! In another calculation, the possibility of one individual fulfilling 48 of those prophecies is 1 in 10157. So coincidence is definitely ruled out.14
In addition to messianic prophecies, there are hundreds of OT prophecies pertaining to events, kings, cities, peoples, and nations (especially the Jewish people and Israel) that have been fulfilled in history. In the OT Book of Isaiah, God declared His purpose for prophecy: to show that He is the only true and living God. He also declared He will bring to pass all that He had spoken and planned.15
3. MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE
The New Testament: More than 24,000 manuscripts from the New Testament exist today, of which 5,856 are original Greek manuscripts and 18,130+ are in other languages.16 Using the science of textual criticism to compare these thousands of manuscripts has established both the reliability of the text and the accuracy of its transmission.
Writings of the early church fathers also confirm the faithfulness of the NT text and its transmission. For example, the writings of Origen and Tertullian (dated within 150 to 250 years of Jesus’s earthy life) contain prolific quotations from the NT. Even if no copies of the NT existed, the Christian fathers’ writings would be sufficient to reconstruct nearly the entire New Testament.17
[The remainder of this blog
is posted as Part 2, published next]
