Expert: Pastor Don Carpenter - 7/20/2009

Question
Hello, My name is Jennifer, and I'm a not so ordinary teenager. I have many questions involving my religion (Christianity), the world we live in, and the people that surround me. I have been a full on Christian for a few years now, and I have many friends who are not Christians. I try to stand my ground when entering arguments involving religion, God, and the bible. I'm not denying the word of God, or the bible. I was just curious what your stance was, when people say, "The bible was written by man, how could you trust it?" what do you think?

Answer
Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for this great question.  One could write volumes in answering such a profound question, but I will try to answer this in a simple way.  There are a few things that you need to consider when thinking about the truth of the Bible.

1.  Everyone has a world view based upon certain unprovable presuppositions.  For example, Christians presuppose that there is a God who gave His Son to die for sinful man and who moved men to write books in the Bible to tell us about it.  This cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it is something we presuppose to be true.

Atheists presuppose that there is no God and that the grandeur of the universe came from some random explosion of material that existed for eternity.  They presuppose that chemicals moved together randomly and formed a DNA chain that produced a one celled creature which developed into all the animals on this planet through mutation and survival of the fittest.  This cannot be proven, but one must presuppose it to be so.

The question must be asked, which presuppositions make sense.  Now let us consider the origin of the Bible.

2.  The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by 40 human authors over a period of 1600 years.  It is perfectly in line with itself even though countless personalities and cultures were involved in the composition of this book.  It has one major theme.  The Bible is consistent with history, culture and true science.  It is full of prophecies that have since come true.  Based on this evidence, the first presupposition, though unprovable, makes logical sense.

3.  The Bible must be taken as a package deal.  If you choose to believe lets say, the golden rule because it is in the Bible, then you must believe the other stuff in it too.  It was never meant to be split and cut up some believed and some rejected.  The same Bible that teaches the golden rule teaches that every word of scripture was inspired, or literally in the Greek "God -Breathed"

2 Timothy 3:16
16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

4.  The same Bible tat says that every word of scripture was breathed by God when it was originally written says that God will preserve every word originally written forever.  We can be sure that there is a perfect copy of scriptures for us to read today.

Psalm 12:6-7
6 The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.  
The King James Version, (Cambridge: Cambridge) 1769.

If you are to take ANYTHING from scriptures and believe it, then you must take it all.  If you are going to reject anything from scripture, then if you are consistent, you must reject it all.

I hope that this is a help to you.

In Christ
Pastor Don