Can we believe the Bible?

How can such an ancient collection of writings be believed in the twenty-first century? This is a question many liberal Christians ask. Atheists also doubt the truthfulness of Scripture on the assumption that it's merely a collection of Jewish fables and prophetic ramblings.

One proof of the validity of the Bible is historical evidence. Liberal Christian scholars doubted the existence of the Hittites until ruins of their cities were discovered by archeologists. The same was true of Jericho. In fact, archeologists even found the bricks which composed the walls of the city. Just as the Bible said, the bricks formed a ramp all around so the Israelites could go up into it.

Prophecy also has shown how the Bible couldn't have been written by clever men or scribes long after the events took place. Who could have predicted the sack of Tyre by Alexander the Great and how he scraped the ruins of the mainland city into the sea to build a causeway. He was able to raze the island city as a result. This is just one of many accurate predictions from Scripture.

Some scholars claim that the Bible is filled with translation errors. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that, as just one example, the book of Isaiah had been translated almost completely without errors. The New Testament also was basically unchanged from the earliest manuscripts. Some critics cite the final verses of Mark's gospel as proof of forgery but the truth they contain doesn't conflict with the other gospels and epistles.

I could go on at length about this but I'll save it for my next book. You Think You're Going to Heaven? will, I hope, provide plenty of evidence for the integrity of Scripture as the final court of arbitration. God willing, I expect to finish the book and have it published in a few years.