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I remember exactly where I was. I remember the room. I remember the chairs. I remember the silence in the room.
It was a Tuesday morning in the fall of 2001. Mike, our guitarist, walked into the pastor’s office a few minutes after Jerry and I had already settled in with our coffee. Jerry, Mike, and I had these weekly Tuesday morning meetings to debrief the previous Sunday and plan for the one coming up. I was serving as the interim worship leader at our church in Wichita Falls, Texas at the time. Mike was the band leader, and Jerry was our pastor. Those Tuesday mornings were one of my favorite times of the week.
But that particular Tuesday was different. Mike walked in with this unforgettable look on his face. Not panicked exactly, but unsettled. He asked if we’d heard what was happening in New York. Jerry and I looked at each other with confusion. We hadn’t heard a thing. Mike told us a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. Jerry reached over and turned on the TV in his office. And then, right there in that small pastor’s office in Wichita Falls, Texas, the three of us watched as the second plane hit the second tower.
Nobody said anything for a moment. We just knew. We knew this wasn’t an accident. We knew we were watching history. We knew our world had just changed.
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday, this is episode 696, “Is the Bible Reliable.” I’m Darrell Darnell, my favorite Star Wars movie is Return of the Jedi, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Happy Star Wars Day to you, and a happy Revenge of the 5th to all you dark side fans out there. Whether you’re on the light side or the dark side, I’m glad you’re here today, because what we’re talking about in this episode is something that I think matters for everyone.
Believer or skeptic. Churchgoer or someone who hasn’t stepped inside a church since you were dragged there as a kid. This one’s for all of you.
Author and theologian Frank Turek was once speaking to a room of believers and skeptics, and he talked about something called an impact event. He described it this way: you might forget what you had for breakfast this morning, but you will not forget an impact event. An impact event is something so significant, so shattering, so outside the realm of ordinary life, that it becomes permanently burned into your memory.
Frank asked the room how many people could remember where they were on November 22nd, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. A few hands went up. He talked about his own memory of that day. He was two years old, two days from his birthday, standing in his living room in New Jersey, watching his mother weep uncontrollably in front of a black and white TV. He asked her what was wrong. She said, “They killed the president.” He said he could still see his 26-year-old mother on that ottoman as clearly as if it happened yesterday, even though it was over 60 years ago.
Then he asked the room: where were you when the second plane hit the tower?
You already know the answer, don’t you? You remember exactly where you were. I was in a pastor’s office in Wichita Falls, Texas. You have your own story. And that’s the point. Impact events don’t fade. They stick. They stay with you in a way ordinary moments simply don’t.
Then Frank asked the room this question: “if Jesus actually rose from the dead — if a man who was publicly executed, buried, and sealed in a tomb actually walked out of it alive three days later — do you think that would have been an impact event?”
Think about that for a second.
I think here’s where a lot of people disengage. Here’s where the skeptic in the room says, “Okay, but the Bible has been changed so many times, translated so many times. We don’t even have the originals. How could we possibly trust what it says?”
I hear you. It’s a fair question. It deserves a real answer.
I love the way Pastor Voddie Baucham addressed this skepticism. He talked about what it would have actually required for someone to “doctor” the Bible, specifically the New Testament. He calls it a three-level conspiracy.
Level one: the manuscripts. For the New Testament alone, we have over 6,000 manuscripts or portions of manuscripts. Let me give you some perspective on that number. For Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, the primary document we use to study Julius Caesar and his conquests, we have around 10 manuscripts. The earliest copy we can get our hands on was written 900 years after the original.
For Aristotle’s Poetics, we have nearly 5 manuscripts, with the earliest copy coming 1,400 years after the original.
For the New Testament? We not only have over 6,000 manuscripts, but we can get to within decades of the originals. In fact, a fragment of John chapter 18 found in Egypt is dated to around AD 120 to 130. That’s within roughly 90 to 100 years of John’s Gospel being written. What makes that even more interesting is John’s Gospel is believed to have been composed in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey. The fact that a copy had already made its way to Egypt by AD 130 tells us the original was already widely circulating well before that.
And as Voddie points out, if someone wanted to change those 6,000 manuscripts, they would have had to steal every single one, alter them without showing any ink work, return them all without a trace, and never breathe a word about it. That’s just level one.
Level two: translations. Within the first few centuries, the New Testament was already being translated into Syriac, Coptic, and Latin. So now your imaginary conspiracy theorist has to go find and alter thousands of Greek manuscripts AND all the translations into multiple other languages. And then get them all back. Quietly.
Level three: the Church Fathers. The early Church Fathers — writers like Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp — had this habit of quoting the New Testament constantly in their own writings. Scholar Bruce Metzger concluded that if every single New Testament manuscript were destroyed tomorrow, we could reconstruct over 95% of the New Testament just from the quotations left behind by the early Church Fathers alone.
So whoever is orchestrating this fictional conspiracy now has to find 6,000 Greek manuscripts, all the Syriac, Coptic, and Latin translations, AND the writings of every early Church Father from the first and second centuries, alter all of them to match, and then get everything back without anyone noticing.
As Voddie puts it: you’d have to find all of it, change all of it, don’t show your ink work, get it all back, and never get caught. Ever.
Objectively thinking, does the doctoring theory REALLY make sense?
And as I mentioned in episode 674, the New Testament writers weren’t writing mythology. They weren’t writing poetry. They were writing with a very specific, very deliberate historical intention. Luke opens his Gospel by saying: “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” (Luke 1:1-4)
He uses the word certainty. That is not the language of legend-making. That is the language of a historian.
Peter, in 2 Peter 1:16, writes: “For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
John, at the end of his Gospel, writes: “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
These men weren’t spinning tales. They were making a case.
And then there’s archaeology. Some skeptic’s arguments often rest on the assumption that the New Testament is full of invented people, places, and events. But dig after dig has told a very different story.
Pontius Pilate, for centuries, was questioned as a historical figure. Then in 1961, Italian archaeologists found a stone inscription at Caesarea that reads: “Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judea, has dedicated to the people of Caesarea a temple in honor of Tiberius.” Pontius Pilot: confirmed.
Caiaphas, the high priest who oversaw Jesus’ trial? In 1990, an ornate burial box was discovered near Jerusalem inscribed with “Joseph bar Caiaphas.” The bones of an elderly male were inside. Caiaphas: confirmed.
The Pool of Bethesda, where John 5 records Jesus healing a man? Critics said it didn’t exist. Archaeologists found it 40 feet underground with five porticoes, exactly as John described. Historical location: confirmed.
Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown. Critics once claimed it wasn’t even a real city in Jesus’ day. A first-century synagogue inscription at Caesarea proved otherwise. Nazareth: confirmed.
Luke was a meticulous historian. He named 32 countries, 54 cities, and 9 islands in his writings, all without a single geographical error. Sir William Ramsay, who spent years in the field as a skeptic trying to disprove Luke, eventually concluded: “Luke is a historian of first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy — this author should be placed along with the greatest of historians.”
As Frank Turek said to that room of skeptics: “If people can be trusted on what you can verify, you probably ought to trust them where you can’t.”
I think that’s right. You can’t keep confirming a person’s story at every verifiable point and then dismiss them the moment they tell you something that challenges your worldview. That’s not intellectual honesty. That’s just deciding in advance what you’re willing to believe.
Here’s what I learned.
For my fellow believers: you don’t have to be an archaeologist or a theologian to have confidence in the Word of God. But you do need to know why you believe what you believe.
1 Peter 3:15 says to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that you have. Not to argue. Not to win. But to give a reason. The evidence is there. Dig into it. Know it. Be ready.
For those of you who are skeptical, and I mean that with the most genuine respect, I want to ask you something. If you are willing to read Caesar, study Aristotle, and trust Herodotus based on a handful of manuscripts written centuries after the originals, what would it take for you to give the New Testament the same honest examination? Because the manuscript evidence for the New Testament isn’t even in the same category. It’s not close. The archaeology isn’t close. The eyewitness proximity isn’t close.
I’m not asking you to become a Christian today. I’m just asking you to be fair. Apply the same standard to the New Testament that you apply to every other ancient document.
September 11th was an impact event. Kennedy’s assassination was an impact event. We trust the accounts of those events from people who were there, even decades later, because impact events don’t fade.
If Jesus rose from the dead, that was the most profound impact event in human history. And the people who wrote about it did so at personal cost while eyewitnesses to the event were still alive to verify those accounts. Not for fame, not for money, not for power. Most of them died for it. People don’t typically die for something they KNOW is a lie.
Whatever you came into this episode believing, I want to leave you with this: don’t settle for a secondhand opinion about the most important question you’ll ever face. Read the evidence. Sit with it honestly. Let it challenge you. Whether you’re a Christian who needs to deepen your roots, or a skeptic who’s never given the Bible a fair shot, the invitation is the same. Look closer, because the truth doesn’t hide from the people who are genuinely willing to find it, and the truth will set you free.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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