Again: These are good questions! But if you are looking for "proof" that the Bible is a perfect, infallible, inspired document, then you are going to be disappointed. In the end, you have to meditate on the following questions: Do you believe that God would leave us with nothing more than faulty accounts of Himself that are full of falsehood and errors? Or do you trust that God preserves a true and faithful account of Himself so that we are not lost forever?
Of course, the next question is this: If you believe that God would preserve a true and faithful account of Himself (so that we are not lost forever), how would you know it when you found it?
Of course, the next question is this: If you believe that God would preserve a true and faithful account of Himself (so that we are not lost forever), how would you know it when you found it?
Have there been mistakes made when scrolls were copied or commentaries on the Bible were written? Have false stories been written by some people and then claimed as true by others? Yes. But the real question is whether they have been allowed to remain. It is way beyond the scope of New Beginnings, but for those who take the trouble to study how the Bible came to be, these things become clear: 1) the Bible paints an extremely coherent and consistent picture of God and His relationship to His people; 2) the "copy mistakes" that have been made throughout the Bible's history have been made by people who were trying to make the text of the Bible clearer rather than trying to obscure it or twist it; and 3) the writings that have been "denied" a place in the Bible paint a very different picture of God and His relationship to His people.
ReplyDeleteRemember: God wants us to trust Him as our God. Is He going to leave us without any way to do that? Is He going to leave us to write the Bible on our own? Or is He going to "move the pieces around the board" - a chess analogy since I'm a chess player - to make sure that you have a way to learn the truth about Him?
ReplyDeleteIn the end, the question is whether you trust that God is going to work things so that you can know Him or not. If you do not trust God can do that or wants to do that, then there isn't going to be any kind of source you can trust. In that case, you really DO need Him to show up in an undeniable and unmistakeable way. But that doesn't guarantee anything either, does it? (Reread Genesis 2-3. It didn't work for Adam and Eve, did it?)
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