If you missed the beginning of the series you might want to go back and catch up.
Start from the beginning in the Intro Article here.
If you have not read article 1, you can read that here.
If God were real, then why wouldn't He show himself to us? How does He reach the most people? How do we know that a message is from God?
As of 2007, you could get a complete Bible in 438 different languages, and you can get portions of the Bible in 1,168 languages. Before the beginning of the twentieth century, we had over a billion copies of the Bible published.
Most of the ancient New Testaments follow the Byzantine tradition (over 99% of the Greek New Testaments). Wilbur Pickering in The Identity of the New Testament Text wrote the following:
A better, more cumbersome, way to describe the situation would be something like this: 100% of the manuscripts agree as to, say, 80% of the text; 99% agree as to another 10%; over 95% agree as to another 4%, over 90% as to another 3%: only 3% (or less) of the text do less than 90% of the manuscripts agree.
Our earliest manuscripts are a generation from the original (autographic) manuscripts. The Old Testament follows the Masoretic tradition usually to the letter. The standard translation of the Bible, the KJV, is considered by experts as one of the greatest pieces of English literature the world has ever seen.
The Bible dominates publication number statistics, starting with the very first printing press. We are not even counting the Bible on audio, video, or braille in saying that. Sermons from hundreds of denominations and thousands of ministers have centered on the Bible.
Meanwhile, most foreign Bibles come from this authorized version. Bible teacher John MacArthur has stated that the Bible speaks of Itself with “Thus saith the Lord” over 2,000 times!
The Bible uses prophecy both in the short-term and long-term to show that its message is Divine in origin. So, the ancient people could see the judgment of God in their lifetimes with the Great Flood of Noah, the exodus of the Jews, and more. Then you have long-term prophecies, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the successive world empires of Nebuchadnezzar, and the spread of Christianity.
Meanwhile, the Bible has gotten science right at times where ancient people could not know these things. The Earth hangs upon nothing; running water tends to be more sanitary than still water; underwater currents exist in the deepest part of the sea; and darkness is the backdrop of outer space.
Archeologists have also found the Bible to be historically reliable in organizing the history of civilizations.
Psychologist and speaker Jordan Peterson noticed that the Bible is the central Book for mankind. It is a library whose influence has pervaded all of western thought and way of life. It was for that reason that the militant atheist Richard Dawkins argued for the inclusion of the Bible into the government school systems: it was embedded into our knowledge of history, law, drama, and literature.
Science, archaeology, prophecy, and the historical success and endurance of the Bible point towards the notion that a supernatural element is behind the Good Book.
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away:
But the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.
—————1st Peter 1:23-25
Continue to Article 6 here
Endnotes
See chapters
"I know of no finding in archaeology that’s properly confirmed which is in opposition to the Scriptures. The Bible is the most accurate history textbook the world has ever seen." - Dr Clifford Wilson, formerly director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology (quote obtained from: Archaeologist Speaks Out) http://www.creationwiki.org/Biblical_archaeology_quotes
"As of 1994, Kurt and Barbara Alund produced their latest combined statistics of extant manuscripts of the New Testament and estimated there to be 5,656 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament in varying form. However in 1967, Kurt Aland provided additional analysis of existing manuscripts. At that time, he noted a total of 5,255 New Testament manuscripts of varying form, Of that number 5,210 manuscripts supported the received text. In his 26th edition of the Nestle'-Aland Greek Text, Aland considered 5,210 manuscripts to belong to the received text group. Or to put it another way, he determined that only forty-five of those 5,255 manuscripts were something other than the received text. It was from those forty five manuscripts that the 26th edition of the Nestle'-Aland text was produced. Therefore in 1967, 99 percent of all existing manuscripts favored the received text and only 1 percent supported the critical text. That percentage has changed only slightly in the intervening years as other manuscripts have been discovered."
David H. Sorenson, Touch not the unclean thing**
"One key milestone in the history of the Bible comes in the early 19th century, when the first Bible Societies were founded. These organizations ordered Bibles in huge numbers, but gave them away or sold them at cost as part of their Christian mission. From this point on, the majority of Bibles were freely distributed rather than sold. A study produced by the British and Foreign Bible Society (founded in 1804) calculated that 2,458,000,000 Bibles were printed between 1815 and 1975.
The 5–7 billion figure has been arrived at by adding the above-mentioned figures to annual estimates compiled by United Bible Societies (the global umbrella organization). In the 21st century, Bibles are printed at a rate of around 80 million per year."
Jordan Peterson's realization on the Bible:
Legal Application
The Bible is the original context of western civilization.
We can not obtain the meaning of the law nor the original intent of the founding fathers without recognizing the intent and divine authority of scripture. Scripture justifies the US Justice system. This was venerated in the ceremony of swearing an oath upon the Bible in court testimonies.
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