God’s Word Proves True

Ezra 6:6-12

6 So King Darius sent this message:

“Now therefore, Tattenai, governor of the province west of the Euphrates River, and Shethar-bozenai, and your colleagues and other officials west of the Euphrates River—stay away from there! 7 Do not disturb the construction of the Temple of God. Let it be rebuilt on its original site, and do not hinder the governor of Judah and the elders of the Jews in their work. 8 “Moreover, I hereby decree that you are to help these elders of the Jews as they rebuild this Temple of God. You must pay the full construction costs, without delay, from my taxes collected in the province west of the Euphrates River so that the work will not be interrupted. 9 “Give the priests in Jerusalem whatever is needed in the way of young bulls, rams, and male lambs for the burnt offerings presented to the God of heaven. And without fail, provide them with as much wheat, salt, wine, and olive oil as they need each day. 10 Then they will be able to offer acceptable sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the welfare of the king and his sons. 11 “Those who violate this decree in any way will have a beam pulled from their house. Then they will be tied to it and flogged, and their house will be reduced to a pile of rubble. 12 May the God who has chosen the city of Jerusalem as the place to honor his name destroy any king or nation that violates this command and destroys this Temple. “I, Darius, have issued this decree. Let it be obeyed with all diligence.”

What I love about these verses is that it proves God’s Word is true. If you remember a few days ago we discussed God’s Restoration Financing Plan and in it we looked at God’s call to His people, Israel, to rebuild the temple. In the beginning of this book Ezra tells us what God’s direction was in Ezra 1:2-6. In the middle of their endeavor, though, it didn’t look like what God had said it would look like. They even stopped building for a period of time because of the persecution from the people around them who did not want them to do what God had said.

God is so good to have had it written down what the King’s wishes were so that they could be found at a later date and show that the people of Israel were correct in their endeavors. What I love even more is that God’s Word is written down for me so that I can find my way through this life by learning from those who went before me. I can learn what to do from their good deeds and what not to do from their bad deeds. I can see God’s plan for my life take shape from what His Word has to say and I can go back to it and know that it hasn’t changed since it was first written down thousands of years ago. How do I know that? Here is one way I know that. I learned from a book by Dr. Don Bierle, “Surprised by Faith”, just how accurate the New Testament is. In his book in Chapter 2 it discusses this issue directly.

“The test of integrity determines whether the New Testament Gospels originated in the eyewitnes generation of Jesus, and whether these accounts were transmitted to us over the centuries without major changes. Specifically, we need to know if the twenty-first century English New Testament is a reasonably accurate reproduction of the original first-century Greek New Testament. There are three primary questions scholars ask of ancient literature to determine this.” They ask these questions:

How many manuscripts have been found?
How early are the manuscripts?
How accurately were the manuscripts copied?

Here is what he said about each of these questions:

“1. How many manuscripts have been found? The more abundant the number of ancient copies that are found, the better.” He goes on to say, “There are more than 5,664 known manuscripts in the original Greek language. There are, in addition, some 18,000 ancient New Testament manuscripts in Latin, Syriac, Ethipic, Armenian and other language versions, together with New Testament text found in ancient hymn books of the early church. All together, about 24,000 handwritten copies of portions of the New Testament have survived.” Comparing that number with some of the other famous writings from that time period of people like Sophocles, Aristotle, Caesar, Tacitus, Plato and others the New Testament has more than 25 times the number of copies as the other writers do combined! Professors in colleges around the country will tell their students that the other authors works are true and correct and say that the bible is not and it could not be accurate. They are WRONG!

“2. How early are the manuscripts? Obviously, the further removed in time the copies are from the originals, the more likely they are to have accumulated copyist errors, additions and deletions, i.e., to have less integrity. Fortunately, while the total number of these errors is greater simply because of the large number of New Testament manuscripts, the large number of manuscripts also increases proportionately the means for detecting such errors and restoring the original wording.”

“It is generally agreed that the 27 books and letters of the New Testament were penned over a fifty-year period, beginning approximately A.D. 47. For ease of calculations, I will use the A.D. 100 as the latest possible date for their completion. What is the earliest copy ever found? The John Rylands papyrus, designated by scholas as P52, is a fragment containing a few verses of the New Testament Gospel of John, dating about A.D. 125. This is only some 35 years after the original Gospel had been written by the apostle. Whoever used this copy could have known the author, or even been personally taught by the apostle John, himself.”

Helping to even further show how soon copies were found he says this, “the recently analyzed fragments of Matthew (Magdalen Papyrus), a scroll fragment of Mark at Qumran, and a papyrus fragment of Luke in a Paris library that have been dated by some scholars between A.D. 50 and A.D. 70. Since Jesus lived until A.D. 30, these copies were made by people who were contemporaries of Jesus – people who knew Him personally or talked with those who did.”

Compared to the other authors cited before the time interval between the date of writing and the earliest known manuscripts compared as follows:

New Testament – 15 years
Virgil – 300 years
Homer – 500 years
Caesar – 950 years
Tacitus – 1,000 years
Plato – 1,250 years
Herodotus – 1,350 years
Aristotle – 1,450 years

All these figures come from this book on page 34 and are found in Figure 2. The New Testament copies are 20 times closer to the original authors writings than any other work of literature! Praise God!

“3. How accurately were the manuscripts copied? The final question measures the extent of distortion of the text due to copying over the centuries…the New Testament must have been quite significantly muddled by insertions, interpretations and translation. Scholars refer to this as ditortion of the meaning of the text.” The author thought that with so many copies that there was going to be such a difference in them that they dispove themselves by the numbers of mistakes from one copy to the next. That isn’t what he discovered, though.

“Dr. Bruce Metzger, professor of New Testament language and literature at Princeton, published an analysis on this very question. He compared research into the many manuscripts of three ancient works: Homer’s Iliad, a religious work of the ancient Greeks; the Mahabharata, a religious book of Hinduism; and the Christian New Testament. The works varied in length from 15,600 lines for the Iliad, 20,000 for the New Testament, and 250,000 for the Mahabharata. Variations such as spelling differences, word order, etc., that did not affect the meaning of the test, were ignored. All differences in the manuscripts affecting the reader’s inderstanding were counted. How much distortion did he find?”

“Dr. Metzger summarized that 764 lines of the Iliad were corrupted, a distortion rate of about 5%…The Mahabharata was even worse with at least 26,000 lines corrupted, somewhat more than a 10% distortion rate…The data for the New Testament, on the other hand, is incredible. Only 40 of 20,000 lines, or 1/5 of 1% (0.2%), are distorted…Said more simply, no teaching of the Christian faith is in question as a result of the distortion of the New Testament text due to copying over many centuries.”

Dr. Bierle finishes this chapter in his book with this synopsis: “Based on the very methods that literary and historical scholars use today, the only reasonable and logical conclusion that I can draw is that the Bible is the most reliable book of antiquity.” This came from a man whose goal was to disprove the Bible. He found out just how accurate God’s Word is and if it is that accurate to what was originally written down one can only come to the conclusion that the Word must be true.

What Dr. Bierle showed is what the Word says about itself:

Proverbs 30:5-6

5 Every word of God proves true. He is a shield to all who come to him for protection. 6 Do not add to his words, or he may rebuke you and expose you as a liar.

2 Samuel 7:28

28 For you are God, O Sovereign Lord. Your words are truth, and you have promised these good things to your servant.

Psalm 119:160

160 The very essence of your words is truth; all your just regulations will stand forever.

Proverbs 12:19

19 Truthful words stand the test of time, but lies are soon exposed.

I thank You today Lord for Your Word and for preserving Your Word accurately for us today. I know that Your Word is the truth and that You are the author of truth. I thank You that what is written down for me is what You want me to see and that the accuracy in what is written down brings confidence that cannot come from any other piece of work today. Your Word is a true today as it was the day it was written down and for that I am eternally grateful. To God be the glory, the honor and the praise! Amen.

Published by Erik L. Vakula
Daily Bread From the Word
Copyright © 2009 Erik Vakula, All Rights Reserved