FIVE REASONS YOU CAN TRUST THE BIBLE --Why we know the story of Jesus is not a legend.

REASON 3: IT HAS NOT CHANGED OVER TIME

Time often exposes eyewitness inaccuracies or lies. It’s important to examine the Gospels for honesty and accuracy over time. If we apply the “chain of custody” concept, (the chronological documentation  that records the control, transfer and analysis of documents), do we have confidence that the major attributes of the life of Jesus accepted as canon were described early and never changed or got more elaborate over time?

How can we know if the initial story of Jesus was not more simple, that He was indeed a preaching rabbi, but that He never walked on water, never made claims of deity, was not born of a virgin, etc.? What if all the miraculous elements of His story have been added over time until finally we have this version in our Bible which we really can’t trust because it has been modified?

The apostle John passed his Gospel into the hands of trustful students, Ignatius and Polycarp, who knew many of the apostles and transmitted his teachings to local churches.  They in turn had a student named Irenaeus, who later had a student named Hippolytus. In this whole chain of custody, link by link, person by person, we can see what they said they received. You can read their letters which have survived --they are not in the Bible, they are ancient documents-- and learn about Jesus from what they learnt from John. John’s students confirmed the accuracy of his Gospel.

The apostle Paul had several key students and disciples; he taught Linus and Clement of Rome, who passed the truth to others who guarded the accounts for future generations. Peter and Mark also had students who faithfully preserved eyewitness accounts.

The New Testament chain of custody transmitted and preserved, one generation after another, the primacy and sacred importance of the eyewitness documents and delivered them faithfully to those who would later identify them publicly in the councils that established our present canon of Scriptures. These councils did not create the current version of Jesus we know so well, they simply acknowledged the documents and reports provided by the eyewitnesses.

If you had lost the entire New Testament and all you had was the letters of the apostles’ students, you could comfortably reconstruct an accurate image of Jesus, like the one you have in your Bible today. These documents were written early by people who would have known if it was a lie. Jesus and His characteristics have not changed. They have not moved over the years and become more and more supernatural and extraordinary, they are exactly the same today as they were originally. The story never changed.

That is the third reason you can trust the Bible.  (To be followed)