The Bible is the Only Holy Book (10 Evidences, E)

Read Isaiah 40:1-8

V.       The Bible is durable.

·        The Bible has survived time.  The Old Testament was first begun to be put in writing 2000 years before Christ.  It was passed on by a special class of men whose sole duty was the accurate transmission of the Scriptures.  Has this transmission been accurate so that we have God’s message today?

o   Over 13,000 New Testament manuscripts, including 4000 from the 2^nd-4^th centuries (Bernard Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences) have been found, providing a basis for the Bible’s authenticity.  Compare this to the writings of Sophocles (100 mss. the earliest being 1400 years after his death), Plato (1300 mss.), Horace (900 mss.) and so on.

o   The Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940’s were quite profound.  Most scholars expected that, given the fact that they were more ancient than anything previously discovered, they would show inconsistencies in the Bible.  But in fact they proved that what has been passed on over the centuries is consistent; as expected, God preserved His word for mankind.

·        The Bible has survived persecution.  Again and again it has been banned, burned and outlawed; by Romans, Communists, African rebels, and even Muslims.  Amazingly, in what we call the dark ages, the professing church denied people access to the Bible and persecuted heavily those who tried to make it available to the common man.  Not only did this persecution fail at the time; but the Bible’s availability continues to increase.

·        The Bible has survived criticism and misuse.  There were attacks of criticism in the first centuries of the Church in the time of the Roman Empire.  Then the Bible was somewhat protected from criticism from 300-1700 being protected and hidden by the Roman Church; but in that time it’s message suffered from misuse.  With the coming of the Renaissance and Enlightenment the critical attacks on the Bible became stronger than ever.  Note Bernard Ramm’s comment on this (p232):

These attacks came from scholars of many countries but mostly Germany, Holland, France, England, & America. The attacks have been made by men of great learning & exceptional mental vigor. The attack in some instances has been made with fantastic regard fro minute details.  The attacks have been publicized abroad in a never-ending stream of periodicals, journals, pamphlets, monographs, books, & encyclopedias. The larger universities of the world & hundreds of theological seminaries have taken up the cause of radical criticism.  A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and the committal read.  But somehow the corpse never stays put.

The Bible is truly unique.  We will finish this tomorrow before moving on.