Why Should I believe the Bible?

Why Should I Believe the Bible?

How do we determine the reliability of things?
Scrutinize the Sources of the Bible
Are the Manuscripts Reliable?
Test the Truthfulness of the Bible
Are the Apostles Reliable?
Is the History Accurate?
Can the Prophecies be checked?
Examine the Effects of the Bible
Are lives being changed?

Slide
This has been a great week.
I got a couple of very exciting emails this week.
I don’t think we are going to have any worries that this financial recession is going to affect us.

Christian Widow in Nigeria email
One email I got was from a Christian widow in Nigeria whose husband was a Dr. and worked for an embassy. She said in her email that she wants to give several million dollars to a Christian cause because she is dying and childless and out of nowhere, I get her email. She heard of us from an unnamed acquaintance. I want to tell you the name of Hickory Creek is really getting around.

I am trying to get a hold of the lawyer she told me to contact and it may cost us a few thousand dollars upfront, but that will be more than made up when we get the millions of dollars she wants to give us.

Microsoft Email
Not only that, but I received another email about Microsoft doing some email testing and they are going to send me a check for every person that I forward an email on to as well as money for every person that my friend forwards it on to.

Is this awesome are what?
I am waiting on the checks now.

From the looks on your faces, I would say some of you don’t believe me.

I bet there are some of you saying,
“Scott, you can’t believe everything you read! Those things are Urban legends, Myths, hoaxes. They aren’t true. There are no dying widows looking to give you millions and you aren’t going to be getting any money from Bill Gates. Don’t believe everything you read!”

I know you are right.
But if we can’t believe everything we read, how do we make a determination about what we should believe?
How do we know what we should believe or not?

Now, this may not seem too important in regard to scam emails that have no bearing on our lives anyway, but
should we believe the warning labels on medicine?
safety precautions when dealing with electricity?
Should we believe warnings we hear during inclement weather?

I am sure all of you would say we need to trust those things, because they can have great bearing on our lives, so it is important that we
learn to judge truth from falsehood and
know the difference between things that matter and things that don’t.

Now, in the case of hoax emails, we can judge the truthfulness by a quick search on the internet of hoaxes or by checking with the source of where the hoax is coming from.

I could call Microsoft and ask them if this is true. They would say no and that would be the end of the story.

But what about things that are harder to check directly?
How do we determine the reliability of what we read or hear in those cases?

Today we are going to look into that in regards to the Bible and ask the question
Why Should I Believe the Bible?
Slide
This is not so much a message from the Bible as it is about the Bible.
It is extremely important for people to understand and know why they believe the Bible.

This is because the Bible is our source of
most of what we know about Jesus Christ,
all of what we know