Why I Believe the Bible is the Word of God: God's Preserving Hand

Another reason why I believe the Bible is God's Word is this: The Bible has been preserved supernaturally against internal corruption (i.e. the integrity/reliability of its text has been maintained for thousands of years), and against external attack (no matter how hard people have tried to destroy it, it still exists today). This attests to its divine Authorship and a divine intervention to preserve it for all time.

To the often asked question: "How do you know that the Bible is the same now as was written by its original authors thousands of years ago?", the answer is in fact quite plain and simple. We have thousands of ancient manuscripts of the Bible (in whole or in part) which can be compared to each other and to what we have today. When these are compared the accuracy of the preserved text is proven.

Let me give you one example. The discovery between 1947 and 1956 of the Dead Sea Scrolls (which include copies of the Old Testament Scriptures written around 100-150 B.C.),has made it possible to compare the text of the Hebrew Bible then with the earliest copies previously discovered, the Masoretic Text (980AD).

A careful comparison analysis shows that the Hebrew text suffered no meaningful corruption or change over that 1,000-1,100 year span! Apart from a letter or word here or there the text is exactly the same. Such comparisons of all the ancient biblical texts reveal astonishing accuracy, an accuracy that lays to rest any serious doubts about the reliability of our Bible today.

What we read in our Bible in 2010 is a careful and accurate record of what the original authors wrote. That claim is not so much a matter of religious faith as it is of established scientific fact. The agreement of today's Bible with ancient manuscripts is so thorough, so substantial, so nearly 100% (right down to the letters of the text) that we can have have absolute certainty that what we read now is what was written then. The text of Scripture has been preserved remarkably from internal corruption.

It has also been preserved from external attack. No book in all of history has faced such sustained attack as the Bible has. People and even nations have tried to undermine and destroy it. Yet today, the Bible is more available and more widely read than at any time in history.

All this leads to another conclusion: the Bible must have been written and preserved by no one less than God. How else does one explain such remarkable preservation of a text written ages ago, a preservation, I might add, accomplished without the benefit of copying machines and modern technologies? For centuries the 1, 000+ pages of the Bible were preserved without internal corruption, by hand, not machine! It defies human explanation.

And how else does one explain the astonishing ongoing existence of a Book so pervasively despised and so often attacked? The best answer? This is the hand of God.

God had something to do with this.

I suppose natural human explanations can be suggested, but in my mind they would have all the markings of a desperation to deny the supernatural! Friends, God wrote this Book, and then preserved it so that humans may hear from Him throughout all generations.

Any other explanation requires more faith than I can muster. When it comes to the inspiration and preservation of the Bible, to paraphrase one author: "I don't have enough faith to be an unbeliever."