Evangelistic Connect Group

We had our first Connect Group on Friday. It was good. Most of those that showed up were neighbors. We talked about the reliability of Scripture and is the bible really true. In brief, it went something like this...

There are 2 billion people on earth today that "claim" that they believe the bible to be true. Are there really so many people who are so weak that they need some book to prop them up and make them feel better? That they just need some crutch to believe in, to help them deal with life? That the bible makes for an easy scapegoat to pawn things off on and have an excuse to remain ignorant? When talking to someone who isn’t even sure if the bible has any truth at all in it, I will not be using scripture to back my thoughts. That would be ridiculous, right?

Let’s take a brief cross section of the Roman history documentation of the same era. We have a couple of popular documents that are repeatedly quoted and are viewed as completely true. The Roman Empire was huge, had great power, they had vaults to hold their historical manuscripts. The writings were about Emperors and Leaders and wars and lineage, etc. I will do my best from memory (hang with me) to give a couple of details on 2 accounts:

- The Gallic Wars
There are 10 copies, the first manuscript we have dates to 900AD (the others come after), written by an employee of Caesar about Caesar’s exploits.
- Writings of Tacitus
2 copies (contains half of the original 30 volumes ordinarily written about Roman history), the manuscript dates at 900AD as well (the 2nd at 1100AD), and also written by a guy who was a Roman Empire employee who was to write about Roman history.

On the contrary … The 4 gospels are from the same era. We have hundreds of manuscripts, Fragments of John were found as early as 135AD in Egypt (great distribution for the early document) and all four gospels are found just like we have them now that are dated 250AD, they are written by 4 ordinary men about a three years span on one Jewish carpenters life (He was not a king or warring with other nations, etc) and there was no motivation. Jesus was already gone and 3 of the writers were killed because of their faith and John was boiled in water but they didn’t succeed in killing him (see the writings of Josephus – a Jewish historian who again has no motive, a Jew he didn’t care to prop up Christian doctrine but to only portray history).

Question: So why is the account where there are only a few documents, dated at 900AD, written by a guy who was an employee of the empire accepted as truth, but the account where there are hundreds of ancient manuscripts, dating as early as 135AD and written by people who were killed for their belief in the truth in their writings is not as accepted?? Some historians would argue that the bible has more documentation and truth about the life of Jesus Christ that all of Roman history of the same era. It boils down to the use of the supernatural. John’s writings can’t be true because they contain elements of the supernatural throughout them. People want to impose thier 21st Century experience on ancient history.

Let me expound … it goes something like this.
I don’t believe that the Holocaust happened!
Really?
Really!
Why is that?
Well, because for that to have happened, then there would have to exist a prejudice and hatred so deep as to want to exterminate a whole race of people. It would have to be so powerful as to convince a whole nation of people to help kill off this race of people. Listen! I have never experienced that or felt that way … my mom said that she has never hated anyone that much or had been hated like that … I asked my friends and they never experienced it either … therefore that kind of hatred or prejudice could have never existed and the holocaust could’ve never happened.
Are you Serious?
Yeah. There is no doubt that something happened. Just give me a couple of days to figure it out and I will come back with my explanation of what I believe happened.

See… that just isn’t fair or logical or scientific or …Just because we have never seen God, doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist. Just because we may not believe that the bible is true doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen the way it says that it did. We just need to give the bible the same opportunity.