I want to challenge you with a mountainous task. Go pull together 66 books written about the practice of family medicine. Some could be written by the same author, but make sure they come from a diverse mix of cultures, within the same geographic region, and were authored over thousands of years. I assume the broad narrative thread should be same - the desire to help people and affect their physical health. Next, judge how many contradictions you get: conflicting treatments, conflicting philosophies, conflicting treatment applications, and conflicting statements.
Now, pick up the Bible, read through it and observe how all 66 books, written by 40+ different authors, across thousands of years, in different languages and cultures, all come together and tell the same story. The narrative is consistent. The theme is consistent. How is this continuity possible unless the evangelical view is true that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, breathed out by the Holy Spirit through human authors?
There are many reasons to believe whole-heartedly in the reliability of the Bible. My go-to reason for trusting the Bible as reliable, inerrant, and inspired by God is because of its continuity throughout. To quote Lifeway's "The Gospel Project," all of the Bible is about "God's plan of redemption" through Christ. The aforementioned study traces how the whole narrative of Scripture is centered around "Christ as the Hero of the story."
Take Paul's letter to the Romans for example. For starters, it pulls together threads from Genesis (sin, covenant, sacrifice, the image of God in man, etc.) and the rest of the Torah (Exodus through Deuteronomy), pointing to the law and sacrifice as fulfilled in Christ calling all to place their faith in him. It lines right up with the narrative of Acts; both in the church's message to people for salvation and the historical narrative of Paul's journeys.
Take Hebrews as another example. The message of Hebrews shows how the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) - as they tell of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection - connect with and fulfill the Old Testament sacrificial system found in Leviticus through Deuteronomy. You can't understand Christ as the perfect high priest for The Church, without understanding the role of the high priest in the Old Testament. Nonetheless, they match up and each helps our understanding of the other.
Lastly, consider the book of Revelation. It ties up all of the narrative. It brings together the reign and rule given man in creation (Genesis), the fall of man through the presence and reign of sin, how Christ frees men from sin's reign and rule (through grace by faith), and how man will ultimately and finally be redeemed back to the original intention of reign and rule that started in Genesis. This book also ties together how Christ will get everything back to the order of creation that started in Genesis, before the corruption of sin, and will finally purify all of creation from the corruption of sin. That basically ties together all of Genesis through the end of Revelation.
None of this even touches on how Jesus, in the gospel accounts, talks about and quotes the Old Testament as though he assumes it to be true, reliable, and historical. If Jesus is the Messiah (which we have great reason to believe) - God himself in human form - and he asserts the Bible to be true, and my examination of the same does not contradict his assertion (emphasizing his assertion as first and foremost in order of importance), then why would I not wholeheartedly believe in the reliability of God's word, the Bible?
Now, pick up the Bible, read through it and observe how all 66 books, written by 40+ different authors, across thousands of years, in different languages and cultures, all come together and tell the same story. The narrative is consistent. The theme is consistent. How is this continuity possible unless the evangelical view is true that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant word of God, breathed out by the Holy Spirit through human authors?
There are many reasons to believe whole-heartedly in the reliability of the Bible. My go-to reason for trusting the Bible as reliable, inerrant, and inspired by God is because of its continuity throughout. To quote Lifeway's "The Gospel Project," all of the Bible is about "God's plan of redemption" through Christ. The aforementioned study traces how the whole narrative of Scripture is centered around "Christ as the Hero of the story."
Take Paul's letter to the Romans for example. For starters, it pulls together threads from Genesis (sin, covenant, sacrifice, the image of God in man, etc.) and the rest of the Torah (Exodus through Deuteronomy), pointing to the law and sacrifice as fulfilled in Christ calling all to place their faith in him. It lines right up with the narrative of Acts; both in the church's message to people for salvation and the historical narrative of Paul's journeys.
Take Hebrews as another example. The message of Hebrews shows how the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) - as they tell of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection - connect with and fulfill the Old Testament sacrificial system found in Leviticus through Deuteronomy. You can't understand Christ as the perfect high priest for The Church, without understanding the role of the high priest in the Old Testament. Nonetheless, they match up and each helps our understanding of the other.
Lastly, consider the book of Revelation. It ties up all of the narrative. It brings together the reign and rule given man in creation (Genesis), the fall of man through the presence and reign of sin, how Christ frees men from sin's reign and rule (through grace by faith), and how man will ultimately and finally be redeemed back to the original intention of reign and rule that started in Genesis. This book also ties together how Christ will get everything back to the order of creation that started in Genesis, before the corruption of sin, and will finally purify all of creation from the corruption of sin. That basically ties together all of Genesis through the end of Revelation.
None of this even touches on how Jesus, in the gospel accounts, talks about and quotes the Old Testament as though he assumes it to be true, reliable, and historical. If Jesus is the Messiah (which we have great reason to believe) - God himself in human form - and he asserts the Bible to be true, and my examination of the same does not contradict his assertion (emphasizing his assertion as first and foremost in order of importance), then why would I not wholeheartedly believe in the reliability of God's word, the Bible?