How Can We Know the Bible is the True Word of God

The White Horse Inn, a modern reform group and a watchdog group for Bible criticism, polled college students about God, religion, and morality, etc. And when they asked about the Bible, they received a number of similar answers, something like this. Quote, "...personally, I think most of it is fiction. I hesitate to trust any book that has been revised that much.

The English copy that we have today, compared to the original copy, is probably not that similar." How do you know that the New Testament that you have in your lap is actually what the original apostles of Jesus Christ wrote? How do you know? There's lots of critics that say it's not. And there's no way to know what they actually said. And is that true? Is the Bible reliable? How can we believe that the Bible that we have in our hands is similar to what the original writers intended?

And that's what I want to discuss today. The key scripture for today is Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 15. Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 15, a very solid principle. On one witness, one witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or sin that he commits by the mouth of two or three witnesses. The matter shall be established. That is an important principle. Believing the Bible is a matter of faith. But what I'm going to show today is that believing that the Bible is what the apostles wrote is not a matter of faith.

It's a matter of simple reason. Believing God is a matter of faith. Believing we have the Word of God in our laps is easy. Let's go through that. Let's look at the criticism. And it's a hard criticism. These people are brilliant people. They have brilliant minds that God gave them, and they've turned those minds against God, and they use their brilliance to form arguments that are very convincing to create doubt.

How can we know what God has to say? How do we know that what we have in our hands even closely resembles the original to what is written? This morning, I'm going to show you a few things that make the Bible, including the New Testament, the most unique book on the planet. It is truly the only Word of God. Satan likes to create doubt, and there's lots of ways he attacks the Bible, and nearly all of them are designed to create doubt. And I don't have time to cover them all in a sermon, so I'm going to get very specific today on one criticism that's really popular and really convincing our youth not to believe in the Bible.

Can we trust the text? Is the text of the New Testament the same as what the apostles wrote? Do we have their original words? Mark writes the book, the Gospel of Mark, and we don't really know that much about Mark. We actually know a little bit about him, but we don't know a lot about him. We don't know exactly where he was when he wrote it, and we don't know what year he wrote it. And how do we know that we actually have the Gospel of Mark? How do we know it wasn't just some guy that wrote down a Gospel account, and there are hundreds of those, by the way, hundreds of counterfeit Gospels out there.

How do we know the ones that we have are the ones the apostles intended us to have? There's a way, and it's not a matter of faith. It's a simple matter of reason. Faith comes in believing it, not in whether or not it is what they intended to transmit. It's the most unique text on the planet. Let's start by looking at the criticism of the New Testament that convinces so many people that the New Testament that we have is a fraud.

Now, the Jews have preserved the Old Testament, and it stands criticism better than the New Testament does, although there are lots of critics of the Old Testament as well. Lots of them. But they are such good record-keepers. It's really hard to criticize the Old Testament. But the New Testament, the arguments seem to be more convincing. So let's look at the argument, and then let's break it down so that we know that the Bible that we have in our hands is the Bible that God intended us to have.

I got a lot of this research from a debate between two very smart men. Dr. Daniel B. Wallace is the head, the chair of theology at one of the colleges in Dallas, Texas. He's right up in Dallas. He is one of America's foremost experts on ancient Greek. This man has an institution that goes around the world and takes high-definition photographs of every ancient manuscript of the Bible he can get his hands on.

Then he makes those high-definition photographs available online for free so that everybody can see the evidence that he's going to bring forth in this debate that I'm going to share with you today. On the opposition is Dr. Bart Ehrman. Who is Bart Ehrman? Dr. Ehrman is the gentleman. A brilliant man. He's written lots of books, corruption of the Orthodox texts, and misquoting Jesus, just the name of couple. Those are two really big popular books.

He's written dozens of them, all of them creating doubt that the Bible is actually inspired by God. Who is he? This is funny. You're going to find this interesting. His mentor was the famous Bruce Metzger. No, not Bruce, not our Bruce Metzger.

The American scholar Bruce Metzger, who was America's premier Bible expert. Bart Ehrman was his protege. At Bruce Metzger's death, Bart Ehrman took over the chair of theology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the gentleman who writes the textbooks for almost all of the seminaries in the United States. Dr. Bart Ehrman, the man on your right, is actually the man who trained Christian ministry in America today through his books.

He's an agnostic, doesn't even believe in the Bible, doesn't believe it's true, just believes it's a historical manuscript that shapes the world and is worth studying, which most, most brilliant textual critics believe. Bible scholars, most of them for the most part, don't believe in the Bible.

Dr. Dan Wallace does. Instead of Dr. Wallace, the gentleman on your left, he knows so much about ancient Greek that people from Greece call him when they have a question. That's how much he knows about ancient Greek. Now, not modern Greek, but the Greek that the Bible was written in. He is the editor of the Net Bible, the New English Translation. You might have a copy of that on your smartphone because it's free to download, and that is actually his translation of the Bible from Greek into English. Okay, so he's done a lot of study and he believes in the Bible.

So, Dr. Erman, let's get into his criticism now that I've set the stage for where I've got some of this information. Dr. Erman criticizes the Bible and says that we cannot trust the text. We don't know who Mark was. We don't know where he was when he wrote it. And when he wrote the original copy of Mark, how do we know that the Mark we have in our Bibles is even close to that? Because remember, there wasn't a Barnes and Noble back in that day. There was not a printing press, there wasn't a computer, or even a typewriter. They had to write it by hand. So, the original version of the Gospel of Mark was written by hand. And then someone had to copy that original.

And he might have made a mistake or two. Spelled a word wrong, got a word wrong. He may have been writing it in the middle of the night by candlelight, and he might have misspelled something.

And somebody else then is going to take that copy, and they're going to make a copy. Now, that copy is going to copy the original mistake that the first copy made, and he's going to make his own mistakes. And then the next person gets that copy, and you get copies of the copies of the copies, all of them copying the original mistake. Now, let's say a scholar comes along and corrects one of those mistakes, but he doesn't have the original. So, what if his correction is wrong? So, now we have copies of the copies of the copies with mistakes, and we have corrections of the copies that may also be mistakes. Now, we don't have, according to Bart Ehrman, and he's correct, the original Gospel of Mark. We don't even have the copy of the copy. In fact, we don't even have the copy of the copy of the copy of Mark. The very first copy that we have of Mark is from the year roughly 220 CE, or what we used to call AD. 220. That's, you know, like 180, 170 years after the Book of Mark is written, or thereabouts, I didn't do my math. And it's a papyrus called P45, and it's the first viable copy of the Book of Mark that we have. So, Dr. Ehrman says there is no way to know that we have the original Book of Mark. Is he correct? Here is an actual photograph of P45. This is it. Now, this is from the Book of Luke. The P45 contains Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and the Book of Acts. All right? And this is actually a very good copy manuscript of the four Gospels in the Book of Acts. This is P45. This is what Dr. Ehrman is talking about.

Now, how do we know that that's even close to resembling the Book of Mark?

Is there a way to know? Yes, there is a way to know. But you can see how many people would be swayed by the argument that I just gave you. Didn't, when I told you Dr. Ehrman's argument, didn't that give you a pit in your stomach? That even if you don't doubt God because you have His Holy Spirit and you have faith in Him, doesn't that argument seem clever?

The problem with Dr. Ehrman's argument, is that it's filled with half-truths. It's only half-truth, what he says. Kind of like the lie in the Garden of Eden. Remember what Satan told Eve? You will be like God, knowing good from evil, which was actually true, and you will not die. You have an immortal soul, which was false.

And every false religion since then has kept that lie. You have an immortal soul.

It's a quick way to spot a false religion, to say you will not die the lie in the Garden of Eden.

You're either going to go to heaven or hell, but you will not die. A false religion, the lie in the Garden of Eden. But it was half-true, so it was convincing.

And that's Dr. Ehrman's clever argument. He has a lot of facts, but he doesn't give you all of the facts. He only gives you the facts that he can use to create doubt, and that's it. Let's remember our key scriptures. Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 15. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be established. There's a companion scripture to that in Proverbs chapter 11 and verse 14. Proverbs chapter 11 and verse 14. Where there is no counsel, the people fall. But in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. And in that lies how we know we have what the original apostles intended, even though they wrote in Greek and that had to translate through Latin and other languages before it gets to the English language or Spanish language that you have in your lap today. But the message translated through perfectly because of the multitude of counselors, because there's more than one witness that translated it. You see, Dr. Ehrman's argument implies that the transmission of the Bible was like the telephone game. How many of you have ever played the telephone game? Right? So, I read a scripture to you, like Mark chapter 8 and verse 6. So he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground, and he took seven loaves and gave thanks. And I read that to you, and I read it to Tammy here in the front row. And she passes along to the kids, and then Ryan passes along to Lydia. And we pass it all the way back until we get to Mr. Delgado. What Mr. Delgado ends up hearing is going to be completely different than what I told Tammy. Will it? I did this with a group of teens, and I kid you not. There was a monkey in the verse by the time we were done with it.

And Dr. Ehrman, what have you believed that that's the way the Bible has been transmitted throughout time? And he is so wrong! According to both Dr. Dan Wallace and Bart Ehrman, there are between 300,000 and 400,000 textual variances in the New Testament manuscripts. What does that mean? A variant is a difference from one text to another. So they find this papyrus, and there's a difference between this papyrus and this papyrus. It doesn't matter how picky or how small that difference is. If it's a difference, it's a difference. It could make an impact on the Scripture, and you could see how that can be blown out of proportion that there are over 400,000 variances. There are only 140,000 words in the entire New Testament, which means there are more variances through the manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Oh, my!

Does that mean the New Testament is invalid? No, it does not. I would like to give you a number of facts to balance out Dr. Ehrman's argument and show you how we have the most reliable book, the most reliable text on the planet. It is so interesting. To me, this is incredibly encouraging, and we're going to get some audience participation at the very end of this. You may be uncomfortable with it. Don't worry. It won't be on camera. I've already told the camera guy we're doing this, and he's not going to include it in the video. Okay? So, fact number one. There are over 20,000 manuscripts. Those are ancient copies of the Bible. Over 20,000 manuscripts of the New Testament that we have found. There are more, probably, buried in the desert somewhere.

There's 20,000. That's a lot. Dr. Ehrman would make you believe that the book of Mark was copied one time, and then that guy copied it, and that guy copied it, and that guy copied it, and that's not what happened at all. The book of Mark was likely written on something very durable, like papyrus, which lasted for decades, could even last for centuries. So, why don't we have the original?

Because it was copied so much! You ever pick up a piece of paper and then hand it to somebody else, and then hand it to somebody else, and then hand it to somebody else? It gets wrinkled, and coffee gets spilled on it, or rain gets on it, the dog chews a corner of it. It gets beat up with use! The fact that we don't have the original means it got beat up, which means there's a lot of copies out there of it.

Fact number two. Approximately 15% of all Greek New Testament manuscripts are from the eighth century or earlier. Okay, so most of 85% of them are actually new. They're not ancient.

They're from the ninth century and on. Only 15% of them are actually old manuscripts.

Hmm, that seems like a low number, doesn't it? Only 15%? That means there's around 600 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament. That's a lot! That's more than any other text of any other ancient writing on the planet. It's a very comforting number to know that there are 600 witnesses and those are just the ones we have that are really, really old, like p45.

That is a multitude of counselors. That is more than two or three witnesses to establish this matter.

When you understand that you get very comforted, but fact number three, this is where the rubber meets the road, brethren. Not only do we have a bunch of counselors, but less than 1% of these variances that I told you about, those tiny little changes in the text, between one text and another text, less than 1% are actually meaningful and viable. What does that mean? When you hear facts like there are variances in manuscripts more than there are words in the New Testament, it seems like there's no way that we could know what the original apostles wrote. But when you learn the rest of the story, you see that the critics are just blowing smoke. When you understand that 99% of those differences have nothing to do with what the text says, you're faced with the amazing fact that there's over 20,000 old and even ancient handwritten manuscripts of the New Testament that agree with each other.

That is amazing! There is no other document on the planet, and I mean no other document on the planet, that even comes close to how the Bible was preserved. This is just the New Testament.

Old Testament statistics would blow you away. This is just the New Testament. As a matter of fact, even if we didn't have those ancient manuscripts, we can reconstruct almost the entire New Testament from quotes that people wrote about the New Testament. Sermons and commentaries and ancient times of people writing about the Bible, and then they would quote the New Testament, we can pull those quotes and almost reconstruct the entire New Testament. And that's not including the 20,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. An amazing witness of what the original apostle says. But it gets even better than this. Less than 1% of those variances actually have meaning, changed the meaning of the text, and are actually viable. In other words, someone didn't go in and intentionally change it, and we caught them. We know they did it, and I'll explain that. That means that with 99% accuracy, we have exactly what the apostles wrote. That blows me away.

There are over 5,500 Greek manuscripts alone. There are another 10,000 Latin manuscripts as early as the second century. That means, let's say, 170 AD, only one century after Mark writes his gospel. We have a Latin manuscript that contains Mark.

There are thousands of Coptic, Syriac, Georgian, Gothic, Armenian, Arabic, Slavic, and a number of other ancient languages. Here's the point that I'm making with that.

It's not just, let's say, for example, the Catholic Church wants to promote itself.

So, they have 5,000 people write 5,000 ancient Greek, or maybe we'll do 5,000 Greek and 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and it'll look like we have the Bible from God. No, no. It's written in Arabic, and Coptic, and all these other languages. These different peoples war with each other. They do not agree with each other. They have no alliance with each other whatsoever. Yet, the Bible that they have in these enemy countries are the same exact message, no matter what language it's in, down to 99% accuracy. The more manuscripts you have, the more difference in text you will find. That's a good thing, not a bad thing, actually. All of these manuscripts were copied. If they were all copied identically, then we would know that they were fake.

We would know that one organization was trying to promote itself.

That's why we don't believe that the Qur'an is an inspired word of God. I know that's a bold thing to say, but they claim it's all exactly the same. You know what that means? Somebody came in later and edited it. That's what that means. There's no way, if you have it all exactly the same, and there's no spelling error, and there's no putting a wrong word in anywhere, then somebody down the road came in and made changes. But that's not the case with the Bible.

With the Bible, there's over 400,000 variances, 99% of which mean nothing, except they prove that it was a legitimate attempt to copy the Bible. Amazing!

The Bible and the majority of the variances, but it's a good thing. The most common error in these manuscripts is called the moveable new, and it's an in in the Greek language at the end of a word, and it's the difference between the word a and the word an, like I say, a apple or an apple. That is the biggest 70% of all of the variances in the Old Testament of this big number, 300,000-400,000 variances, are spelling errors. Dr. Dan Wallace makes the point that if, let's take the preamble of the Constitution. Now, in the preamble of the Constitution, it says, in order to make a more perfect union, but what if we got a copy of the Constitution way back in the day when America was first forming? And the guy wrote down, in order to form a more perfect onion. Oh, it's a spelling error, right? How would we know to correct that spelling error? We would look at the other copies, and all the other copies said a more perfect union. And we'd go, oh, change that O to a U. Oh, yeah, O to a U. That's essentially the vast majority of problems that these critics say. There are variances in the New Testament, and the majority of those spelling errors is immovable new. It's a grammatical error. Like someone says, yeah, I picked up an apple, and I ate it. Okay, you know he picked up an apple and ate it. He just didn't say, and he said, A. That is literally how picky that guys like Bart Ehrman get to make college students, and even us, if he could, doubt the Bible. So what I'd like to do is give you two examples of variances that are in that 1% category. That 1% that they're meaningful and viable changes or variances, differences in the manuscripts. There's 1% that actually matter, and zero of them change a single doctrine. None of them do. Let me give you the example that Bart Ehrman himself criticizes. Mark chapter 1 and verse 41. Mark chapter 1 and verse 41. This is a meaningful, in other words, it changes the meaning. It's a meaningful variance, and it is viable.

Meaning, you know what? It probably is the other way, not the way it's written in our Bible.

Let's read it and see if it changes the meaning that Mark was trying to get across.

In our Bible, New King James, it reads like this.

Then Jesus was moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I am willing, be cleansed. And yet, they found an older manuscript that says it reads like this.

It's an older and, they believe, more accurate manuscript. Now, Jesus was moved with passion, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, I am willing, be cleansed. So, instead of Jesus being compassionate, he was angry. Aha! Jesus is an angry person, not just loving Savior. He was moved with passion. What would he be angry about? And it's actually viable that he was moved with passion. He was stirred up, not moved with compassion, but moved with passion. Does it change the meaning? Absolutely not. Who would not get stirred up to see a leper suffering like that? Jesus Christ had real feelings. He really was concerned about people. What is there to be angry about? Sin and this world and what it does to people, like this leper who's in front of them. And he said, I am willing, be cleansed. Yes, it's a meaningful change. It's a viable change, but it doesn't change what Mark was trying to say. Even in the slightest fit, if anything, it enhances it. And all of the variances are like that. So, 99% of them actually do nothing. They're just blowing smoke. And the 1% that are actually meaningful change nothing.

Now, there are some variances in the Bibles that we have that are meaningful. In other words, they blow away the original intent that the apostles meant, but they're not viable. In other words, they're false. Someone put that in there, and we know they did, and we caught them. How do we catch them? How do we know that that was inserted into the Bible and it's not supposed to be there?

Because there's so many copies that we can compare to. A matter is not established by one witness, but by many witnesses. And we have 20,000 of them in multiple languages. So, let me give you an example of a meaningful variance that's actually not viable at all. It was a false intent to prove the Trinity doctrine. 1 John 5, verses 7 and 8. This is called the Kama Johanna. It's very famous. We know who put it in the Bible. We know when he did it. We know the whole story. It's not a viable change. I have this actually marked out in my Bible because it was added in. It says, in your New King James Version, now if you have the NIV, the NIV actually left this out. They said it's not a viable change. They didn't even include it in the text. But King James did, for political reasons. It's left in. So, the New King James also leaves it in. And it reads like this if you have the New King James Version. For there are three that bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit. And these three are one. Ah, Trinity! And there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three agree as one. This variant is not viable, but it was put into the New Testament in the year 1522 by a monk named Erasmus.

And this was his third edition. His first edition in 1516 didn't include this. His second edition in 1519 didn't contain these words. But in 1520, he had so much pressure from Emperor Maximilian and the Pope Felix, I believe his name was, to put this in there because this was the dawn of the Renaissance. The Catholic Church was losing its power. The Trinity is what gave the Pope their power. And there was no text in the Bible that pointed to the Trinity. So they forced him to put this text in there, and he wouldn't do it. He said, I can't find any manuscripts anywhere with these words. So in like 1521 or 1522, a man came and put a doctored up Greek manuscript with these words in it, laid it on his door, knocked on the door, and ran away. And we even know who did it, who put it on his door. And then he took it, it's like, fine, I have a Greek manuscript with the false words in it. And here's what he added. If you look at 1 John 5 and verse 7, for these three that bear witness stop, that's where the text of John stops. And here's where Erasmus added, in heaven the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one, and there are three that bear witness on earth, stop. Now we get back into what John said, the Spirit, the water, and the blood, these three agree as one. So it actually should read, and if you have an NIV, it reads similar to, for there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. These three agree as one. And that whole middle section about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and heaven, and the ones on earth, that was all added by Erasmus. Now, that would be a meaningful variance in the text. I mean, that would be, oh wow, there is a trinity, but it's not viable. There is actually no meaningful, viable variance out of 20,000 known manuscripts that change a single teaching, not one. Brethren, you can't get that through human effort. That is inspired across multiple languages, across multiple peoples, multiple ethnic groups, enemies of each other. They hate each other. They kill each other. And yet, their Bibles agree with the same books and the same words in those books. That is absolutely phenomenal.

Dr. Dan Wallace said, quote, the reason there are so many variances in the manuscripts is precisely because we have so many manuscripts. And that's a good thing.

The New Testament was carefully translated. It cannot be compared to the telephone game, as Dr. Erman implies. So, what I would like to do is, I would like for us to recreate P-45 from the original Mark. We're just going to do it in pretend, and we have to do it rather quickly. So, what I'm going to do now is, I'm going to come around here, and remember the argument that Bart Erman made, that Mark wrote his manuscript by hand.

So, let's pretend that this is Mark's handwritten manuscript. And then people wanted copies of those manuscripts. But more than one copy was made. So, what we're going to do is, I'm going to have five people from the second row. No, four from the second row, and I want Vince also.

Will you come up here? You're going to do me a favor. Okay. And then, Daniel, why don't you come up? And Lydia, Albert, is that three? Okay, James. All right. Take this, and here's some pins. And I want you to read. This is from Mark. This is an actual scripture from Mark, and I want you to copy it exactly, word for word, and include the comma. I want the punctuation in there. Okay? And we're going to show the brethren that these people represent the original copies of the Book of Mark. So, go ahead, come up here, and on your paper, write that down exactly, keeping the commas. Now, remember Bart Ehrman's argument. They had copies of the copies of the copies, and mistakes were made. All right? So, I've got Vince actually making a mistake.

He's throwing a mistake in there, and eventually we're going to come up with this copy, this P45.

We're going to come up with P45 on copies of the copies of the copies. And let's see if we get an accurate translation of this scripture through time. So, let's just give them a moment. I know this is a little unorthodox, but this will give you the point that the New Testament that we have in our hands is the message that the apostles intended. And when you're done, hand them to me.

All right. Now, time goes by. The original copy of Mark gets destroyed, and all we have left are these copies. But time is brutal, the copies. It really is. Like when people use them, you don't really get an intact version. And sometimes, you know, sometimes you don't get the entire manuscript. Sometimes you just get a fragment that's left. Okay? So, we still want the word of God. We still want to make copies. So, now I would like to go back a little bit.

Dale, would you be willing to come up and make copies of this one? David and Aaron, come on up.

How many is that? That four? Maxine, will you do it for us? Okay. So, here. I want you guys to make exact copies. Don't edit anything. If you've got a fragment, leave it fragmented.

Only copy what you have exactly. Let me get you some paper. Now, these are, let's say, 80 to 50, 50 to 80 years later. And these are now copies of the copies. And they're really worn out.

But this is all we have to go by. Are we going to preserve the New Testament? Be extra careful to copy it exactly, because this is the Word of God to you. And here's some pens. So, it's important to you, because you're a believer and you want to get it right. So, for those of you who are on the webcast, we're having people up front writing down copies of the copies of Mark's original. We're going to do this one more time, and then I have P45 right here. Somebody's going to create that for us. Is P45 what Mark wrote? What Luke wrote? Okay, great. Thank you. Appreciate that. Okay, now more time goes by, right? And these copies fall away. We no longer have copies of the original. The only thing we have, and I'll just set these over here, the only thing we have now are copies of the copy of the original. So, let's get another five up here. Who else wants to come up? Anybody want to? How many have got one, two, three, four, one more? No, five. Okay, that's five. Perfect. All right. Now, each of you, I want you to be as accurate as you can and write down only exactly what you have on here. Don't add anything or take anything away. So, we pass some paper out.

Here's some pens.

And then, here is your copy of the copy. Your copy of the copy. Your copy of the copy. Your copy of the copy. Your copy of the copy. Be very careful. So, time is going by. These copies are in a little bit better shape. Will we come up with the original? Will there be any variances?

Will those variances be meaningful? Or will we have the intent of what Mark wrote over time?

Done this several times so far. Okay, now let's make p45. A couple of centuries have gone by.

We no longer have the original copy of Mark. We don't even have the copies of the original. And we don't even have the copies of the copy of the original. We have copies of the copies of the copy of the original. Can we take these and recreate a viable manuscript of what Mark intended to say? So, now I just need one person. And I'm going to have you create p45.

Now, what I'd like you to do is use reasoning power and not your memory.

And take this scripture and recreate it accurately from what Mark wrote using those five. You can go back to your seat. That's fine. That's the way I would do it. Clean my mess up here.

This is our first viable copy of the New Testament. And it's just the four Gospels and the Book of Acts.

Is it reliable? Or was the Bible transmitted like the telephone game, where we have copies of the copies of the copies, where mistakes were made and those mistakes were copied, people corrected those mistakes, but the corrections weren't verified, so they're probably wrong, too. So, now we have this jumbled mess that doesn't even resemble closely what the apostle Mark...or Mark wasn't an apostle, but what Mark wrote. Or do we have such a cloud of witnesses?

So many different copies that we do have an accurately reconstructed New Testament. And we do have exactly what the apostles intended to write. I think you will find this very amazing.

So, we had a fragment. We had somebody intentionally make an error, twice that I saw.

Can we still come up with, even with those errors, an accurate resemblance of what Mark actually intended? My prediction is we will. We'll even have the same comma in place. I'll just give them a minute. You know, a lot of people criticize the Jews also, because the Jews would pass down the Bible orally. But it wasn't one guy, one Jew, who memorized the Bible and passed it down to another Jew, who memorized the Bible and passed it down to another Jew. It was thousands of them that memorized the Bible and passed it down to thousands more, and then to tens of thousands.

You have all this huge group of witnesses that say, this is what the Bible said. And it is one of the most accurate and efficient ways to pass down the Bible. So, even an oral transmission of the Bible can be accurate if you have enough people passing it down. When it comes to the New Testament, 20,000 manuscripts that we have, and they all agree, up to 99% is amazing.

Okay, so the original copy of Mark reads, So they ate and were filled, comma, p45 centuries later says, so they ate and were filled, comma.

And they took up seven large baskets. Now I had Vince write 12.

Okay, and so that got transmitted down through the centuries. But there were other witnesses, and all of them said seven. So, p45 says, so they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments of leftover fragments. It's identical. I ripped it up. People intentionally changed it. But there were so many witnesses, only five each time, and we got it exactly the same way. Brethren, it wasn't transmitted five times. It was hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands of times. We can literally take quotes from people's writings and reconstruct the same exact New Testament. There is no other ancient document on the planet that comes close to that many witnesses. That over the centuries, over such a large geographic area, remains largely the same with only one percent meaningful variances and none of those variances causing a major doctrinal change. When people criticize the Bible on campuses or in their workplace, they don't realize they are criticizing the most amazing document on the planet.

Of the Greek and Roman ancient world, the best comparison that would even come close to the Bible is Homer, the Odyssey, and the Iliad. The average ancient manuscript is 500 years after the original was written. Five centuries later, do we have a manuscript that copies Homer's Odyssey and Iliad? And you know what? We have so few of them that if you took all of the ancient manuscripts of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, it would stack up either to my hip or to my head, depending on how thick the paper was. That's it! That's how many copies we have of Homer's Odyssey and the Iliad. And yet, when you go to school, you have to read that as though it is an original. We know exactly what Homer wrote, because we have all of these ancient manuscripts. And then when it comes to the Bible, which people don't want God telling them what to do, you could take all the manuscripts and all of the copies that people wrote about the Bible and stack them up. And the stack would go almost to the outer edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

Okay. Up to my head, or up to the heavens, worth of copies. And yet, they doubt the Bible, and they say, oh, but we only have copies of the copies of the copies of the copies, and we have no idea what they wrote. Brethren, the whole point of today's sermon was it does not take faith to believe that we have the New Testament that the apostles intended us to have. It doesn't.

It takes faith to believe it and follow it. But never doubt that the Bible that you have in your hand is the one and only and true Word of God, because it is. There is nothing else like it, and men could not have done it. God had to have done it, because the copies that we have are in the hands of people who hate each other's guts, and yet it's still the same, everywhere you go on the planet. Deuteronomy chapter 19 and verse 15. One witness shall not rise against a man concerning an iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be established. By the mouth of 20,000 witnesses, the Bible is very, very well established. You have in your hand a gift from God Himself, His inspired Word. Don't ever doubt that.