.....As far as the New Testament goes, there were some books that were accepted by all 20 members. There were 21 gospels, 8 acts, 4 epistles, 7 apocalypses and others that were deemed as false and rejected by all. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 3 John, and Revelation were disputed by 7 members but eventually proven to be accurate. During the time of the NT, the church became international. The gospel was being spread across all known nations. The church also began to be persecuted. Would Paul, Peter, Luke, James, etc write and preach if the information that they had was not worth dying for? You could maybe get 1 of them to but not all of them. They felt so strongly about Jesus and who He was that even torture and death couldn't stop them. By the 2nd century AD, all 27 books were widely accepted. By the 5th, they were accepted without question.
People tend to question the historical reliability of the Bible, not its inspiration. The thousands of manuscripts that were compiled range 250-300 years from when they were originally written. Plato, Socrates, and Homer were all told in oral tales and weren't written down until 750-1600 years after these writers died. The words are never questioned as being theirs. If you doubt the Bible, then you must doubt all literature of antiquity according to McDowell.
Chafer writes that the Bible is not a book that man would write if he could, nor could write if he would. Why? Who could come up with the idea of the person of God? The oneness and trinity at the same time. How about the origin of sin? Aren't humans basically all good? What about the plan of salvation by grace and not works? Don't all other religions make you work hard to get to heaven like blow yourself up? The creation account, the scope of the contents, and the unity of the contents all lend an authenticity that no other book has. So many different writers over so many years could not come up with the theme and stick with it! Impossible!
In my opinion(and Mr. Mathisen's, this evidence proves that the Bible is Inspired, trustworthy, and Infallible. It contains God's redemptive plan for us. What will you do with God's Word?
