SURVIVAL THROUGH PERSECUTION:

The Bible has withstood vicious attacks by its enemies as no other book.  Many have tried to burn it, ban it and outlaw it "from the days of Roman emperors to the present-day Communist-dominated countries" (ref.14, p.232).

Sidney Collett in "All About the Bible" says, "Voltaire, the noted French infidel who died in 1778, said that in one hundred years from his time Christianity would be swept from existence and passed into history.  But what has happened? Voltaire has passed into history; while the circulation of the Bible continues to increase in almost all parts of the world, carrying blessing wherever it goes."

Concerning Voltaire, Geisler and Nix point out that "only fifty years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles" (ref.8, p.123).  What an irony of history!

The world abounds with such instances...as one has truly said, "We might as well put our shoulder to the burning wheel of the sun, and try to stop it on its flaming course, as attempt to stop the circulation of the Bible" (ref.6, p.63).

In A.D. 303, the emperor Diocletian issued an edict to destroy Christians and their sacred book: "...an imperial letter was everywhere promulgated, ordering the razing of the churches to the ground and the destruction by fire of the Scriptures, and proclaiming that those who held high positions would lose all civil rights, while those in households, if they persisted in their profession of Christianity, would be deprived of their liberty" (ref.18, p.476; ref.7, p.259).

The historic irony of the above edict to destroy the Bible is that Constantine, the emperor following Diocletian, 25 years later commissioned Eusebius to prepare 50 copies of the scriptures at the expense of the government. 

SURVIVAL THROUGH CRITICISM:

H.L. Hastings has forcibly illustrated the unique way the Bible has withstood the attacks of infidelity and skepticism: 

"Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet [it] stands today as solid as a rock.  Its circulation increases and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the Pyramids of Egypt. 

"When the French monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in the dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, 'Sire, the Church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.' So the hammers of infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and that anvil still endures.  If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago.  Emperors and popes, kings and priests, princes and rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives" (ref.11, pp.17-18).

Bernard Ramim adds that: "A thousand times over, the death knell of the Bible has been sounded, the funeral procession formed, the inscription cut on the tombstone, and committal read.  But somehow the corpse never stays put.  No other book has been so chopped, knifed, sifted, scrutinized, and vilified.  What book on philosophy or religion or psychology or belles-lettres of classical or modern times has been subject to such a mass attack as the Bible? With such venom and skepticism? With such thoroughness and erudition? Upon every chapter, line and tenet?  The Bible is still loved by millions, read by millions, and studied by millions" (ref.14, pp.232-233).

No claim that has been made to discredit the Bible has ever been proved to be true!

V.  THE BIBLE IS UNIQUE IN ITS TEACHINGS.

PROPHECY:

"It is the only volume ever produced by man, or a group of men in which is to be found a large body of prophecies relating to individual nations, to Israel, to all peoples of the earth, to certain cities, and to the coming of the One who was to be the Messiah.  

"The ancient world had many different devices for determining the future, known as divination, but not in the entire gamut of Greek and Latin literature, even though they use the words prophet or prophecy, can we find any real specific prophecy of a great historic event to come in the distant future, nor any prophecy of a Savior to arise in the human race.  Islam cannot point to any prophecies of the coming of Mohammed uttered hundreds of years before his birth.  Neither can the founders of any cult in this country rightly identify any ancient text specifically foretelling their appearance" (ref.17, pp.9-10).

HISTORY:

Wilbur Smith cites the distinguished archaeologist, Professor Albright, who begins his classic essay, "The Biblical Period": "Hebrew national tradition excels all others in its clear picture of tribal and family origins.  In Egypt and Babylon, in Assyria and Phoenicia, in Greece and Rome, we look in vain for anything comparable.  There is nothing like it in the tradition of the Germanic peoples.  Neither India nor China can produce anything similar, since their earliest historical memories are literary deposits of distorted dynastic tradition, with no trace of the herdsman or peasant behind the demigod or king with whom their records begin.  Neither in the oldest Indic historical writings (the Puranas) nor in the earliest Greek historians is there a hint of the fact that both Indio-Aryans and Hellenes were once nomads who immigrated into their later abodes from the north.  The Assyrians, to be sure, remembered vaguely that their earliest rulers, whose names they recalled without any details about their deed, were tent dwellers, but whence they came has long been forgotten" (ref.17, p.24).

PERSONALITIES:

The Bible deals very frankly with the sins of its characters.  Read the biographies today and see how they try to cover up, overlook, or ignore the shady side of people.  Take the great literary geniuses; most are painted as saints.  The Bible does not do it that way.  It simply tells it the way it is! 

"The Bible is not such a book a man would write if he could, or could write if he would" (ref.20). 

VI.  THE BIBLE IS UNIQUE IN ITS INFLUENCE ON SURROUNDING LITERATURE.

McAfee writes in the "Greatest English Classic": "If every Bible in any considerable city were destroyed, the Book could be restored in all its essential parts from the quotations on the shelves of the city public library.  There are works, covering almost all the great literary writers, devoted especially to showing how much the Bible has influenced them" (ref.12, p.134).

Kenneth Scott Latourette, former Yale historian says, "It is evidence of His importance, of the effect that He has had upon history and presumably, of the baffling mystery of his being, that no other life which has ever lived on this planet has evoked so huge a volume of literature among so many peoples and languages, and that, far from ebbing, the flood continues to mount" (ref.10, p.44).

The historian Phillip Schaff vividly describes the Bible's uniqueness along with its Savior: "This Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms, conquered more millions than Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed, and Napoleon; without science and learning, He shed more light on things human and divine than all philosophers and scholars combined; without the eloquence of schools, He spoke such words of life as were never spoken before or since, and pronounced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet; without writing a single line, He set more pens in motion, and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art, and songs of praise than the whole army of great men of ancient and modern times" (ref.16).

SOME COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS:

1) "It doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you believe."

This is called a "subjective faith."  It comes from within one's own mind.  The only problem with a "subjective faith" is that someone can sincerely believe in what is really false or worthless!

We are saved by grace (forgiveness), through faith in Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). Most faiths are based on human knowledge and moral teachings.  Remove the founding prophet or Guru and the religion remains essentially intact.  Remove Christ from Christianity, and you no longer have Christianity! Christianity is based on a person--Jesus Christ, and an event in history--the resurrection! There is no merit in faith alone; in order to be saved, faith must have Jesus Christ. Jesus made his identity the central issue.  He claimed to be the Son of God! He presented himself as the only avenue to a relationship with God, the only source of forgiveness for sins, the only way of salvation!

2) "The Christian faith is a blind faith and has no historical basis in fact."

Most modern historians approach history with a narrow-minded outlook or prejudice that shuts out any supernatural possibilities.  Instead of beginning with pure historical data this prejudice says:

	"There is no God."  How can anyone "know" this? How can a complicated ecosystem come into existence from nothing, without a creator? Can a watch be made without a watchmaker?
	"We live in a closed self-causation system."  (The universe is closed to any outside interference and therefore every event within it has a natural explanation.)
	"There are no miracles."  Just because you or I have never witnessed a miracle happening does not exclude the possibility of its happening. If God became man, then we would expect Him to manifest the supernatural in the form of miracles, to validate His Word or messengers. The Bible is full of eyewitness accounts of miracles performed by Jesus and the apostles.  The ultimate miracle of Christ’s resurrection from the dead was witnessed by hundreds of people.
	"There is no supernatural."  This is a faith in their preconceived ideas! Intelligent faith investigates the claims and concludes on the basis of the weight of the evidence.  Faith in Christ is based on evidence. Faith is simply the arm that reaches out to receive what Christ did on the cross.

3) "If you can't prove something scientifically, it's not true."

If the scientific method were the only method of proving something, how would you prove honesty is the best policy? The scientific method is useful only in proving repeatable events and is not adequate for events in history, or past events. Another method is needed for proof of historic events:

The LEGAL-HISTORICAL TEST:  Proof based on showing that something is true beyond a reasonable doubt.  A verdict is reached on the basis of the weight of the evidence.  It is much like the method used in our courtrooms today.  Historical evidence is determined by testimony (ref.2, p.16).

Christ's claims and His resurrection can be substantiated beyond any reasonable doubt by the Legal-Historical Method.

The BIBLIOGRAPHICAL TEST: Not having the original documents, how reliable are the documents we now have?

How many manuscripts are available, and what time interval is between the original and the earliest copy? This is useful in determining that the text we now have is what was originally recorded. 

When the number of surviving manuscripts of scripture are compared with the number of surviving manuscripts from other books of antiquity, the results are truly astounding:

- Plato (Tetralogies) = 7 surviving manuscripts
- Caesar (Gallic Wars) = 10 surviving manuscripts
- Aristotle = 49 surviving manuscripts
- Homer (Iliad) = 643 surviving manuscripts (ref.2, p.24)
- Pliny the Younger = 7 surviving manuscripts
- New Testament = 24,633 surviving manuscripts

The Bibliographical Test is useful only in determining that the text we have now is what was recorded.  We must go further to determine to what extent the written record is credible.  To do this, we must apply the Internal Evidence Test (ref.2, p.30).

The INTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST: Two factors must guide this test:

1) In the event of an apparent inaccuracy or discrepancy, the benefit of the doubt must be given to the document itself.  The textual critic must not be biased. 

"One must listen to the claims of the document under analysis and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualified himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies" John Warwick Montgomery (ref.3, p.29).  An author is innocent until proved guilty of a discrepancy!

2) The nearness of the witness, both chronologically and geographically (date/place), to the events greatly affects the writer's credibility. 

The New Testament accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus were recorded by men who had been either eyewitnesses themselves or had related the accounts of the eyewitnesses; hostile witnesses were used many times, and they had the opportunity (and were asked) to deny the truth of the statements.  They did not (ref.2, p.31)!

"And it was not friendly eyewitnesses that the early preachers had to reckon with: there were others less well disposed who were also conversant with the main facts of the ministry and death of Jesus.  The disciples could not afford to risk inaccuracies (not to speak of willful manipulation of the facts), which would at once be exposed by those who would be only too glad to do so.  On the contrary, one of the strong points in the original apostolic preaching is the confident appeal to the knowledge of the hearers; they not only said, ‘We are witnesses of these things,’ but also, ‘As you yourselves know’ (Acts 2:22).  Had there been any tendency to depart from the facts in any material respect, the possible pressure of hostile witnesses in the audience would have served as further corrective," F.F. Bruce (ref.4, pp.44-46).

The EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TEST: Do other historical materials confirm or deny the internal testimony of the documents themselves? What sources are there, apart from the literature under analysis, that substantiate its accuracy, reliability, and authenticity?

	EUSEBIUS--In his "Ecclesiastical History," 111. 39, Eusebius preserves the writings of Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, who received them from the apostle John!
	IRENAEUS-- In "Against Heresies III," Irenaeus quoted the words of his teacher, Polycarp, martyred in A.D. 56 , and who was a disciple of the apostle John (ref.2, p. 32)!