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Webinar Review Guide

Is the Bible Reliable?

Recap of the Live Webinar (60 minutes)

A concise review of the four lines of evidence presented in the webinar. Each block shows the time window, key points to remember, and the anchor verse. Print this and use it to revisit the session.

Key Points

  • 1Central question of the webinar: Can we trust the Bible?
  • 2The skeptic's position is respected — Thomas doubted, and Jesus met him there. This is not blind faith; God gave evidence (Isaiah 1:18, "Come now, and let us reason together").
  • 3The stakes: if the Bible is reliable, it changes how we live, how we die, and where we spend eternity; if it is not, Christianity is just another philosophy.
  • 4Thesis: the Bible is the most reliable ancient document in existence, tested four ways — manuscripts, archaeology, prophecy, and internal unity.

Anchor Verse

2 Timothy 3:16-17 — 'All scripture is given by inspiration of God…'

Key Points

  • 1Manuscript count measures how reliably an ancient book reached us.
  • 2Caesar's Gallic Wars — 10 copies, written 900 years after the events. Aristotle — 49 copies, a 1,400-year gap. Neither is questioned.
  • 3The New Testament — over 5,800 Greek manuscripts, some within 30–100 years of the events. No ancient book comes close.
  • 4In 1947 a Bedouin shepherd found the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran — portions of every Old Testament book except Esther, dating to 200–150 BC.
  • 5The Isaiah scroll from Qumran is virtually identical to the Isaiah in modern Bibles — a thousand years of copying with no significant change.
  • 6Scholars have reconstructed 99.5% of the original New Testament text with certainty; the remaining 0.5% affects no core doctrine.
  • 7Modern Bibles are translated from the original Greek and Hebrew, not from translations.
  • 8Logical consistency: rejecting the Bible on manuscript grounds means also rejecting Homer, Plato, and Aristotle.

Anchor Verse

Isaiah 40:8 — 'The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.'

Key Points

  • 1For over a century critics claimed biblical places and people never existed; archaeology has repeatedly proven them wrong.
  • 2The Hittite Empire — called a Bible myth until 1906, when the entire civilization was discovered in modern-day Turkey (Genesis 15 confirmed).
  • 3King David — called "legendary" until 1993, when the Tel Dan Stele mentioned the "House of David" (9th century BC).
  • 4Pontius Pilate — once called fictional, until the "Pilate Stone" was found in Caesarea in 1961, bearing his name and title.
  • 5The Pool of Bethesda (John 5) — dismissed as a literary invention until excavated in the late 1800s, exactly as described: five porticoes.
  • 6The Cyrus Cylinder (1879) confirms Ezra 1; Isaiah predicted Cyrus's decree 150 years before he was born.
  • 7The Moabite Stone confirms 2 Kings 3. Caiaphas's tomb was found in 1990 south of Jerusalem.
  • 8Sir William Ramsay set out to disprove Acts; decades of fieldwork convinced him, and he became a Christian.
  • 9Nelson Glueck: "No archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference."
  • 10Archaeology confirms the Bible's framework — real geography, real people, real events. The more we dig, the more the Bible is confirmed.

Anchor Verse

Luke 19:40 — 'If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.'

Key Points

  • 1Fulfilled, falsifiable prophecy is unique to the Bible — God's test in Deuteronomy 18: if it does not come to pass, it was not God.
  • 2Isaiah named "Cyrus" as the king who would free the Jews — written 150 years before Cyrus was born; fulfilled in Ezra 1.
  • 3Daniel foretold the sequence of world empires — Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome — centuries before Greece or Rome rose.
  • 4Over 300 Messianic prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
  • 5Micah 5:2 — the Messiah born in Bethlehem, written 700 years before Jesus.
  • 6Zechariah 11:12 — the betrayal price of 30 pieces of silver, fulfilled in Matthew 26.
  • 7Psalm 22 — written a thousand years before crucifixion was invented — describes pierced hands and feet, casting lots for garments, bones out of joint.
  • 8Isaiah 53 (suffering servant), Zechariah 9:9 (triumphal entry), and Daniel 9 (the Messiah's timeline).
  • 9Statistics (Professor Peter Stoner): 8 prophecies = 1 in 10^17 (Texas covered in silver dollars two feet deep); 48 prophecies = 1 in 10^157 — more than the atoms in the universe.
  • 10The "written after the fact" objection fails: the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) was finished by 150 BC, before Jesus was born, and contains every one of these prophecies.

Anchor Verse

Isaiah 46:9-10 — 'I am God… declaring the end from the beginning.'

Key Points

  • 1Internal unity: 1,500 years, 40+ authors, three continents, three languages (kings, fishermen, prophets, doctors, shepherds) — one unified story of God redeeming humanity through Jesus Christ.
  • 2Forty authors from one century and culture could not produce a unified book; the Bible's unity is miraculous.
  • 3Alleged contradictions mostly dissolve with careful reading — perspective, context, and genre; many are complementary accounts.
  • 4The Bible does not read like propaganda — it includes the embarrassing failures of its own heroes (Abraham's lies, David's adultery, Peter's denial).
  • 5Survival: in 303 AD Emperor Diocletian ordered every Bible burned; ten years later Constantine ordered 50 new ones made. An empire tried to burn the Word — and lost.
  • 6Voltaire predicted Christianity would be forgotten in 100 years; 50 years after his death the Geneva Bible Society bought his house and press to print Bibles.
  • 7The Bible remains the best-selling book of all time — the Word outlives its critics.

Anchor Verse

John 10:35 — '…the scripture cannot be broken.'

Key Points

  • 1Four lines of evidence summarized: 5,800 manuscripts, archaeology confirming the text, 300+ fulfilled prophecies, and a unity spanning 1,500 years.
  • 2If the Bible is trustworthy historically — about geography, people, and events — it is trustworthy spiritually. The same Bible that told the truth about Cyrus, Bethlehem, and the cross tells the truth about Jesus: He died for our sins, rose from the dead, and is coming back.
  • 3Defending the faith does not require a PhD — only knowing the evidence exists.
  • 4Challenge: read the Bible daily for 30 days. If it is just a book, nothing is lost; if it is the Word of God — and the evidence says it is — you will find life.
  • 51 Peter 3:15 — be ready always to give an answer for the hope that is in you. The goal is to win a soul, not an argument.
  • 6Trust it, read it, live it, and share it.

Anchor Verse

1 Peter 3:15 — '…be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.'

Cross Life School of Divinity — Webinar Review Guide

Pastor Larry Fisher • ~60 minutes • All scriptures KJV