Tag Archives: “

Is the Bible reliable? Hasn’t the Bible been corrupted throughout time? How much faith can we have in the Bible being from God?

QUESTION: HASN’T THE Bible undergone corruption as it was translated hundreds of times through the centuries…?

ANSWER: Yes, the Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages through the centuries. But the actual text of the Bible has been accurately preserved. How do we know?

First, there is the manuscript evidence. Simply put, we have many more copies that go much farther back than any other ancient piece of literature. Today several thousand partial and complete, ancient, handwritten manuscript copies of the Bible exist, some dating as far back as the third century BC.

For comparison, the next best piece of literature regarding manuscript evidence is Homer’s Illiad. This has only 643 copies and these copies are dated 500 years after the original. The Biblical manuscripts have allowed textual critics and scholars to verify that the Bible we have today is the same Bible the early church had.

A second evidence for the reliability of the Bible comes from the writings of the church fathers. By church fathers I am referring to leaders in the early church within a few generations of the apostles of Christ. In their commentaries on the Bible, their letters to one another, and their letters to other congregations, these men quoted the New Testament Scriptures more than 86,000 times. Their quotations have allowed scholars to reconstruct 99.86 percent of the New Testament. There are only 11 verses in the New Testament the “church fathers” apparently never cited.

The original text of the Bible has been accurately preserved. Dave Early & David Wheeler, “Answering Common Questions Seekers Ask,” Evangelism Is… 273, 274

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.” Matthew 24.

Mike Benson

We’ll close the incision now

Leave a reply

IN THE OPERATING room of a large, well-known hospital, it was the nurse’s first day on the medical team…

She was responsible for ensuring all instruments and materials were accounted for before completing the final steps of the operation. She said to the surgeon, “You’ve only removed 11 sponges. We used 12 sponges, and we need to find the last one.”

“I removed them all,” the doctor declared emphatically. “We’ll close the incision now.”

“No,” the rookie nurse objected, “we used 12 sponges.”

“I’ll take the responsibility,” the surgeon said grimly. “Suture.”

“You can’t do that, sir,” blazed the nurse. “Think of the patient.”

The surgeon smiled and lifted his foot, showing the nurse the twelfth sponge. “You’ll do just fine in this or any other hospital.”

THOUGHT: When you know you’re right, you can’t back down. Dennis Waitley, “Your Absolute Bottom Line,” Priorities Magazine

“He who walks with integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his ways will become known.” Proverbs 10.9

Mike Benson

Jesus Christ

Leave a reply

JESUS WAS NEITHER a salesman nor a manipulator…

He was not trying to convince anyone to do anything. Instead, Jesus focused on illuminating the truth about issues, events, questions, and concerns.

His words made it possible for his listeners to see the truth.

But what they did with that understanding was their choice.

Of course, he hoped that his listeners would make the right choices and decisions, but he did not try to coerce or manipulate them.

Rather, he focused a penetrating spotlight on false beliefs and life’s illusions.

This is why he claimed to be “the light of the world.”

Those who would follow him would “not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Over and over again we see him exposing false values and revealing hidden truths. Steven K. Scott, “A MESSAGE That Communicates, “The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived,” 104

“Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, “I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.” John 8:12

Mike Benson

CONSIDER THE EYE…

Leave a reply

Look out the window. Your field of view catches a vista perhaps a mile wide. It all appears projected onto half of a sphere a the very back of your eye, the retina, less than three centimeters in diameter. Yet your brain sees within those three centimeters of information a world a mile wide and knows it is no Disney cartoon the size of a postage stamp. Light from the outside world has reached your retina with only slight distortion. That’s because somehow those clever genes in your body produced crystal clear, transparent cells for the eyes’ outer casing, the cornea and the lens just behind the cornea, and the thick fluid that fills the globe of the eye between the lens and the retina. Amazing. All those totally clear cells and fluid even though most of our body is opaque or translucent. Some cells of your eyes are yours for life. As you age, more are added, but the ones you were born with are still with you as well.

The iris, which is controlled by an array of muscles, regulates the amount of light entering based on feedback from the retina. Behind the retina is a heavily pigmented layer that absorbs light not captured by the retina. A second array of muscles changes the shape of the lens, bending the light more or less as per the extent of the lens’s curvature, focusing the incoming images sharply on the retina. (All land vertebrates use the system to sharpen the image. A fish lens acts in a manner similar to a camera, focusing by moving the lens backward or forward.) Of course, the concept of focusing assumes the brain makes some decision as to what a “sharp” image means. Might the world really be blurry and we just see it as sharp?

All those muscles working in unison with no conscious thought on your part, and all in the blink of an eye, and all originally stored in one fertilized cell. Gerald L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, “Meiosis and the Making of a Human,” 82-83

“By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” Psalm 33.6

Mike Benson