SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Daily Blade. The word of God is described as the sword of the Spirit, the primary spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up.

Paul’s Large Letters And Eyewitness Reality

Manuscripts And Why Legends Don’t Fit

Embarrassing Details And Outside Evidence

The Bottom Line Trust Scripture

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome back to the Daily Blade. We have finally made it to the end of Galatians. We are in Galatians chapter 6, beginning in verse 11, Paul says this See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. So we're going to spend our time today just on this one verse. This is the reason, by the way, a lot of people think that the thorn in the flesh that Paul talks about in Corinthians when he asks God to remove it is his bad eyesight. You see, oftentimes when a person like Paul would send a letter, they would dictate it to someone, but Paul wants the church at Galatia to know that he is writing this, and a part of the reason he's writing with such large letters, a lot of folks think that it's because he's got bad eyesight. Well, the part of the reason I want to point this out is because Paul is a real man with real problems, and he's writing a real letter to a real church. Now, why does this detail matter? Because what I want you to see here is that the scripture, the Bible, is not a fairy tale. It's not a fiction book. It actually happened. And so I want to give you a few reasons why you can trust the word of God. I mean, like hardcore reasons that you can trust the word of God. Because you'll hear, if you scroll the internet now, you'll see people say all this kind of stuff like, well, you know, it was just made up by a group of people, and the church conspired uh in the Council of Nicaea in the 300 AD to put this thing together to be a power source of the church. That could not be further from the truth. Or others will say, Well, how can you trust that Bible that you have right there in your hand because it is just uh an interpretation of a translation of a translation and it's all been lost. That is so untrue. First and foremost, the early manuscript evidence of the Bible is overwhelming. We have thousands of copies of the scriptures that were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. There was not enough time for this to be a fable or a fairy tale that grew over time. Also, like just the Greek manuscripts that we currently have access to. We have 5,800 Greek manuscripts. If you include the other manuscripts that we have that were translated into other languages as the gospel began to spread all over the place, we have over 20,000 that are traced back to within a hundred years of when these actual events happened. You see, most of the ancient histories that we trust as fact maybe have a few dozen copies a hundred years later. Everything we know about Julius Caesar, the best thing that we have. We have 10 copies of the history of Rome that are at least 100 years old. Also, Paul is writing about his own personal experience with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus. It's closely linked to many of the eyewitnesses of Jesus. Paul's going to say this like when he writes to the Corinthians, that Jesus appeared to over 500 people for over six weeks, and many of them are still alive today. Go check them for yourself. Also, something that is contained in the scriptures that you don't find in religious writing is what is called the criterion of embarrassment. Like when Paul in the book of Galatians confronts Peter to his face about his sin. If you were making up a new religion so as to endow power amongst the power brokers, there's no way you would include these kind of embarrassing facts. And then just another one is the external corroboration about the historicity of the Bible. Every archaeological find has only supported the truth of the scripture. It happens over and over and over. Maybe you've heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, that uh Shepherd Boy was out in Qumran. He throws a rock into a cave, he hears something shatter, they get down in there, and there are copies of the book of Isaiah for existence. And when you look through what was written, it's over a thousand years earlier than any other copy that we had at that point. It is word for word, it is exactly what you have in your Bible, on your Bible app right now. That Tacitus, who is an external historian, he references the crucifixion of Jesus. Josephus mentions Jesus and the rise of Christianity. If you want more evidence, go see Wesley Huff. Wesley Huff's been on Kyle's podcast on Daunted Life before, and this is what he does. He talks about these kinds of realities. What I want you to know when you read the scripture is it's not only living and active, it is. It's not only historically correct, it is. It's not only inspired or breathed out by God and useful for everything in your life, but it is true and it is trustworthy because it actually happened. You can believe the Bible because it is real.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Stay sharp.