I know I love my wife. I know a beautiful sunset when I see one. Though I have never been there, I know that the Great Wall of China exists. And I know that the Bible is true and trustworthy.

If you have come to this book looking for certainty and ironclad arguments, we don’t have them. I cannot prove beyond any doubt that the Bible is worthy of your trust and belief any more than I can prove to you that love is real or that justice is better than injustice. But after weighing the evidence, I can confidently claim that I know the Bible is true. The cumulative case for the trustworthiness of the Bible is just too convincing.

Is the Bible honest? Yes. Historical and archaeological discoveries corroborate its story. Does the Bible itself claim to be more than just a human book? Yes. God has not only inspired its composition but through the centuries has ensured its preservation. Did Jesus really endorse the Scriptures? Yes, He did. Not only did He endorse them, He embodied them. And this is the most compelling reason of all to trust the Bible.

In the pages of the Bible we encounter the most extravagant love story ever told. The God of the universe—the creator and designer of all—chose to become a human in order to restore the relationship we willfully broke when we chose to sin.

God created a good world, but when humans sinned and kept on sinning we brought separation and distance between the creator and His creation. But God was unwilling to allow that separation to continue indefinitely, so He did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. He closed the gap of sin and separation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We could not ascend to where He is so He descended in the person of Jesus Christ to where we are.

Are there good historical, textual, and philosophical reasons to believe that the Bible is trustworthy? Absolutely. But the most compelling reason to trust the Bible is its message of reconciliation and grace. It’s not just good news—it’s the best possible news.

¹ Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol. 2. The New Kingdom (Berkeley: University of California Press), 57.

² Avraham Negev, The Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land, 3rd ed. (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1990).

³ K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 34-50. See also http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10899-moabite-stone. The Cyrus Cylinder is on display at the British Museum in London,

England, and the Moabite Stone is on display at the Louvre in Paris, France.

⁴ Josephus, The Works of Josephus: Complete and unabridged, trans. William Whiston (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987).

⁵ Doug Powell, Holman QuickSource Guide to Christian Apologetics (Nashville: Holman Reference, 2006), 164-66.

⁶ A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, & A. C. Coxe (eds.), The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1,

The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company), 414.

⁷ Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 53-55.

⁸ Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 196, 261-70, 351-85.

⁹ Craig L. Bloomberg, Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2009), 424-44. See also McDowell, New Evidence, 38.

¹⁰ Dan Wallace, “Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered?” The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, last accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.csntm.org/News/Archive/2012/2/10/EarliestManuscriptoftheNewTestamentDiscovered.

¹¹ Alvin Plantinga, “The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ‘Ad Absurdum’: A Review of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion,” in God Is Great, God Is Good: Why Belief in God Is Reasonable and Responsible, ed. William Lane Craig and Chad Meister (Downers Grove: IVP, 2009), 247-58.