04/08/19 STEPS TO NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY

04/08/19 STEPS TO NEW TESTAMENT RELIABILITY

God is truth. His Spirit revealed His truth in Scripture. Earliest believers acknowledged His truth. We have His truth (Bible).

My view of the reliability and authority, and inspiration, and infallibility, and inerrancy, and authenticity, and genuineness, and accuracy of the Holy Bible.

I understand the reliability of the New Testament through these four steps.

GENERATION (beginning).
God is truth. Truth is inherent to God's nature. God has always been true.

REVELATION from God to His chosen messengers who had first and second hand knowledge of God's truth.
God chose men, equipped these men, qualified these men, communicated His truth to these men, guided these men in recording the truth of the New Testament. The first hand knowledge of God's truth was Divine inspiration, communicated to chosen messengers. First hand knowledge also included eyewitness accounts of the events and verbal declarations included in the written record. Second hand accounts were the written reports of other people who were eyewitnesses to the events and oral declarations. But the New Testament writers were directed by the Holy Spirit specifically and precisely to report and record the New Testament, even when the documents were not Divine actions or verbal communications.

PRESERVATION of God's truth in the New Testament.
God called, equipped and guided earliest followers of Christ into bodies of believers. God transmitted His written record of truth to great numbers of the earliest believers, who also had first and second hand knowledge of the life, teachings, ministry of Christ. The believers, through individual churches, in conjunction with other churches throughout the Christian world (Asian, African and European) gave corporate recognition and acceptance to the verifiable written records. Remember, the first century and early Church (corporate, universal) acknowledged the written record through preaching, teaching, contending, communicating. These written records were known as the acknowledged and accepted revelation of God.

PROPAGATION of God's truth in the New Testament.
Through the centuries, the Church, which has held to the divine Generation, Revelation, Preservation of God's truth, separate from and above all other claims to authority, has endeavored to present the original and absolute truth of God through faithful scholarship, linguistic changes, cultural differences.

As a result, the word of God in the New Testament has been transmitted faithfully and accurately through a score of centuries and hundreds of cultures, countries and languages.

With all of the difficulties and problems involved in preservation and propagation, the message and word of God has been communicated faithfully from the time of Jesus until today.

The same can be said of the Old Testament. However, this document is focused on the reliability of the New Testament being the true word of God and thoroughly reliable for facts, faith and practice.

Even if no one was propagating the New Testament today, God and His revelation are true.
Even if no one had been faithful to preserve the New Testament record, God and His revelation are still true.
Truth is dependent on its source, not on its acceptance.

By The Way,
This is not just an exercise if verbosity. This is intended to help explain the veracity of the Holy Bible.