Can We Trust The Bible?
Chris Holm | APR 19, 2026
Series: The Whole Story
Categories: Scripture and Bible Study, Faith and Trust, Hope and Encouragement
Sermon summary
We began our nine-week journey through God's unfolding kingdom by addressing the foundation: Can we actually trust the Bible? If Scripture is mythology or ancient speculation, we're wasting our time. But if God is truly revealing himself through these pages, everything changes.
The New Testament was written remarkably early. Most scholars agree all 27 books were written before AD 100, with Paul's letters dating to the 50s and 60s—less than 30 years after Jesus died. This matters because eyewitnesses were still alive to verify or contradict what was being written. The gospels were composed between the 60s and 90s AD, well within living memory of Jesus's ministry.
We have overwhelming manuscript evidence. Over 5,800 Greek manuscripts show 99.5% agreement across centuries and continents. Compare this to other ancient texts we accept without question: our earliest complete Plato manuscripts come from 1,200 years after he wrote.
The church didn't create the canon arbitrarily. They recognized books that were written by apostles, used widely from earliest times, and conformed to apostolic teaching. The Spirit guided this process over centuries.
We're not claiming every translation is perfect or that the Bible is a science textbook. We're saying Scripture reliably tells us what God wants us to know about himself, ourselves, and his rescue plan for the world. The Spirit who inspired Scripture illuminates our reading of it today. We can build our lives on this foundation.