You've made it to Lesson 3! Well done! You've learned what apologetics is all about in Lesson 1 (defending your faith) and moved on to learning what a worldview is in book 2. Now that you have that down, it's time to strengthen your worldview by learning about what you believe and why it's even worth believing. So, we start with the Bible! |
Once again, Cora's friend Betty is challenging Christianity. Cora's friend spends A LOT of time on the internet, so she is seeing many atheist posts that go against what we believe. But don't worry, many of these posts are not well thought out, and can be easily answered...IF YOU KNOW YOUR RELIGION. That's why it's important to know your Bible and knowing a little apologetics doesn't hurt either! :) |
Many religions have their own book and claim to be the Word of God. We have the Bible and it stands above all others in many ways. For instance, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) have the Book of Mormon. It is said that it has an account of Jesus being in America, yet no archaeologist has ever found any of the cities, weapons, pottery or coins or anything mentioned in its stories! Even the Smithsonian Institute says it's not reliable: "The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book." (mrm.org) |
This page is one of my favorites because of all the amazing things we know about the Bible. Mica wasn't too happy about no cats represented in the scriptures, but eventually she got over it with lots of therapy and cat treats. One thing I left out was that the Bible was written on 3 different continents! :O Yup. It wasn't just one country, many authors on different continents contributed to the amazing book. Remember, the are 2 Testaments in the Bible, the old the covenant (The Old Testament) and the new covenant (The New Testament). When I was young in Christ, I had trouble understanding the difference (or even knowing) there were two parts to the BOOK. Following are 2 infographics that I created that will help you keep them in order in your mind. |
Before Jesus (B.C.)
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After Jesus (A.D.)
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(You can download the infographics above, just click the file download. You can then laminate them!)
Many skeptics attack the Bible because they think it can't be from God--as if God isn't powerful enough to preserve a book for us. The same God that spoke and the UNIVERSE leapt into existence can't protect a book for us throughout time? That's just silly. Of course He can and He picked the best way to do this...through copies. If we still had the originals, God knew this would cause problems--they would become worshipped and become idols. Humans have a nasty way of worshipping the creation rather than the creator (Rom. 1:25). And think about this, which ever church owned those originals could become corrupt with power or even change them. Thanks to all the copies though, we can ALL share in its wisdom and guidance. God knew what HE was doing. |
It's important to be familiar with what the Bible says. This way, you can spot errors when someone claims to be speaking for God (this is called discernment). This page shows Gabe knowing his scriptures and seeing that Jethro Money is saying things that aren't true according to the Bible. Whenever some preacher or "guru" comes along and says he has a WHOLE NEW WAY of interpreting the Bible, it's 99.9% of the time bogus, plastic banana, phony baloney. God has spoken in the Bible, that's all we need. |
It seems difficult to imagine not having computers and printers that can basically spit out anything we type...and very quickly. But during the New Testament times, things were much more different. To make a copy of a book in the Bible, it had to be done by hand! Can you imagine the time that took? The scribes took their time to make sure everything they copied was right. Sometimes they made mistakes, but no mistakes found in the copies ever changed anything Jesus wanted us to know (doctrine). They made small mistakes like a misspelled word or forgetting to add a word. Remember, we believe only the ORIGNIAL MANUSCRIPTS were perfect--the ones actually written by the apostles, not the copies that followed. And I gave you two reasons why God made it this way up above. |
Did you know that it was illegal to be a Christian within the Roman Empire? Christians had to meet in secret and often times they were killed if found out. They took great care to guard the letters written by the Apostles, even risking their lives to do so. It wasn't until 313 A.D. that Constantine, the Roman emperor, finally legalized Christianity and allowed for freedom of worship throughout the empire. What a happy day that must have been! |
In this picture, I drew Gabe on top of a pile of copies :) Apologist Lee Strobel mentions this fact in the movie about himself called The Case For Christianity. You should watch it! You can watch the movie on YouTube for free for some reason. Click here for the movie.
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Like this page explains, we have many many of the copies of the New Testament. Why is this important? Because the more copies we have, the better we can recreate the originals. We have so many now, that we can be almost 99.7% sure we have what the apostles wrote! That truly is amazing for any ancient writing. As Daniel Wallace, a very prominent textual expert said, "New Testament scholars face an embarrassment of riches compared to the data of classical Greek and Latin scholars have to contend with." In other words, we have waaaaaay more evidence than other ancient writings. And our copies date back to much closer to the time that they were written. |
There are several ways to test the Bible. That's the great thing about the Bible, it doesn't just expect us to blindly follow what it says. No where in the Bible does it say we need to have blind faith. It wants us to test it! I can assure you; no other religion does this. They expect their followers just to go along with whatever they say is true, like that fellow under the tree. God doesn't want robots though, He wants us to love Him with all our hearts, souls, strength and MINDS. (Luke 10:27) So He allows us to use our minds to search Him out, not just be told to believe. The Scriptures shows us He is the One True God. |
More Information on the Bible!
Start here and learn the story of the Bible. It's a great animation!
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
These are ancient documents that were found in several caves near the Dead Sea in a place called Qumran. It is considered one of the greatest Biblical archeological finds ever. And it was found by kids!
In this very quick video Dr. Sean Mcdowell does a great job explaining exactly what they are. Check it out.
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This 5 min video shows the area the where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found and why they're so important!
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Who picked the books in the Bible?
How did we get the books that we have in the Bible in the first place? And were some books left out for some reason or another?
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Did Church Councils pick the books we have in the Bible?? The following video does an excellent job of refuting this.