April 23, 2025 • 44 mins
Many people think that the Bible is a cobbled–together selection of ancient writings that have been changed so many times over hundreds of years that surely the text can no longer be trusted. Dr. Timothy Jones admits that the Bible is a difficult book to believe. Still, he makes the case that belief in the Bible is far from unreasonable. Join us he takes a look at common questions and doubts about the Bible. Learn how to better 'contend for the faith' by knowing what you believe and why it can be believed.
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S1 (00:00):
Hi friends, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
and it is my sincere hope that you'll hear something
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and then gently but consistently push you out into the
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shine before men and go and tell them the good news.
Before you listen to this podcast, let me just tell
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(00:20):
written by pastor Jack Graham. I love it because he
really does recognize the fact that biblical literacy is declining,
and that a lot of people think that the Bible
is too complicated, that it's written for pastors or for scholars.
And yet, in truth, Jesus is there from Genesis to Revelation.
And that book was written for every single one of us.
We just need a better way to know how to
study God's Word. And that's exactly what the Jesus Book
(00:42):
is all about. So when you give a gift of
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In the Market with Janet Parshall. Scroll to the bottom
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(01:28):
Hi friends, this is Janet partial. Thanks so much for
choosing to spend the next hour with us. Today's program
is pre-recorded so our phone lines are not open. But
thanks so much for being with us and enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (01:54):
Oh, the Bible, the Holy Bible. Let your mind find
peace in God's word. Oh, the Bible. The Holy Bible.
(02:18):
Let your mind find peace in God's word.
S1 (02:23):
Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. And if
you were a good detective, you'd pretty much figure that's
a big clue as to what our topic is going
to be about this hour. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I hope
we make you ride home in rush hour traffic a
little more enjoyable. And in that crazy rush hour that's
known as dinnertime around your house. I hope this helps
you set your mind on things above. I particularly want
(02:44):
to invite those of you who do not know Jesus
Christ as their personal Savior and think, oh no, there's
those wacky Christians again, talking about that book. Really? How
could you possibly read that Bible you talk about all
the time? I mean, honestly, it's filled with mistakes, contradictions
written by ignorant Bedouins. Not first eyewitness accounts. I mean,
it's not the least bit plausible. In fact, the question
(03:06):
on the table this hour is this why would any
reasonable person in the 21st century trust that the Bible
is true? Ladies and gentlemen, do I have your attention?
That's what we're going to talk about this hour. And
we're going to spend the hour with Doctor Timothy Paul Jones.
What a great name. Doctor Jones is professor of apologetics
and director of the center for Christian Apologetics at the
(03:28):
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also has a very popular
weekly music and apologetics podcast called Three Chords and the Truth,
The Apologetics Podcast. So we're going to spend the hour
asking these questions why should I trust the Bible? It's
part of a series put out by Christian Focus, one
of my favorite publishing companies. You know, they're actually up
(03:48):
in Scotland, up in the Tain area. Well, if you
were looking at your hand, your left hand Tain is
right there in that space between your index finger and
your thumb in the part that Scotland. So it's great.
A lot of great great Christian works come out of Scotland,
and they're brilliant in the way in which they find
superb authors like Doctor Jones to answer these questions. These
are books designed to make you think, and they fit
(04:09):
so beautifully in the apologetics category. So, Timothy, the warmest
of welcomes. And I got to ask you first about
your podcast. I'm absolutely intrigued. What is the intersection between
music and apologetics?
S3 (04:19):
Well, part of the intersection is the fact that I
just really, really enjoy both of those. But what we
actually do is we look at classic rock and look
at the theology of different classic rock songs. Everything from
Don't Stop Believin to God gave Rock and roll to you.
We look at the theology of that and help it
critique our cultural perspectives on different topics as well. So
(04:41):
it's a lot of fun, but mostly it just brings
together two things I really enjoy, which is music and apologetics.
S1 (04:47):
But how fabulous. Especially when you talk about cultural apologetics.
This is your Athens moment where you know people are
listening to this music. So when these musicians are twanging away.
Are they asking transcendent questions that can be answered? And
if the answer is yes, they can be answered. Where
do I go to find the answers? So kudos to you.
I think that's a brilliant way for cultural intersection. I
(05:07):
love this question because we hear it all the time.
You make the excellent point very much at the beginning
of the book, where some people have never read the Bible,
and yet they believe it absolutely to be true. And
there are others who around the world, you say throughout
history who have in fact wrestled with what the Bible
has to say, and they've landed on the firm conclusion
that the Bible, in fact, can be trusted. Here we are, postmodern,
(05:27):
21st century, and we still have people who are saying
it's an arcane book. It's thousands of years old, and
you could give them a dump truck full of archaeological evidence,
literary evidence. We could talk about the codex and material
that's in museums all across the European continent. And they'd
still go, still don't believe it. So and I'm asking
a philosophical question as we get started. Is it a
(05:50):
question that can never really be answered? Because the answer
can only reside in each individual heart, and it may
not necessarily be a uniform response.
S3 (05:58):
I think that's true, and I think that one of
the things we have to recognize is that there are
two factors in people coming to faith in Jesus Christ,
and that is there's the evidence that we're talking about,
but there's also the Spirit of God working in their
heart and transforming their lives. And I don't think we
can ever pretend that I can somehow come up with
just that one perfect piece of evidence that will make
(06:20):
every single person believe. We have to recognize that the
Holy Spirit of God and that person that has something
to do with it as well. But even though the
Spirit of God and the individual do have something to
do with it, we have a responsibility as believers in
Jesus Christ to take care of that other side and
to present real evidence for why the Bible is believable
(06:41):
as the Word of God. And I think that's what
we need to to have a passion for doing. And
that's what apologetics is. It's not pretending I can make
somebody believe. Rather, it's saying I can present evidence that
can become a means for the Holy Spirit to work
and to draw somebody to believe.
S1 (06:57):
Oh, I'm so glad you said that. Particularly the last part,
because it seems to me, Timothy, that we could try
as best we could to posit all of the theories
out there that we would say naturally would lead one
to the conclusion that, yes, of course, I can trust
the Bible. But that belies the supernatural nature of this book,
does it not?
S3 (07:12):
That's exactly correct. I mean, we've got to recognize that
if we really believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures,
and that same spirit is the one who brings somebody
to faith in Jesus Christ, that it's not all up
to us, but God by his grace, by his mercy,
chooses to include us in this process of bringing somebody
to faith, by us presenting evidence and truth in human
(07:35):
words that fall far short of of the divine nature
of God's words. But they are. But it's it's a
means that God uses to work through us and in us,
and it's a privilege we have of participating in that.
S1 (07:47):
And there's also a kind of freedom in what you
just said, Timothy, because I think for a lot of
people who are saying, well, I've got this friend, I
really care for this friend, but he just thinks I'm
a knucklehead for even believing what the Bible says. And
they they believe that if they could just present this
airtight three point presentation that their friend would say, ah,
and they'd have their own Damascus Road experience and they'd
have the epiphany. And there you go. The book can
(08:07):
be trusted. I think it's important for us to remember,
stand back, you know, let the Holy Spirit do the
work that has to be done here. We can, we should,
and we must examine and vet and look at the
abundance of evidence the Lord has given us. But ultimately understand,
you go so far and that's all you're going to
be allowed to go in some of this, which I
think is great. So why in the world would you
(08:27):
read a book, why I'm Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell.
S3 (08:30):
Well, I read that because I at that moment in college,
I was a college student at that time, 17 years old,
and I was frustrated because of the answers I was given.
And I worked in a library. I was shelving that
book and I said, I'm going to read this and
find out why this person doesn't believe.
S1 (08:46):
All right, what a great place to take a break.
Doctor Timothy Jones is with us for the entire hour,
and he gives us something we can't give back to him,
which is the gift of this time. And I thank
him so much for that. It's a great question. If
you're talking to your friends and family about Jesus and oh,
I hope you are. Although the statistical data says you're not,
you're going to get asked the question, why should I
trust the Bible? Want to learn how to answer? That's
(09:09):
what this hour is about. Back after this. Ever feel
intimidated by the Bible? Unsure where to begin or how
(09:30):
it all fits together? Well, you're not alone. That's why
I've chosen The Jesus Book by Doctor Jack Graham as
this month's truth tool. Learn to unlock the timeless wisdom
of God's Word. As for your copy of the Jesus Book,
when you give a gift of any amount in the market,
call eight 7758. That's eight 7758 or go online to
in the market with Janet Parshall Dot. Org.
S4 (10:00):
The word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light unto my path.
S1 (10:12):
I'd like to thank all my Sunday School teachers ever everywhere,
who taught me songs like that, because that was one
way to hide scripture in my heart. I bet you
started singing along with that, didn't you? Well, I'm glad
we're talking about Bible verses, because our entire topic this
hour is predicated on the question, why should I trust
the Bible? Doctor Timothy Paul Jones is not only the
author of the book. He's our teacher this hour. He's
(10:33):
a professor of apologetics and director of the center for
Christian Apologetics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I want
to thank you, Timothy, for starting the book out with
your own personal journey, because, um, you've got all the
initials after your name. But like all of us, you
had to have your own journey of faith. And I
love the fact that you talked about being drawn eventually,
because obviously you were hungry for knowledge and wisdom and
(10:56):
you were a voracious reader. You talked about C.S. Lewis.
Mere Christianity played tremendously in my husband coming to faith
in Jesus Christ. For you, it wasn't mere Christianity. It
was surprised by joy. Talk to me about that.
S3 (11:09):
Well, that particular book is C.S. Lewis's journey from atheism
to Christianity. And the point at which God brought that
book into my life was when I felt like I
was on the opposite journey from Christianity to atheism, because
I'd been given all these different reasons for believing when
I was growing up and the churches I was growing
(11:30):
up in. And what started to happen when I got
to college was that the reasons I had been given
to believe ended up not checking out with the facts.
And I started to feel this fear. And I read
some books by Bertrand Russell and other atheists and about
why not to believe. And I started reading and reading
all of these books about atheism. And in the midst
(11:51):
of all of that, I ran across this book by C.S.
Lewis called surprised by Joy. And I realized in that
that many of the questions that I had, many of
the struggles I was having, were ones that other people
had had before, and that those things that C.S. Lewis
was struggling with had led him not away from faith
in Jesus Christ, but to faith in Jesus Christ. And
(12:14):
that book became this catalytic book in my life, in
which God began to raise questions in my heart about
these atheist books I was reading. And I started reading
more and more of C.S. Lewis, and then some other
scholars that I began to run across, and, and God
used that to draw me back to faith in himself
(12:34):
and a different and much stronger and deeper faith than
the faith I'd had before.
S1 (12:40):
Well, amazing. You quote so many people in this, this
beginning of the book, this introduction in your own spiritual journey.
And I'm going to ask you a question, but let
me ask you a different question first, which is you
could have dived right into the facts. You could have
skipped over your personal story. Why did you put it in?
S3 (12:57):
I put my personal story in because I wanted the
person who is a skeptic or an unbeliever to know
that other people have had the same doubts that they have,
that other people have felt the same way they felt,
and yet have come to a very different place in
terms of faith. And that's what I wanted the unbeliever
to see, because I found over and over, when I
share that story with unbelievers, it actually piques their interest.
(13:19):
It really does grab their interest of, oh, you've felt
this before. Other people have felt this too and come
out at a different place. So I think it is
so important. And also, I think when we talk to
an unbeliever, one of the first things we can do
is to say to them, when did you first start
feeling this way? Because almost always there's a story they
have as well. And if we tell our story, it
(13:39):
lets them share their story, and it helps open the
doors to a real dialogue between us.
S1 (13:45):
Yeah, I think that's brilliant, by the way. And I
think that's a powerful tool in apologetics. You quote Christopher Hitchens,
and he said at one point, the surrender of the mind.
It's the surrender of reason in reference to faith. There
are a lot of people, and we're talking to folks
from Guam to the Cayman Islands, and I'm thrilled that
there are people listening who don't yet believe that the
Bible can be trusted, who don't yet know who the
(14:07):
person of Jesus Christ is, and have subscribed to the
same idea that Hitchens did, which is somehow that faith
and reason are mutually exclusive, and that if you become
a person of proclaimed faith, that you therefore have given
death to the intellect. I don't know where this comes from.
Let me quote Louis I, my poor listening friends, are
now collectively groaning because I quote this all the time.
Christians are the best argument for and against Christianity, and
(14:29):
sometimes we give credence to the idea that our heart's
been transformed, but our brain has been put in a
shoebox and put under the bed. So faith and reason
are not particularly as you get deeper into this book,
we're talking about mutually exclusive. In fact, they highly intersect.
But how do we slay the mythology of that dragon
that says, you can't be both a person of reason.
Use your intellect and be a person of faith. It
(14:51):
belies logic that the two could coexist.
S3 (14:54):
Well, we have to do first is to make sure
that we're operating with the same definition of faith, because
it really comes down to how do we define faith,
and what do we mean by faith? And what I
find with my unbelieving friends, and particularly those who are
agnostics or atheists, is they actually believe in many cases
that faith is a rejection of evidence, and faith is
(15:15):
a rejection of reason. But that has never been what
faith is or what faith is, especially in the history
of Christianity in any way. Faith is a disposition of
trust that includes evidence. It's not a rejection of evidence.
It's a disposition of trust that includes evidence. Faith and
reason and evidence are not contradictory. They're mutually supportive. So
(15:37):
that's the first thing I want people to understand. But
here's where I want to press a little harder into it.
And that is to recognize all of us operate by
some type of faith. That is to say that we
believe more than we can actually prove based on empirical
or visible evidence, as we all do. Everybody has some
sort of a disposition of trust in which they're trusting
(15:58):
in something they can't absolutely prove. And we need to
be honest about the fact that we can't prove every
single little detail that we believe about Christianity, but nor
can somebody on the other side believe that. Can they
prove every single detail that they believe about their belief system?
What we're all doing in life, and this is there's
nothing wrong with that, is we are developing a belief
(16:20):
system on the basis of the best evidence. And that's
what we want to be able to do. And we
want to recognize that we're both doing that. This is
not something where Christians have faith and everybody else has evidence.
This is something where we're all operating on a combination
of faith that includes evidence and different evidences. We're all
operating on that, and that helps the unbeliever to see
(16:43):
that they're not in some sort of unique category separate
from a Christian. They too are operating by faith at
some level.
S1 (16:50):
And that's good. That's good. That is a takeaway, friends,
I hope you remember that doctor Timothy Paul Jones is
our guest. He is the author of the book we're
discussing entitled Why Should I Trust the Bible? Now, maybe
you've asked this question yourself, or you have a friend
who's been asking this question. I hope this hour is
going to help you better contend for the faith by
knowing how to answer this question back after this.
S4 (17:13):
You're the light unto my path.
S5 (17:35):
You can change, but you want to change. But you
can't change the Word of God. You can't change what
you want to change, but you can't change the Word
of God.
S1 (17:56):
We're visiting with Doctor Timothy Paul Jones, who's written the
book Why Should I Trust the Bible? He's professor of
apologetics and director of the center for Christian Apologetics at
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So let me and little
books like this. And one of the reasons why I
love Christian Focus is they're powerful, pithy, and they're not long.
They're not. And while Doctor Jones could certainly write strictly
(18:19):
for an academic audience, he writes Where You and I live,
which is on terra firma, and he just takes these
exalted ideas and puts them down in understandable ways so
that we, in fact, can better give our apologetic for
the Christian faith. Uh, Christian focus does this as a
publishing company so. Well. So I want to dive into
some of the points that you make, and I want
to start with the Gospels, because that's where a lot
(18:39):
of skeptics and cynics and seekers start, which is you've
got these four books bearing four different names, and surely
they'll say they're written, filled with contradictions, and surely they
weren't authored within any sort of reliable frame. Period. It's
got to be 5 to 600 post a series of events,
which then raises a question that you address in this chapter,
which is were these four gospels intended to be accounts
(19:03):
of real history? And if the answer to that question
is yes, where where is my reliance on that answer?
How can I evidentiary give some belief that, in fact,
these are substantiated historical events? Do I have to go
outside the Bible to get that affirmed?
S3 (19:19):
I think one of the most important things for us
to recognize in this is this question of, were these
even intended to be historical documents? And there's several different
ways we can approach this and see that the New
Testament books, the Gospels in particular, were intended to be historical.
Now I'm going to use I'm going to give a
skeptical kind of perspective on this at first, because I
(19:40):
think this is worth listening to and hearing. And the
fact is that the style in which these books are written,
this sort of more of an earthy, down to earth style,
is the way the Gospels were written, is actually more
characteristic of some texts that were actually fictional texts that
we find in the ancient world. And so some people
have argued, for example, that these were intended to be
(20:01):
fictional texts. But there's a lot of different reasons not
to think that that's the case. And I'll just go
through just a handful of those because it's so important
for us to get these. One of them is the
way in which, for example, Luke begins his gospel, which
he's actually drawing from some Roman historians in the verbiage
he uses when he talks about eyewitness testimony. When he
(20:22):
talks about that, I've gathered this. Other people have also
formed a different gospels or different accounts of the life
of Jesus. He's talking about that. That's that's very much
like certain Greco-Roman historians, for example. Also simply the idea
that we have from time to time, particularly in John's
Gospel and to some degree in Luke's gospel that says
(20:42):
there's eyewitness testimony, I saw this or that. Somebody actually
saw these particular things in this. Another one, just another one,
is the fact that another literary genre actually includes the
same facts. So we have the literary genre of epistle
that we have also in the New Testament, and that
also includes the same facts. But let me tell you
(21:02):
one of my favorite ones, and it's this one. And
Peter Williams does a great job of this, talking about
it in a book called Can We Trust the Gospels?
And I include this information in there. It's the fact
that they get the geography correct. Now, we may think
nothing of it when we hear about something in the Gospels.
We read all the time and don't think anything about
(21:23):
up and down. They went up to Jerusalem or they
went down to a certain place. They went to Jericho.
They went to these places up and down. But here's
something really important to understand that there's no way with
the with the information they had back then for anybody
who hadn't been in those regions and in those locations
(21:43):
to know when the road goes up and when it
goes down. And yet the Gospels get those right every
single time. Now, here's what's fascinating about that. It demonstrates
that you have people who are writing these texts who
are either they themselves or close associates of theirs, were
actually in these places and were intimately acquainted with these places. Now,
(22:07):
I could go on to dozens of other reasons, but
these texts actually just ring of something historical in what
they are claiming. They actually have this and include also
even names of people that were known to them who
had witnessed these events. They were telling these things in
a context where the apostles who had witnessed these events
(22:29):
were traveling around during this time and could have said, no,
that's not the way it happened. If somebody was making
something up. Everything about these texts suggests that they were
intended to be taken as descriptions of events that actually happened.
S1 (22:46):
Wow. How does the question of plausibility reveal itself in
what you call the Kentucky meat shower?
S3 (22:52):
Well, let me tell you about the Kentucky meat shower
that happened a couple of hours east of my house,
where I live in Louisville, Kentucky. And it happened in
1876 when meat fell out of the sky for about
30 minutes in a person's yard. The meat is still preserved,
by the way, in a university science lab. It's still
there today in this. And this is a really vivid.
(23:13):
This sounds like something I'm making up. And what I
use it as an example of is that the same
things that lead people to believe that that event happened.
And by the way, the best, most plausible explanation for
it is that there are certain vultures that vomit when
they are frightened, and several vultures vomited at the same time.
That's the most plausible explanation. But this is a crazy event.
(23:35):
And yet, the reasons that we believe that are the
same ones we can believe the New Testament gospels.
S1 (23:41):
There's so much more Timothy to that story, and I
really want you to continue. I don't want to have
to rush you for the break. Thank you for being
sensitive to the music. So let me pick it up
with the Kentucky meat shower and plausibility when we come back.
Doctor Jones again is the author of Why Should I
Trust the Bible? He serves as associate vice president and
professor of Christian apologetics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
(24:02):
We're going to take a break. We'll be right back
after this.
S6 (24:05):
That's why I say you can change. Yeah. Oh.
S1 (24:26):
Friends, this is Janet Parshall, and I want to take
a moment to remind you that today's program is prerecorded
so our phone lines aren't open. But I sure do
appreciate your spending the hour with us. And thanks so
much and enjoy the rest of the program. What's the
goal of in the market? I'll tell you in the
market equips men and women to think critically and act biblically.
(24:48):
Why do we do this? So that we can be
confident when speaking the truth in a confused culture? Are
you willing to stand with me? Become a partial partner
today and enjoy exclusive benefits only my partners receive while
making an impact for the Kingdom? Call 877 Janet 58
or go online to in the market with Janet Parshall.
S7 (25:13):
The word is alive and it cuts like a sword
through the darkness, with a message of life to the
hopeless and afraid. Breathing life into all who believe. The
word is alive.
S1 (25:33):
Why should I trust the Bible? Well, that's an interesting question.
On the heels of that song. That's the name of
the book that Doctor Timothy Paul Jones has authored. He
is professor of apologetics and director of the center for
Christian Centre of Surrey, centre for Christian Apologetics. Brain going
faster than mouth at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Love
(25:53):
this book. It is direct to the point we'll answer
so many questions. And boy, I hope you're being asked
this question by somebody, because then it tells me that
you really take the Great Commission very seriously, and you've
gotten out into the world and you are having conversations
with people about Jesus, which, by the way, is not
an opt in, opt out clause for the follower of Christ.
(26:13):
That's part of our experience with him. When last we met,
we were talking about the Kentucky meat shower, and it
really is this wonderful example that Doctor Jones writes about
that addresses the question of the historical plausibility of the gospel.
So this is a real, bonafide event. Vomiting vultures may
be the answer for why this happened. The meat is
saved there, not too far from where you are, Timothy,
(26:35):
but pick up using this example on how this is
a transference to the question of plausibility for the Gospels.
S3 (26:40):
Well, you see, there's a guy named Bart Ehrman, and
there's others that follow this as well that are skeptics, agnostics, atheists.
And they basically say the only events you ought to
believe happened are events that are probable. And the way
we establish whether an event in history is probable is
the frequency with which we see it. And so we
we shouldn't believe in the resurrection as historical, because after all,
(27:02):
how often do you see a resurrection happen? And so
they use this argument and it sounds like a really
valid argument at first. Oh my goodness, we never see
this happen. Why should we believe it happened in history?
And so I draw this event out the the Kentucky
meat shower, which as I described it, meat for about
20 or 30 minutes fell out of the sky a
couple of hours in Bath County, Kentucky, a couple of
(27:22):
hours east of where I live. And at this particular
time in 1876, there were no airplanes or anything like that.
Nobody knows for sure why this event happened. The vomiting
vultures are the best Explanation. But my point in that
is that that is an event that we have no
analogy for in our common human experience. There's nothing like
(27:45):
that that any of us have experienced. And yet people
believe that that event happened in history. Why? Because there
were eyewitnesses. Because there were people who had nothing to
gain by sharing the story that they shared, because there
were evidences and there were reports of it that came
soon after the events themselves occurred. All of these different
(28:05):
things coalesced together to make an event that sounds absurd, crazy,
an event that nobody denies. And my point in that is,
is that it shows that those that are rejecting the
resurrection of Jesus Christ are, in essence, placing it in
a special category because it's supernatural. They may pretend to say, look,
(28:28):
the reason we don't believe it is because this is
improbable and we've never seen anything like this. And how
could something happen no matter what the evidence is? But really,
there's a lot of improbable things that we believe happened.
But this event is being placed in a special category
because it requires the supernatural to have taken place.
S1 (28:47):
That's an excellent point. So on the heels of that,
you asked this question in the book. You say, can
a miraculous claim ever be plausible? Can it?
S3 (28:54):
It can be if there's evidence for that event having happened.
And it's where we're actually saying, you know what, I'm
going to be more open minded than the atheist. And
that's the thing that I find sometimes in discussions, I'm like, look,
you're supposed to be the open minded person. You're the
atheist who doesn't believe you're supposed to be open minded,
and yet you're presenting these things as if only natural
(29:16):
explanations are valid. But I'm actually being more open minded.
I'm saying I'm going to open the door to both
natural and supernatural explanations, and I'll let the evidence lead
where it may and believe where the evidence actually points,
regardless of what it does for my worldview, whether supernatural
or natural.
S1 (29:36):
Only in deference to time, because there is so much
in this book. But I want to ask some of
the questions that I know. Some of my skeptic friends
who are listening might be asking, or some of my
seeking friends would want answered. And that is this idea of, okay,
we talk about the canonical gospels. We talk about what
books were included as opposed to what books were excluded.
So the person who's never read the Bible but is
(29:59):
fully convinced situational ethics has already reached his desired conclusion.
He doesn't care where the evidence leads. He's already predetermined
that the Gospels are replete with contradictions, that they contradict
each other, so therefore they can't be believed. But second
of all, who got to pick and choose what books
went in and what books didn't get out? Because certainly
didn't Constantine get a bunch of people together? And didn't
they decide, we'll take that one, but we won't take
(30:21):
that one. So unpack that for us.
S3 (30:23):
That is the common myth that this happened at Council
of Nicaea. I talk about that myth and where it
even came from in the Middle Ages, all the way
in the book that this is it's this medieval myth
that has really caught hold. But the fact is, let's
look at the real evidence and we could call for
several things. I'll just point to a couple of them.
There's a there's a fragment from the late second century
(30:43):
called the Muratorian fragment. And it actually is, is kind
of this discussion of certain books, why they go in
the New Testament and why they don't, why they, in
their words, the books publicly read, that is, the books
that are authoritative for Christians. There are some people wanting
this book called Shepherd of Hermas to be included in
the books that are authoritative for Christians, and we get
a glimpse in there of the of how this happened.
(31:05):
And it's not our only glimpse that we have, but
it's one very clear one. And they said, look, this
book can't go in our authoritative books because it's after
the time of the Old Testament prophets, and it's after
the time of the apostles. It's after their time. Therefore
it cannot be included. Now here's what we see there.
And I could go to others, but in the interest
of time, just focus on that one. Here's what we
(31:26):
find over and over is that the books that are
included in the New Testament are included there because of
the fact that they could be traced back to either
people who saw the risen Lord Jesus, or who were
close associates of those who saw the risen Lord Jesus.
That's where everybody came from. When they had discussions about
the books and arguments about the books. And they did.
(31:47):
At times the argument wasn't, do we like this book?
Does the Emperor like this book or anything like that?
That wasn't what they were talking about. It was, are
we sure this book can be traced back to an
eyewitness of the risen Lord Jesus, or a close associate
of an eyewitness? And if it can't be, we aren't
going to include it. If it can be, we will.
That was the standard all the way back to the
(32:09):
very beginning. It was the standard that they followed, and
we see it clearly, and we see a book like
Hebrews that we don't know who wrote it for certain,
but it says toward the end of it, it connects
it to somebody who knew Timothy. And so they knew
that Timothy was connected to Paul. So they include it
in there because of that, for example. And we have
these books. Every single book in our New Testament can
(32:29):
be connected to either an eyewitness of the risen Lord
Jesus or a close associate of. There was no meeting,
no gathering, no council, no emperor. It was. Can we
be sure we can trace it back to such people
as those?
S1 (32:42):
Pretty straightforward criteria. So let me go back then, because
I said something earlier in our conversation, which is one
of the allegations levied against the reliability of the scriptures,
is that, um, these were books that were the Gospels
in particular, were written 4 to 500 years after the fact.
If the criteria was they had to be an eyewitness
or a close connection to a person who was an eyewitness,
(33:02):
how does that work 5 to 600 years hence?
S3 (33:04):
Well, it simply doesn't. And it also doesn't work for
another reason. There are actual manuscripts and fragments of the
Gospels from the second century, so there were some that
early then. Uh, then we can't have them written after
they were actually we have fragments of them that remain.
But here's another bit of evidence that's really important. In
that early second century, a guy named Papias is recalling
(33:25):
experiences he had in the first century when he lived
in a place called Hierapolis, which was near a crossroads
in the western part of where we know today is Turkey.
And he would gather stories as people came through where
about where the Gospels came from and where different traditions
came from. And he testifies very, very clearly to Matthew
and Mark, coming from the sources that are named of them,
(33:48):
and Mark having been Peter's interpreter or translator, such that
Mark's gospel is the words of Peter, Matthew coming from
the tax collector. We also have, through a guy named Polycarp,
who was born in the late first century, was martyred
in the middle of the second century. He passed on
a tradition to Irenaeus, and Irenaeus describes Matthew, Mark, Luke,
(34:08):
and John. That earlier fragment I mentioned, the Muratorian fragment
mentions the Gospels as well. We have every evidence that exists,
and these are in the second century, less than a
century after the books were written. These are all second century,
a century or so after the books were written, and
every single one of them connects them to very particular
people in the first century who had access to eyewitnesses
(34:31):
or were themselves eyewitnesses of the risen Lord Jesus. To
be able to say that this was written hundreds of
years later by somebody else, requires that we actually just
throw out all the evidence that actually exists in favor
of some sort of supposition based on evidence we don't
actually have.
S1 (34:50):
All right. I was going to ask you a question,
but I want to take a break instead, because I
don't want you to have to rush through the answer.
So I'm going to put the question out. I'll keep
you all listening on the edge of your seat. And
I'm going to ask Doctor Jones to answer it on
the other side. And that is some would say, and
I referenced this earlier in our conversation, the idea that
these were, quote, ignorant Bedouins. So that presupposes two things.
Number one ignorance. Two, that they were Bedouins. And so
(35:12):
therefore information would have been transmitted strictly through an oral tradition.
So I want to find out if there is any
legitimacy to that. And that will go to the bigger question,
which is the title of the book that Doctor Jones
has written called Why Should I Trust the Bible? By
the way, you're going to want this book. It's going
to be one of those great ready reference books on
your shelf. Somebody should be asking you this question. Somebody
(35:35):
better be asking you this question, and you're going to
want to be able to have an answer. This book
will help you so tremendously in that area in the market.
With Janet parshall.org. Click on the red box. You hear
me say this all the time. It says program details
and audio. It will take you to the information page.
There's a much longer bio for Doctor Jones, including where
he got all of his wonderful degrees. A link to
(35:55):
his web page and the book. Why should I trust
the Bible? All for your perusal. Back after this.
S7 (36:12):
Down through the ages, many people have tried to stop
the power of God's Word. They tried to control it
and even ignore it. Anything so it could not be heard.
But the word has survived. Yes, it's very alive and
(36:34):
it still has the upper hand. Before we came along,
and after we are all gone, God's word will stand.
S1 (36:45):
Perfect song for our conversation. We're talking with Doctor Timothy
Paul Jones, who's authored the book Why Should I Trust
the Bible? Doctor Jones is the professor of apologetics and
director of the center for Christian Apologetics at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary. So let me ask the question again,
because you hear this all the time. You're watching one
of those cable TV specials around Christmas. Easter. They tend
(37:08):
to show up like a bad case of hives at
a regular time. And you'll send in the checkout line
who is the real Jesus? Written by some person who
never believed in the authority of the scriptures, by the way.
And it'll be right there for your perusal at the
checkout line in the grocery store. So one of the
questions we always hear, ignorant Bedouins, which I find so interesting, Timothy,
because let me see, Virgil wasn't ignorant, Cicero wasn't ignorant. Um,
(37:31):
Sophocles wasn't ignorant. But apparently just the writers of the
gospel fall into the ignorant camp. And also they will
contextualize this and say it was only an oral tradition,
so it's just replete with mistakes, because it would have
been scribes copying, copying, copying, copying, copying, mistake after mistake
after mistake. How do we address that issue?
S3 (37:48):
Well, one of the ways that we address it is
to recognize that let's suppose it was and it was.
Some of it was passed on orally from person to
person and person to person. But it is very possible,
even in cultures today, they can pass on a story
in a reliable way, person to person to person, in
a low literacy society. So let's suppose it was passed
(38:10):
on orally, which some parts were. We actually have evidence
that in the New Testament that those things were passed
on in a reliable way. And it's in first Corinthians
chapter 15. Paul says to the Corinthians, who he's not
on great terms with at that particular time. And Paul
says to the Corinthians, when I was with you last time,
which was about 4 or 5 years earlier. Okay, here's
what I said to you. And he gives every fact
(38:33):
that we need to trust in Jesus right there about
the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus dying for our sins, about
the authority of the scriptures and the Old Testament. Now
let's pause for a moment and think. Paul is saying
to them, I told you this when I was with
you before 4 or 5 years earlier. Now we've got
to go. One of two things. Either Paul is preaching
the same words, place to place to place as he
(38:55):
summarizes the truth about Jesus. Or Paul has a massive
file cabinet that he's like, oh man, what did I
tell the Corinthians? What did I tell the Ephesians? I've
got to remember what I said. I don't think that's
what's happening. Paul is able to say, this is what
I told you, because everywhere he went he said the
same thing in terms of the traditions and the stories
of Jesus. And so when the first place, let's suppose
(39:16):
there is an oral tradition element, a part of it
that that can be passed on in in cultures where
there's low literacy that they can pass on oral traditions.
But even beyond that, one of the things that I
do in the book is I actually don't think that
the disciples were nearly as illiterate as people make it
out to be. Now, it's true that they lived in
a low literacy world, but to do that, people have
(39:37):
to assume a couple of different things. One of them
is that those disciples could not have somehow gained literacy
over the decades after the time of Jesus. You've got
a message that you believe in, which is world changing.
Might you actually learn even if you were illiterate? And
people also have to assume that somebody that is on
the Sea of Galilee, fishing and going all around the
(40:00):
coast of the Sea of Galilee is only operating in Aramaic.
And they are not, even though they're engaging with people
that are Gentiles, non-Jews, and having to engage with them. Who? Oh,
they speak Greek, all of those people. So I don't
I don't buy it that the disciples were automatically illiterate.
But here's what I do in the book. I say, okay,
(40:21):
I'll grant you that argument. I'll just grant it to
you for a moment and I'll say, let's proceed. Assuming
that you're right and the disciples were completely illiterate, let's
assume that even if that is the case, one very
common practice in the ancient world that was very widely
accepted was somebody who was illiterate, could give their story
(40:43):
to somebody else, could tell a story in its comprehensiveness
to somebody else who was literate and was able to
write in a literary fashion. That person would draw that
together into a book and then read it back to
that person, and that person would then sign off on it. Yes,
that is accurate and truthful to what I have conveyed
(41:05):
to you. Even if we were to grant, which I'm
not willing to. But even if we were to grant
that the disciples were completely illiterate, it still doesn't mean
that they could not have produced the gospels that we have.
It simply is a is a weak argument that even
if I grant everything I can on that, it still
(41:27):
doesn't hold weight as something that goes against saying that
the that the Gospels could have come from eyewitnesses, it
simply doesn't disprove that even if you grant as much
as you can to that particular argument.
S1 (41:40):
So if again, just in deference to time, let me
ask another one that raises its head on a regular occasion.
And that is all right. Do you believe the Bible? Yes.
Do you believe every word is literal? Yes I do.
Do you believe that every word can be trusted? Yes. Okay.
Then they'll start breaking down writing styles. So what is
the difference between, uh, allegory or what is applied to
(42:01):
Old Testament rules at the time versus application for the
believer's life through all of their life? In other words,
as we look at the different writing styles of the
66 books, do we take every single word literally or can?
Can we contextualize that this one was meant to be
a reference to something else? Then, if you say yes
to that question, Have we in fact opened a Pandora's
(42:22):
box that says, well, wait a minute. So here it's
it's allegory, it's representation, it's symbolic. But there you're saying
you think that a cloud literally stopped in the sky. Well,
what metric do you use to decide here? It's authentic,
historical and accurate. And here it's symbolic.
S3 (42:38):
Well, what we have to do is recognize there are
cues in the text, typically to let us know when
things are symbolic or proverbial and things like that. And
here's what we have to recognize. The Bible may be
more than literature, but it's never less than literature. And
literature is written in different styles and in different genres.
And I go back to that word literally, and I
(42:59):
try to point out to somebody that, look, do you
know what that word literally originally meant when it was
used as sensus littoralis? It means, according to the literary
sense of that particular text. And so do I take
the Bible literally? I take it absolutely, literally. I take
everything according to the literary sense in which it was written,
(43:19):
which means that I may read Proverbs somewhat differently than
I read the Gospels. That doesn't make one any more
or less true, any more than when the things that
we read and that that we that we write and
read today are any more or less true because they're
in different genres. The Bible's truthfulness isn't dependent on a genre,
but rather on it conveying what is intended in the text.
S1 (43:42):
Excellent. What a note to end this conversation on. Timothy,
thank you so very much. It is a superb book.
If you're trying to create a legacy library for your kids,
this would be one of those books that you'd want
in your own personal study, in your own work of apologetics,
of which I hope you are involved. Telling people about Jesus.
This question will be raised why should I trust the Bible?
(44:04):
This book will help you to answer the question, why
should I trust the Bible written by our guest, Doctor
Timothy Jones? It's on my website. Check it out and
I thank you for joining us. We'll see you next
time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.
Hi friends, thank you so much for downloading this podcast
and it is my sincere hope that you'll hear something
that will equip you, edify you, encourage you, enlighten you,
and then gently but consistently push you out into the
marketplace of ideas where you can let your light so
shine before men and go and tell them the good news.
Before you listen to this podcast, let me just tell
you about this month's truth tool. It's called The Jesus Book,
(00:20):
written by pastor Jack Graham. I love it because he
really does recognize the fact that biblical literacy is declining,
and that a lot of people think that the Bible
is too complicated, that it's written for pastors or for scholars.
And yet, in truth, Jesus is there from Genesis to Revelation.
And that book was written for every single one of us.
We just need a better way to know how to
study God's Word. And that's exactly what the Jesus Book
(00:42):
is all about. So when you give a gift of
any amount this month, I'm going to give you a
copy of the Jesus Book by doctor Jack Graham. Just
call 877 Janet 58. That's 877 Janet 58 or give
online to in the market with Janet Parshall. Also consider
becoming a partial partner. Partial partners always get the monthly
truth tool, but in addition, they get a weekly newsletter
(01:04):
that includes some of my writing and an audio piece
only from my partial partners. So whether you want to
give one time or you want to support the program
every single month, just call eight 7758 or online at
In the Market with Janet Parshall. Scroll to the bottom
of the page. Thanks so much for letting me take
a moment of your time. And now please enjoy the broadcast.
(01:28):
Hi friends, this is Janet partial. Thanks so much for
choosing to spend the next hour with us. Today's program
is pre-recorded so our phone lines are not open. But
thanks so much for being with us and enjoy the broadcast.
S2 (01:54):
Oh, the Bible, the Holy Bible. Let your mind find
peace in God's word. Oh, the Bible. The Holy Bible.
(02:18):
Let your mind find peace in God's word.
S1 (02:23):
Welcome to In the Market with Janet Parshall. And if
you were a good detective, you'd pretty much figure that's
a big clue as to what our topic is going
to be about this hour. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I hope
we make you ride home in rush hour traffic a
little more enjoyable. And in that crazy rush hour that's
known as dinnertime around your house. I hope this helps
you set your mind on things above. I particularly want
(02:44):
to invite those of you who do not know Jesus
Christ as their personal Savior and think, oh no, there's
those wacky Christians again, talking about that book. Really? How
could you possibly read that Bible you talk about all
the time? I mean, honestly, it's filled with mistakes, contradictions
written by ignorant Bedouins. Not first eyewitness accounts. I mean,
it's not the least bit plausible. In fact, the question
(03:06):
on the table this hour is this why would any
reasonable person in the 21st century trust that the Bible
is true? Ladies and gentlemen, do I have your attention?
That's what we're going to talk about this hour. And
we're going to spend the hour with Doctor Timothy Paul Jones.
What a great name. Doctor Jones is professor of apologetics
and director of the center for Christian Apologetics at the
(03:28):
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also has a very popular
weekly music and apologetics podcast called Three Chords and the Truth,
The Apologetics Podcast. So we're going to spend the hour
asking these questions why should I trust the Bible? It's
part of a series put out by Christian Focus, one
of my favorite publishing companies. You know, they're actually up
(03:48):
in Scotland, up in the Tain area. Well, if you
were looking at your hand, your left hand Tain is
right there in that space between your index finger and
your thumb in the part that Scotland. So it's great.
A lot of great great Christian works come out of Scotland,
and they're brilliant in the way in which they find
superb authors like Doctor Jones to answer these questions. These
are books designed to make you think, and they fit
(04:09):
so beautifully in the apologetics category. So, Timothy, the warmest
of welcomes. And I got to ask you first about
your podcast. I'm absolutely intrigued. What is the intersection between
music and apologetics?
S3 (04:19):
Well, part of the intersection is the fact that I
just really, really enjoy both of those. But what we
actually do is we look at classic rock and look
at the theology of different classic rock songs. Everything from
Don't Stop Believin to God gave Rock and roll to you.
We look at the theology of that and help it
critique our cultural perspectives on different topics as well. So
(04:41):
it's a lot of fun, but mostly it just brings
together two things I really enjoy, which is music and apologetics.
S1 (04:47):
But how fabulous. Especially when you talk about cultural apologetics.
This is your Athens moment where you know people are
listening to this music. So when these musicians are twanging away.
Are they asking transcendent questions that can be answered? And
if the answer is yes, they can be answered. Where
do I go to find the answers? So kudos to you.
I think that's a brilliant way for cultural intersection. I
(05:07):
love this question because we hear it all the time.
You make the excellent point very much at the beginning
of the book, where some people have never read the Bible,
and yet they believe it absolutely to be true. And
there are others who around the world, you say throughout
history who have in fact wrestled with what the Bible
has to say, and they've landed on the firm conclusion
that the Bible, in fact, can be trusted. Here we are, postmodern,
(05:27):
21st century, and we still have people who are saying
it's an arcane book. It's thousands of years old, and
you could give them a dump truck full of archaeological evidence,
literary evidence. We could talk about the codex and material
that's in museums all across the European continent. And they'd
still go, still don't believe it. So and I'm asking
a philosophical question as we get started. Is it a
(05:50):
question that can never really be answered? Because the answer
can only reside in each individual heart, and it may
not necessarily be a uniform response.
S3 (05:58):
I think that's true, and I think that one of
the things we have to recognize is that there are
two factors in people coming to faith in Jesus Christ,
and that is there's the evidence that we're talking about,
but there's also the Spirit of God working in their
heart and transforming their lives. And I don't think we
can ever pretend that I can somehow come up with
just that one perfect piece of evidence that will make
(06:20):
every single person believe. We have to recognize that the
Holy Spirit of God and that person that has something
to do with it as well. But even though the
Spirit of God and the individual do have something to
do with it, we have a responsibility as believers in
Jesus Christ to take care of that other side and
to present real evidence for why the Bible is believable
(06:41):
as the Word of God. And I think that's what
we need to to have a passion for doing. And
that's what apologetics is. It's not pretending I can make
somebody believe. Rather, it's saying I can present evidence that
can become a means for the Holy Spirit to work
and to draw somebody to believe.
S1 (06:57):
Oh, I'm so glad you said that. Particularly the last part,
because it seems to me, Timothy, that we could try
as best we could to posit all of the theories
out there that we would say naturally would lead one
to the conclusion that, yes, of course, I can trust
the Bible. But that belies the supernatural nature of this book,
does it not?
S3 (07:12):
That's exactly correct. I mean, we've got to recognize that
if we really believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the scriptures,
and that same spirit is the one who brings somebody
to faith in Jesus Christ, that it's not all up
to us, but God by his grace, by his mercy,
chooses to include us in this process of bringing somebody
to faith, by us presenting evidence and truth in human
(07:35):
words that fall far short of of the divine nature
of God's words. But they are. But it's it's a
means that God uses to work through us and in us,
and it's a privilege we have of participating in that.
S1 (07:47):
And there's also a kind of freedom in what you
just said, Timothy, because I think for a lot of
people who are saying, well, I've got this friend, I
really care for this friend, but he just thinks I'm
a knucklehead for even believing what the Bible says. And
they they believe that if they could just present this
airtight three point presentation that their friend would say, ah,
and they'd have their own Damascus Road experience and they'd
have the epiphany. And there you go. The book can
(08:07):
be trusted. I think it's important for us to remember,
stand back, you know, let the Holy Spirit do the
work that has to be done here. We can, we should,
and we must examine and vet and look at the
abundance of evidence the Lord has given us. But ultimately understand,
you go so far and that's all you're going to
be allowed to go in some of this, which I
think is great. So why in the world would you
(08:27):
read a book, why I'm Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell.
S3 (08:30):
Well, I read that because I at that moment in college,
I was a college student at that time, 17 years old,
and I was frustrated because of the answers I was given.
And I worked in a library. I was shelving that
book and I said, I'm going to read this and
find out why this person doesn't believe.
S1 (08:46):
All right, what a great place to take a break.
Doctor Timothy Jones is with us for the entire hour,
and he gives us something we can't give back to him,
which is the gift of this time. And I thank
him so much for that. It's a great question. If
you're talking to your friends and family about Jesus and oh,
I hope you are. Although the statistical data says you're not,
you're going to get asked the question, why should I
trust the Bible? Want to learn how to answer? That's
(09:09):
what this hour is about. Back after this. Ever feel
intimidated by the Bible? Unsure where to begin or how
(09:30):
it all fits together? Well, you're not alone. That's why
I've chosen The Jesus Book by Doctor Jack Graham as
this month's truth tool. Learn to unlock the timeless wisdom
of God's Word. As for your copy of the Jesus Book,
when you give a gift of any amount in the market,
call eight 7758. That's eight 7758 or go online to
in the market with Janet Parshall Dot. Org.
S4 (10:00):
The word is a lamp unto my feet and a
light unto my path.
S1 (10:12):
I'd like to thank all my Sunday School teachers ever everywhere,
who taught me songs like that, because that was one
way to hide scripture in my heart. I bet you
started singing along with that, didn't you? Well, I'm glad
we're talking about Bible verses, because our entire topic this
hour is predicated on the question, why should I trust
the Bible? Doctor Timothy Paul Jones is not only the
author of the book. He's our teacher this hour. He's
(10:33):
a professor of apologetics and director of the center for
Christian Apologetics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I want
to thank you, Timothy, for starting the book out with
your own personal journey, because, um, you've got all the
initials after your name. But like all of us, you
had to have your own journey of faith. And I
love the fact that you talked about being drawn eventually,
because obviously you were hungry for knowledge and wisdom and
(10:56):
you were a voracious reader. You talked about C.S. Lewis.
Mere Christianity played tremendously in my husband coming to faith
in Jesus Christ. For you, it wasn't mere Christianity. It
was surprised by joy. Talk to me about that.
S3 (11:09):
Well, that particular book is C.S. Lewis's journey from atheism
to Christianity. And the point at which God brought that
book into my life was when I felt like I
was on the opposite journey from Christianity to atheism, because
I'd been given all these different reasons for believing when
I was growing up and the churches I was growing
(11:30):
up in. And what started to happen when I got
to college was that the reasons I had been given
to believe ended up not checking out with the facts.
And I started to feel this fear. And I read
some books by Bertrand Russell and other atheists and about
why not to believe. And I started reading and reading
all of these books about atheism. And in the midst
(11:51):
of all of that, I ran across this book by C.S.
Lewis called surprised by Joy. And I realized in that
that many of the questions that I had, many of
the struggles I was having, were ones that other people
had had before, and that those things that C.S. Lewis
was struggling with had led him not away from faith
in Jesus Christ, but to faith in Jesus Christ. And
(12:14):
that book became this catalytic book in my life, in
which God began to raise questions in my heart about
these atheist books I was reading. And I started reading
more and more of C.S. Lewis, and then some other
scholars that I began to run across, and, and God
used that to draw me back to faith in himself
(12:34):
and a different and much stronger and deeper faith than
the faith I'd had before.
S1 (12:40):
Well, amazing. You quote so many people in this, this
beginning of the book, this introduction in your own spiritual journey.
And I'm going to ask you a question, but let
me ask you a different question first, which is you
could have dived right into the facts. You could have
skipped over your personal story. Why did you put it in?
S3 (12:57):
I put my personal story in because I wanted the
person who is a skeptic or an unbeliever to know
that other people have had the same doubts that they have,
that other people have felt the same way they felt,
and yet have come to a very different place in
terms of faith. And that's what I wanted the unbeliever
to see, because I found over and over, when I
share that story with unbelievers, it actually piques their interest.
(13:19):
It really does grab their interest of, oh, you've felt
this before. Other people have felt this too and come
out at a different place. So I think it is
so important. And also, I think when we talk to
an unbeliever, one of the first things we can do
is to say to them, when did you first start
feeling this way? Because almost always there's a story they
have as well. And if we tell our story, it
(13:39):
lets them share their story, and it helps open the
doors to a real dialogue between us.
S1 (13:45):
Yeah, I think that's brilliant, by the way. And I
think that's a powerful tool in apologetics. You quote Christopher Hitchens,
and he said at one point, the surrender of the mind.
It's the surrender of reason in reference to faith. There
are a lot of people, and we're talking to folks
from Guam to the Cayman Islands, and I'm thrilled that
there are people listening who don't yet believe that the
Bible can be trusted, who don't yet know who the
(14:07):
person of Jesus Christ is, and have subscribed to the
same idea that Hitchens did, which is somehow that faith
and reason are mutually exclusive, and that if you become
a person of proclaimed faith, that you therefore have given
death to the intellect. I don't know where this comes from.
Let me quote Louis I, my poor listening friends, are
now collectively groaning because I quote this all the time.
Christians are the best argument for and against Christianity, and
(14:29):
sometimes we give credence to the idea that our heart's
been transformed, but our brain has been put in a
shoebox and put under the bed. So faith and reason
are not particularly as you get deeper into this book,
we're talking about mutually exclusive. In fact, they highly intersect.
But how do we slay the mythology of that dragon
that says, you can't be both a person of reason.
Use your intellect and be a person of faith. It
(14:51):
belies logic that the two could coexist.
S3 (14:54):
Well, we have to do first is to make sure
that we're operating with the same definition of faith, because
it really comes down to how do we define faith,
and what do we mean by faith? And what I
find with my unbelieving friends, and particularly those who are
agnostics or atheists, is they actually believe in many cases
that faith is a rejection of evidence, and faith is
(15:15):
a rejection of reason. But that has never been what
faith is or what faith is, especially in the history
of Christianity in any way. Faith is a disposition of
trust that includes evidence. It's not a rejection of evidence.
It's a disposition of trust that includes evidence. Faith and
reason and evidence are not contradictory. They're mutually supportive. So
(15:37):
that's the first thing I want people to understand. But
here's where I want to press a little harder into it.
And that is to recognize all of us operate by
some type of faith. That is to say that we
believe more than we can actually prove based on empirical
or visible evidence, as we all do. Everybody has some
sort of a disposition of trust in which they're trusting
(15:58):
in something they can't absolutely prove. And we need to
be honest about the fact that we can't prove every
single little detail that we believe about Christianity, but nor
can somebody on the other side believe that. Can they
prove every single detail that they believe about their belief system?
What we're all doing in life, and this is there's
nothing wrong with that, is we are developing a belief
(16:20):
system on the basis of the best evidence. And that's
what we want to be able to do. And we
want to recognize that we're both doing that. This is
not something where Christians have faith and everybody else has evidence.
This is something where we're all operating on a combination
of faith that includes evidence and different evidences. We're all
operating on that, and that helps the unbeliever to see
(16:43):
that they're not in some sort of unique category separate
from a Christian. They too are operating by faith at
some level.
S1 (16:50):
And that's good. That's good. That is a takeaway, friends,
I hope you remember that doctor Timothy Paul Jones is
our guest. He is the author of the book we're
discussing entitled Why Should I Trust the Bible? Now, maybe
you've asked this question yourself, or you have a friend
who's been asking this question. I hope this hour is
going to help you better contend for the faith by
knowing how to answer this question back after this.
S4 (17:13):
You're the light unto my path.
S5 (17:35):
You can change, but you want to change. But you
can't change the Word of God. You can't change what
you want to change, but you can't change the Word
of God.
S1 (17:56):
We're visiting with Doctor Timothy Paul Jones, who's written the
book Why Should I Trust the Bible? He's professor of
apologetics and director of the center for Christian Apologetics at
the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. So let me and little
books like this. And one of the reasons why I
love Christian Focus is they're powerful, pithy, and they're not long.
They're not. And while Doctor Jones could certainly write strictly
(18:19):
for an academic audience, he writes Where You and I live,
which is on terra firma, and he just takes these
exalted ideas and puts them down in understandable ways so
that we, in fact, can better give our apologetic for
the Christian faith. Uh, Christian focus does this as a
publishing company so. Well. So I want to dive into
some of the points that you make, and I want
to start with the Gospels, because that's where a lot
(18:39):
of skeptics and cynics and seekers start, which is you've
got these four books bearing four different names, and surely
they'll say they're written, filled with contradictions, and surely they
weren't authored within any sort of reliable frame. Period. It's
got to be 5 to 600 post a series of events,
which then raises a question that you address in this chapter,
which is were these four gospels intended to be accounts
(19:03):
of real history? And if the answer to that question
is yes, where where is my reliance on that answer?
How can I evidentiary give some belief that, in fact,
these are substantiated historical events? Do I have to go
outside the Bible to get that affirmed?
S3 (19:19):
I think one of the most important things for us
to recognize in this is this question of, were these
even intended to be historical documents? And there's several different
ways we can approach this and see that the New
Testament books, the Gospels in particular, were intended to be historical.
Now I'm going to use I'm going to give a
skeptical kind of perspective on this at first, because I
(19:40):
think this is worth listening to and hearing. And the
fact is that the style in which these books are written,
this sort of more of an earthy, down to earth style,
is the way the Gospels were written, is actually more
characteristic of some texts that were actually fictional texts that
we find in the ancient world. And so some people
have argued, for example, that these were intended to be
(20:01):
fictional texts. But there's a lot of different reasons not
to think that that's the case. And I'll just go
through just a handful of those because it's so important
for us to get these. One of them is the
way in which, for example, Luke begins his gospel, which
he's actually drawing from some Roman historians in the verbiage
he uses when he talks about eyewitness testimony. When he
(20:22):
talks about that, I've gathered this. Other people have also
formed a different gospels or different accounts of the life
of Jesus. He's talking about that. That's that's very much
like certain Greco-Roman historians, for example. Also simply the idea
that we have from time to time, particularly in John's
Gospel and to some degree in Luke's gospel that says
(20:42):
there's eyewitness testimony, I saw this or that. Somebody actually
saw these particular things in this. Another one, just another one,
is the fact that another literary genre actually includes the
same facts. So we have the literary genre of epistle
that we have also in the New Testament, and that
also includes the same facts. But let me tell you
(21:02):
one of my favorite ones, and it's this one. And
Peter Williams does a great job of this, talking about
it in a book called Can We Trust the Gospels?
And I include this information in there. It's the fact
that they get the geography correct. Now, we may think
nothing of it when we hear about something in the Gospels.
We read all the time and don't think anything about
(21:23):
up and down. They went up to Jerusalem or they
went down to a certain place. They went to Jericho.
They went to these places up and down. But here's
something really important to understand that there's no way with
the with the information they had back then for anybody
who hadn't been in those regions and in those locations
(21:43):
to know when the road goes up and when it
goes down. And yet the Gospels get those right every
single time. Now, here's what's fascinating about that. It demonstrates
that you have people who are writing these texts who
are either they themselves or close associates of theirs, were
actually in these places and were intimately acquainted with these places. Now,
(22:07):
I could go on to dozens of other reasons, but
these texts actually just ring of something historical in what
they are claiming. They actually have this and include also
even names of people that were known to them who
had witnessed these events. They were telling these things in
a context where the apostles who had witnessed these events
(22:29):
were traveling around during this time and could have said, no,
that's not the way it happened. If somebody was making
something up. Everything about these texts suggests that they were
intended to be taken as descriptions of events that actually happened.
S1 (22:46):
Wow. How does the question of plausibility reveal itself in
what you call the Kentucky meat shower?
S3 (22:52):
Well, let me tell you about the Kentucky meat shower
that happened a couple of hours east of my house,
where I live in Louisville, Kentucky. And it happened in
1876 when meat fell out of the sky for about
30 minutes in a person's yard. The meat is still preserved,
by the way, in a university science lab. It's still
there today in this. And this is a really vivid.
(23:13):
This sounds like something I'm making up. And what I
use it as an example of is that the same
things that lead people to believe that that event happened.
And by the way, the best, most plausible explanation for
it is that there are certain vultures that vomit when
they are frightened, and several vultures vomited at the same time.
That's the most plausible explanation. But this is a crazy event.
(23:35):
And yet, the reasons that we believe that are the
same ones we can believe the New Testament gospels.
S1 (23:41):
There's so much more Timothy to that story, and I
really want you to continue. I don't want to have
to rush you for the break. Thank you for being
sensitive to the music. So let me pick it up
with the Kentucky meat shower and plausibility when we come back.
Doctor Jones again is the author of Why Should I
Trust the Bible? He serves as associate vice president and
professor of Christian apologetics at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
(24:02):
We're going to take a break. We'll be right back
after this.
S6 (24:05):
That's why I say you can change. Yeah. Oh.
S1 (24:26):
Friends, this is Janet Parshall, and I want to take
a moment to remind you that today's program is prerecorded
so our phone lines aren't open. But I sure do
appreciate your spending the hour with us. And thanks so
much and enjoy the rest of the program. What's the
goal of in the market? I'll tell you in the
market equips men and women to think critically and act biblically.
(24:48):
Why do we do this? So that we can be
confident when speaking the truth in a confused culture? Are
you willing to stand with me? Become a partial partner
today and enjoy exclusive benefits only my partners receive while
making an impact for the Kingdom? Call 877 Janet 58
or go online to in the market with Janet Parshall.
S7 (25:13):
The word is alive and it cuts like a sword
through the darkness, with a message of life to the
hopeless and afraid. Breathing life into all who believe. The
word is alive.
S1 (25:33):
Why should I trust the Bible? Well, that's an interesting question.
On the heels of that song. That's the name of
the book that Doctor Timothy Paul Jones has authored. He
is professor of apologetics and director of the center for
Christian Centre of Surrey, centre for Christian Apologetics. Brain going
faster than mouth at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Love
(25:53):
this book. It is direct to the point we'll answer
so many questions. And boy, I hope you're being asked
this question by somebody, because then it tells me that
you really take the Great Commission very seriously, and you've
gotten out into the world and you are having conversations
with people about Jesus, which, by the way, is not
an opt in, opt out clause for the follower of Christ.
(26:13):
That's part of our experience with him. When last we met,
we were talking about the Kentucky meat shower, and it
really is this wonderful example that Doctor Jones writes about
that addresses the question of the historical plausibility of the gospel.
So this is a real, bonafide event. Vomiting vultures may
be the answer for why this happened. The meat is
saved there, not too far from where you are, Timothy,
(26:35):
but pick up using this example on how this is
a transference to the question of plausibility for the Gospels.
S3 (26:40):
Well, you see, there's a guy named Bart Ehrman, and
there's others that follow this as well that are skeptics, agnostics, atheists.
And they basically say the only events you ought to
believe happened are events that are probable. And the way
we establish whether an event in history is probable is
the frequency with which we see it. And so we
we shouldn't believe in the resurrection as historical, because after all,
(27:02):
how often do you see a resurrection happen? And so
they use this argument and it sounds like a really
valid argument at first. Oh my goodness, we never see
this happen. Why should we believe it happened in history?
And so I draw this event out the the Kentucky
meat shower, which as I described it, meat for about
20 or 30 minutes fell out of the sky a
couple of hours in Bath County, Kentucky, a couple of
(27:22):
hours east of where I live. And at this particular
time in 1876, there were no airplanes or anything like that.
Nobody knows for sure why this event happened. The vomiting
vultures are the best Explanation. But my point in that
is that that is an event that we have no
analogy for in our common human experience. There's nothing like
(27:45):
that that any of us have experienced. And yet people
believe that that event happened in history. Why? Because there
were eyewitnesses. Because there were people who had nothing to
gain by sharing the story that they shared, because there
were evidences and there were reports of it that came
soon after the events themselves occurred. All of these different
(28:05):
things coalesced together to make an event that sounds absurd, crazy,
an event that nobody denies. And my point in that is,
is that it shows that those that are rejecting the
resurrection of Jesus Christ are, in essence, placing it in
a special category because it's supernatural. They may pretend to say, look,
(28:28):
the reason we don't believe it is because this is
improbable and we've never seen anything like this. And how
could something happen no matter what the evidence is? But really,
there's a lot of improbable things that we believe happened.
But this event is being placed in a special category
because it requires the supernatural to have taken place.
S1 (28:47):
That's an excellent point. So on the heels of that,
you asked this question in the book. You say, can
a miraculous claim ever be plausible? Can it?
S3 (28:54):
It can be if there's evidence for that event having happened.
And it's where we're actually saying, you know what, I'm
going to be more open minded than the atheist. And
that's the thing that I find sometimes in discussions, I'm like, look,
you're supposed to be the open minded person. You're the
atheist who doesn't believe you're supposed to be open minded,
and yet you're presenting these things as if only natural
(29:16):
explanations are valid. But I'm actually being more open minded.
I'm saying I'm going to open the door to both
natural and supernatural explanations, and I'll let the evidence lead
where it may and believe where the evidence actually points,
regardless of what it does for my worldview, whether supernatural
or natural.
S1 (29:36):
Only in deference to time, because there is so much
in this book. But I want to ask some of
the questions that I know. Some of my skeptic friends
who are listening might be asking, or some of my
seeking friends would want answered. And that is this idea of, okay,
we talk about the canonical gospels. We talk about what
books were included as opposed to what books were excluded.
So the person who's never read the Bible but is
(29:59):
fully convinced situational ethics has already reached his desired conclusion.
He doesn't care where the evidence leads. He's already predetermined
that the Gospels are replete with contradictions, that they contradict
each other, so therefore they can't be believed. But second
of all, who got to pick and choose what books
went in and what books didn't get out? Because certainly
didn't Constantine get a bunch of people together? And didn't
they decide, we'll take that one, but we won't take
(30:21):
that one. So unpack that for us.
S3 (30:23):
That is the common myth that this happened at Council
of Nicaea. I talk about that myth and where it
even came from in the Middle Ages, all the way
in the book that this is it's this medieval myth
that has really caught hold. But the fact is, let's
look at the real evidence and we could call for
several things. I'll just point to a couple of them.
There's a there's a fragment from the late second century
(30:43):
called the Muratorian fragment. And it actually is, is kind
of this discussion of certain books, why they go in
the New Testament and why they don't, why they, in
their words, the books publicly read, that is, the books
that are authoritative for Christians. There are some people wanting
this book called Shepherd of Hermas to be included in
the books that are authoritative for Christians, and we get
a glimpse in there of the of how this happened.
(31:05):
And it's not our only glimpse that we have, but
it's one very clear one. And they said, look, this
book can't go in our authoritative books because it's after
the time of the Old Testament prophets, and it's after
the time of the apostles. It's after their time. Therefore
it cannot be included. Now here's what we see there.
And I could go to others, but in the interest
of time, just focus on that one. Here's what we
(31:26):
find over and over is that the books that are
included in the New Testament are included there because of
the fact that they could be traced back to either
people who saw the risen Lord Jesus, or who were
close associates of those who saw the risen Lord Jesus.
That's where everybody came from. When they had discussions about
the books and arguments about the books. And they did.
(31:47):
At times the argument wasn't, do we like this book?
Does the Emperor like this book or anything like that?
That wasn't what they were talking about. It was, are
we sure this book can be traced back to an
eyewitness of the risen Lord Jesus, or a close associate
of an eyewitness? And if it can't be, we aren't
going to include it. If it can be, we will.
That was the standard all the way back to the
(32:09):
very beginning. It was the standard that they followed, and
we see it clearly, and we see a book like
Hebrews that we don't know who wrote it for certain,
but it says toward the end of it, it connects
it to somebody who knew Timothy. And so they knew
that Timothy was connected to Paul. So they include it
in there because of that, for example. And we have
these books. Every single book in our New Testament can
(32:29):
be connected to either an eyewitness of the risen Lord
Jesus or a close associate of. There was no meeting,
no gathering, no council, no emperor. It was. Can we
be sure we can trace it back to such people
as those?
S1 (32:42):
Pretty straightforward criteria. So let me go back then, because
I said something earlier in our conversation, which is one
of the allegations levied against the reliability of the scriptures,
is that, um, these were books that were the Gospels
in particular, were written 4 to 500 years after the fact.
If the criteria was they had to be an eyewitness
or a close connection to a person who was an eyewitness,
(33:02):
how does that work 5 to 600 years hence?
S3 (33:04):
Well, it simply doesn't. And it also doesn't work for
another reason. There are actual manuscripts and fragments of the
Gospels from the second century, so there were some that
early then. Uh, then we can't have them written after
they were actually we have fragments of them that remain.
But here's another bit of evidence that's really important. In
that early second century, a guy named Papias is recalling
(33:25):
experiences he had in the first century when he lived
in a place called Hierapolis, which was near a crossroads
in the western part of where we know today is Turkey.
And he would gather stories as people came through where
about where the Gospels came from and where different traditions
came from. And he testifies very, very clearly to Matthew
and Mark, coming from the sources that are named of them,
(33:48):
and Mark having been Peter's interpreter or translator, such that
Mark's gospel is the words of Peter, Matthew coming from
the tax collector. We also have, through a guy named Polycarp,
who was born in the late first century, was martyred
in the middle of the second century. He passed on
a tradition to Irenaeus, and Irenaeus describes Matthew, Mark, Luke,
(34:08):
and John. That earlier fragment I mentioned, the Muratorian fragment
mentions the Gospels as well. We have every evidence that exists,
and these are in the second century, less than a
century after the books were written. These are all second century,
a century or so after the books were written, and
every single one of them connects them to very particular
people in the first century who had access to eyewitnesses
(34:31):
or were themselves eyewitnesses of the risen Lord Jesus. To
be able to say that this was written hundreds of
years later by somebody else, requires that we actually just
throw out all the evidence that actually exists in favor
of some sort of supposition based on evidence we don't
actually have.
S1 (34:50):
All right. I was going to ask you a question,
but I want to take a break instead, because I
don't want you to have to rush through the answer.
So I'm going to put the question out. I'll keep
you all listening on the edge of your seat. And
I'm going to ask Doctor Jones to answer it on
the other side. And that is some would say, and
I referenced this earlier in our conversation, the idea that
these were, quote, ignorant Bedouins. So that presupposes two things.
Number one ignorance. Two, that they were Bedouins. And so
(35:12):
therefore information would have been transmitted strictly through an oral tradition.
So I want to find out if there is any
legitimacy to that. And that will go to the bigger question,
which is the title of the book that Doctor Jones
has written called Why Should I Trust the Bible? By
the way, you're going to want this book. It's going
to be one of those great ready reference books on
your shelf. Somebody should be asking you this question. Somebody
(35:35):
better be asking you this question, and you're going to
want to be able to have an answer. This book
will help you so tremendously in that area in the market.
With Janet parshall.org. Click on the red box. You hear
me say this all the time. It says program details
and audio. It will take you to the information page.
There's a much longer bio for Doctor Jones, including where
he got all of his wonderful degrees. A link to
(35:55):
his web page and the book. Why should I trust
the Bible? All for your perusal. Back after this.
S7 (36:12):
Down through the ages, many people have tried to stop
the power of God's Word. They tried to control it
and even ignore it. Anything so it could not be heard.
But the word has survived. Yes, it's very alive and
(36:34):
it still has the upper hand. Before we came along,
and after we are all gone, God's word will stand.
S1 (36:45):
Perfect song for our conversation. We're talking with Doctor Timothy
Paul Jones, who's authored the book Why Should I Trust
the Bible? Doctor Jones is the professor of apologetics and
director of the center for Christian Apologetics at the Southern
Baptist Theological Seminary. So let me ask the question again,
because you hear this all the time. You're watching one
of those cable TV specials around Christmas. Easter. They tend
(37:08):
to show up like a bad case of hives at
a regular time. And you'll send in the checkout line
who is the real Jesus? Written by some person who
never believed in the authority of the scriptures, by the way.
And it'll be right there for your perusal at the
checkout line in the grocery store. So one of the
questions we always hear, ignorant Bedouins, which I find so interesting, Timothy,
because let me see, Virgil wasn't ignorant, Cicero wasn't ignorant. Um,
(37:31):
Sophocles wasn't ignorant. But apparently just the writers of the
gospel fall into the ignorant camp. And also they will
contextualize this and say it was only an oral tradition,
so it's just replete with mistakes, because it would have
been scribes copying, copying, copying, copying, copying, mistake after mistake
after mistake. How do we address that issue?
S3 (37:48):
Well, one of the ways that we address it is
to recognize that let's suppose it was and it was.
Some of it was passed on orally from person to
person and person to person. But it is very possible,
even in cultures today, they can pass on a story
in a reliable way, person to person to person, in
a low literacy society. So let's suppose it was passed
(38:10):
on orally, which some parts were. We actually have evidence
that in the New Testament that those things were passed
on in a reliable way. And it's in first Corinthians
chapter 15. Paul says to the Corinthians, who he's not
on great terms with at that particular time. And Paul
says to the Corinthians, when I was with you last time,
which was about 4 or 5 years earlier. Okay, here's
what I said to you. And he gives every fact
(38:33):
that we need to trust in Jesus right there about
the resurrection of Jesus, Jesus dying for our sins, about
the authority of the scriptures and the Old Testament. Now
let's pause for a moment and think. Paul is saying
to them, I told you this when I was with
you before 4 or 5 years earlier. Now we've got
to go. One of two things. Either Paul is preaching
the same words, place to place to place as he
(38:55):
summarizes the truth about Jesus. Or Paul has a massive
file cabinet that he's like, oh man, what did I
tell the Corinthians? What did I tell the Ephesians? I've
got to remember what I said. I don't think that's
what's happening. Paul is able to say, this is what
I told you, because everywhere he went he said the
same thing in terms of the traditions and the stories
of Jesus. And so when the first place, let's suppose
(39:16):
there is an oral tradition element, a part of it
that that can be passed on in in cultures where
there's low literacy that they can pass on oral traditions.
But even beyond that, one of the things that I
do in the book is I actually don't think that
the disciples were nearly as illiterate as people make it
out to be. Now, it's true that they lived in
a low literacy world, but to do that, people have
(39:37):
to assume a couple of different things. One of them
is that those disciples could not have somehow gained literacy
over the decades after the time of Jesus. You've got
a message that you believe in, which is world changing.
Might you actually learn even if you were illiterate? And
people also have to assume that somebody that is on
the Sea of Galilee, fishing and going all around the
(40:00):
coast of the Sea of Galilee is only operating in Aramaic.
And they are not, even though they're engaging with people
that are Gentiles, non-Jews, and having to engage with them. Who? Oh,
they speak Greek, all of those people. So I don't
I don't buy it that the disciples were automatically illiterate.
But here's what I do in the book. I say, okay,
(40:21):
I'll grant you that argument. I'll just grant it to
you for a moment and I'll say, let's proceed. Assuming
that you're right and the disciples were completely illiterate, let's
assume that even if that is the case, one very
common practice in the ancient world that was very widely
accepted was somebody who was illiterate, could give their story
(40:43):
to somebody else, could tell a story in its comprehensiveness
to somebody else who was literate and was able to
write in a literary fashion. That person would draw that
together into a book and then read it back to
that person, and that person would then sign off on it. Yes,
that is accurate and truthful to what I have conveyed
(41:05):
to you. Even if we were to grant, which I'm
not willing to. But even if we were to grant
that the disciples were completely illiterate, it still doesn't mean
that they could not have produced the gospels that we have.
It simply is a is a weak argument that even
if I grant everything I can on that, it still
(41:27):
doesn't hold weight as something that goes against saying that
the that the Gospels could have come from eyewitnesses, it
simply doesn't disprove that even if you grant as much
as you can to that particular argument.
S1 (41:40):
So if again, just in deference to time, let me
ask another one that raises its head on a regular occasion.
And that is all right. Do you believe the Bible? Yes.
Do you believe every word is literal? Yes I do.
Do you believe that every word can be trusted? Yes. Okay.
Then they'll start breaking down writing styles. So what is
the difference between, uh, allegory or what is applied to
(42:01):
Old Testament rules at the time versus application for the
believer's life through all of their life? In other words,
as we look at the different writing styles of the
66 books, do we take every single word literally or can?
Can we contextualize that this one was meant to be
a reference to something else? Then, if you say yes
to that question, Have we in fact opened a Pandora's
(42:22):
box that says, well, wait a minute. So here it's
it's allegory, it's representation, it's symbolic. But there you're saying
you think that a cloud literally stopped in the sky. Well,
what metric do you use to decide here? It's authentic,
historical and accurate. And here it's symbolic.
S3 (42:38):
Well, what we have to do is recognize there are
cues in the text, typically to let us know when
things are symbolic or proverbial and things like that. And
here's what we have to recognize. The Bible may be
more than literature, but it's never less than literature. And
literature is written in different styles and in different genres.
And I go back to that word literally, and I
(42:59):
try to point out to somebody that, look, do you
know what that word literally originally meant when it was
used as sensus littoralis? It means, according to the literary
sense of that particular text. And so do I take
the Bible literally? I take it absolutely, literally. I take
everything according to the literary sense in which it was written,
(43:19):
which means that I may read Proverbs somewhat differently than
I read the Gospels. That doesn't make one any more
or less true, any more than when the things that
we read and that that we that we write and
read today are any more or less true because they're
in different genres. The Bible's truthfulness isn't dependent on a genre,
but rather on it conveying what is intended in the text.
S1 (43:42):
Excellent. What a note to end this conversation on. Timothy,
thank you so very much. It is a superb book.
If you're trying to create a legacy library for your kids,
this would be one of those books that you'd want
in your own personal study, in your own work of apologetics,
of which I hope you are involved. Telling people about Jesus.
This question will be raised why should I trust the Bible?
(44:04):
This book will help you to answer the question, why
should I trust the Bible written by our guest, Doctor
Timothy Jones? It's on my website. Check it out and
I thank you for joining us. We'll see you next
time on In the Market with Janet Parshall.
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