You can’t trust the New Testament. You can look at it as history but the rest can’t be trusted. It contains miracles and there is no evidence that what the writers claimed actually happened.

I seem to hear this a lot from students. They also claim that the writers created stories to make Jesus sound better. However, this is simply not true. In Frank Turek’s new book, “Stealing From God”, he gives seven lines of evidence that confirm the trustworthiness of the New Testament.

  1. Early Testimony
  2. Eyewitness Testimony
  3. Elaborate Testimony
  4. Embarrassing Testimony
  5. Excruciating Testimony
  6. Expected Testimony
  7. Extrabiblical Testimony

Now each one of these by itself may not seem convincing, but when you add them all together, it is very reasonable that the writers were not making up stories. This becomes very clear when you look at the first two together. Most of the New Testament documents were written prior to AD 70. Frank Turek shows that even liberal scholars admit that the creed Paul records in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 predates AD 40. So why is this important? When the Gospels began to circulate with stories of miracles, the eyewitness were still alive! Anyone could have come forward and proclaimed that the miracles didn’t happen and that the writers were lying. Paul states in 1 Cor. 15:6 that Jesus appeared to over 500 people after his resurrection and that many of them were still alive. Instead of discrediting the written accounts, the people began to believe.

Anyone can create a lie hundreds of years later and it becomes very had to disprove, but seems crazy to tell a lie while the eyewitnesses are still alive. This provides very good reason to believe that the miracles recorded in the New Testament documents were not created stories, but were in fact true. You can trust the New Testament.