40 Days In The WordExemplo

God’s Word Is Right and True

You can trust the Bible because it’s doctrinally correct. You can trust the Bible because it’s theologically correct. You can trust the Bible because it’s accurate regarding morals and ethics.

But you can also trust the Bible because it’s historically accurate.

Why does that matter?

The Bible tells us in Hebrews 6:18, “It is impossible for God to lie” (NIV). The only reason the universe works is because God is true all the time.

If the Bible has one lie in it, it’s not a godly book. It’s not from God, because God can’t lie. Psalm 33:4 says, “The Word of the Lord is right and true” (NLT). That means the Bible is right and true about salvation and history.

How do we know the Bible is historically accurate? The same way you judge any other history:

• The Bible comes from first-person accounts. An historian would look to see if the historical information is written down by someone who saw it, whether it’s secondhand or a fable, written hundreds of years later. The Bible is primarily eyewitness accounts. Moses was there when the Red Sea split. Joshua was there when the walls of Jericho fell. The disciples of Jesus sat in the upper room and saw the resurrected Jesus appear.

• Biblical history was recorded with extreme care. When the Old Testament copyists — the scribes — would copy scrolls from one to another, they’d do so like a photocopy machine! They had a long list of rules they used to make sure it was copied exactly.

• Archeology proves the Bible is true. Archeologists have been able to dig up the places mentioned in the Bible. For example, they’ve found the Pool of Siloam where the blind man was healed and portions of Herod’s temple. The Hittite Empire is a great example of how archeology has shown us that the Bible is historically accurate. For generations, historians had no record of the Hittites’ existence anywhere else. Yet in the early 1900s, an archeologist discovered 10,000 clay tablets in the Hittite capital. Now everyone knows that the Hittites once existed.


This devotional © 2014 by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. Used by permission.