As custodians of the OT scriptures and with the help of other Israelites or Jews (Nehemiah 8:7-8), the priests were educators of the people in the revealed ways and will of God, (Malachi 2:7), until the coming of the Son of God, Who placed His authoritative (Matthew 17:5; Hebrews 1:1-2) stamp confirming the reliability and trustworthiness of the preserved OT scriptures as Divine revelation.

Having made a prima facie case that the New Testament,- especially the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles,- are a reliable record of historical facts (including facts relating to supernatural phenomena, like miracles), we then located in those reliable scriptures evidence of the claims and miraculous works of Jesus Christ that He was human AND DIVINE. Jesus was “worshiped” (Matthew 28:17), as only Deity or God should be.

In the three recorded instances of the Jews inferring that Jesus was claiming to be God, Jesus could have very easily dispelled their inference by denying He was claiming to be God. If the Jews were wrong to thus infer, it was His custom to correct them unequivocally (eg. Matthew 22:29). Here were three opportunities to declare clearly that He was NOT claiming to be God. However, Jesus did not so declare.

After it has been ascertained that the New Testament is a reliable (i.e. trustworthy) record of eyewitness testimony and reactions to that testimony, we need to determine what it,- especially the four gospels and Acts of the Apostles,- says about the person of Jesus Christ, the focus of its contents. Most importantly, we must determine whether the New Testament records that Jesus was Divine, being Deity or God. Only if He was God would we be able to accept as true what He said about the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments,- that they were God’s word communicated to mankind and thus authoritative for us. After all, only God Himself would know whether any writing were His inspired word.

Up to this point, we have built a prima facie case (i.e. one which is built upon evidence at “face value” and before it is challenged) that, firstly, there exists an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-benevolent God who can communicate with mankind and, secondly, that the New Testament (not yet the entire Bible, including the Old Testament) is a historically trustworthy document.

The Good Book that brother Steven Chan loved, and lived by, tells us that individuals are to be known by their fruits (Matthew 7:18-20).

There’s no reason for anyone to reject the existence of the supernatural beyond our human, material existence.

Critics of the Bible very seldom find fault with the details in it which have to do with people, places and events.

Many elements recorded in the New Testament,- especially names of people and places as well as happenings,- can be verified by comparing with non-scriptural sources which are contemporaneous (i.e. closely related in time) with the scriptural record.

The reliability of a written document subjected to the INTERNAL EVIDENCE Test depends on whether or not it contains eyewitness testimony which has withstood the scrutiny of others, especially disinterested people.

The first step in proving that the contents of the four gospels and the book of Acts contain reliable historical records requires subjecting their available copies of manuscripts to the BIBLIOGRAPHICAL Test.

The case for the Bible’s divine authority moves from science to legal-historical reasoning: if God exists and Jesus is God, then His endorsement of Scripture affirms it as God’s word.

The case for the Bible’s divine authority moves from science to legal-historical reasoning: if God exists and Jesus is God, then His endorsement of Scripture affirms it as God’s word.