That You May Know the Certainty

We asked, at the very beginning of this course, a plain and pressing question: can we trust the Bible we hold in our hands? We refused to answer it with a skeptic's easy sneer or a salesman's easy boast. Instead we called four witnesses, and we made each of them testify under honest examination. The first witness, the canon, gave us the right books — recognized by the church, not invented by it. The second witness, the text, gave us the right words — kept for us in such an abundance of manuscripts that no honest doubt can erase them; the same Word stands in your New King James and your Reina-Valera that the church has always held. The third witness, archaeology, showed us the real events — the world of the Bible lifted out of the ground and correlated, name upon name. The fourth witness, geography, showed us the real stage — a land so exactly known that you may walk the Bible with a map in your hand. Four witnesses have spoken; four testimonies lie before us. It remains now to ask the final question: what do they say when we hear them together?

No single witness proves the Bible; we have said so at every step — correlation, not proof. But witnesses do not testify one at a time in sealed rooms; they testify together, and their agreement carries a force that no one of them has alone. In a court of law, a single thread may be explained away, but a hundred threads woven together make a rope that holds a great weight. So it is here. That the books are the right ones; that the words have been faithfully kept; that the events are grounded in real soil; that the stage is a real and knowable land — each of these, by itself, is a single strand. But braid them together, and they make an overwhelming case that this book is exactly what it claims to be: a true record, rooted in real history, faithfully handed down to us. The strength of the whole is not the mere sum of its parts; it is far greater than the sum. This is how honest confidence is built — never by one dramatic knockout proof, but by the quiet convergence of many independent witnesses, all pointing the same way.

Return now to the very words with which this course began — the opening of the Gospel of Luke. Luke tells Theophilus that many had undertaken to write of these things; that he himself had carefully investigated everything from the first, following those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word; and that he had set it all down in an orderly account. And then he tells him why he did it: "that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed" (Luke 1:4). Mark that one word well: certainty. Luke did not labor over his investigation merely to give Theophilus a pleasant story or a warm feeling. He wrote so that Theophilus would know — know with certainty — that the things he had been taught were true and could be trusted. That was the whole purpose of the inquiry. And it has been the whole purpose of this course. We have done, in our own small and careful way, exactly what Luke invites every reader to do: we have examined the books, the words, the events, and the land. And so we may say to every Theophilus who holds a Bible today: you may know the certainty.

But here we must be careful and clear, or we will build our house upon the sand. We have gathered a mighty cumulative case. Does our certainty, then, finally rest upon that case? No — and this is the very heart of the matter. The evidence is precious, but it is the servant, and not the master. If your certainty rested upon archaeology, it would rise and fall with the next spade turned in the next field; if it rested on a count of manuscripts, a cleverer skeptic might one day trouble it. A certainty that can be argued up can also be argued down. The true ground of certainty lies far deeper: it is that God Himself breathed out this Scripture, and that His Spirit bears witness in the heart of the believer that this is indeed His Word. The evidence does not create that certainty. What the evidence does is clear away the obstacles to it, and confirm it, and silence forever the false charge that faith is blind. The four witnesses strip away every reasonable excuse for doubting that the Bible can be trusted — but the certainty they serve rests upon the unchanging character of the God who spoke. Evidence is the servant of faith; it is never its foundation.

And now we may say the thing this whole course has been moving toward from the first page. Because God gave His Word, and because God has faithfully kept His Word, the Bible you hold in your hands carries the full and absolute authority of God Himself. Notice carefully what we are saying, and what we are not. We are not saying that you must first prove every word before you are permitted to trust it; you cannot do that, and, thank God, you do not need to. Nor are we resting this authority upon the lost original manuscripts, as though the Word of God were locked away in autographs that no living soul has ever seen. We are saying that the authority of God travels down — through faithful copying, and through faithful translation — into the very Bible that lies open in your hands. When the apostles preached, they preached from copies and from translations, and they preached with the full authority of God. So may you. The Word of God is not a fortress you must anxiously defend inch by inch; it is a throne, from which God Himself speaks — and He speaks, with full and absolute authority, in the very book you are holding right now.

Let us now speak very plainly, to the ordinary believer in the ordinary pew, who has followed this whole course and may still be quietly wondering. You do not hold the original page that Moses or Paul wrote; no one on earth does. You hold a translation — an English New King James, a Spanish Reina-Valera — of a copy of a copy. And we will not pretend otherwise; we have been honest about that from the very first unit. But now hear the promise, and hear it rightly. God never promised to place the autograph in your hands; He promised to preserve His Word. And He has done precisely that — so faithfully, so richly, across so many hands and so many centuries, that the Bible lying open before you tonight is the preserved and authoritative Word of God. You are not holding a faint and distant echo of God's Word; you are holding God's Word. So read it as such. Believe it as such. Obey it as such. The certainty that Luke wrote his Gospel to give is not reserved for scholars in their studies; it is for you — in your own language, in your own hands, this very night.

See now why we took the harder road — the road of honest candor — all the way through this course. We could have overclaimed at every turn, crying "proven!" over each discovery, straining the gnat, promising far more than the evidence could hold. For a season, that would have felt stronger. But it would have left you with a faith that shatters at the very first hard question. Instead we conceded what was genuinely open, we refused what was merely assumed, and we stood immovably upon what is truly settled — and this is the settled thing: God has spoken, God has preserved His Word, and that Word is worthy of your absolute trust. Because we did not overclaim, nothing here will crumble when a skeptic presses hard, or a single dig is disputed. You may stake your very life upon this book — and your death as well. You may preach it without flinching, obey it without hedging, and rest your soul upon it in the darkest night. That is the fruit of honest confidence: not a nervous certainty that trembles before the next question, but a settled certainty that has already faced the questions, and stands.

And so this course comes at last to its end, and it brings you back to the place where the whole journey began — with a Bible in your hands and a question in your heart: can I truly trust this? Now you have examined it, exactly as the Scripture itself commands you to do: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). You have proved it — the books, the words, the events, the land — and you have found it good, and true, and faithfully kept, and clothed with the authority of God. So now, do the other half: hold fast. Hold fast to the sure Word of God. Do not hold it timidly, like one clutching a treasure he half suspects is false; hold it boldly, like one who has weighed it in the balance and found it worthy. The certainty that Luke wrote to give Theophilus is now yours to keep — and yours to give away. So go: go and trust this Word; go and obey it; go and proclaim it to every soul who asks whether the Bible can be trusted. And you may tell them, on the evidence and on the sure promise of God: Yes. We can trust the Bible we hold.