Ep. 183: Is the Bible Trustworthy?

Kourtney Cromwell:
Welcome to the indoubt Podcast where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca or indoubt.com.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks for joining us on this episode of indoubt. My name’s Kourtney, the indoubt coordinator and it’s so good to have you with us. On this week’s episode, Ryan talks with guest Dr. John Neufeld. Dr. John is a Canadian Bible teacher and he was last week’s guest and we’re glad to have him back. In this episode he joins us to discuss the foundation of our faith: the Bible. We’re looking at questions like, why do we trust the Bible? How and when was the Bible written, and is the Bible accurate?

Ryan McCurdy:
Hey everyone, it’s so good to be with you today. My name is Ryan, your indoubt host and today I have a guest with me who I’ve been able to interview before and always love getting to talk with him about theology and scripture, today is going to be our topic. So we have with us Dr. John Neufeld, who is a world-renowned Bible teacher and John – thanks so much for being here with us.

John Neufeld:
Great to be here.

Ryan McCurdy:
Glad to have you. So today we’re going to talk about the scriptures.

John Neufeld:
Yeah.

Ryan McCurdy:
How are you feeling about that?

John Neufeld:
That’s all I do.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s all you do. John we talked a little bit before we got here in the studio about scripture, and about some of the important things about reading scripture, and there’s a comment you made about people being so well-versed in the latest movie or TV show but being so biblically illiterate. I’m curious, I’d like to hear a little bit more about what you think that does to a society. What does that do to our churches? What does that do to our faith across a culture, across a nation?

John Neufeld:
Yeah, I don’t know how I can speak to society as a whole. I mean our society is now a multi-faith society and I think it’s true to say that the way in which western culture operated two generations ago is significantly different. I mean I used one example with you that when the first London bombings happened by the Nazis, the London papers ran a headline, And If Not, and everyone in London understood that those words came from Book of Daniel, who refused to bow to the king’s statute, God would deliver them and if not they would still not bow. So just simply using those words, and if not, the entire culture already understood where that was from, they were that biblically literate. See that’s shocking to us that you can think about the early 1940s and you think, no that’s not that long ago.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

John Neufeld:
And so you can think about that everyone in London was so literate in scripture that even several words in a line they would identify where in the Bible it was from.

Ryan McCurdy:
And today it’s completely different.

John Neufeld:
And today it’s different, so I recognize our society has changed, but my heartbeat, Ryan, is for the Church of Jesus Christ. The appalling biblical illiteracy in the church, that’s something we can do something about, but it’s there. So it’s remarkable to me that just basic facts about the Bible, the stories about the Bible, the people of the Bible, where the thing actually happened, to locate it on a map, all those kind of things. You know the historical narrative of the Bible, I mean it’s just lacking from people. I know people talk about that, but they’re not actually reading their Bible, so I think they’re speaking in a vacuum.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, so let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about why reading the Bible is of utmost importance.

John Neufeld:
Yeah, I’m going to say this. Every single believer should commit themselves to reading through the Bible, the entire Bible, every single year. Now I’ve got a reading plan that I often give out and it’s the one that I took years to actually put together myself, but it takes the Bible through in a chronological order.

Ryan McCurdy:
Okay.

John Neufeld:
Yeah, so people actually will then get to see, oh my goodness, look at the Prophet Haggai, oh that connects directly with what happened in Ezra’s time and the coming back of the exiles from Babylon, and oh my this was going on. So it all begins to make sense if you read it that way. But nonetheless, even if you don’t, it’s not that big of a plan. I think if you spent 15 minutes reading per day, you’ll very easily read through your Bible. So I’m going to guess most people are on the internet or watching television for more than 15 minutes a day. This is a very small disruption in their lives and they could do it.

Ryan McCurdy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), totally. You know in a culture where people are viewing scripture as less than important, why is scripture so important? Where do we even get knowledge and understanding that scripture is so important?

John Neufeld:
Yeah I think part of it is that we have no idea how the scripture came to us. May I, however, just preface something that I’m going to say. Some of us have supplanted the importance and the… The first importance of scripture with the importance of hearing a direct word from God.

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

John Neufeld:
So it’s very… I even hear pastors from a pulpit, listen I’ve been in a pulpit for 35 years, I will never in a pulpit say, the Lord talked to me. It’s not because the Lord doesn’t talk to me. I would never say it in a pulpit because I know that the Lord spoke to Jeremiah. I know he spoke to Isaiah. I know he spoke to Matthew and to Peter and Paul. And I know that what he said in those authors is definitive and final and is the super cultural truth, the truth that all people need to know for all times and all cultures, and I’m going to argue that that’s what we need to feed on, that’s what we need to communicate. But I think we’ve trained a sloppy generation and a sloppy generation simply says, I can just wait for a feeling, a sense that something has happened.
I mean I’ve even heard one person say, “When Jesus said my sheep know my voice, so I’m going to know his voice when he speaks to me.” That’s not what the text means, even close to that, but what it means to say is that any thought that now random wells up into my heart, must be the voice of God. They might not know about Jeremiah 17, which Jeremiah says, “The heart is desperately deceitful and beyond cure.” So our hearts speak to us all the time and lead us astray, but there are so many that don’t know that, because they haven’t read the scripture. So the world view that they have and the world view of the scripture is miles apart, miles apart. So it’s like going to the moon for them and they no longer pay attention. So all that to say, we need to train people in reading the Bible. How to do it, but more important even than how to do it is to get into the habit of daily doing this thing so that we begin to know what we’re talking about when we talk about the Bible.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah. What’s our framework? Where do we start? Where do we all have a shared understanding of what we’re talking about?

John Neufeld:
Yeah. I think there are other places that we can do this. I mean one is, in church. Look when the Protestant reformation began, the furniture of a local church changed. And the furniture changed in this fashion. We now put the pulpit at the center, rather than the table of the Eucharist. So for middle-age Catholicism, the grace of God is communicated through the sacrament. Same is true in the Catholic Church today. But the Protestants said, you know grace comes by hearing the word of God and by believing, and therefore central became the pulpit. The Bible was placed on the pulpit and therefore the people that preached the Bible needed to know it well enough, well enough, so that they probably were familiar with the original languages that the Bible was written, and they were experts in going verse by verse, Ryan. Verse by verse and explaining the meaning and helping God’s people see the relevance of that. When the pulpits are silent on this modality, individuals stop reading it as well, because what they get in church and what they read in the Bible seems different, seems different. Therefore they can’t make the connection.
A little example here works. John Calvin was in Geneva where he preached faithfully from scripture. Whether or not you agree with Calvin is not the issue here, but the fact that he was a verse by verse Bible teacher is true. He is, because of a lot of political situations, kicked out of Geneva. After two years he comes back. Rather than getting in the pulpit and saying, it’s so good to be back, hey Harry, good to see you again, that kind of stuff, he doesn’t do any of that. He had a marker in his Bible where he had left off the last time he was in that pulpit. Without saying a word, he simply opened up the Word and took off from where he had left off. What he was trying to say is, it really doesn’t matter who I am. It matters what the Word of God says and the man of God who preaches the Word must not put the spotlight on himself, but must help God’s people put the spotlight on the Word. Now if we do that in church, slowly I think that modality begins to filter down.

Ryan McCurdy:
And there’s an element in a lot of churches today, where preaching is… It’s almost like a regurgitation of a pastor’s own time with God, or their own time reading the Bible. And I’ve heard it said this way, that some people would say, “Oh man I just went to that sermon and it was so full.” You hear the expression in churches sometimes, it was really meaty. It wasn’t like milk, it was solid teaching. One of the ironies of that is that it’s still being regurgitated by a pastor. A pastor is taking in the information, or a preacher is taking in the information, reading scripture and is teaching the scripture and then those who are listening are listening to something that’s already been chewed for them. Rather than them on their own week and their own time going into the scripture and reading it for themselves, getting food from the source.

John Neufeld:
Yeah, I mean, I know that happens and in a real way we can’t stop that from happening, but I think that when a person goes home and they look at the text that was read in scripture and they read it again, they should be able to say, I see exactly where he got that, now this makes sense to me. So I think there ought to be that connectedness from what happens when they go to church to what happens when they come home. So they begin to see, oh wow I see how this passage not only makes sense but how it applies to me and how God calls me to live or what God calls me now to believe and so Lord I commit this to me, I repent, I get a renewed enthusiasm and fervor. Come Holy Spirit, help me to live out this which your word has taught me. So when that connectedness happens, we’re building something that’s real and we’re building something that’s solid and it remains.

Ryan McCurdy:
So let’s say somebody’s listening to this conversation right now.

John Neufeld:
Yep.

Ryan McCurdy:
And they have a Bible and they would say, “You know the Bible seems really big, it seems really… I don’t know where to start.” They would even ask another question, so I’m going to put two questions to you here. First question, where do we start? Second question, where does the Bible come from? What are the origins of the Bible? How do we know that it’s reliable? How do we know that it is God’s word? Where did we come to this position? How has it been handed down? So where do we start and what’s it come from?

John Neufeld:
Well, let’s talk about where we start first, because that’s the easier question.

Ryan McCurdy:
You’re right.

John Neufeld:
The other one’s loaded, but there’s a good answer to the other one. But let’s… Where do we start? I would normally say that if you’ve not been reading your Bible you want to take one of the three Synoptics. The Synoptics are Matthew, Mark or Luke. One of those three. The first three books in the New Testament. I normally recommend you start with either Mark or with Luke. Matthew writes to a primarily Jewish audience, so he assumes that you have a wealth of Old Testament background and quotes it constantly, and shows how Jesus fulfilled that. Often a person’s just not well read there. I know that sometimes we communicate that we should start with the Book of John, which is the last of the four Gospels, and I normally say if you haven’t been reading, I would say start with Mark or Luke, because John is the last one that was written. It’s written a good deal of time later and a new generation of believers have arisen. John is living then in Ephesus, the center of the Christian Church is then in Ephesus. Jerusalem’s been wiped out by the Roman armies by that time. So John is writing to a group of people who’ve been raised in the Christian faith. Yep there are new ones coming, but he wants that new generation to ask the question again, when I believed in Jesus, what did I mean when I said believe. So he’s taking them to a level that you know they had never thought about before, but John is also assuming that they understand the stories of Jesus. So he’s building on what’s been given. Luke writes to a primarily Greek audience. Mark probably to a primary Roman audience. Mark is shorter. So if your attention span is shorter, that’s an excellent book for you, right?

Ryan McCurdy:
Right.

John Neufeld:
If you want to go a little bit deeper then start with Luke. In either case it will be an easy read and you’ll begin to understand. So I will say often start there and then I will say take the next leap and go into the deep end and get out the Book of Romans, which is Christianity 101, and begin to understand what it is that Christians have believed from the beginning. You might be shocked to find out what it is. So I would say start with either Mark or Luke and then take that deep end jump and go into Romans. So there’s a starting place anyway.

Ryan McCurdy:
That’s great, that’s awesome. So someone’s reading and they’re going along and they come across the question, where did this come from? As a whole, all the books of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, how do we get where we are right now?

John Neufeld:
Yeah. You know it came to us rather organically. I know that sometimes people talk about… I mean, for instance a number of years ago, there was that absolute nonsense book called The Da Vinci Code, that gave us this idea that in 325, a group of people got together and decided what was in the Bible and what was chucked out, and they got this organizational model in their heads. First of all that’s not what happened. Dan Brown really doesn’t read history and every time he’s pushed, he says, “Well it’s just a novel anyway, it’s just fiction.” So when he’s pushed he says it’s fiction, but as soon as he’s not pushed, he goes back to talking like this is what really happened.
But from that has come the idea that the Bible came as a result of an institution foisting this. They decided, who knows who they were, but they must have been powerful players who are trying to control what Christians believe and what they don’t. And then we’re also told, wow did you know that there are other Gospels out there? There is the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas. I mean who stopped those from coming in? So what’s come into a lot of people’s minds is this deep sense of doubt without any understanding of history. I mean they’ve just been given some pseudo facts and don’t know how it’s come.
So, let me start this way. When you actually read, say Joshua 1:8, Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible. The first five are the Pentateuch, and they are the books that are written by Moses. And then we get to Joshua and Moses has just died and Joshua speaks and he says, “This book of the law must not depart from your mouth, but you must meditate on it day and night so that you might be careful to do everything that is written in it.”
Look, Moses is just dead, what’s he saying? He is saying to the people of Israel that the writings of Moses, the prophet who was among you, the one you’ve been listening to for the last 40 years, that stuff that he’s left over, meditate on it, memorize it, do everything that’s in it, because we know that this man was an attested prophet of God. As an attested prophet of God, we know that his word can be trusted. So it wasn’t a group of people that got together and said, wow, you know.
Then when we read the Book of Joshua, we find that Israel comes to the Jordan River and Joshua stretches out his staff and the Jordan parts just as the Red Sea had parted for Moses and the people say, “Obviously God has put his Spirit on the next spokesman.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that as you begin to read through the Bible it becomes apparent that it formed quite organically when attested spokesmen of God actually spoke the Word of God and God’s people recognized that it was the Word of God.
But then comes something that’s new and unique and never been done before. Jesus shows up, who is the fulfillment of all that’s written. It’s fascinating about Jesus, by the way. Died and rose from the dead. Only guy ever rose from the dead, lived eternally. Jesus said… Not only said it like that, he said, “Not one jot, not one tittle, the least stroke of a pen.” It’s found in Matthew 5:17.

Ryan McCurdy:
Matthew 5.

John Neufeld:
Not the least stroke of a pen will pass away, won’t pass away until all is accomplished. We know from history exactly what he was referring to. He was referring to the 39 books that make up of our Old Testament today. Jesus said, “I believe those 39.” So that’s fascinating to me. Now, how do we get the 27 in the New Testament, right?

Ryan McCurdy:
That is the next question.

John Neufeld:
And it’s fascinating because when we get to John 14, Jesus says to his disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, he will bring to remembrance all that he has taught them. And he’s speaking to the 12 here. You know sometimes when you don’t understand what you’re reading, you’re going to say, it must mean every single person won’t need a Bible, they’re just going to… the Holy Spirit’s going to reveal everything that Jesus taught. That’s not what that passage says. He takes the disciples or the apostles whom he has chosen aside and he says, that a special anointing of the Spirit is going to be given to you so that you will accurately relay everything that I have taught and the implications of everything that I’ve taught. That’s the 27 books in the New Testament. They’re called Apostolic Books in that they were written either by the people that Jesus had directly chosen or by those people who are directly overseen by the apostles. So Luke for instance, was directly mentored by the apostle Paul. Mark, who was not an apostle, was directly mentored by Peter. So we know that all of the books in the New Testament are either eyewitnesses, well they are all eyewitnesses, and they were people who were either directly chosen by Jesus, or directly overseen by those chosen by Jesus.
Now, having said that, this is very important. This is why we have Paul writing in Ephesians, he says, “I laid a foundation.” That’s the foundation. The apostolic foundation forms the foundation for the church.

Ryan McCurdy:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

John Neufeld:
That’s why we don’t accept the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. It’s written a hundred years, it’s living 200 hundred years later and it’s not written by Mary Magdalene and it also has no eyewitness accounts to it. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene doesn’t understand the geography nor the culture of Israel, nor the Old Testament, but is actually written from a framework of Greek gnosticism, which is a Greek world view. So it has nothing to do with the historic Jesus. It’s kind of like, Ryan, if you read a book today, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer. And I said to you, “Well wait a minute, there are actually historical documents, eyewitness accounts of individuals who worked with Abraham Lincoln.” And you said, “Yeah, but there are other stories too, you’re just trying to keep them out. How about Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer?” And I would argue, that the Gospel of Mary Magdalene fits into that category.

Ryan McCurdy:
Okay.

John Neufeld:
Yeah, that’s how we got the Bible that we got.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, so there’s a level of apostolicity that it’s been carried on through, and even in the Book of Ephesians we see Christ is the cornerstone.

John Neufeld:
Yep.

Ryan McCurdy:
And on his church is built prophets and the apostles.

John Neufeld:
Yeah, which forms, says Paul, on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. And every generation after that builds on what they have written, but we don’t add to the foundation. Just like building a house today. The foundation’s laid only once. The building that happens is built on the foundation.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yes. The Book of Hebrews. Would love to ask a question about that. Maybe there’s people out there who know that the Book of Hebrews, the authorship is-

John Neufeld:
In question.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yes, in question. So how do we deal with the Book of Hebrews? And then my second question being, okay so we have these apostolic books and how did they come to formation? Was it an easy thing where each book of the New Testament was glowing and all the other books weren’t? How did the formation come to passage?

John Neufeld:
Let’s take the first one, Hebrews, that’s an easy one for me because even though we’re not absolutely sure of the author of Hebrews, there are not a lot of options and there are two primary ones and one is Paul and one is Barnabas. And if it’s Barnabas he was overseen directly by Paul and if it’s Paul he’s an apostle and that’s the end of it. And the early church understood that. So now here’s the question, and that is the question about how do we finally get the final list. I think that’s what you’re asking?

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah.

John Neufeld:
Those 27 books that make up our New Testament, how do we get that? And the answer is that they were accepted very quickly. There was an ancient Christian document called the Didache. It’s the first Christian writing after the apostles. The Didache is very interesting, it makes no claim to having authority. Very early on when you go to what we call the church fathers, they’re constantly quoting from the apostolic writings. Always claiming there’s a distinction between their writings and the apostolic ones. Clearly the early church fathers did not believe they had the same authority. They thought they only had the authority to teach what the apostles had left them.
So the question then is, why were some books accepted very early and others were accepted a little later? The answer is, in some cases, they were accepted later because the question of authorship was not yet settled. Are these authentic books? And of course you still have living witnesses. If we think about it in terms of when there’s still a living memory, you can actually ask people, and they’ll say, oh yeah, yeah, so and so lived over there, yeah I remember that quite well, and other people will corroborate that. This is the work that the early church was involved in. They were not so much interested in asking the question, which one don’t we want? They were asking the question of the ones that are given, can we establish authenticity, historicity, all those kind of things. But the key question was always the question of authorship.
So once you’ve established that the New Testament is written by the prophets and apostles, the prophets being those directly overseen by the apostles. So once you establish that, then the primary task of the church is to do the hard work of establishing the credibility of each document. And that’s the shortcut version to what we have, but that’s it. It’s really down to that.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, that’s great. And there’s a unity to these books.

John Neufeld:
Well that’s the amazing thing. You know when we think about the 66 books that make up a Bible, written over a period of 1600 years, written by over 40 different authors and written in three languages. I mean two primary languages and one just a few chapters in Aramaic. We also have written by some people who are kings and other people who were in prison. Amos was a farmer, a dresser of vines. We have people from every conceivable walk of life who over 1600 years tell one amazing story that reaches it’s climax and fulfillment in Jesus and from the Gospel of Jesus takes us to the end of the world and claims that Jesus will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
It’s fascinating that over those 1600 years, there’s all sorts of authenticating signs. One is, it’s one story that never contradicts. It’s one story. That’s huge. You tell me, you bring together 66 documents from 1600 years and make them tell one story. I dare you to do it. You can’t get it done. Hasn’t been done. This book is unique and not only that but we find that some earlier prophecies are fulfilled during those 1600 years.
An example would be that Isaiah the Prophet says that Israel is going to go into exile and that Cyrus… He says, “You Cyrus are a signet ring in my hand and by you I will bring my people home.” Well Cyrus wasn’t going to live for the next 200 years, but lo and behold, 200 years later there was a king in Persia by the name of Cyrus who issues a decree to allow the exiles to go home and we find out, wow look at that. Isaiah’s prophecy is fulfilled down to the details.
So that’s what we get in those 1600 years. We get lots of examples of just that kind of a thing. And we can say, whatever else you make of the Bible there is no book like it. And I love to say this. Ryan, I love to say this, if God were to write a book, you would have to expect there’d be no book in the world like it and that’s what we have in the Bible.

Ryan McCurdy:
Yeah, that’s true. Thanks so much for being with us today. So much wealth of knowledge and information that we’ve all benefited from. Thanks Dr. John.

John Neufeld:
Thank you.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening today. It was great to have Dr. John with us again and have the chance to hear about why the Bible is so important and go into more detail on why it’s trustworthy. I do want to pause for a moment and thank Ryan. Moving forward, Ryan will no longer be serving as the indoubt host. Although he was our host for a short time, we do really appreciate everything that Ryan brought to indoubt. The effort and passion that he put into the role was so appreciated and we will miss him. indoubt will continue to air our weekly podcast and nothing will change with what we produce, but we’re going into a new format with our indoubt host. Moving forward you’ll be hearing multiple indoubt hosts. They’ll share the role and continue to give you the biblical teaching and content that help us in our young adult years. We’re really excited for what the future holds and we hope you are too. So join us next week as we invite our indoubt hosts to the podcast and get to know them all a little bit better.

Kourtney Cromwell:
Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes and Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.