One day, while scrolling through YouTube, I stumbled across a video of a young woman on a college campus who had no shortage of comments about trusting the Bible. Her passionate voice expressed an honest desire to know the answers. She sincerely wanted to find a way to trust God's Word. She asked:

What is it about this ancient book that I should even care what it says? . . . I'm supposed to believe that some men wrote the Bible like thousands of years ago, and these men wrote about things that happened all the way back to the first people. How would they even begin to know anything about what happened back then? So, I'm supposed to believe some kind of invisible spirit person told them what to write. I mean, this book is centuries old and probably has a lot of mistakes in it anyways, which by the way, there are like a thousand versions. How can I trust the people who wrote the Bible?

Can we answer her questions? We sit in God's school every Sabbath and should study His Word regularly. He is training us to instruct this woman and many others like her who want to know the truth. Are we able to help them, saying, "This is the way, walk in it" (Isaiah 30:21)? Are we prepared to defend and explain how the Bible is the actual written Word of the Creator of all things? Can we fulfill the requirement of our calling in I Peter 3:15, "[A]lways be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear"?

We have different ways of learning and teaching, so there is no single way to answer questions like this woman's. But here are a few important facts we can use to provide some perspective and truth should we ever find ourselves in such a conversation:

First, how can we know the Bible is accurate and has not been rewritten or twisted in some way by different religions and denominations? The facts of history tell us that it has been preserved remarkably well. The Jews collected and preserved the Old Testament books in the period from about 50 BC to AD 100, making Jesus' Hebrew Scriptures the same ones we read in English translation today.

When copying the Torah, the Jewish scribes, called Masoretes, would go so far as to count the number of words in each book and the number of times a single letter appears. They would also point out the middle letter within each book, the middle letter in the Pentateuch (the Law or the five books of Moses), and even the middle letter in the entire Old Testament. They immediately burned any text found to contain an error. The first-century BC Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in the 1940s, proved that today's Old Testament is nearly word-for-word identical to the ancient manuscripts. The text of the Old Testament has not changed in more than 2,000 years!

Christian scribes took similar meticulous care when translating and copying the New Testament. Many more New Testament manuscripts are available than any other writing from the ancient world. The over 4,500 Greek manuscripts used to compile the King James Bible have been examined and confirmed to be more than 95% accurate. The inaccuracies are overwhelmingly spelling and minor transcription errors, having nothing to do with doctrine or practice.

Second, how do we know if the Bible is complete? In certain religious groups, the seven books that comprise "The Apocrypha" are added to the Old Testament of their Bibles. Why do the King James Bible and most Protestant Bibles not contain them? The Jews were responsible for preserving the Old Testament, and they rejected these books, calling them uninspired by God, a decision made centuries before the Catholic Church came into existence.

In Isaiah 8:16, God provides a prophecy about how New Testament writings were to be chosen: "Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples." This evidence indicates that the four gospels and Acts, all the apostles' epistles, including all of Paul's letters, and Revelation, were gathered, bound together, and circulated among the early church by the time the last disciple of Christ, the apostle John, died. II Timothy 4:13 hints that Paul was doing something of the sort just before his martyrdom. Not long before his death, Peter wrote that he considered Paul's writings Scripture (II Peter 3:15-16). The church included no other books beyond what we consider canonical today. By AD 170, most churches agreed about which books should be part of the New Testament. In contrast, the Catholic Church did not complete its biblical canon until AD 390.

Third, is the Bible too hard to read and self-contradictory? Isaiah 55:9 provides insight on this question: "‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD. ‛For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'" If we believe in an all-powerful, sovereign God whose mind infinitely exceeds the human mind, do we not also believe He can inspire His chosen apostles and prophets to write the words just as He intends?

However, one of the Bible's great paradoxes is that God inspired His Book to be written so that it intentionally appears to be riddled with errors, discrepancies, and contradictions while actually being 100% true! This method allows a skeptic or an objector to create excuses, hiding the truth from himself by quitting, failing to persevere in his search for the answers to his doubts. God does not intend His Word to be understood by those with rebellious attitudes. He provides understanding only through His Spirit, which He gives only to those He specifically calls (see John 6:44-45; I Corinthians 2:6-16; II Timothy 2:7).

Notice Isaiah 28:11-13, where God shows how His Word appears to sinners and unbelievers—and the tragic results:

For with stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people [rebellious Israelites], to whom He said, "This is the rest with which you may cause the weary to rest," and "This is the refreshing"; yet they would not hear. But the word of the LORD was to them "precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little," that they might go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and caught.

In Romans 1:18-32, the apostle Paul asserts that God gave rebellious mankind over to a debased mind because they rejected Him and worshipped created things, even though they could see proofs of God's existence and power in nature. People with perverse thinking cannot understand the truth found in Scripture. By His Spirit, God must remove the curse and open their minds to the truth and give them faith. No wonder the Bible confuses them!

The understanding of His instructions must be on His terms. He demands that individuals make the right choices and apply themselves in honest study, not looking to disprove His Word but prove it by living it (Psalm 111:10; 119:99; Proverbs 28:5). That is the attitude God desires. So, He inspired Scripture to be written just as He intended, perfect for accomplishing His goals and teaching His way of living to those who choose to walk with Him on the path to the Kingdom of God.

In Part Two, we will examine four more approaches that may help in teaching others about the wonders of God's Word.