(Excerpted and slightly modified from our Ready With An Answer (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997)
The presence of hundreds of eyewitnesses to the events recorded in the New Testament would surely have prohibited any alteration or distortion of the facts, just as today any false reporting as to the events of the Vietnam War or World War II would be immediately corrected on the basis of living eyewitnesses and historic records.
Some argue that the Gospel writers’ reporting of miracles can’t be trusted because they were only giving their religiously excited “subjective experience” of Jesus, not objectively reporting real events. They thought Jesus did miracles, but were mistaken. What is ignored by critics is what the text plainly states and the fact that the gospel writers could not have gotten away with this in their own day unless they had been telling the truth. They claimed that these things were done openly, not in a corner (Acts 26:26), that they were literally eyewitnesses of the nature and deeds of Jesus (Luke 1:2; Acts 2:32; 2 Peter 1:16), and that their testimony should be believed because it was true (John 20:30-31).
Indeed, the apostles wrote that Jesus Himself presented His miracles in support of His claims to be both the prophesied Messiah and God incarnate...
When John the Baptist was in jail and apparently had doubts as to whether or not Jesus was the Messiah...
The teachings and miracles of Jesus, as any independent reading of the gospels will prove...
The fact that both conservatives (F.F. Bruce, John Wenham) and liberals (Bishop John A.T. Robinson) have penned defenses...
“New papyrus discoveries, Thiede believes, will eventually prove that all four gospels...
Even liberal bishop John A.T. Robinson argued in his Redating the New Testament...
The implications of this are not small...
Even the critical methods themselves indirectly support New Testament reliability...
Certainly we must also concede to the historicity of the New Testament when we consider...
Lawyers, of course, are expertly trained in the matter of evaluating evidence...
What of the “father of international law,” Hugo Grotius...
“So invariable had been my observation that he who does not accept wholeheartedly...”
What of hundreds of contemporary lawyers who, also on the grounds of strict legal evidence...
Certainly, such men were well acquainted with legal reasoning...
We must, then, speak of the fact that to reject the New Testament accounts as true history is by definition to reject the canons of all legitimate historical study...
“… it seems to me inescapable that anyone who chanced to read the pages of the New Testament for the first time...”