The Bible is one of the foundations of a Christian's faith.  It is the final authority.  It is the very word of God and contains information on the afterlife, morals and daily living, originals of the universe and the world, the supernatural, and most importantly about God and his relationship with his creation.  It explains man's fallen state and God's plan to reconcile mankind to himself.  How can God be a just God and still save the wicked?  This is the gospel, the good news of Christ, through Christ the wicked can be made righteous and have communion with the God of the universe.  The Bible claims to be a supernatural book, written by God and not man.  It claims to have foretold the future.

These are all very bold claims!  Could some of them be true?  Could they all be true?  Can we trust it?  How do we know it's reliable?

Some may answer... I was raised that way; It works for me!; I'm baptist and that's what we believe.

None of these answers are valid for basing your beliefs on.  We were raised and taught many things during our childhood, this doesn't mean everything we were taught was correct.  "It works for me" is not a valid response either since Hinduism works for some people, Islam works for others and atheism works for others.  We also don't believe something because that's what baptists believe.  Baptists do share common beliefs but those beliefs aren't because we are baptist.

Dr. Voddie Baucham puts it this way; "I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report [of] supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writing are divine rather than human in origin"

Lets look at his quote more carefully...

A Reliable Collection of Historical Documents

The Bible is old, we all know that, but can we trust that we have a reliable copy in our hands today?  We don't have the originals, they were destroyed or lost shortly after the death of the apostles, so how do we know what we have today is reliable?  How do we know the text wasn't altered between then and now by copyists or zealous monks with their own agenda?

Lets tackle the most common accusation towards the reliability of the Bible; zealous monks altered the biblical text throughout church history.  Let's test this theory.  Christianity spread fast, and so did the biblical text; the text was translated into several languages very early in church history, and early church leaders continued to write and quote the bible.  Today we have approximately 5,500 copies that contain all or part of the new testament; all in the original Koine Greek.  We also have 18,000 - 25,000 copies in other languages, and 86,000 citations of the New Testament in writings of the early church fathers which were written before AD 325.  The zealous monks would have to change all those copies and put them back without anyone noticing... ridiculous.

There is TONS of manuscript evidence for the Bible, some of those numbers were mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Let's look at other secular writings that are deemed reliable by textual 'scholars' of our day and compare them to the evidence we have for the Bible which they deem as unreliable.

Those are just manuscripts!  The early translations help to ensure that we have a reliable text, and all of the New Testament except eleven verses can be reconstructed outside the Bible from the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries AD.  (McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict)

The Bible is by far the most reliable ancient document in the history of the world.  For someone to question the authenticity of the Bible, they are ignorant of the facts.  No one can refute the reliability of the Bible, once this is established people who reject God must reject what was originally written; which leads into the next point.

Eyewitness Evidence

Since we've established that the Bible is reliable and we can know with confidence that we have what was originally penned down by the apostles, how do we know that they weren't simply making this up?  

In the court of law having a witness is key.  If someone is accused of a crime and there are 2 or 3 eyewitnesses implicating the criminal then we can be sure they he committed the crime.  If there were hundreds of witnesses then there would be no doubt in anyone's mind that he was guilty.  And we not only need eyewitness accounts, but those accounts need to be in agreement.  In fact when they had supposed 'eye-witnesses' why Jesus was being tried, they couldn't indict him at the account of the eledged eye-witnesses because their stories didn't match.  (Mark 14:59)

What we see in the Bible is that there are a lot of eye witness accounts, and they agree.  Here are a few of the first hand eye witness accounts.

John was an eyewitness:

1 John 1:1-4 states: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.  And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full"

Peter was an eyewitness:

1 Peter 5:1 states "The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:"

The disciples and believers at the day of Pentecost were eyewitnesses:

Acts 2:32 states "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses."  Also Acts 3:15, Acts 5:32, Acts 10:39-42, Acts 13:31, Acts 26:16-27

Paul was an eyewitness:

Note that Paul statement here leads a great point to bring up.  Not only were these men eye witnesses of these events, their account was written during the lifetime of other eye witnesses.  In fact there were at least 250 living eye witnesses when Paul wrote this!  The apostles message could be verified and proven false by finding and speaking to those eye witnesses!  Eye witness evidence is the best evidence in a court of law, and it's the best evidence we have that the Bible speaks the truth.  These men didn't make it up, eye witness accounts testify to their accuracy!

Prophecy

A large portion of the Bible is prophetic; meaning that things were written in advance of when they actually took place.  Many of the prophecies in the Bible have also been fulfilled and their fulfillment is documented clearly.  These prophecies are not general prophecies that could fit any number of different things, they are specific!

Lets just look at the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ.  In the back of one of my Bibles there is a list of different prophecies concerning Christ, I don't believe the list is exhaustive but there are still 44 specific prophecies listed there.  Scripture written more than 400 years before Jesus was born detailing where he was to be born, how he was to die (before crusifiction was invented!), that he was to raise again, that he was to take away sin, and many others.

The evidence of prophecy is so irrefutable by skeptics that they say that these prophecies were written after the events actually took place, not before.  Of course that argument doesn't hold up due to the amount of manuscript evidence we have.

Writings Were Divine

The authors of scripture made the bold claim that their writings were divine.  2 Peter 1:21 "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.".  They were not only eyewitnesses, but they were under the direction of the Holy Ghost to write the scriptures!  Evidence of this is in prophecy and in the unity of the Bible.  It was written over a period of 2000 years by 40 different authors and deals with the toughest questions of mankind; to write a book like this with no errors is IMPOSSIBLE for man.