How Do I Know the Bible Is True? (Open Forum)

Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life

Tim Keller

Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Christianity, Spirituality

4.8 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 1 August 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s very common for people, even those who want to live the Christian life, to feel they have to check their brains at the door if they’re going to believe. Often, we hear this basic approach to the Bible: the gospels were written down after years of legends, so we don’t really know how much of them are true. But let me give you a case that the Jesus the Bible shows you is historically reliable. Here is the case in three stages: 1) if you look at what the gospels claim, you’ll see they’re not written as legends or fiction; they’re either historical accounts or a deliberate hoax, 2) we now know now that all of the gospels were written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses, and 3) the same rules of historiography that are used on other documents of antiquity show the gospels to be trustworthy. This talk was given by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on December 4, 1994. Series: Redeemer Open Forums. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Gospel and Life.
0:05.5	How comfortable are you when it comes to being open about your faith?
0:09.4	This month on the podcast, Tim Keller looks at what the Bible says about having a public faith.
0:14.6	He shows us what it looks like to be open about our faith in a pluralistic society
0:18.8	in a way that creates civility and peace and meaningful
0:22.3	dialogue with our neighbors.
0:30.5	It is very common for a lot of people, even people who want to live the Christian life,
0:39.0	to feel that they've got to check their brains at the door, a lot of people will say to me, I know that probably Christianity
0:46.1	isn't really true, but I want it to be true, or I live a general Christian life, but I know
0:50.8	that there's all sorts of problems with the historical accounts. If you go to college,
0:56.6	generally in Religion 101 or Philosophy 101, if you read the newspaper, you'll get this basic
1:03.2	approach to the Bible. It goes like this. Number one, the Bible, the Gospels, were written down after years of legends and oral tradition
1:16.6	circulated about Jesus Christ over the years amongst the followers. Many years after the events,
1:22.4	somebody, some gospel writers wrote down these accounts. We really don't know how much of those accounts are factual
1:32.3	and how much of them are not. They're embellished, you see, with all sorts of miraculous
1:37.6	and fantastic incidents, which was, of course, the want of ancient people, pre-modern people,
1:43.8	pre-scientific age. And so when we read
1:46.2	the Bible, we have a lot of trouble knowing what's true and what's not. There's a very well-publicized
1:52.5	group of scholars called the Jesus Seminar that you probably read about every year. Usually USA Today
1:57.9	puts a front- page article about it.
2:02.9	And what they do is they go through the Bible and they color code the Bible, biblical verses.
2:07.7	What they'll do is they'll give red if they say, Jesus probably said this.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 3 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tim Keller, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Tim Keller and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.