God created us with a mind that is able to learn. Learning, studying, and asking questions are good things. In order for you to follow Jesus and not be tricked by Satan, you must prepare yourself by learning. Prepare yourself by learning what you believe and why you believe it. For example, can you answer the following question: 

How do you know God is real and the Bible is true?

Don’t feel bad if you can’t answer this question. Many adults cannot even answer it. But all people who believe in God should be able to answer why they believe. If you can really know why you believe God is real and the Bible is true, it will be much harder for Satan to trick you with his lies.

Part of science involves observing, testing, and searching for evidence. Is there evidence that God is real and the Bible is true? The answer is yes. In fact, there is so much evidence that people have written books with hundreds of pages describing the evidence. And more evidence is still being discovered today. Let’s look at a few examples.

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1. Science
People who believe in the big bang think that the universe began by accident from a tiny point that exploded (or expanded). (They think it happened randomly by chance.) If something exploded, where did this “something” come from? Believers in the big bang cannot give a clear answer. The idea that the universe started by accident from an explosion is hard to believe when you understand how complex all of creation is. 

For example, look at a person’s DNA. Our body has trillions of cells that help us do things such as see, run, taste, smell, and ride a bike. Each cell has a specific job to do, and DNA in the cell tells it how to do its job. DNA and cells are so small that you can’t see them without the help of a microscope, but the amount of information they have is amazing. DNA is made up of four letters in the alphabet, and these letters are repeated over and over. The letters in your DNA must be in exactly the right order and combination for us to be alive and our bodies to work right. If the letters of DNA in one person’s body were printed in books, there would be enough books to fill the Grand Canyon about 50 times! As you learn how complex DNA and the rest of our bodies are, it is hard to believe that we are here because of a random accident. It shows there must be an intelligent Creator.

It’s important to remember that the Bible is not a science textbook. However, there are things about science in the Bible. For example, the Bible says, “They will be as many as the stars in the sky that no one can count” (Jeremiah 33:22 NCV). With all of the advanced technology we have today, no one knows how many stars there are. The smartest person in the world can only guess at the number. Through many examples like this, the Bible agrees with what has been observed in science. No one has been able to prove that the is Bible is wrong by using science. In fact, the more that we learn in science, the more a person can see that there must be an intelligent Creator.

 

2. Archaeology
Archaeologists often dig up very old man-made items, that are found buried in the ground, to help them study people who lived long ago. There have been (and still are) many people who explored in the land of the Bible times, and they have found some amazing discoveries. For example, there used to be many people who said that Pontius Pilate (the Roman governor who ordered Jesus to be killed) never really existed. However, in 1961, archaeologists dug up a limestone block that said, “Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.” The block is now in a museum in Israel. This shows that Pontius Pilate was a real person as the Bible says. 

There are many other examples like this such as finding words carved in stone or pottery, very old copies of parts of the Bible (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), houses, tombs, walls, and much more. As more and more items are found, archaeology has never provided evidence that anything in the Bible is not true. Instead, archaeology shows that people, places, and things listed in the Bible really did exist and are not fairytales as some claim. 

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3. Accuracy of Manuscripts
When we say manuscripts of the Bible, we are talking about handwritten copies of the Bible that were written a very long time ago. Since we don’t have the very first version of the Bible that was written down, did people make mistakes when they copied it? The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls helped answer this question. The Dead Sea Scrolls are parts of the Bible (written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) that were found in caves near the Dead Sea over 60 years ago. The scrolls are about 1,000 years older than most copies that have ever been found. Having an older copy is better because it was written closer to the time of the original. This means there is less time for mistakes to happen when people copied it. 

 

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, scientitsts were able to check these older scrolls with the copies they already had to see if mistakes had been made. They found that the scrolls matched the other copies almost perfectly. Some things that didn’t match were things like spelling and puncuation that did not change the meaning. 

The number of copies of the Bible is also amazing. There are far more copies of the Bible than any other writing or book (like Plato and Aristotle) that were written very long ago. For example, there are around 25,000 copies of portions of the New Testament. The next highest copied document of that age is Homer’s Iliad (a Greek poem) which has only 643 copies that have survived today.3 More copies mean they can be compared with one another to see if mistakes exist. This makes the Bible the most trustworthy document of its time.

4. Prophecy
Prophecy in the Bible is when God gives a message about the future, usually by using a person called a prophet. There are over 300 prophecies in the Bible that are about Jesus. This means prophets gave messages from God about the life of Jesus hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. All of these prophecies about Jesus have come true (except for prophecy about Jesus’ second coming that has not happened yet).

Let’s pretend we have 100 quadrillion (100,000,000,000,000,000) chocolate cookies and only one vanilla cookie. As you close your eyes, someone else throws the one vanilla cookie into all of the chocolate and stirs them up. Then, without being able to see, you have one chance to find the vanilla cookie among the 100 quadrillion chocolate cookies. This sounds nearly impossible, doesn’t it? This is what it is like for only eight of the 300 prophecies of Jesus to come true. Having all 300 prophecies come true is more than we can imagine. The only way to explain how this could happen is because God is the only One who knows the future and the only One who could give those prophecies. Prophecies provide evidence that God exists and the Bible is true.

5. First-hand Witnesses
The twelve disciples (including Matthias who replaced Judas Iscariot) were first-hand witnesses. This means they saw Jesus during His time on Earth, and they saw Him after He was raised from the dead. They didn’t just hear about Him from someone else. After Jesus went to heaven, the twelve continued to travel and tell people about Jesus. Eventually, eleven of the twelve disciples were killed because of their faith in Jesus. 

Some people today say that Jesus was not a real person. Others say He existed but was just a good teacher and not the Son of God. Some think the disciples made up the stories about Jesus and were traveling around lying to people. But here is something to think about. Are people willing to die for a lie? If a person was telling a lie and someone told them they better stop lying or they will die, don’t you think they would decide to tell the truth to stay alive? At least some of them, if not all, would have likely decided to tell the truth if they were lying about Jesus. However, none of the disciples changed their story. They all continued to say that Jesus is Lord even though they knew they would be killed.

6. Proof of Jesus Outside the Bible
There are many ancient writings, other than the Bible, that talk about Jesus as a person in history. Some people who wrote about Him include Thallus, Tacitus, Phelgon, Pliny the Younger, Lucian of Samosata, Celsus, and several more. These writings describe things like where Jesus lived, give details of His death, say Jesus could correctly tell the future, say that people who knew Him said He was God, say Jesus Himself claimed to be God, and even say Jesus had “magical powers”. Remember, these are people from long ago who wrote these things as history and were not Christians. This shows that Jesus was not made up by the writers of the Bible, and it helps show the Bible is true. 

Now, what if someone were to ask you this question: Can you prove that God is real and the Bible is true?

You could start by giving them evidence of the things that are listed on the previous pages. You can also ask them this question:

Can you prove that God is not real and the Bible is not true?

The answer is no, they cannot.