Can I Trust The Bible?: Why These Book (Part 2)

Can I Trust the Bible?: Why These Books? (Part 2)

January 11th, 2026 | Seventh Day Adventist

Intro:

Last week we asked whether the Bible is a reliable book. We looked at manuscripts, history, and evidence. And today we’re asking the question, “Even if the Bible has been preserved, how do we know the right books are inside it?”

Why Matthew but not Thomas?
Why Luke but not Mary?
Why John but not Judas?

This is where TikTok influencers and Netflix documentaries get loud,
and where a lot of Christians quietly lose confidence. So today, my goal is to present some additional evidence, building on last week, to help you not only understand it for yourself, but also so that you may be able to defend it to the world.

Question: What Does Canon Mean?

The Greek word kanon means a measuring rod, a ruler, a standard.

So when Christians say “the canon of Scripture,” they are not talking about a list that gives books authority. They are talking about a list that recognizes authority. In other words, canon is not the church granting authority, but the church confessing which writings already carried apostolic, Spirit-breathed authority and were already shaping Christian worship and doctrine.

When Christians say the Bible is canon, we mean God has finished giving His authoritative Word through Jesus and the apostles. That’s called a closed canon. God still speaks, but He does not add new Scripture. That is because Christianity is not just built on a book, it is built on a Person. We believe God revealed Himself progressively through the prophets, but He spoke fully and finally in Jesus Christ. That’s why the apostolic witness to Jesus is the final chapter of God’s written revelation.

Other religions don’t agree with that. Some believe God keeps giving new holy books and new prophets. That’s called an open canon or open-ended progressive revelation.

Mormons have the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

Christian Science has the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings.

Islam honors earlier Scriptures but says the Qur’an is God’s later and final revelation.

And the Baháʼí Faith believes God spoke most fully through Baháʼu’lláh in the 1800s.

Christianity says God’s final word is a Person: Jesus Christ.

That belief is what the Reformers called Sola Scriptura. It doesn’t mean God is silent today. It means Scripture alone is the final authority for faith and doctrine, because it is the completed apostolic testimony to God’s final revelation in Christ.

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways. 2 In these last days, He has spoken to us by his Son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him.” - Hebrews 1:1-2 CSB

Apostolic Authority and Canon

When Christians say the New Testament is apostolic, we do not mean every author was one of the Twelve. We mean every book comes from the apostolic circle. Some were written by apostles who personally saw the risen Jesus, and others were written by their closest companions who recorded their eyewitness testimony. Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul were apostles. Mark wrote from Peter’s preaching. Luke wrote from Paul’s ministry and from direct interviews with eyewitnesses. James and Jude were the brothers of Jesus and leaders in the earliest Jerusalem church, personally known and trusted by the apostles. There are no unknown mystics, no later generations, and no secret teachers behind the New Testament. It comes from the first generation of those who walked with Jesus or who were appointed to preserve their testimony.

But apostolic connection was not the only test. The early church did not sit down with a checklist and vote. They lived with these writings. They asked: Does this sound like the Jesus the apostles preached? Does this agree with the faith we received? Is this being read and trusted across the churches? Is it shaping our worship? Over time, the same books kept rising to the top, not because of power, but because they carried the voice of the apostles and the gospel itself. That is how canon formed. It was the convergence of apostolic origin, doctrinal faithfulness, and widespread use.

“19 So, then, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.” - Ephesians 2:19-20 CSB

The Modern Myth:

Before we go any further, we need to talk about where the modern suspicion of the Bible actually comes from.

The belief that certain books were included in the Bible for personal or political agendas does not come from ancient historical evidence, but from modern distrust of institutions, Enlightenment skepticism in the 1700s and 1800s toward anything supernatural, and popular culture, especially novels like The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, which fictionalized the idea that Constantine or church leaders manipulated the Bible for their own gain.

In reality, no ancient source claims Constantine chose the books of the Bible, no church council secretly voted to suppress alternative gospels, and no early Christian writer ever says the ‘real Jesus’ was hidden. The New Testament books were already widely used and recognized across churches long before Constantine, and councils like Nicaea dealt with who Jesus is, not which books belong in the Bible.

The Early Church Fathers and What They Gave Us

The early church fathers were not medieval theologians inventing Christianity. They were the first generation after the apostles, many of whom were personally discipled by them or by their closest companions, and they are how the apostolic memory survived.

Polycarp of Smyrna, who lived from about AD 69 to 155, was a disciple of the Apostle John and the bishop of Smyrna.

Irenaeus of Lyons, who lived from about AD 130 to 202 and was a disciple of Polycarp, wrote a work called Against Heresies in which he defended the four Gospels as the true apostolic witness.

Justin Martyr, who lived from about AD 100 to 165, was a philosopher who became a Christian.

Ignatius of Antioch, who lived from about AD 35 to 108 and was also a disciple of the Apostle John, was the bishop of Antioch.

Clement of Rome, who lived from about AD 35 to 99, was likely a companion of Paul and a leader of the church in Rome.

And this is why all of this matters: these men were not guessing, they were remembering; they did not invent, they guarded; they did not create, they preserved what the apostles handed down; and many of them paid for that faithfulness with their lives.

The Gnostic Texts

Now we come to the so-called “lost gospels.” In the second century, new movements arose that redefined salvation around secret revelation rather than the cross.

We all know what plagiarism is. That’s when you take someone else’s work and put your name on it so you get the credit. In the ancient world, the opposite problem existed. It was called pseudepigraphy (Soo-Duh-pig-graphy), when someone wrote their own ideas but put a famous apostle’s name on the cover to borrow his authority.

That’s what happened with many of the so-called ‘lost gospels.’ Books like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Judas were written by later authors who attached the names of apostles to their writings to make them sound credible, even though no recognized scholar believes those apostles actually wrote them.

These books were written between about AD 130 and 250, long after the apostles were gone. They are not biographies. They are not narratives. They are collections of sayings, visions, and mystical interpretations. They reflect later movements that reinterpreted Jesus in ways foreign to the Jewish, apostolic proclamation.

*No recognized literary scholar argues that these texts were written by the apostles whose names they bear.

These books were used by small fringe communities, but they were never accepted, preached, or treated as Scripture by the global church.

The early church rejected the Gospel of Thomas not because it was dangerous or inconvenient, but because it came from the wrong time, the wrong place, and the wrong worldview, reflecting a later mystical movement rather than the Jewish eyewitness world of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, who preserved the voice of Jesus from the first generation.

“6 I am amazed that you are so quickly turning away from him who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, a curse be on him! 9 As we have said before, I now say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, a curse be on him!” - Galatians 1:6-9 CSB

The Deuterocanonical Books

Not every book outside the Bible is a forgery, and that distinction matters. Which brings us to the Deuterocanonical books.

The Deuterocanonical books are different from the Gnostic texts. They are not forgeries. They are not late mystical rewrites of Jesus. They are Jewish writings from the time between the Old and New Testaments, written by people who loved Israel’s God and wanted to preserve Israel’s story. The word deuterocanonical literally means “second-level canon.” These books were respected, read, and spiritually valued, but they were never universally recognized as carrying the same authority as the Hebrew Scriptures Jesus and the apostles used.

Books like Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, and Maccabees occupied a unique space. They were meaningful. They were instructive. But their status as Scripture was debated.

Most early Christians did not read Hebrew. They read Greek. The Old Testament they used was a Greek translation called the Septuagint, and it included these Deuterocanonical books. That’s why Augustine, one of the greatest Christian thinkers, believed they should be treated as Scripture. Those were the books his churches read.

But Jerome, the scholar who translated the Bible into Latin, went back to the original Hebrew manuscripts. And he discovered that the Jewish Scriptures used by Jesus and the apostles did not include those books. So Jerome said, in effect, that these are spiritually valuable, but they are not inspired Scripture. Augustine disagreed. And the church lived with that disagreement for more than a thousand years.

That’s when the word Apocrypha comes in. It means “hidden” or “set apart.” It became the name for books that were valuable for reading but not accepted as Scripture. Catholics later used the word Deuterocanonical. Protestants used the word Apocrypha. Same books. Different judgment.

Then in the 1500s, a German monk named Martin Luther stood up and said the church had drifted from the authority of Scripture. He was not trying to start a new religion. He was trying to call the church back to God’s Word. Luther went back to the Hebrew Old Testament Jesus used and the Greek New Testament the apostles wrote, and when he saw that the Deuterocanonical books were not part of the Hebrew Scriptures, he placed them in a separate section called the Apocrypha. He was not attacking them. He was saying these are valuable books, but they are not the same as Scripture.

He wasn’t alone. John Calvin in Geneva, Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, and Reformers across Europe all came to the same conclusion. They believed Scripture alone must stand above every church, every council, and every tradition. That principle became known as Sola Scriptura. And they paid for it. Luther was excommunicated. Calvin was exiled. Many Reformers were imprisoned or killed. But they refused to let institutions redefine what God had said.

The Roman Catholic Church responded by calling the Council of Trent. In 1546 they made it binding teaching for the first time that the Deuterocanonical books are fully equal to the rest of the Old Testament, confirming lists that earlier councils had given (Hippo in 393, Carthage in 397, Florence in 1442). Before Trent, Christians could disagree. After Trent, Catholics could not.

This is also when the word catholic began to change. Originally it meant “universal”, the worldwide church holding the apostolic faith. The Reformers believed they were the true catholic church because they held to Scripture and the apostles. Rome began using catholic to mean loyalty to the Pope. And that split still shapes Christianity today.

So when Protestants do not include these books in the Old Testament, it is not because we removed them. It is because we kept using the Bible Jesus and the apostles used. This isn’t about tearing down history. It’s about preserving it.

Why Persecution Matters Today:

Now here is why persecution matters, not because suffering proves truth, since people can die for lies, but because suffering reveals motive, and the people who wrote and first preserved these Scriptures did not get rich or gain political power from them, they were ruined by them.

The apostles were beaten, imprisoned, and executed, with Peter being crucified, Paul being beheaded, and John being exiled, and then came the next generation, when Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John, was burned alive rather than deny Christ, Ignatius, another disciple of John, was thrown to wild beasts in Rome, Justin Martyr was executed for refusing to stop preaching, and Irenaeus was hunted for defending the apostolic Gospel.

Then came the defenders of doctrine, when Athanasius was exiled five times for refusing to deny the divinity of Jesus, and church leaders were stripped of their churches, their families, and their freedom, and then came the Reformers, with Martin Luther being declared an outlaw, John Calvin being driven from cities, William Tyndale being strangled and burned for translating the Bible into English, and men and women across Europe being imprisoned, tortured, and killed for insisting that God’s Word belonged to the people and not to an institution.

Across every generation the pattern is the same: the Bible was not carried forward by people who gained from it, it was carried forward by people who bled for it, because they did not die to prove the message was true, they died because they would not walk away from what they knew to be true, and if the Bible were a power grab someone would have cashed in, but instead they were hunted.

And this is why Hebrews 11 says that some were tortured refusing to accept release, others suffered mocking and flogging and chains and imprisonment, some were stoned, some were sawn in two, some were killed with the sword, and the world was not worthy of them, which means this is not blind faith, it is costly faith.

So when you hold the Bible in your hands today, in a generation of apps, translations, access, and comfort, you are holding something that came to you through prisons, fires, and exile, and the question is no longer whether you can trust the Bible, but whether you will honor what it cost to give it to you.

Closing:

So after everything we have seen tonight, here is what it really comes down to.

“31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples. 32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”” - John 8:31-32 CSB

All of this talk about Constantine, lost gospels, and hidden books sounds academic, but it is not. At the deepest level, these stories are not about history. They are about permission.

If the Bible is just a political document, then no one has authority over me. No one can tell me what sin is. No one can tell me what truth is. No one can tell me who God is. The ‘they manipulated it’ story doesn’t just explain history. It relieves the conscience. If Scripture is human, then I am not accountable to it. That is not a scholarly motivation. That is a spiritual one.

And that is why the alternative gospels are so appealing. They all share the same message. You are not a sinner who needs grace. You are a divine being who just needs awakening. No cross required. One story humbles you. The other empowers you. And modern people almost always choose the one that flatters them.

And conspiracy theories make it even easier, because they let you feel smarter, deeper, and more spiritually enlightened than everyone else. TikTok and podcasts reward this. Truth is often boring. Conspiracy is exciting.

Add to that a generation that has seen political lies, corporate scandals, church failures, and hypocrisy, and suddenly the idea that ‘the church hid the truth’ feels emotionally believable, even when it is historically false.

But here is the deepest layer of all. Hidden-knowledge spirituality bypasses repentance. The biblical gospel says, ‘You are wrong. You must turn. You must submit.’ The secret-knowledge gospel says, ‘You are special. You just need to discover who you really are.’ One calls you to the cross. The other calls you to self-realization. One wounds pride. The other feeds it.

And that is why scholars do not move the needle. Because this is not about evidence. It is about identity. People do not want to be sinners, dependent, accountable, or constrained. They want to be awakened, free, spiritual, and self-defined. So they choose a story that gives them that.

People are not rejecting the Bible because of evidence. They are rejecting institutional authority and looking for alternative narratives that feel more revealing, more exciting, and more empowering than the truth.

But even deeper than that, they are rejecting a God who tells them who they are, in exchange for a story that lets them define themselves.

That is not an academic crisis. That is a spiritual one.

And that brings us to the real question. At some point, this stops being about Constantine or councils or lost gospels, and it becomes something much closer to home.

The real question is not ‘Did the church manipulate the Bible?’ The real question is, ‘Do I want a God who has the right to tell me who I am?’

Because if this Book is truly God’s Word, then it does not just inform us. It confronts us. It calls us. It names our sin. It offers us grace. And it invites us to surrender.

So this morning, the question is not whether you can trust the Bible. The question is whether you are willing to trust the God who speaks through it.