Were they playing telephone or is the writing on the papyrus?

"repeat after me"

So how did the message get to us today about Jesus?

Yes, many wrote about Him. Thanks to St. Jerome (a great man and Early Church Father-just love these guys) he spent most of his time translating these ancient scripts written from so long ago into the entire Bible, completed in 405 AD.  From the original languages, into Latin, the language of the former Empire.The Old Testament and New Testament make up the Bible-73 books in total.

But how sure can we be that what we read in the Bible today is what the original authors wrote? I mean hand copying these writings,over centuries could have caused error in transmission (no printing presses then).Oral traditions may not be trustworthy but like playing the child's game telephone? Yikes! Well, we can be confident about what these authors wrote and that hand copying and oral tradition came through:

• There are far more copies of the New Testament documents than of any other comparable ancient document
• The manuscripts go back closer in time to the originals than for any other ancient documents
• The manuscripts are consistent - there are no major or significant changes
• No other ancient Greek books are known from such a wide range of copies, written so close to the times when their authors composed  them.

The evidence for the New Testament documents is much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors whose authenticity no one questions. There are 5,309 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin manuscripts, 9,300 other manuscripts, as well as over 36,000 citings in the writings of the Early Church Fathers (dating back to the early second century). No one in history has so many writings written about a person from that era, no one!

 The Old Testament (written before Christ was born) fulfills and supports the claim that Jesus is God.

•  No one else in the history of the human race has had a whole collection of books written about him before he was born. Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies written in the Old Testament (all written over at least 400 years-some even thousands of years-before the time of Jesus) There were prophecies regarding His forerunner (John the Baptist), His identify, His birthplace, how He would be born,what He would do, the purpose of His life and death, and even the details of how He would die.

When we look at The New Testament (when Jesus was on earth) someone might say, maybe He tried to live His life to fulfill these prophecies deliberately to show that He was the Messiah, the Christ foretold in the Old Testament. The problem with this suggestion is that:1) The sheer number of prophecies would make it extremely difficult to fulfill 2) There were prophecies that He could not control like when he was born, the exact manner of His death and where he would be buried, etc.

Historical proof is so substantial and  I have only skimmed the surface. There was no email, or postal service and there are too many writings out there about Him that coincide with each other. It is not by faith alone that I believe, but also by substantial proof as well. No children games here, it was written *smile* I actually saw some of the authentic writings on papyrus this past summer at the Royal Ontario Art Museum when some of the the Dead Sea Scrolls (the original texts) were on display.

So glad I stayed with this Church of strength, that upholds the truth, teachings and writings these past 2,000 years. Continuing to transfer this ancient but important message to the ends of the earth that Jesus is God and Saviour over the whole earth-Amen!