1. expected testimony
2. early testimony
3. eyewitness testimony
4. embarrassing testimony
5. excruciating testimony
Before we start looking at the five E's though let's address a question that is popping up more and more often these days thanks to books like Bart Erhman's Misquoting Jesus. The question is this: Do we have an accurate copy of the original N. T. documents? The answer is YES.
We have earlier manuscripts.
--25 year gap vs. 1000 year gap
Most ancient historical and non-historical documents have a much larger gap between when they were written and the earliest found copies. The New Testament manuscripts are much closer to the events they record.
We have more manuscripts.
--5700 copies vs. 10-20 copies
We simply have way more complete and partial manuscripts from the New Testament than from any other ancient writing.
We have more accurately copied manuscripts.
--99.9% accuracy vs. 90-95% accuracy
We have more abundantly supported manuscripts.
--18,000 non-Greek manuscripts and 36,000 quotations
It has been noted that almost the entire new testament can be reconstructed from the quotes of the early church leaders.
There is also an uncanny harmony between the books of the entire Bible, Old and New Testament. Consider this passage from Floyd McElveen's book, God's Word--Final, Infallible and Forever:
"Imagine 40 men, separated by centuries, coming from many different cultures, towns and backgrounds, some having limited access to a part of the work done by the others, some having no such access, working on a statue of Jesus. Each has his particular part of the statue to carve; one a toe; one an ear; another the neck; another the chin; a leg; a shoulder blade; and so on. After thousands of years, all these carvings are brought to one place and put together. Incredibly, they all fit perfectly, and a beautiful statue of Jesus is formed. Impossible, by chance! Possible only by a superintending act of a supervising God. This is exactly what we have in the Bible. Some 40 to 50 authors, working over a period of from 1500 to 1600 years, men educated and uneducated; ignorant to intellectual; from shepherds to statesmen; writing 66 books, come up with a perfectly unified book portraying one perfect person, the Lord Jesus Christ. There is absolutely no dissonance, no contradictions, but perfect harmony."
Now back to the Five E's. I'm going to break this down into five parts, so let's take a look at #1 in this post:
Expected Testimony
This has to do with prophecies from the Old Testament. The prophecies of the coming Messiah are fulfilled in only one person, Jesus. The Bible gives over 300 prophecies about Jesus. Most of these are written many centuries before He was born. Isaiah chapter 53, for example, gives detailed prophecies about Jesus written about 700 years before He came.
Here are some of the many prophecies fulfilled in Jesus:
Gen. 3:15--human race
Jer. 23:5; 33:15--line of David
Micah 5:2--in Bethlehem
Isa. 9:6--God and man
Mal. 3:1--visits Temple
Isa. 53:5-6--suffers for us
Zech. 12:10--hands and feet pierced (Jn. 19:18, 37)
Ps. 22:18--garments to be divided and lots cast for his clothing (Matt. 27:35)
Ps. 69:21--offered gall and vinegar to drink (Matt. 27:34)
Isa. 53:12--would die with criminals
Dan. 9:24--dies in 33 A.D.
Isa. 53:9--buried in a rich man's tomb (Matt. 27:57-60)
Isa. 53:11--rises from the dead
For a very detailed and complete list of prophecies and their fulfillment in Christ, go to the website--godandscience.org and click on prophecies of Christ.
I will close this post with this. Floyd McElveen gives us another good illustration of what he calls "marks of identification" in his book God's Word--Final, Infallible and Forever. See if this makes good sense to you.
"Suppose I agree to meet my blind date at the Greyhound Bus Station, 464 Liberty Street, at 8:00 p.m. She will wear a green hat and a lavender dress and will carry a purple purse. She has yellow hair and blue eyes, but has a black patch over her right eye because of a recent injury. She is one-legged, having lost her left leg, and is missing the little finger of her right hand. She wears a peg-leg. She has painted it a florescent yellow, with a blinking red light built in to keep folks from stumbling over her leg. She will wear a pink stocking on her one good leg and a maroon and white saddle-oxford on her one good foot. Do you honestly think I would have any trouble identifying the right girl at the Greyhound Bus Station at 8:00 p.m.?
I only gave about 11 marks of identification concerning this girl. Yet the chances are over a million to one against there being another girl with these identification characteristics being in that particular bus station at 8:00 p.m. God gave at least 333 marks of identification about Jesus, concerning the time and place of his birth, and details about His life, death and resurrection. These "marks of identification" were given centuries before He came so that there could be no doubt about identifying Him when He came! All these 333 marks of identification were perfectly fulfilled in Jesus!"
So we have expected testimony, prophetic scripture that tells us of the coming Messiah. Only Jesus fulfilled these prophecies, and in so doing He has given us very substantial proof that the N.T. is true.