Someone Is Going to Challenge Your Faith. Are You Ready?

The Word at the Table

I'm Neal Reyes, The Entrepreneurs' Pastor, and I'm glad you're back at the table. Two words for you again this week. One for your faith and one for your leadership. The faith word this week is one I believe you need to have in your hands, because someone in your life is going to come at you with a question you need to be ready for. Let's get into it.

This Week's Word

The Opening: What Do You Say When Someone Tells You the Bible Was Written by Men?

Let me ask you something.

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and they said to you, I don't believe the Bible. It was written by men. It's full of contradictions. It's outdated. It was written for a different time and it has no relevance for today.

Maybe it came from a family member. Maybe a coworker. Maybe someone you love deeply who used to sit in church right next to you.

And in that moment, did you know what to say? Or did you feel that familiar knot in your stomach where you believed in the Word but you couldn't find the words to defend it?

If that has ever happened to you, this word is for you today.

Because I want to give you something you can carry into that conversation with confidence. Not arrogance. Not religiosity. But real evidence. The kind of evidence that, by the world's own standards, by historians' own criteria, makes the Bible the most verified document in the history of the human race.

Part One: They Can't Discredit What They Can't Disprove

We are in Part 2 of our series Eternity: Waking Up the Church on Champion's Walk. Last week we talked about the urgency of eternity and the danger of Comfort Christianity. This week I want to address the number one weapon people use to avoid the truth of God's Word.

They try to discredit the Bible.

And here is what I want you to understand before we go any further. The real reason people reject the Bible is not because of a lack of evidence. It is because of what the Bible requires of them. It requires a standard of living that they are not willing to submit to. And when the Word says something that conflicts with the lifestyle they want to keep, it is easier to call the book inaccurate than to face what the book is actually saying.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 NKJV says it this way. "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables."

God told us exactly what was going to happen. And the fact that it is happening right now is not a sign that God's Word is failing. It is proof that the prophecy was fulfilled.

Faith Anchor #1: The Bible predicted its own rejection. That makes it a fulfilled prophecy, not a failed document.

Now let me take you somewhere I think is going to be powerful for you. I want to walk you through how historians determine whether or not a manuscript is accurate. Because what they discovered about the Bible using their own standards, not ours, is something that nobody who rejects the Bible ever wants to talk about.

Here is what historians look for. First, the time gap. That is the distance between when the original document was written and when the first surviving copy appeared. The shorter the gap, the closer the copy is to the original and the less opportunity there was for errors or changes to creep in. Second, the number of copies. The more copies that exist, the stronger the case for accuracy. And third, the geographic spread. The more locations those copies came from across different time periods, the more confident historians are that the document is true and unchanged.

So let me walk you through the top five ancient manuscripts that historians consider the most verified documents in the world, outside of the Bible.

The collected works of Plato. Seven copies. The first copies appeared around 1,200 to 1,300 years after the original. Historians say it is accurate.

Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, his firsthand account of his military campaigns. Ten copies. First surfaced within a 1,000 year gap. Historians call it accurate.

The Annals of Tacitus, the historical record of the Roman Empire. Twenty copies. Again, within about a 1,000 year gap. Accepted without question.

The collected works of Aristotle, covering law, biology, physics, ethics. Forty-nine copies. Started appearing around a 1,400 year gap. Historians say it is true and not to be debated.

And then the gold standard, the one historians point to when they want to talk about the most verified ancient manuscript in the world. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey combined. Around 1,900 copies. Surfaced within a 400 to 500 year gap. Nobody questions it. Nobody tries to discredit it. By historical standards it stands without challenge.

Now let me tell you about the Bible.

The Old Testament was written by over 40 authors across a span of 1,500 years, from three different continents, in three different languages, telling one consistent story. Think about what that means mathematically. Forty different people, separated by centuries and geography, writing in three languages, and they are all telling the same story. The probability of that happening by coincidence is not just low. It is essentially impossible.

And what does the manuscript evidence look like?

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the historians' gold standard, has approximately 1,900 copies. The Old Testament alone has over 17,000 manuscripts. The New Testament has over 24,000 manuscript copies and fragments. In the original Greek alone, over 5,800 manuscripts were found. And the earliest fragments of the New Testament began surfacing around 130 AD, which means within 35 to 40 years of the original writings.

You want to compare that? Homer's best copies showed up 400 to 500 years after the originals. Caesar, 1,000 years. Plato, 1,200 years. The Bible, 35 to 40 years. And here is why that matters beyond just the numbers. People who were alive when Jesus walked the earth were still living when these early copies were being made and circulated. That means if a copy was wrong, they had every opportunity to say so. They did not, because the copies were accurate.

Nobody questions Homer's works. Nobody tries to say Aristotle's writings were invented. But they come after the Bible by a thousand manuscripts or more and by hundreds of years in gap time.

By the world's own standard. By historians' own criteria. The Bible is not just verified. It is the most verified document in the history of the world.

Faith Anchor #2: The most verified book in history does not need man's approval to be true.

So why do people still reject it? Because the evidence is not actually the issue. Romans 1:25 NKJV describes it plainly. "They exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever."

And verse 28 follows with this. "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting."

When a person hardens their heart long enough, the evidence becomes irrelevant to them. They have not become smarter. They have traded truth for a lie. And the more educated they become in the things of the world while rejecting God, the more they fulfill the very scripture that describes them. They profess to be wise and have become fools.

But here is what I want you to carry with you. God does not abandon people. People walk away from God. And He is always ready to receive them back. His love for people does not change based on what they do or do not believe. There is nothing a person can do to make God love them less. And there is nothing they can do to make Him love them more. His love is constant. But He is also a perfect gentleman, and He will not force Himself on anyone who chooses to close that door.

The church needs to wake up to the reality that the world is not waiting for more judgment. It is waiting for someone who loves them enough to tell them the truth and be willing to back it up.

You have more evidence than you think. Use it.

Part Two: Stop Sprinting. Start Scaling.

Let me bring you the second word for today, and this one is for every leader, entrepreneur, and high performer who is running at full speed right now and wondering why it still does not feel like enough.

I want to talk to you about slowing down to speed up.

I know that sounds counterintuitive. Everything in business culture tells you to go faster. Grind harder. Stay later. Sprint longer. And if you slow down, you are falling behind. That is the message most high performers have been living by.

But I want to challenge that thinking today with something that is both a business principle and something I have personally lived out in my own work, and I want to show you why the leaders who learn this concept are the ones who actually win long term.

Slowing down is not quitting. Let me say that clearly before we go any further. Slowing down is not giving up. It is not weakness. It is not backing off from your calling or your goals. Slowing down is a strategic decision. In fact, it may be one of the most intelligent business decisions you ever make, because the leaders who know when to pull back are the ones who never run out of gas when it matters most.

Leadership Truth Bomb #1: You are not falling behind. You are recalibrating for something greater.

Here is what I see when I coach high performers and executives. The ones who are constantly in sprint mode often confuse activity with progress. They are busy. They are working. They are moving. But they have never stopped long enough to ask whether what they are doing is actually moving the needle in the direction they intend to go.

Speed without structure creates waste. It wastes time, it wastes energy, and it wastes the potential of everyone around you. If you are a leader and you are always in go mode, your team feels the pressure of that pace. Some of them will try to match it. And when people operate at a pace they cannot sustain, you do not get their best. You get their burnt out. And burnout does not produce elevation. It produces exhaustion.

Leadership Truth Bomb #2: Hustle without structure leads to exhaustion, not elevation.

I want to open the door of transparency here and share something from my own life, because this is not just theory for me.

Several months back I was at a mastermind event and I connected with a gentleman from Colombia who has built a very successful podcast on finances. When he learned about The Executive Perspective, he challenged me to do 100 podcast episodes in 100 days. And when he said it, something resonated with me at the core. I knew I could not dismiss it.

But before I committed to anything, I went before the Lord and prayed about it. I sought His direction. Because everything I build, I build from that foundation. He always sees the end from the beginning, and His wisdom is what has guided everything I have accomplished in business and in ministry.

What He showed me was not 100 in 100 days. It was 90 episodes across three sprints of 30, with rest built in between. And He gave me a specific instruction. After the first 30, I was to stop. Reassess. Go back before Him and make sure I was not neglecting anything before I continued.

We launched 30 podcasts in 30 days and it was exhilarating. It was work. It showed up wearing overalls, as I like to say. But it was wonderful. And when the 30 days were done, He gave me a one week instruction. Rest. Completely unplug. No recording, no editing, no strategizing about new episodes. Just rest.

And then He shifted the plan again. Instead of going back to one episode every day, He moved me to five episodes a week. At first that felt like I was giving something up. It felt like I was losing two days of output per week. But I trusted the instruction.

And what happened was this. By doing five instead of seven, I got two days back to focus on other strategic areas of the business. My impact per episode went up. My clarity went up. My capacity to think and plan and build expanded because I was not in perpetual output mode. I went from maintaining velocity to actually building momentum.

That is the difference. Velocity is speed in one direction. Momentum is what builds when your energy, your focus, and your structure are all aligned and moving together. One is exhausting. The other is sustainable.

Leadership Truth Bomb #3: Pacing is not passive. It is precision.

And here is the framework I want to give you. Know when to sprint and when to rest. That is maturity in leadership. The rabbit in the old story was faster. But the turtle won the race because the turtle ran a pace it could maintain for the entire distance. The rabbit sprinted, hit exhaustion, stopped to rest, and ended up sleeping instead. Speed without pacing is not an advantage. It is a liability.

Leadership Truth Bomb #4: You are not sacrificing momentum. You are building a runway.

Runways do not slow down a plane. They are what makes the takeoff possible. And when you slow down to get clear, to get focused, to get aligned with the right direction and the right pace, you are not losing ground. You are building the runway that allows you to take off and sustain that elevation.

Measure what you are doing. Ask yourself regularly whether what you are working on is actually moving your needle. If it is not moving your needle, it may be a good thing in the wrong priority. And a good thing in the wrong priority is still noise. Cut the noise. Lock in the clarity. And then go.

I want you to know I believe in you. You have something great on the inside of you. And the breakthrough you are looking for is not always on the other side of going harder. Sometimes it is on the other side of going smarter. Slow down long enough to get your structure right, and watch what happens when you take off.

Take This With You

Two things this week, one for each lane.

On the faith side, I want you to take the manuscript evidence from today's word and put it somewhere accessible. You do not need to memorize every number, but know this much. The Bible has over 41,000 manuscript copies and fragments, and the earliest ones appeared within 35 to 40 years of the original writings. No other ancient document in history comes close to that. The next time someone tells you the Bible cannot be trusted, you have an answer. And deliver it in love, not in debate.

On the leadership side, take an honest look at your current pace. Ask yourself whether you are running fast or running smart. If you have been in sprint mode for a long time with no structure and no reset built in, that is your assignment this week. Build in the pause. Identify one area where you have been moving fast but not necessarily moving forward, and make a deliberate decision about it. Clarity before velocity.

From the Table Last Week

On Champion's Walk, my faith show that teaches Real Help For Real Hope, I brought you They Can't Discredit What They Can't Disprove. This is Part 2 of our series Eternity: Waking Up the Church. I walked you through the manuscript evidence that makes the Bible the most verified document in the history of the world, broke down why people reject the Bible based not on a lack of evidence but on what the Bible requires of them, and brought you two faith anchors that will equip you to stand confidently in God's Word when someone comes at you with questions. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytNLflY_jTo&list=PLMPDSgKkGZNvHLzeBuhqHvZhuCSMEQEgV

On The Executive Perspective, my leadership and business show that delivers Real Help For Real Success, I brought you Slow Down to Speed Up: Why Strategic Pauses Unlock Explosive Growth. I broke down why speed without structure creates waste, shared the behind-the-scenes of my own 90 podcasts in 90 days journey and how God redirected the pace, and delivered four leadership truth bombs on why the leaders who learn to slow down are the ones who scale the fastest and go the furthest. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxlEeKuVlos&list=PLMPDSgKkGZNuJ-dNFVFCWc3lb7BmJ07mM

Until Next Time

The Bible is not on trial. It never has been. And the next time someone asks you to defend it, you have the evidence to do exactly that. Slow down long enough to know where you are going, and you will be amazed at how fast you get there.

This Wednesday on Champion's Walk, we continue our series Eternity: Waking Up the Church with Part 3. You do not want to miss it.

Then Saturday on The Executive Perspective, I have something powerful coming for the leaders and entrepreneurs who are building right now. Be there.

I'll see you at the table next Tuesday.

Neal Reyes, The Entrepreneurs' Pastor