THE GOSPELS APPEAR TO BE CONTRADICTORY BUT CHRISTIANS KNOW THEY ARE THE REAL STORY. This Is Not Because Of the Scientific Plausibility That Upholds The Validity Of The Scriptures, But Because Of A Personal Experience With The Resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible is an incredible book because it is written in such a way that only those who truly desire to know the truth will find it.

What makes Christians so sure the 4 gospels chosen for the Canon are the real story?

Happy Riches answer requested by Anonymous

One of the amazing truths about life, apart from the fact people die and cease to live, is we are able to know the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ and possess the assurance of this relationship, even though He is not physically with us everyday.

I cannot speak for other people, but for myself, having come to know Lord Jesus Christ, I was surprised afterwards to learn that the Bible instructs us to seek what I had experienced in meeting the only person who had risen from the dead.

The four Gospels were accepted by members of the church in the second century because these people had a relationship with Lord Jesus Christ and they understood that what was written therein was what the apostles had taught. What was taught from the majority of witnesses concurred with what was in the four gospels.

The authenticity of the Gospels has held up under investigation by many people applying varying techniques to fault them. Here are two:

1. Cold case detective J. Warner Wallace questioned the reliability of the Gospels (when questioning the integrity of the Bible). After applying the techniques he used to solve murder cases that had not been finalized for years, J. Warner Wallace concluded that the veracity of the Scriptures concerning the death and resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ was astonishingly true. He became a Christian.
2. Dr. Zukeran looks at five reasons why the Scriptures are authentic by looking at the internal and external evidences for the date, the reliability of the oral tradition, the written transmission of the texts and whether miracles are veritable.

Many people believe that there are aliens who control this planet. They point to evidence of circles (proven to have been made by mechanical means). They point to the many sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). They point to the people who claim they were kidnapped by aliens. They point to the inexplicably mutilated animals found in various places around the world. They point to the Roman Catholic Church and its many practices that correspond to pagan worship of the gods. They point to the inexplicable archaeological findings that testify to ancients possessing technology foreign to modern man—the most notable being the many massive stone structures that are made from what appears to be laser cut stone.

All of these reasons for people believing in aliens can be demonstrated from the Scriptures to be the result of ancient man and fallen angels. The Gospels have much more evidence of being reliable than the false view of aliens that is presented by people who are looking for intelligent life in outer space, rather than accepting that the ability to think that they possess has been given to them by their Creator.

The record of Lord Jesus Christ that we have been permitted to possess has been made available to inform us how the purpose of God was achieved in judging the god of this world. We were given four different perspectives. These may appear incongruent to the casual reader or anybody who merely wants to remain ignorant of the truth. Yet for those who have examined the gospels under forensic constraints, the fact that there are four different version is testament to their authenticity.

As Jesus said of the Old Testament bearing witness to him (John 5:39–40), the Gospels do so too, only more explicitly. Consider any other person in history. Not even the greatest of prophets or religious leaders come close to establishing the testament delivered by Jesus of Nazareth—let alone the testimony borne to Him by others today that He lives. As C.S. Lewis stated: “Either this man [Jesus] was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”

Understanding The Depth Of Knowledge That Comes With The Gospels