Bible Reading Is Up, But Belief is Down (Why?)

Research shows that young people are reading the Bible more today than any generation in a decade. And at the same time, they're trusting it less than any generation before them. Both of these are true, but nobody actually is explaining why. Today, I'm gonna show you what's actually happening, and I wanna give you real reasons why you can trust the Bible as God's word for yourself. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. I wanna show you the numbers of the increase in Bible reading, because these should stop us all in our tracks. In 2025, weekly Bible reading in America jumped to 42%. That is up from 30% just one year earlier. That's a 12-point surge in a single year. And do you know who's driving that? Well, it's Generation Z, or Gen Z. Weekly Bible reading among young adults jumped from 30% to 49% in 12 months. Now, that sounds like great news, right? Well, here's the problem. In 1980, 40% of Americans believed that the Bible was the literal word of God, so 1980, 40%. By 2020, that number had dropped to 20%. So we have a generation that is reading the Bible more now than ever before, and they're believing it less than ever before as well. How is that even possible?

Here's what I believe is happening. I wanna give you my perspective. Scholars call this today the curiosity gap. Your generation is looking for answers, real answers to real questions about life and meaning, identity and purpose, which we should be. And so you're opening your Bible, if you're a Gen Z or maybe even Gen Alpha, and you're looking for answers. But the problem is social media and AI have done something dangerous. They have trained all of us to be skeptical of every source. You fact-checked everything. You learned that influencers that you follow lie, that algorithms manipulate us, and that any headline you read is probably missing something. So you open your Bible asking questions. But before you've read 10 verses, a voice comes in your head and says, can you really trust this? Can I really trust what I'm reading? And that question, can I trust the source, stops you before you've given it a fair chance. So I wanna answer that question, not with catchy slogans or Sunday school answers. I want to start a four-part series that you're gonna wanna lock in for, because I wanna give you real reasons to trust the Bible. And I wanna start where most people never start, and that is what the Bible actually is.

This is the first of four parts of a series I'm entitling Why I Can Trust the Bible. Now, before we talk about how we got the Bible, we need to understand what the Bible's purpose is, because most people think of the Bible as this law book or a rule book or a religious manual, if you will, and that's not what it is, although it contains laws and rules and guidelines. The Bible at the core, the irreducible minimum, coming close, is a record of God communicating with his people for the purpose of us having a relationship with him. It begins in Genesis with God walking in the garden with Adam. It spans through the building of the tabernacle, the construction of the temple. Every one of those structures is a symbol of God coming down to dwell with his people. Then we move to Jesus, God's son, who literally in the incarnation comes out of heaven to dwell with us in human form. Now, if you read the end of the book, Genesis 1 to Revelation 21, you're gonna see it culminates with God dwelling once and for all with his people. He will be their God, they will be his people, and he will be with them. Where? In the new heavens and the new earth.

Not somewhere out there far away in the by and by abyss. No, here on earth in a renewed place that God will redeem. Now, from Genesis to Revelation, this book has one message, the Bible. God is pursuing you, and he has a plan to bring you back to him. That's not a rule book, look at me. That's a love story. And here's what the Bible says about itself, 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17. All scripture is inspired by God, and it's profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man or woman of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. The word inspired in the Greek is theonoustos. It literally means, means God breathed. This isn't a book about God. It's a book from God. And that changes everything about how you and I approach the Bible. Now, I need to make a distinction here that I think is critical before we venture into this series. The Bible is the objective word of God. Now, here's what I mean. When I say objective, here's what I mean. The Bible is true regardless of what any person says about it. It's the word of God whether you read it or ignore it,

whether you believe it or doubt it, whether you obey it or reject it. Let me give you an illustration that I think will help. When you debate with someone over whether the Bible is true, it's a lot like debating over whether a knife is sharp. You don't determine if a knife is sharp by staring at it. You don't hold it in your hand and say, oh, it should look sharp. You test it. You test the knife to see if it cuts. The Bible doesn't need you to vote on it on whether it's true or not. It simply is true. And your job and my job as believers is to give people the truth of this book and let the, quote, sword of the spirit do what only it can do. The Bible says when the word of God goes forth, it will always accomplish what it intends to accomplish. But someone always pushes back at this point and they say, well, Robbie, wasn't the Bible written by men? Well, yes. And here's why this actually makes it more reliable than less reliable. Listen to 2 Peter chapter one, verses 20 through 21. Here's what Peter says. Above all, you know this, no prophecy of scripture comes from the prophet's own interpretation because no prophecy ever came by the will of God.

Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Listen to me. God is in the business of using people to accomplish his purpose. He always has been. It's always been that way. And the evidence for that in this book is mathematically staggering. Here's the number that changes everything for me. Watch this. The Bible was comprised by 40 authors, 66 books, 1,500 years of compiling these books together, written on three different continents in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, without the use of internet, AI, or Wikipedia. No way is there any evidence for an author writing in 800 BC to look up what a prophet said 400 years before him in 1200 BC. It was virtually impossible. And yet, when you lay all 66 books alongside each other, they tell the same unified, coherent, redemptive story without chat GPT, Grok, or Gemini. One story of God's plan to save mankind from sin through one man, Jesus Christ. The Old Testament talked about the Messiah who would come. The New Testament looks back at his arrival and crucifixion. Think about what that would take to fabricate.

You would need to coordinate 40 different authors living across 1,500 centuries in three different languages on three different continents without any means of modern communication, and somehow produce a book without contradictions at all in its central message, without the Holy Spirit guiding every single word. By the way, these men penned the words, but it's the Holy Spirit who gave them the words. To do that would be mathematically and practically impossible. Now, I have read or tried to have read the Bible in my own life every single day for 23 years since I surrendered my life to Christ in 2002. And here's the thing I've learned. The more I read it, the more I find things I've never seen before. Connections between Genesis and Revelation that no human conspiracy could have manufactured. Types and shadows in the Old Testament that find their fulfillment in the New Testament. Not because someone planned them in a back room with a manipulative, no, but because one author was writing the entire story together through all 40 of the men. Friends, that's not coincidence. That's a miracle. So let's come back to where we started. In the future videos, I'm gonna talk about the manuscript purpose

and why we have all these manuscripts compared to the world. I'm gonna give you reasons to defend the Bible you believe in, so you wanna hang with us. But I wanna come back to where we started. Our generation, Generation Z, is reading the Bible more than ever before, but they're believing it less. And I said I'll answer why, and here's my honest answer. I think many of you come to the Bible with the wrong question. You come asking, is it true? Before you've ever asked, well, what does it say? See, you've been trained by social media to make judgments before you've ever heard the evidence, or even investigated it for yourself. A lot of people know a lot about the Bible, but they haven't actually read the Bible for themselves. I've heard people say, well, I've read the Bible before. Well, friends, you don't read the Bible, look at me. The Bible reads you. The Bible's like a mirror to your soul. You don't read it like a book on the shelf and then put it back. You continually are nourished by the word of God. Here's the big difference between the Eastern culture of Jesus' day and the Western American European culture of our day, influenced by Hellenism and Romanism. Here's the difference. In Jesus' day, they read the Bible very differently or heard the Bible and studied it. In today's culture, we read the Bible

for information about a topic. That's what we do. We learn my life falling apart, I go into the Bible. I need help in my marriage, I go into the Bible. I need to know my future, I go into the Bible. In the Old Testament, in the Eastern culture of Jesus' day, the audience Jesus was ministering to, they read the Bible not for information about a topic. They read the Bible for intimacy with a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. Friends, if you're not growing more in love with the Jesus of the Bible, then you're not reading the Bible that Jesus gave us to read. Here's the thing. We live in a world where people skim the Bible the way they scroll TikTok. They're looking for a reason to stop rather than a reason to stay. So here's my challenge, and I wanna leave you with this. Have you actually searched the claims of this Bible for yourself? Not what someone told you about the Bible. Well, that's what my mom said it meant, or that's what the guy online, that's what a TikTok, no, no, have you searched it out for yourself? Not what someone else told you, not what you saw on a YouTube comment section. Have you actually opened the Bible with genuine curiosity, the same curiosity that's driving your generation back, if you're Gen Z or Gen Alpha, back to the Bible,

and actually investigate what it says? Sadly, most people that argue against the Bible have never actually really read the Bible they're criticizing. That's like saying Michael Jordan isn't the greatest basketball player of all time. Can I get an amen? Without ever watching a single game, and I get it. Most people are saying LeBron is the greatest. Well, a lot of those young folks have never seen Michael Jordan play like I have. I didn't miss a game growing up. I had posters on the wall and gummy bears in the box still posted to the wall, Wheaties and shoes. I mean, I was all into Jordan. I've watched both of these men play and I've investigated. Now, I know I'm biased. MJ's the goat. But the question isn't why should I trust the Bible? The question after an honest investigation is why would I not? In the next video, I'm gonna show you something that really solidified everything for me. It is a mathematical proof that Jesus of Nazareth is exactly who he claimed to be. And if you like numbers and mathematical equations and connections, this one's gonna be for you. If this video has helped you, let me encourage you to send this out to someone who needs it,

someone who's questioning the word of God or wanting to know if it's the word that God gave us or written by men. Let me encourage you to share it. Also, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, go ahead and do so. Like the video. It helps us share it on the internet. And if you haven't hyped the video, someone said, I didn't know you could even hype videos. You actually can. So let me encourage you to do all of that. I wanna thank you in advance. Really helps us out. And until next time, get into the word until the word gets into you.