1. There is no single reason that people choose to reject the truth of the Bible.  Your suggestion of the reason is not the correct one, in my opinion, for this reason.  Jesus is telling us that most will be condemned (Matthew 7:13-14 for example).  But that is the effect, not the cause.  It is not the reason for their rejection, but a reflection of their choice to not believe.  Jesus does not cause people to reject him!  The causes of unbelief are varied.  Some choose not to believe because to believe means that they must submit to him, but they are not willing to do so.  Others do not believe because to believe means that they will have to repent, and they are not willing to repent, so they choose not to believe.  Others have experienced extreme trauma which blinds them to the possibility of a loving God.  Others have been deceived by intellectual arguments from opponents of Christianity..  Others are caught up in false religion which they hold onto, despite evidence against those religions for various reasons.  I am sure many choose not to believe for more than one of the reasons I have listed, and there are other reasons as well.  Yours is a simple question with a complex answer.

2. That is an easy question.  Yes, archaeology and biblical accounts are in excellent agreement!   I have taught on this topic many times.  I can give dozens of examples.  I am attaching a couple of documents with many of those examples.  Let me put it this way.  There are many archaeological finds which support the reliability of the Bible, and there are none which conclusively disprove the historical reliability of the Bible.

3. This appears to be a simple question, but it is not necessarily so.  In Exodus we have a statement about the number of fighting men in Israel during the Exodus.  In Exodus 12:37 it is stated that there were “about 600,000” men of fighting age, plus women and children.  A decent estimate is a bit shy of two million total.  Some have argued for a smaller number based on various other passages. I will let you do your own research on their reasoning, but this seems to be the most likely answer to the question.  This would be a massive number of people–a number which could not be supported in the wilderness without the miraculous intervention of God.  Could they have been there without leaving a trace?  The answer is a definite yes!  The number is large, but, if we take the Bible’s description of Israel in the wilderness at face value, the people lived off the land and stayed in tents.  They did not produce crops and they certainly did not build large buildings.  There would literally be not a trace of their travels, except possibly the remains of a fire, which would not provide evidence that it was the Jewish people who had been there.  I have argued similarly for the reason that there is no trace of the Israelites in Egypt.  They were slaves who lived in hovels. They lived in slave quarters and would have left no identifiable remains in the cities of Egypt.  I do not expect that we will ever find smoking gun archaeological proof of Israel, either in Egypt or in the wilderness.  Those who look for such evidence are likely to come up empty-handed.

John Oakes