The Authority of the Bible

I thought I'd left my notes back at the seat. Then turn out they didn't.

If we look back to about the 7th century AD, that'd be about the middle 600s, there was a dramatic change happening in the Middle East. Basically, the Muslim Revolution, as it's often called, was sweeping and conquered a great part of the world. The new converts of this new religion swept out and used military conquests when necessary, persuasion when they could, to start telling, turning people to this new religion of one God.

Now what's interesting, we don't think of it this way now because of the strong animosity we see, but when Muslims first came into a lot of areas, they gave special treatment to Jews and to Christians, rather than, you know, thinking of them as their mortal enemies.

At that time, the Muslims looked at Jews and Christians and they gave them special treatment because they respected the fact that both of these groups were religions that were guided by holy Scripture. And they had a term that they used, I'm not sure how you pronounce it in Arabic, but they called them people of the book. Now you might not realize this, but Muslims do believe that Abraham is the father of the Arabs and that much of the Old Testament is valid and part of the New Testament.

They don't recognize Jesus as the Son of God, but they believe He was one of the prophets and that Muhammad was the final prophet. Now, of course, there was also the advantage. Unlike many of the other peoples that the Muslims were conquering, Christians and Jews believed in only one God. Most of the other groups were following pagan religions that believed in multitudes of gods. So there was that special distinction, though, believing in one God and being people of the book. Today, we're still people of the book.

And that's why I wanted to give that story to focus in on that. We have a set of writings that we believe are God's Word. Now, the authority of the Bible is one of the fundamental beliefs of the United Church of God. And one reason I thought it's very important for us to focus on it. It's one of the things our church believes, but I thought, is it one of your fundamental beliefs?

And if it is, why? Or why not? That's something we want to think about, because it occurred to me, if someone starts coming to the truth, there are a couple of things you have to establish in your mind before you can move on to others. First of all, you have to believe that there is a God and that He's working with people. And then you need to come to the understanding and conviction that the Bible is His Word, that it reveals His will and teachings.

Because then, after that, all of our other teachings come from the Bible. So, it's sort of foundational. You've got to believe and be convinced that the Bible is God's Word, so that you can use it to then learn how you order your life.

Let's go to Matthew 4, chapter 4. Matthew 4 in chapter 4, and as is my habit, I have quite a few scriptures. In some parts of the sermon, a lot of scriptures, some parts not as many. But this, of course, was part of the classic confrontation where, after Christ had fasted for 40 days, He confronted Satan the devil, and Satan was challenging him.

And, of course, Christ overcame him largely by referring back to God's written Word. And here He answered one of Satan's temptations, where He said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Now, assuming that the Son of God really did say this, who could argue with it? Of course, God's telling you to live by every word that comes out of His mouth. But there are some who would question whether Jesus really said this or not. Some will question, well, was Jesus of Nazareth really the Son of God? Some might say, well, He was a good teacher, and He taught many moral principles, but, you know, saying He was the Son of God is a bit too far. And that line of questioning leads to some basic questions.

You know, is the Bible the authoritative Word of God? You know, is the Bible God's Word? Now, part of how we're going to answer that is we're going to get into what does it say about itself?

Now, does it say it's the Word of God, or did we just make that assumption? How did we get this set of writings? I keep wanting to look at it as, you can't have much better prop than a Bible, since we all have one here, but how did we get it?

Is it complete? And is it accurate? All those things are important to understand. Now, let me give you some background. What we know of is the Holy Bible, and it's interesting, matter of fact, almost all of them will say that on the front, Holy Bible, because the word Bible comes from Greek biblios, which simply means book. So any book could be called a Bible. The Holy Bible is this particular set of books.

It was written by 40 independent authors. 40 different writers contributed to this, living in 10 different countries over the space of about 1,500 years.

They represented 20 different occupations, included among them kings, statesmen, fishermen, priests, a physician, several full-time prophets, a tax collector, some farmers, a general, and a tent-making rabbi. I like that last one. I pulled this out of one article from previous years in the church. But with all those people working in all that spread-out area over many years of time, we claimed that the real author was God Himself. Of course, all those other men put pen to paper, but we say it was God who wrote it. And of course, if you spend time studying this, it's easy to see.

There is a certain unity to it that's kind of surprising if it was 20 different or 40 different writers, you know, with 20 different occupations, they're spread all over the place, and yet the Bible all fits together. So let's start by saying, what does the Bible say about itself? And we'll turn to what it says, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16. 2 Timothy 3, 16, very important Scripture for what the Bible tells us. This doesn't tell us about its origin and what it's for, one we quote many times. 2 Timothy 3, 16 says, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. And we're often, we like to say that the Greek that's translated inspiration could be translated God breathed, God breathed out these words. It's given by inspiration of God, and it's profitable for doctrine. That's for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness. Bible is good for all of these. It can teach us how to live, what we should do and what we should not do, how to be righteous. Now, this alone says all of its inspired by God. That's a pretty clear claim, but of the many who put paper or pen to paper, there's even more. If you look through the Bible, and I didn't count these all myself, I'm saying I drew on some other people for research, but there's more than 3,800 times that writers used some variation of the phrase, the word of the Eternal came to me, saying this or that. Let's go to one of them in Ezekiel 6.

Ezekiel 6. I don't actually read the first verse. Matter of fact, I should have had you turn here first, because this is what I just read to you. Now the word of the Eternal came to me, saying, and he goes on, Son of man, set your face towards the mountains. That's a pretty bold statement. He's saying, God talked to me, and he told me this, and so I wrote it down. We can go even further. If you'll flip back to Exodus, Exodus 33, we want to talk about some bold claims. If someone walks up to you now and says, hey, the word of God came to me and he told me to tell you this, we might think twice. Now there's a reason for that, and we'll come to that later, but there was a time when God was talking to people, and some he talked to more personally than others. Exodus 33 in verse 11 says here, the Eternal spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend, and then he'd return to the camp, and it goes on from there, but God spoke to Moses face to face the way you might talk to one of your friends. God didn't call him on the phone, because the cell service isn't real good around Mount Sinai, but they got together face to face. How many of us can claim that? Well, there is one other person who makes a claim like that. If you go to Galatians, as I said, we're going to flip back and forth a little at first here, and then we'll settle down, but Galatians chapter 1, the Apostle Paul has a similar claim. Now he's talking about the gospel that he's preaching, because in the book of Galatians, of course, Paul was writing this to combat some false teachings that had been going around him, talks about other gospels. But referring to his gospel in Galatians 1 verse 12, he says, I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul is saying, I didn't get this teaching from some other man, I got it from Jesus Christ directly. And if you turn forward a few pages to 1 Corinthians chapter 9, we can piece this together to see how we got it from Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 9 verse 1, Paul is having to defend his position to the Church of Corinth, but he says, am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? And are you not my work in the Lord? So we put these two together, Paul's saying, I saw Jesus, and that's where I got my teaching. We understand Paul was knocked down on the road to Damascus, struck blind, and of course, then he hears this voice saying, hey Paul, what are you doing? Stop persecuting me.

Persecuting you? Well, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus. Now go into town and somebody's going to come to you and tell you what to do. And the narrative goes off from there. It skips some parts. If we piece other places together, we know that he said he went out into the desert for about three, three and a half years, and from what we can understand, Jesus came and appeared to him and taught him, similarly to the way he taught the other disciples, in person.

So the writers of the Bible say very clearly, in some cases they spoke to God directly, when not that, at least they were inspired. The Word came to them somehow. So the Bible is making some strong claims about itself. Now we've already seen that it says that it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction. Let's see a little bit more. John 17 verse 17.

That's funny. I often refer to ones as memory scriptures if they're ones that I memorized.

And this was one of them. I remember memorizing this in college because it's a foundational principle, and I like the ones that are easy to remember. 1717 sort of comes together. But this is part of Jesus's prayer to the Father shortly before he was crucified.

And by talking to the Father, he says, sanctify them by your truth.

Your word is truth. Think about that phrase. Your word is truth.

Now philosophers will spend a lot of time discussing and debating what is truth? How do we determine truth? This is a pretty bold statement. This is saying your word, God's word, which other places are saying that the Bible is God's word, that's the standard of truth.

If it's God's word, it is truth. If it's not, you know, it's not necessarily. Anything that contradicts God's word can't be truth. Let's go a few pages earlier in John to John chapter 10 and verse 35.

Okay. I don't know if anybody knows the clock in the back of the room is off.

It's about 20 till 8, according to that. So I've got a long time before I have to be done.

I don't think I'll go four hours, but sorry, I got sidetracked. I just looked up there. Luckily, I have my watch on. John 10 verse 35. Here, Jesus is in a discussion with the Pharisees, but also an important phrase matters to us. He's quoting Scripture. He says, if he called them God's, to whom the word of God came, and then in parentheses says, and the Scripture cannot be broken. I want to pull that part out. Jesus said the Scripture can't be broken. That means God's word is going to stand. If other things fail, it won't.

So the Bible says some pretty bold things about itself.

And that would lead me to say that it either is what it says it is, or it's a fraud. It can't be the infallible word of God and contain falsehoods. And there, I would say some people say, oh, it's good literature, some nice folk tales. Well, does good literature say, I'm God speaking to you and lie about it? No, I would think not. Now, I think of this logic because I heard someone say that about Jesus Christ once. There are people out there who, as I said earlier, say, well, he wasn't the Son of God, but he was a good moral teacher. He was a preeminent rabbi of his time.

Now, wait a minute. Does a good moral teacher tell you, I'm the Son of God? Because if he wasn't the Son of God, he was a liar and an absolute fraud. People base their lives on his teaching. So Jesus either was the Son of God or he was a charlatan and a liar and working a great evil. And you could say the same about the Bible. It either is God's word or it's a terrible hoax that's ruining people's lives. Now, I believe it is God's word. Let's consider that in the Bible, we see God speaking in first person. If you want to turn towards Isaiah, we'll go to Isaiah 44. But think of this. It didn't strike me because, like many of you, I grew up reading the Bible but not reading the great works of other religions. But to my knowledge, none of the other religions have a book where their God is speaking in first person. It's all somebody saying, you know, wise teachings or things about God or whatever. But we have some places here where we see the word of God coming out. Isaiah 44 and verse 6. I've always said that this section in Isaiah, you know, in the 40s, is always one of my favorite parts of the Bible because God is speaking. He talks about His great power. Here he says, "...Thus says the Eternal, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts." He says, "...I am the first and I am the last. Besides me, there is no God." That's interesting.

Now, we know that He inspired Isaiah or spoke to him and had him write that down, but God spoke these words. Here you can read first person. God is saying, I'm Him and there is no other God.

Go ahead a couple chapters to chapter 46. Isaiah 46, beginning in verse 9.

Remember the former things of old, for I am God and there is no other. I am God. There's none like me. I will always hesitate to even say that. I feel like I have to put a disclaimer. I'm just reading His words. I'm not saying, you know, Frank Dunkel is God. I think you know that.

But here it's interesting. One of the things he says that God can do that others can't.

Chapter verse 10, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, my counsel will stand. I'll do all my pleasure. So I'm God. I can tell you from the very beginning how things are going to end up. He can predict the future, partly because He's smart and He knows how things go, but also because He has the power to cause things to happen that He's predicted. A few more pages toward the front. Isaiah chapter 41. Isaiah 41, I like this because God will challenge idols, false gods. Say, can you do what I can do? Isaiah 41, beginning in verse 21. Here, He is again God speaking in first person, but He's addressing these statues and images that aren't really gods. He says to them, present your case, says the eternal. Bring forth your strong reason, says the King of Jacob. Let them bring forth and show us what will happen.

He says, I can predict the future. Can you? Let them show the former things that they were, that we may consider and know the latter end of them, or declare to us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods. Yes, do evil, or do good, or do evil, that we may dismay and see it together. You know, God's saying, do good, do evil, do something. But the conclusion is, indeed, you're nothing. Your work is nothing. I could see God standing in front of one of these banks of idols, perhaps, in one of those pagan temples, talking to them, saying, come on, do something. Prove to me you're God. Say, you're nothing. You can't do anything. Whoever worships you is an abomin... chooses an abomination. So those are strong words, aren't they? I said, you find them here in the Bible, as I said, it's either gotta be true or it's nothing. And some people say that. They say, okay, how do you prove the Bible? Some people say, ah, the Bible is nothing, just folk tales, whatever. So can we prove that it is something?

Let's get into that. Now, and I'll say this, to some degree, proving that the Bible is accurate and authoritative is something you have to do for yourself. I'm going to present several things that we can look at, but there's an element of you believing it yourself, not trusting someone else.

So before I go into a positive, proactive proofs, let's consider some of the arguments against the Bible. Now, there are a lot of people who say, well, you know, we've got science now, and we can study physical things and we know truth from science. We could do experiments, and the Bible doesn't match these things. Well, the fact is, the Bible has not been disproved by science. You know, it doesn't contradict scientific fact. Science stands in contradiction to what many people mistakenly think that the Bible says, and there is an important difference. We'll come into that. For example, physicists believe that the whole universe came into existence at one point in time, starting with what they now call a big bang. And it's only, boom, everything started, but before that it wasn't there. Well, the Bible says that the whole universe came into existence at a particular point in time because God created it. Okay, through those... You can see now there's not so much contradiction as we think. What I should point out is that it's only been about a hundred years or so, or within the last hundred years, that scientists have started accepting the theory of the big bang or of some beginning to the universe. For hundreds of years, science believed that the universe had always existed, that it didn't have a starting point.

That's what we believe about God. And then as they did experiments and began to learn how matter works, they said, oh, this couldn't have always been here. We've got scientific evidence that it had to have a starting point. Well, it turns out the earlier scientists were wrong and the Bible was right. Now, of course, major disagreements come down to discussing things that can't be proved by experimentation. You know, can you do an experiment to reproduce the big bang? No, we can't, obviously.

We also can't do an experiment to reproduce God creating the universe. But we can test to see if many of God's claims are true or not. But first, let's deal with a couple other questions of science. Scientists tend to think that the Bible's story of creation in the Garden of Eden is contradicted by scientific evidence that says the earth has to be older than 6,000 years.

Now, once again, that's a misunderstanding on their part. You know, the Bible doesn't say when God created the heavens and the earth. And we know that it says He did, but when in Genesis 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Then the next verse says, and the earth became without or was without form and void. We don't know exactly if there was a amount of time in between those two verses or how much. Matter of fact, let's go there, because I want to talk about that a little. Genesis 1 and verse 1, one of the things I'll point out in the original Hebrew, the first, the, could easily be and should be translated, a. It could be an a beginning.

And one of the reasons we know it should be a beginning, because there's another beginning described in John chapter 1, verse 1. Well, I won't turn there, but we know John 1, verse 1, says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So that's as far back a beginning as you can get. And then this is a different beginning. This is the beginning of the physical creation. God created the heavens and the earth. And then verse 2, and the earth was without form and void. I'll point out the Hebrew word translated was, is ha'ia. We were transliterated as h-a-y-a-h, which I can't help it made me think of karate. If anybody asks of karate, ha'ia!

But I don't think God was practicing karate, but that word could just as well, it's a form of the to-be verb, which, you know, to-be includes is, am, were, was, and all kinds of complex variations.

But it would be better if that had been translated became. The earth became without form and void.

Now, why do we say that? One reason is because of Isaiah chapter 45. And actually, we don't have to come back to Genesis, so you can lose your place there if you want to go to Isaiah 45.

And we'll read in verse 18. Although I will mention where the Hebrew, it says, became without form and void. And how many of you know what the Hebrew words there are?

But we used to talk about this all the time in church. To-hu and bo-hu. It could be translated chaos and confusion. I think Mr. Armstrong liked that one. But to-hu and bo-hu, the earth became to-hu and bo-hu. In Isaiah 45 verse 18, here, once again, God speaking, for thus says the eternal, who created the heavens, here again is reminding us, I created all this, who formed the earth and made it. He established it. Um, I'm losing. Oh yeah, I'm sorry, I looked right over there.

He established it, who did not create it in vain. He did not create it to-hu. Same word is in Genesis.

So if we say, he didn't hear, if the Bible is true, here's, I didn't create it to-hu, but Genesis 1 verse 2 says, it was to-hu and bo-hu for good measure. So it must have became that way in between. Now we don't know, and there's speculation, maybe between Genesis 1, 1, and 1, 2, there were thousands of years, millions, perhaps billions. You know, we don't really have any way of knowing. We think that it's during that time, perhaps, that Satan launched his rebellion and turned against God and tried to gain control of the earth and the universe and then was cast down.

And perhaps that's when there were dinosaurs on the earth and perhaps humanoid creatures that look like man but weren't. I mean, there's all kinds of speculation. The Bible just leaves a gap there because it's stuff we don't need to know. Sometimes it's, have you ever been told this on a need-to-know basis and you don't need to know? God's telling us that in a sense. We don't need to know for sure what happened between Genesis 1, 1, and 1, 2. He'll let us know when we need to.

Now let's talk about archaeology. Archaeology not only does not disprove the Bible, more and more new discoveries are backing up and proving the Bible. Let me give you a couple of examples.

In the mid-1800s, so 150 years ago, there was no evidence aside from the Bible that there was ever such thing as an Assyrian Empire. Now we read the Assyrian Empire. Remember, they came and they conquered northern Israel and took them into captivity. A lot of people said, oh, that's just a myth. There are no such things as Assyrians. But then, a couple of archaeologists, and I wrote down the names, Austin Henry Layard and Paul Emil Bota, discovered the archaeological remains of three Assyrian cities in what is now northern Iraq, including the capital, Nineveh. They also found tens of thousands of clay tablets that had writing on them. And the writing, in some cases, not only proved that there was an Assyrian Empire, but proved that it had dealings with a kingdom known as Israel.

So, archaeologists before did say, oh, it's just a myth. Now they've got hard proof in front of them.

This stuff written down thousands of years ago was talking about this this empire and this other kingdom. Similarly, in the past, Bible critics have doubted the existence of an actual King David.

Another myth. He's sort of like King Arthur. And there's...

Let me say that, sir. I said... There is debate over whether there was an actual King Arthur or not, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was. But in 1993, archaeologists digging in northern Galilee found an ancient inscription on a tablet that mentions both the house of David and the king of Israel.

So, once again, hard proof showing, yeah, there was a real guy named David.

This stuff was written back during his time.

Now, of course, as I said, right now I'm dealing with some of the arguments that some people had thought disproved the Bible. That's still a long way from proving the Bible. Now, the way I see it, if there's an effective way to prove the Bible and that the God who inspired it does have authority and power, perhaps we should use the standard that God set forth. There in Isaiah 46, he said, I can tell the end from the beginning. I can predict the future. And he challenged the false gods. Can you do this? So, fulfilled prophecies then would be one of the most strong proofs of the authority of the Bible we could have. Now, there are lots and lots of prophecies in the Bible.

We can't go to just any prophecy to use that because a lot of them haven't been fulfilled yet.

And that's not something we would say, well, yes, it says this is going to happen. It says that. It says the end of the world is going to come. It hasn't come yet. Well, that doesn't mean it won't.

So, we need to narrow it down to some prophecies that are specific and that can be verified by history. Let's take a couple, take a look at a couple that have been fulfilled and we can prove. If you'll turn to Ezekiel chapter 26. Ezekiel 26 is sort of a fun one. I spent some time studying this as I was preparing the sermon and I'd forgotten how much is in there.

Okay, let me read the first few verses of Ezekiel 26.

Now it came to pass in the eleventh year on the first day of the month that the word of the eternal came to me, I guess that's to Ezekiel, saying, Son of man, because Tyre has set against Jerusalem, aha, she is broken who was the gateway of the peoples. Now she's turned over to me and I shall be filled. She has laid waste. So he's talking about the city of Tyre is looking at Jerusalem saying, ha, they're going down. Now I'm going to profit. We're going to swoop in and get the goods. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I'm against you, Tyre, and will cause many nations to come up against you, as the sea causes its waves to come up, and they'll destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers. I'll also scrape her dust from her, make her like the top of a rock, and it'll be a place for spreading nets in the midst of the sea. For I have spoken, says the Lord God, it shall become a plunder to the nation. And also her daughter villages, which are in the field, shall be slain by the sword, and they'll know that I am God. Now this is some pretty strong stuff. It picks out this city that apparently was having a problem with pride and wanting to take advantage of God's people and said, okay, I'm going to destroy you. Now let's keep in mind, the city of Tyre, when this was written, had been around for about a thousand years. It was a great commercial center. And by the way, Tyre, I should have, I was debating trying to fix a map to bring up here, but your imagination will probably be better. But imagine it's right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. If you go from Jerusalem, which you know is not by the sea, to the northwest a little way, you'd come to Tyre. Now you won't find it on a modern map because it's not there anymore, but we'll get to that in a little bit later. But it's a commercial center. A lot of trade going on, ships coming in, ships going out. And it had been there for a thousand years, getting more prosperous.

So when God says, you're going to be wiped out, that's sort of like if there was prophecy saying London, England is going to be wiped out, and it'll never be rebuilt. People would say, are you kidding?

People have been living there and buying and selling and making stuff for thousands of years.

How's it going to be wiped out? Nobody would rebuild it.

And he also says there's going to be many nations coming like waves. I want to keep that in mind, because how do waves come in on the seashore? Do all the waves hit at one time? No, they come one after another with a cumulative effect. But let's move forward, so we'll see how this starts.

In Ezekiel 26 and verse 7, carry on, For thus says the Lord God, Behold, I'll bring against Tyre from the north, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. This is getting very specific. Say, I'm going to bring this particular king against you, with horses and chariots and with horsemen and an army of many people. He'll slay with the sword your daughter villages in the fields. He'll heap up a siege mound against you, build a wall against you, and raise a defense against you. And he'll direct his battering rams against your walls, and with his axes he'll break down your towers. Because of the abundance of his horses, their dust will cover your walls and will shake the noise of the horsemen, the wagons, and the chariots, when he enters your gates as men enter a city that's been breached.

With the hooves of his horses he'll trample all your streets, he'll slay your people by the sword, and your strong pillars will fall to the ground. Now this was fulfilled, and not long after it was written. Nebuchadnezzar did come and he conquered Tyre. But he didn't move the rubble. They knocked down the buildings, but he didn't make it smooth like the top of a rock. That's because the prophecy originally called for many nations like the waves of a sea. Let's continue. Let's skip down to verse 12. Oh, we're not skipping down. That's right where we were. It says, they'll plunder your riches and pillage your merchandise. They'll break down your walls and destroy your pleasant houses. They'll lay your stones, your timber, and your soil in the midst of the water. In verse 14 again it says, I'll make you like the top of a rock. You'll be a place for spreading nets. You'll never be rebuilt. For the Lord God, for I the Lord have spoken, says the Lord God. As I said, that's something. This great commercial city, it was destroyed, but he's saying not only will be destroyed, but they're going to throw all your rubble in the sea and you'll never be rebuilt.

And what happens, we go to the history. The Babylonians did demolish Tyre, the city there by the seashore. What happened next was interesting, though. A lot of the people, instead of rebuilding there, they built what they often called New Tyre on an island that was nearly a half mile out to sea. Close enough to see, and see visibly. You've got to watch out when you mix your seas. So, old city on the mainland destroyed, new city being built called Tyre on an island a little ways out.

Now, water not all that deep in between, but enough that's a little bit of trouble.

Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city on the mainland. That became known as Old Tyre, and the New Tyre was on the island. Now, God's prophecies are not always fulfilled at all at one time, but when they're fulfilled, they're usually, I shouldn't say when, I should say well, I didn't want to say if, when they are fulfilled, he does it very thoroughly.

And that would happen hundreds of years later in 332 BC. 330 years before Christ, Alexander the Great, was building his empire. Now, remember, Alexander started from Greece and Macedonia and conquered most of the known world. He moved against Tyre. Now, he wanted to conquer New Tyre, but he had trouble getting his armies to it because there's nearly a half mile of water.

Now, to overcome this, instead of building boats, his armies built a causeway. A causeway is a narrow strip of land. They took all the rubble from the old city and threw it in the water and added to it.

So they essentially scraped the old city and made it like the top of a rock and threw all the building into the sea. And, of course, with that and enough, they built this causeway.

I guess you know what suddenly occurred to me. What's a good example of a causeway? If you've ever been to Cedar Point up in Lake Erie, they've got a causeway, but that's the other end of the state. I don't know how many of you have been, even though it is the roller coaster capital of the world. So that's a long way from talking about Alexander conquering a city. Let's read Ezekiel 26 verse 19. For thus says the Lord God, When I make you a desolate city like cities that are not inhabited, when I bring the deep upon you, and great waters to cover you. Now we can make a case that that's already been done. All that rubble from the original city was thrown into the water, but Alexander the Great went a little bit further because the city of New Tire, part of that was built on land that was below sea water. If you've ever read about the Netherlands, it's like that.

As a matter of fact, there was a fellow from camp that's an ABC student. He says the Netherlands, half of their country sits below sea level, and they have dikes that they've built to keep the water out. But if the dikes are broken, the water would come in and flood everything. Well, a lot of New Tire was built behind dikes and walls to keep the water out. Alexander's soldiers came in and destroyed that wall and destroyed the rest of the city, and the water rushed in. And you could actually go there today and see rubble from those buildings in the water, just as it says here.

And verse 19, you know, they'll bring the deep upon you and great waters cover you.

God was very thorough in fulfilling this prophecy. And, of course, the sight of New Tire and Old Tire both have never been rebuilt. Fishermen do spread their nets there today.

Even though it was a great place for commerce, it seems that it would have been a great place for commerce again. There was nothing stopping anyone from rebuilding there, except that God said it would not happen. Now, the destruction of cities sounds a little violent and could be a little depressing. One of the reasons we like to look at those is because when there's a specific prophecy, we can see it recorded in history. And, of course, when they say it's never going to be rebuilt, we can test to see if that's been the case. So I don't want to do too many of those, but there's another one that makes a good example. If we'll go to Isaiah chapter 13.

Isaiah 13. And I'll just remind you, the reason we're looking at these prophecies is because it's a good proof. If God says, I can tell the future, and then it actually happens, good evidence. Now, this book has some authority. Isaiah 13 will begin in verse 19.

Okay, this is talking about the city of Babylon. And it says, Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldeans' pride, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.

It will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation, nor will the Arabian pitch tents there, nor will the shepherds make their sheepfolds there, but wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and their houses will be full of owls, ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper there. I overlooked the capering part before.

But that is the case. Babylon was a great city. One of the seven wonders of the world was supposedly the hanging gardens there, and the walls are supposed to be thick enough that you could drive a chariot around the top. Then it was destroyed when the Medes and Persians conquered it, became totally desolate, and was never rebuilt. Now we know where ancient Babylon was. They actually discovered the site, and there's an archaeological dig there in what is part of Iraq. I was going to say, or is it Iran? I'm getting those too confused, but it doesn't matter.

What's interesting, I was reading an account from when Mr. Herbert Armstrong visited there in the 1950s. So he was able to go there, and there was a caretaker that kept watch of the site, because it's a national monument. So he asked the caretakers, well, do you live here? And he said, well, no! No one ever lives here! So he asked him, well, do the nomadic Arabs ever pitch their tents here? And the man replied, never! They have a superstition against it. All these thousands of years, they haven't pitched their tents there, exactly as the Scripture says.

Now, I'll mention, these particular prophecies are especially neat and tidy. That's why we like to point them out for cases like this. But there are a couple of others that I think are actually better.

They're just not all tied up yet. If we'll turn to Daniel 2, I'm not going to go through all of that prophecy, but a lot of us, or most of us, are probably familiar with the great prophecy of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar saw. We usually call it the great image. And if we look at the statue, and of course we know in his sleep he saw this image. And he woke up and he knew he had this terrible dream. He said, well, I can't remember the dream. So he called all of his wizards and his soothsayers and said, okay, I have this troubling dream. I need you to tell me what the dream was and then tell me what it means. And they're saying, well, tell us the dream and we'll tell you what it means. Of course, they're thinking, we'll make something up. And how does he know any better? And he says, no, anybody could do that. You tell me what the dream was. And when they say, well, you're asking us to do something that only a god could do. He said, fine, I'm going to have you all put to death. And I'm summarizing here. So they go and they're going to kill everybody.

And they come, they're looking for Daniel and what, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, or as their Hebrew names was, what, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael. Daniel says, wait a minute, wait a minute, give me a chance to go appeal to God to see if he'll show me the dream. And he did.

So he said, Nebuchadnezzar, what you saw was this big image, a statue. The head was made out of gold. The arms and shoulders were made out of silver. The torso was bronze. And then the legs were iron. And the feet were part of iron, part, you know, clay or pottery, ceramic. And while you were watching, then a stone came that was cut out without hands and hit it on the feet, and the whole thing shattered. Now, I want to begin reading in verse 36, because that's the dream.

Now, the interpretation is what's very interesting. Daniel 2 in verse 36.

Okay, I'm in the wrong chapter.

This is the dream. Now we will tell the interpretation of it before the king.

You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory. Wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heaven, he's given them into your hand. It has made you ruler over them. You are the head of gold.

So he's saying, you Nebuchadnezzar, your kingdom, your empire, represents the head of gold.

He says, but after you will arise another kingdom, inferior to yours, at least inferior in certain qualities, and then another, a third kingdom of bronze. So he said the silver would come, and then, and we recognize that the silver represented the Medo-Persian empire. It's the empire that conquered the Babylonians and took their place. He says, then a third of bronze, the Persians were conquered by the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great. So we see a succession of empires. And then the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron, and as much as iron breaks in pieces and shatters everything, and like iron that crushes, that kingdom will break in pieces and will crush all others. Whereas you saw the feet and toes, partly of potters clay and partly of iron, the kingdom will be divided, yet the strength of iron will be in it. And just as you saw the iron mixed with ceramic clay, and as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom will be partly strong, partly fragile. And as you saw iron mixed with ceramic clay, they'll mingle with the seed of men, but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron doesn't mix with clay. And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom will not be left to other people. It shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. Now, a study of history can very quickly and easily verify the succession of empires that was foretold in advance. And I sometimes wonder about this, because most of the Bible is dealing with the nation of Israel. Of course, it starts with the Garden of Eden, covers about the course of 2,000 years in 11 chapters.

And then when Abraham comes along, things slow way down in how it's covered, and we learn about Abraham and his children, and we see the nation develop. So the Bible is focused on Israel. Well, this is the time when Israel would stop becoming a kingdom, and of course the separated kingdom of Judah would. So I think what happened is God is saying, I'm going to let you know what's going to happen from here on out, now that I'm not dealing with Israel as a kingdom anymore. And he gave, essentially, in some ways, the history of the rest of human... I was going to say the history of the rest of human history. I've got to think of a different word there. The rest of the history of human civilization. He gave the succession of empires, 1st Babylonian, then the Medo-Persian, followed by the Greek, and then the Roman Empire. And that's where some people say, well, that's incorrect, because this implies that the Roman Empire would still be ruling when God comes and establishes His kingdom. And we know that can't have happened, because the Roman Empire was conquered. You know, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths overthrew them and sacked Rome about 4...

I should have wrote this down... 476 AD, if I remember correctly. Well, and that's where we need to tie this in with some other prophecies. And I'm not going to go there, but if we look at prophecies in Revelation, we'll see that God predicted that the Roman Empire would fall, that it would suffer a deadly wound and then recover. And that, if we understand the prophecies correctly, that would happen about seven times. So we say, no, it's not incorrect, because the Roman Empire fell before Christ returned the second time. It's just that the Roman Empire has to go through several revivals. And of course, the Holy Roman Empire happened. We had Charlemagne, and then we had the Hapsburg Empire, and I don't want to track through all that. But history, when we fit it with prophecy properly understood, verifies that God did foretell the end from the beginning. As I said, this prophecy is just not as neat, because it leaves a part still yet to be fulfilled. But probably a good 90 percent of it has already been completed. I'll mention, and we're not going to go through this, but Daniel chapter 11 is likewise. Daniel 11 is the longest continuous prophecy in the Bible. I'm going to say, if we decided to go through that and detail how it explains the history, we would take not only all the rest of the time for today, but we would have needed all the time before this to cover it.

But I'll just mention there are several scholarly reference works available, you know, in libraries and religious bookstores that do detail how Daniel 11 shows the course of events in the Middle East through hundreds of years. And the Expositors Bible commentary is a good reference to use for that. And I mention Expositors because it's one that the United Church of God has used in some of our booklets. We refer to Expositors as giving good historical coverage. And the one that especially we have a booklet called, Is the Bible True, that I drew on while I was doing some of this research. So the discussion could go on looking at prophecies and how they fulfill or how the fulfilled prophecies prove the authority of the Bible.

But let's think of some of the other questions we had. By now you might be saying, okay, there's something to this. As a matter of fact, some of these prophecies are so accurate, like Daniel 11, that critics, they can't argue that it's not accurate. What they've done is said, well, we've got to figure out a way to prove that that was written afterwards, that it was really history and you tried to make it look like it was written in advance. But that doesn't hold up the scrutiny either. But there's some other questions. Okay, say it's accurate. How did we get it? I mean, you probably know how you got your copy of the Bible, right? I mean, I got this one. Actually, my grandmother bought it and she gave it to me. And you might have gone into a bookstore or something like that. But how did we get the content? Where did it come from?

Well, let's consider that. Now, the biggest portion of the Bible is the Old Testament, considerably bigger than the New. And it's been around the longest.

So it and it clearly pertains to the people of Israel. Now, there was a tribe within Israel that was given the task of preserving those scriptures. That's the Jewish people. Now, we know all Jews are Israelites, not all Israelites were Jews. But let's turn to the Book of Romans to see a comment on this. And I will mention, I tend to say, the one tribe of Judah actually when the kingdom separated, the southern kingdom Judah also included Benjamin and most of the Levites. That's why when the Apostle Paul, who was a Benjamite, refers to himself as a Jew, he's talking about being part of the kingdom of Judah. And we'll see that here in Romans chapter 3 verse 1. He's talking about, he refers to the Jews as his people. But Paul says, what advantage then has the Jew or what prophet is circumcision? And what's it good to be in Jewish?

Well, much in every way and chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.

To the Jews were committed the oracles of God. Now, oracle is a fancy way of saying the Word of God.

God's Word was committed to the Jews. It was their job to take care of it. Matter of fact, while we're here, you can skip a few pages ahead to the front towards Acts chapter 7.

Acts 7, and we'll begin in verse 37.

I couldn't resist cross-referencing this one.

Acts 7 and verse 37 here, again part of Stephen's sermon, he mentions Moses. He says, This is that Moses who said to the children of Israel, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren.

Him you'll hear. This is he, that is Moses, who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers, the one who received the living oracles to give to us. I wanted to come down to the last phrase. Moses received what's called the living oracles, or we could say the living Word of God. We saw earlier where it said, Moses talked to God face to face. He heard those words live. He received those words, which you could also call an oracle, and he wrote a lot of it down. Moses is attributed to writing the first five books of the Bible, most of which was just from listening to God and saying, okay, I'm writing this down. He must have got information about the stories in Genesis from other sources, but we know God inspired him and worked with him. And then, of course, Romans tells us that the Jews were entrusted to preserve those words. It was their job.

Let's go a little further. Turn to Matthew 23, because Jesus Christ, to a certain extent, endorses that view and says that the Jews there had a specific responsibility and authority.

You can tell I'm out of practice preaching. The words aren't coming out.

Matthew 23, beginning in verse 1. Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. Now, we just heard about Moses being the one who got the word. Therefore, whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do. He says, Do what they say, because they're sitting in Moses' seat. They're his successors. They have his authority. And he says, Do what they say, but don't do according to their works, for they say, and they do not do. So Jesus, as God, was saying, they're in authority. Do what they say, because they're teaching you from God's word and they're responsible for keeping it. It's just they're not doing it themselves. They're not doing it right. And I would say, I hope I'm never in that situation, but standing up as a pastor, I would say, follow God's word. If I ever said a wrong example, follow God's word, don't look at my example. Hopefully, I'll always set the right example, but just in case, you need to know which is right. Let's also look to Matthew, while we're here in Matthew chapter 5. Matthew 5 and verse 18.

Because we've been talking about this word and how it's preserved. How did we get it?

Jesus said this, For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.

Now, we just looked at some of the prophecies that have not yet been completely fulfilled, such as in Daniel 2 and Daniel 11. Well, we didn't read all of Daniel 11. Now, now we know for the most part, Jesus was talking about the law itself, not the actual words.

But then again, I think it's interesting. He's talking about jots and tiddles, which we don't write Hebrew, but we can equate that to like the dotting of an I or crossing a T.

Those are elements of writing, and he said none of them are going to get lost.

So if the jots and tiddles, the T crossings and the I dotting won't get lost, that means all the words are going to be preserved. They're not going to be, they're not going to pass away until all is fulfilled.

So how did that happen? Now, I'm going to read from some sources that talk about how the Jews made copies. Remember, they couldn't send it over to the printer and have him lay it out on his computer and print off a few million copies. Before the printing press, people had to hand copy, and they were very careful about it. Now, from 70 A.D., that's right about the end of when the original apostles were living, up until 500 A.D., they had set rules for how the Jews copied Scripture. Let me read some of those. A scroll for the synagogue had to be written on the skin of a clean animal. We call that sometimes vellum. They didn't have paper made out of trees. They had to scrape animal skin and treat it so it was a type of leather. Only clean animals were allowed.

The length of each column could not extend less than 48 lines or more than 80. The width of a column had to be 30 letters. No word or letter, not even a yod. Don't ask me what a yod is, but it's probably something small. Not even a yod could be written from memory. And I read in another source that I couldn't find, said that when they were writing, they'd look at it and they'd have to repeat it something like five times as they looked at it in one page and went to the other and then wrote it down. They didn't trust their memory. They kept saying it over and over, one little yod at a time, one little yet letter. That's how they copied it.

Between each consonant must be the space of a hair or a thread, and between every book the space must be three lines. Besides all of this, before they could do any copying, the copyist had to wash his whole body and then put on full Jewish dress. So you had to be in the right frame of mind before you could go to the task of copying God's Word. Now, something was added in the later years.

The Jews who had copies of m- I'm going to say that again. The Jews who had the job of making copies of Scripture from 500 AD up until around 1000 were called mazaretes.

Mazaretes. And this is based on the word masora. Masora was a set of guidelines that told certain things about the Scripture when it would be written, and included things like how many of each vowels there were, and what would be the middle word of each book, and what would be the middle letter of each book. And it was considered to be like a fence that locked the Scriptures in place because they could test it against the masora, and if it didn't match up, the copy had it affected it somewhere and they'd throw it out. Let me read this to you.

The masora recorded the number of times the several letters occurred in the Bible.

The number of words, and the middle word, the number of verses in the middle verse, and so on.

This had the set purpose of preventing the loss or misplacement of a single letter or word.

They calculated and checked each copy regarding the middle letter of the Pentateuch.

That's the first five books. So is the middle letter the one we expected to be? Well, good.

It has to be, or else there's a mistake. And the middle letter and verse of each book, as well as of the entire Old Testament. Now, in addition to that, certain phrases were numbered and counted. So they'd have to say, how many times does it say, House of Israel? They knew how many times that was in there, and they'd count to make sure it was all correct. And that was counted separately from the phrase, Sons of Israel. They'd count those up and make sure they had the right number. And the number of times each occurred was counted to be sure no errors had been made.

Similarly, the expression, Sins of Jeroboam, was counted separately from the phrase, the Sins of Jeroboam, Son of Nebat. So this messorah had a lot of very particulars, and I hate to be the guy that had to go count the letters. But can you see how you would catch if there was a mistake?

So the Jews passed it on, copying that one letter at a time for thousands of years to make sure that the Bible we got was accurate. And of course, all of the rules I just mentioned were after the time of Christ. And you might wonder, well, what did they do before then? And truth is, we don't know for sure.

But I've got faith in that because Jesus quoted from that scripture. If it had been out of line, he was God, he would have told us, hey, the scriptures aren't accurate, you need to fix it.

But since he did quote from the Old Testament scriptures, we can presume that that was his endorsement that they were kept correctly up until that time. Also, I had a note I wanted to mention.

These texts were known as the Masoretic Texts many times because they followed the Masorah.

And those are the texts that the translators into the King James Version used for the most part.

They had various other texts, but they drew primarily on the Masoretic Texts for the Old Testament.

Now, what about the New Testament? Now, the Jews didn't have the task of preserving that.

Why would they, you know, the Jews that didn't believe in Christ, they wouldn't be preserving the New Testament, so we'd have to look elsewhere. Now, we know that the New Testament scriptures were written in Greek. Greek was the language of education at that day and the most widely understood. Now, the Greek people didn't have, well, they had fairly a common religion, but it wasn't Christianity. So we couldn't look to the Greeks to preserve it, nor necessarily the Jews.

But, of course, by this time we had God's church. Let's turn back to Isaiah chapter 8. Isaiah 8, and we'll begin in verse 14. There's a prophecy that gives us good reason to believe that the task did fall to the church, most of whom were Greek-speaking. All the original apostles had learned Greek. The apostle Paul spoke and wrote Greek, and they preserved the scriptures in Greek.

Isaiah 8 and chapter 14 says, "...he will be as a sanctuary, but a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense." That's a prophecy of Jesus Christ, the stone of stumbling. "...to both the house of the Israel as a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And as many among them stumble, they shall fall and be broken, snared, and taken back." I want to say that to know we're talking about Jesus Christ there, and then it continues. It says, "...bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples." This seems to be a prophecy that Jesus Christ's disciples would be the ones to bind up the testimony. And I learned that the Hebrew word that's translated as bind up could also be translated as complete. Complete the testimony. Make sure that it's done and it's kept track of. So, of course, the testimony we're thinking of is the testimony of Jesus Christ and God Himself. Now, we don't have a record of exactly how copies were made the way we do with the Jews who copied the Old Testament, but I want to read something on the subject that comes from the statement of our fundamental beliefs that explains partly we can tell how accurate the New Testament was preserved by how many copies there were and how they match up against each other. Because you would imagine if people were careless making their handwritten copies, you'd start seeing variation.

So let me read here. It says, "...there are many copies of ancient manuscripts. If the New Testament was not preserved accurately, we would find variations among them, but we don't. There are more than 4,000 Greek manuscripts of the complete New Testament, and 13,000 manuscripts or copies of portions of the New Testament." When we say manuscripts, that means handwritten. Of course, there weren't Xerox machines or printing presses. Now, compare this to other writings of ancient time.

You might have heard of Caesar's work called Gallic Wars that Caesar, Julius Caesar, he wrote a description of his wars. There were only 10 good copies of that, as opposed to 4,000 of the New Testament. There are only two copies of the history of Tacitus, only eight manuscripts of the history of Thucydides. And I don't know if you're familiar with Tacitus and Thucydides, but if you ever go study history in graduate school, you'll learn about them. There are some of the early historians, and we put great trust in their writings. Nobody says, oh, because there's only 10 copies, we're not sure if it's accurate. But there are thousands of manuscripts and partial manuscripts of the New Testament, and some of them we believe were copied within 50 years of the original. Now, it'd be great if we had the original that the Apostle Paul wrote on this piece of paper. We don't have any that are that old, but some that are probably no more than 50 years older than that. No other body of literature can be so well attested by such a wealth of documentary evidence as the New Testament.

The large number of New Testament manuscripts greatly increases our ability to determine what the original autographs said. Now, autographs were the ones, as I said, Paul was writing this himself.

In addition, numerous theologians who lived within a hundred years of Christ, like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine, argued their doctrines by quoting the extant writings of the New Testament books. And they quoted from the Gospels, Acts, the Epistles, and Revelation. Matter of fact, they quoted them because they used that to make their case. And I love this. It says, whoops, watch what I'm doing there, two glasses down there. There's a fellow named David Dalrymple.

He reconstructed the entire New Testament from quotes by these other theologians. All except for 11 verses. They quoted that much. So basically it says, if all of our copies of the New Testament suddenly disappeared, we could reconstruct it from the writings of other people who quoted it within a hundred years of when it was first written. Now that's pretty convincing for me.

That tells us we've got the Bible. I think we've got it, you know, it's been preserved, of course, if we have faith in God that he would do that, that helps. But we can see hard evidence that people were very careful over the years. It hasn't disappeared and then been re-found in a cave.

Except, well, actually you could say it has. You've all heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and I didn't even bring that up. But they were found hidden in a cave, thousands of years old, and they pulled it out and said, hey, they match what we've got written here.

It didn't change over the years. Now that leads to another question. Is the Bible complete?

Did we get all of it that we're supposed to have? Now, what we've covered so far should give us good reason to trust that we have the Scriptures God intended. Knowing that the Jews were entrusted with preserving the oracles, it would make sense that we should trust the canon that they preserved.

Now, we use that term, canons, not a big gun shooting shells, but it's basically a listing of which books are included and which books are not. Now, we don't know for certain, but there's speculation that Ezra the priest, who has the book named after him, did the final compiling of which books would be in the Old Testament. That legend has been around. I'm not sure where it started.

And there's also idea that the Apostle Paul did much of the compilation of the New Testament, probably finished up by John since he was the last living apostle. The question of completeness arises, though, because there are several additional books known as the Apocrypha, that if you attend a Catholic Church, they have a different version of the Bible printed, and it includes seven books that are not in the King James Version or most modern translations.

Those books are named Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. And I can give you that list if you want it later, but I guess they're in every Catholic Bible. Besides those, there are 107 additional verses placed at the end of the book of Esther and also some additional chapters inserted into Daniel and several more verses in Daniel chapter 3. What I learned in history will show us, though, is that the Catholic Church assumed the authority to add these to the Bible. They had not been part of the Old Testament before the year 397 A.D. And 397, the Council of Carthage, was the first to approve using those additional books. So for nearly 400 years, they hadn't, well, even longer than 400 years since we're talking largely about the Old Testament. And the Council of Trent in 1546, that's about half a century after Columbus discovered America, is when the Apocrypha was officially declared to be equal with other parts of the Bible. So the Apocrypha hasn't always been there. As part of my research, I came across an old reprint article written by Dr. Herman Hay, who is long a leader in the worldwide Church of God. Now, his writing is not infallible like the Bible, but he had a lot to say on it. So let me read some of what he wrote. He says, the word Apocrypha comes from a Greek word meaning hidden, secret in origin. These books, in other words, had a hidden beginning, a secret origin not openly given to the community at first. They were mystery books. But these seven additional books and chapters are actually only a few out of many hundreds of fabulous books, which are commonly called Apocryphal writings. And I think he means fabulous, not in that they're really good, but that they're amazingly strange or something like that. There are dozens of ancient spurious Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses. These include such titles as the Gospel According to the Egyptians, Gospel of the Birth of Mary, the Acts of Peter, and the Apocalypse of the Virgin.

And he goes on, he talked about there was a sect of the Jews called the Essenes, who came up with some of these books to support their practices where they had adopted several pagan religious practices. So they, he says they forged these books to help support their teachings.

We don't know for sure about that, but he did the research to kind of to indicate that. But I will say there is general agreement apart from the Catholic Church that the Apocrypha is not valid scripture. So I'm going to leave off discussing that any further, especially since this sermon is going a little longer than I intended. But, but that's good. It's always good to have more material than you need. I do want to mention the question sometimes comes up, how we got the Bible in English. And you might not have known this, but last year I knew I should have got the sermon done a little sooner. I just missed it by a couple weeks. Last year was the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It was printed in 1611, and throughout the ages, or in the years since then, it's become the most popular translation of the Bible in all history. Now, for years before then, of course, the Bible was preserved in its original languages, Hebrew, Greek, and parts in Aramaic.

Parts of Daniel were written originally in Aramaic. About 397, the Latin Vulgate Bible was translated. So 397, the same year that the Apocrypha was added, was the first time a complete Bible was created in Latin, and that was preserved through many years. And it's still a good one to compare scriptures with. And then in 16... let me back up and get my dates. 1380, a man named John Wycliffe translated an English version of the Bible. So that started in English. William Tyndale did a better one in 1525, and then another fellow named Miles Coverdale in 1535. And I'm not going to have a quiz on this, but just to let you know, suddenly there was an interest corresponding to the Protestant Reformation, of course, in the Puritan movement. As a matter of fact, the Puritans were so concerned about getting a good version of the Bible in English that in 1560, a group of English Puritan scholars who were located outside of England and in Geneva, Switzerland, translated their own version of the Bible that became known as the Geneva Bible. And of course, bishops in the Anglican Church didn't like the Puritans challenging them, so they created their own in 1568 that became known as the Bishop's Bible. So can you see, as we go through the 1400s and 1500s, we had these various translations, and some people like one and some people like another. And when King James came to the throne in 1603, several people came and met him and said, you got to sort this out.

And the Puritans were hoping he'd favor them, and the Anglicans were hoping he wouldn't like the Puritans. And although none of them asked him for a new translation of the Bible, King James said, maybe a new translation will help bring us together. And he authorized a specific translation.

That's why if you read, matter of fact, in the front of most of them, it calls—well, this one won't say it because this is the new King James—but it's often known as the Authorized Version. By Authorized, it means Authorized by the King. He authorized this translation. They—I lost—what they did is they brought together 47 scholars who knew Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic, and they formed them into several committees, giving each of them parts of the scriptures to translate.

And they had some fairly elaborate rules to check on each other's work and compare with other committees. And the chief translator, a man named Lancelot Andrews, he spoke 15 modern languages and 16 ancient ones. I think of that. I can barely speak English. He spoke 31 different languages.

And, of course, they created the King James Bible. Surprisingly not very popular when it first came out. And what you might not have known is one of the reasons it wasn't very popular is they decided when they did this version—how many of you have used the King James or the New King James, just because I'm curious? Still a majority. I still love the King James, but so much of our literature uses the New King James. I finally went to that. But when I really want to delve in, I get the old King James. What I was going to point out is that, unlike some of the earlier translations that were a phrase-by-phrase translation—meaning, you might say a sentence, and then I'll put it in the language—King James was word for word. That means some things that they'd say in Hebrew, you translate the words and it'd come across something really funny.

What's interesting is, though people sort of pushed back against that, now many of those phrases that seemed very foreign to people at the time are common to us. I wrote just a couple of them.

One is a broken heart. When they first translated, people said, what do you mean broken heart? You can't break your heart. It's a muscle. But it was written that way in Hebrew. And now, of course, broken hearts in, what, half the songs on the country music channels? I didn't plan that one in advance. But not to be an offense to country music fans. The phrase, skin of your teeth. People read that and said, there's no skin on your teeth. But Job was saved by the skin of his teeth, and some people still use that. A fly in the ointment. Sour grapes, which of course, Aesop's fables borrowed later on. The phrase, pour out your heart. Let me pour out my heart to you.

Never heard of until the King James Bible. So we have a lot of phrases. Matter of fact, the King James Bible is the single most influential work on the English language, even ahead of Shakespeare. A lot of people say Shakespeare first and then the Bible, but studies really show King James was more influential than that.

During the 1800s, Bible societies in Britain and America worked hard to distribute as many copies of the Bible as possible to as many people as possible as cheaply as possible. And in almost all cases, it was the King James Bible they circulated. Let me give you some numbers there.

During each year of the 1860s, the American Bible Society had more than a million copies printed.

That's each year in the 1860s. Now, if we count from way back then to present time, the various Bible societies have distributed more than four and a half billion copies of the Bible.

Total amount, if you include the Bible societies and others' versions, mean that there's been more than one copy of the Bible produced for each living person on the planet. And the Bible, even though the King James is still the most popular, it's been translated into more than 2,000 languages and dialects. So, no matter what language you speak or read, you can get at least part of the Bible. So, with all that, there's still one very important thing about the Bible that I haven't mentioned that we should consider. With all that we have considered, it's worth noting that the Bible is the most well-distributed but least understood book in history. Most people have a copy, at least in this nation, but few know what it says.

Matter of fact, as you know, if you look through the history of the modern era of the Church, we've had to change our style in preaching the Gospel. Because in the old days, Mr. Armstrong could come on the radio and talk about things that people believed and assume that they did believe it. They knew what the Bible said. Now you have to mention something. You have to say, well, you know in the Bible there's this book called Isaiah or there's a king named Nebuchadnezzar.

Most people have no idea. But I wanted to get to another point. I discussed these proofs of the Bible. That the Bible is the authoritative Word of God, but I left out what I think is the most important one. I hinted at it, but I want to talk about it now. In my opinion, the most important proof of the Bible is simple faith and experience. Faith and experience. The most sure way to know that the Bible is accurate and that what it teaches is true is to experience the results for yourself. Study it. Try it. If you step out on faith and live according to the Word of God, you'll find that it's true because what it tells you works.

There is, I'm going to quote this in Malachi 3 in verse 10. I'm not going to turn there, but God there is talking about tithing. He said, why have you been robbing me? You haven't been paying your tithes. And He says, prove me in this. Bring the tithes in the storehouse and see if I don't bless you. Well, you can do that with the whole Bible. Prove God in it. Test Him.

You'll, I said, test it. Try it. I was thinking that there was an old commercial years ago that said, try it. You'll like it. Am I right? I have no idea what that was for. Does anybody remember?

Cereal?

Cereal?

Life cereal. Okay. So Mikey too. Try it. You'll, it's amazing how I can jump from the most profound to the most trivial. But like life cereal, but much better, if you try the Bible, you'll like it.

And most of you have been doing that for years. Many people in this room have been studying God's Word and proving in their lives that it works longer than a lot of the rest of us have been alive. Let's turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 5. 2 Corinthians 5. Let's see again a little bit of what the Bible tells us about this. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 7.

I could have just quoted this, but I think it's good if we look at this. But this is the essence of what we're doing here, what I'm saying in this point. We walk by faith, not by sight.

In this case, the more we exercise faith, the more we'll actually have evidence in sight.

Let's go to John chapter 5 and verse 39.

I only have a couple more scriptures to go to, so... John 5 and verse 39.

Once again, Christ was arguing with the Pharisees, but he makes it an interesting point because the Pharisees did know their Bible. They misunderstood a lot of it. But talking to them, he says, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me. But that's important. If we search the scriptures, they do tell us how to have eternal life. Jesus was pointing out that they're looking for the right thing. They were misunderstanding. But the scriptures testify of Jesus Christ, and they show us how to have eternal life. Proverbs chapter 30. Go there, Proverbs 30 and verse 5.

I think we've already made a good case that the Bible is God's Word. Something important for us to remember, just the first line in this. Every word of God... Actually, let me read more than just the first line. Every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him.

Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and he be found a liar. So all of his words are pure, it's interesting. He says, don't add to them. We can talk about them and discuss them, but don't try to add your own words, because his are pure. And then the last scripture I want to turn to, if you'll go to 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16. Now, if you're keeping notes, you're probably past page 1, but you might notice this is where we started. I thought it'd be good to use the first scripture to come to our end, but to remind us what this is all about. 2 Timothy 3 verse 16.

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, breathed out by God, and it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness. This is the Bible telling you that the Bible is God's inspired word and that it's valuable in your life. The most convincing proof you'll ever have is if you study the Bible and if you do make it your guide for life. I'll tell you what works, but of course the point is not to believe me because I'm telling you it, but believe the evidence that you can compile in your own life. Now, this book has been around a long time. Actually, I've got one in my office that seems like it's been around a long time, but the book itself has been around a long time. For it to be what it says it is really would require a miracle of God. For it to have been preserved all these years intact without error would require a miracle from God. And interestingly enough, this word teaches us that for us to understand what it says also requires a miracle for God to open our minds. It's a good thing that we believe in miracles. I believe in them. I think you do too. And I'll say this, I've in my life, I've been testing this book for many years, and I've proven it to be true, and I'm sure you'll find the same.