The Bible

I'm going on in the news lately, the talk of the terrorist attacks. And many have been describing the conflict between Islam and Christianity as a clash of cultures. And indeed, it mostly is. And I don't want to get into that, per se. This isn't a prophecy sermon. But I was intrigued thinking about how the relationships between Islam and Christianity has developed and changed over the years. When Islam first came on the scene, under the leadership of Muhammad, they moved out and started subjugating Arab peoples and forcing a new religion on them. Their primary goal was to overcome paganism and animism. These false polytheistic religions that were based in falsehood, I believe, inspired by Satan. And when they would come across groups of Jews or Christians, they would actually give them a little more favorable treatment. Because, of course, Islam claimed the Old Testament as part of their holy writings. They believed the Qur'an completes that. And they believed Jesus was a prophet, but not the Son of God. I think they were totally incorrect in that. And by the way, I'm not showing sympathy to their beliefs. But I wanted to latch on to one thing they called the Jews and the Christians. And one of the reasons they gave them favorable treatment is they called them fellow people of the book. People of the book. They had a set of sacred writings revealed from God that guided our lives. And in many ways, today, we're still people of the book. I like that phrase. We're people of God's Word. The authority of the Bible is one of the fundamental beliefs of the United Church of God. And I hope it's one of the fundamental beliefs of each and every one of us. And if it's...well, I could ask...we should look at it and ask ourselves, why is it? Or why not? I don't think you'd be here if the question were, why not? One of the most famous quotes of Jesus Christ was when Satan the Devil attempted him. He said, if you're the Son of God, make these stones into bread. You haven't eaten anything in 40 days. Jesus' answer was, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Assuming that he was the Son of God, who could argue with something like that? And of course, some question, was he really the Son of God? Or was he just some influential rabbi? And if we go along that line of thinking, it's worth us considering, knowing I think most of us have answered these questions before, but it's not a bad review, what we think about the Word of God. What does it say about itself? Where did we get it? Is it complete? How accurate is it? And how do we know these things? What we know is the Holy Bible, which is from the Greek biblios, which means book or books. It was written by 40 different authors from about 10 different countries, spread out over 1500 years, representing such different occupations as kings and diplomats, fishermen, priests, farmers, shepherds, a general, and I like one person said, an attempt-making rabbi. It was a rabbi with a side job. But they would all claim the real author was God. I would claim that as well. People might ask, well, how could that be? How could 40-some different people spread over almost 2000 years have one work? The answer comes in 2 Timothy 3.16. You can turn there if you like. You might already know it very well. I debated which Bible to bring up here. I've got one that's falling apart, but the type is bigger. The other, the type is okay, or it's not falling apart, but it's hard to read. Of course, this is a memory scripture. 2 Timothy 3.16 tells us, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Or we like to cite the Greek in this means it was breathed by God. And it's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness.

This is claiming that all scripture was given by God. That's a pretty clear claim. Many who put pen to paper to create what we have here went even further. Many of them said that God spoke to them. Not just that the Spirit moved in them. They would say, God spoke more than 3,800 times. Actually, if you want to turn to Ezekiel 6 in verse 1.

I'm going to turn there, although the phrase that I want to get is very simple. And as I said, it appears thousands of times, literally, in the Bible. And it's this. Ezekiel 6.1 says, Now the word of the Eternal came to me. God spoke to Ezekiel. And that's what he claimed. I didn't just have some feeling of what I should write. He said, God spoke to me. I'm not going to turn to Exodus 33, verse 11. But there is where it says that God spoke to Moses face to face, like a man talks to his friend. How many of us wish we could do that? And I go from there to think that the Bible says Abraham was God's friend. I don't doubt that Moses was, but God went out of his way to call Abraham his friend. And from what I understand of the Hebrew, his best friend. James 2.23 is a good reference for that. And they did what friends do. In Genesis 18, God showed up at Abraham's house while it was a tent. And they sat down and had a meal together. And then they had a discussion where you almost could feel like Abraham sounds like a Jewish mother saying, well, are you going to kill everyone in Sodom? What if there's 50 righteous people there? They went all the way down to 10.

The New Testament is also very clear in saying that Jesus Christ was the Son of God in the flesh. Says that he died and was resurrected. And then those who wrote the Bible say, I saw him. I talked to him. I'm going to go back to the New Testament there in 1 Corinthians 9 and verse 1. They said, I'm looking at this partly to show what does the Bible say about itself?

1 Corinthians 9, verse 1, Paul says, am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? I've seen him.

I won't turn to Galatians 1, verse 12, but there he says, I didn't receive this from man. I wasn't taught it from them, but it came from a revelation of Jesus Christ. We put that together with some other things, and we understand that after Paul was knocked down and blinded, and went and fasted three days, and then had his life restored, and he was baptized, he went out into the wilderness, and apparently for three, three and a half years, Jesus Christ met with him and taught him. He calls himself an apostle born out of season. But that's where he says he got this truth from. The writers of the Bible very clearly say God spoke to them directly, and even when that didn't happen, they were inspired. They were moved by God. In fact, I would also note 2 Peter 1, verse 21.

I tensiled this into my margin because actually we just covered this in class recently, and it's a point I wanted to make for the students. It was a surprise for some of them.

First, 2 Peter... I'm bad at getting my Peter's confused. Second Peter 1, 21 says, prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. That tells us the prophets of the Old Testament, that is the ones who wrote what we call the Bible, were moved by the Holy Spirit. They had God's spirit. The Bible claims to be profitable for reproof correction and instruction in righteousness. There are some other pretty high-level claims, some that you might have committed to memory scriptures.

John 17, 17, Jesus Christ in prayer to the Father said, thy word is truth. The definition of truth could be said to be this book. God's word is truth. Also in John 10, in verse 35, Jesus said the Scripture cannot be broken. The Scripture will stand. It won't be broken. It occurs to me, just from what the Bible says of itself, we would conclude that the Bible either is what it says it is, the infallible Word of God, or it's a complete fraud.

It couldn't just be worthwhile literature, beneficial folk tales. It couldn't be worthwhile if it's claiming to be God's word. I adapted that logic from thinking about what Jesus said of himself, because there are people that say, Jesus didn't have to be the Son of God, including, as I said, the Muslims.

He was an influential rabbi. He was a good teacher, but not really God in the flesh. Have you paid attention to what he said? He said he was God in the flesh. If he wasn't, he was a liar. And you couldn't say he was a good teacher. Matter of fact, people gave their lives to support him. That's not someone that's a good teacher if he wasn't what he said he was. Of course, I think he was what he says he was. And the Old Testament, all of the Bible, is what it says.

I would like to turn to Isaiah 44 and note again some of what the Bible says. I find this fascinating. I didn't realize this until learning a little bit about studying other religions. Gary Antion, I mentioned, teaches a comparative religion class. And sometimes you can look at what other religions that aren't Christians claim to be their fundamental documents. None of them claim to be God speaking in first person. They just refer to this or that. The Analects of Confucius are some nice proverbs. And the Vedas of the Hindus are these long poems that have some morality and such.

The Bible is different. Isaiah 44 and verse 6 says, Thus says the Eternal, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts. I am the first, and I am the last. Besides me, there is no God. And that's something else. Look down to verse 9. Those who make an image, all of them are useless.

Their precious things shall not profit. They are their own witnesses. They neither see nor know that they may be ashamed. Who would form a God or mold an image that profits Him nothing? And God looks down and says, those pieces of wood and stone, they are absolutely useless. Another thing I pointed out, there is a Hebrew word that is often translated into English as idle. But I learned that the original meaning of that word in Hebrew was dung pellets. I thought, God was saying, idols are pieces of, you know, human waste.

We could use other words that are more crass, but that's what God thinks of those idols. Let's turn over to Isaiah, back to Isaiah 41, and see some of what He says there, challenging them. Again, this is God in the first person, recorded in these words. And as I said, it either is God, or this whole book is a farce. It's not a farce, though. Isaiah 41, verse 21, He says, Present your case, says the Eternal. Bring forth your strong reason, says the King of Jacob.

Let them bring forth and show us what happened. This is the speaking of the idols. Let them show the former things that were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them, or declare the things to come to the idols. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know your gods. Yes, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed together. In other words, do something, but indeed you're nothing.

Your work is nothing. And He who chooses you is an abomination. Those are some pretty strong words. God's saying to these idols, look what I can do, look what I did. And He goes on describing how He made the earth, He made the universe. And these idols, He's saying, you can't do anything. You have to have people pick you up and carry you around. But some people would say, well, this is just some guy invented this and made it up. They say the Bible is nothing. Can we prove that it is something?

What have we based our belief on? I've been very, actually honored. That's one of the things working with young people there at the home office. I've had a couple of them working with me, wanting to counsel for baptism recently. And one of the things I tell them very early on is, you've got to know why and how you believe God exists. And then know that you believe this is His Word.

So I said, once you accomplish that, you can prove everything else from it. The Bible tells us how to live, but how do we know it is God's Word? Well, for one thing, we can say, we've got a booklet that the United Church of God produces called, Is the Bible True? It takes the stance of just saying, look, many scientists say there's no proof of the Bible. They say the Bible contradicts science. But the fact is, the Bible doesn't contradict science.

Mostly, it just contradicts what people mistakenly think it teaches. One example, physicists believe that the universe came into existence at one particular time through what they call the Big Bang. Well, the Bible says the universe came into existence at one particular time when God created it. And what I find interesting, and many of you, I'm sure, will remember this because you're older than me.

When I was going to school, I still remember the science textbook saying that the idea of the Big Bang Theory hadn't been around that long. And they say they used to believe in what they called the Steady State Theory. Meaning, scientists believed the universe had always been in existence. But things like the theory, you know, understanding radioactivity and the principle of entropy, convinced them that that can't be.

It had to start at a particular time, which is exactly what the Bible teaches. Now, their theories can't explain what happened, what caused the Big Bang. Well, we understand what caused creation. God decided to create, and He did it at a particular time. Now, of course, they look at the fossil record, and some say, well, the Bible says that mankind's only been around, or the world's been around 6,000 years. No, the Bible doesn't say that.

They just misunderstand it. We know that the Bible says God created the heavens and the earth in a beginning. When was that beginning? We don't know. It could have been, you know, ages ago, billions of years. We know, well, if we want to turn to Genesis, I wasn't planning on exploring it, but, of course, Genesis 1.1 says, in the beginning, or the Hebrew should say, in a beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Then, in verse 2, the earth was, or in the Hebrew, ha'ya, the earth became without form and void. But Isaiah 45.18 says, the Lord who created the heavens and earth didn't create it in vain. He didn't create it to you, as in Genesis 1.2, without form and void, as translated from the Hebrew words tohu and bohu.

I'm guessing most of the people in this room have been hearing that as long as I have, or longer. God says, I didn't create the earth tohu. God didn't create it that way, but it became that way. And we don't know how much time elapsed between Genesis 1.1 and 1.2. Likewise, archaeology doesn't just prove the Bible. As a matter of fact, the longer time goes on, the more proof is found.

Before the mid-1800s, scholars were largely convinced that there were no such thing as the Assyrian Empire. They said, the only evidence of it is in the Bible. There's no proof in any archaeological digs. And then, two archaeologists discovered three Assyrian cities, including Nineveh, the capital. And they found tens of thousands of clay tablets proving that the Assyrian Empire existed, and proving that it had commercial trade and war with the Kingdom of Israel.

Similarly, in 1993, archaeologists in northern Galilee found a tablet with an inscription that mentions both the House of David and the King of Israel. Outside proof, outside the Bible, that the characters there were real. Again, these are just things that prove that there's nothing in science that's disproved the Bible.

But, some of the areas we go to... there are more areas, but one of the strongest independent proofs is prophecy. When prophecy is fulfilled, that's a strong proof that the God who inspired it knew what he was doing. There is lots of prophecies in the Bible. Many of them, though, are yet for the future. So, they haven't yet been fulfilled. But, there are quite a few that have. Well, actually, there are good many that have, but the evidence of their being fulfilled is also in the Bible.

And outside people say, well, you can't prove something by itself. But, some of the ones that can be independently verified are pretty powerful. And again, I know this is a review, but I want to turn to Ezekiel 26 to remind us of one of those. Ezekiel 26, beginning at the start of the chapter. By the way, when I was preparing this, I was looking at one of Mr. Armstrong's old books that printed in black and white. I'm curious how many of you still have that one? I think called The Proof of the Bible, and it diagrams some of this. Here, he's referring to the city of Tyre.

That's pretty strong stuff. At the time that this was written, we believe around 600 B.C., Tyre was a very powerful, great trade center. A large city that had been in existence probably for about a thousand years. This would be like someone writing today and saying that London is going to be destroyed, and there will be no remains left, and no one will ever rebuild there. Or perhaps New York or Chicago. That would be sort of comparable. Well, Tyre had been watching Judah being conquered by the Babylonians, and it says, was watching with gloating. Yeah, now I'm going to get all these riches. So God promised destruction, but not all at once. God said that many nations would come like waves. Waves don't all hit the shore at one time. They come one after another. Ezekiel 26, verse 7, Now this did happen, and actually fairly soon, when Abra was prophesied, the Babylonians came and besieged Tyre for thirteen years, and finally conquered it and destroyed it. But that Nebuchadnezzar didn't scrape it like the top of a rock. So he didn't accomplish all of that. But then again, the prophecy calls for many people, many nations, and says that they would scrape Tyre like the top of a rock. I want to go to verse 12, in the same chapter. It says, Drop down to verse 14.

Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians did destroy Tyre, but they destroyed the original city that was built on the coast. But there was another, what was called New Tyre, built a short ways out to sea on an island. And that city now grew and expanded and was still known as Tyre. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the mainland, but it would be left for others. And that would be happening. And 332 BC, hundreds of years later, Alexander the Great came with his Greco-Macedonian armies, and they besieged New Tyre. Now, to be able to get at it, they had to get across that, you know, that piece of water. So they built a causeway. And they took the debris from the old demolished city, and they did put it in the water. And they scraped it like the top of a rock. And so built a causeway that has built up to where now, of course, what was New Tyre is on a peninsula, not an island.

Let's read in verse 19 of Ezekiel 26. For thus does the Lord God, when I make you a desolate city, like the cities that are not inhabited, when I bring the deep upon you, and great waters cover you. Archaeologists show that much of the new city that was destroyed by the Greeks was built on low-lying land that was reclaimed from the water by building sort of a sea wall to keep the water out like much of the Netherlands is today. Well, Alexander destroyed that, and so that later rubble from the destroyed cities could be seen in the water, just as this prophecy called for hundreds of years in advance. And the sight of those cities has never been rebuilt. Now, fishermen do spread their nests there. As I said, that's something we used to talk about more. One of the reasons we don't as much is there are technicalities about which part was the old city and where are buildings nearby and things like that. But it's worth noting, as I said, if someone came and said, Chicago is going to be destroyed and never be rebuilt. And that happened within hundreds of years, and then people said, well, yeah, but Jerry Indiana is still there. Some would say, well, see, God didn't fulfill his prophecy. But we would say, no, he did fulfill his prophecy. Destruction of cities can be depressing, but it's a worthwhile event because it's something archaeologists can verify. There's a similar case in Isaiah 13. Isaiah 13, beginning in verse 19.

Isaiah 13, part of a long prophecy against the city of Babylon, beginning in verse 19. And 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 shall lie there, and their houses will be full of owls, ostriches will dwell there, and wild goats will caper.

The hyenas will howl in their citadels and jackals in their pleasant palaces. The time is near to come, and their days will not be prolonged. This is of the city that Nebuchadnezzar, as you read in Daniel, looked out and said, Isn't this great Babylon that I've built just before God reduced him to being like an animal for seven years? But the site of ancient Babylon is now an archaeological dig in Iraq.

It was eventually abandoned. It took quite a long time. The Persians conquered the city, and at first didn't destroy it. They were able to capture it by having some men go under this river gate after they diverted part of the river, opened it up, and conquered it. So then later the Persians destroyed part of it. It took until the Roman Empire to finally destroy the city. But God's word was true. It was destroyed and never rebuilt. There's an interesting account, Mr.

Armstrong, wrote of visiting that site back in the 1950s. And I remember reading where he asked a tour guide, Well, does anyone live here? No, no one lives here. Do the Arabs ever pitch their tent? The traveling Bedouins and the tour guide said, Never! They have a strong superstition against it. Again, supporting exactly what God wrote.

Now, these prophecies are nice to look at because they're very neat and concise. But there are prophecies that are better at showing how God could foretell the future. I referenced Daniel. I'm not going to turn there, but remember Daniel chapter 2 describes Nebuchadnezzar seeing this great image with a head of gold, arms and shoulders made of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron with a feet mixed of iron and clay. And Daniel gave a very clear interpretation that this would describe four succeeding empires, starting with Babylon, when he told Nebuchadnezzar, You're the head of gold. And after you there will arise another kingdom, inferior but greater in strength.

And he was supplanted by the Persian Empire, or the Medes and Persians, as it says. And after that, another one, the Greco-Macedonian Empire, and finally the Roman Empire. And of course, these would correspond to the beast that Daniel would see in chapter 7, when God gave him another vision. And scholars almost all agree that this did foretell the progress of human history during that time.

As a matter of fact, it did so so accurately that scholars, rather than trying to disprove it, claimed that Daniel wrote it hundreds of years later. No one could have possibly done that before it happened. Well, we've got reason to believe he could and did.

And of course, some people also say, well, wait a minute. The prophecy can't be accurate because it shows the Roman Empire in existence when Christ returns. But of course, that's another case where it's easy in history to show revivals of the Roman Empire. Rome might have been sacked in 476 AD by the Goths and the Vandals, but it would rise again. And we've counted several resurrections of the Holy Roman Empire, what became known as the Holy Roman Empire, and strong indications that it will do so again. And how many of us have watched what's going on in Europe now and wondered if, as Europe struggles with saying, who are we?

What should we be? Are they going to look back to their past? Are they going to look back to Caesar Augustus as their roots and what they need to become? And perhaps we'll see something that might fit Daniel 11, a king of the north coming against the king of the south. And I'm speculating here, but Daniel 11, of course, is the longest continuous prophecy in the Bible. And it's so accurate with what happened in the Greek Empire that, as I said, scholars say that it must have been made up hundreds of years later.

And there are other Bible references. I just want to mention this. If we look for proof of the Bible rather than choosing to just believe it, that can shore up our belief quite a bit. As I said, the authority. Do we believe it is what it says it is? Can we ground our life in it?

Of course, another big question we might have is, how did we get it? If this was written so long ago by all these different people, how did we get it? How do we know we have the right one? Well, we look at it partly by the largest part of it is the Old Testament, written originally in Hebrew. Now, it describes how God worked with Abraham and built a nation, and eventually there would be twelve tribes of the nation of Israel. Judah was one of those tribes. And in Romans 3, we see a very strong indication of how we got the Bible. Romans 3, verses 1 and 2.

Here Paul says, what advantage has the Jew or its prophet of circumcision? Well, much in every way, chiefly, because to them were committed the oracles of God. To the Jews were given the oracles of God. And we take that to mean the Word of God, which we can see actually over in Acts 7. Not far away. Acts 7, verse 37 and 38. Acts 7, verse 37.

So what Moses received was the Word of God. What we read, we often call the Pentateuch. Living oracles. And to the Jews were committed the oracles. The Word of God. Jesus confirmed the idea that the Jewish people had authority in Matthew 23. I'm going to just reference it, but at the beginning of that, he said, The scribes and the Pharisees stood in Moses' seat. So God committed to Moses the Word of God. The scribes and Pharisees in Jesus' time sat in his seat. Now he said, do what they say, because they have the oracles. Don't do what they do, because they have the Word, but they don't follow it themselves. You know, they distort and misinterpret. I do want to turn to Matthew 5, verse 18, to see something that Jesus Christ said. And I think it's a powerful promise that God's Word would be preserved. Matthew 5 and verse 18. Actually, this is a memory scripture we often memorize for a different reason. Matthew 5, 18, it says, 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. We usually quote this to prove that God's law was not done away. It wasn't nailed to the cross. Jesus didn't fulfill it so that we don't have to obey it. And those are the ideas represented by the written Word. But, like that, I think he mentions jots and tiddles. These are elements of actual writing. I think we can interpret what Jesus is saying, that not only the spiritual law would never be done away, but God would preserve the written Word that tells us about that law. God's Word would not fail. And when we look, if we think about how the efforts that the Jews went into to preserve that, to make sure it didn't get altered or lost, it is impressive. I've got an excerpt from a writing on how the Jews from about 70 AD, the period of the early church, up to 500 AD, they had various rules, and included in producing a scroll for the synagogue, it had to be written on the skin of a clean animal. That is, they would produce what was called vellum, or animal skin, prepared for writing. Each column could not extend less than 48 lines, or more than 80. The width of the column had to be 30 letters. No word or letter, not even a yod, could be permitted by memory. So the scribe would look, and he would actually chant the letter as he went from looking to writing it on the new scroll, never just trusting his memory. And between each consonant would be the space of a hair or a thread, between every book the space of three lines. And before doing any copying, the copyist had to completely bathe himself, put on his robes, his Jewish garb, and then pay that much care. Now, the Jews that were given the job of making new copies from that time forward were the ones, they were called the Maserites, because they followed a rule called the Massorah, for making sure that the sacred law was copied accurately. And the Massorah was sort of considered a fence or a lockbox to keep the Scriptures accurate. The Massorah would record the number of times that several letters occurred in the Bible, and also the middle word, and the number of verses, and the middle verse of each book, so that later they would produce a copy, and then someone would go and count. And is the middle letter the one that was predicted? Does this consonant appear that number of times? And they would circulate the text around and have several people check each copy. And they numbered certain phrases, like the number of times it would say, House of Israel, and it had to be exact.

Now, we could think that could be pretty effective. That's a pretty effective way of, from about the time of Christ until about 1500, or once out, well, about 1500, that's how it was preserved. How do we know that they had the accurate Scripture when Christ was on the scene? Well, that one's easy. I trust that. He would have told us if it wasn't. He was the Son of God. He would know if the Bible needed correction or adjustment. And I will mention what's called the Masoretic Text. You know, the ones that they preserved by those elaborate rules is also called sometimes the Received Text. And it was the basis for the King James translation of the Bible. They used those set of translations. Or, I shouldn't say translations, because it was in the original Hebrew. They followed that, and not some manuscripts. There's some interesting discussion, because they found some manuscripts that are older than some of the Masoretic Texts. And some people claim, oh, these ones from Alexandria and Egypt must be more accurate, because they're older. Well, that doesn't hold up, because the Masoretes, they would use a copy of the Scripture for a certain time. But when it started getting tattered and not very reliable, because it's getting faded or whatever, they would destroy it. So there would not be inferior copies of the Bible around. But they used very strict rules to make new copies. So the fact that there aren't as many very old copies of that doesn't mean they're less accurate. We could say it in some ways to mean that they're more. What about the New Testament? The Jews didn't have any stake in preserving that. Now, they didn't believe, well, except for the ones that became Christians. But as a nation and as a church, they didn't preserve the New Testament. And it wasn't written in Hebrew. It was written in Greek, the common language of education at that time. Now, the Greek people themselves had no responsibility to preserve it. But God had established His church. I want to turn to Isaiah 8, verses 14-16, to see something that I think is a valuable prophecy.

Well, I can't rightly say there are any unvaluable prophecies, but this one is valuable to the subject at hand. Isaiah 8, verse 14, says, He will be as a sanctuary, but as a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. This is the prophecy of Jesus Christ, who was the stumbling stone, the rock of offense. To both houses of Israel, as a trap in its narrative, the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, but they shall fall and be broken, be snared and taken. And then with this prophecy of Christ, it says, bind up to testimony, steal the law among my disciples. I think it's significant that he says, steal the law among my disciples, and it's a proxy of Jesus Christ. Christ would have disciples who would bind it up and keep the testimony. The Hebrew that here translated as bind up can also be translated into the word complete. It could also be considered a proxy for Christ's disciples to complete the law and the testimony. And again, if we're not sure about what testimony it might be, in Revelation 12, 17... Actually, I will turn there. I was going to cite it, but I don't want to leave that.

Revelation 12, in verse 17, of course, this prophecy of Satan portrayed as a dragon, waiting, trying to devour the Son of God, and then just make war against the church. But in verse 17, the dragon was enraged with the woman. He went to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandment of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ. Again, we just read that the disciples of Christ would complete the law and the testimony. They would bind it up.

So I'll make a leap to say that this testimony of Jesus Christ certainly includes the four gospels, but I believe all of the New Testament. Now, we don't have record of the church compiling and preserving the New Testament, but we have the New Testament. And it's interesting when scholars talk about the manuscripts, the handwritten copies. There are lots and lots of manuscript copies of the New Testament, and preserved accurately. The reason we know it's accurate is they agree with each other. They're not a whole bunch of them, and this one says that, and that one says that. They preserve the same word. I copied from our fundamental belief statement on the subject. Let me read from this if you despite me. It says, 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. Now, compare this to writings of other ancient writings of the time. Caesar's Gallic Wars, there are only 10 good copies of it. And the oldest one was copied 900 years later than Caesar's life. There are only two copies of the history of Tacitus, and only eight manuscripts of the history of Thucydides. Tacitus and Thucydides were considered great historians and poets of the Roman period. And I'll say, historians who study ancient history consider those to be valuable and accurate books. They don't dispute, can we trust these because there's only two or eight copies? And yet, we've got 4,000 copies of the New Testament, and they agree with each other. Matter of fact, let me continue. There are thousands of manuscripts and partial manuscripts of the New Testament. Some of these were copied within 50 years or less of the original. 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 did. In addition, numerous theologians who lived within 100 years of Christ, like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Augustine, and I'm not citing them because we believe in their theology. They had become part of the false church that had fallen into apostasy. But in arguing their doctrines, they quoted the extent writings or copies of New Testament books. The Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Revelation were all quoted as the final authority. It's said that Sir David Dalrymple reconstructed our entire New Testament, except for 11 verses from writings of these theologians. That's an amazing corroboration of the New Testament. And the last thing it says is, if the Bible, if every Bible were to disappear overnight, we could almost entirely reconstruct the New Testament from the quotes that are in other books. That's saying a lot. That's very convincing for me.

The Bible was preserved accurately. It is what it says it is. Now, some people have questioned, do we have all of it? I just want to mention that briefly.

The Jews were entrusted with preserving the oracles. So it makes sense that we should trust what's called the canon that they preserved. By canon, of course, it's not a large metal thing that shoots stuff, but the canon is the group of books that are considered part of the Bible. Now, we don't know exactly who was responsible, but that speculation is that Ezra the priest did the final canonization, choosing what would be in the Bible or what we call the Old Testament and what not. Now, for the New Testament, most speculation believes that it was the Apostle Paul. There is some evidence that Peter might also have had a hand, and we don't know that there might not have been others. So the question usually comes down to a set of writings that are called the Apocrypha. If you ever look at a Catholic Bible, it includes seven additional books that aren't in my King James Bible. It has the book of Tobit, Judas, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. Besides 107 additional verses that are placed at the end of the book of Esther and some additional chapters inserted into Daniel, I would claim that the Catholic Church didn't have authority to add to the Bible as they received it. These were never considered to be a part of the Old Testament before 397 A.D. So until nearly 400 years after Christ, nobody had claimed that those books were part of the Bible. And it wasn't until the Council of Trent in 1546 that those Apocryphal books were officially declared to be a part of the Bible. 1500 years after Christ's time, my thought is that the Bible that was complete in Christ's time, the Old Testament, was complete. I'll just make a reference. I'm not going to read all of it, but in 1952, Dr. Herman Hay published an article, I can't remember if it was in the Plain Truth or the Good News, but on the Apocrypha, and he made some strong arguments. His conclusion was that the Apocrypha have no divine authority behind them. So in numerous places, they blatantly contradict the Bible. So you can't have the Bible contradicting the Bible.

And they introduced pagan false doctrine and superstition. He even says that a couple of books were deliberate frauds brought in by the Aesthenes. Those were books called, yeah, the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jasher. There's evidence that the Aesthenes, after Christ's time, deliberately tried to introduce those and that they were known to be frauds.

So, actually, I don't want to spend much time on this because outside of the Catholic Church, there's almost no debate. Almost everybody believes that the Bible that we have from the received text, the Masoretic text, is correct.

Now, we might wonder, though, with all that talk about additions to the Old Testament, should we look at the New Testament as being on par? And actually, I don't think that's much of a question. We remember Matthew 24, 35, where Christ said, Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Christ's Word would be preserved, and it was in what we know as the Bible. There are also some places. I'll turn to 2 Peter 3, 16. I'm in Revelation, so it's nearby.

Since I like talking to an older audience, I made reference to Scriptures being nearby. I was doing some counseling with one of the students, and he was looking his up on his phone. So I said, I guess nearby doesn't matter when you're bringing it up digitally. They're all nearby. But 2 Peter 3, 16, Peter is referring to the Apostle Paul. Actually, you see in verse 15, Our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, because the untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures. Of course, this is saying that Paul's words can be twisted, and they certainly have been by modern churches. But Peter's also saying that if the rest of the Scriptures are on par with Peter's epistles, or Paul's, he's calling Paul's epistles Scripture. I don't think I said that very clearly. But Paul's epistles and the rest of the Scriptures include... says that Paul's epistles are Scriptures.

So he's confirming Paul's writing. There's something similar in Revelation 22. Revelation 22 will read verses 18 and 19. Revelation 22, of course this is wrapping up the book just about, says, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in the book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away His part from the book of life, from the holy city, and from the things that are written in this book. This obviously refers to adding or subtracting from the book of Revelation. But I think we might wonder if it would include... this would be a way of God saying, the whole Bible is complete. This is the last thing I'm going to give you before Christ returns.

I suspect that's the case. There's another, just sort of corroborating, small bit of circumstantial evidence to say that the Bible is complete. And sort of that's the section. I'm going to mention in Luke 24, verse 44, Jesus mentions what we call the tripartite division of the Old Testament. He mentions the law, the prophets, and the Psalms. The law, that being the Pentateuch, that which was written by Moses, the prophets, and then the Psalms, referring to all the wisdom books.

Well, that's three sections, and scholars routinely divide the New Testament into four different types of books. The Gospels, Acts, standing on its own, the Epistles, and Revelation. And if you put those together, that's seven, which we consider the number of completion. We have the complete Bible, most of us believe, in that it is authoritative. At least it was in its original languages. Some people wonder about the translation into English.

I'm not going to discuss a lot of it, but we should know that throughout the ages, for millennia, the original Greek and Hebrew was preserved, as I mentioned. It began being translated into Latin almost at 400 AD, but I don't know if any of you read Latin. I don't. But it was in about the 1300s, some men began translating the Bible into English. And in 1611, we would finally have what was called the Authorized Version. King James VI of Scotland, who became King James I of England, to sort of try to satisfy the Puritan movement in the Kingdom, gathered a group of scholars, 47 scholars, experts in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and they set up elaborate rules of separate subcommittees. They broke up the Old Testament and the New Testament manuscripts into groups, and they would work on them and then check each other's work. And the chief translator was a fellow named Lancelot Andrews, which is a pretty cool sounding name. Lancelot Andrews spoke 15 modern languages and 16 ancient languages, and he presided over this group, and they produced what would become the most popular version of the Bible in human history. Interestingly, the King James Bible wasn't very popular when it first came out, because previous English translations were largely idea for idea. They would sort of say, well, here's the idea in Hebrew, and let's give how we would say it in English. But the King James translated mostly word for word, and in doing so introduced a lot of new phrases into English that are now familiar to us. You've heard of the phrase, broken heart? That's a Hebrew phrase that came into English with the King James Bible. Similarly, escaping by the skin of your teeth, a fly in the ointment, having sour grapes, pouring out your heart. That and many more phrases were introduced in English by the King James Bible. And it was during the 1800s, Bible societies in Britain and America worked very hard to distribute the Bible, and they ended up sending out millions of copies, almost all of them the King James Bible, or King James Version. Now, the Bible has been translated into over 2,000 languages and dialects, but it's interesting that the King James, actually what I have up here is the new King James. I brought my old King James, I was going to use it, and then I pulled out and said, boy, that type's too small for me to use. I've been looking for a more giant print than my large print, so I can use for speaking. But we have a lot to tell us that the Bible is what it says it is. But there's one more thing I think that we should consider. The Bible is the most well-distributed but the least understood book in history. Most people have a copy, not very many people know what it says. It reminds me of a church some decades ago published a booklet called Read the Book. I remember hearing a commercial once where people were arguing and the narrator kept coming in and saying, just read the book. In discussing various proofs or things about the Bible, I left out what I think is the most important one. As I said, when I counseled with a couple young men for baptism, and when I told them, you have to believe there's a God, and you have to believe that this is His Word, the one proof that still says the most to me is 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 of following what it teaches. You have to step out on faith to live according to this word, but invariably people find that if they do, it works. Sort of as it says in Malachi 3 and verse 10. I'm taking this a little bit out of context, but it's worth it to get what it says.

Here, God is speaking to the Jewish people about tithing, but it refers to much more than that. Malachi 3, 10, Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Try me now in this, says the Lord, if I won't open for you the windows of heaven, and pour out for you such a blessing, there won't be room to receive it.

Try me now. The old King James says, prove it. Either one still works. It reminds me of the old phrase, try it, you'll like it. Studying and living by God's word is the most sure way to know that it is indeed God's word. And I know in this room, many of you have been doing that for many decades. That's why you're still in this room, and I think will be.

2 Corinthians 5 and verse 7. 2 Corinthians 5, 7.

It's a very simple, short scripture. We walk by faith, not by sight. In this case, the more we exercise faith, the more we'll have evidence in sight. Remember Hebrews 11.1 says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. We walk by faith, and that brings it into our sight. I'll also mention John 5 and verse 39. I'll turn back there.

John 5, 39.

I didn't realize that I'm coming towards a conclusion. How many scriptures I had near the end. Jesus is discussing some things with the Pharisees and having disagreements, but he says, You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and these are they which testify of me. Now, I want to use it for a meeting slightly different than he meant with the Pharisees, but Jesus was saying, by searching the scriptures, you'll see that they do tell us how to have eternal life. Search the scriptures. In them we have life. Largely because they do testify of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ's personality is in this book. I've been going, teaching the major prophets class with the students, and I've discussed with them, you know, one of the main reasons we spend that time, because you could summarize the prophecy fairly quickly. I could probably do it within a week of class. But I said, one of the reasons to wade through and read so much of what's in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel is because you get to know God. God's personality is there. You get to know what he's like when you read all of that and you spend time with him. And it's the words of life.

Proverbs 30 and verse 5 says, every word of God is pure. Every word of God is pure. And it says, He is a shield. We can put our trust in Him. If you want to turn back to the book of 2 Timothy for a couple of closing thoughts on this.

2 Timothy 3 and verse 16, once again, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. All Scripture comes from God. It's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, instruction, and righteousness. This is the Bible telling us that the Bible is God's inspired word. It is a valuable guide for life. That's the most convincing proof that we'll ever have. Not what it says, but if we study what it says and we live by it, we'll see that it works. But the point, as I said, is not for you to believe me telling you, but believe it in your life. There's no better personal evidence across the page in 2 Timothy 2.15. It says, Be diligent or study to show yourself approved to God, a worker who doesn't need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. So we need to dig in and study it and live by it. This book has been around a long time. You can tell this one's falling apart. But the words that it contains have been around such a long time. For it to be what it says would take a miracle. For it to have been preserved without error, all of these millennia would take a miracle. And I think it's only right, then, that to understand it also requires a miracle, God in us. Fortunately, I think we all believe in miracles. In my life, I've read this book and strived to understand it, and I've been blessed by it, and I want to encourage all of us to continue to do the same.