Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.
We are going to start now this morning. This is apologetics class two. Last week was introduction to apologetics. Today we're going to move into this is class two, but this will be divine inspiration of the Bible part one. There will be several parts to this aspect of it about divine inspiration of the Bible. Of course the term apologetics, we covered it last week, means to give a defense, to give an answer, a reason, an argument of why you believe what you believe. Uh to give reasonable evidence, reasonable proofs, and again just logic and reason why. Uh we used the scripture last week. We went through the scripture 1 Peter 3:15 about be ready to give an answer always to every man the reason and hope that is in you. We were in Philippians chapter 1:7 and 17 talking about Paul said, "I'm set to give it a defense of the gospel." So, uh one of the aspects of this of course is uh the issue of the Bible. Is the Bible the inspired, inherent word of God that's been preserved to us as God gave it to his prophets and apostles down through the centuries. And of course this is really where the battle lies. The battle is against uh the scriptures. It's really uh I think the battle and the attacks on the scripture have increased. But listen, this is nothing new. Okay? This attack on, you know, we got a lot of people say, "Well, I believe in God. I believe or I believe in intelligent design. I believe in you know, creator, but I don't necessarily believe the Bible." Uh of course as several of our speakers at the conference a couple of weeks ago, you know, made mention of was that, you know, that there's a lot of people that make these statements and they haven't even read the whole Bible all the way through. But also, there's an aspect to it that there are people that just don't understand a lot of what they read. They don't know how to put it into proper context. They don't know how to rightly divide the word. And of course, we have what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians about, you know, it's really the the natural man cannot discern or understand the things of the spirit of God sometimes. So, but but we have to do the best we can, right? As Christians and especially if we're called to be ministers of the gospel, teachers, pastors, evangelists, prophets, apostles, we have to be be able to try to break through that either lack of discernment, lack of understanding, lack of ability, lack of knowledge of the scriptures themselves or the evidences and proofs that surround them. So, we're just going to be looking this morning at some of the basic things you need to know about the Bible itself, okay? And we're going to get into some of the evidences and what those are. Very important. So, let's just look at
this. Who and when, all right? The Bible was written over period of 1,400 to 1,800 years. Now, I'm going to pause there. One of the reason that's stated is because there most scholars are not sure when the book of Job was written. It was probably the earliest book, but I happen to think it was probably way before way before Moses, possibly even around the time of Abraham or before Abraham. But it's definitely one of the first of the Old Testament books to be written. The Bible's written over a period of 1,400 to 1,800 years by more than 40 different authors. The Bible is a a of 66 separate books divided into two primary divisions, the Old Testament containing 39 books and the New Testament containing 27 books. It is believed that all of the books of the Bible were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is kind of how it breaks down here and this is good for you to know who. Now, sometimes uh we're uncertain as to who, but I tend to look at it this way. You have You got to remember you have liberal scholars. And liberal scholars will sometimes, even though it's pretty clear who's writing the book from the way it's written or or from the perspective of of it's written or even the people around it, who's telling the story, they still want to have these question marks, right? But anyway, you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy written by Moses, 1445 BC through 1405 BC and so on down the line. Joshua, it just ki- kind of gives you a time frame here and I'm I'm going to leave these up for a second just so you guys can can either copy these down or or take a screenshot if you need to or however you want to do this, go back and take screenshots. Um we just go we're we'll rock right on through here. First Kings, Second Kings, First Chronicles, Second Chronicles, so on down the line. And then you have the book of Psalms and you notice the book of Psalms is kind of broken up. Sons of Korah wrote certain Psalms, Asaph wrote certain Psalms. Of course, King David wrote certain Psalms, Solomon wrote some. Uh but you know, it's important to get a hold of two. Just just make a mental note of this and the King David is around 1000 BC. That's something you need to remember cuz he was considered not just a king, but a prophet and a priest. And we'll cruise on through here. Just let everybody see this. You can so you kind of understand the dates. It's It's good when you're reading the Bible, when you're studying the Bible, to kind of know if you're reading, for instance, if you're reading the prophet Isaiah, it's good to know that, you know, he was writing that between 740 and 680 BC. Right? Think about that, you know, 700, nearly 800 years before the Messiah came, Jesus Christ came,
Isaiah was writing very specific prophecies about him. We're going to be talking about that in the days that probably in part two. We're going to get into the prophecies of Jesus' first coming. I want everybody to see this. Here's on down to Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets. Really says 600 to 450 BC, but we really know it was around 450 BC when the Old Testament was completed as we know it. Here's the New Testament. This is important to get a hold of. I want you guys to really know this right here. It helps you so much when reading the New Testament that Matthew was written in the 60s AD. Uh Mark, probably the earliest of the Gospels, late 50s, early 60s AD. Luke 60 AD, of course, the Gospel of John, late 80s, early 90s AD. Acts written by Luke, 61 AD. Romans by Paul, 55. First Corinthians, 54. Second Corinthians, 55 AD. Again, really helps you get a grasp on on this. What's interesting, I want everybody to notice that one of the very earliest, I think the the earliest epistles of Paul was Galatians. Having to deal with the the whole do we keep the law and the rituals and the ceremonies and the circumcision and the Sabbaths and all that. He dealt with that very early on, 49 AD. So, you're going down Ephesians 60, Philippians 61, so on down. Look at the book of James was a very early New Testament book. The half-brother of Jesus was in the 40s or 50s AD, somewhere in that time period. Of course, bringing us on through. Peter, first first and second Peter, 63, 64 AD. First, second, and third John, we got the late 80s and early 90s AD. And of course, the book of Revelation. Somewhere probably around 80, 95, or 96. So, very important to just kind of have a grasp on the time frame that the Bible was written in. Each book and epistle. Now, we have here, why trust the Bible? Why trust the Bible? And these are going to These are five things that we're hopefully going to cover, maybe not in order, but we're definitely going to cover these reasons why. And I can say beyond any shadow of a doubt, it's not blind faith. Okay? It's not blind faith for me, and it really shouldn't be blind faith. Remember Thomas, the apostle, said, "If I don't touch the nail prints in his hands and his side, his pierced side, I'm not going to believe." And what did Jesus appear in there and say, "Come here. Come come see. Come touch. Come put your hand Come put your hands in here." And so, the Lord doesn't mind giving us evidence. The problem is, most people
don't know the evidence. Most Christians don't know the evidence and don't know the history and they don't know the archaeological confirmation and so on. So, these are the five areas: manuscript evidence, we will look at historical accuracy and references from secular sources, archaeological confirmation, fulfilled prophecies, the supernatural and mathematical evidence. I mean, when I say mathematical when you start compiling a list of like prophecies for instance, this is like mathematical evidence. This is in the book Evidence Demands a Verdict, which is one of your books for this course. But uh Josh McDowell talks about you take 30, there's 300 plus prophecies of Jesus' first coming. He said, "If you just take 30 of those, the likelihood of 30 of those being any other man than Jesus Christ, he said would be like taking the state of Texas, burying it 2 ft deep in quarters. All right? That's a lot of quarters. Painting one orange and having a guy jump out of an airplane and parachute down and land on that quarter. That's the chances that Jesus is not the prophesied Messiah of the Bible just taking 30 prophecies. And there's 300. All right? Think about that. So, we have the supernatural prophecies. Fulfilled prophecy is the supernatural and mathematical evidence. All right? And then of course we have testimonies of changed lives of of of historical figures like Saul of Tarsus who became the Apostle Paul. We have testimonies that lead up into from way back in antiquity into the modern times now of changed lives and how the Bible uh has changed people from being you know, murderers and drug addicts and alcoholics and you know, terrible, promiscuous, sexually immoral, and all kinds of terrible situations and changed their lives. So, uh fairy tales don't do that. All right? So, again, you need to know this. Why trust the Bible? We're going to go through manuscript evidence, historical accuracy, and references is secular sources, or we should non-Christian or non-Jewish sources as well. Archaeological confirmation, fulfilled prophecies, testimonies. All right? So, let's keep going here. All right. It says here, "The divine inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible is the most crucial aspect of our faith in Jesus Christ as our God and Savior. This truth is foundational. It is under attack by Satan as never before." Psalm 11:3, and you'll need to know this one. "If the foundations be destroyed, what will the righteous do?" Now, that does not mean that Satan can destroy the word of God. He can't. God promised that his word would never be
destroyed. He said, "Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will not pass away." God said he'd preserve his word forever. We'll get to that verse in a minute. So, it's not that. Satan cannot destroy the word of God, but he can destroy our faith and trust in the truthfulness and integrity of God's word if we believe his lies. This is exactly what Satan did with Eve in the Garden of Eden, and he does the same today. He wants us to doubt the truthfulness and the trustworthiness, the integrity of the written word of God, God's commands, okay? And if he can do that, then he's destroyed our foundation. He ain't destroyed the word of God. He'll never do that. The word of God's forever. But, he has destroyed our foundation of our faith. And that's why he attacks this so relentlessly. It's just constantly under attack. Um that's why it is so important for Christians to equip themselves, to be very equipped in apologetics, in the ability to give answers and evidences and reasons why we trust the Bible, why we believe the scriptures to be inspired by God, and trustworthy. Of course, some of the attacks on the Bible sound like this, "The Bible was only written by men." "Or it's full of contradictions, or it's full of myths and legends and has been changed over the years, or it has some spiritual principles, but not meant to be taken literally or word for word." Anybody heard any of those before? Right? And what's interesting is that these these attacks and these statements usually come from people who are not at all experts in the scriptures. They haven't spent decades studying and researching and digging into these things. They just, you know, the devil just gets them to believe those things without really looking into it, right? I make the statement that the scripture and faith in the word of God in the written word of God is foundational to our faith, and I don't just say things because this is what the Bible says about itself and what God said through his apostles and prophets. Let's look at it. Of course, Romans 10:17, "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." So, faith is dependent upon hearing the word of God. Um, I can't even I mean, there there is no basis for faith in the God of the Bible and the God of creation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's there's no there's no other basis. There's no other foundation you can build upon. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Psalm 138:2, the psalmist writes, "I will worship toward thy holy temple and praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy
name." Now, that's pretty amazing when you consider that within the Ten Commandments, God said one of the commandments, you shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. God will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Now, think about that. God's so serious about his name, you can get in big trouble over taking his name in vain. And yet, he says here in Psalm 138, by the Holy Spirit moving through the psalmist who wrote this, "You have magnified your word above your name." Well, that's pretty That's pretty serious, right? God looks at his word and he takes it very serious, even higher than his name. That's hard for me to even comprehend. Okay? Pretty serious. All right. Let's go to a New Testament verse here. This is 2 Timothy 3:15-17. Like I said, we got a lot of scripture this morning as we get into this. Because, you say, "Well, this is just the Bible testifying of itself right now." Yes. But, see, the reason you go through this is because once you once you see all this about what the Bible says, you either have to throw the whole thing out or accept its declaration of what it is, which it claims to be the inspired or God-breathed word or revelation to man. So, Paul tells the young pastor Timothy by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he says, "And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures." Well, of course, at this point, what holy scriptures is he talking about? He's talking about the Old Testament that was already well established, Genesis to Malachi, those 66 books. All right? And he said, "You you've known these holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise into salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." Now, of course, even as we're going to see in in the next few classes that we're going to be doing, that even the Old Testament scriptures all point to and foretell, prophesy of and explain what the Messiah would come to do. And so, that's what he was talking about. If you know what it says that the Messiah would come and die for our sins, that he would be raised from the dead, that he would be God in the flesh, that he would be holy, that he would be the way. All right, he'd be the atonement, the propitiation, the sacrifice. He said, "All of this is in there. All of this is in the Old Testament, which is amazing." Because, listen, there's no other and I've said this many times, I'll say it again and again. There's no other religious figure, leader of any other religion that had these specifics about him foretold thousands of years in advance. No other person. Not Buddha, not Muhammad, not Krishna, not anybody. There is no one like Jesus Christ and there is nothing like the Bible, okay? But see, again, most are ignorant of it.
That's the problem. And a lot of it is just, again, they just don't know. But it's our job to help them know, right? But if we don't know, how can we tell them, right? So, we have to know. So, this is why this is important. So, he says, "You've known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good work." So, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. Here is the Greek word theopneustos, neustos, I guess you would say. Inspired by God, the contents of the scriptures. It means divinely breathed in, given by inspiration of God. So, it's really God breathed. Now, Christians, Bible believers, who believe in the inspiration of the Bible, we don't deny the Bible was written by men. God used men. God inspired them. He breathed his Holy Spirit in them and upon them and moved them to what to write down. And we believe this beyond any shadow of a doubt because of that supernatural element, particularly fulfilled prophecy, and and and the how would you say, the unity and the continuity of the message. I mean, you think about the unity of that. I think also this is something that uh Josh McDowell in Evidence That Demands a Verdict he pointed out. He said, "You take any 10 authors, right? And you take one subject and you say, 'You 10 authors write me a book on this subject.'" Do you think those 10 authors are going to agree perfectly on that subject? But now we can take 40 authors plus over thousands of years and they agree at what? There is one God. There is one way. There is one Messiah. They agree there is a heaven, there is a hell. There is one way to be forgiven of sins. Not confusing. And they all point to Jesus, to the Messiah. Now, let's look at these scriptures. We got a lot to go through this morning. Better be taking good notes, students. All these scriptures are going to be on your test. They go, "This is too many." Really? It's never too many. Should know the whole book, right? So, the prophets, priests, kings, and apostles who penned the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament all claimed the inspiration of God on what they wrote and affirmed that inspiration in each other. That's what's amazing is like for instance, how many of you know that
Isaiah, just the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah written in 750 BC, is quoted in 23 New Testament books. Isn't that amazing? And this goes on quite a bit, but let's look at what the Apostle Peter said here. The Apostle Peter put it this way. He said, "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of men, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." So, this is what I was explaining a moment ago about we don't doubt. We don't deny. Yes, the Bible was written by men, but men who were holy men, chosen by God, anointed by God, moved on by God's Holy Spirit to write exactly what he wanted them to write. All right? Let's look at some of the some of the instructions when he told men of God, holy men of God to write. Exodus 17:13-14 here, he says, "And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword, and the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua. For I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven." Here's another one, Exodus 34:27. And the Lord said unto Moses, "Write thou these words for after the tenor of these words have I made a covenant with thee and with Israel." And the Lord Jehovah Yahweh spake unto Moses face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend. Where he says, "Write." Told Moses here, "Write this in a book. Write the words of the covenant down. God speaking, revealing himself to Moses. And telling him to write these things down. Says here now after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua. So here the Lord speaks to Joshua. So we have the book of Joshua. Where Where did the book of Joshua come from? From Joshua. And God speaking to him, what God spoke to him, and what the Israelites went through, and what they did. So you have what God said and the true history. The Again, the Bible is giving you a historical account of what what happened. And also what God said and what God revealed. The true God, the creator of heaven and earth. Let's look at the prophet Samuel. We move a little further into the scriptures. The prophet Samuel, 1 Samuel 10:25. Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord. And Samuel sent all the people away, and every man to his house. So Samuel wrote it in a book. The way of the kingdom. Might be about 1 and 2 Samuel. Maybe even Kings and Chronicles as well. They are parts of that anyway. Let's go on. 1 Kings 11:41.
And the rest of the acts of Solomon, King Solomon, and all that he did and his wisdom, are they not written in the book of the acts of Solomon? So there you have again the wisdom of Solomon. Where do What do we What do we call that? Well, that Well, now we call it Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. All books in our Bible. Are they not written? He tells you they're written. Already back then. 1 Kings 22:45. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoshaphat and his might that he showed and how he warred, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So again, telling you these books existed way back then. They were written down when they happened, when these events happened or close to the time they happened. History, but history inspired by God. God making sure these men were anointed. God-breathed that they were getting it right for him. Let's keep going. Oh, there's so many here. Now, the rest of the acts of Uzziah, first and last, did Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos, write. So, here you got Isaiah writing this And you know, the the acts of of Uzziah, where do we see that? Kings and Chronicles, right? So, it appears that Isaiah continued on writing the history of the kings of Israel and Judah, right? As a prophet. Here we have Jeremiah 30:1-2. The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, or the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, "Thus speaketh the Lord God of Israel saying, Write thee all the words that I have spoken unto thee in a book." Pretty clear, huh? What do we have? The book of Jeremiah, the book of Lamentations, written by Jeremiah. Um Jeremiah 36:2-4, "Take thee a roll of a book and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel and against Judah and against all the nations from the day that I spake unto thee from the from the days of Josiah even until this day. It may be that the house of Judah will hear all the evil which I proposed to do it to them that they may return every man from his evil way that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin." And Baruch, who was his scribe, Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord which he had spoken unto him upon a roll of a book or a scroll. You see that? You know, there was archaeological discovery of the seal of Baruch the scribe. that it's either and there's a fingerprint on it and there's the it's either his fingerprint or Jeremiah's. Isn't that amazing? Pretty cool. I'll show you that in a minute. Let's keep going here. Ezekiel 24:1-3. Here's the prophet Ezekiel and again in the ninth year and the 10th month and the 10th day of the month, the word of the Lord came unto me saying, "Son of man, write thee the name of the day even this of this same day. The king of Babylon set himself against
Jerusalem this same day and utter a parable unto the rebellious house and say unto them, "Thus saith the Lord God." So, here's the Lord telling prophet Ezekiel, "Write down what I'm telling you." The prophet Habakkuk or Habakkuk. Say it different ways. The Lord answered and said unto me, "Write the vision and make it plain upon tables that he may run who reads it." Now, I didn't really realize how many times it was instructed of these men these prophets to write. God told Isaiah, look at here. Isaiah 38:8. Now go and write it before them in a table and note it in a book that it may be for the time to come forever and ever. He was telling Isaiah right there, "Write it down cuz it's going to be forever and ever. When you write this down and guess what? No man could preserve any book he writes. It would have to be supernatural protection and moving it on. You're going to see how God how God did that for centuries to come. King David, I know we're kind of a little bit out of order or sequence cuz we hit Solomon a minute ago, but I wanted to see just kind of pause on King David. King David said this in his last words. This is 2 Samuel 23:2. The last words of King David says, "The spirit of God spake by me and his word was in my tongue." Now, think about this. If If you If you dismiss the entire Bible to fairy tales, right? Lies, made-up stories. Every one of these men of history and that have been now proven to be real people, you have to call them lies. They were all liars and deceivers. Cuz see, the Bible's not just one book. It's a compilation of many books and many writers that God used, many prophets. So, you have to come to the point where you say, "All of them lied." Right? And then you have Jesus stepping on the scene and his 12 apostles stepping on the scene and acknowledging that these men in the Old Testament, these Old Testament prophets, were from God and spoke the truth. So, then you have to go, "Okay, Jesus and the apostles didn't know what they were talking about and were liars." You see where you have to go? Because God did that way because guess what you have? You have more than one witness. You don't have just one person wrote a book. You have these multiple books, multiple authors over centuries of time. Witness after witness after witness. Here's what God said. Here's what God did. I'm going to write it down for you. And then God says, "You write it down, Isaiah. You write it down, Jeremiah. You
write it down, Moses, cuz it's going to be forever. I'm going to keep it forever." Let's look at this. So, King David says, "The spirit of God spake by me and his word was in my tongue." Now, look at what Peter said about David in Acts 2:29 through 32. Here's what Peter said about David. "Men and brethren, let me speak freely unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. So, again, he's he's he's saying, "Guess what? Everybody knows our history. We had a great king named David, and his tomb is here today. You know where he's buried." This is history. This is testimony. This is a witness. And then he says, "Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne, he, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ that his soul was not left in hell, neither his his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses." So, here's the Apostle Peter going back to David saying he was a prophet. The spirit of God spoke to him that Christ would come from him, his lineage, the tribe of Judah. Fact fulfilled in Jesus. And that he would die and that he would not be left in hell or in corruption, in the grave, he would come back from the dead. And he's And this is what what he Peter is referring to here is Psalm 16, where David wrote this down 3,000 years ago from now, but 1,000 years before this before Jesus came even. Here's what Jesus said. This is in the Gospel of Luke chapter 24:44-45. Again, the Apostle Luke confirming that here's what Jesus said, and here's what he said about the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms. And so, he quotes this. Let's look at this. And he, Jesus, said unto them, "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. Now can I just say Jesus pretty well covers this here. Jesus expounded to them. He began to explain Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Psalm 16. The prophecies in Isaiah. Emmanuel, God with us. A a virgin will conceive and bear a son. Jesus begin to go through Think about that with the on the road to Emmaus. He's He's hidden from them. They don't know it's him. And he's explaining to them
all the scriptures, the Old Testament prophecies and scriptures about himself. And later on they said, "Did not our hearts burn while he spoke with us?" He's explaining. You can't get away from this. The scriptures is foundational and intertwined in everything. In everything you see about God in the Old Covenant and everything you see about God in the New Covenant. You you you don't get away from. Now the beautiful thing about this is that it's not just it's not just a book. It's not just a compilation of books. The good thing about this aspect about it is we can know the author now. We can know the one This is this is this is why Christianity is so different, true Christianity. Not fake Christianity, not Roman Catholicism, not any of that. Under my true Christianity about knowing intimately and experiencing the God of the Bible, knowing the author. That's why a lot of Listen, a lot of you think, "Oh, you know the Bible. You know what the Bible says." And you're not You don't really you're not really born again, you don't really have the Holy Spirit in you, Jesus is not Lord of your life. I'm going to tell you right now. There's no better one to explain and help you understand the Bible than the one who inspired it in the first place. I mean, I never met Jeremiah, but I get to know the one who told Jeremiah what to write down. That's why again why this is book is so different. Right? Let's keep going. Like I said, a lot of scriptures today. Here's 1 Thessalonians 4:2, Paul saying clearly here. I mean, he couldn't have made it any more clear. For you know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus. What what's Paul saying right there? Real simple, isn't it? I I didn't make these up. I'm not giving you these commandments, these instructions, this teaching, these revelations, these mysteries, the gospel that I'm not giving you this just out of my head, just because I thought it'd be a good idea. He said, I gave you these commandments because they were from the Lord Jesus. He gave them to me to give to you. So, right there Paul's claiming the inspiration, the revelation, the power behind what he was saying, the authority behind what he was saying. It was not him. He was given what the Lord Jesus gave him to give. 1 Corinthians 14:37-38. I love this one right here. Some people think I'm strong. I imagine the Apostle Paul was pretty strong sometimes. Because he said here, "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord. But if any man be ignorant,
let him be ignorant." Like he wants to be stupid, let him be stupid. Because if any man claims to be a prophet, claims to be spiritual, claims to be, you know, a Holy Ghost-filled Christian, and they don't acknowledge what Paul is saying that the things that I'm writing to you are the inspired, Holy Spirit-led commandments and scriptures, if they don't believe that, he's ignorant. Right? It's amazing. The Apostle Peter recognized Paul's writing as scriptures. Look what he said here. 2 Peter 3:15-16, and account that that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of thing of these things, in which some things are hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest or twist, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. It's pretty powerful when Paul says uh Peter says Paul's writings are scriptures, and they twist his scriptures like they twist the other scriptures. What other scriptures? He's talking about all the other scriptures. I mean, so Peter says and and you know, of course God used Paul to write nearly half the New Testament. Or maybe even actually half. So, think about that. Pretty important. Here we go, in the Apostle John, Revelation 1: 10-19, the Apostle John, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day and heard behind me a great voice, and that voice of the Lord said unto write the things which you have seen. Wow. Write, write, write. So, these men were either liars, deceivers, or their claims to hear from God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of creation. From the spirit of God, from the Lord Jesus. Their claims. They're either liars, lunatics, or they're telling the truth. Now, let's look just a few times. I want you to see this. I just did a few searches last night. Just the phrase, "Thus saith the Lord." Now, look at that right there. It occurs in 413 verses in the King James version. Thus saith the Lord, that phrase. 413 times. I guess they're claiming that God spoke to them. They heard from God, but it doesn't end there. Let's keep going. The Lord spake. Occurs 144 verses. Right? The Lord spake unto Moses. 144 verses in the King James version. Let's keep going. The Lord said.
219 verses in the King James version. Uh here, The Lord God said. Four verses. God said. Occurs 46 verses in the King James version. God spake. Occurs 13 verses in the King James version. I counted those up, and of course, that wasn't an exhaustive list of how many times it says, "Thus saith the Lord." or "The Lord spake." or "God said." or "The voice of the Lord." But that right there, right at a thousand times. Just what I looked at briefly. A few phrases. 1,000 times. Pretty important, wouldn't you think? Pretty central theme to the Bible. The prophets, the apostles, the kings, the priests, all the people that God used to write these books of the Bible said, "Thus saith the Lord. God spoke to me. The Lord spoke to me. I heard the Lord say. I saw in a vision from God. I saw in a dream from God." So, see? Again, we have to look at it and we have to go, "Okay, this is what the Bible claims." Now, think about this. This is what the Bible claims. So, either I have to accept it or I have to throw it all out. I can't go, "Well, I'll take that part. I believe what Isaiah said, but I don't believe what Ezekiel said." But, here's the thing. What's beautiful about these things is that they're they're testable. They're testable in looking back at ancient manuscripts, are they accurate? Do we still have them today? They're testable in the sense of these men didn't just give us religious philosophy. They gave us specific events that would happen in the future to what? Verify that God was speaking by him. That is what I mean, I can show you things and we will in the next I'll show you things in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, specific things that we're seeing even now, some of them are now beginning to come to pass. See, if you really I don't I don't want to say this very clearly. If you really look at these things, take the time to really research all of these aspects of the scriptures, where they came from, who wrote them, the time frame, the the archaeological evidence. You do this, you really walk away from going as I did many years ago.
There's no more There's There's not a even any room for doubt or question. To me, it's always been settled. Even Even if I fell away from God because of sin, it wouldn't be because I didn't believe. And it wouldn't believe be just blind faith or some uh religious experience. It's because I have looked at the evidence, the history, the archaeology, the the uh What is it? What is it called? The uh um mathematical this What is it? Compound of compound probabilities. You You look at all these things and you just go, "There's no way. There's no way that the Bible is not of supernatural, divinely inspired origin when you look at all of this in its context. You may not agree with it. It may uh make you uncomfortable because it may be confronting sin or you may not like the way God dealt with a certain people group or judged a certain nation or whatever. You might not agree with God's justice and judgment. You might not agree with what God calls sin. You might not agree with what God says uh gets you into heaven. You might not agree with there being eternal punishment in hell. You might not agree with a lot of things, but if you truly are honest and look, you'll have to say, "No, there's something different, unique, special, supernatural. The Bible just can't be a fairy tale written out of the imagination of mortal men. It just can't be. All right. So, let's look at another passage this here. Psalm 12:6-7. Here's what King David wrote. Remember, King David had a special relationship. I could I could spend a whole class just talking about the special relationship that King David had with the Lord. I I really could. Because it is unique and I I can't get into all of it. Why? But it was unique. All right. But David was David was of the tribe of Judah, of course, but he was a king. He was a prophet. He was also allowed to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek. And I believe he was actually walking in an aspect of the new covenant before the new covenant came that God was letting him have a you know, kind of a season of walking in that kind of intimacy um beforehand. But I can't get into all that today. We'll We'll get into the whole Melchizedek revelation. But David clearly had many specific prophecies. We'll cover them. I'm just I just want to give you this, but you know, in Psalm 22 when David writes the first verse of Psalm 22 says, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Sound familiar? Exactly what Jesus said when he was on the cross. And then later in the same chapter in the Psalm 22
he says that my hands and my feet they pierced. They cast lots for my garments. Jesus couldn't pierce his own hands and feet, folks. Jesus couldn't cast lots for his garment while he was nailed to a cross. And David wrote that by inspiration of the Holy Spirit 1,000 BC. And this is the same David God used to write these words right here. And he said this right here. The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O Lord: thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever. Now, here's what's what's mind-blowing. We can prove now that the very words he spoke to these prophets, he preserved forever. Now, think about that. That ought to be just mind-boggling. But, that Be sure you you memorize that verse. Those two verses there in Psalm 12, that's going to be paramount. Now, one of the main points I want to make today is this right here. About this. This is just a logical reason here. See, we got a lot of people out there say they believe in creator. They believe in a god. They believe in intelligent design. And I mentioned this a minute ago. Well, here we go. If they believe that, again, we're not talking about talking about this complete atheist here. But, we're talking about people say, "No, I I don't believe in evolution. I don't believe in the Big Bang or, you know, or maybe they do in some way, but they say I still believe that there is a a god, a creator, a divine supernatural being." Well, here's the thing. If you believe in a creator that was able to make the heavens and the earth and the sun and the moon and the stars and the animals and uh the grass and the trees and this perfectly unique interdependent system in which we live called creation that's perfectly balanced to sustain life. And you say, "I believe that God created There is a god that created this." How is it not reasonable to believe that if he was powerful enough to make all this just perfect, to make the human eye, to make human DNA. That he he has he's the one with that breathed life into us. That but that somehow though, he is not powerful enough, big enough, strong enough to create a book or a compilation of books to give a revelation of who he is to mankind and preserve it.
Well, why is that so hard for people? I mean, to me it's always made sense. Well, I believe I believe God created the heavens and the earth, but I don't know about that Bible. Okay, so God couldn't preserve a book. Now, think about this. God couldn't preserve a book that shows there's one way to him. Not 5,000 different contradictory gods and ways to gain favor and find Yeah, uh no. Who would create the confusion, folks? Who would Who would create all these other religions and all these confusing ways and have, you know, 15 million different ways and gods and all these that yeah, who would do that? An enemy, a deceiver, a liar, right? Who would say, "No, there's one way and I'm going to give you one book. Well, a compilation of 66. But what I'm going to give you I'm going to put those books together so you got multiple witnesses. And they're all pointing to one God of creation and one way to know him. And one way to be forgiven of your sins, one way to be saved and delivered, one way to be reunited with him. See, this is how messed up the world is in their heads. The devil, the devil, Satan, the serpent. They can't even think logically anymore. There's a God saying, "Hey, you can know me. There's one way." Oh, and by the way, I love you, but I'm not going to tolerate your wickedness forever. But I love you. Also, here's a way I'm going to show you that I love you. I'm going to come down and be one of you. And then I'm going to die in your place, so you don't have to pay the penalty of death. And then I'm going to show you, here's how I want you to walk. Here's what I want you to do. And if you walk this way and you believe me and you follow me, your sins are forgiven and you can be with me forever. And it's real simple. Or like I've seen, I've been to the like the island of Mauritius. When I went there in 2000 to preach for 2 weeks, the island's primarily Hindu. And you see these Hindu statues and sometimes they'll put them out in the middle of a lake, you know, on a like a platform in the middle of the lake and there's this long walkway out into the middle of this beautiful lake in this beautiful area. And I I remember being heartbroken as I watched women walk out to this idol, this statue of a Hindu god, and bow before it crying tears and and laying fruit and food in front of it. And I thought about the Hindu all the thousands of Hindu gods and
I thought, "What What misery." And look at India. Look at India. What a bunch of horrible misery created by that religion. Worshiping mice and rats and snakes and just let them run crazy. Won't kill it. Won't kill the mice and the rats cuz it could be an an ancestor come back. And I'm like, is that crazy? That's about as crazy as us Americans and Westerners, oh, we came from monkeys. Really? We came from monkey. My my great great great great great great great granddaddy was a monkey. No. We have to believe ludicrous things or instead of just believing there is an almighty all powerful God who created all of this, has a purpose. And also he's powerful enough again to make the animals, to make the trees, to make the birds, to make the grass, to make the fish, to make the water, to make the the sky, to make us, he's powerful enough to make a book and keep it forever. Right? And if man if it Listen, if it wasn't for God's supernatural intervention, Satan and mankind, evil mankind, would have destroyed and done away with this book long ago, but they cannot. God will not allow it, has not allowed it, and won't allow it. Now, let's get into this again some of the basics here. Just how the Bible some of the things the Bible was written on just to give you some information. Uh the writing materials original writings of scripture were done in a variety of materials. Uh papyrus made by pressing and gluing two layers of split papyrus reeds to form a sheet. Perhaps mentioned in 2 John 12, paper, uh Revelation 5 1, scroll/book, animal skins were also used. The copying process Now, let's look at this. It says uh the copying process of the Old Testament originally written in Hebrew. At first during the Old Testament era, the only copies of the scriptures that were at the temple and at first only uh the first five books of the law for many years even copies of the law were lost until they were found during Josiah's reign as as the books of history Joshua judges Samuel the books of poetry Job Psalms the prophets Isaiah Jeremiah etc. We're written and gathered together scribes began to copy the scriptures for use in various synagogues and for private purchase and study. So that's early on and I go You'll need to know this the Masoretic scribes Masoretic scribes are in charge of the Old Testament manuscript copying you know back in you got to remember back in those days they they didn't have copy machines and have
Xerox machines who remembers though that that name remember that? We didn't have computers and printers and hard drives and flash drives had to copy it and copies would wear out and then so somebody had to steadily be copying and they were they had to be very careful and meticulous about how they did it. They used a very meticulous system of transcription and had a deep reverence for the text God used their almost obsessive respect for the text to preserve the text accuracy. They had specific rules on the type of ink and the quality and size of parchment sheets no individual letter could be written down without having looked back at the copy in front of them the scribe could not write God's name with a newly dipped pen lest it blotch and even if the king should address him while writing God's name he should take no notice of him. They were so meticulous that they counted all the paragraphs words and even letters so that they could know by counting if they had done it perfectly. They were serious about this they knew the middle letter of each book so they could count back and see if they had missed anything. Imagine having this job. Now, remember Jesus mentioned these. He mentioned the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes and the lawyers. Scribe is someone whose job was to just continually make copies of the scriptures. All right. Of course, we actually have very few complete or nearly complete Old Testament manuscripts existing today. There are four or five really significant Masoretic manuscripts that are the basis of the best Hebrew Bible available. These copies were made between AD 900 and AD 1000 by the Masoretes. Now, the reason is not because they couldn't have kept copies, but they would just when when they would get marred, when they would get in bad shape, they would just do away with them cuz they think, "We're just making more and more more copies." Okay? And again, they were being very very faithful with the copying with the text. And I believe God's hand was on them. Again, what did God say? I will preserve my word forever. I mean, can you imagine knowing that as a scribe and taking your job lightly? Right? I believe they knew that they were part of God's divine plan to carry on the scriptures. Now, the Septuagint and there's we're going to talk about this in two different places in two different ways, but it's very important to the progression of this because it was during this time of the Masoretes uh the Masoretes, I should say, the Masoretic scribes. You get into 250 BC time period and you had the king of Egypt decide that he wanted
the Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek. And so, what was it? 70 72 scholars? I have to I don't know why. I'm thinking it was 72, but anyway, 70 minimum of 70 I know. Anyway, the Septuagint is a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek language which was made in the second or third century BC. We know it was about 250 248 BC. There are about 300 existing copies of the Septuagint. We're talking about ancient copies. This was the common Hebrew Bible used and quoted by Jesus and the apostles who lived in a Greek culture, of course. Although written in Greek, scholars can generally determine what Hebrew words were being translated in the Septuagint. It provides evidence that the Hebrew Bibles were copied extremely well for all the years between the Septuagint translation and our best existing Hebrew copies. So, the Septuagint was very pivotal not just for the Greeks having the Old Testament, but it just proved that we, you know, in that time period, there we we had some we had a good working and correct and accurate translation of the Hebrew scriptures. And then, of course, I'm referring to Genesis to Malachi. All right? Now, let's keep going here. Now, the Dead Sea scrolls, they've been attacked lately. This is one of the most significant archaeological and manuscript discoveries in history. Um they have been uh scrutinized now. They were found in 1947, the first batch of them, and there's there's been more found in the caves there in Qumran. These have been studied by Christian and non-Christian experts for decades now. Um and they preserved them. They've been they're in museums now. I mean, they've been they toured the country. Uh but there's a big attack on this. I don't I don't even get this. It's I guess it's because it's such a an important archaeological discovery and manuscript. I mean, here you have both. I mean, a tremendous archaeological find, but also it was manuscripts and Bible manuscript. So, see and and and it cleared up a problem that many critics had about the Bible. Well, how do we know we still have if if the oldest copies we have are, you know, 900, 1,000 AD of the Old Testament, how do we know it's what they had way back, right? That was the big argument. It says, "Since the oldest complete copy of a Hebrew Old Testament in existence is dated about 81,000, that's a long time after the originals were written in 1450 to 400 BC." But there are portions that date back farther. Most significant are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in caves in 1947 by an uh, Arabian shepherd boy.
These well-preserved Hebrew text fragments date back to 300 to 100 BC. They include many Bible portions, including some complete books. Their value to the credibility of our Bible is that amazingly there is in complete agreement between these Hebrew text and the ones dated 1,100 years later. You see that? There's this huge gap. Pe- See, this is what I love about You got these liberal scholars and these liberal theologians and these libtard even um, you know, academics. Well, we just can't know. There was probably a lot of changes between 300 BC and, you know, 1,000, 1,100 AD. Probably a lot of change. We probably don't have the same Bible today. It's probably been altered by men. God said "What though?" God said he would preserve his word forever. So, what you have and ain't God funny? He takes a little Arab shepherd boy out playing in the desert chucking rocks cuz that's about all he's got to play with, right? And he's chucking rocks and who hasn't seen a uh uh a boy chucking rocks, right? So, he's chucking rocks and he throws one in this cave and he hears something break. And he goes in and what does he find? The most significant manuscript discovery in modern times. Right? And it proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Bible we have today is exactly what they had in 300 BC and 100 BC and 100 AD. That that gap What What did God do? God let them have that gap for a while so he could sift out the libtards. The ones who wouldn't believe. Anyway, let's look at this. This is the Dead Sea Scrolls here. This is a little more information. Says the Dead Sea Scrolls have had the greatest biblical impact. They have provided Old Testament manuscripts approximately 1,000 years older than the previous oldest manuscript. The Dead Sea Scrolls have demonstrated that the Old Testament was accurately transmitted during this interval. In addition, they provide a wealth of information on the times leading up to and during the life of Christ as Dr. Bryant Wood, archaeologist Associates for Biblical Research. Here's just some of the things that they found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. 39 copies of the Psalms, 33 copies of Deuteronomy, 25 copies of Enoch 1 which we will discuss Enoch later. Genesis, 24 copies. Isaiah, 22 including the copper scroll where Isaiah was in in it's inscribed on a copper. Um which preserved it perfectly almost, right? Of course, Jubilees 21, Exodus 18 copies, Leviticus 17, Numbers
11, Minor Prophets 10, Daniel eight copies, Jeremiah six, Ezekiel six, Job six, First and Second Samuel, so on. Really, I think it was almost uh if I remember correctly, all the books of the Old Testament except for the book of Esther was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Pretty impressive discovery. All right? They took and this is in Evidence That Demands a Verdict. Evidence That Demands a Verdict volume one, Josh McDowell, this is in there. He talks about how they took the Isaiah Scroll found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back to a minimum Now, dating back to a minimum of about uh at least 100 BC to 300 BC. Um even if you date it back to the first century AD, all right? So, you're still closing that gap by 900 years. There was. But you take that Copper Scroll of Isaiah and the Isaiah we have right here in this Bible today, and they only found uh less than 5% differences. And the only difference is sometimes was a punctuation issue or uh you know, a little grammatical thing, nothing significant changed in a copy of Isaiah from possibly 300 BC to the Isaiah that I have in this Bible right here today. Now, that's that's God right there. That's God showing this generation, "No, you can trust the Bible. I have preserved it." And that's that's just proof I have preserved it over this long period of time Cuz here we are, what? 2018, right? Think about if if we if we look just at the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copy of Isaiah. 2,300 years. And we still got the same Isaiah. Now, that's huge. Right? That's so huge. Again, the Quran. I mean, the Quran can't even touch that. We need to you know, we need to play uh what's his name? Who is it can't touch this? Quran can't touch this. Doesn't even come close. Doesn't even You put the Quran up next to the Bible, it's a joke. Okay? They they don't compare. And in fact, much of the a lot of the wording and a lot of the stuff in the Quran, he just robbed from the Bible anyway. And then twisted it to fit him, you know, Muhammad, what he wanted. But let's look now. We're going to look at some of the some of the archaeological discoveries that confirm the Bible to be true, that confirm the Old Testament accounts of things. So, you don't just have the Bible saying, "This is history and prophecy and what the Lord said and it would happen in this city at this time
and da da da da da." And so, for a long time, the your libtard scholars and theologians would say, "Well, we know the Bible talks about the Hittites and we know the Bible talks about the the King David, but they probably weren't true. They're just legends." I mean, they were teaching this stuff in Bible seminaries. Right? And then what God would do, he'd let some archaeologists stumble on something, find some major find that proved that oh yeah, the Hittites did exist. Oh yeah, King David's kingdom did exist. From secular sources, from secular kingdoms. Right? Let's look at this. This This is one here. And I we won't be covering them all here today, but this is just a few. So, ancient Sumerian tablets confirm the Old Testament. Now, let's look at this. The most documented biblical event is the worldwide flood described in Genesis 6 through 9. A number of Babylonian documents have been discovered which describe the same flood. The Sumerian king list pictured here list kings who reigned for long periods of time, then a great flood came. Following the flood, Sumerian kings ruled for much shorter periods of time. This is the same pattern found in the Bible. Men had long lifespans before the flood and shorter lifespans after the flood. So, here you have it. We'll We'll go through some of these. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Anybody heard of that? So, they find this. Ancient Sumerian artifact called the Epic of Gilgamesh. And the Epic of Gilgamesh is another Sumerian tablet that is among the earliest known works of literature. The 11th tablet of Gilgamesh speaks of an ark, animals taken on the ark, birds sent out during the course of the flood. Now, now remember, this dates back before Moses wrote Genesis. Before Moses lived. This is going back to the ancient Sumerians. And they find this and it talks about an ark. Who wrote about the ark in the Moses. So, long before Moses, even the secular kings wrote about there was an ark. There was a flood. Animals were taken on the ark. It says the ark landed on the mountain and and a sacrifice offered after the ark landed. It follows the biblical account point by point, but unlike the Bible, it's just a story based on true event, whereas the Bible is the full true account. Hollywood does that all the time, right? Now, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, they would put their own little vibe in there. But later on, what? The God of creation calls out Moses, go deliver my people from Egypt. I'm going to do great signs and wonders, and has him up on a mountain not eating for 40 days and 40 nights while God reveals all this stuff to him.
Supernatural. So much when he comes down, his face is glowing. And this was probably by the time I mean, you think about this, this right here is probably 3,000 this Epic of Gilgamesh. We're talking about 3,000 years, 4,000 years before Moses. It's probably already buried in the desert somewhere. Right? This piece of rock they found. Moses comes on the scene. God reveals to him, here's how I created the heavens and the earth. Here's when the flood happened, the days of No- I mean, gives him the whole gives him all the details. And then in our day, you know, in our time, this is dug up, and we find out, yeah, the ancient Babylonians, Sumerians, they knew about the flood, the ark, and the animals, and the sacrifice. I was talking to Matt Long the other day, and he was telling me, you know, he spent time in Japan. And he was talking about the Japanese have like three languages, and the Chinese, and he was talking about that one of their symbols or whatever was a a boat with eight people in it. And that their word for life or something or beginning was two people. I mean, it's just it's just amazing. Their word for heaven was, you know, like a canopy. Right? Pretty cool stuff here. But let's keep going. Here it says Sumerian tablets record Now, listen to These Sumerian tablets that are found, and you can verify all this yourself. You can go look all this up. A lot of it's covered in Evidence That Demands a Verdict Volume One, but Sumerian tablets record the confusion of the language as we have in the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, Genesis 11:1-9. Uh they say, "Now, listen. This is a Sumerian tablet." Says this right here. "There was a golden age when all mankind spoke the same language. Speech was then confused by a god they called Enki, the leader of the gods." The Babylonians had a similar account in which the gods destroyed a temple tower and scattered them abroad and made strange their speech. Now, this is on these ancient tablets, right? The translation of one tablet was, "He, the father of all the gods, had repudiated the thought of his heart was evil of Babylon. He hastens to the submission. Small and great he confounded on the mound. The walls all the day he founded for their destruction punishment in the night. He did not leave a remainder. In his anger, also his secret counsel he pours out to confound their speeches. He set his face. He gave the command. He made strange their counsel." Now, think about that. Ancient culture telling you what? The same event. Telling you it happened. And people want to say, "I just can't believe the Bible." That's a fool right there.
It really is a fool. Cuz, you know what? None of this is hidden. If you were If you were doing honest, you know, if you had an honest heart that said, "You know what? I want to know." It's out here to know. Or you just find some YouTube video of a god hater and take his word for it. Right? The Ebla tablets. Here's another important discovery. They weren't discovered until the 1970s. Really important. Say, why is it important? Well, the Ebla tablets were discovered in the 1970s in northern Syria. Documents written on clay tablets from around 2300 BC demonstrate that personal and place names in the patriarchal accounts of the Bible are genuine. In use in Ebla was the name Canaan. A name critics once said was not used at that time and was used incorrectly in early chapters of the Bible. See, critics that start attacking the Bible always get proved wrong. Always. So, they say, "Oh, no, that Canaan, that wasn't a name used at that time period. Oh, I'm an expert. Believe me." And then, they dig up a rock or a clay tablet and the rock makes you look stupid. Right? You start speaking against God, God's word, you're going to end up looking stupid every single time. So, anyway, they said, "Yo, Canaan." "Oh, that's not I wasn't using the Bible the Bible's incorrect." Tablets refer to all five cities of the plain mentioned in Genesis 14. So, the it mentions all five cities of the plain that were destroyed. Sodom and Gomorrah, you know, the five cities of the plain. So, the Ebla tablets talks about those five cities of the plain, names them by name, mind you. Not found till the 1970s. Uh it previously assumed to have been mere legend. Yeah, beware of libtards. Libtard seminary Bible professors. They start to go, "Oh, no. Oh, no. That's just a legend. It's just a fairy tale story. Beware, professor. They're going to dig up a clay tablet or a rock and prove you wrong. All right. Great proportion of Egyptian words in the first five books of the Bible and the rest of the Old Testament, accurate Egyptian names in this Potiphar uh Zaphenath-Paneah uh Joseph's Egyptian name I mean, it's just Ramses. Amazing stuff. Found in these El Amarna tablets in the Bible. Finds in Egypt are consistent with the time, place, and other details of
biblical accounts of the Israelites in Egypt. These include the housing and tombs that could have been of the Israelites as well as a villa and tomb that could have been Joseph's. Now, listen Look at this part right here. This this Confounding earlier skeptics but confirming the Bible an important discovery was made in Egypt in 1896. That most people hadn't even heard of it. But it was found in 1896. But remember the great period of criticizing of what's called textual criticism, which we'll get into later was in the 1800s, 1860s and on. But in 1896, I guess God wanted to silence some of these people like Westcott and Hort. Confounding earlier skeptics but confirming the Bible an important discovery was made in Egypt in 1896 a tablet called the Merneptah, I guess that's how you say it, Merneptah stele uh was found that mentions Israel. Merneptah was the pharaoh that ruled Egypt from 1212 to 1202 BC. The context of the stele indicates that Israel was a significant entity in the late 13th century BC. And of course, that was denied by libtard theologians, scholars, professors, textual critics of the Bible. But, you need to remember this one. The Ebla tablets. This Merneptah stele. I think that's how it's pronounced, but there you have it. Let's just look at a few others. Don't have illustrations of these. You guys can look them up. But, the Hittites were once thought to be a biblical legend until their capital and records were discovered in Turkey. All right. So, libtard seminary professors would say, "There was never any Hittites. That's just a legend. Bible's wrong about that." And then, what happened? They dig up some rocks. Dig up some clay tablets. Talk about the Hittites. Find their capital city and their records. Isn't that amazing? Isn't God neat how he does things? Crucial find in Nuzi, northern Iraq, an entire cache of Hittite legal documents from 1400 BC confirms many details of Genesis Deuteronomy such as a siring of legitimate children through handmaidens. Oral deathbed was uh binding was a uh deathbed will as binding. The power to sell one's birthright for relatively trivial uh property. Uh need for family idols such as Rachel stole from Laban to secure inheritance. Form of the covenant in Deuteronomy exactly matches the form of whatever that word is what suzerain suzerainty what treaties between the Hittite emperors and vassal kings.
Of Of the walls of Jericho discovered in 1930s by John Garstang. The walls fell suddenly and outwardly unique so the Israelites could clamber over them. There's a lot written about that. In 1986, scholars identified an ancient seal belonging to Baruch, the son of Neriah, a scribe who recorded the prophecies of Jeremiah. And there Here's a picture of that. Biblical Archaeological Review 1975, approximately 20 clay bulla uh bullae, whatever they're called, turned up in the hands of a Palestinian antiquities dealer. They have on them the name and of course in ancient Paleo Hebrew there, which is awesome. Uh Baruch uh Berakiah is the name of Baruch with the abbreviated divine name Yah attached to the end. The bulla is dated to the late 7th or early 6th century BC. It's interesting there was other another one that was uncovered when since we've even discovered the seal of Baruch's brother, Seraiah. The seal reads, "Belonging to Seraiah, Ben Neriah." Uh Seraiah is the name of the chief chamberlain in the court of King Hezekiah and said to have accompanied Zedekiah into captivity in Babylon, according to Jeremiah 50 uh 9. Jeremiah gave Seraiah a written prophecy to read aloud in Babylon upon his arrival, predicting the downfall of Babylon. Once finished, he was instructed to tie it to a stone and throw it into the Euphrates River, typifying Babylon would sink and rise no more. So, there you have it. I mean, these these things we could go on day after day. But, here's a very significant one and you need to You need to have this one here. Remember we had libtard theologians, seminary professors, religious false Christian academics. Oh, King David never existed. He was just a legend of Israel. 1994, they dig up a rock. 1994, archaeologists uncovered a 9th century BC, which would be the time period of David. Right? Around 1,000 BC. They They 9th century BC inscription at Tel Dan. The words carved into a chunk of basalt refer to the house of David and the king of Israel. And the Bible version of Israelite history after the reign of David's son Solomon is believed to be based on a historical fact because it is corroborated by independent account of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions. But here you have it. Oh, the house of David. King David didn't exist. And then they dig up a rock. Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions that say, "Oh, yeah, they did." It's just incredible, right? Uh here's a few other discoveries. Of course, Sodom and Gomorrah has been discovered. It was once claimed there was no Assyrian king named Sargon as recorded in Isaiah 20 verse 1
because this name was not known in any other record. Then Sargon's palace was discovered in Iraq. The very event mentioned in Isaiah 20, his capture of Ashdod, was recorded in the palace walls. Even more, fragments of a stele, a poetic eulogy memorializing the victory. So, again, they said, "Oh, there was never a Sargon, so Isaiah was be must be wrong." And then they find Sargon's palace and it's all inscribed on the walls. Just amazing. Another king who was in doubt was Belshazzar, the king of Babylon named in Daniel 5, the last king of Babylon was Nabo- Nidus, Nabo- Nidus, I guess that's how you say it. According to recorded history, tablet was found showing that Belshazzar was Nabo- Nidus' son. Uh the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah have been discovered southeast of the Dead Sea. Evidence at the site seems to consist with the biblical account that the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah uh from the Lord out of the heavens. The destruction debris was about 3 ft thick and buildings were burned from fires that started on the rooftops. Geologist Frederick Clapp theorizes that the pressure from an earthquake could have spewed out sulfur-laden bitumen similar to asphalt known to be in the area through the fault line upon which the cities rest. The dense smoke reported by Abraham is consistent with fire from such material which could have ignited a spark or ground fire. And two, there's been other people who have gone to that site and found the sulfur balls that are unique to that area like 95% pure sulfur and it that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It's usually 60 or 40% sulfur you dig out of the ground. But this, you know, 95% pure sulfur balls there just happen to be in a place that looks like it was burnt. It's kind of white ash there. So, again, we could spend hours and hours. Here's some of the books, The Stones Cry Out I've recommended for you guys to get and have. The Stones Cry Out, uh What Archaeology Reveals About the Truth of the Bible by Dr. Randall Price. Another one, uh The Popular Handbook of Archaeology and the Bible, Discoveries That Confirm the Reliability of Scripture by Holding and Geisler. And of course this one right here, Discovering the City of Sodom Dr. Steven Collins Dr. Leiten, I guess, C. Scott. I mean, and these are just that's just three of many that you could look into. And like I said, we could spend the entire semester just looking at archaeological discoveries. I just wanted to give you a few here that confirm what we're talking about. I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again, and again, and again. The Bible is unique and above all other religious texts. As we're going to get into in the next classes, you're going to see that the Bible, which particularly we're
going to get into the New Testament manuscript evidence as well, but the Bible has more manuscript evidence than any 10 pieces of ancient literature combined. There are more than 24,000 copies of of portions of the New Testament in existence today, some of which date back to the 1st century. And if you have a New Testament document that dates back to the 1st century, that means you have a document that exists from the time when the apostles were writing them. That's pretty significant. Not many people can say that there. In comparison, it says here that the Iliad by Homer has only 643 surviving manuscripts. Yet, the New Testament has over 24,000. That is I mean, when when when second is 600 What is it? 643? That's second for ancient text. And the Bible has far, far more than that. Also, as we said before, I'm going to keep pounding this point cuz this is very important. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic contain all books of the Old Testament except Esther and includes a copy of the Book of Enoch. These manuscripts, some dating back to 300 BC, confirmed that the Old Testament scriptures were translated accurately for the last 2,300 years. The Isaiah scroll was compared to the Isaiah we have today and found to be identical. These are not my opinion. These are historical, archaeological, confirmed facts, all right? The quantity, and again, these are points you need to be getting a hold of here. The quantity and the specificity of fulfilled Bible prophecy is the DNA evidence of the God of the Bible being the true creator. Uh one very outstanding and undeniably unique aspect of Jesus' life is that it fulfilled literally hundreds of predictions and prophecies written in the Bible made by the ancient prophets and seers, many of them centuries before he was born. These prophecies gave specific details regarding his birth, his life, his death, uh that no mere mortal could possibly have fulfilled. In the first books of the Bible, over 300 such predictions about the Messiah or savior can be found. 20th century archaeological discoveries of hundreds of ancient Old Testament manuscripts have proven without a doubt that these prophecies were indeed written centuries before Jesus was born. Now, remember, there's some people out there that will make the accusation say, "Well, the prophecies about Jesus were written after he lived." But, that's just simply not true based on again, going back to the Septuagint version. The reason I come back to this, and this is key here, okay? Because the Septuagint was the first translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. And when we're talking about the Old Testament, we're saying the the the canon, the complete Old
Testament, Genesis to Malachi, translated from Hebrew to Greek. Wouldn't it stand to reason that if I have a translation, if I'm going to take this book, and I want to take this book, it's in English, and I want to translate it to Japanese. Wouldn't it mean that I have to have the complete translation of this book first? Before you can have a translation, you got to have the finished copy. So, you got the finished copy of the Old Testament. We know confirmed history, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the prophets, the law of Moses, the Psalms, long all of it, long before 250 248 BC. So, the Septuagint was the first translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. It was ordered to be done by the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus around 250 to 248 BC. This will be on your test. This you need to memorize. He did this to put it in his famous library in Alexandria. The significance of the Septuagint version done by a non-Christian king in 248 BC is that it proves that we had the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament Genesis to Malachi, long before Jesus was born and started his ministry from a credible non-Christian source. At least 280 years before he started his ministry. It also proves that the detailed prophecies about Jesus were not written and ministry into the first century as some critics accuse. So again, you have non-Christian non-Jewish testimonies from Sumerian tablets, Egyptian writings, ancient Hittite writings discovered. And of course this translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek in 250 BC. All of this letting you know beyond any shadow of a doubt that the prophecies of Isaiah, the prophecies of Jeremiah, the prophecies of Ezekiel, the prophecies of Micah, the prophecies of Malachi, of Moses, all of these things were written long before God decided to enter into Mary's womb, become a human being, to live, and then die for our sins, and be raised from the dead. Pretty clear, isn't it? And I want to tell you, if you if you really get this down inside of you, students, any really any Christian, for that matter, you get these truths down in you, really memorize them, really be able to give it back to people. You're going to find people going One of
the things you you'll find is they're going to be amazed that you know what you're talking about. That you're not just going, "Hey, believe in Jesus and come to church." Start telling them about No, no. Do you understand Do you know about the Septuagint version? Do you know about the El Amarna tablets? Do you know about the Tel Dan stele that prove the existence of King David? Do you know? Most of them are going to go, "Uh no. Uh no. Uh no, I didn't know that." And then they're going to say, "Well, you know what? They they they may walk away going, 'Yeah, I don't believe what they're telling me or I don't accept it or but I know they know what they're talking about.'" And that right there sometimes is just a is a beautiful seed that you plant right there. Cuz they go, "Well, he knows what he's talking about. I guess I need to I need to check and see." Right? Yes, sir. So, how does Ptolemy's translation from Hebrew to Greek coincide with the time frame when the Dead Sea scrolls were placed in the caves? It It appears that they were pretty close to that time. It does. I mean, the 300 BC to 100 BC is an estimate cuz they don't know exactly for sure. Um cuz actually some of them could have been put in there earlier and then they you know, then they just continue to put some in there. So you might have them dating from that. But it was it was pretty close. I mean, when you talk about 300 BC versus 250 258. So about 50 years apart. So yeah, a lot of this could have been happening at exactly the the same time. But it's not I mean, it's not um whether it is or isn't doesn't really change anything. It's just Yeah, yeah. Definitely interesting time frame coincidence that that that the Lord was giving historical and going well, like he was giving one historical marker, you know, point in history that we can look back and go non-Christian non-Jewish king having the the Hebrew scriptures translated from Hebrew to Greek. So we know from a non-Christian non-Jewish source we had a complete book. Um and you know, you have historical documentation. You have the fact that copies were made of this and and became commonplace in the Greek world. So you have that testimony. And then you have around the same time you have God having you know, the Essenes and some very interesting people, you know, Jewish people putting copies of the scriptures in a cave and and in clay pots trying to preserve them. And they you know, and we end up discovering those you know, 2,300 years later, yeah. I mean, you see it's it's interesting cuz God does a lot of times you see him moving at specific in specific time periods
kind of powerfully doing the same thing. So yeah, I mean, it is an interesting concept. So this right here, again, I want everybody to know all especially you students out there. This will be on your test. So you better know this. And I mean, know it just like it's written up there. This is not optional here. Okay? This is important. I memorized this 30 years ago. All right? I can tell that just I can just spit it off of people. Because that's how important it is. All right? I'm going to finish up with a couple more slides, but this this is going to be kind of our segue going in from Old Testament to New. Cuz we're going to deal with those scriptures in a minute, but of course the last of the Old Testament prophets was Malachi. His book is dated between 433 and 400 BC. The writings of the 1st century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus 37 to 100 AD. You need to know Josephus. Just remember Josephus. He is a very important character because he's a a Jewish historian who wrote the Antiquities of the Jews, The Wars of the Jews. I mean, he from this time period in the 1st century, he he had an his eyes on what was going on in the 1st century and wrote it down. And what's interesting, he was not a Christian. And to our knowledge, he never became one. Okay? So, he was Jewish. But uh he confirms that the the Old Testament canon was in place for 400 years before Jesus came on the scene. For those of you who never heard of Titus Flavius Josephus, he was law-observant Jew of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history such as the 1st Jewish-Roman War. That war which he witnessed resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. He also recorded some of the earliest history of Jesus Christ outside of the Gospels, and he was not a Christian. Here's what he wrote, and I have That's my copy. That's not a copy from the internet. That's my copy I've had for 30 years of the complete works of Josephus from the 1st century. Listen to what he said. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, Paragraph 3. At this time, there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die, but those who became his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them 3 days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders, and the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day. Wow. Perhaps. Notice. He was probably thinking, you know what? This guy might be the guy.
Isn't that interesting, though? You see a Jewish guy going, "Hmm. Could it He might be." But he was just writing history. But it is interesting you see his humanity come out in what he wrote. Well, maybe maybe he was. Maybe he is the Messiah. I don't know. But But here we have again, non-Christian, Jewish historian, confirming what? We confirming Jesus existed. You got people out there that Jesus didn't ever existed. It's all a myth. Okay. Who are you? You got your information from a YouTube video, and we have the first century Jewish historian. Who you Who you Who you going to take? A person that probably witnessed Jesus doing some of his miracles. Think about that. But hadn't converted yet. Still, uh perhaps maybe he could be, but here's what he did. All right? Another reference in history to Jesus. Cornelius Tacitus AD 56 to AD 117 was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. In uh 115 AD, Tacitus wrote the following in book 15, chapter 44 of the Annals. Quote, "Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace. Christus, or Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate." So, there you have it. Should be the end here of this this morning apologetics class two Divine Inspiration of the Scripture, part one. We're going to move next week, next Tuesday, we're going to move into the New Testament manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence. Um you see some of the historical references here. It's going to be pretty amazing, but uh you're going to be equipped. You're going to be equipped to give an answer. That's what apologetics is about. Apologetics is about being equipped with the truth. Not just the truth of scripture, but the truth that God has outside of it to confirm it. And he has plenty of it. And you need to be equipped with that so that you can be a powerful witness, preacher, teacher, soul winner, a true disciple of Jesus Christ prepares himself or herself to give an answer. So, that's what we're doing, and that's why we're doing this. I'm just hoping we can cover everything in this semester that we have to deal with in this class. So, that's all I have for today.
We're going to let everybody go. Class dismissed.