Apologetics #3 - The Divine Inspiration of the Bible (Part 2)

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   Okay, we want to welcome everyone this morning. This is week three in apologetics, so this will be class three, the divine inspiration of the Bible part two. The reason I decided to share these last two classes in apologetics because I believe they're helpful to every Christian to um, you know, strengthen your faith and also give you an answer uh, to the skeptics out there and all the lies and stuff that's going on. Uh, you know, in the social media about Jesus being a historical figure or not and just there's so many lies and so many people think they're experts out there because uh, they watch YouTube videos, but um, you know, there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation, and just outright false stuff on the internets. So, we have to dig in and so we're digging into uh, stuff, you know, back back when I started as in the ministry 31 years ago, there was no internet. So, like I've said many times before, you actually had to go to real libraries and look up real books and that's how you did research. And so, um, anyway, so we're going to cover some of that stuff. We're going to cover some history this morning. But again, this is apologetics class three, divine inspiration of the Bible part two. Um, and I haven't decided on your assignment, but I'll figure out one before the class is over. Uh, we're going to be moving on this week. Um, but last week and and well, just just kind of update, we did an introduction uh, in our first week, we did introduction to apologetics. And just to give you the the definition, apologetics, the Greek word apologia, just simply means to give a defense of the gospel, give an answer, to give reasons why you believe, and and the evidence. And so, we've talked about that there's evidence the evidence is that we look at manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, fulfilled prophecy, historical evidence. We have, you know, the writings of other historians, non-Christian historians that confirm these things. So, we're going to see some of that today. But today mainly we're going to focus on the prophecies of the Bible. And again, you've seen this slide several times, but I'm going to put it up here again because we're going to talk about the Old Testament prophecies cuz last week we established that the Old Testament was finished to Malachi, finished in about 450 BC, at least by 400 BC. And that there's hundreds and hundreds of prophecies fulfilled, you know, given in the Old Testament that we see fulfilled after the fact and fulfilled specifically by the coming of Jesus about 300 and something. Fulfilled. And no other religious book or text can make that claim. I've said

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   that before, but I'm going to say it again and again and again. Muhammad, for instance, cannot point to any ancient scripture, literature, writings. Muhammad can't point to anything foretelling his coming, specifically where he would be born, his life, his death, what he would do. Muhammad has nothing like that. But Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Messiah, God who came in the flesh, has hundreds and hundreds of prophecies foretelling very specifics, where he would be born, where he would live at different times, his ministry, how he would die, everything. He would be raised the dead. Very specific stuff that is historical. But I want to read this again. The Bible is unique above all other religious texts. So, this is not just that this is not a biased Christian claim. This is not uh exaggeration. There is no other like it. The Bible has more manuscript evidence than any 10 pieces of ancient literature combined. There are more than 24,000 copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today, some of which date back to the 1st century when it was all happening. In comparison, the Iliad by Homer only has 643 surviving manuscripts. As we talked about a lot last week, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls written in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, which contains all the 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. Uh the Isaiah scroll, for instance, was compared to the Isaiah that we have today in our Bibles and found to be identical. So, we have we have an unbelievable uh book and testimony and history and archaeology and manuscript evidence beyond any other book in ancient literature. If you throw the Bible out, you have to throw out all of other ancient history books. You just You just have to. There's no other way. Again, you've seen this slide, but I'm going to repeat this again because this is so vitally important. And the reason I repeat this stuff, I want it to get in your head, also that you know it's important, but that you get it in your head. And that's, you know, and I I say it this way, the the quantity and the specificity of fulfilled Bible prophecy is the DNA evidence of the God of the Bible being the true creator. And that's is one of one of the 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 ancient prophets and seers, many of them centuries before he was born. These prophecies gave specific details regarding his birth, life, death that no mere mortal could possibly fulfill. And we're going to look at that today. We're going to look at some of the specific prophecies in the first books of the Bible. Over 300 such predictions about

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   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. There be some goofballs out there that try to say, "Oh, the prophecies of Jesus were written after his birth, his life, his death, his ministry." It's just nonsense, okay? It does not Anybody that that knows anything about history knows that's not true. Now, we talked about this last week, but again, covering this ground again cuz this is vitally important. The Septuagint version lets you know that we there was a secular king, King Ptolemy, the king of Egypt, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, ordered a translation of the Hebrew scriptures, the Hebrew Bible, what we now call the Old Testament. He ordered that translated from Hebrew to Greek and he to put in the library in Alexandria. And so, that happened in around 248 to 250 BC. That is a historical fact, okay? The Septuagint version became widely used um for the next 2 300 years there and more. But anyway, the Septuagint version 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 to put 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. It also proves that the detailed prophecies about Jesus were not written after his death uh uh his birth, rather, and ministry into the 1st century AD as some critics accuse. Vitally important that you get this down in you to understand because this is what the arguments that come out from atheists and agnostics and so on and so forth. So, as we move on here, I want to get back again. We're we're covering some ground that we covered last week, but I it's important because as we we're transitioning into talking about uh we're still talking about the Old Testament, but we're talking about the prophecies of Jesus that were fulfilled in the New Testament of his first coming. And just so you see, here's Flavius Josephus, the complete works of Josephus. He was the 1st century Jewish historian, not a Christian. And this is what he said. So, what I'm getting at is the Bible foretold Well, we're going to look at foretold the Messiah coming. And we see that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies. So, so what's interesting when you have that, you have people now, right on right on the internet, with their denying that Jesus was a real historical figure. Yet, again, Christian, non-Christian, and

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   Jewish historians say he existed. All right? So, what do we do? We throw out history because they got an an an opinion from the internet. Right? But no, we don't. Josephus said this at 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 the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. Now, remember that. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and die. So, Josephus says this, that Pilate Pontius Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die, but those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. So, then it tells you the church continued, right? I mean, amazing. 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. Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book 18, Chapter 3, Paragraph 3. So, you know what you should do? You should find you a copy of this Josephus and look it up for yourself. But, here's a first-century historian. Now, let's go back and I I shared this with you last week, but we I want you to see the Roman historian, and very much respected Roman historian, Tacitus. Cornelius Tacitus, AD 56 to AD 117, was a senator and historian of the Roman Empire. In 115 AD, Tacitus wrote the following in the Book 15, Chapter 44 of The Annals. 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, which is crucifixion, during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. So, here both historians, Roman, Tacitus, Jewish, Josephus, say that Jesus was crucified, and that he was tried and that order came from Pontius Pilate. Okay? Now, some interesting some more information I didn't give you last week on Tacitus. And this this is a picture of a very very old copy of his writings. And there it is again. But let me skip on down. This is the same thing. This is just again another source, another person. I think this was from biblical archaeology or something.com or whatever there. Something I didn't know this about Tacitus until I I read this little bit right here, which makes sense. I knew he was not a Christian and he was In fact, he was actually very anti-Christian. Tacitus was. So, the fact that he wrote that is

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