Participants: Chris Holland
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201332
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00:11 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time....
00:14 God's book, The Bible 00:18 Still relevant in today's complex world 00:23 It Is Written 00:25 Sharing messages of hope around the world 00:40 >>Chris: A Swedish couple was visiting Italy. They were on a dream vacation 00:45 and planned to tour Italy. One of the sure places that they wanted to see 00:51 was the Blue Grotto sea caves on the island of Capri. Unfortunately for 00:58 the couple, as they typed in the city to the GPS, they typed in the city 01:03 Carpi. There is such a city in Italy and the GPS took them there. When they 01:10 arrived and asked about the sea caves - the local tourist office informed 01:16 them that they were 400 miles or or about 640 kilometers off course. In 01:23 fact, the GPS couldn't have gotten them there on land because Capri is an 01:30 island. This couple ended up in the wrong place because they were 01:35 following the wrong directions. 01:41 Friends, I am afraid that we are living at a time when many people may be 01:45 following the wrong directions in life. I believe that the Bible is 01:51 the only true road map and guide. As you well know, the title of this program 01:58 is It Is Written. As I speak from week to week, there is a very important 02:04 assumption that I make and that is that you believe this book to be true and 02:10 accurate - the word of God. It is the most basic and fundamental foundation 02:15 that each Christian must have. However, as many of us operate under a this 02:22 very important assumption. I wonder if many of us take for granted that the 02:28 Bible is the word of God and what we find in it is true. Now before some of 02:35 you leap to your feet and disagree that you are making an assumption, I 02:40 would like for you to contemplate very carefully whether or not you have 02:43 truly dealt with the concept of the authenticity of the Bible. 02:49 Many of us proclaim profound truth, however I wonder if we have ever 02:53 dealt with the foundational principle of the reliability of the 02:59 Bible. The question is in reality, have you placed your faith in something 03:04 that is worthy? I must tell you friends, as I have read and studied, my 03:09 heart aches for those who do not believe the Bible Most alarming to me is the 03:15 number of Christians who believe only in portions of scripture or in none of 03:21 it at all. In fact there are many people today who will ask the question, 03:27 "You don't mean to tell me that you really believe everything in the Bible do 03:30 you?" The trends are frightening: Since 1991 those who attend church on 03:37 a weekly basis is less than 20% of the population. Over the last 03:42 20 years regular church attendance has been on the decline. 12% of born-again 03:49 Christians do not believe the Bible is totally accurate in all its 03:53 teachings. 12% of all Americans believe the name of Noah's wife was Joan of 03:59 Arc. Only 51% of American women and 36% of American men believe that the Bible 04:08 is totally accurate in all its teachings. In a recent survey 100 people were 04:14 asked why people don't believe the Bible. Here are the top 5 answers: 5 - 04:19 Just a bunch of stories 4 - Just written by men 3 - I am my own source of 04:27 truth and when I need answers to my problems, I just go into my special 04:31 room and cross my legs and hum. 2 - Outdated and irrelevant for today. We 04:38 don't read old parenting manuals or old auto repair manuals why should we read 04:43 the Bible? 1 - It is filled with contradictions I must tell you 04:50 unequivocally that none of these objections are true I believe the Bible and I 04:56 believe the evidence for it being totally true is so overwhelming, that most 05:01 people when presented with the information, will believe. 05:08 First of all there is the internal evidence. The Bible presents itself 05:13 through several texts that attest to the fact that it is accurate and it will 05:17 last forever. In Isaiah 40:8 05:35 A clear testimony that it will last on. Later in Isaiah 55:10, 06:09 God's word will not return void. It will do amazing things in the people who 06:13 read it. The Bible goes on to say in Psalm 119: 89 06:39 In heaven there is no question of the accuracy or truthfulness of God's 06:43 Word. It is a settled matter and I hope that over the course of the 06:48 next few moments, it will be settled in your mind. In Matthew 5:18, the words 06:58 of Jesus himself, 07:14 The phrase jot or tittle is a reference to the smallest Hebrew letter and 07:19 the smallest vowel marking. Here Jesus is telling us that God's Word 07:23 has always been and will always be the same. And again Jesus speaks in 07:29 Matthew 24:35 07:41 Over the course of time, many have tried to destroy this book, but none have 07:48 been successful in doing so. And finally in 2 Timothy 3:16 the Bible 07:53 says, 08:12 These words are just the words of some random author, these are God's 08:20 Holy and inspired words. That word inspired literally means God 08:28 breathed. It is exciting to pick up and book and know that these are God's 08:34 very thoughts to us. We could go on and on with many more texts of the 08:40 Bible, but, friends, the internal Biblical evidence indicates that God's word 08:46 is accurate and will last forever. 08:53 What about the outside evidence? What about the external evidence, does it 08:57 give credence to the Biblical record? First let's talk about the 09:02 distribution of the Bible. It has been translated completely into over 350 09:09 languages. It has been partially translated into over 2000 languages. There 09:15 are people who have traveled to the remotest parts of the world and 09:18 learned the language of the people for the sole purpose of having the 09:23 Bible translated into that language. The British Bible society 30 years ago 09:28 was printing 1 Bible every 3 seconds. That is 20 Bibles per minute. 1200 an 09:33 hour and 28,800 per day. And that is just one Bible society, and there are 09:42 several other Bible societies. In 201 Gideon's International 09:49 gave out over 80 million copies of the Bible. The Bible is the all-time best 09:56 seller with over 6 Billion copies sold. Some might say that's no big deal. Do 10:03 you want to know what number 2 is? It is "Quotations from Chairman 10:08 Mao Tse-Tung" with over 900 million copies sold Now when you get into the 10:15 millions and billions it is very hard to fathom Let me break this down 10:19 into more simple statistics. The Bible sells 600 percent more 10:24 than the number 2 book, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung". For every 6 10:29 Bibles sold one person buys "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung." 10:35 The Bible has influenced more writing than any other book. There has been 10:40 more writing on the Biblical topics of theology, hymnology, 10:44 lexicons, dictionaries, commentaries, and concordances than any 10:49 other subject material. Again, I could go on and on. But let's move on the 10:56 fact that the Bible has survived the test of time. 11:03 First of all we must consider the number of manuscripts that exist. 11:07 The Bible, when it was copied long ago, was not copied with copy machines 11:12 or printing presses like we have today. Instead it was copied by hand. These 11:17 hand written copies are referred to as manuscripts. As 11:22 archaeological digs progress year after year, more and more manuscripts 11:26 are found. Today we have over 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New 11:34 Testament, over 10,000 Latin and 9,300 early copies. That boasts to 11:43 over 24,000 manuscripts. In the area of ancient literature, let me tell 11:50 you what that means: the Bible dominates the scene The Bible ranks first 11:56 among all pieces of ancient literature in the number of manuscripts. 12:00 Just to give you an idea, number two on the list is authored by an ancient 12:06 Greek poet by the name of Homer. That book is entitled, "The Iliad" with 12:12 647 manuscripts. Just so we get the full picture, the Bible stands at number 12:21 one with 24,000 manuscripts. The Iliad, which is number two on the 12:27 list has 647manuscripts. So powerful is this evidence for the 12:34 authenticity of the Bible, listen to what Sir Frederick Kenyon, former 12:38 director and principal librarian of the British museum has to say, 13:33 Beyond just the sheer numbers of manuscripts, let's talk about the 13:36 agreement of these manuscripts. Although we may have a huge amount of 13:40 manuscripts, if they all say different things, then what's the point, right? 13:45 New Testament Greek scholar, Hort, estimates that any substantial 13:50 variation in the text is limited to less than one-tenth of one percent 13:56 of all manuscripts. Let's just put a number to this: of the 5300 ancient Greek 14:04 manuscripts only 5 of them have any substantial variations. Friends the 14:14 evidence is clear this book can be trusted. 14:22 But what about the Old Testament? To many Biblical scholars this has 14:26 been an area of contention for many years. The oldest manuscript that existed 14:33 for many years was the Masoretic Text, which dates to 900 A.D. Those 14:42 who were the greatest critics of the authenticity of the Bible 14:46 used this as their foundation. In fact their greatest attacks were 14:50 against the book of Isaiah, especially chapter 53 that contains many of 14:58 the prophecies predicting Jesus as the coming Messiah. These attackers 15:02 said that no one could have written this before Jesus - they said this 15:07 because of its accuracy, it must have been written after the fact. Well, one 15:13 day all of this changed when a young shepherd boy was searching for a lost 15:19 goat. As he walked along the Dead Sea basin, he threw rocks into the caves 15:25 looking for that goat. On one toss he heard a loud crash. Upon investigating, 15:33 he discovered he had broken a clay pot, which contained 7 scrolls in it. 15:42 This discovery lead to over a decade of excavation and the finding 15:48 of over 40,000 manuscripts. Many of which were of the Old Testament 15:56 and many of them were of the book of Isaiah. They dated to over a 1000 years 16:03 older than that of the Masoretic text. Upon investigating the Dead Sea 16:09 Scrolls, listen to what they found. In a comparison of Is. 53 they 16:14 found that there are 166 words contained in the text. Of those 166 words 16:21 the only difference between the Masoretic Text and the Dead Sea Scrolls 16:25 text is 17 letters and of those 17 letters, 10 of them are common spelling 16:33 differences, 4 were stylistic differences and only3 letters changed the 16:42 meaning of one word and that is the word light - which does not alter the 16:48 meaning of the text. Do you realize what this means? For over 1000 years 16:55 of handwritten copies the only differences were of a stylistic and spelling 17:02 nature. This demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Old Testament we 17:09 have today is just as it was when written by the Old Testament writers. 17:18 Again, let me give you an idea of what this all means in the study of 17:23 ancient literature. William Shakespeare, you've all heard of him, 17:27 right? His works are from the 1500's. In a study of the manuscripts of 17:33 Shakespeare, not only are there manuscript differences, they are 17:39 missing entire chapters of some of his works. They can't find them. They're 17:44 gone. So these beautiful plays, many times have the modern directors own 17:50 adaptations and influences, because there are entire chapters of his 17:54 works missing. This is not true of any chapter in the Bible. All are 18:01 authenticated and have manuscripts to support their text. 18:09 Now, very briefly let's talk about the timing of the manuscripts. What we 18:14 are going to discuss is the difference in time between the event, the 18:17 original writing, and the oldest manuscript. Some of what modern scholarship 18:24 considers to be the most dependable ancient wirtings are writings such 18:30 as: Josephus' Antiquities. This volume recorded events that occurred 18:36 between 200 B.C. and 65 A.D. It was written in 95 A.D. and the earliest 18:46 manuscript is from 1050 A.D. This is almost a 1000-year difference in 18:54 time between the timing of the actual writing and the oldest manuscript. Many 19:01 other ancient works range from a 700-1500 year difference. What about 19:11 the Bible? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have been estimated to be 19:17 written between 50 and 65 A.D. and there are manuscripts that have been 19:24 dated to between 80 and 150 A.D. Brothers and sisters, we are talking 19:33 about and extraordinarily small span of time. In the study of ancient 19:39 literature, this is absolutely astounding. Friends, again listen to 19:46 Sir Frederick Kenyon in his book, The Bible and Archaeology, 20:24 Archaeological evidence is another demonstration of the Bible's reliability. 20:28 One critique of that Bible that many have argued is that Moses could not have 20:35 written Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy because the Hebrews had 20:42 not yet developed a sophisticated alphabet at the time. The critics 20:47 argue that Moses would have had to written the books in hieroglyphics, 20:55 which in his life there would not have been enough time to do so. However, 21:00 the discovery of the Ebla Tablet and the Rosetta Stone demonstrate that at 21:06 the time of Moses there was a written language and a complex legal system. 21:17 And then there are those who argue that the Bible is full of contradictions, 21:22 friends, listen very carefully. Many argue that the OT and NT are not in 21:28 agreement and are contrary to one another. However, accurate study will 21:33 demonstrate they are not contrary, they are a continuing development. 21:39 There are stories that may seem to be contrary to one another, such as when 21:43 Jesus healed 2 blind men. According to Mark and Luke it was two men, but in 21:49 Matthew it only records one blind man. Listen very carefully, in order for a 21:55 contradiction to be a contradiction it has to be that 2 things cannot be 22:02 true at the same time. Is that the case here? Can they both be true at the 22:08 same time? Of course they can, for some reason the one blind man was more 22:14 important than the other to Matthew. Friends, the Bible was written over the 22:19 course of 1500 years by 40 different authors, many of whom didn't know one 22:25 another and they were from all walks of life: kings, prophets, fisherman, poets 22:31 and shepherds. Yet with such a great span of time and diversity of 22:36 characters the Bible is in total agreement. Here is the question that I have 22:42 had to ask myself. In light of all this evidence do I really utilize this 22:47 book as the unerring map of my life? What excuse do I have? Is it possible 22:55 that we are in danger of trusting man's word over God's word? Is it possible 23:01 that we have degraded ourselves from being "people of the Book" to 23:06 being simply people of lip service. 23:12 In 1517, right in the center of the Dark Ages - a time period when the 23:18 Bible was squashed under foot - Martin Luther exploded on the scene with 23:24 his 95 theses. The Reformation was thrust forward at super sonic 23:29 speed. Men, women and children were studying their Bibles and 23:34 rediscovering the truths of the Word. One of the places of greatest 23:40 movement was France, exploding with optimism and hope as found in God's 23:46 word. But something happened, under the influence of the pope and 23:50 bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, the state legislature authorized and 23:56 promoted the slaughter of the protestant religion And on August 24, 1572 24:03 commenced the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. One week later 24:08 over 100,000 Christians had been slaughtered. A mural still hangs in the 24:14 Vatican today celebrating their victory. The French state declared itself to 24:20 be a state of "reason." This denial of Biblical truth would eventually 24:27 lead to the French Revolution and the many who die at the guillotine. 24:34 Friends, the denial of scripture only leads down one road. And that is the 24:40 road of death and pain. We must stand firm, and this must be our textbook for 24:49 living. Jesus said in Matthew 24:35 25:01 This book will not die where have you placed your faith, in God's true word? 25:12 The noted French Infidel Voltaire died in 1778. He made it his life work to 25:20 eradicate Christianity and just before he died he predicted the within 100 25:25 years of his death Christianity will be extinct. But in one of the 25:31 greatest ironies of history, within 50 years of his death, the Geneva 25:37 Bible Society purchased his home and used his own printing press to print 25:43 scores of Bibles. Isaiah 40:8 says, 26:00 Will you stand with it? It will stand forever. It is the map, it is the guide - 26:06 will you trust in it? Today do you want to say to Jesus, "I do trust Your 26:12 Word and I want to follow all of its ways" If you do, why don't you pray 26:18 this prayer with me. Heavenly Father, your word is true. We know it to be 26:24 true and we want to follow it. Please give us the strength, give us the time 26:29 to read it every day, and may it be the map of our life. We pray in Jesus' 26:36 name, amen. 26:55 The Bible is God's holy word. It is reliable. It is authentic. And it is a 27:01 book that you can trust. It is the roadmap for our life. I'd like to offer 27:06 you today the Discover Bible guides. These Discover Bible guides will 27:11 lead you in understanding this roadmap, this roadmap that leads to heaven with 27:17 Jesus. Here's the information you need to receive today's offer. 28:05 God's holy book is a book you can trust. I want to encourage you to go to our 28:11 website, itiswrittencanada.ca, and there you can find 28:13 resources to help you in understanding this book and to further your walk 28:17 with Jesus. I hope you enjoyed today's program. I invite you to join us next 28:23 week. Until then, remember, it is written, "Man shall not live by 28:28 bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." 28:36 $$$$$$$ |
Revised 2020-02-13