Participants: Chris Holland (Host)
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201518A
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00:00 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS
00:04 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:10 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:15 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:19 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:25 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:30 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:35 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 00:40 IIW-PAH-HE HAS THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS 01:31 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 01:34 God's book, The Bible 01:38 Still relevant in today's complex world 01:44 It Is Written 01:46 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 01:59 Buddha, 02:01 Krishna, 02:03 Mohammad, 02:04 Jesus. 02:06 Are these men just different manifestations of the One God?Or is there a substantive 02:11 difference between them? Is there a way that we can determine if these are just 02:16 different manifestations of the One God? Or do one of them actually fulfill the claims that 02:22 are made about Him? As we have studied, we have developed a criteria to answer the question 02:28 of God's existence. In brief, we discovered that truth and certainty can be determined 02:35 through probabilities. Simply put, if an event has a probability of occurring only 02:43 once in 10 to the power of 50, which is 1 time in 1 with 50 zeroes after, that event is 02:50 statistically impossible to occur. And that event becomes even more impossible as the 02:59 probabilities become even smaller. What has been amazing, truly astounding is that as we 03:06 have studied the issue of God's existence, God has defied probabilities to demonstrate 03:15 decidedly to His existence. When applying statistical probability to the major world religions, we 03:23 found in that in spite of the claims that each of these religions and philosophys make, 03:30 only the Old and New Testament Scriptures challenge us to test the claims that the Bible makes. 03:40 And through prophecy, the Bible's claims have been demonstrated to be true and 03:47 accurate over and over again. This book can be trusted. Our study has focused on the book of 03:56 Daniel. The prophecies outlined in Daniel, which foretellmany of the world events, cannot be 04:03 explained as pure chance or good luck. 04:10 Last week, we discovered that the longest time prophecy in the Bible pointed to the cleansing 04:17 of the heavenly sanctuary in 1844. So today, we ask additional questions: how do we 04:25 know thatChrist is real, that the sanctuary in heaven is real and that the activities of 04:30 Christ in the heavenly sanctuary are real? In order to answer those questions, first we need 04:37 to ask, who is the Christ. Many religious leaders made bold claims. But to claim to be 04:46 Christ, Messiah, Savior of this earth would be bold. Jesus, according to the Bible, was in a 04:57 heated discussion with the Jewish religious leaders. In John 8:56 he stated, 05:15 The Jewish religious leaders responded to this statement by saying, 05:25 In John 8:58 Jesus responds by saying 05:39 This was a bold claim. In Exodus 3:14, God introduced Himself to Moses as the Great I AM, the 05:47 eternal self-existent One whose life is original, unborrowed, and underived. In claiming this 05:56 very title, Jesus was stating in no uncertain terms that He was and is Divine. The Promised One, 06:05 the Messiah, the Christ. The Jewish leaders understood this clearly, which is why they 06:13 picked up stones to throw at Him. When we look at the other major founders of world 06:21 religions, do we find the same claims? Although there is no single founder of Hinduism, the 06:30 highest claim of the founders was that of a sage-someone noted and respected for his knowledge, 06:37 integrity, and piety. Regarding Islam, Muhammad was called the "Seal of the Prophets." He is 06:44 considered the final prophet whose words could not be disputed. Gautama Buddha claimed 06:51 to be the super-enlightened one. He achieved his apparent enlightenment after a six year 06:58 search while under a ficus tree in India. And with even an elementary and cursory glance at 07:08 these claims, it reveals an infinite distance between the claim that Jesus made, and the 07:15 claims of every other religious leader. 07:20 The Hindu sages formed a philosophy in order to show the way to ultimate truth; Buddha 07:26 stated "For enlightenment I was born, for the good of all that lives"; Muslims state that the 07:34 Quran is the infallible word of God revealed to the prophet Muhammad; but Jesus stated, John 07:42 14:6 07:54 It's one thing to say I can show you the light but it's altogether another thing to say 07:58 I am the light! Those who make these kinds of claims, to be God, to be the way, to be the 08:07 lightare either lunatics, liars, megalomaniacs, or God. When we picture in our minds a lunatic, 08:22 we see deluded individuals whose thoughts are disjointed and who keep flitting from one absurd 08:29 scene to another. This seems impossible to reconcile in regards to Jesus with what some 08:35 refer to as the Greatest Sermon ever Preached, a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. When we 08:41 look at Jesus and judge the charge of being a liar, His entire life was comprised of 08:47 transparency, honesty and truthfulness. To the question "Tell us, are you the Son of 08:55 God?" posed by the Sanhedrin during His trial, Jesus answered truthfully knowing full well 09:04 that the consequences would mean certain death. In fact, at one point in His ministry He 09:12 challenged His accusers to convict Him of one sin, yet they could not find one sin against 09:19 Him, He was above reproach. My friends, Jesus was not a liar. Was He a megalomaniac? 09:27 Megalomania is the symptom of having delusions of greatness. I don't believe history records 09:38 any examples of megalomaniacs washing the feet of their followers. That was what Jesus 09:48 did. Although He claimed divinity, He was humble, like a servant. 09:57 My friends, there is only one logical conclusion; Jesus is God. Yet some people try to 10:03 state that He was a simply a good or great man, a prophet, but not God. Yet, this doesn't 10:11 make sense because if He is not God, as He claimed to be, then He is not good at all. C.S. 10:20 Lewis perfectly summed up the futility of those who try to suggest that Jesus was a good 10:27 man but not God. In his book Mere Christianity on pgs 40-41 he states: 11:38 Jesus claimed divinity. But there is one prophecy that puts such constraints on fulfillment, 11:45 that it could leave no mistake. It is the prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. Let's turn our 11:53 attention to study these verses and see if it enlightens us any more on the claims of Jesus. 12:05 Daniel 9:24-27 state, 13:26 In last week's show we discovered that the starting place of this prophecy is 457 13:29 BC. If you missed that show, feel free to go to our website www.itiswrittenccanada.ca and 13:36 there you can find our archived programs. 457 BC is the year that the command was given to 13:44 restore and build Jerusalem.There are other notable details that are 13:48 contained in this most remarkable prophecy. Will these details legitimize the claims of 13:55 Jesus' divinity? Daniel states that from the going forth of the decree to the Messiah would be 14:07 69 weeks or 69 X 7 which equals 483 years. Now, the word Messiah, like its Greek 14:21 equivalent Christos, means the anointed one. The book of Daniel is here announcing that 14:30 the Messiah would be anointed exactly 483 years after the commandment to restore and build 14:40 Jerusalem! When we add 483 years to 457 BC, which is like a negative number.because the year 14:47 after 457 BC would be 456 BC of course, we come to 27 AD, now some of you say. Wait, Wait. I 14:58 get 26 AD when I do my math. Well that would be right under normal math circumstances. 15:07 However we have a problem. In normal math, zero is included in the number scale. When measuring 15:14 years, there is no year zero. So years went from 1 BC to 1 AD. There was no year zero, so 15:25 therefore we skip year zero by adding 1 year and that brings us to 27 AD. Did anything 15:32 remarkable happen in 27 AD? Interestingly enough in the Gospel of Luke, Dr. Luke records 15:40 an interesting fact in Luke 3:1, hes says, 15:53 Why do I find that interesting? Well it just so happens, that the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar 16:00 is 27 AD. But why is that interesting? Well just a few verses later the Bible records 16:11 in Luke 3:21-22, 16:36 Jesus was baptized in 27 AD or the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar. This is critical, 16:42 because Acts 10:38 speaks of Jesus being anointed, 16:59 Jesus was anointed at His baptism in 27 AD. He was anointed as the Messiah right on 17:09 time.Jesus Himself referred to this time period in the book of Daniel when in Mark 1:15 He 17:18 stated these words after His baptism, 17:29 Right on time. Yet this prophecy is 70 weeks of years of 490 years, this only takes us 483 of 17:39 those years. What happens with those final 7 years? 17:46 Daniel informs us that the Messiah's ministry would only last about half of that final 17:52 week.approximately three and half years. The prophecy states that in the middle of this last 17:59 week, the Messiah would bring to an end the sacrificial system by the sacrifice of Himself thereby 18:06 confirming the covenant. In other words, He would be cut off, but His voluntary sacrifice 18:15 would not be for Himself. Instead, as Daniel informs us in Dan 9:24, He would finish the 18:22 transgression, make an end of sins, make reconciliation for iniquity, bring in everlasting 18:29 righteousness, seal up the vision and prophecy, and anoint the heavenly sanctuary. In other 18:36 words, He would make this great sacrifice in order to provide salvation and righteousness to 18:43 you and to me. Three and a half years after the baptism of Jesus, in 31 AD, Jesus was 18:55 crucified, fulfilling all that the Bible predicted. All of it, right on time. Those final three 19:07 and a half years bring us to the end of the 70 week prophecy in 34 AD. In 34 AD the Sanhedrin 19:20 executed Stephen for his belief that Jesus was the promised Messiah. Daniel stated that the 19:30 70 weeks or 490 years were allotted for Daniel's people and for the city of Jerusalem. In 19:37 other words, with the stoning of Stephen in 34 AD aprobationary time had ended for Daniel's 19:47 people because they rejected the Messiah. In the parable of the vineyard found in Matt 21:33-46 19:56 Jesus informed the religious leaders that on account of the great sin they were about to 20:02 commit by putting Him to death the kingdom of God would be taken from them and given to a 20:08 nation bearing the fruits of it. And with it, Israel as a nation was no longer God's chosen 20:16 people. All of it happening on time. In addition, Daniel tells us that the city and the 20:25 sanctuary would be destroyed by the abomination of desolation. In AD 70, the Roman armies under 20:33 Titus destroyed both city and sanctuary. Jesus Himself predicted in Matt 24:2 that 20:41 there would not be left one stone upon another in the Temple that would not be thrown down. 20:51 Friends, Daniel revealed almost half a millennium before the events occurred: The arrival of 20:58 the anointed one, the Messiah, the great I AM The exact year of Christ's anointing at His 21:05 baptismin 27 AD That Jesus' ministry would only last about 3 and a half years That He would 21:11 be cut off for our sins, and that this would bring to an end the sacrificial system. That the 21:21 sanctuary and the city would be destroyed. Dear friends we don't have to wonder how in the world 21:27 all of these specific predictions ever come about by chance! They never could have, 21:33 the were fulfilled by the divinely orchestrated plan of God.This means thatBuddha, 21:43 Krishna, Mohammad, Jesus, and others who would claim to be great religious leaders are not 21:54 just manifestations of the One God! No my friends, Jesus' claim to be the Eternal One is 22:04 verified by one of the most amazing prophecies of the entire Bible. This amazing book has 22:11 connected the claims of Christ with the prophecies of the Bible. Friend, there is no 22:19 other book on the face of the earth that can do this! Jesus himself said, in John 14:29: 22:37 You can believe that Jesus is the One. The prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27 sets the seal on 22:46 Christ's claim to divinity. 22:52 But what about this heavenly sanctuary? How is it possible to affirm the reality of heavenly 22:56 things without having the capability to examine them? Remember, when we studied the 23:03 dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2, we noted that this one prophecy connected events that 23:10 began with Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the 10 divisions of Rome and finally ended with 23:15 the 2nd Coming of Christ as the Rock that struck the image on its feet. All of those events, 23:22 with the exception of the second coming of Christ are completely verifiable from history. But 23:30 because the second coming is connected to the rest of the prophecy, but has not yet 23:35 occurred, we can believe that it will happen on the basis of the other pieces being fulfilled To 23:41 deny the reality of the 2nd Coming of Christ, we would also have to deny the rise and fall 23:48 of the nations and events that are based on the same prophecy. That would not be logical. Logic 23:56 that is based on the laws of probability says that we can know with certainty that Christ 24:01 will come based on fulfillment of the other events of Daniel 2. And it is in a similar way, that 24:09 the 70 week prophecy that points to the baptism and crucifixion of Christ which was cut off from 24:15 the 2300 day prophecy about the cleansing of the sanctuary that began in 1844. 24:24 Since this is one prophecy running through Daniel 8 and 9 demonstrating the reality of 24:29 Jesus Christ as the Eternal One with the reality of Christ as the real presence in the 24:35 heavenly sanctuary, we can with assurance believe that there is a sanctuary in heaven where 24:43 Jesus is. To declare that the heavenly sanctuary is not real would be tantamount to declaring 24:49 that Christ himself is not real. It is interesting that on one hand atheism declares that there 24:56 is no heaven and thus no sanctuary. Yet, on the other hand many Christians beginning 25:02 with the early and medieval church declare that God and heaven should be interpreted on 25:07 the basis of Greek philosophy, which means that material structures in heaven like the 25:13 sanctuary are mere meaningless metaphors and illustrations. That idea comes from the Little 25:20 Horn and declares that God cannot act within the sequence of past, present and future, and 25:28 that He is incompatible with space and time. The consequences of this philosophy for 25:38 spirituality, salvation, and worship are immense. Two world views that come essentially to 25:47 the same conclusion. However, the Bible says that all of that is not so. The Little Horn's 25:55 attempt at trivializing the reality of God would be overthrown by a real Christ, who 26:02 came to this earth, became real flesh, really died for our sins, really resurrected after the 26:12 third day and really ascended to heaven to dwell in a real sanctuary working on our behalf. 26:21 My dear friend, let us therefore, 26:42 He will forgive you, He will cleanse you. He wants to write His word in your heart and mine. 26:51 What will you do? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you that Jesus is real, thank you that 27:01 your sanctuary is real and thank you that you want to have a real relationship with each one of 27:06 us. We pray in Jesus name, amen. 27:33 Friends, what a powerful thought, Jesus Christ, the eternal self-existent one -- 27:38 He's real, but more than that, he want to have a real relationship with you. Today for 27:46 offer, I want to offer you a book called "Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing". Now this is 27:51 a study on the sermon on the mount which is different than our show, however, the sermon on 27:56 the mount is all about having a practical, real experience - a real relationship with Jesus. 28:04 You can get that book, and when you read that book, that book is going to touch your heart and 28:10 help you to have a deeper relationship with Jesus. Now in addition to that offer, I offer 28:16 to you the full 4 DVD set of "Philosophy's Achilles Heel" -- 16 programs. You can have that 28:26 DVD set for any size donation. Here's the information you need to receive the offers today. 29:29 Friends, a real Jesus who wants to have a real relationship with you. I'd invite you to go to our 29:33 web-site www.ItIsWrittenCanada.ca -- there you can find resources to 29:37 help develop your spiritual life and keep up with what's happening with It Is Written. 29:42 You can also like us on Facebook. Thank you so much for joining us. Join us again next 29:48 week. Until then remember, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 29:55 that proceeds from the mouth of God. 30:00 $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ |
Revised 2016-02-03