Objection 3: The Bible Was Written By Men...

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We are again tonight in our series on the subject of apologetics, which is the practice of defending the faith.
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And a few weeks ago we discussed objections to the faith, and we looked at some broad categories of objections, and I want to remind you what those broad categories were.
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We said when we're dealing with someone who is objecting to the faith, meaning that they're coming at us with some form of an unbelief or some form of an objection or argument, normally those arguments can be lumped together into three categories.
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The first category is the existence and the nature of God.
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The second category would be the nature and the reliability of Scripture.
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And third is the interpretation and application of Scripture.
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And as I noted, no matter what argument you might hear, no matter what argument you might even think in your own mind or wonder if somebody has made, will fall into these three overarching categories.
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And we have already had a couple of sessions on this.
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We have looked at the existence of God, and we have said that those who deny God's existence are coming from a position where they're having to replace the existence of God with some other explanation for why we are here.
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As the one scholar noted, he said, they have to be able to give some explanation why there is something rather than nothing.
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Because there is something, and that is something on which we all agree.
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We are here and we're something.
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And so they have to give some explanation as to the something rather than the nothing.
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And what happens when someone denies the existence of God, they are denying the Creator, and they are replacing Him with some other mechanism by which the world and life came into existence.
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And they often run to some naturalistic explanation.
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And we spent time, and I'm not going to reiterate, but we spent time in that lesson talking about the vacuous nature of their arguments.
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And our second time out on this subject, we talked about the nature of God.
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We said, well, generally the issue of the existence of God may be the appetizer, but almost immediately they go to the main course of the nature of God.
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They say things like, well, God can't be all good because bad things happen, and if He were all good, He would do something about it.
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Or if He is all good, He must not be all powerful, because if God is all good and all powerful, He would be doing something about all the bad in the world.
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And we noted in the lesson that that particular argument has behind it a presupposition.
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It assumes a standard for good and for evil, which does not exist in a naturalistic worldview.
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They're having to borrow from our worldview to even make the argument.
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They also assume themselves to be greater morally than God Himself.
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This is how I ended the last lesson.
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I said, consider this.
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A person who says that God is not all good is saying so because they believe that morally they are better than He.
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Because they're saying, if I were God, I would do it differently.
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And one of the things I failed to mention last time is that one of the things they don't possess is the knowledge of God.
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And I like to point out the fact that maybe if you knew what God knew, you wouldn't do what you do.
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And maybe the reason why you think you would do differently is because you don't know all that God knows.
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You see, when we talk about God, we talk about not just omnipotence, but also omniscience.
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He not only can do all, He knows all.
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He doesn't learn it.
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He already knows it.
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So tonight, we're going to look in our second category in the first objection.
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Like I said, this breaks down to really six parts rather than just three because we're going tonight to look at the nature of Scripture.
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The nature of Scripture.
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And I want to begin by opening up the Bible and turning to 2 Timothy 1, as I've already asked you to turn there.
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Or if you have your notes, 2 Timothy 1 is printed on your notes.
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I'm sorry, I'm even going to 2 Peter.
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I already passed Timothy by.
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I'm going to 2 Peter saying Timothy.
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No, no, it's 2 Peter.
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You're right.
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2 Peter 1, beginning at verse 16, down to the end of this chapter.
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Peter says this, For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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But we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
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For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to Him by the majestic glory, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
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We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain.
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Of course, this is referring to the Mount of Transfiguration.
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For those of you who remember in the Gospels, it was Peter, James, and John who accompanied Jesus to the top of the mountain.
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So when he says we heard, he's talking about himself and James and John.
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The two brothers.
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Verse 19 says, And we have the prophetic word, more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
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Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
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For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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Amen.
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And so ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word.
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So again, tonight we're going to look at the second objection, which is the issue of the question of the nature of the Bible.
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And if you've ever been in apologetic conversations, meaning that you're speaking to an unbeliever, whether that unbeliever is an atheist, an agnostic, a person from another religion, possibly someone who's antagonistic against the faith, someone we'd identify as an anti-theist, you know that it doesn't take long for the conversation about the divine to turn from a conversation about God to a conversation about the Bible.
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In fact, it almost immediately happens in the conversation that someone in the conversation will address the Bible.
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Either you, because you are standing on the Word of God and you're making your defense on the Word of God, or the other person will say, well, what do we know about God? We know what the Bible says and I don't believe what the Bible says.
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As a result, this becomes a place of contention.
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The Bible itself becomes the battleground upon which the war is waged.
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And so, as I said in the previous lessons, we can talk about the existence of God, we can talk about the nature of God, but we really can't do that apart from the Scripture.
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Because what we know about the existence of God and what we know about the nature of God comes to us through the Bible.
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Now we could say we know God exists outside the Bible because the Bible says that.
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The Bible says the very creation proves that God exists.
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Romans 1 says all men can look out at the world, see the order of the world, see the design of the world, and they know that the world had a designer.
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They know the world had a creator.
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So really and truly, all men face God without excuse because every man knows that God exists.
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But how do we know that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God? How do we know that Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried for three days, and was raised on the third day? How do we know that He was born of a virgin? How do we know He was prophesied about 500, 1,000, even 1,500 years before His birth? How do we know that Adam and Eve were people who lived in a garden and that those people sinned against God and brought chastisement and even a curse upon not only their progeny, their children, but also upon the world that they lived? We know this from the Bible.
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These are not things that we come up with on our own.
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These are things that come to us from sacred Scripture.
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And so, when someone is talking to us about God, they are also talking to us about the Bible.
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And so we're going to be looking at the nature of the Bible and the reliability of the Bible.
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This week will be on the nature.
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Next week will be on the reliability.
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And by nature, I want to make this clear, by nature, what I mean, and I'll make a little jot here and bring it down, by nature, I mean what the Bible is and how it came to be.
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When we talk about the nature of Scripture, we're talking about what the Bible is and how it came to be.
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Now, I don't know if you've ever heard this or not, but I'm going to assume that you probably have heard something like this, because I know I've heard it many times.
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The Bible was written by men, so it cannot be trusted.
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By quick show of hands, how many of you have ever heard that argument? You've heard someone say something like that.
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Now, it might be in a different form or a little bit different way or maybe a different vernacular, but in some way, shape, or form, you've heard someone say, the Bible was written by men, and as a result of that, it cannot be trusted.
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Now, before I address the objection, I want to first look at and understand the claims that Christians make about the Bible, because I would assume you know this, but I don't like to assume, I don't like to automatically imagine that everyone here is on the same page on every single thing.
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So, in your outline that I gave you, it says there, Christians believe the Bible to be blank, and it's got three blanks.
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Does everybody see that? Christians believe the Bible to be blank.
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Well, I'm going to give you three things that Christians believe the Bible to be, because I do think this is necessary for you to understand, as a Christian, if you're going to defend it, you should at least be able to understand what you're defending.
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Okay? Number one, Christians believe the Bible to be God's Word.
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Christians believe the Bible to be God's Word.
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Now, I know what some of you may be thinking.
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Some of you may be thinking, well, I know some people who call themselves Christians who don't believe the Bible is God's Word.
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Well, tonight, I'm going to be honest, I'm using the word Christian in the narrowest of senses to mean a person who's been born again.
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I wouldn't say that's too narrow, because that's the way Jesus used it.
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When Jesus talked about believers, he said those who've been born again.
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And I would say this, there may be some born-again people out there who have not yet come to a right understanding of God's Word as being God's Word, but I do believe that Christians in general believe that truth.
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And I believe that a denial of that truth tends to lead to a denial of the faith itself.
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But be that as it may, we're talking in the generality tonight, Christians believe the Bible to be God's Word.
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But something you need to understand about that, and this is the point I'm trying to get to, is that even though we believe the Bible is God's Word, this is not a rejection of the fact that it was written by men.
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Look back at your text in 2 Peter.
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The text in 2 Peter is talking about the Scripture.
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In fact, he says that.
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He references the Scripture in here.
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Let me pull it back up myself.
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I closed my text.
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I didn't mean to.
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Let me pull it back up.
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In the text here, he talks in verse 19 about the prophetic Word, fully confirmed, and then he goes down in verse 20, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from one's own interpretation.
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Now, the way that that's written in the King James can sometimes be confusing, because the way it's written in the King James almost comes across as to say that the Bible is not subject to personal interpretation.
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And so what people have taken that to mean is that you're not allowed to interpret the Bible for yourself.
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And some people even push that even further to say that the only people who can interpret the Bible are the clergy, and you understand how that works like within Roman Catholicism, that only the bishops and only the priests and only the Pope get to interpret the Scripture.
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That's not what that's talking about.
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When it says in verse 19, or rather verse 20, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, that's not saying how it's interpreted, that's saying how it came.
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And what it's saying is that no one who wrote Scripture wrote in accord with how they were interpreting the world around them, as if like I sat down one day with a pen and paper, or this is 2017, if I sat down with my Macbook, and I looked at the world around me and I said, oh, I see a tree, and the tree is, leaves are falling from the tree.
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And this happens every winter, everywhere but Florida.
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It happens.
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I see the leaves falling from the tree and the air is turning cold.
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So what I think is happening is I think that there are gremlins in the sky, and I think that once a year those gremlins get angry and they begin to agitate the air.
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And as they agitate the air, it begins to move more forcefully, and as it begins to move more forcefully, it brings more of the cold air out and some of the hot air gets pushed away.
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I know all of you say, Keith doesn't believe that.
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Yeah.
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You know we don't believe that, but that would be the idea of my own interpretation.
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I'm looking at the world, I'm interpreting it according to some weird idea I have, and I'm writing it down.
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That's what this text is saying.
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That is not how the Bible came.
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The Bible didn't come because Paul sat down and had an interpretation of the way Jesus did things, and he wrote down his own interpretation.
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No, that's not the way it came.
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Verse 21, For no prophecy of Scripture was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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Now again, this is what we believe about the Bible being God's Word.
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Did men write it? Yes.
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And that's the key to this whole thing tonight, is you've got to understand, if somebody comes to me and says, men wrote the Bible, I say, uh-huh.
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That's not the argument.
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They say, men wrote the Bible.
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Okay.
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Because I don't believe that golden plates came down from heaven.
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Now, some people do.
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And I don't believe that we have some type of Scripture that was miraculously put on a plate.
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I don't even believe in automatic writing, which some religions believe that the person was just writing and their mind sort of went blank and they didn't know what they were writing and they just sort of just sat there and just sort of like first century fax machines.
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They were just sort of spitting out what God was doing.
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That is not what we believe.
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We believe that men wrote the Bible as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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That's the key.
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That's why this passage is so important.
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If you read Mark and you read Paul, you can tell there's different men writing.
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Especially if you read the writer of Hebrews and you read John.
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That's one thing we know.
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John didn't write Hebrews.
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At least if he did, he wrote it much differently than he did his other books.
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Because John's books come to us in a very elementary, very basic form of the Greek language where Hebrews comes in a very high form using words and expressions that are not found in the books of John.
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And so we know that men wrote the Bible.
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It's not a debate.
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They're not arguing for anything that we debate.
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So why do we call it God's Word? Well, when we call it God's Word, we're not rejecting the human component.
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We're acknowledging the divine component.
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You see, there was a divine superintendence.
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That's the word I like to use.
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Because you know what a superintendent does.
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He oversees.
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And he ensures that it's right.
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That's what a superintendent is supposed to do.
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There was a divine superintendence on the Scripture which we see here in 2 Peter 1.20.
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John and Paul and the others were not writing from their own interpretations of the world.
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They were not simply putting down their own opinions of what Jesus did or how He came to live and the things that He came to do.
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They were being carried along by the Spirit of God.
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The Bible defines itself as Theanoustos.
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Theanoustos is the Greek term.
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It's actually only used one time in ancient literature in the Greek language that we know of.
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And it's here.
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It's the Bible.
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Theanoustos is two Greek words.
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Theos meaning God and Pneumos is the word.
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It's actually Pneuma because they do pronounce the letter P.
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It's like in pneumonia.
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What is pneumonia? It's got to do with your lungs.
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The air.
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And you've heard of a pneumatic tool.
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That's where you get the word pneumatic.
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Theopneuma means God breathed or from the mouth of God.
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And this is what Paul tells us about the Bible.
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It says, All Scripture is Theanoustos or God breathed or breathed out by God.
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The...
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Try it again.
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Sorry.
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I've got a kink in my fax machine.
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The King James Version says All Scripture comes by inspiration of God.
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And this is one of the times where as much as I love the King James and what it did in history, I do think that that's not the best word.
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To inspire means to breathe into something.
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But the word means breathe out.
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So it does...
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It's just a bad way of saying it because often times people will say I was inspired to write this song by God.
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Or I was inspired to hike this mountain by God.
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And then people read the Bible and they say All Scripture is inspired by God and they think there's some type of a one to one connection there.
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There's not.
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When the Bible talks about inspiration it's talking about God superintending the writing of Scripture.
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Men were involved but men were not only involved.
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That's the key.
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You've got to understand that because if you don't this argument won't make sense.
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You've got to understand first of all when we say the Bible is God's Word men were involved but God was the superintendent.
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The second thing.
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Christians believe the Bible to be God's Word.
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That's number one.
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Second thing.
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Christians believe the Bible to be inerrant.
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I'm going to write that down.
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It is I-N-E-R-R-A-N-T Inerrant.
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I remember years ago and there was a sweet lady at this church and I was teaching on this subject and I stood up and I said the Bible is inerrant.
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And I preached a little bit and then again I said the Bible is inerrant.
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And she was just getting so mad.
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And I didn't know why.
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Finally, the Bible is inerrant.
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And she just gave me that little look.
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Finally, I said what's wrong after the service? And she goes you were saying the Bible is an error.
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No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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I was saying the opposite.
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Inerrant means without error.
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It's the opposite of being inerrant.
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It's without error.
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And this term simply means that the Bible does not contain any errors.
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And there has been much discussion about this in the history of Christianity particularly the last 200 years.
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Many who are more liberally minded would say that the Bible does contain errors.
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They would say they would call themselves Biblical errantists or sometimes higher critics of Scripture.
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You hear the term higher criticism refers to those who believe that yes not only does the Bible contain errors but it is copious amounts of error.
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They'll say that when the Bible makes a claim regarding a historical event it may err regarding the people who are named the number of people involved and all kinds of different things.
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Another school of thought is that the Bible may contain errors on things that are not essential to the faith.
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They'll say things like well, the Red Sea parting is not essential to the faith so it doesn't matter if it happened or not it probably didn't happen.
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Or Adam and Eve in their mind not essential to the faith doesn't matter if it happened or not.
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And things sort of come up for grabs in that mindset.
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However, conservatives and I use that term loosely as much as I use the word Christian loosely I use conservatives even more loosely because there's conservatives that ain't Christians y'all just in case you didn't know.
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There's people out there that are fiscally conservative socially conservative morally conservative and lost as a goose.
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You can be a conservative and be lost.
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It is true.
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But when we talk about biblical conservatives typically argue for the complete inerrancy of the Bible.
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Why? Why does it matter? Why even make the case? Why make the argument? Well, we argue for the inerrancy of the Bible because we believe it's God's Word.
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As a result, if it errors what are we saying? God has made an error.
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You see how the first argument sort of lends itself to the second argument.
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If we believe that it's God's Word and we believe that it's in error then we have to believe that God's ability to superintend the writing of His Word is also at risk of failure.
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And it calls into the entire question the validity of the Scripture.
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In fact, I remember having a conversation with a man where I asked, I said, do you believe that the Bible is completely true? He said, no.
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I said, well, how do you discern which parts are and which parts are not? That really is the weighty question because you then, who's the judge? I believe Jonah was swallowed by a fish.
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I believe he was spit up on the shores of Nineveh.
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And I believe he went into Nineveh and he preached righteousness and there were people who were saved.
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And he was mad because he didn't want people to get saved.
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Now we get into the story of Jonah.
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But I believe that that happened.
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And somebody says, well, I don't believe it happened.
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Okay.
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What else don't you believe? Where do we stop? It really is a sort of a house of cards type thing.
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It's sort of just, if you're going to take the approach that it's not true, well, where do you end? Well, some people say, well, it's true where it speaks to issues of faith.
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Isn't it all an issue of faith? I mean, what do you mean? Well, it's true where it speaks to issues that are necessary for salvation.
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Okay.
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New topic.
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What's necessary for salvation? I mean, it really does.
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It becomes a monster of issue.
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And in our next study, I just want to point this out.
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We are going to get to the reliability of Scripture because some of you may be saying, well, wait a minute, Pastor.
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You talked about textual variance in the past and I have.
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And textual variance is a huge issue.
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And next week I plan to have some stuff on the screen to show you.
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Because I want to show you some ancient manuscripts and show you how manuscript variation does occur and how this is not a denial of our belief in the tenacity or the truth of the Bible.
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In fact, I put this in my notes tonight just so you know this.
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When we talk about the Bible as being absolutely inerrant, we are talking about the original manuscripts.
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I would never say the King James Bible is without error.
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Now, I would get drug out and stoned at certain churches for saying that.
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But I don't believe the King James Bible is without error.
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I don't.
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Because it has translational problems.
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It has manuscript issues.
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It was based on manuscripts that were, at the time, the best that were available.
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But they are not the best that are available anymore.
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So, you know.
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But I don't think that this robs the tenacity of the Scripture, the reliability of the Scripture at all.
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But we'll talk about that next week.
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But the point of the matter is when we talk about the Bible being inerrant, we are talking about the original manuscripts, that which was written by Peter, Paul, James, John, and the rest.
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Now, the third point.
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And we haven't even gotten to the argument yet.
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Boy, I keep looking at my time.
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I've got to go.
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I've got to get giddy up.
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There's the third argument that Christians need to understand.
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Christians believe the Bible is God's Word.
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Christians believe the Bible is inerrant.
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Christians also believe the Bible is infallible.
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Infallible.
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That's an A there.
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Now, oftentimes you will hear inerrant and infallible used as the same thing.
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But I want to show you something tonight that's very important.
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They ain't the same thing.
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Inerrancy and infallibility are not the same.
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Because a document can be inerrant without being infallible.
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Let me explain.
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A document can be factually correct, but that does not mean that it could not have been incorrect.
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Let me say it like this.
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I say a lot of things that are correct.
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I say some things that are incorrect.
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But I say a lot that's correct.
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I hope.
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But I have the capacity for being incorrect.
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Right? So when I'm preaching, what I always pray, Lord, keep me from error.
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Because I am a fallible man capable of preaching that which is wrong.
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So God, keep me from that because I'm fallible.
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Now, everything I say is not wrong, but everything I say is subject to being wrong.
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That's what fallible means.
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The Bible could be inerrant and not infallible.
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Now, I don't believe it is, but I'm saying it could be.
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It could be 100% true and not infallible.
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Meaning, it could have contained errors if it weren't from God.
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Now, I'm not trying to throw you off mentally.
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What I'm trying to say is this.
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When we say that the Bible is inerrant, that means it cannot err.
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But it doesn't mean it could not err.
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That's what infallibility is.
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We're taking a step further.
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We're saying not only does it not err, we're saying it cannot err.
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And again, why do we take this extra step? Because of the origin of Scripture.
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If it comes from God, it's not only inerrant, doesn't err, it's infallible.
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It can't err, because it came from Him.
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And that's an extra step of affirmation.
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Now, I only say that because I hear people use infallibility and inerrancy synonymously, and they're not.
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Because again, I've said many things that are correct, but I'm not infallible.
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The Bible says everything that's correct.
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And it could say everything incorrect and still be fallible if it weren't from God.
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But because it is from God, it's both inerrant and infallible.
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In the fall of 1978, a group of evangelical scholars met in Chicago to address the subject of inerrancy.
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Among them were such notable men as James Boyce, Norman Geisler, John Gerstner, J.I.
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Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and R.C.
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Sproul.
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And the Congress was supported or sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, and it was meant to provide a definition of what it meant, what is meant when a Christian says the Bible is without error.
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And to help take a stand against the tide of liberalism, which attempted to view the Bible as containing not only some error, but a multitude of errors.
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And I don't have time to read the entire statement to you, but I would encourage you to go get a look at it.
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How many of you have ever read the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy? Okay, good.
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It ain't that long, but it's worth the read.
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You can get it online.
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It's free.
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The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy helps explain what we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant and the Bible is infallible.
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But I want to read to you a short snippet.
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This is actually the summary statement of the whole thing.
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The whole thing is several pages long, but the summary statement is very short.
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Sorry.
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God, who is Himself truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge.
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Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.
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Holy Scripture being God's Word written by men, prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches.
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It is to be believed as God's instruction.
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It is to be affirmed, obeyed as God's command in all that it requires, embraced as God's pledge in all of its promises.
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The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine author, both authenticates it to us by its inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
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Being holy and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God than in its own witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
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The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own, and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the church.
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That's the whole summary statement, and it's basically saying this.
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The Bible is given to us by God, superintended by the Holy Spirit, and those who deny that are doing damage not only to themselves but also to the church.
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Now, just to be clear, we have five minutes left and I have not addressed the question.
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But we will now.
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We will now.
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Because all that was to simply say, you need to understand what you believe.
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What did I say at the beginning of this whole course? Most of apologetics is just understanding what you believe.
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Once you understand what you believe about the Bible, once you understand what you believe about God, once you understand these things, you're better off to defend it.
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That's how it always begins.
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So, what do we say when a person says, well, the Bible was written by men so it cannot be trusted? Well, let's examine the question.
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The person says, the Bible was written by men, to which we would respond, yes, indeed.
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No one is denying the Bible was written by men.
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We know that it was.
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In fact, for the most part, we know who wrote it.
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But this premise has an implied objection which is incorrect.
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And the objection is this.
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When they say it was written by men, they are saying that it is, it cannot be trusted.
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The implied argument is that because it was written by men, it could not have also been superintended by God.
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They're assuming naturalism.
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They are assuming that because it was written by men, that God was not involved.
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In fact, most of the time, they're assuming God doesn't even exist.
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So, when they say the Bible was written by men, there's a presupposition.
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Remember what I talked about throughout this whole course? Is that there's presuppositions that you have to listen for? The presupposition of this argument is this.
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Because it was written by men, it could not have had any involvement by God.
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But I want to point out the fact that this leads to a question.
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And I would say an even deeper question that I would ask.
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If I had a chance to ask the person a question, I would ask this question.
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Does the fact that the Bible was written by men demand that it cannot be trusted? Because we're not denying the fact that it was written by men.
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We're not.
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Nobody here is denying that it was written by men.
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Because it was written by men, does that demand that it cannot be trusted? If the person says yes, then they have a problem.
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Because all books are written by men.
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No book has ever been penned by an ape, or a dog, or a horse.
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If the argument is true that because a book is written by a man, that book cannot be trusted, my question is, do you read? Do you trust anything that you read? Why do you trust what you read if it is that books written by men cannot be trusted? See, here's the thing that they won't tell you.
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But maybe you can pry it out of them with a little bit of coaxing.
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They believe almost everything they read, as long as it's not the Bible.
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They'll believe there's textbooks, even though this year's textbook contradicts what last year's textbook said.
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They'll believe what they read on Reddit and Yahoo News.
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They'll believe everything they read, except the Bible.
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Now I want to say something radical.
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And I thought about this, I thought about it, I might not say it.
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Because I don't want to confuse anyone.
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So listen to me with the heart that this is coming from.
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I'm not intended to confuse.
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I just want to make a point.
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Even if the Bible were not superintended by God's Spirit, which I believe it was.
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Understand that.
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I don't want anybody to walk out of here confused.
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I believe the Bible is divine in origin, superintended by God.
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Even if it weren't superintended by God, it could still be completely true.
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Because men have the capacity to write things that are correct.
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Now you say, why would you make a point like that? Because they're saying that because men wrote it, it's not correct.
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And I'm saying that's a dumb argument.
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Because men have the capacity to get things right.
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But we believe in more than that.
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We believe not only do men have the capacity to get things right, we believe in a God who doesn't have the capacity to get things wrong.
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And we believe He superintended what those men wrote.
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So had God not intervened, they still could have gotten it right.
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But because He did intervene, I believe they absolutely got it right.
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You see what I'm saying? So if a person says, well the Bible was written by men, it can't be trusted.
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We know their assertion is based on faulty logic.
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It's based on an absolutely faulty premise.
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They are making a truth claim which includes a premise that they have not proven that all things written by men must be inherently untrustworthy.
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And they're saying that because men were involved in the writing of Scripture, it must not be true, which is soundly false.
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And my response typically is something like this.
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If you believe the Bible has errors, please show me one.
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Now I will say this, and again, time is running away from us, I will say this.
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If you say that, be ready, because they're going to say something.
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That's not a showstopper.
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Especially if you get a hold of somebody who's maybe watched the West Wing or something else like that.
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There's a West Wing TV show mentioned something about the Bible years ago, and people called what the West Wing argument came out.
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It was this.
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A person was arguing against homosexuality, and a guy says, well you play football, the Bible says you can't touch pig skin, so I guess you can't ever play football again.
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And the person's like, oh, I don't know how to answer that.
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It's a ridiculous argument if you understand Scripture at all, but it became known as the West Wing argument because it became the popular argument for unbelievers who were dealing with the issue of homosexuality.
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It's called the West Wing argument.
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It's not uncommon for arguments to rise and fall like that, and they usually get little keen nicknames.
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But it is true that if you talk to somebody and you say, well tell me where the Bible has errors, you're going to hear all kinds of stuff.
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Well, the Bible seems to indicate the world hasn't been here that long, but science tells us that the world's been here for 4.5 billion years, and the universe has been here for 13 billion years.
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And you say, what? How do you respond? Were you there? That's a good question.
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Were you there? You weren't there.
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Science can't prove the age of the universe.
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It's not possible.
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It can make conjecture, it can make arguments based upon evidence, but the evidence is interpreted differently by different scientists, much like how the climate scientists argue whether or not we are going through a time of heating or warming or cooling or whatever.
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Science is not, I repeat, science is not without bias.
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But there's all kinds of other things you might hear.
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What about the fact that when Jesus went to Gennesaret, Jesus got off the boat and he talked to a demoniac? But that's what it says in one of the gospels.
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But in another gospel, it says Jesus got off the boat and there were two demoniacs.
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What about that? Here's a direct contradiction.
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In this book, it says there was one demoniac, and in this book, it says there was two demoniacs.
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I always like that argument because my response is very simple.
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I say, earlier today, I came to the church and I was alerted to the fact that I forgot some shirts that I had made for a customer and I needed the shirts.
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So I was really disappointed that we had to go back and pick the shirts up.
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Is that true? It is true.
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But I didn't go.
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I sent Cody.
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See, I didn't tell you the whole story.
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I said I was disappointed that we had to go back, but then I determined I don't have to go.
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He gets to go because he's got a driver's license.
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See, I didn't tell you the whole story the whole time.
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I didn't tell you anything wrong the first time.
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I was disappointed that we had to go home, but then I realized we didn't have to go.
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You see, the Bible doesn't always tell every story all the way through every time.
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There's something called telescoping.
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Telescoping is when you take a story and you close the story up to a little bit shorter or you take out some issues that are non-essential and you all do this.
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You all telescope things and you all tell stories different ways.
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And when we have four gospels telling four different accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, there's no doubt that there are going to be times where those accounts have to be harmonized.
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And harmonization is essential in interpretation.
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And we're going to get to that in a few weeks.
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But you see, that's part of the fact that when I'm talking to an unbeliever, I understand this.
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He already doesn't believe what the Bible says.
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I'm not going to argue about whether or not there are one or two demoniacs.
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Because he doesn't believe it anyway.
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But the point of the matter is this.
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When I'm speaking to an unbeliever about the Bible, I have to understand they do not have eyes to see and they do not have ears to hear.
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But that doesn't make the Bible untrue.
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It just makes them not want to believe it.
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So I want to end with this.
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Time is gone.
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And I want you to consider this.
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Dr.
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Votie Balcom, who is a very powerful preacher, and if you've never heard of him, I encourage you.
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His name is on your sheet.
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You can look him up on YouTube.
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You can look him up online.
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Dr.
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Votie Balcom is a fantastic preacher of the gospel.
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And he's actually now the president of a seminary in Africa.
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He was a pastor here in Texas.
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And he went to Africa to lead a seminary where there is so much false teaching because there's so much just like faith healers and stuff that go over to Africa and just terrorize the people.
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So he's over there preaching the truth.
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This is what he said.
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He said, if you were ever asked why you believe the Bible, here are some things that you shouldn't say.
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He said, if anybody says, well, why do you believe the Bible? He says, please don't say this.
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Please don't say, well, I believe it because that's how I was raised.
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He said, because if you say, that's how I believe it because that's how I was raised, he said, there's no difference between you, a Muslim, a Mormon, or a Hindu, or anyone else who was raised differently.
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And if that's your argument, keep it to yourself because that's not a good argument.
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He said, number two, don't say this.
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If somebody says, why do you believe the Bible? He said, don't say, well, I tried it and it worked for me.
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He said, because your personal experience doesn't make it true either.
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Somebody might say, well, I went through the 12-step program.
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I was an alcoholic.
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I went through the 12 steps and I tried it and it worked for me.
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So that's my religion now.
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How you were raised and on top of that, the fact that it works for you is not an argument for the Bible.
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But he goes on to say this, and I did put this quote in your notes.
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He says, when somebody asks me, this is what I say, I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.
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They report of supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.
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Now, if you think about all that he's saying, and I don't have time to break it down, but the key to this is this.
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This is a reliable, a reliable collection of eyewitness accounts that was written during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.
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And the men who wrote it said, and we believe, that they were doing so under the authority of Almighty God.
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Is there a faith element in that? Yes.
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But it's not a blind faith.
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It's a faith element that says, I believe not only what these guys said, but I believe the origin from which it came was not them, but was God Himself.
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People may claim the Bible contains errors, but the onus is on them to prove it.
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And as Christians, we have confidence that the Bible is not just inerrant, but it's also infallible.
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And next week, we're going to move to the issue of reliability, because the next question is this.
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If somebody says, the Bible was written by men, can't be trusted, that argument is fallacious and foolish.
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But the next argument and the next question we're going to deal with is this.
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The Bible was written 2,000 years ago.
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What right do you have to believe that what you have is accurate to what was originally written? And that question is what we're going to deal with next time.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the truth of the Word, and I thank You for this opportunity to study together, and I pray that this study will be used by You to encourage people in their faith and give us even more reason to stand for the hope that is within us.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.