Whitten Q & A - Why do YOU believe that Christianity is the ONLY WAY?

Whitten Baptist Church

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Good afternoon and welcome to Question and Answer with Pastor Josiah Shipley of Witten Baptist Church.

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I've got a pre -recorded video today, but please still comment, and if you want, I can do a follow -up on this.

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In fact, I really would appreciate that. Today's question is, why do Christians think they are the only way?

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Why do Christians think they are the only way to heaven? How can they be right and everyone else be wrong? And again, based on the comments of this video, we'll determine if we do a follow -up video or two, which

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I would love to do. Okay? So, what I want to do today is give five very quick reasons of why

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I believe Christianity is right, Christianity is true, and other quote -unquote belief systems are not.

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And I want to set a few preliminary factors. First off, all religion is wrong.

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You may be thinking, I thought you just said you believe in Christianity. Yes, all religion is wrong. Religion is a man -made interpretation of God.

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Faith is directly from God. You see, when we call the Bible the

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Word of God, what we're saying is we believe there's 40 -something writers, but only one author, God, written over 1 ,500 years.

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So notes and Bible commentaries and church history books can be helpful, but they can also be flawed, and I recognize that, and I don't hide from that, okay?

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But I treat other belief systems the same way. I want to know what their texts that they claim to be from God are, and other comments or commentaries on that I can read to learn from, but I don't treat those as if they were divine.

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So there's that. So all religion is wrong. Satan has used religion better than he has any other type of demon music or drugs or drinking.

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Religion is his best tool, okay, because what

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Jesus told the Pharisees, you teach as doctrine the commands of men. Whereas we have always said, as real

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Christians, what the Bible says is the Word of God, even if it goes against what I have previously believed, or even if it goes against what

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I feel or what I want. So I want to give you five reasons why I believe

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Christianity is true, and understand that each of these reasons I could spend a whole video on, and if I need to do that,

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I want you to tell me. So I'm about to list the five reasons, okay? Reason number one, personal experience.

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Reason number two, history. Reason number three, examination of other religions. Reason number four, the

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Bible itself. Reason number five, grace. If you would like me to go in -depth on any of these five reasons in a future video,

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I will, and I will do it live or pre -recorded, whatever you prefer. But if we do it live, we need to keep the subject matter on that thing, if that's what people are asking for, and we need to be respectful of that.

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One of the benefits of doing pre -recorded videos is focusing on one topic. So again, these are the five reasons.

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I'm going to just spend a couple minutes on each of them, but if you're not satisfied with my answer on that, or you want more detail, or Josiah, what about this,

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I promise you, I will take the time and go in -depth on any of them that you guys need me to. I'm here to serve you, not promote myself, okay?

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I want everyone watching this to know whether you are a Christian, a Muslim, a

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Hindu, a Buddhist, whether you are a different sect, or whether you are a

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Roman Catholic, or Jehovah's Witness, whether you are a Baptist, or Pentecostal, whether you are an atheist, an agnostic,

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I want you to know from the bottom of my heart, to listen to what I'm about to say, I really believe this stuff.

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You can, and you are allowed to, and I encourage you to question what

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I say, to think critically about it, to even disagree, but I would hope that you understand and look in my eyes when

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I say, I genuinely believe this stuff. I could pass a lie detector test right now saying that I really believe this is the

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Word of God, and that what it says happened, is happening, and will happen. I genuinely believe that, okay?

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So my sincerity is true. Now, sincerity does not prove reality. There are billions of people on this planet that are sincere about beliefs, that doesn't make them true.

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You know, that doesn't make them true. So keep that in mind. Reason number one why

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I believe Christianity is true is personal experience. Now, if this were the only reason

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I had, why I believe it, you shouldn't believe it. Personal experience is not convincing and proving to other people what is true by itself.

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That's circular. However, it is true, it is true that personal experience can speak louder in your own heart, in your own mind, in your own soul, more than all the books, and all the sermons, and all the

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YouTube videos can. And all of us, whether we're believers or not, have personal experience with something that has touched us, whether it's something positive or negative, that has stuck with us through our lives.

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Personal experience can be a good indicator of truth so long as you can separate experience from feelings.

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You see, feelings are a really bad indicator of truth. I don't always feel like I love my wife.

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Does that mean I don't love her? Of course not. Because feelings, emotions, are bad indicators of truth.

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They're bad expressions of it. They can vary a lot. But I just want everyone watching this to know that in my personal experience with God speaking to me, not audibly,

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I'm not one of those people that say God has audibly spoke to me. Maybe He has to you, but not to me. God speaking to me,

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I'm convinced. I'm convinced that He is real and that this is

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His Word and what it says really happened. I'm convinced of it. That is more real to me than this table.

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That may sound crazy to you and some of you that may even sound dangerous. I'm not denying the reality of the physical world and that our actions have consequences.

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I am saying the supernatural is even more real. We're living in the matrix. The real world is the world to come.

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In one common stab at religion, but again,

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I don't believe in religion, I believe in faith, that atheists make is that, well, you're just living for eternity, we're living for the here and now, therefore, we recognize you only have one life, make the most of it.

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However, and they make this altruistic claim that they can be selfless, but the believer cannot because they're doing it to obtain salvation.

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First off, no good work we can ever do can attain salvation. Secondly, no, a regenerated spirit will seek the things above.

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And God sums up the things above by saying, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love each other as you love yourself.

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And that doesn't obtain salvation, that is a result of it. My example of that is electricity.

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If I turn off the light in here, right, and then turn it back on real fast, you see light.

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But you see, the electricity was present in the walls before that light came to be.

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The light is an expression of the electricity, okay?

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Our good works don't save us, they just bear fruit that we already are, okay?

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Our salvation is like that electricity and it will produce light. If it doesn't produce light, then it's probably not active in the first place.

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There's a lot of church people that have never truly been regenerated. Personal experience, number one. Number two, history.

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There's so many examples, I just want to give you a few. Flavius Josephus, he's a Jewish historian who betrayed his

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Jewish brethren to save his life during the Jewish revolt of the 60s and 70s

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AD. He was General Titus's, kind of like his translator, I guess you'd say, when he invaded

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Jerusalem. Just a couple things, you can read about this in the Antiquities of the

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Jews, or Jewish Antiquities. Historical source, not a believer, not a Christian. Alexander the

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Great, you can read about this, you know, Alexander sieged and killed and pillaged a lot of people in a lot of cities.

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History tells us that he did not conquer

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Jerusalem the same way he did everyone else. He didn't. He conquered it without any complications. No killing, no sieging, no murder, no slaughter.

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Josephus tells us in his book, Jewish Antiquities, that when he went to destroy

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Jerusalem, the priests, the Jews, came out, brought him into the city, and showed him the book of Daniel, written before Alexander was even born.

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Alexander read it and realized that Daniel was prophesying about him, that he was the goat from the east, well, excuse me, from the west moving east, from Greece.

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And he realized, wow, this is about me, and didn't conquer Jerusalem. It's amazing.

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The book of Daniel, written before Alexander was born, was shown to Alexander. Alexander recognized the prophecy was about him and didn't destroy

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Jerusalem. That really happened. Josephus speaks of John the

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Baptist, and that Herod killed him. So does the Bible. Josephus speaks of Jesus dying under Pontius Pilate.

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So does the Bible. Bart Ehrman, an agnostic, borderline atheist, wrote a book called

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Misquoting Jesus. It's critical of the New Testament. Says that it's mostly an embellishment, not that its events can't be trusted.

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But Bart Ehrman says this in his book, Did Jesus Exist?

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No matter what you believe, no matter what you believe and what you disagree about who

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Jesus of Nazareth was, whatever else you may think about Jesus, he certainly did exist.

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That's Bart Ehrman, an unbeliever, says that we have more evidence of Jesus existing than we do any other first century

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Palestinian, with maybe the exception of Josephus himself, who also credits the existence of Jesus.

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If you deny the existence of Jesus, now, I'm not saying this in and of itself proves that he is divine, son of God, or anything like that.

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I'm saying evidence shows that we have more manuscript evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth than we do any other first century

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Palestinian, other than maybe Josephus, who also gives credence to the existence of Jesus.

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If you deny the existence of Jesus, you have to deny the existence of every other first century

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Palestinian who ever lived there during that century. You have to say none of them existed.

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It was just a barren land. Number three, examination of other religions.

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So I just gave a few examples of history. Examination of other religions. Guys, I am not like some of these other quote unquote

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Baptist pastors who just want to hide truth from you so you just believe what you're told and never critically think for yourself.

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I don't want you to critically think. I want you to question the Bible. I want you to, because I believe you'll find out that it's true.

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Guys, other books by other religions, it's not like the Return of the Mummy where if you open it up and read it, you'll become demon possessed.

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They're just books. But I don't believe they're true or divinely inspired. I've read them.

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I really have. This is the New World Translation. This is the Jehovah's Witness Bible.

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Okay, Watchtower, right? This is the Quran in English. Oh no, I can't read

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Arabic yet. One day maybe. The Book of Mormon is downstairs in Pastor Jeff's office.

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Guys, even among quote unquote Christians, I went to a

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Roman Catholic high school. I have read documents. I've listened to debates. I have read the

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Quran. I'm still studying it. I have read the New World Translation. I've read and studied other religions, and I think all

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Christians should. I've examined it for myself. I haven't. I have tried my best to not go into it with already an innate bias.

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Like, okay, what this says is true. Is it or is it not? And examined it from a logical, critical thinking perspective.

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And what I have found is that I don't find them to be convincing.

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For example, I'm sorry. The Jehovah's Witness translation is just a plagiarism of the

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Bible. We can look at the Greek manuscript evidence, which I'm going to speak about in a minute, and see that this is an inaccurate translation, in fact, a paraphrase.

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Quite frankly, it doesn't take a doctrine in manuscript evidence to see that this is a forgery.

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Sorry, not sorry, it's just the reality. Mormonism is a known faith. From the 18th century,

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Joseph Smith's claims to have received revelation from golden tablets written in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and then when it's translated, it's translated in 16th century

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English that no one spoke in the 18th century, or the 1800s, excuse me. It's a known faith.

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The Qur 'an, when I read this, I find it to plainly and clearly be a plagiarism of the

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Bible. Remember, guys, people get this wrong, Islam started 500 years after Jesus had already died.

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500 years. While it's an ancient, quote -unquote, religion, it is not older than Christianity.

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And no, older does not mean true, but when you read it and see that it's clearly a plagiarism,

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I'm sorry, I don't know what else to tell you. It doesn't mean there's nothing true or good or moral in them.

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An atheist can be a good moral person, but it doesn't make it divine, okay?

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When I study the Eastern religions, and really, also, Islam, I find that they are all basically the same story of man piling up merit, piling up good works, piling up morals, whether that's through asceticism, whether that's through meditation, whether that's through giving, good works, sacrifice, prayers, whatever it is, piling up merits to try to reach

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God. It's man climbing the ladder to try to reach God. Christianity is the story that God reached down to man.

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God reached down to man. Do not, do not try to go show me a two -minute

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YouTube video where Christianity is based on Osiris or one of the other ancient Egyptian gods.

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It's not even close. It's not even close. I'll go into it if you want, but don't bore me with YouTube theology on that.

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No serious scholar buys into that, okay? The fact that we find other ancient stories of the underground, and there's no connection to the

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God of the Bible, it's not even close. So, an examination of the other religions is something we should all do, but I believe if you go to it with an open mind, you'll find it to be unconvincing.

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The Bible. I could spend a long time speaking on prophecy, because there's a lot of it in this book, and what it said happens.

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I'll give you one example, Isaiah. The book of Isaiah was written in the 700s

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BC. So, the 8th century BC, that's before Jesus, or before the common era if you prefer, 700 years.

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You know, it's funny. It contains so many prophecies that end up happening, like the birth of Jesus, who already proved to be existing.

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How he would be born, where he would be born, how he would be killed, Isaiah 53.

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Isaiah predicts the return of Israel from captivity before they were ever captured. How amazing is that?

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It predicts Darius releasing the Israelites back to Jerusalem before he captured them, in the

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Medo -Persian Empire, after the Babylonian Empire. Remember, world powers, Assyrians to Babylonians to Medo -Persians to Greeks to Romans.

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We have a manuscript, the Great Isaiah Scroll, found in the

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Dead Sea Scrolls, that has been carbon dated to 125

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BC. Now, everyone recognizes this is not the original scroll that Isaiah wrote down on.

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It's a copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy. Everyone recognizes that.

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And that copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy that we recognize not the original, has been carbon dated to 125

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BC, 125 years before Jesus was ever born. Even if that were the original, it still predicts his birth, where he would be born, how he would die, etc.,

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etc. It is a complete copy of the book of Isaiah, minus a couple verses that I think fell off or it's hard to read.

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It's actually a collection of scrolls. I think it's 17 scrolls. You can't fit all of Isaiah on one scroll. All 66 modern day chapters.

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We have more manuscript evidence, manuscripts, handwritten documents of the Bible than we do any document of history.

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We have 5 ,700 Greek copies of the

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New Testament alone. 5 ,700. Now, we could do a bunch of comparisons, but I just want to read again from Bart Ehrman.

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This is Bart Ehrman, an unbelieving agnostic who used to be a Christian, he says, and then he fell away, and he does not believe that the

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New Testament is convincing that Jesus is God and provided salvation, but he does not deny that Jesus existed and that the

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New Testament writers truly believed who he was. Let me read a quote from him. This is from, if I remember right, this is from his article on his website, the

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Ehrman blog, from July 18, 2015. The title of the article is New Testament Manuscripts, Good News and Bad News.

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Now, keep in mind, I am not trying to say that Bart Ehrman is a believer. He's not. I'm not trying to say that he believes the

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Bible, everything it says is true and that it's inerrant and fallible. He doesn't. What I am saying is he recognizes the

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Greek manuscript evidence we have in the Bible is far more than any other work of antiquity. To read his quote, we have more manuscripts from the

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New Testament than for any other book for the ancient world. I'm going to read that again.

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We have more manuscripts for the New Testament than any other book from the ancient world. Many, many more manuscripts than we have for the writings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, or any other important author.

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So listen to what he's saying. We have more evidence for the New Testament than we do for Homer, Plato, or Cicero.

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We have something like 5 ,700 manuscripts of the New Testament from small fragments of tiny parts of a single book or complete copies of the entire

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New Testament. In the Greek language, which they were originally written, along with manuscripts in many other ancient languages like Latin, Syriac, Coptic.

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This is good news indeed. The more manuscripts to have, the more likely you can figure out what the author originally says.

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He goes on to say, the vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of differences between those manuscripts, because there's differences, are completely and utterly unimportant and insignificant and don't matter at all.

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By far, the most common differences simply show us that the scribes in the ancient world could spell no better than most people can today.

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So what he's saying is, in those 5 ,700 manuscripts, they all say the same thing.

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The differences between them don't matter in our spelling. One percent of them, we have to make a decision about what was originally said, and I don't hide from that.

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I love that kind of stuff. Like John 5 .4, and 1 John 5 .7, and John 8,

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I love going through that stuff, I don't hide from that. I think we can know. But my point is, if you deny the

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Bible to be, well we'll start with the New Testament, to be a first century documentation of history, even if you don't believe it's inerrant or infallible, you have to deny

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Plato, Cicero, the Gaelic Wars, notes on Julius Caesar, you have to deny all work in antiquity, all of it.

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See, because there's more evidence for the New Testament than any other by far.

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Lastly, reason number 5 why I believe Christianity is true is one word, grace.

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As I mentioned before, all religions are ultimately about piling up merit to reach

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God. Christianity is a story where God came down to man. You see, we are so dead in our sin that we can't find

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God. You never found Jesus, Jesus found you. I'll tell a story real quick, this is a story we've used before to help define grace the best we can.

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Father and mother have one son, they love this son. One night a thief breaks into the house, walks past the parents' room, goes upstairs, and kills that child, takes what he wants and leaves.

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Revenge or vengeance would be the father grabbing a shotgun, tracking down the killer, and the knight shooting him and killing.

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That would be revenge. Justice, at least in the United States, would be for the father to call the police, the police to catch the criminal, the judge to say guilty, and for the criminal, the killer, the murderer of the son, to spend the rest of his life in prison.

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We would call that justice. Mercy is not getting the punishment you deserve.

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This would be mercy. They call the police, the police find them, the judge says guilty, but then the parents walk in the courtroom and say, hey,

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I don't want to press any charges, he can go free. That's mercy. But grace is this. The parents go in that courtroom and say, your honor, not only do we not want to press charges, but see, grace is getting a gift you don't deserve.

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Your honor, this young man clearly doesn't have a good home life. He can come live with us.

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We have a bunch of empty clothes now that don't have anyone to fill them because our son is dead.

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He can wear those clothes. We have an empty chair at our dinner table he can sit at. He can live in our son's room.

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We will treat him as our child and we will call him son and never treat him as if he wasn't.

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That's grace. Ladies and gentlemen, Christianity is not, is not the story where the hero died for the villain and slayed the dragon.

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Christianity, my bad, I just misspoke. Christianity is not the story where the hero dies from the damsel in distress in the tall tower and kills the dragon.

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Christianity is a story where the hero dies for the villain. Guys, in our sin, you and I are the bad guys.

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We have all turned our back on God and by his grace, he has provided a way for salvation.

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And yes, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one can come to the father except through me.

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Guys, I preach the truth and the truth is there is one way to salvation. It's through Jesus Christ.

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And I pray you consider that. Guys, I think it is the most logical, the most critically thought out and the most historically sound, the best option by far when you look at the other quote unquote options of religions.

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But I want you to remember that I don't believe in a religion. That's a man made interpretation. All religion,

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Baptist, Pentecostal, Islam, Jehovah's Witness, Roman, Catholic, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Atheism, it's all man made.

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It's all wrong. It will all send you to hell. Only faith in Jesus Christ has the power to forgive sin, provide eternal life.

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Grace is what separates Christianity from all the would be faiths. And that is a story where God reaches down to man, not man reaching up to God.

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And sometimes some Christians distort that and then make it a different gospel, whether intentionally or not.

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Don't add to grace. Nothing can be added to it. I love you guys very much.

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Whatever follow up videos or follow up questions you have, please put in the comment section, I promise you, I will answer them.