1 - School of Biblical Hermeneutics, Introduction

Welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Biblical Harmonetics.

We're glad that you could be with us in the first lesson here that we will be going into over 20 lessons, or at least 20 lessons, that we will be looking into the art and science of interpretation.

That's what that big word, hermeneutics, means. If you want to impress your friends at the dinner table, you know, you're at a

Christian fellowship, I've been studying hermeneutics, and they're going to go, ooh, they must be really important.

They know big words. Yeah, it's just the interpretation of things, right? So it's how we interpret things like literature or language, and specifically, we're going to look at how to interpret scripture.

So that's what we're going to embark upon. I'm glad that you are with us. I'm glad that you will be enjoying the time that we're going to have in these several lessons.

If you are an enrolled student with the Academy, you have your syllabus.

So go grab your syllabus, it's right there. I can't grab it, okay, but it makes my hand disappear, that's cool,

I like that. All right, so grab your syllabus, and if you don't have a syllabus and want one, that's all the notes that we're going to be going over, you can go to the website that should be down here somewhere, and you will find on there the

Striving for Eternity Academy page where you can enroll. That page is hopefully going to be updated somewhat soon with some new cool things just for students.

So we are going to embark on this study, and we are going to start with an introduction.

It's always good to start with an introduction, right? So introductions are good, so we're going to start with one.

And what we want to do as we go through these lessons, we are going to help you throughout this course to try to help you understand not only how to interpret the

Bible, because there are several things that are out that will help you to be able to interpret the

Word of God, but there's also some things that we don't see a lot of, which is how do you use the tools?

What are the different tools that someone would use that would help them to be able to study

God's Word more effectively? And those are some of the things that we're going to start with when we start these lessons.

However, not today, because today we're going to start by looking at the Word of God itself.

So let's begin. Many Christians recognize that the Bible is the source for their spiritual growth, and their lives become frustrated when they come to a text to gain a better understanding of it, and they don't have that.

Now a Christian is one that is going to hold to the fact that the Word of God is just that, the

Word of God. If that's not their ultimate authority for life and practice, they get some problems.

But there are times when sometimes we come to a text of Scripture and we don't quite understand its meaning, and this study is designed to help give the student of Scripture some keys to interpreting correctly

God's Word. So before we begin though, we want to start with looking at some of the benefits that will help us to outline the objectives and the obstacles that could come and hinder us to our studies of the

Word of God. So that's where we are going to start in this class. The objectives are this.

The objectives are, first, to help the student become more effective in interpreting the

Word of God, to the end that they may have a closer walk with Him, and be ready to minister.

The Scriptures do say to be ready to give an answer for the faith that lies within you. And so we want to help you be ready when someone asks you about a text of Scripture.

How can you, without doing lots of study, be ready to give at least a general answer?

But we're also going to see that there's some that want to dig deeper and we want to be ready to know how to study to give an answer to some people when they ask questions.

So that's going to be the first, is to help us be more effective in our study of the Word of God. Second, is to introduce the student to various tools for in -depth

Bible study, as I mentioned we're going to do. We're going to look at Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and concordances.

Actually a concordance is not just that thing that's in the back of your Bible that helps you find the verses that you know are there but you forgot.

It's actually more useful than that. It's just most people don't use it for what it's meant for. But third thing is to teach the student more effectively his or her

English Bible, or whatever translation you have. We're going to look specifically at English because, well it's the language

I know best, or only language maybe. But what we're going to end up looking at is some of the skills that we're going to teach you work in any language because languages have grammars and rules and so these things work.

Fourth, is to assist the student in gaining a greater appreciation for God's Word. Now there's also, though these things are the objectives we have, there are some obstacles.

One of the largest obstacles to understanding God's Word is no conversion.

In other words, someone who is not saved. This is why when we go on the streets we talk to atheists, professing atheists, that's right, there's no such thing as atheism.

God says they all know he exists, sorry. Yikes, those people think they're so smart too.

Hmm, new film out about that too. How to answer, oh, the fool.

Talks about how those atheists rely on God. Anyway, but we want to look, look in 1

Corinthians 2 and verse 14. If, what you see here it says,

So what that tells us is that somebody who does not have the Holy Spirit, in other words they're not converted, they are not spiritually discerning.

They may be able to read God's Word and have a certain level of understanding. They can take the principles of interpretation and apply it to God's Word.

But what they will be lacking is the spiritual discernment that the Holy Spirit provides.

Another reason that there's many obstacles is that there is no commitment.

No commitment. What we mean by this is that we need to be searching the deep things of God is a rewarding task.

But it takes a lot of work to be diligent. And a student must be committed to that work of the

Word, studying the Word of God. Let's look at 2 Timothy, it says, Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the

Word of God. And so, what we have here when we look at this is that it takes some commitment.

The things we're going to teach you in this class take work. There's no way around it.

No pain, no gain, I guess. But it's really not painful to study the Word of God if you're a

Christian. You should love the study of the Word of God. And that will help you to love it more the more you study.

But if you lack in commitment, in other words, you have no problem watching that TV, seeing the latest movie, but when it comes to sitting down and spending an hour with God's Word, I just can't find the time.

That may be signs of something more spiritually wrong with you. Alright?

A third thing is no church. A Bible teaching church gives you an opportunity not only to gain insight into passages, but to observe the process as well.

If you're in a very good church, a good church is going to help you to understand

God's Word. And so, if you're in a good church, you're going to find that it is going to help you in the study of God's Word.

Now, let's look at section number one. And we're first going to look at this and look to gain an appreciation for the

Scriptures. Alright? And so, the primary objectives of this kind of study focuses on the methods of Bible study.

And in order to lay a foundation for that focus, we want to get an appreciation of the

Scriptures itself. No matter what text we're examining, we want to have an appreciation for the

Scriptures. So, much of what I'm going to share with you now is out of a book from John MacArthur called How to Study the

Bible. This is from his little booklet produced in 1982.

So, it is not available anymore, but I think he does have this in other forms that you might be able to pick it up.

So, I encourage you to do just that. Alright? But this is just a little bit from that book, some of the attributes that we're going to look at from Scripture and look at some of the passages of Scripture that support those attributes.

And we'll discuss them. First attribute that I want us to look at when it comes to looking at the

Scriptures, some attributes of Scriptures, is one is that in its original writing, it was infallible.

It was infallible. Every word of the Bible is exactly as God intended it to be.

Now, let's look at a couple passages here of Scripture and then we'll describe this more. It says, All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.

Psalm 19 says, I love that.

Because what that's saying is that the simple will seem wise. So when some people think that I'm wise, it really has nothing to do with me.

It has to do with the fact that I study God's Word. I know, I hear some of you in the chat room that are watching this live and you're saying,

Yeah, we know him. He's not wise. Yeah. No argument here.

Agree. But, I study the Scriptures and I know one that's wiser than all and that's

God. And when he wrote the Word of God, it was inspired. It was without error.

It had no errors in it. Okay? It was exactly as God intended it to be.

Okay? This is the idea of inspired. Okay? It was exactly.

Now, I say in the original because, well, we don't have the original anymore. And we have some copies.

And while some copies have changes and mistakes and errors, that's not a big deal as we'll see.

Because not one of those things that we have is anything with any doctrine. So we know that because of the number of copies we have.

We may not be able to get back to the original, but we know that nothing is affecting of doctrine.

Okay? So, your second one there is that it's infallible. It's also inerrant. That means it's without error.

This focuses on the necessity relationship between the authenticity of the words and the authority of the message.

Okay? So, it's infallible or inspired, meaning that it is exactly as God intended.

That word God breathed in 2 Timothy 3 .16 means God breathed it out.

He inspired it. Which doesn't mean that it's like people say, oh, that song inspired me or I was inspired by a poem.

Meaning I feel good. It means it was breathed out by God so that every word was exactly as God intended it.

And because it comes from God, it means it's also inerrant. Meaning that it has no errors or flaws.

So, it's exactly as God intended and it had no errors. And therefore, because of that, it is in its words, it's authentic.

Okay? And it is also authoritative in its message. Therefore, the

Bible is the only source of absolute truth that we can go to. Because it is the only thing that we have directly from God.

Okay? It's also complete. In Revelation 22, it says this.

Revelation 22. I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book.

If anyone adds to them, God will add to them the plagues described in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words of this book, of this prophecy,

God will take away his share in the tree of life in the holy city which is described in this book.

So, what we see here is that this truth that we say it's complete is sometimes called plenary.

It's a big fancy word. You know how those theologians are. They have to come up with these big fancy words to make themselves feel kind of smart.

Right? Yeah. Okay. So, what does plenary mean? Right? In case you hear that.

This emphasizes the fact that nothing should be added or removed from the

Bible. Nothing should be added. Nothing should be subtracted. It is complete.

Alright? So that it means that there's nothing more that's needed. This kind of gets to the issue of the sufficiency of Scripture.

If this is God's Word spoken exactly as He intended it, without error, without fall or fail, and it's complete, that means it's also sufficient.

Okay? Which is I don't think one of the ones that we're going to cover really in the list that John MacArthur provides, but it is one of the aspects of it.

This is saying that the Word of God is all that we need. Not for everything. It doesn't cover every topic that's ever going to be there, but it means that when it comes to our faith, when it comes to the things that God wants to make sure we understand and live by,

He's provided it. We don't need anything extra. We don't need a Book of Mormon.

We don't need a Doctrine and Covenants. We don't need a Watchtower. We don't need a Quran. We don't need any of those things because we have the completed

Word of God. Okay? It's also authoritative, which kind of goes without saying if you've been following along, because if this is bought from God and it's sufficient, well, it's going to be authoritative in our lives.

So the Bible is God's self -revelation of one who has the right and the power to command compliance in thought, in word, in deed by his rational creatures.

Had someone this week that when we were out on the street evangelizing and he was trying to argue that his heart was enough to tell him what's right and wrong and God had no place telling him that.

Really? Really? You're going to trust your heart over God's Word? God has spoken and He's the

Creator and He's the only one that has the right to say what things should and should not be because He's the one that created it.

He is authoritative. He's the absolute authority. Okay?

And so when we look at His Word, it is authoritative because of the source of who wrote it.

Almighty God. Okay? Therefore, number five there or letter

E, it's trustworthy. It should be trustworthy. Look at its source. Now, all that God said in His Word is sure.

It is either a present reality or something that will come to pass. This includes statements of history, geography, science.

When it deals with those things, it is trustworthy. You see, the Bible in Isaiah, it said the world was round.

It was the scientists that said it was flat. You know what people do today? They try to argue, well, round actually means flat because it didn't say sphere.

It didn't use a mathematical term like sphere because something that's round is flat, two -dimensional, but a sphere is three -dimensional.

Yeah, okay, well, Hebrew in the time didn't have that distinction. So, round meant something that was a sphere.

It was kind of interchangeable. And when you look at that, you don't interpret, and we're going to get this, you don't interpret something written 750

B .C. using, you know, 1900 -2000 language, all right, 21st century language.

That's not the way you interpret, all right? But when it does talk about geography, when it does talk about science, it's accurate.

When it talks about history, when it mentions towns and people say, oh, the Bible's inaccurate because that town doesn't exist, and then they discover that town did exist, or some king that the

Bible mentions that they later find exists. The more we find archaeologically and historically, the more we see support for the

Scripture, not less for it. That's the reality. Same with science. Science keeps affirming

Scripture even while it tries to deny it. It's just they deny the interpretation of the science that they're looking at, okay?

So, it is infallible. It's inspired. It's inerrant. It's complete. It's authoritative.

It's trustworthy. Lastly, it's eternal. Heaven and hell will pass away, but God's Word will by no means pass away.

The standard of precepts for the character of morality throughout all of eternity are the

Word of God. And that's what we're going to see, all right? We're going to see that this is some of the characteristics, the attributes of God's Word, okay?

It's eternal. I just preached at a church on this this Sunday, that it is eternal. It will not go away.

It's not going to be voided out. Jesus didn't say, oh, get rid of the Old Testament because I'm here.

No, He fulfilled that because it's all part of God's Word, okay? Let us continue on and take a look at some other things.

Let's look at the authenticity of the Bible, okay? So, we're done by looking at some of the attributes, the authenticity.

It must be understood that we accept the authenticity of the Bible ultimately by faith, but it is a presupposition that I'll hold to, all right?

There are, however, some certain realities that affirm this authenticity that we're going to look at. Now, I believe that everybody knows there is a

God and He has spoken. They may not know how He has spoken. They can look at creation and learn some things about God.

But when it comes to the Word of God, the special revelation from God, we are going to see that that is something that is declarative in our lives, that describes and informs the way we should live.

Now, we are going to take that because we know it to be true.

It is something we understand by a reasoned faith. And so, we are going to look at some authenticities to the

Christian to encourage our hearts to know that God's Word is just that, God's Word, okay?

First one, and I think one of the strongest arguments, is prophecy. Prophecy. In other words, everything that the

Bible has said would come to pass, has come to pass. Let me read a quote.

This is from a book that is from Peter Stoner called

Science Speaks. And he says this, he says this quote, and this is actually,

I got this quote from MacArthur's book here. On how to study the

Bible. And what we see there is that it says, quote,

Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks, says that if you take just eight of the

Old Testament prophecies, prophecies

Christ fulfilled, Stoner is a scientist in the area of mathematical probabilities, and add up the probabilities of these eight things could come to pass by accident, it would be one chance in 10 to 17th power.

That is such an accident could happen, and yet every detail came to pass.

One chance in 10 to the 17th power would be like filling the state of Texas with two feet deep of silver dollars, putting an

X on one of them, and giving a blind man one pick.

He'd have one chance in 10 to the 17th power in picking the one with the

X on it, unquote. What that's trying to argue is that the probability of choosing, by coincidence, the things in Scripture, is an astronomical number.

When I first became a Christian, well, before I became a Christian, the first night I heard the

Gospel, one of the things an individual did with me, his name was Chuck, he had, we sat down, and he had shared with me the prophecies of the

Old Testament with the New Testament fulfillments. Because I did not accept, as a Jewish child, being raised

Jewish, I did not accept the New Testament. So what he did was he showed me the supernatural nature of the

New Testament. He showed me enough of it by showing me the prophecies where I ended up realizing that all of these things could not happen by accident.

There had to be something supernatural behind it all. And that got me to see that the

New Testament was and had to be written by God. Mathematical impossibility, in other words, something that cannot statistically ever happen, not something that's beyond probability, that it's unlikely to happen.

What's called statistical impossibility is 10 to the 48th power.

Now, Peter Stoner looked at just 8 prophecies. But if you continue looking at all the hundreds of prophecies that Jesus Christ fulfilled,

I think it's something like 300 prophecies he fulfilled just in the last week of his life or the last day of his life.

Hundreds of prophecies that Jesus Christ fulfilled. You can put some of them, some of the prophecies that you look at them and you can say they could be coincidence.

They could just happen. Some you could say are self -fulfilling. You can see a prophecy and you can try to fulfill that.

But see, if the Bible is the Word of God, it has to be 100 % accurate 100 % of the time.

If you can find one flaw in the Bible, you can throw the Bible out knowing it is not

God's Word. And so, we have so many detailed prophecies.

I love to look at the book of Daniel because one of the things that the liberal theologians do, they want to discount all the supernatural aspects of Scripture.

They have a problem with Daniel because when you look at Daniel, Daniel gives some exact prophecies with dates even.

He says there's going to be a decree from Cyrus. And so, after this decree, he gives a 490 year about window of when the temple is going to be rebuilt, of the

Messiah coming, about the Messiah being cut off. Details. Talks about nations that would rise up.

Now, Daniel's living during the time of Babylon. He talks about two nations that are going to form one. That was the

Medes and the Persians. He does not mention them by name. Obvious reasons. The king of Babylon would have just wiped the

Medes and the Persians out, right? But he talks about two nations that become one. He talks about Greece by name when they were nothing.

Speaks of Rome by name when they were nothing. And he mentions them.

He gives them descriptions of the way they fight, of how big their territories will be.

We see in the book of Jeremiah, we see details of Tyre and Sidon. Two cities that were told that the old city of Tyre would be destroyed.

They would find refuge in an island city and think that they are safe and they won't build any walls.

And they'll think that they're safe because they will have a strong navy that will keep people from them.

But basically they'll be comfortable in not needing a walled city. But that one day a king would come and he'd throw the old city into the water.

And they would march across and level the city and a judgment by God would be that Tyre would be no more.

Well, that wasn't fulfilled in biblical times. That was fulfilled by Alexander the

Great. When he came to Tyre and sent a small boat over to Tyre asking for supplies.

And they rejected him thinking that this man who has no navy won't be able to get to us.

So they said no. Alexander wasn't exactly the kind of man you say no to. So Alexander decided to get all of his army to take all of the old city, the rubble that had been the old city of Tyre and Sidon, threw it into the water and made a large causeway for his entire army to march across and level the island city of Tyre.

And it says in scripture that it won't be rebuilt and it hasn't been. So there are many prophecies that we see.

Very detailed prophecies that were fulfilled. Now sometimes when we come to prophecy we have near and long term fulfillments.

In other words, there are some prophecies that are short term and they were given with a long term fulfillment.

And the reason for that is so that when you see the short term prophecy fulfilled literally, you also can trust that the long term fulfillment will also be literally.

And the reason that God would often do that is if He's going to give a prophecy of end times, 2 ,000 years, 3 ,000 years, 4 ,000 years from the time of its writing, how do you know you can trust that?

Well you know because He's also going to give some near term fulfillments that are also going to be fulfilled.

So books like Isaiah, which has a lot of short term prophecies and a lot of long term prophecies of the

Messiah, 750 years before the time that Isaiah was writing.

You have the book of Daniel. Those two books the liberals love to try to argue are later books. They actually argue that they were written much, much later after those events happened.

And the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and oops, not a single word of Isaiah or Daniel changed.

And we have a dating of those books 1 ,000 years earlier than the earliest ones that we had.

In other words, those books were written before Rome, before Greece, before the

Medo -Persian Empire. You know, they were written when they said they were written. That's basically what it comes down to.

And so you have this fact that we can look at these things and see that prophecy is a strong emphasis to show that God wrote this book.

It's why He put it there so that we can be encouraged to know this is God's Word. And all you'd have to do is find one error and you can throw the thing out, but there aren't any there.

Second thing that we have, we have prophecy as it authenticates God's Word.

Second, we have Jesus Christ. Christ Himself did not waver from the authority of Scripture.

Look at what it says in Matthew 5 .18. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until it is accomplished.

That is the text that I was preaching this past weekend. And what it's saying is that not even the smallest character of the word or letter is going to pass away.

Jesus Christ said that. Jesus Christ had absolute trust in the authenticity of God's Word.

Even those things that are supernatural. Jesus believed. Believe it or not,

Jesus believed that Jonah was inside a fish for three days. It happened. And Jesus, who is

Almighty God, said so. This is the reality. Jesus knew that the things of Scripture were authentic.

Look at what it says in John 5 .39. And you see that Jesus appealed to Scripture as a record for salvation.

It says, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they that bear witness of me.

Do you see that? He's basically saying that the Scriptures are something you can trust.

You should search them out and trust them because they bear witness to what He says. Now another thing that we see, a third authenticity, is miracles.

Miracles are something that lends to the authenticity of Scripture. The purpose of the witness of miracles was to attest or verify or vindicate the truth of the message it's connected with.

Now there's three main times in history that we see miracles occur.

One is in the time of Moses. One is in the time of Elijah and Elisha. And one is the time of Jesus.

What's unique about those three times? Well, the time of Moses, we have the beginning of the writings of Scripture.

Then we had a period of silence after Joshua. And then we had

Elisha and Elijah that start writing again. After that, they didn't write, but other prophets after them started to write again during that time period.

Then we had a period of silence. And Jesus comes on the scene and we have more revelation of Scripture.

I would argue that miracles, other than miracles like miracle of salvation, that's a miracle.

I mean, God is always doing miracles. But some people think miracles should be normative. In other words, they should be normal and we should see them all the time.

And miracles are not something that we would see all the time in normal practice. That's why they're called supernatural.

Get it? They're not natural. Something God does, not typical. And so we see this throughout

Scripture. And one of the things that we see when we look at that is we see that miracles are something that attest to the

Word of God. It vindicates the messenger that's delivering that message. So these were testimonies of truths of the apostles and teachings.

These different passages that you have in your syllabus. You can look at Matthew 9, 5 and 6. John 5, 36.

Acts 2, 22. Just some you have more in your syllabus. One of the encouragements we have is get the syllabus because you have all these notes.

You're going to find it's very helpful. You can enroll in the academy and get that. Now, one last way to authenticate

God's Word. It's not really the best way. We're going to talk about this throughout this class.

Why it's a problem when it comes to interpretation of Scripture. But experience. It is a way that authenticates

God's Word. Now, while it's certainly not the most authoritative proof. Experience does bear witness to the authenticity of God's Word.

In 2 Corinthians 5, 17. It says,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the old has become new.

So if you look at this. Keep this up. It declares that once someone receives Christ, he is a new creation.

And the testimony upon testimony of a changed life can be attributed to this book being authentic.

Alright. Now, the problem. Why do I say it's a problem? Because many people when they come to God's Word, they interpret

God's Word by their experience. They say, well God's Word must mean this because this is what

I experienced. This is what I wish it to mean. This is what I think it means. And they're arguing really for studying

God's Word by experience and not principle. In other words, you have two ways to interpret

God's Word. One is say, what do I think this means or what does it mean to me?

I use my experience and my human reasoning to what I wish it to say or what

I feel it says to interpret it. And that's the wrong way to do it.

The right way to do it is to follow the principles and practices that we're going to lay out throughout this class.

The keys to interpretation that are going to help you to interpret God's Word using consistent principles.

That's how you come to a right understanding is by following the proper principles of interpretation.

Okay. So lastly, we're going to end on this class is to look at the aim of the

Bible. The aim of the Bible is to provide us with doctrinal truth. What are some subjects that it provides doctrinal truth on?

Well, God Himself, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, man, angels, salvation, sin, the future times.

These are the doctrinal truths that we systematize our Bibles, systematize the study of the

Bible into a systematic theology. And we actually have a class on our website and also on the YouTube, the

School of Systematic Theology. You can join that class which is already in progress. And you can follow up and learn after this class.

It's really important to take this class first and then jump into theology because you want to be able to study the

Scripture. So when we do this theology class, you can rightly divide the Word of God and know whether what

I'm saying is true. Because you'll be able to have a handle of God's Word by studying it yourself.

So it's important to get this foundation first. So not only does it provide us with doctrinal truth, but Scripture also provides us with practical truth.

It provides guidelines concerning things like temptation. You ever have any of those?

You wish you knew how to handle it? Scripture provides answers. Trials, do they ever come your way?

Scripture provides practical truth to dealing with them. Marriage, if you're not married, you better understand the principles of Scripture for marriage before you enter into that.

And if you are married, you better follow the principles about a husband -wife relationship if you want to have a good marriage.

Because a bad marriage, you know, makes it really hard. Children, they can be a trying time it seems for many people.

But Scripture provides some practical truths on how to raise your children.

Finances, yeah the Bible even talks about your money. And tells you things that would be helpful for your spending.

Lifestyle, we hear that all the time. People talk about lifestyles.

Scripture provides very clear instructions on lifestyles. Different problems that could occur in life.

Things like work. Someone's asking if I said the hundred -wife relation.

That was husband -wife relation. Some people are just looking to make bloopers out of all the classes.

You know, it is a thing why the Scripture says you have to be careful to be a teacher. Because with being a teacher you speak many words.

With many words come many mistakes. And there's some people that love to spot them so that they can laugh.

I don't mind. Alright, so. Because I'm going to laugh back.

Alright, so other things. Church. I think the Bible has some things to say about church.

The way church should be run. Whether you should be in church. Yes, it does. Very clear.

So, what we have is that Scripture talks very clearly. And it tells us some very practical things in many areas of life.

And understanding the attributes of the Bible. The authenticity of the

Bible. And the aim of the Bible should be all the more motivating towards the diligent study.

So that we would truly be good ministers of the Word of God. We cannot serve

God without properly interpreting God's Word.

If you don't have God's Word right. Well, that's a big problem.

Okay. You want to make sure that you get God's Word right. Okay. And so, we want to make sure that we understand

God's Word. Because of these things that we've discussed. If God's Word is authoritative in our life.

If God's Word is something that we have to have right. If this is something we can't be wrong about.

Well, then this is something we must study. This is something that we can't take for granted.

We can't take for chance and say, well, we hope to be right about this subject.

This is something, if there's anything that you're going to devote a great amount of time to.

Before you want to study those theology. I know there's those people, they want to get in the Calvinism or Minionism debate.

Or do we speak in tongues or do we not speak in tongues? You know, or superlapsarianism and superlapsarianism.

Yeah, and you know why you don't know what those terms mean? Because they don't matter. Okay. So, I mean, it's like, that's not the big deal.

And some people love, love, love, love, love, love to debate those things. But the real thing is, if you don't have a right handle on God's Word, you will not be a good

Berean. Remember in Acts 17, the Bereans who studied out the Scriptures daily to see if the things that Paul, the

Apostle. The things he was saying, they wanted to check to see if those things were true.

And you know what Paul says about the Bereans? He commends them because they did that diligent study.

And I commend you if you do a diligent study. If you do diligent study of God's Word, you will find great value in God's Word.

And one of the things I'll encourage you throughout this school, as we study these lessons,

I encourage you to never read a Bible verse.

We're going to get to this later on about context and things. But when you see me put a verse up of Scripture, read the whole chapter.

Don't read just the Bible verse. Because the reality of what we have is that when we look at the

Scriptures, it's very easy to take things out of context. And we want to make sure that we are looking at the full of Scripture, properly, rightly dividing it, so we don't make mistakes.

This is not the thing we want to get wrong. We want to get this right. Because it is just that important.

Scripture is the only thing that we have in this world that we can rely on objectively.

Now, we have something else we can rely on absolutely and authoritatively, but it's subjective, and that's the

Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is an essential part of the study of Scripture. It is the

Holy Spirit who illuminates our mind to an understanding of God's Word. It is the Holy Spirit who is going to help us to understand

God's Word subjectively. But objectively, we have God's Word that we study.

It is extremely important to make sure that we rightly divide God's Word, we rightly interpret it, so that we don't get things wrong.

We do not, especially if you're going to go out and teach God's Word, it is essential that you put the time and study into diligently looking in and properly interpreting

God's Word. And if you're not willing to do that, if you don't have the commitment to do that, then you should not teach.

You should not even go out on the street and evangelize and proclaim

God's Word. Alright? You should go and study

God's Word diligently. Now, should we evangelize? Sure, we all should evangelize. But there's some people that like to get out on the streets, and they get up and they preach in the open air, and they say

God's Word says something that they haven't studied out. If you're going to say, Thus says the Lord, you better be right.

You better put the time into the study. So, I want to encourage you to put the time into the study.

Now, I also want to encourage you to go to the website down there, and get in touch with us to enroll in this academy.

So that one of the things you'll get if you do, is you'll get the syllabus, that right there.

Okay? That's what you want to get. You want to have a copy of the syllabus. We're changing, we may be changing the way we do it.

Right now, we do it on a yearly basis. We don't know if we're going to continue with that or do it per school, but we're going to see.

But right now, what we do say is that if you enroll, and you put in that you want the

School of Biblical Harmonics, that is the syllabus that you will get. And you'll get that syllabus.

Alright? So, that is what we encourage you to do. What does that do for us? Well, it helps us to put these classes out for you.

Alright? We do these things, we do it on YouTube so that you have them. You can watch them later.

They're in a playlist so that you can go to YouTube at any time and just watch them scroll through and watch them in order so you never miss out on any of the lessons.

But, there are some things that cost money. And the equipment and things like that cost money.

So we ask that if you would help support us. We know there's plenty of big ministries that many people support.

And smaller ministries kind of get forgotten about or left out of the loop. And those that need a lot of support don't get it.

And so I want to encourage you, if you find these lessons helpful, would you think about committing maybe to a yearly enrollment?

Or maybe even more, would you commit to a monthly donation? You can go to our website right down here, strivingforeternity .org.

And you can go on the main page, you'll find some buttons to donate. And you can set up for monthly donations right there.

If you could just give a couple of dollars, even every month, it makes a big, big difference to us.

We would greatly appreciate that. Now we have some announcements that we want to make. We do have some things going on that we want to make you aware of.

One is coming up in just about 35 days. 35 days or so is going to be

Jersey Fire. What is the Jersey Fire? Oh, it's 32 days.

Sorry, 32 days from now is Jersey Fire. You can go to the website, jerseyfire .org, and learn more about it.

But Jersey Fire is basically an event where it's both a conference of encouragement, it is an evangelism training, and then we take people out on the streets and actually do an evangelism outreach on Saturday night.

It is a long weekend. It starts Friday night. We'll have Jason Lyle speaking.

He used to be with Answers in Genesis. He's now with the Institute for Christian Research. I will be speaking. Cy -Tim

Broomingkate, the fellow who just came out with the new film, How to Answer the Fool. He's from proofthatgodexists .org.

He will be speaking. Will Costello from Faith Bible Church in Jackson, New Jersey will be speaking on the righteousness of God in the gospel.

These are some of the things that we're going to be looking at and having discussions on. It is a great encouragement.

But we do have a special announcement that we're excited to announce, and that is that this year at Jersey Fire, we're going to do something we have never done at any of the other

Spreading the Fire events. Paul Taylor had been at the Ohio Fire.

He got so fired up to warn the lost of the fire to come, so encouraged that he called me up and asked if he would be able to come with his ministry partner,

Eric Hoven, just to attend the Jersey Fire. They're going to come up all the way. I think they're driving up all the way from Florida.

So if you're thinking you're far, they're doing a 20 -hour ride just so they can attend.

But what I said is if you guys are coming up, would you at least do one of your broadcasts live from Jersey Fire?

So Eric Hoven and Paul Taylor will do a live broadcast of the Creation Today show at the

Jersey Fire. That's going to be something. You'll have to be there. We do not know if we're going to be able to record that and put that onto the

DVDs, so you'll have to watch that. I know you can always go to their site and watch it there, but you want to watch it live, that would be the place to be.

In September, we'll have the NorCal Fire, so we encourage you to sign up September 20, 21. That'll be Matt Slick from CARM and Tony Miano from Cross Encounters Radio.

Those two will be out, so encourage you to look at that. We'll give you more information as that gets closer.

If you happen to be in the New Jersey area, you're out this way, you want to find a good church, some people come and visit for a great adventure.

If you would like to find a good church, come join us at Faith Bible Church. FBC -Jackson .org.

Faith Bible Church is a church replant or revitalization. Pastor Will Costello and myself are active in a church that we are building in Jackson, a historic building that we are revitalizing the church and trying to rebuild it.

If you know people in New Jersey that need a good church where the Bible is being taught, consider coming out there or consider sending them out.

One of the things, if you're familiar with our ministry here, we try to do lots of different things.

What we try to do in these schools is we're always trying to give you someone to encourage.

Many people love to know the big celebrities. They're like, oh, I wish I could know that person or that person.

We want you to get to know people that aren't the big celebrities that also need encouragement. People send letters and emails to these big

Christian celebrities to encourage them for how they've been an encouragement. Have you ever needed encouragement?

Have you ever been someone who could use some encouragement? Yeah, we all are. And that's why we encourage you to encourage others kind of before they die.

You ever notice that? It's at funerals that everyone says all these encouraging things that people wish they heard. Well, we want you to go and encourage people.

Even if you're not watching this live, if you're watching this on YouTube later, you can always go to the Striving for Eternity Facebook group and encourage the people that we encourage you to encourage.

Or we give you other ways in which to get a hold of them, as we will tonight. And so this is actually, on Facebook, people have dubbed this the

C -Bro and C -Sis, the Striving for Eternity Academy's Brother of Encouragement or Sister of Encouragement.

And this week's Sister of Encouragement is someone that I want you to encourage especially this week.

She has been put into a new position with lots of responsibilities, and that is our dear sister

Jennifer Pepling. Jennifer is with Change Collegian Network, and you can see her website changeyourcampus .com

slash jpepling. You can support her. She would love that. You could pray for her.

But she goes on to college campuses, and where so many of these college campuses and college ministries have gone by the wayside, you know, they want to get rid of the name

Christ in their name, and they just want to have pizza and God nights and teach about let's be friends and maybe never talk about Jesus, but if you like us, maybe you'll ask us questions about Jesus.

Yeah. So basically, we want you to go and encourage someone that goes on to campuses, and she goes with students to help them understand what the true biblical gospel is, get a good handle of apologetics and give them some training so that they can handle and understand the right ways to handle

God's Word, to evangelize, to deal with people on the streets. We want to encourage you to encourage her.

She has now become the president of Change Collegian Network.

It's undergoing a lot of changes. They have a whole new board, new president, new leadership, and she's been made the president of that ministry, and so we're really looking forward to seeing some of the things that are going to go on there.

But as you know, with any promotion, especially when you get into big ministry opportunities, there becomes lots of stress, lots of new things to do, and she's been thrust into a position that she wasn't really expecting, and because of that, she really could use your encouragement this week.

She is a dear sister. If you know her personally, you'll know her as Giggles. And basically, the story behind that, if you ask her, well, you won't have to.

I'll now tell you, is that when she went to one of the ambassador academies, she sat down, asked if there was an open seat, said, can

I sit here, and it was Ray Comfort that she asked, and she sat down next to Ray. She has a little bit of a, well, kind of a nervous laugh sometimes, or just a laugh that she has when she shall respond to things, and Ray thought it was the cutest thing in the world, so what did he do?

Being Ray Comfort, he kept trying to make her laugh so that he could hear her laugh, and he called her

Giggles, and that kind of stuck. And so Giggles, or Jennifer Pepling, is the person we want to encourage you to encourage this week.

We want you to consider attending the next class. We will be starting to look at some of the tools for Bible study.

And we are going to continue into these lessons. We really want you to learn how to handle

God's Word, and to handle it rightly. If you have any questions, you can always email us at academy at strivingforeternity .org.

That is academy at strivingforeternity .org. And until next class, remember to go out and strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.