Can We Trust the Bible?

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Can we trust the Bible? I mean, after all, we live in the 21st century. I mean, is it reasonable to believe that, you know,

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God created the earth in six days, that Adam and Eve and that talking snake, that's a real historical account?

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And what about that ark and all of those animals, and what about that guy in the belly of the big fish and stuff like that, and the parting of the

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Red Sea? Should we trust those accounts to be true, or are they just myth or legend or something like Aesop's fables?

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Well, sadly, there's a lot of people in the church today who attack the Word of God from within the church.

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They're seminary professors or they're pastors, and they say silly things like, well, the

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Bible isn't the Word of God. It contains the Word of God, but you can't trust it.

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They seem to be obsessed with undermining God's Word and its authority. I'm Pastor Chris Roseborough, I'm the pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church in Oslo, Minnesota, and I'm here to assure you that because Christ is risen from the dead, and He has, you can trust your

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Bible to tell you the truth about Adam and Eve, man's fallen to sin, about Noah's ark, and all of the historical accounts in the

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Scriptures. They're true. How do I know? Well, because Jesus is the greatest Bible scholar who ever lived.

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Let me kind of explain it this way. Over at the Kongsvinger Lutheran Church website,

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I posted a blog post, and the name of it is, The Greatest Biblical Scholar Who Ever Lived in His View of the

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Bible, and we'll put a link to it down below so that you can read it in its entirety.

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I'll give you some of the highlights and the gist of it. In fact, let me put my browser in reader mode to help us out here, and here's what it says.

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And I use some big, really big theological words in the beginning paragraph, excuse me for doing that, but here's what it says.

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Modern and postmodern liberals. You know, these are two different types of liberals. The postmodern liberals are oftentimes referred to as emergents, and their higher critic deconstructionist co -belligerents, you know, kind of partners in crime.

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They have an almost obsessive preoccupation with undermining, impugning, and maligning

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God's Word. They do that. And by the way, they're not doing this as people who claim to be atheists.

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They're doing it as people who claim to be Bible scholars, you know. The Reverend Dr.

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Professor Flockenshloops says, well, you can't trust that Bible. And he says it in the pulpit, he says it in seminary, and none of these guys are telling the truth, and they don't have better credentials than the greatest biblical scholar who ever lived.

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Let me explain. So they incessantly attack the inerrancy, the historicity, the sufficiency of Scripture.

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And their attacks, by the way, are getting bolder by the day, this is true. And these people, they appear to be driven to reduce the

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Bible into a mere human product that is nothing more than man -made mythological narratives.

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Stories of pristine gardens, Adam and Eve, forbidden fruit, a whole worldwide flood, the Ark, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, a prophet being swallowed by a big fish, they're all too silly and childish to be believed as actual historical events by this growing liberal resurgence.

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And my point is, and they're smarter than the greatest biblical scholar who ever lived?

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Now before you fall for these guys, all right, and their postmodern reimaginations of the Scripture, you should consider

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Jesus' opinion and views of the Bible. And as you can see, Jesus had much to say about the

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Scriptures, and His statements reveal His assumptions regarding the Old Testament text, as well as the veracity of the stories recorded in them.

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So let's take a look at Jesus' credentials. I lay them out in my article. It says before we look at Jesus' opinion of the

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Scriptures, it should be prudent for us to first be reminded of Jesus' credentials and His authorities regarding the

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Scripture. So when we examine the eyewitness testimony concerning Jesus that is recorded for us in the contents of the four biographies, they're called

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Gospels by the way, have you considered that? The first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, are either written by an eyewitness, or are the writings of people who've interviewed and spoken to the eyewitnesses.

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And they record the eyewitness accounts of the conception, birth, life, teaching, miracles, death, and resurrection, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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They're written by eyewitnesses. So these four biographies of the

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New Testament, they're called the Gospels, we learn that Jesus claimed to be none other than the one true

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God, the God of the Old Testament of all things, the one true God in human flesh. Now by the way, any nut or lunatic can claim to be

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God, however proving such a claim is a whole other issue.

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But the fact is this, Jesus proved His claim to deity by raising Himself from the dead three days after He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

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And the men who authored the New Testament documents were also eyewitnesses of Jesus' life, teaching, miracles,

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His bodily resurrection from the dead. Notable among them, by the way, is a fellow that you may have heard of, his name is the

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Apostle Paul, and Paul began his career theologically as a Pharisee and a persecutor of Christians.

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He was there when the first Christian was martyred for his faith in Christ, that was Stephen, and he was a guy who rounded up, persecuted, arrested, flogged, beaten, and beat people who claimed to be

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Christians, and wouldn't you know it, Jesus Himself appeared to him, and Paul then became the

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Apostle Paul, sent by Jesus. And he, in 1 Corinthians 15, says if Christ isn't risen from the dead, then we should be pitied, because we are found to be liars about God and our faith is in vain.

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And this is a guy who persecuted Christians, and greatest turnaround in all of history. I mean, the

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Apostle Paul becoming, or Paul of Tarsus, Saul of Tarsus becoming a Christian, and becoming the

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Apostle Paul, I mean, the chances of that happening are the same chances as, well, it would have been if had

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Hitler become a Jew. It just doesn't make any sense. You kind of get the idea. So we can trust these eyewitness accounts, the bodily resurrection accounts from these eyewitnesses.

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And so Jesus claimed to be God, proved it by rising from the dead, and so the idea then is this.

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Since Jesus proved His claim to being the one true God in human flesh by raising Himself from the dead, there is no greater authority, living or dead, on the subject of the

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Bible than Jesus. There is no scientist, no modern scholar, no biblical critic, regardless of the number of degrees that he or she may hold, who can speak with greater authority on the subject of the

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Word of God than Jesus Christ. Therefore, if you call yourself a Christian or a

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Christ follower, then you would do well to pay close attention to what Jesus believed and taught regarding both the

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Old and the New Testament scriptures, and bring your thinking and conviction in line with His.

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And in the article I go on to demonstrate how Jesus believed that Adam and Eve and the creation account in Genesis 1 are true.

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True history. Jesus Himself also believed that Noah's Ark and the worldwide global flood.

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He believed in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, He believed in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness.

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Jesus believed in Jonah and the great fish, and believed that was a historical account, too.

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And so the idea here is that we can trust Jesus, and there is nobody, nobody on planet

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Earth who has greater credentials than He does when it comes to biblical scholarship. And by the way,

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He is the God of the Old Testament in human flesh. So my basic belief is this, until your credentials are better than Jesus, I'm gonna go with Jesus and His opinion of the

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Old Testament rather than yours if your opinion contradicts His. So hopefully you found this helpful.

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Again, there's a link down below in the description of this video if you would like to read the article in its entirety.

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Hopefully you'll find this helpful, and the idea here is is that, you know, you can trust Jesus and His view of the

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Scripture because He rose from the dead. It's true. It's true. And the great, the better news even than that is that Jesus, the reason why

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He died was so that you can be forgiven of your sin. He was pierced for your transgressions, He was bruised for your iniquities, and the punishment that brings you peace with God was upon Christ.

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And so the call of the Gospel, the call of Christians everywhere, to everybody in the world, is to repent, to be forgiven, and receive eternal life as a gift because God so loved the world that He gave

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His only begotten Son. Whoever believes in Him, including yourself, should not perish but have eternal life.

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And all this we have assurance of, because Christ rose bodily from the dead. So if you found this helpful, all the information on how you can share this video is down below, and if you don't already, you know, attend

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Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, if you're in the local area in Oslo, Alvareta, Warren, Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, Leaf River, we have people coming from Crookston, our services are every

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Sunday morning at 930. During the pandemic, we're having our services online, so if you'd like to join us during our 930 services online, you're welcome to do so, and hopefully we can see you in person when we're all able to join back together.

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So until next time, may God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ, His vicarious death on the cross, for all of your sins.