Sunday School: Eyewitnesses of His Majesty (2 Peter 1:16-21)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. I said last week

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I didn't want to go too quickly through this just because of how important the word is here at the conclusion of chapter 1.

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So I'm presently a week behind, but we'll catch up, we'll make up the space. Second Peter chapter 1, we're going to be looking at verses 16 to 21.

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And I'll read through that and then we'll pray. I am in the

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Legacy Standard Bible this morning as I mentioned in the sermon, that was the translation that I'm teaching from.

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If you have the NASB 95, it's going to sound pretty much identical to that. So second

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Peter 1, starting in verse 16. For we did not make known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly devised myths, but being eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom

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I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

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And we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.

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Know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation.

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For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we come into this word today,

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I pray that we see and we understand that the written word that we're laying our eyes upon, that we can hold in our hands, that we have studied, some of us have even studied our entire lives.

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That what we have here, though this book was bound by men, though these words, the typesetting was set by men, though the original words that we are reading were written by men, yet it is not by the will of man, but every word we read was given by the will of God.

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That we may know you, that we may turn from our sin, for which we deserve judgment, death, the wrath of God, and we may turn to Christ, through whom we receive salvation, life everlasting, and fellowship with God.

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May the light of Christ shine in our hearts, we may do your will in these days until we join you in glory, and it's in Jesus' name we pray, and all

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God's people said, amen. So we come back here to 2

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Peter 1, verse 16, where Peter says, We did not make known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly devised myths, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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Last week we looked at exactly what Peter is referring to, and that being the transfiguration, that Peter, James, and John were part of that inner circle of disciples that were privileged to see

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Christ transfigured before them, that we have recalled for us in the

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Gospels, in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that the gloriousness and the radiance of Christ that was veiled to them in flesh, that veil was peeled back, that they might see

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Christ in his glory, and even standing with him were Elijah and Moses. However, Jesus introduced him to the disciples, hey, let me introduce you to my friends here, this is

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Elijah, this is Moses, however they knew who that was, they nevertheless did, and it was written about in the

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Gospels, and Peter wants to make tents for them, in other words, he wants to build them individual tabernacles, it's good that we're here, you can stay here, let's build tents for you, and yet it was the voice of God that came from heaven that had stricken them with fear, and they fell on their faces afraid, but they were witnesses to the majestic glory, saying, this is my beloved

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Son, with whom I am well pleased. Now, the three disciples who were there were

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Peter, James, and John, John wrote about this as well, so we're right here in 2

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Peter, flip over to 1 John, which just might be a page or two to your right, this is the next book over, so in 1

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John chapter 1, John talks about being an eyewitness to the majesty of God, 1

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John 1, 1, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the

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Father, and was manifested to us, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you may also have fellowship with us, and indeed, our fellowship is with the

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Father, and with his Son, Jesus Christ, and these things we are writing, so that our joy may be complete.

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John giving a testimony of himself as being one who has even witnessed these things in Christ Jesus, and we can go on and on, the

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Apostle Paul even saying that the message that I delivered to you came not from man, but it was revealed to me by the

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Lord, even when Paul gives instructions about the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, he says to the

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Corinthians, what I'm giving to you didn't come from man, God gave it to me, I'm telling you how the

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Lord's Supper is supposed to be practiced in a right way among you in the church as was given to me by the

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Lord, and even the proper practice there as Paul is giving it to them is not strictly taken from the

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Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke where we read about the institution of the Lord's Supper there, although we could certainly take from that how this is to be practiced, but the command to practice it, and how it's to be done, specifically comes from the

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Apostle Paul, which we take from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, and again, he says there, this was given to me by the

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Lord. So you have eyewitnesses to these things, Paul may not have been an eyewitness to the earthly ministry of Christ, but he was an eyewitness to the glory of Christ that was revealed to him, and Peter says here that what we are proclaiming to you is not a myth, it's not something that we cleverly came up with, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

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John says it a couple of pages over, Peter says it here, we were eyewitnesses in what we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you.

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Votibachum, when early in his apologetics ministry would use this section of 2

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Peter chapter 1 to talk about how we can know that the

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Bible that we read is truly something that came from God. It did not come from the will of man, it is given to us by God.

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And he developed kind of this saying, or this creed, so to speak, that would go along with this section of 2

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Peter chapter 1. In fact, if you go to Votibachum Ministries online, I think you can still buy the t -shirt that has exactly this quote, this phrase on it.

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Something to memorize, something to learn, it's a good apologetics base. So as we're trying to give a defense for the truth, for the hope that is in us, as Peter says in 1

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Peter 3 .15, here's a good place to start. So Votibachum says the following, quote, the

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Bible is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

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They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings were divine rather than human in origin.

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Now I'm going to come back to that and repeat that at the end, because Votibachum, even as he's doing this, if you've ever watched his evangelical talk early on in his ministry, you can go on YouTube and you can still see it.

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He says this particular statement so many times that by the end, the audience is able to quote it with him.

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So that they may know and understand that we have a good base, even given to us here in 2 Peter 1, we may know what we are reading comes not from man.

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It's not from the will of man, it comes from God. And this is so important for us to understand, especially as we're going to go on here.

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Because think about what we come into next. If you've read ahead and you know 2 Peter well, and you know what we get into in chapter 2, all of chapter 2 is dedicated to warning the church against false teachers.

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Chapter 2 looks a lot like the book of Jude, in fact. We'll talk about that next week. Some of the things that Jude wrote warning the church about false teachers looks very similar to what

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Peter wrote. So this was a very cherished and upheld defense among the apostles and those who were continuing to spread the apostolic ministry.

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That they may know that the word that has been proclaimed to you comes not from man, but it has been given to us by God.

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So Peter says again in verse 16, we did not make known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, following cleverly devised myths.

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And I mentioned to you last week, the number of teachers that are out there that are just trying to say that even what we read in the

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Bible is just a cleverly devised myth. One of those names that I mentioned to you was

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Bart Ehrman, author of the bestselling book, Misquoting Jesus. Ehrman, when he was in his studies, it was either at University of North Carolina or at Duke.

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I can't remember which one of the two. But when he was in his studies, he was under Bruce Metzger, who was one of the foremost textual critics of the

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New Testament at that particular time. So he got to study with some of the best of them, and yet came out from those studies as a skeptic and an unbeliever, rather than somebody whose faith was strengthened by what it was that he studied.

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And one of the things that Ehrman has made kind of foundational to his talks and his books and his debates and everything else, is that when you look even in the

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Gospels, you see kind of this progression of myth.

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So if you were to start with Mark as the earliest Gospel, now when I was growing up studying the

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Gospels, I actually did not read that Mark was the earliest Gospel. There are a number of scholars that will hold

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Matthew truly was the earliest Gospel. That's why it's placed first in the New Testament, not just because it begins with the genealogy of Christ.

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So kind of tying in what we had in the Old Testament with now what we're looking at in the New with the coming of the Savior, fulfilling those things that had been written about.

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What is this fly coming from? Get that out of my face. Not just fulfilling those things that had been prophesied in the

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Old Testament, but it truly was the first book of the Bible or the first book of the New Testament written.

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So that's one of the reasons why Matthew appears there. It was only when I got older that I discovered, well, there's also this teaching out there that Mark was actually the first Gospel and then

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Matthew took from Mark. And there's like this progression that you see from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John.

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And that's the same thing that Bart Ehrman has taught. But one of the things that Ehrman says is that you don't really even see a proclamation of Christ being the

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Son of God, God Himself, until you get to John. And when

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I heard him say that, I was like, that's not what I remember from the book of Mark. Turn with me.

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Let's go ahead and do this together. So turn to Mark, second book in the New Testament. Look at Mark chapter one.

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Mark chapter one, and we start right there in verse one. The beginning of the

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Gospel of Jesus Christ, the who? Son of God. We're calling

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Him God from the very first verse of what a skeptic would say was the first book that was written in the

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New Testament. He still proclaimed His God. Son of God, synonymous with God.

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For even in the Gospel of Mark, there are people who hate Jesus because of what

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He has said of Himself, that He is the Son of God. Look at what the demons say of Jesus later on in verse 24.

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Still in chapter one. What do we have to do with you, Jesus the Nazarene?

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Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.

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You have a testament from the demons. In the first chapter of what is said by skeptics to be the first book of the

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New Testament, even the demons are proclaiming Him to be the Holy One of God.

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And so there is, there's simply nothing to the claim that there was some sort of progression expressing

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Christ's divinity as you go through these books. Even if you were to start with Mark and then go

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Matthew and then Luke and then John, Christ is proclaimed as God from the very beginning.

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There was not a progression of this particular myth. It is what it is. Now, Ehrman, when he's pressed with this, in some debates that I've seen him say, he will say, well, when the original books were written,

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they did not proclaim Christ as God, that that was something that was added a little bit later on.

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So the myth was developed and eventually it was just kind of written in there, but it was not originally what even the disciples believed about Jesus himself.

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This is, again, this is according to Ehrman. It's something that I've heard even from, even before these books started being written, before Ehrman was kind of the name that was attached to it.

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Some of my skeptic friends would say it. There just wasn't any scholarship that was attached to it. They would, you know,

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I had friends that were not Christians when I was in college and they would say, well, I don't believe, I mean, I just think it was a myth.

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It was just, these stories just kind of developed over time and eventually these people started believing that this

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Jesus, who was such a great philosopher, they just started saying that he was God. So it's just a myth that is developed.

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You know that no one really says this of their own religion's founders. And when you look at things like Buddhism and Hinduism, and you look at Islam, even

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Mormonism itself, now Mormonism is a little bit different because they will say that John Smith did ascend to becoming a

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God, just as we can all become gods. That's how they overcome that hurdle in Mormonism.

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But even among these false religions, they don't really see that their teacher or their founder became

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God himself because he died and his grave's on earth somewhere and you can point to it and you can say, that's where that man's bones are.

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That's where that man's body lies. Same with Joseph Smith. They can say that he ascended to become a

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God and he's off in the cosmos somewhere with his own planet populating it. That's truly what the

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Mormons believe. But his body's here on earth. It's buried in, I think it's Nauvoo, Illinois.

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Isn't that where his grave is at? So you can go to it and you can say, there's where Joseph Smith lies.

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So no one would be able to say, no one can proclaim of their religion's founder that he is

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God because anybody could disprove that just by going, oh yeah, well there's his grave.

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His bones are in there. This is what I think of your God. He's becoming dust like the rest of us will become.

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But where's Jesus' body? Where's his grave? Somebody point to where his bones are.

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There have been efforts to try to find him. Some of you may remember, it was over a decade ago,

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James Cameron, the guy who directed Aliens and Titanic and Avatar, you know, these huge blockbuster films.

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He invested all this money in finding the bones of Christ. Do you remember this? They even did like, it was either a history channel or discovery channel special on it where they kind of toured the

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Holy Land, they were looking for the grave or the bones of Jesus. I think he claimed to have found them. I don't really remember that.

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But apparently that claim had so much credibility that I don't even remember it.

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That's how credible that claim was, whether or not he even said it. So there are people that have invested fortunes and times and whatever else to find the bones of Christ.

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You won't find him. He is risen. He is risen indeed. And we're reading accounts from eyewitnesses who proclaim his majesty.

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They saw it. They know that the body of Christ was risen. There was one book that I read and I cannot even remember which book this was now.

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It's in my library somewhere. But there was a book I read about 20 some years ago.

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And one of the apologists that was being interviewed in that book said that there was a time up to about 600 to 800

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AD, we actually knew exactly where Christ's tomb was. So we could have actually pointed to it and said, there it is.

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It's empty. The body's gone. And it was well known among the people at that time exactly which tomb it was that belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, that the body of Jesus had been laid in, but he was now risen.

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Now why don't we know now exactly which tomb it is? If you go over to the Holy Land, there is a tomb that they claim is the tomb of Christ, but we actually don't know.

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How did we lose which tomb it was? Well, that's through wars and different conflicts and stuff like that going on in the

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Middle East. People being dispersed, more people moving in, and just as a result of all that movement, all that conflict that we have known of the

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Middle East our entire lives and even generations before us, it's because of all of that we've kind of lost the placement of some of those historic landmarks that are there in the

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Holy Land. I think that's by the providence of God that we don't know where it is, because you already see how crazy people are about some of these relics when they visit the

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Holy Land. I've not been there, but a friend of mine one time said that he went into the tomb that they say is the tomb of Christ, but it's a

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Catholic tourist attraction. And he goes in there and he looks around and he's like, you know, this is kind of neat.

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I don't really believe it, but it's neat. And as he's standing there looking at this, which is being proclaimed as the empty tomb of Christ, somebody comes in in tears, falls on the floor, wailing, arms up in the air, howling something.

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And he said, I don't know if this person thought they were speaking in tongues or if they really were speaking another language. I'm not sure, but they were just howling about something, tears flowing down their faces.

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And they fell on the ground and they're just kissing the pavement. They're kissing the stone over and over and over again.

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And he's just standing there going, how sad. How sad is that, that they think that this is the glory of Christ.

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This isn't the glory of Christ. We're not even sure this is the tomb. Christ is risen.

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So we put our hope not in these relics because the relics can become an idol. We put our hope and our trust in Christ.

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So again, I think it's by the providence of God that those things are kind of mysterious to us now as to exactly where the places were.

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We have a general idea. You can go there and you can stand in a spot and you're probably within a hundred yards of the actual tomb, whichever one it was, but we don't know exactly which so that we would not put our hope and trust in those things that are on earth.

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We put our trust in Christ who is the one who is risen and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

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Another reason why I don't say, or I should say, this is one of the reasons why I think we also don't have the original manuscripts.

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So this is another one that the skeptics will try to use with regards to whether or not

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Christianity is authentic. They'll say, we don't have the original manuscripts. As though that's supposed to be something shocking to us, like, ooh, we don't have the original manuscripts?

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Well, one of the reasons why we don't have those original writings is because I think by the providence of God, same kind of a reason.

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I think people would worship the manuscripts rather than worshiping

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Christ who gave the word that's written down in those manuscripts. You just think about the way that certain religions, including

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Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, et cetera, you just think about how some of them consider the apostles.

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They worship the apostles, right? Now, they'll call it veneration, but they're bowing to them and praying to them.

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That's worship. And you'll have the Catholic tours of stuff where you'll have, like, the finger bone of some saint from back in the day, and that finger bone will end up in this church in this major city so that all the people fled there, and they can see the finger bone of this saint.

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For a long period of time, they claimed they had the skull of John the Baptist. Is that still a claim? Do they still say they have the head of John the

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Baptist? So for a while there, the Catholic church would tour with that, and then come to this church, we have the skull of John the

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Baptist. People would come there, and they'd bow to it, or they would kiss the floor, or something like that, believing that there was something holy, something divine that was being passed on to them because they were in the presence of the skull of John the

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Baptist. So this is the way people regard these things. We treat them as idols. That's one of the reasons, again, by the providence of God.

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I think it is that we don't have those original manuscripts. There's a second reason, I believe, that by God's providence, we don't have those original manuscripts, because don't you know somebody out there would try to tamper with them and try to change them, right?

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This is happening all the time. People twisting God's word, trying to make it into something that it isn't.

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We talked about at the beginning of this study of 2 Peter, how many teachers are out there that try to say that 2

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Peter wasn't even written by Peter in the first place? I know men who are pastors in their churches who believe that 2

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Peter was not written by Peter, and I look at that guy and go, disqualified. Get him out of the pulpit.

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He's saying the Bible's lying. So there are people out there that if given the opportunity, they could find those original manuscripts, they would erase, add some extra things in there.

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Somebody got this wrong, I'm going to make sure they get it right. So what God has done by his providence is he has removed the existence of those original manuscripts, lost to time, lost to dust, wear and tear, whatever it might happen to be.

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What we have instead are copies. But those copies all say the same thing.

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They're all within something like 99 .8 % accuracy of one another. It's just various dots and tittles that might be different from one manuscript to the next, but the manuscripts don't say anything different.

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The message is not different between the manuscripts. So, so many of those copies of copies of copies have verified what was originally said.

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And in fact, even the skeptics will acknowledge that what was written by the apostles originally is pretty much what we have in our

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Bible today. Even the skeptics will acknowledge that. Go back to Bart Ehrman again. This was early when, in the early days when

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I was just becoming familiar with who Bart Ehrman was. It's because a lot of my friends were listening to him, a lot of my friends were reading his books and they were going, see this confirms all the doubts that I ever had, whether or not the

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Bible's even true. So I started reading a couple of his books and I started listening to his interviews because I wanted to know what is it that this guy is saying that my friends are finding so compelling.

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And he was on an interview with a British radio host in England and he, it was, it was by phone.

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He wasn't present there with him or, or I don't even think they were doing Skype at that time. So however it was, phone interview or whatever it was.

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And the atheist interviewer was asking him all these questions, an hour long interview. They get to the end of the interview.

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This is just within like the last three or four minutes of the interview. And the atheist says, after all this skepticism that, that Ehrman's been laying out, talking about how we can't really rely on what it is that we have in the

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Bible, that it was changed and all this other kind of thing. The atheist asked him, so what do you think it was that the original writers actually wrote down?

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What do you think it was that they wrote down? And Ehrman, no kidding, after laying out all this skepticism for like 55 minutes, his response was, oh,

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I think it's pretty much what we have in the Bible today. And even the atheist that was interviewing him was like,

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I don't, I don't know how to follow that up. We just spent an hour talking about how this is, we can't rely on it.

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We can't trust in it. And here at the conclusion, you're saying, oh no, what we have now in the Bible is pretty much what they wrote in the first place.

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Even the skeptics will acknowledge that what we have in the pages of scripture, you can't doubt it. The fact that there are so many manuscripts that exist really verifies that what we have is quite original.

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As Votie Bauckham said, we have a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

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So even if you're talking about somebody like Mark, who he himself may not have been an eyewitness to the things that Peter saw, but he's writing down what

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Peter saw, and Peter's able to say, yep, that's what I saw. Or you have somebody like James and Jude.

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These are two half -brothers of Jesus. Were they followers of Jesus during his earthly ministry?

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No, they weren't. They were skeptics. They thought he was crazy. There's an account in Mark where they're like, go get him and bring him home and make him take care of his mother.

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He's stirring up the mob. There are people going crazy over what it is that he's saying. So the siblings, the half -brothers and sisters of Jesus, did not believe what it was that he said.

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And yet they became writers of the New Testament. James writing

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James, and Jude wrote down Jude. They may not have been with Jesus during those three years of his earthly ministry, but they became eyewitnesses of other eyewitnesses.

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And you have that throughout the scriptures. Even what we have written down in the Old Testament was either written down by the person who bears the name of that book, or it was written by someone who was an eyewitness to those things that took place.

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Like you think of the book of Jeremiah, for example. Some of it is written by Jeremiah. Some of it is written by Baruch, who was his scribe.

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But Baruch is still writing down exactly what Jeremiah saw and experienced and told

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Baruch. And so everything that we have written down in scripture is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

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They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies.

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That's important. So they're not just recalling supernatural events that other people would be able to say, yeah,

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I was there, I saw that. I can confirm that that really took place. I saw Jesus on the cross.

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I saw the empty tomb. I saw him ascend into heaven. As I talked about last week, there were more than just the 11 disciples that were standing on that hillside when

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Jesus ascended into heaven. There were likely as many, or as few, I should say, as about 120 people.

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There may have been even more than that. So all of these people who are eyewitnesses to these things that took place and can verify that they really happened.

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They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings were divine rather than human in origin.

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So Peter says here, we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. And verse 17, when he received honor and glory from God the

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Father, such an utterance as this was made to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved

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Son with whom I am well pleased. And we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain.

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Now consider verse 19, and we have as more sure the prophetic word to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

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Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. Turn with me over to 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

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Let's go to 1 Corinthians 2. It's the seventh book of the

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New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Make sure you don't make the mistake that I continually make and turn to 2

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Corinthians instead of 1 Corinthians. Watch that number on the top. So 1 Corinthians chapter 2.

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Consider what Paul says here about the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Verse 1, when

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I came to you brothers, I did not come with superiority of word or of wisdom proclaiming to you the witness of God.

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For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.

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And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the

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Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

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Now later on in 1 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about how the signs of an apostle were performed among you.

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What's he talking about there? Healing the sick? Raising the dead? Speaking in tongues, meaning actually speaking in other languages, not just strange utterances but words that would have actually been known and comprehended in another language.

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All these miracles that were performed by the apostles were affirmed among them so that they may know the word that Paul came proclaiming to them was not the word of man, but it was a word that came from God.

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It was something supernatural. So going on here in verse 6, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom however not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are being abolished.

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But we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom which has been hidden, which

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God predestined before the ages to our glory, which none of the rulers of this age has understood.

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For if they had understood it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But just as it is written, things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him.

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But to us, God revealed them through the spirit for the spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

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For who among men knows the depths of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the depths of God, no one knows except the spirit of God.

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Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God so that we may know the depths graciously given to us by God.

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Of which depths we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the spirit combining spiritual depths with spiritual words.

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Now look at verse 14. But a natural man does not accept the depths of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually examined.

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But he who is spiritual examines all things, yet he himself is examined by no one.

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For who has known the mind of the Lord that he will direct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

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How is it that we are able to read the Bible and we see in the Bible the power of God? It's because we have the

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Holy Spirit that's been given to us that we may know this. This was something I wrestled with when I was trying to witness to my atheist friends when

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I was in college. How is it that you read the Bible and you see foolishness and I read the Bible and I see the power of God?

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It's because they're naturally minded men who cannot understand the things of the spirit of God for they're spiritually discerned.

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And I had been given the Holy Spirit that I may understand the thing. It doesn't mean I understood everything perfectly.

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I'm still growing in knowledge and in sanctification as God would give me a blessing to be able to know those things that are revealed according to his word.

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But nevertheless, I could know God and see Christ as God because God was the one that illuminated that to me.

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Not by my will, but by God's will. And don't just take my word for it.

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Back in 1 Corinthians 1 verse 30, Paul said, by his doing you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that just as it is written, let him who boasts, boast in the

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Lord. Again, it's by his doing you are in Christ Jesus.

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It is God who has illuminated these things to us. It's by his doing we've come to Christ.

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It's by his doing we see Christ. It's by his doing we are being grown in Christ. It's by his doing we will be glorified in Christ.

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This is all by the wonderful gift and blessing of God. In 1 John chapter 5,

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John says that we come to know these things are true by the spirit that is given to us.

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So yes, everything that we read in the Bible can be absolutely affirmed by evidence.

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Archeology, history, eyewitness accounts, even sheer logic, we can argue some of these things in Scripture just by reason are true.

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But it's not because of natural things that we come to understand the truth of what it is that we read.

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How do we know the Bible is true? Because God has given his spirit to us that we may know it is true.

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Yeah, you can verify it by all these things and that's all well and good. I think those things are important for us to study because they become an apologetic defense of that which we read.

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The Mormons will say that if you just pray and ask God for wisdom, they use James 1 .5, they're taking it out of context.

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If you actually read what James says there in James 1, it doesn't line up with what the Mormons are saying. But the

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Mormons will say if you don't believe that the Book of Mormon is true, then you just pray and ask God that he'll show you that it's true and then he'll show you that it's true.

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That's how they'll say you can verify that the Book of Mormon is real. But then you take the Book of Mormon and you test it against actual history and it doesn't stand up.

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So we know the Bible is true because God has shown us that it's true. And you can take the Bible and test it against all these other things and it's going to stand the test of time.

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Every time. It has been for 2 ,000 years. But ultimately it's God's spirit that reveals the truth to us.

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God had even given a test to Israel. Here's how you know whether a prophet that has come to you is actually speaking truth to you or whether he is lying to you.

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In Deuteronomy chapter 13, God says this to Israel. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true concerning which he spoke to you saying, let us go after other gods whom you have not known and let us serve them.

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You shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the

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Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the

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Lord your God and fear him and you shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him and cling to him.

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So listen to that test. God is telling the Israelites, if somebody comes to you with a prophecy or a dream and it comes true, like they've even given you something and it happens.

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But what it is that they're telling you is, let's go after these other gods. How is it that this false prophet has come in among you and given you this miraculous sign or wonder that's come to pass?

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It's because God is testing you to see if you really trust in the Lord your

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God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Are you trusting your feelings?

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Are you trusting your senses? Even that which you physically come to know over what

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God has revealed according to his word. So we must trust

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God even more than we trust our own experiences. God gives a different test in Deuteronomy chapter 18.

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Beginning in verse 15, through Moses, it says,

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The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you. From your countrymen you shall listen to him.

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This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly saying, let me not hear again the voice of the

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Lord my God. Let me not see this great fire anymore or I will die. The Lord said to me, they have spoken well.

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I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

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This is a prophecy concerning Christ. So it's a reading about prophecies that come true and Christ is the fulfillment of that.

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But then consider what Moses goes on to say, what the Lord says next in verse 19.

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It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

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But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

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You may say in your heart, how will we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the

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Lord, if the thing does not come about or come true, that is a thing the Lord has not spoken.

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The prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you shall not be afraid of him. And what was supposed to happen to that prophet?

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He was supposed to die. You were supposed to put him to death. That's how highly God regarded his word.

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Let no one come in among you saying that he has some revelation from God that did not truly come from God.

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If you ever hear from someone today, God said to me, what better follow is a verse from the

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Bible or God did not really say it to them. How do we know that God has spoken? It's right here in the pages of Scripture.

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And these are not cleverly devised myths. Again, as Peter goes on to say in 2 Peter 1 .20, know this, first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one's own interpretation.

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The prophecies are revealed to us by God, they are interpreted by God. We have the mind of Christ again, going back to 2nd, or I'm sorry, 1

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Corinthians. See, I made the mistake already. 1 Corinthians 2 .21, for no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men moved by the

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Holy Spirit spoke from God. What we have is truly God's word.

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It was not given to us by any man. So consider this statement again from Vodie Bauckham as we close this out.

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The Bible is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

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They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claimed that their writings were divine rather than human in origin.

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Even if we were to try to go back to change all of those manuscripts, that there are copies of the originals, to try to corrupt and change what was written down in the

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Bible, there are so many thousands of them, we would never be able to accomplish that, which is one of the reasons why I know the

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Bible has not been tampered with and has not been changed. What we have in the scriptures that we read now is truly what was written down for us in the very beginning.

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Even if you were to take the early church fathers, you're just talking about the first couple hundred years of the church, you would be able to reconstruct the entire

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New Testament just from their writings. That's how highly they regarded what was written in the

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New Testament and how many times it was copied and taught, even throughout those early centuries of the early church.

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So we can trust this, we can rely on it, it is true, it is