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Thank you for the opportunity to study together, thank you for your word, thank you for the truth.
I pray that we would be faithful to the truth, especially me as the one leading the discussion today, and I pray that you would keep me from error.
Thank you, O God, for the fact that your word is the very truth of God that we have to hold to and to attach our lives to and to govern ourselves by.
And, Lord, we know that ultimately you are speaking to us through the word, and when we want to hear from you, we hear from you by reading and examining your word.
So we pray, Lord, today that we would be faithful to it as we study together.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Last week we began a discussion on the subject of Neo-Orthodoxy as part of a larger study of the book that some of you have, Charts of Christian Theology and Doctrine.
Basically, the charts have been taking us through different theological systems.
We've looked at Roman Catholicism, Natural Theology, Arminianism, Reformed Theology, Wesleyanism, Methodism, those different things.
Well, Neo-Orthodoxy falls into the realm of what we would typically call liberalism because it doesn't take a fundamentalist or a conservative approach to the scriptures, but it takes more of a liberal, more open interpretation to the Bible than what typically a conservative Christian or evangelical Christian would take.
And this comes on the heels of our study of existentialism.
That was what came right before this one.
And as we noted last week, Neo-Orthodoxy has vestiges of existentialism in it.
But the biggest thing that I wanted to talk about today, and I actually, as I was telling some of you earlier, I actually wrote this lesson on my way back from my trip.
I was thinking about...
Well, my wife was typing as I was reading, as I was thinking and outlining what I wanted to say today.
And because this is something that I mentioned in our last study, was that we need to understand why we believe the Bible is the Word of God.
And I made mention last week, and it was the last thing that I said, and it was a negative way to end, but I said it is naive to think that the Bible is the Word of God simply because someone else told us that it's the Word of God.
That's sort of a naive way of looking at anything is simply because, well, somebody told me this, because in reality the Muslims believe the Quran is God's Word, the Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is the Word of God, you know, it goes on and on and on.
And just because someone believes something is the Word of God doesn't make it so.
You understand that? Just believing in something doesn't make it something.
And Neo-Orthodoxy argues that the Bible itself isn't the Word of God, but rather, it's not the Word of God inherently, but rather it becomes the Word of God as God uses it to reveal himself to individuals, and thus it becomes very subjective.
Rather than the propositional, objective truth of the Bible as God speaking, it becomes a very subjective, individualized God speaking to you.
And so I put on the board today two propositional statements.
These propositional statements are ones that really create the subdivision between Neo-Orthodoxy and what we would call Traditional Conservative Orthodoxy or Biblical Christianity.
These two statements create the line of divide.
The first one, and I know you guys can read it, but because I have a recorder I'll read it to you.
The first one is, the Bible contains the Word of God.
And then the second one is, the Bible is the Word of God.
Now, just looking at these two statements in and of themselves, as a conservative Christian, as a Bible-believing, to use that term, Christian, I can affirm both of these as true, but I understand that there is a difference between them.
What is the difference? Yeah, yeah, it's obviously it's the verb, right? One, you know, the Bible contains versus the Bible is.
And when we say that the Bible contains the Word of God, what we're saying is that within the contents of the book, the Word of God exists.
But also, within the contents of the book, there can be other things that are not the Word of God.
And that is the heart of the Neo-Orthodox argument.
You see, we, at least I would say I specifically, would hold, and I would assume we all would, but I'm always careful to make assumptions, I would hold specifically to the second statement, the Bible is the Word of God, that it is God speaking, that as the scripture says about itself, it is theanoustos.
Theanoustos means God breathed.
And then that's when the Word of God speaks, it's God himself who is speaking.
So we would affirm the equality of God's spoken word and God's written word.
In fact, the word is, is oftentimes, if you, if you're just thinking of how language works, the word is, is a, is an equal sign.
If you think about, if I, if I say Mike is a man, what I'm saying is there's, there's, there's, there's a man and there's Mike and they're the same, because that's what Mike is, right? The word is, it means, is a derivative of the word to be.
The verb be is expression of, of something, how it is, how it, how it actually is.
And so when we say the Bible is the Word of God, we're saying the Bible equals the Word of God.
That's what it is.
It's not part and parcel.
It's not half and half.
It doesn't just contain it, but it is it.
It's God spoken word.
But you go to the statement by the Neo-Orthodox and the Neo-Orthodox position is, the Bible contains the Word of God, but it also contains the words of men.
And so the, the position then becomes, well, we get to go through and determine what's God's word and what's man's word.
What's, what's God saying and what's Paul saying? It's interesting that oftentimes you will hear, and I've heard it in this very church years and years ago, people will say, well, that's Paul saying that.
Right? Specifically, I remember on a, on the issue of female elders in the church.
We had a discussion years ago and that was a hotly debated topic as to whether or not a woman should serve in the office of the elder or the pastor of the church.
And the Bible clearly says that that's not correct.
That, that a woman is not to exercise authority or to teach over or to teach men.
Second Timothy or First Timothy 2.15 rather says a woman is not to teach or to exercise authority over a man.
And the office of the elder is a teaching and authoritative position.
So it's obviously, it takes that position and sets it aside and says, this is for men only.
And then later, of course, whenever you read the description of what an elder is, obviously a man is the only one who would fit that particular category.
So that issue came up and it was a hotly debated topic.
It was, I mean, it was one where my predecessor, who was much more liberal than, than I am, and I don't say that to be ugly, just, it is a fact.
And my predecessor, his, his, his position was, well, we need to have the courage to, to step out in faith and just, you know, ordain a woman elder, you know, and that, that was his position.
And, and I, and I, I was very taken aback by that.
I said, I said, I'm never going to have the courage to disobey God's word because that's not courage.
That's foolhardiness.
That's the kind of thing that gets you in a lot of trouble.
Yes.
Yeah.
Actually, what he says is the Lord.
He says, what I'm saying the Lord has not said and what, what, what the Lord has said.
And what he's referring to specifically is what Jesus said about marriage and now what he's saying about marriage.
He's not saying that what he is saying is not under the inspiration of the Spirit.
Because he says in that very context, he says, I believe I have the Spirit too.
And this is, the Lord has said this.
If you go back to Matthew 19 and a few other places, Jesus said some very specific things about marriage.
Now Paul is coming along in a different context and he's having to say some things that don't change what Jesus said, but they add to because he's dealing with a different context.
He's dealing with a situation where there are people who are, many of them already been in divorces.
Some of them were living in slave conditions where they had been moved around and they weren't able to maintain the relationship they were in.
The question is, well, can we get married? If we've already been married, we've been divorced now, can we get married again? You know, Jesus said, if we divorce, you know, there's a committing adultery if we get married.
You know, there's this question that comes up.
And so Paul has to address it, but he has to say, the Lord has said this, and I'm saying this.
And he's not saying that he's not speaking from the inspiration of the Spirit.
He's not saying he's not speaking under the authority of God.
And in fact, he says the opposite.
He says, I speak with the authority of the Spirit.
But he's making a distinction between what Christ had said specifically and what he is now saying.
But there are people who use that to argue that Paul is giving his opinion and he's not speaking for God.
Again, we're going to talk today about why we believe the Bible is the Word of God rather than just contains the Word of God, but that is a good question.
I'm glad you brought it up because that was part of it.
You know, what do we do with those texts? It seemed to be very focused on the human side of it.
And the Bible is a book written by men.
You know, one of the things that is often brought up in conversation, if you're ever talking with atheists or talking with somebody who doesn't believe the Bible, specifically people from the collegiate realm, you know, the colleges and scholastics, you know, they'll say, well, they'll say the Bible was written by men.
And I'll say, well, so were your textbooks.
And you believe those.
You know, what's your problem? And your textbooks are always changing.
Yeah, absolutely.
The Bible is written by men.
And the assumption then by saying the Bible is written by men is that God is not the author, but that men are the author.
And yet we would believe that the Bible, though written by men, has its ultimate authorship in the Spirit of God.
Holy men spoke as God carried them along.
This is what the Scripture describes itself as.
This is how it happened, as God is moving and to write down His Word.
Now, that doesn't mean that they became, you know, sort of first century Xerox machines or fax machines, where their mind just sort of, you know, they started auto-writing.
You know, that's not how it worked.
And the reason we know that's not how it worked is because one, it's never described that way, but also each writer brings in his own individual ways of saying things.
And this is why you have people who say, wait a minute, well Paul said something like this, James said something like this, they seem to contradict.
Well, they don't contradict each other.
But they do say different things that you have to harmonize because it's two different men speaking about one truth and they're coming at it from a different perspective.
And this is actually a part of a broader conversation.
But back in the 70s, there was something called the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
And this was a product of several scholars in the United States and abroad coming together in Chicago and having a conference on the subject of biblical inerrancy.
What does it mean when we say the Bible is without error? What does it mean when we say the Bible is infallible? You know, these are questions that, because liberalism had become so popular and had gained so much of an inrow, these questions came up.
And so it became important for biblical scholars to come together and answer the question.
And some of the things that we have to realize when we talk about inerrancy, one, we talk about inerrancy, we're talking about the original autographs, not the copies.
Obviously, copies have mistakes.
And so part of what we have to do as textual students is look at, well, we're looking at copies of the original.
We're reconstructing the original based on the copies, and that's one of the questions that often comes up.
Well, you don't have the copies anymore, or you don't have the originals anymore.
No, but we have a very large textual history that we're able to reconstruct the originals based on the amount of copies that we have and things like that.
And that's a big conversation that comes up because the question is, well, how do you know that you know what the original said? Well, because we have such a massive library of copies that were all from, you know, built on these originals, and so you're able to reconstruct the originals based on the massive amount of copies.
And God preserves his word, obviously, but that's a statement of faith, and it is true.
And so we have, you know, the faith does play a role in it.
But, you know, the Bible is the most well-attested work of antiquity.
There's nothing that even comes close to the amount of data and the amount of copious copies that we have, not only in Greek and Hebrew, but in other languages.
The Bible was almost immediately copied into Coptic, Syriac, later into Latin.
It was translated into all these other languages.
And you say, well, were things lost in translation? Yes, but you can actually go back and see what the translators translated it to, and it gives you an idea of what the original says.
And you can compare that to some of the original manuscripts as far as original language manuscripts, rather, to be able to see what was there and what was not.
But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
My point being is, when we talk about the Bible is the Word of God, there are, you know, there are reasons why we believe this.
There are reasons why we trust this.
And as Christians, we should know why.
We should know why do you believe.
If somebody says, why do you believe the Bible is the Word of God? You know, well, mommy told me so, isn't a real good answer.
And I'm not saying that to be ugly, but oftentimes that's the answer people have.
Well, I went to church.
Mom read the Bible.
It worked for her.
So, I'm going to read the Bible and it works for me.
Well, that's subjective.
That's not objective.
That's not something that is propositionally true.
That's something that is individually true and subjective.
So, what I want to just go over today, well, first I want to say, what are the dangers of that first statement, the Bible contains the Word of God? What are some of the dangers that would be associated with that statement? Yeah, I think, yeah, go ahead, you're...
It seems to me that that culture is, people like this that do it this way, they want to incorporate modern culture into the Bible and things like women as elders, they can do that because, you know, we know now that women are equal in every way and they should be leaders too, and so they can just mold it into what they want.
They can say, well, that part's not true, but everything else.
I guess the other thing too that would bother me is when you, if you take it in one form by the true aspect of what it says, the Bible contains the Word of God, then that means the God, that it's only here, it's not everywhere, and the Word of God is, is, I mean, it's everywhere, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's almost like saying, well, God's only in this book, and he is, but he's not just in the book, he is everything that is, he's Alpha and Omega, you see what I'm saying? Yeah.
That kind of narrative, it kind of, it can, it can kind of, depending upon the mind looking for it, squash it.
Well, I see what you're saying, it can be, it can be limiting also.
Well, my biggest concern with the Bible contains the Word of God is it makes man the arbiter of what is and what isn't the Word, because then if I open the Bible, it's like the conversation I had, and I always tell these stories, I hope I don't bore you with my stories, I had a guy wanting to argue about some changes that were going on, and back whenever we were really doing a big teaching on reformed theology and some of the things that were going on in the church, and, and he actually came to my house and wanted to discuss with me some of the things that were going on in church, which was, the female order thing was part of it, but it was, it was all at the same time.
So he came to my house, sat on my couch, and he was sitting there, and he said, look, he said, I want you to know that I don't believe that the Bible is completely true, and I, and I said, you're in the wrong church, and he kind of stopped and looked at me, because he'd been a member here for a long time, I said, I said, you're in the wrong church, and he said, well, what are you talking about? I said, well, I can throw a rock and hit 15 churches that believe like you do, that the Bible isn't all true.
I said, but we believe that, it's in our statement of faith that we've affirmed the inerrancy of the Bible, and that it is true.
I said, so if you're not happy with that, that's not going to change, you know, you might want to look somewhere else.
I wasn't trying to be ugly, I was just, I wasn't going to argue with him about the truth of the Word of God.
He made a statement, I don't believe the Bible's true.
Well, you're in the wrong place.
Later in the conversation, though, he said, well, I want to talk to you about this Calvinism stuff.
I said, I can't do that.
He said, what do you mean you can't do that? I said, well, a few minutes ago, you told me you don't believe the whole Bible's true.
I said, as soon as I open the Bible and show you something, all you have to tell me is, well, I don't believe that.
I said, you've cut this conversation off at the knees.
There's no way we can have a lucid conversation about what the Word of God says if you don't believe it's the Word of God.
Because all you have to tell me is, I don't believe that.
Why would I have a conversation with you about theology and doctrine when you don't have a firm foundation upon to build your theology and doctrine? The problem with the idea of the Bible containing the Word of God is you get to pick what is and what ain't.
That's the problem, and that's dangerous.
That's the biggest danger for me.
So, I want to give you four thoughts today.
I don't usually come in here with a broad outline like this, but I'll give you four thoughts, and I'll be happy to make a copy of this for you so you don't have to write anything.
This is my notes as I was writing them, as I was thinking, as I was driving.
Four reasons why we believe the Bible is the Word of God.
Number one, it makes divine claims about itself.
It makes divine claims regarding itself.
Now, I want to say this from the beginning, just because it says it's the Word of God doesn't mean it's the Word of God.
However, it's important to recognize its own claims.
Because if the Bible says it wasn't the Word of God, or if it doubted its own integrity, then the claims of the debate would be over.
If the Bible says this isn't from God, or we don't know if this is from God, or it said something to that effect, then the whole conversation would be a moot point because it wouldn't matter.
If it didn't make the claim of divinity, if it didn't make the claim of that authority, then we wouldn't need to even discuss it.
Nobody asks if the Iliad is the Word of God.
It doesn't make that claim.
You know, I mean, nobody asks if the writings of Plato or Aristotle or any of these guys is the Word of God because it doesn't claim to be.
Okay, so one of the things we have to realize from the beginning, the Bible claims to be the Word of God, and so it makes a statement about itself.
And though that doesn't prove anything, it does give you a point to start from at least as to what it's asking me to accept, what it's asking me to believe.
Second Timothy 316.
All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God will be fully equipped for all good works.
All right, we know that passage.
Second Timothy 316 is Pascha Grafe Theonustos.
All scripture is God-breathed.
And you say, now wait a minute, what is it talking about? When that specific claim is talking about the Old Testament, because this is Paul writing in the New Testament, the New Testament isn't written yet, but he's writing about the Old Testament, he says it's God-breathed, it comes from God, it's his word.
And it assumes that people will know what it is, because if you go back to the Old Testament and you read it, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path, right? You know, the scripture consistently talks about the Word of God being the truth, being the statement.
Psalm 119 all the way through is about the Word of God, the testimony of God, the truth of God, the law of God, all of this being true, right? It's God's word, you were saying? Yeah, the statutes of God, all these things.
It assumes that people will know what it is and that it's divine in origin.
Jesus even challenges the Pharisees for not believing God's word when he is talking to them about their problems.
He says, have you not read what God said to you? And what is that? I love that phrase when Jesus says, have you not read what God spoke? You know, what's the assumption that Jesus is making? When you're reading it, you're reading what God spoke, you're reading what he said.
Have you not read what God spoke to you, saying, and he goes on to say this and that, and he's speaking to the Pharisees.
And what's the assumption? You should know this and you should know it's God's word.
So the Bible makes divine claims regarding itself.
That's the first thing we need to remember when having this thought or conversation, is the Bible does make a claim regarding itself.
Doesn't make it true, but it does give you a place to start from.
It's making a claim.
Number two, it bears the evidence of divinity in itself.
It bears the evidence of divinity in itself.
Much of the Bible is written as prophetic announcement, and prophetic announcement can be verified historically.
Key prophecies of the person and work of Jesus Christ are found hundreds of years before he was born.
I recently had a lady come to my office and she was saying she didn't really know if she believed the Bible was true.
She wasn't being belligerent, she was just having doubts and issues about the Bible.
And I said, OK, I want to read you something.
And I open up the Bible and I read these words.
You mind? No.
I said, I just want to read you a passage.
I dropped your bookmark there.
I'll be happy to open right to the page right where I was going, like one page over.
That was nice.
I said, I just want to read this to you.
I said, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we're healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid upon him the iniquity of us all.
I said, who is that talking about? She said, Jesus.
I said, are you sure? She said, yeah, absolutely.
I said, that was written 700 years before Jesus was born.
That's from the book of Isaiah.
Isaiah 53.
And it's, huh? Jesus is on every page.
Yes, I said, but that's such an obvious, and you're right, Jesus is on every page.
But that's such an obvious reference to the coming work of Christ.
The fact that upon him the iniquities of all people will be laid, and this is he who is going to come and be crushed for our iniquities, going to bear our sins.
Isaiah 53 is such a specific outline of the work of Jesus.
It's the Achilles heel of the Jew, because when they read that, they see it's obviously a reference to Jesus, and so many of them have to come up with so many exegetical gymnastics just to get around it.
Sometimes claiming that it's Israel, sometimes claiming that's Isaiah himself, but never being allowed to say, no, it's actually referring to the coming Messiah who is the suffering servant.
Written 700 years before Jesus was born.
Again, the Bible bears the evidence of divinity within itself.
Kind of said it right off the bat, here's our benchmark for this writing.
The divine nature of the Old and New Testament are so easily recognized that other religions, major world religions such as Islam and even things, you know, kind of outstripped like Mormonism, other things like that, they all are interdependent on the Bible, even though like Islam would deny certain aspects of the New Testament.
They don't deny the divinity of it.
They say that it's been corrupted, but they can't write it off wholesale because it's dependent.
Their whole system, Islam would not exist without the Bible, because so much of what is said in the Quran is dependent upon what is said in the Bible.
It's called the Torah and the Injil.
In the Quran, it talks about the Torah and the Injil.
That's the law and the gospel, and it's dependent upon that.
We are the people of the book.
If you read the Quran, it talks about the people of the book.
That's us.
What's the book? The Bible.
Go ahead.
Yeah, and it's written 600 years.
Yeah, exactly.
It was actually dictated by him, John.
Yeah, one of the things, over 40 different authors, over a 1,500 year span of time, and three different languages, and over several continents, because eventually it's moved into Europe and everything else is written there.
We have a book that has, you know, if you get 40 people in a room today and ask them to talk about something as controversial as God and get them to agree, it wouldn't be possible.
But when you have in the scriptures, again, 40 different authors, three different languages, 1,500 years, and yet they all are consistent within itself.
That's the amazing part.
And of course, the atheists and those would argue, well, there are inconsistencies in scripture.
But they pick at nits, and every one of them is explainable through harmonization, but it's often, it's so, it's such a, to try to find one missing link, you know, something, and it's often so silly that it's ridiculous.
But like I said, the Bible itself bears the evidence of divinity.
So we see it makes claims about divinity, and it bears evidence of divinity.
Number three, and moving, let me see what time, okay, we're getting close to the end.
Number three, it's maintained its historical integrity.
I mentioned this earlier in the lesson, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but the New Testament is the most well-attested work of antiquity.
There are thousands of handwritten manuscripts, some 5,700 Greek manuscripts alone, not including the other languages, Syriac, Coptic, and even Latin, which take it well into the, you know, 20,000, 30,000 range as far as handwritten manuscripts.
And no other book even comes close, and I don't have the exact numbers in my mind.
I do have this on a presentation that I give when I teach this as a whole lesson, but if you consider from the time that Jesus lived, you know, you figure if this was a timeline, you say the birth of Jesus and the cross, you could say was, you know, around 33 years, and this would have put this somewhere around 33 AD.
Obviously, that's not 100% accurate because we don't know when year zero was.
There was no year zero, so we kind of have to kind of fudge the numbers a little here, but it was somewhere around 30 to 33 AD.
The first books of the New Testament are written in the mid-40s, possibly as late as 50 they began to be written.
Most of the writing ends at AD 70.
What happened in AD 70? Destruction of Jerusalem.
So that's a huge watermark or watershed moment in church history.
It's after this that the explosion of the copies begin to go out into the world.
Actually, as soon as the books begin to be written, they begin to be copied, they begin to be collated.
What was it? Good trivia question.
What was the first that we know of collection of books that went out to the churches? The Pauline Corpus.
The writings of Paul were collected together and sent out as a unit.
That was the first collection of the New Testament that would have happened.
It wasn't until later that the Gospels and the book of Acts and other things were started to be collated together.
The Gospels were collated early together, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts as well, but the writings of Paul were actually the first groupings of books that we see going out, and interestingly enough, it did include the book of Hebrews, even though I don't believe Paul wrote Hebrews, the people who collected them did, because they put Hebrews in with the writings of Paul.
So anyway, we see this grand expansion.
From here, we have copies.
If you go to, we'll say 100, 100 AD, right? Less than a generation from the writing itself.
We have copies that start here.
Within a generation of the original, we have handwritten copies that date back to here.
Now, they're fragmented because most of them are written on papyri, and papyri doesn't last like vellum or leather or other things like that, but we have evidence, because there were people who used to argue that the Gospel of John wasn't written until the 200s or the 300s, and that was very late, and it was used as a way to propagandize the divinity of Christ, because it says so much about the divinity of Christ, but then they found a copy that dated back to as early as the first century, late first century, early second century, and they were like, oh, miss that.
Yeah, yeah, because, you know, when it was dated for certain to be this far back, all those other arguments about the fact that it wasn't written until later were put to bed.
Now, well, that the mass, I'm waiting for that to be completely confirmed, but when that's confirmed, that's going to, that could push, that could push and mark back into the first century, and would be awesome, would be awesome to have that.
All right, so here's what I want to point out, though.
The Iliad, Homer's Iliad, is the second best work of antiquity.
The earliest copy, if I remember this correctly, and if I'm wrong, I'll be willing to say I'm wrong, but I'll look at my evidence, or look at my notes, but from when it was written to when it was first, the first copy that we have is a thousand years from the time it was written to the earliest copy that we have, and this is the second best work of antiquity.
The New Testament, we have it written, and our first copy is within a generation.
This written first copy, it's a thousand years later.
It's not even close.
You ask textual scholars, guys who study the Iliad and things like that, you ask them if they have what we have, not even close.
It's ridiculous.
Oh, by the way, and we have thousands of copies.
They have, what, less than, well, I think there's like a hundred, between a hundred and a thousand.
There's more copies of the Iliad than anything else, but it's so much less than that.
It's not even, I have to bring the numbers next week, just so I can actually show you, but it's crazy.
The differences are crazy.
Finally, and I've already alluded to this, but I do need to finish.
Fourth and finally, and I'll be happy to give you my notes, Jesus upheld the authority of God's written word.
He demanded allegiance to God's word as being God's word.
We know this did not include the New Testament because it wasn't written yet, but it did prove to the concept that God had spoken and his word had been written, and that word was authoritative because Jesus demanded that men obey it.
If it didn't have authority, if it wasn't from God, Jesus wouldn't have appealed to it as the word of God.
So we believe who Jesus is, and we believe that Jesus was right, and Jesus believed that God's word was written, so there is part and parcel of why we would believe it, but somebody says, well, why then believe the New Testament? Because Jesus died and was buried and resurrected and ascended before the New Testament was written.
The New Testament also speaks of itself as scripture.
Peter, in talking about the writings of Paul, calls them scripture.
He says people have twisted the scriptures, and he compares Paul's writings with the rest of the Old Testament.
So it's in my estimation, there's no reason to doubt that the New Testament is just as much scripture as Isaiah or Jeremiah or any of the ones that Jesus would have accepted.
Now, there were questions in the first century as to which books were authoritative and which weren't, and this often comes up when people watch the History Channel.
They'll hear about the Gospel of Thomas, for instance, and they'll say, why didn't the Gospel of Thomas make it into the New Testament? The Gospel of Judas, and when some of those are so late, they don't even qualify.
Some of them are not written until the 2nd, 3rd, 4th century, some even 1 to 13th century, which is people try to argue for its inclusion, which is silly.
It's written 1,300 years after the fact.
But the Gospel of Thomas is a very early work, and maybe one day we'll read it.
It's only a few, it's a couple pages, it's very short.
But the Gospel of Thomas is so obviously Gnostic influenced, and it doesn't even make sense.
Go home and read, look it up online.
It's so easy to, you can go through it in less than an hour, it's a very short reading.
But it's so obviously Gnostically influenced, it's so obviously influenced by those who were opposed to what the church was doing at the time, that it bears within itself its own testimony against itself.
It doesn't agree at all with what the other books say, it doesn't agree at all with what else is in the Bible.
And so the Gnostics were opposed to the Christians.
John talks about them in his writings, about those who would deny that Jesus has come in the flesh.
See, the question of the Gnostics wasn't whether Jesus was divine, it was whether or not he was human.
Because for the Gnostic, anything that was natural, the world, the flesh, all this was all evil.
And so if Jesus became flesh, he became evil.
And so they had to deny, they didn't deny that he was divine, they denied that he was human.
That's why John says in 1 John, if anyone who has not said Jesus come in the flesh is teaching what's false.
So that's part of what the Bible addresses the Gnostics themselves as false teachers.
All right, so we have to close because of time.
Thank you all for your attention, I hope this was helpful.
And if you would like a copy, I'd be happy to make you one.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
Help us to obey it, to listen to it, to learn from it, and to trust in it.