Why 66 Books?

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Well, I want to welcome everybody again back to our lesson series on the subject of apologetics.
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And again, for those who haven't been with us, the study of apologetics is the study of how to defend what we believe about God, what we believe about Jesus, what we believe about the Bible.
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The Christian faith is based on propositional truth.
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Propositional truth means it's not based on opinion and it's not based on objective feelings, even though certainly feelings are part of what we experience as believers.
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We experience joy and we experience happiness and we experience all of the things of life and we experience great joy.
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The Bible says we have a peace that passes understanding.
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So there are certain experiences that we have emotionally as Christians, but our faith is not based in emotion.
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Our faith is based in truth.
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It's based in fact.
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It's based in what is actually true.
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As Paul said, if Jesus Christ didn't rise from the grave, we above all people are most to be pitied, because it means we believed a lie.
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If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, we believed a lie, might as well go home and just forget it all.
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So it's based in propositional, objective truth.
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And when we talk about where do those propositions come from, where does the truth of the Christian faith come from, where do we know that Jesus rose from the grave? Where do we know that Moses gave the Ten Commandments? Where do we know about Joshua and all of these people of the Bible? Well, it's in the Bible itself.
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So part of defending the faith is knowing the Bible and knowing about how we got the Bible.
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The Christian faith is based on the writings of the Bible.
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It is a collection of 66 individual books.
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It's not one book.
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It's not even one part.
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It's two parts, what we call the Old Covenant text and the New Covenant text, or the Old Testament and the New Testament.
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The Old Testament text is 39 books.
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The New Testament is 27 books.
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And those 66 collective books make up what we call one holy Bible.
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It was written over a period of about 1,500 years, and it was written by over 40 different authors.
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And yet it has one thread of truth, one consistent message that starts in Genesis, goes all the way to Revelation, and it's consistent all the way through about God, about His nature, about the fact that He is a redeeming God, and that He sent His Son to redeem those who would believe on Him.
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So there is the Bible, and that's what we're seeking to defend and understanding it, how we got it is essential to being able to make a defense of the faith.
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In our previous lessons in this course, we have looked...
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By the way, I made myself a note.
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There's a short video at the end, and if I didn't make myself a note, I would have forgotten.
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That's not for you, that's for me.
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Don't let me forget it, because I'm looking this way, not this way most of the time.
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But in the previous lessons, we have looked first at Revelation.
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Not the book of Revelation, but the concept of Revelation.
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Revelation, God revealing Himself to mankind.
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And we said in that lesson that God has revealed Himself in two ways, and does anybody remember what those two ways are? There is special revelation and general revelation.
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General revelation is that which goes out to all men.
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General revelation is when we look up in the sky, we know there's something greater than ourselves.
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The Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God.
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In fact, the Bible says that if a man looks at the sky and denies that God exists, he's suppressing a truth he knows in his heart.
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He knows God exists.
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There's really no such thing as an atheist.
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An atheist is an intellectually dishonest person, because they're suppressing a truth that God has placed in their heart.
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They know that God exists, they don't want Him to exist, because they do not want to be accountable to God.
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So they suppress that knowledge, the Bible says, in unrighteousness.
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So we have revelation from God in the general sense, but we also have revelation from God in the particular or special sense.
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And what is that? The Bible.
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The Bible is God's special revelation to man.
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It is God's Word to man, and it's how we know more about God.
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Because if all we had was the sky, if all we had was the rivers and the oceans, we would know a lot about God's immensity, a lot about His power, a lot about His genius, a lot about those things.
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But we wouldn't know much about redemption and we wouldn't know anything about Jesus if we didn't have the Bible.
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At least maybe what we heard from history, but we wouldn't know about these things.
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So the Bible is special revelation.
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So revelation was the first thing.
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And the Bible is God's special revelation to man.
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The second week, which was the last time we met, the week before Walter was here, we talked about inspiration.
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Now, inspiration refers to the books of the Bible that God oversaw their writing.
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Or what was the word I used? Superintended.
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Remember? We said God has superintended the writing of certain books that He calls His Word.
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In fact, it's an interesting point in the Gospels when Jesus is talking to the Pharisees in the Gospel of John, He says, Have you not read what God said to you? And He goes on to quote a passage of Scripture.
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If you think about what He's saying, He says, Have you not read what God said? It's an actual statement about what the Bible is.
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It's God speaking.
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When you read it, you're hearing God's Word.
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And in fact, in 2 Timothy 3.16, what does it say? All Scripture is God breathed.
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Or given by the inspiration of God.
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It's from the mouth of God.
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It's God speaking.
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And that's what inspiration, the Bible is inspired by God.
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Meaning it is coming from Him.
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Now this week, we're going to move on to the third.
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There's eight of these.
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So it's an eight week part of this.
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We're going to look at something called canonization.
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Canonization.
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And you have your handout.
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I don't have one.
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I just want to see something.
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Okay, it's fine.
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No, I just want to make sure I give you the answers to the questions.
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Because tonight what we're going to be talking about is what is canonicity? What does it mean? And all of those things.
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But just to give you sort of an overview.
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We said we have 66 books of the Bible, right? How do we know that it's supposed to be 66? How do we know it shouldn't be 65 or 67 or 40 or 39 or 152? That's a question that's often asked of us.
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Particularly by people who don't believe Christianity.
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Who don't believe the truth about Christ or the Bible.
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They'll say, well, I don't know if I should believe the Bible.
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How do I even know you got them right? I mean, isn't it true that you can go right now to Barnes & Noble and purchase a copy of the Gospel of Judas? Yeah, if you go to the religious section of Barnes & Noble, you can find a copy of the Gospel of Judas.
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And the argument is, well, if Judas has a gospel, why isn't it in the Bible? Why isn't that the 67th book? Or what about the Gospel of Thomas? It's not really long enough to be its own book, so you won't find it for sale.
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But you'll find many books about the Gospel of Thomas.
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And other what are called Gnostic works.
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The Gnostics were a sect in the first century that were at odds with the Christians.
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And they did write some things that some people would argue should be in the Bible.
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So those questions arise, and that's the question of canon.
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So let's look now at your handout.
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Introduction to Canonicity.
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What does canon mean? The original word canon is traced to the Greek language.
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And it actually means a measuring rod or a rule.
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A canon is a standard.
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It was actually a standard of measurement, but it is a standard.
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And it means pretty much a standard for anything.
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And so when we talk about the canon of the Bible, in regard to the Bible, the canon refers to what is and what isn't Scripture.
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For instance, if I said, tonight I'm going to teach from the book of Maccabees.
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My next statement would be, this is not part of the canon.
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Because this is not part of sacred Scripture.
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It is part of Jewish history.
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I could teach from it.
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I could talk about it.
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I could use it for examples.
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I could use it for historical information.
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But I would have to tell you, it is not part of the canon.
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It's not part of the authoritative standard or rule that we would accept, and that historically, both Christians and Jews have accepted, as part of the Word of God.
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F.F.
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Bruce is a wonderful scholar.
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If you ever see anything by him, and you're interested in reading, he is a masterful scholar.
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And this is what he says, When we speak of the canon of Scripture, the word canon has a simple meaning.
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It means the list of books contained in the Scripture.
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The list of books recognized as worthy to be included in the sacred writings of a worshiping community.
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In the Christian context, we might define the word as the list of writings acknowledged by the church as documents of divine revelation.
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And the first clear application of this term to the Scriptures is attributed to Athanasius in 367.
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So the first time we see the phrase canon used is in 367.
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Now, I want to make a point about that.
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You might say, well, when did Jesus live? Well, this is the year of our Lord, 2018.
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Jesus would have lived somewhere in the first 30 years of this era, what we call the Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.
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So Jesus would have lived anywhere, somewhere around, there is no year zero, but he lived, according to extra-biblical sources, we put the dating of Jesus' birth somewhere around 4-5 BC.
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So it's funny, Jesus was born before he was born.
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But because of when Quirinius was governor of Syria, that's mentioned in the book of Luke.
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So a historical statement is used as an argument as to when he was born.
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So we have Jesus being somewhere born around 4 BC, dying somewhere around 30 BC.
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And then you have, so from 30 BC, or 30 AD rather, you have from 30 AD to somewhere around, well, depending on how you date Revelation, anywhere from 69 AD to 95 AD, you have the writing of the New Testament.
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First book of the New Testament probably written somewhere around 45 AD.
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That would have been about 15 years after the death of Christ.
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We have the first book of the New Testament.
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There's debate as to which book came first.
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Some people argue it's Galatians, some people argue it was James.
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I tend to lean towards James as one of the first books of the New Testament, but it doesn't really matter.
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We know that they were all written somewhere between 45 and 69.
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Why 69? Somebody tell me why 69.
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Huh? Because in AD 70, Jerusalem is destroyed.
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Jerusalem is destroyed by Emperor Titus.
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Everything is destroyed in AD 70.
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I argue that all of the New Testament was completed prior to AD 70, but there are those who believe that the Gospel of John and Revelation was not written until closer to the 90s, so there is a debate that could push the earlier writers out to somewhere around 95.
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So all of the New Testament...
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Obviously the Old Testament was written prior to Christ, right? Malachi lived 400 years before Jesus, so all of the Old Testament is written before Christ, but all of the New Testament is written within about a 50-year period or less.
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Okay? I bring this up only to say we have from 95 to 367 before even the term canon is used.
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So there was a period of time where the canon itself was undergoing points of recognition, undergoing points of acceptance.
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In fact, which book of the Bible, by your guess, which book of the Bible do you think had the longest time to be accepted by the church as a whole? I know you know this.
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Okay, go ahead, Jen.
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It was Revelation.
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Revelation took the longest to receive wide acceptance.
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And you got to think about why.
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It talks about ten-headed dragons and beasts coming out of the sea.
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It's got some really interesting apocalyptic imagery.
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And I'm glad that everything that was written in the first century wasn't automatically accepted, that there was a process that the church looked at and wanted to know whether or not this came from an authoritative source.
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They wanted to know that this was in line with the rest of Scripture.
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These were questions that the church was asking.
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And yes, Revelation, also another book that was not as widely accepted immediately was Hebrews, because we don't know who the author is.
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There is now questions.
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And I know, like Brother Richard believes, was it Barnabas? Who do you believe? Huh? Silas.
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He believes Silas was the author of Hebrews.
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I don't know who it is and I don't even argue.
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I think it could have been Luke.
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I think it could have been Apollos.
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I think it could have been Silas.
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I think it could have been a lot of guys.
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But I know there was only one.
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The only strong argument is who it was not.
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It wasn't Paul.
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At least in my opinion, because it says in the second chapter of Hebrews that the information in this book is from a second-hand source.
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Paul is primary source, because Paul saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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He says in another book, I didn't get this information from other people.
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I got it as a direct revelation from Jesus.
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So when you read Hebrews and it says this is a second-hand, I'm getting this information not directly, that's pretty much me in argument that it's not Paul.
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So anyway, long story short, we've got a several hundred year period here where there is question regarding canon.
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Here's the interesting part of this history.
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The reason why the canon became an issue in the church was because a man created a canon and in his canon he eliminated the God of the Old Testament.
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Because he believed that the God of the Old Testament was a demigod, an evil deity, and so his name was Marcion.
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So Marcion, M-A-R-C-I-O-N, Marcion comes along, and he argues that the God of the Old Testament was an evil God, that we shouldn't worship that demigod of the Jews, and he eliminates the Old Testament, and he eliminates all of the New Testament references to the Old Testament God.
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Which means about a third of the New Testament is gone too, because most of it's references back to the God of Israel.
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I have a sermon actually, years ago, the Marcians are coming, because they're still here today.
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People today chop up the Bible, they only want the parts that agree with them, they don't want the parts that don't, and that's what Marcion was.
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He was a man who wanted the parts that he agreed with, he didn't want the parts he didn't agree with, and he jettisoned the parts that he didn't agree with, and he created a canon.
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In response to that, the church recognizes the need to have this listing.
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And the very first canon that we have is what's called the Moratorium Fragment.
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Now, I'm not going to try to write that up here for you, but the Moratorium Fragment is the first list of the New Testament that we are aware of historically.
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And don't let this bother you.
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But it ain't exactly what's in your Bible.
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But here's the things that are great.
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One, four Gospels.
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
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Those were never in dispute.
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Acts, the writings of Paul, not in dispute.
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So there is times where we have to say, okay, what is the canon? How did it come about? How was the decisions made? And the decisions were not made by cloak and dagger men in a room in Nicaea.
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There's arguments that come out all the time that what happened was Constantine gathered a group of bishops and they went into a room and they took out part of the Bible and they added other things into the Bible and they did all of these secret, mysterious things, and he produced a Bible that satisfied him.
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Absolutely not true.
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Absolutely false.
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Nothing in Nicaea even close happened to that.
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We have historical record of everything that happened in Nicaea.
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The issue of Nicaea was not the canon.
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The issue of Nicaea, and Nicaea, if you're unfamiliar, this was the very first worldwide church council that met, well, unless you count Acts 15 and the Jerusalem Council, but it was the very first, what was called ecumenical council where leaders of all the churches came.
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Over 350 church leaders came in 325 A.D.
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to a place called Nicaea and they discussed the issue of Arianism.
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Arianism was the belief that Jesus Christ was not fully God.
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There was a man by the name of Arius who taught that Jesus wasn't fully God, and by the way, Santa Claus punched him in the face.
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Saint Nicholas of Myra, the guy who we attribute of being Santa Claus, was so upset that Arius said that Jesus is not fully divine that he walked over and hit him in the face.
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And he was disciplined for it.
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So I'm not recommending that you go whacking heretics, but Saint Nicholas did.
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So, Nicaea wasn't about the canon.
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Nicaea was about Christ.
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It was about the question of the divinity of Christ.
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And I know I'm throwing a lot of information at you, but all of this is part of it.
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All of this is part of the history and knowing these things.
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And so, in your notes, this is why I probably need a copy.
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Dad, I'll take that one.
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No, no, you keep yours.
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Thank you.
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Because I want to make sure I'm not bypassing something that I put in your notes.
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So we said, what does canon mean? We know what it means.
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What is the difference between inspiration and canonization? What is the difference between inspiration and canonization? Inspiration is how God gives something authority.
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He speaks it.
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Canonization tells us how it is received or accepted by the community.
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God gives it by inspiration.
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It is received and canonized by the community of the faithful.
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And the significance of canonicity is this.
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If the Scriptures are indeed inspired by God, which books are they? And how do we know? And historically, it's important to determine which books God has inspired and which ones He hasn't.
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Because that's the significance of the question.
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So how do we determine that? How is that determined? Alright.
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Well, before going into the determination, I want to make a point.
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The canon...
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I'll write this up here.
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The canon itself.
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Is the canon revelation? Let me ask that question.
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Is the canon revelation? Nobody wants to answer? That's okay.
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I'll give you...
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Yes, because the Bible is special revelation.
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Okay, the Bible is revelation.
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Is the canon revelation? Here, let me ask the question this way.
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Did God ever give us a list of books and said these are the ones I inspired? And that's what we said the canon is, right? The canon is the list? God didn't send down golden plates from heaven.
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Or He didn't have one of the apostles write down, okay, we're going to have two Thessalonian letters.
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We're going to have two Corinthian letters.
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We don't have a list that we would say is from God.
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So the canon is not a part of revelation.
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It is an artifact of revelation.
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The canon is not revelation itself.
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It is an artifact of revelation.
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What do I mean? Here's what I mean.
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It's very simple.
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When the canon is produced by God, the canon is created immediately.
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The only way I can do this is give you an illustration.
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I have written three books.
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I had to think because I don't even remember.
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I'm not God so I don't have a perfect memory.
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I wrote, that wasn't very good writing, obviously.
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I wrote a book on the Trinity called God in Three Persons.
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I wrote a book on martial arts, self-defense.
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And I wrote a very short book on speaking in tongues.
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Okay, so those are three books that I have written.
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As soon as I finished the last period of each of those books, they were added to my canon because I wrote them.
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You understand? And I knew perfectly what I had written and what I hadn't because I know what I wrote.
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So the canon exists first in the mind of God.
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Dr.
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James White calls this Canon One.
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Canon One exists first in the mind of God because God knows what he wrote.
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God knows what he inspired.
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Agreed? Does anybody disagree? Anybody think God doesn't know what he wrote? Okay.
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God knows what he wrote.
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And because he wrote some things and not everything, a canon was created.
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God didn't inspire everything.
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We agree with that? God did not inspire every book.
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I mean, there's a Satanist Bible out there.
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There's a lot of books that God did not inspire in the way that he inspired the Bible.
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We agree, right? God did not breathe the Satanist Bible.
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God did not breathe most of what Stephen Hawking wrote.
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God didn't breathe a lot of these things.
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But he breathed the Scriptures.
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So when he did that, the mind of God knows canon perfectly.
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And thus an artifact is created.
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There's this thing called the writings, the Scriptures.
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They're produced, they're created as soon as God has them written.
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Canon 2.
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Canon 2 is when the church recognizes what God wrote.
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The church recognizes what God wrote.
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That's how we receive the canon.
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And the reason why I'm making this a point is because the church doesn't get to determine what God wrote.
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God determines what God wrote.
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And you might think I'm splitting a theological hair here.
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I'm really not.
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Because looking at your next sheet, the next part of your sheet, what does it say? God determines the canon.
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That is hugely important.
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God is the one who determined what he was going to write and what he wasn't going to write.
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He's the one who determined that he was going to write what he wrote.
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And the question I have, and I think this is huge, I think this is the answer for me.
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And this helps me.
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Do I believe that God wants his people to know what he wrote? And in that point it becomes a theological question.
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If I believe God wants his people to know what he wrote, then I believe this will be the same as this.
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This is the church recognizing what God wrote.
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This is what God actually wrote.
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And God is the one who's assuring that this and this are the same.
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R.C.
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Sproul said something a few years ago that really got him, and a lot of people got upset about this.
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A lot of people got upset about this.
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I didn't because I know what he was talking about.
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But it's easy for people to get their minds in a tizzy.
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R.C.
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said what we have is we have an uninspired list of inspired books.
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Or, what he said, is an imperfect list of perfect books.
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And people got upset.
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Oh, you're saying it's an imperfect list? What he's saying is we were never given a list by God.
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But what we have is a church that God rose up.
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Christ said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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And the church has recognized down through the ages what God has revealed.
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And the church has received what God has revealed.
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And in that, we can trust that God was superintending that reception or that acceptance.
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And somebody says, well, that's awful convenient.
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You're basically saying, well, God did it.
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Here's a spoiler alert.
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That's the answer to everything.
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I mean, really, it is.
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Just think about it.
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How did the world come to be? God did it.
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I mean, you can go about how He did it.
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You can talk about six days.
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You can talk about the fact that there was nothing and then there was something, which is pretty something.
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Yeah, that's really something.
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But at the end of the day, the answer is that God did it.
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And so, why do I trust that the Bible is what it should be? Because I trust God wants me to know His Word.
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And I know that if God wants me to know His Word, He's going to ensure that the Word I have is the one I'm supposed to have.
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And He's used the church and He's used historical questions to bring this about.
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And I'm glad.
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I'm glad there were questions in the beginning.
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I'm glad that there was questions about the Epistle of Barnabas and about Clement and about these other writings.
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I'm glad the church had the wherewithal to ask the questions.
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And I'm glad that some of those questions were hotly debated and I'm glad decisions were made.
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But again, so God determines the canon.
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Letter B on your list.
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Canonicity is determined by God, but it is discovered by man.
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And I would put by man, maybe cross out the word man and say by the church.
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It's discovered by the church.
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God determines whether a book is inspired and thus canonical.
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Churches and councils do not determine it.
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Canon is determined immediately because God, as soon as He finishes the last period of that book, it's determined.
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It is.
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And this is the last two blanks and I want to move on, but the last two blanks on your sheet is we must remember the distinction between the canon's nature and the canon's discovery.
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The canon's nature and the canon's discovery.
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The canon's nature is this.
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God inspired it to be written.
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The discovery is the recognition of that inspiration.
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Now I want to ask some questions very quickly.
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And we're going to watch a video in a few minutes that will kind of help clear up some of this.
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But I do want to ask a couple of questions.
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What are some of the things that when we look at the Bible can help us be confident that the Bible books that we do have are in fact the ones that God intended for us to have? What are some of the things that we can look at that help us to know that what we have is in fact what God intended for us to have? We believe that it is because we believe God wants us to know His Word.
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We have His Word.
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But what are some of the evidences that we can look at? Not that evidence is going to prove to an unbeliever because it doesn't, but what are some of the evidences we look at? Yes.
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That's right.
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There is an internal consistent testimony.
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That's exactly right, Dottie.
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There's an internal consistent testimony.
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There's a coherence through the Bible from beginning to the ending.
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What else? What are some other things that we look at in Scripture and we say, okay, this is something that gives evidence that this is in fact God's Word.
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Anybody else? Okay.
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Not only does it have an internal consistent testimony, it has an inerrant statement or we'll say no contradictions.
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It has no contradictions.
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Now, you know as well as I do, some unbelievers would want to argue with that.
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And part of this course, when we get further along, we're going to look at some of the supposed contradictions in the Bible.
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But you're right.
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One of the great things about the Bible is that testimony that is truthful and consistent with itself.
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What else? Remember what I mentioned earlier about the timetable? Remember what I said about when Jesus died, when the Bible began to be written, when the last book was written? One of the things that I really believe and it helps in my mind is something called apostolic authority.
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The Bible says that the church is founded on Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, but it has the foundation of what? The apostles and prophets.
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Ephesians says it has the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone.
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So we know that ultimately Christ is the foundation.
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But there is apostolic authority.
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Paul, Peter, and Matthew and all these men who were apostles, they had a certain level of authority in the church that Christ had bequeathed unto them, had given to them a certain leadership authority.
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And one of the reasons why I am so absolutely convinced in the New Testament particularly is because all of the books of the New Testament were written not by apostles necessarily, but in the lifetime of the apostles.
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Here's the thing about when somebody says this is about the Gospel of Judas.
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The Gospel of Judas is at least 100 years past or more the death of the apostles.
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The Gospel of Thomas, end of 1st century, early 2nd century, at the absolute earliest.
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No way it was in the lifetime of the apostles.
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The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was like 400.
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It was way past the time of the apostles.
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Certainly not written by any of these people who were named.
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Yes, dear? Well, we're going to talk about that in a later lesson because that's more about transmission and consistency of how we know.
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But that is true though.
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The other thing about the Bible and why we feel like we can trust it is just how well it's been preserved.
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You know, when we look at other old works of literature, Iliad, Homer's Iliad and things like that, there's maybe 10, 20 copies at most and those are several hundred years after the original was written.
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We have New Testament copies, over 5,000 handwritten copies, some of them dating back to the late 1st century, early 2nd century, within decades, not centuries, of the original writings.
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That's what Jennifer's talking about.
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The New Testament has a historicity that other works of antiquity literally drool after because it's just nowhere near the historical reliability.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And when we talk about textual criticism, that's going to be the subject for that.
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But apostolic authority I think is huge.
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Let's go through real quick the New Testament.
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Who is Matthew? Matthew's an apostle.
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Who's Mark? Mark was not an apostle.
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Mark was a leader in the early church.
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He was actually the assistant of Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey.
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He was the one that went home.
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And then Paul didn't want to work with him anymore because he went home and he couldn't cut it, couldn't cut the mustard as it were.
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His parents were wealthy.
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His mother is the house where Jesus had the Last Supper.
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And the Gospel of Mark, according to a later writer, was actually the memories of Peter.
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So you could think of the Gospel of Mark as being the Gospel of Peter because Mark is writing from Peter's accounts.
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So you've got Matthew, Mark, who is under the authority of Peter.
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Who is Luke? He's the assistant of the apostle Paul.
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He's an assistant of the apostle Paul.
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He's writing with Paul's authority.
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Who's John? No question, right? Beloved disciple.
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Acts is written by Luke.
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The next several books of the New Testament from Romans all the way to...
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It's not Hebrews.
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But the writings of the apostle Paul, of course, apostolic authority.
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Hebrews, there's a question as to the authorship and that's why there's some question not about whether it should be there now.
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I don't have any doubt it should be there now, but the question early on about whether or not.
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But Hebrews had apostolic authority.
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It was widely accepted in that time.
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Then you have who else? Peter.
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James.
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Who is Peter? Peter.
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Apostle.
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Who's James? James is the brother of Jesus.
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Now that didn't give him any authority in the sense of he wasn't an apostle.
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He's not the apostle James.
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But James is actually the pastor of the church of Jerusalem who is writing in the time of the apostles.
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Who would have been in the church of Jerusalem? Peter.
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And then you have Jude and Revelation.
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You have these books that are being written in the time of the apostles and they have apostolic authority.
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Now I'm not saying that's the reason I believe them, but I'm saying that's great evidence for why these books are so widely accepted by the church.
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And other books wouldn't be.
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So there are those.
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And I'm going to show you a video in just a minute by Dr.
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Michael Kruger.
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If you ever want to look more into the canon, the man who I'm going to introduce you to tonight, there is...
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I don't think there's anybody in the world who knows more about this subject than he does.
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So if you're really interested in canon issues, I recommend looking him up, reading his stuff, watching his YouTube videos.
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His name is Dr.
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Michael Kruger.
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And we're going to watch just a short little video of him.
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And I hope this is helpful.
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If you listen to this on Sermon Audio, go to YouTube, look up Michael Kruger, and it's his interview with Together for the Gospel.
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Or the Gospel Coalition, rather.
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Are you guys ready? All right.
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I'll be spending the next few minutes talking about I'm Martin Milner with the Gospel Coalition National...
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I hope you found that useful.
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Was that helpful to hear somebody other than myself kind of give a little bit? And again, that man is a benefit to the church.
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I recommend reading.
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I want to add one last thing, and then we're going to pray.
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Because we did a few things here.
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None of these by itself is the only reason, but all of these are important evidences.
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But the last thing, and I thought about it while he was speaking, the fourth thing that I would always say, and this involves both the Old Testament and the New Testament, is the prophetic utterance.
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If you heard Dr.
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Kruger mention that the Bible itself is self-authenticating.
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It's got an internal way of authenticating itself.
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And one of those ways is the fact that the Bible makes claims about things that are going to happen, and then they happen.
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In the Old Testament, these things happened a lot.
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There were amazing testimonies of prophetic words that this will happen.
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And then it did.
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And probably the most powerful of those is when the Old Testament says that there is going to come a Messiah, that He is going to suffer, that He is going to die, that He is going to rise from the dead.
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And He did.
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The Old Testament testimony about Jesus Christ and then the fulfillment is so clear that those who argue against it have to argue that the writers of the New Testament were writing backward and taking parts of the Old Testament and including it in the New simply to make Jesus fit because it's so obvious that Jesus fulfills prophecies that were four, five, six, seven hundred years prior to His life.
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The book of Isaiah speaks about Jesus.
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It talks about the Lamb of God.
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It talks about the One who would be the suffering servant, the One who would take the sin of His people.
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He was going to be led as a sheep to the slaughter.
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By His stripes we're healed.
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We know these passages.
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These were written 700 years before Jesus was ever in the world as a man.
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The prophetic utterance is one of the internal testimonies of the Scripture and it helps us be confirmed in what we believe.
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I hope tonight was helpful.
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We're going to move on next week.
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Our next part of the lesson is transmission.
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Transmission is not a part of the car.
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Oh, it is, but it's not what we're talking about.
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Transmission is how does the Bible go from the hand of the Apostle Paul to the hand of Richard Taylor? How does it get from there to here? And that's the subject of next week.
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It's going to be a lot of history, looking at the history of how it went from there to here.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, we thank You for this opportunity to study the canon.
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I know there's so much more that can be said and should be said, and I pray that You would, Lord, just ignite within us a desire to study and I pray that in the weeks, months, and years to come that we'll make the desire for the Word of God just the very passion of our hearts and that we would seek out knowing more about it.
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In Jesus' name, amen.