Pastor Rick McGough (truncated because of technical issues

easily grasp it and understand it. That's why in this video series and what we're gonna see tonight, it's broken down into specific numbers even, six scientific flaws of the theory of evolution, eight areas of evidence of a creator.

And in that we deal with it from biggest to smallest. So biggest being the universe all the way down to DNA and other levels in between.

Eight areas of evidence that the Bible is the word of God that we're gonna talk about tonight.

We challenge people in my book and in the video series, we direct people to our website where they can actually download for free memorization cards, which you would be able to do that are related to the lesson we're gonna look at tonight.

So that people can memorize those specific areas and then use them in conversation, use them in their home, teaching their kids and grandkids and use them at church or in a class they may be teaching.

So that's what we're gonna try to do. If you're looking for the deepest level of apology heard, you'll be disappointed tonight.

That's not what I'm gonna be presenting. I'm gonna be presenting what you would consider probably kind of an overview of evidences.

Each one of these, you would be able to hear if you look for it, you could find apologists that would spend an entire hour on each of these eight areas.

So we're not gonna try to go into extreme depth, but we're gonna try to cover this in a way that when you put it all together, you can both remember the main points and use them in everyday life.

And together they create a powerful evidence that the

Bible is the word of God. So now let me share my screen and we will get going here tonight.

All right, now the only thing is Terry, I am up, let me see here.

I'm seeing just your screen rather than mine up in the corner.

So I may need to do something different here. It says we're viewing yours.

Yes, but we wanted to help him. Yeah, I've got it. I pinned it and I got it.

Perfect. Very well. So this is my wife that Terry mentioned from 41 years and she's been amazing, especially as we've launched out in this journey.

These are our three sons. We're real proud of all of them. And we actually have a seventh grandchild now since I wrote that bio.

And so we love our grandkids and they fill our lives with lots of joy and they make us tired every time we see them.

So that's just a little bit I threw in there about who I am. So we're gonna be talking about the

Bible, God's word. This originally faith and reason made simple was a four part series.

It's broke down into eight parts for the TV video series. Each part was broken in half to be instead of one hour session, they broke into two half hour sessions.

So the Bible is the anchor of our faith. And we were told in the scripture, all scripture is inspired by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

So the Bible makes the proclamation that all of the scriptures are inspired by God or God breathed.

And also Jesus said, sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth.

So the Bible is inspired by God and it is truth. And yet we live in a culture where we have things like this.

Ian McClellan said, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying, this is fiction.

A study was done back in 2006 of college professors.

And from that study, they found that only 6 % of college professors said the

Bible is the actual word of God. While 51 % described it as an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts.

So that's the battle we're up against and why believers need to know not just what we believe, but why we believe it's true and have evidence that we can share with people to help them understand that with rational thinking, we proclaim the

Bible is the word of God. Dr. Votie Bauckham in dealing with this subject, this is the statement he makes of why, what he tells people of why he believes the

Bible is the word of God. He says, I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written down by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses.

They report to us supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and claim to be divine rather than human in origin.

And I've added to Dr. Bauckham's statement here, these events are confirmed by and give us understanding of historical events and the realities of the world today.

So that begins to give us a picture of the types of mentality we wanna approach this with as we share with people why we believe the

Bible is the word of God. And I'm gonna be sharing with you eight different areas of evidence.

So this is where we're headed. Well, internal unity, the bibliographical evidence, archeological and historical evidence, we'll mostly just touch on archeology there in that.

Medical facts found in the Bible, scientific facts found in the Bible that are confirmed by modern medicine and modern science.

And then we'll spend quite a lot of our time on fulfilled prophecy of ancient cities, world empires, the

Messianic prophecies, the Jews returning to Israel and end times and the city of Jerusalem.

And then two other areas, changed lives, the changed lives of millions and millions of people through following what the

Bible teaches of Jesus Christ and putting their faith in Christ. And then the indestructibility and distribution of the

Bible. So those are the eight areas we're gonna look at. Now, if you're taking notes,

I would encourage you, I'm gonna go quite quickly and I would encourage you don't get too bogged down in trying to write everything down because I think you'll just get frustrated.

You'll be able to go back over this with YouTube and you do have available to you notes that I've made available as well.

So maybe jot a few key things down, but don't be worried about every detail.

Okay, let's begin to talk about the evidence area number one, internal unity of the

Bible. So the Bible was written by 40 authors, the 40 authors of the 66 books over a 1500 year period on three continents in three different languages with a 400 year gap from the

Old Testament to the New Testament. It was written by shepherds, kings, scholars, fishermen, prophets, a military general, a cupbearer and a priest.

They all pinned portions of the scripture. Now, when you look at that in the natural, you would think, well, this must be a hodgepodge of writings that don't relate at all to one another, have no connection to one another and would be very difficult to find any type of unity in it.

But instead what we find is an unfolding story of redemption from Genesis to Revelation that a clear ribbon of truth and of the presentation of the gospel is seen throughout both the

Old and New Testament. The Old Testament and New Testament are linked together in so many different ways.

Here's an example, the Old Testament puts great emphasis on the law and God gave his law and the people were trying to gain favor with God by keeping the law.

Well, then you come to the New Testament and the law is mentioned certainly, but there's greater explanation.

It says the law was never able to make a person righteous because nobody's able to keep the law perfectly, but it gives us its purpose that God gave us the law in the

Old Testament as a tutor to lead us to Christ. And it does that by showing us our need for a savior.

Anybody that looks at the law of God understands their own need and their desperate need for help and it leads them to the answer which is found in Jesus Christ.

And the book of Galatians expresses that to us. Consider this, the person of Melchizedek, actually,

I'm gonna do two other quick things and then deal with that more here in a moment. But think about this,

Abraham and his life, there's a number of chapters in the book of Genesis about the life of Abraham and how he was declared righteous by faith.

He becomes the picture of all of the New Testament of believers becoming righteous in the eyes of God, declared righteous by faith in Christ.

He is the faith representative in the Old Testament and by exhibiting the same faith of Abraham, we become children of Abraham.

Think about this, Abraham is seen in Genesis 22 as taking

Isaac and offering him as a sacrifice. And he's told to go to the hills of Moriah and that God would then show him the specific place.

Well, the hills of Moriah are the hills that surround the city of Jerusalem. So he goes there and then

God points out the specific place and we're told that it becomes a place that's called that the

Lord will provide, in the Mount the Lord will provide. You can't prove this without a shadow of a doubt by any means, but I believe the specific hill that God showed him was the specific hill that Jesus Christ would later be crucified on in order to provide salvation for us.

In that moment, when Abraham's there, God says, because you did not withhold your own son, he says that God will provide, but that also that all the nations will be blessed through his seed.

And so there's a promise and what we see is man giving his son to God as a sacrifice on the very place that this covenant now is made with God and mankind that God will in turn offer his son in that very location for the sins of the world.

So amazing unity between Old Testament, New Testament, they're linked together. Now, let's talk a little bit about this person of Melchizedek.

We find him in Genesis 14 and Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought up bread and wine.

This is right after Abraham has just won a battle of really saving

Lot, his nephew. So Melchizedek shows up. Now he was a priest of God most high.

He blessed him, that is, he blessed Abram or Abraham and said, blessed be

Abram of God most high, possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be

God most high who has delivered your enemies into your hand. He gave him a 10th of all.

That's Abraham gave Melchizedek a 10th of all. So this out of nowhere, this Melchizedek shows up.

No mention of him before this and no mention of him after these three verses until you get to Psalm 110, verse four.

And David, the psalmist, mentions one verse about Melchizedek says, "'The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.

"'You are a priest forever "'according to the order of Melchizedek.'" So 1 ,500 years before Jesus Christ is born,

Moses writes in the book of Genesis about Melchizedek and showing up suddenly to Abraham, the picture of New Testament believers.

And he's a high priest that Abraham acknowledges as a priest. And his name means

King of Righteousness. He's said to be King of Salem, which means King of Peace. So he's King of Righteousness, King of Peace.

We find out in the New Testament, he has no genealogy. He just no beginning of days.

So he's obviously either an Old Testament appearance of Christ or just a typology of Christ.

But now here's my point in this. So you've got a total of four verses in the

Old Testament, three of those verses written 1 ,500 years before Christ and one verse, 1 ,000 years before Christ.

If those four verses were not in the Old Testament written hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus came, the

New Testament, a major doctrine of salvation would be lost. Because when you get to the book of Hebrews, which is all about the new covenant versus the old covenant and the priesthood of Jesus, we read this in chapter five, just as he says also in another passage, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Chapter six, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Chapter seven, for it is attested of him, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Jesus is of the tribe of Judah, not of Levi. His priesthood in our lives, which is so important is based on those four verses of the

Old Testament. This one who has his priesthood, not on the basis of being a Levite, but on the basis of an incorruptible or indestructible life where other priests had to constantly be replaced, this priesthood is everlasting.

And Jesus is of this priesthood. And we find the significance of that in Hebrews seven, says, but Jesus, on the other hand, because he continues forever, that's

Melchizedek, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them.

So the Bible is absolutely amazing. A major New Testament doctrine would not exist if it were not for three verses written 1 ,500 years before Christ and one verse written 1 ,000 years before Christ.

So how did they know to put that in there? Well, it was because the Holy Spirit was guiding and directing all of this from beginning to end.

Think of this, the internal unity between Old and New Testament. The book of Malachi in chapter three and chapter four ends with prophetic words about the coming of Elijah, who we find out later to be a reference to John the

Baptist who would precede the Messiah. And then the New Testament starts with words in both

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about the ministry of John the

Baptist, who is really the first one on the scene in the New Testament, and then introducing the ministry of the

Messiah, the Christ, Jesus. So Old Testament ends with what the New Testament begins with after 400 years.

There's claims of inspiration throughout scripture. The Bible claims to be the word of God throughout over 2 ,600 times

God said, or its equivalent are found throughout the scriptures.

Now, speaking of scriptures, whenever you see the word scripture or scriptures in the

New Testament, which it shows up 53 times in the King James, 52 times in the

NASB, the New American Standard, a one -time translated sacred writings, it always speaks of the

Old Testament. Think about that, because there was no New Testament yet while the

New Testament was being written. So whenever you see a reference to the scriptures in the New Testament, it's pointing you back to the

Old Testament. Well, here's just a couple of examples of significant verses about that.

Jesus said this, you search the scriptures, you search the Old Testament because you think that in them you have eternal life.

It is these that testify about me. So he's saying the whole Old Testament that you're looking at is about me.

It's pointing to me. On the road to Emmaus after his resurrection, he's talking to two disciples and you know that story.

And it says this, then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, so the law and the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures or all the

Old Testament. So some people say, well, only the New Testament is about Jesus.

Well, we see that is clearly not the case. This book written over a 1500 year period is consistently pointing to the person of Christ.

He's the central character of the entire Bible. And we find that the Old Testament goes to great lengths to point to specific things about Jesus through types and shadows, the

Passover lamb, the ark, the scapegoat, Rahab's scarlet cord in the window, the brazen serpent that Moses put up in Numbers, I think 21,

Melchizedek that we already looked at, the sin and guilt offerings. Moses, who represents the law, could only bring them to the bank of the

Jordan River. Joshua, whose name, Joshua is the same as Yeshua, Jesus, is could bring them in.

So New Testament tells us the law can bring you to Christ, only Christ can bring you in to God's promises.

And so we had a picture of that in the Jordan River as the people were going in. The manna and the water from the rock were typologies of Christ as well.

If we could spend, and I do a whole session called Seeing Jesus in the

Old Testament, where we dig into these a lot deeper, but it's fascinating. Let me show you a couple examples though.

This one, I just love. This is a picture, by the way, from modern Saudi Arabia. They believe, some who have studied this, believe this may very well be the rock that water flowed from when the children of Israel were in the wilderness and going from Egypt to the promised land over that 40 year period.

So we read about this incident in two different places. In Exodus chapter 17, verse six, they come to this location, they're complaining, and Moses goes to God and he says, well,

I want you to take your staff and I want you to strike the rock. He does so and massive amounts of water flow out of the rock and life comes, life giving water and the people are nourished.

Okay, then they come back years later in Numbers chapter 20, verse eight to the same location.

And again, same thing is happening. They need water, they're complaining, Moses goes to God. Now this time

God says something different to him. He doesn't say strike the rock. He says, speak to the rock and the water will come.

Well, Moses doesn't listen. He's so frustrated with everything that's been happening and the people murmuring, complaining again, that he's angry and he just remembers what happens before he struck the rock.

Water does come, but God immediately says that you shouldn't have done that.

And because of this, you're not gonna be able to enter the promised land because you did not consider me holy.

Well, why was that such a big deal? Speak to the rock, strike to the rock.

Why did God consider that a big deal? We don't know until the New Testament is written hundreds of years later.

And we find in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse four, speaking of this time, it says, and all drank the same spiritual drink for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them and the rock was

Christ. Now you think about it. How many times was Jesus to be smitten, stricken to bring life just once?

And what do we now do to receive life from Christ? We simply speak to him. And you see it was beautiful typology of not only what was written, but what was happening in real time, hundreds and hundreds of years before Christ, all recorded in the

Bible. Amazing internal unity, certainly not just the writings of men.

No way they could have conspired all of this, people on different continents and different languages over hundreds of years to make this fit like this.

Also, we see Jesus Christ as the central character of the entire Bible through the

Old Testament prophecies that he fulfilled. We'll look more about that a little bit later.

And then the Bible also has all this embarrassing testimony. This is considered good evidence for the integrity of scripture.

Because if you were making up a story, all the stars would be impeccable.

You wouldn't write about their embarrassing moments if you're making it up. But what we find throughout scripture is extremely embarrassing things to some of the key people in scripture.

Cain murders Abel. Noah gets drunk. Abraham's lying about Sarah being his wife.

Judah gets involved in prostitution. It becomes a part of the lineage of Jesus.

Israel is constantly in rebellion. Samson is guilty of lust.

Eli, the high priest, his sons and Samuel's sons even were rebellious and not good stewards of the positions that they should have inherited.

David is found guilty of adultery and murder. The disciples are arguing about who is the greatest.

They're afraid at sea. Peter's rebuked two times. Peter denies Jesus. The disciples are sleeping at a critical moment.

They're fleeing when Jesus is captured. And after the crucifixion, it's women that are the first witnesses of the resurrection in a culture where women's testimony was not even permitted in a court of law.

You see, none of this points to somebody making up a pretty story. This is real life.

The stars had flaws and it's shown throughout the Bible.

So we see numerous things of internal unity. In the scriptures.

Now, obviously I'm not gonna take as much time on some of these as others. That one we spent quite a bit. We'll spend a lot on fulfilled prophecy.

Some of these in between, we're gonna go quite quickly on. Bibliographical evidence. This more points to the integrity of the modern day scriptures.

Some say, well, even if the Bible was the word of God and accurate hundreds and hundreds of years ago or thousands of years ago, it certainly isn't today.

They talk about the old telephone story. You start a story and by the time it gets back through many different links, it doesn't sound anything like it did originally.

So that's what some try to claim about the Bible. Bibliographical evidence is what deals with that.

Now, this is a chart. The way ancient writings are valued as far as their integrity is two things.

The time span between the earliest known copy from the original, the shorter that is, the more integrity we find.

And then the number of manuscript copies, portions or entire copies, the higher the number that is, the more it speaks to the integrity of the ancient writings.

Well, this is all of these writings at the top here by Caesar, Plato, and so on,

Aristotle. In universities, they're not even questioned, but look at the time span between our earliest copies of these writings and the original.

They're all over a thousand years. And you get to Homer's Iliad a little bit better, about 500 years.

And the number of copies that we have are minuscule. But then you get to the

New Testament and you see that we have copies that originate back as close as 25 years from the originals and over 24 ,000 manuscript portions or entire manuscripts that are available to us.

So the manuscript evidence, the bibliographical evidence for the Bible, for the

New Testament is way surpasses any other ancient writings. So if there's any ancient writing that we should look at and say, it's trustworthy, it's the

Bible. British paleographer and biblical and classical scholar,

Sir Frederick Kenyon has said this, the interval between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extent evidence become so small as to be in fact negligible.

And the last foundation of any doubt that the scriptures have come down substantially as they were written has now been removed.

Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.

And then in addition to that, we have all the writings of the early church fathers, Clement of Rome, Origen, Tertullian, Arrhenius, Ignatius, Polycarp, et cetera.

They quoted the New Testament over a million times in their writings. And scholars have noted that if all the manuscripts of the

New Testament were destroyed, but the writings of the church fathers were still available, we could reconstruct pretty much the entire

New Testament just by their writings alone. So we have wonderful evidence of what was originally in the scriptures from the early church father writings.

And they confirm that what we have today is accurate. What about the Old Testament?

Well, in our truth conferences, Josh McDowell brings a 700 year old

Torah scroll and rolls it out in front of us for people to actually be able to come up close and see it.

And he explains the rules that were involved by the scribal rules in copying the

Old Testament. And this scroll that he brings is from the 1400s.

So just before the printing press. And he shows these things that there and explains there were 4 ,000 scribal rules.

They were extremely meticulous, very careful and precise. And in the scroll, he lays out like the one you see on the screen.

It looks like something on some kind of ancient computer with all of the lines being exactly straight and parallel with one another.

It's amazing. And then he explains how they would number the words and the letters.

Think about this, like in a Torah scroll, it would take them about two years to copy a

Torah scroll. And they knew exactly how many words were in the Torah, the first five books of the

Bible. It's also called the Pentateuch. And they knew what word was the middle word.

And when they got all done, they had to count. And if that word was not the middle word, they had to throw the whole thing away and start over.

There's no book in history that by even close to having the care that the

Bibles had to make sure that the writings we have today are very accurate. It's been confirmed then by the

Dead Sea Scrolls. They were found in the

Middle East there back in the 1940s. And they date from 200

BC to 68 AD, about a thousand years older copies than the ones that were the earliest copies we had before that.

So it made it very interesting to compare the Dead Sea Scrolls with the copies that we had before because it's a thousand year gap between them.

So we could find out, well, did things change a lot in that thousand years? Well, an example was found in, for example, in Isaiah 53 of the 166 words in that chapter, only 17 letters were in question.

10 of these letters were simply a matter of spelling, a spelling of words change over a period of time.

Four more letters are minor stylistic changes. The remaining letters comprise the word light, which is added in verse 11 and does not affect the meaning.

It was a three -letter word for light. In other words, in one chapter of 166 words, there was only one word but three letters in question after a thousand years of transmission and copying, and it didn't change the meaning at all.

So that's a great example that confirms to us the Bible is very accurate, the ones we read today.

Okay, number three, archeology and history. Other documents that confirm the things that are recorded in the scriptures for us.

So this is just a picture of some of the archeological findings there near the ancient

Jericho. Nelson Gluck, who was a famous archeologist, said, as a matter of fact, however, it may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference.

Then James Mann of US News and World Report wrote, a wave of archeological discoveries is altering old ideas about the roots of Christianity and Judaism, and affirming the

Bible is more historically accurate than many scholars thought. Take, for example,

Luke's writings. In his writings, Luke's very detailed and was very precise in the way he wrote.

He mentions 32 countries. This is in the Book of Luke and Book of Acts combined. 32 countries, 54 cities, nine islands, numerous ports, names and titles of priests and political leaders, deities that certain cities worshiped, weather patterns, particular shipping lanes, laws and customs.

So that's a lot of detail he puts in that can be checked to see was this historically accurate.

Here's an example of how he added so many details like this. Now in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when

Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea and Herod was Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother

Philip was Tetrarch of the region of Aeteraia, and Trichonith...

I should have read that ahead of time. And Lysanias was Tetrarch of Abilene. Now see, all of these details could be checked to see if it's historically accurate.

In the high priesthood of Annas, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias in the wilderness, and he came into all the district around the

Jordan. He wouldn't have had to put all those details in there, but he did to really paint a picture of the historical surroundings of what he's about to write about about John the

Baptist's ministry. What archeology has shown, more than 80 details in the book of Acts alone have been confirmed by historical and archeological research.

As well as many details from the book of Luke. So archeology is continually confirming, not that the

Bible missed it and is historically inaccurate, but confirming rather that the

Bible is accurate historically, and not just a book of moral precepts.

Okay, then what about medical facts? So the Bible has a lot of medical facts that have now been, which were written, most of these 3 ,500 years ago.

And now modern medicine in the last 250 years or so has been confirming some of these things written in the ancient scriptures.

For instance, the book of Leviticus, we all have experienced going through it and thinking, oh my goodness, there's so much detail here about cleansing.

Because what they're really expressing is the danger of germs. And how they can be spread and how you had to quarantine people at times and wash meticulously things.

And well, that wasn't understood, even in modern medicine until,

I think a couple of hundred years ago or so. At one point, a doctor would work on a cadaver and then, or a dead body, and then go deliver a baby without even washing his hands.

But now we know, certainly in the age of COVID -19, we really know a lot about being careful about the passing of germs.

Now, Leviticus 17, 14, again, 3 ,500 years ago, the

Bible's made this statement, the life is in the blood. Well, as recently as in the life of George Washington, you can read this account that when he became ill at the end of his life, doctors did something three or four times the last three days or so of his life that was a common practice of that time.

They would bleed a person thinking the infection that was in their body was in the blood, so they needed to get rid of the blood.

Well, we know now that that doesn't work. Modern medicine has ruled that out as a treatment, but the

Bible knew it 3 ,500 years ago. And then, I love this one.

Leviticus 12, 3 says you're to circumcise every male child on the eighth day.

That's pretty specific. Well, more research about blood clotting was done in 1939 that we know that vitamin

K and prothrombin combines together as a major part of blood clotting.

Well, when a human being is born, their body is deficient in vitamin K, and it doesn't start producing vitamin

K for the first few days, but then once it starts, it does a really good job, and it peaks.

There's a day in a person's life that vitamin K is at its peak level, and then it kind of falls off and levels out for the rest of their life.

You know what day it peaks on? The best day of a person's life for blood clotting is the eighth day of their life.

Now, how does a skeptic explain the Bible picking that day to say every male child should go through this experience of circumcision, which blood clotting would be very important for, on the eighth day?

You see, this confirms to us, this book is not just a grouping of men's writing trying to make up some story, but this is the word of God.

And then what about scientific facts that are confirmed by modern science?

Well, the Bible tells us the Earth is a sphere, that it's round, Isaiah 40, verse 22, that the heavens or the universe are being stretched out.

There are actually 10 different places in the Old Testament that says that, and we know now the universe to be expanding.

Stars forming the Pleiades constellation are gravitationally bound and stars forming

Orion are not gravitationally bound. Job 38, 31 told us that, and modern science has confirmed that.

The Earth hangs on nothing, Job 26, 7 has been confirmed by modern science and that there are springs within the seas and oceans.

These are examples. Now, this one is really kind of neat. In Psalm 8, 8, we read the birds of the heavens and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths, the paths of the sea.

Well, this verse is what caused

Matthew Maury in the 1800s, who was an oceanographer to begin to contemplate what the

Bible was saying about the paths of the sea. And so he began, based on that verse of scripture written about 2 ,500 years ago, he began to explore the possibility that there were currents, oceans, and he found that there were.

And it changed, revolutionized shipping, drastically cutting travel times, all based on him looking into the

Bible. And he said this, the Bible is the authority for everything it touches, not just doctrine, but science and history as well.

And here's an example, there's this monument to him, you see over on the left side is in Richmond, Virginia.

He's called the Pathfinder of the Seas, all directed by the Bible. So the scientific facts in the

Bible that are confirming that it is accurate in the word of God. Now let's look at fulfilled prophecy.

This is a major important one here. 27 % of the verses in the

Bible somebody has said, I say that because I haven't checked it out to confirm it, and I haven't went through every verse myself, are predictive prophecy.

Here's an example, in Isaiah 44 and in 45, chapter 45, 200 years before the birth of Cyrus the

Great, it says, it is I who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and he will perform all my desire.

And he declares of Jerusalem, she will be built and of the temple, your foundation will be laid.

Well, Cyrus ends up fulfilling prophecy about his involvement in having

Jerusalem rebuilt in fulfillment of a 200 year old prophecy. Now that's an ancient prophecy.

Here's some other ancient prophecies about the destruction of ancient cities. Think cities, there were major cities of their day like Babylon and Petra and Tyre.

And some of them go into great detail. I wanna give you just one example. Again, all of these, you could go into way more detail.

We could spend the whole night on each one of these areas, but I'm just hitting the high points. But here's an example of Tyre.

Notice this prophecy. They will destroy the walls of Tyre. This is

Ezekiel 26 four and break down her towers and I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock.

Well, that's pretty specific. Well, what happened was in 500 and some odd years

BC, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed ancient Tyre, the mainland city.

The city of Tyre was kind of in two parts, the mainland city, but then there was an island about a half a mile off the coast that was also part of the city.

When Nebuchadnezzar was able to destroy the mainland and he broke down her towers and her walls fulfilling part of this and left it in shambles for a couple hundred years.

But the last part of this verse says, I will scrape her debris from her and make her a bare rock.

Well, what happened was in 332 BC, Alexander the Great shows up and he wants to conquer this island portion of the city of Tyre.

And so he, the way it was structured and fortified with no flight in, no helicopters or airplanes at that time, he and his naval fleets could not get too tired in order to conquer it.

So what he did was he told his soldiers, his foot soldiers, I want you to take all of that debris that's on the mainland portion of the city leftover that's just been laying there.

I want you to scrape it all into the waters and create a causeway to the island portion.

So they scraped it bare like a rock in order to get to the island portion fulfilling the scripture in an amazing way.

We even can look at that today. Here's an aerial view of Tyre. You can see the mainland, this is from 1934.

You can see the island portion out in the water and the causeway that was produced by Alexander the

Great over 2000 years ago, still there today. Here's a more modern picture.

They've even built on top of it out to the island portion. Amazing, amazing fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

And then here, let's look at the prophecies about the world empires. Daniel, in his writings 2 ,500 years ago, in Daniel two, seven and eight, if you put the information together, here's in essence what it says is that there will be a number of world empires, the

Babylonian world empire, the Medo -Persian world empire and the Greek world empire, all named specifically in the book of Daniel.

And then the Roman empire described, not named, but described as stronger than the other three.

And then that will extend all the way into the last days, be revived in the last days, a conglomeration of nations, a world empire that then

Jesus will come, strike the feet of the statue there and crumble the empires of men and establish the kingdom of God.

Well, it's pretty detailed prophetically written 2 ,500 years ago.

And what we have found since then is there was a Babylonian empire followed by the Medo -Persian empire, followed by the

Greek empire. And Daniel had specifically given information too that the first emperor of the

Greek empire would die at an early age and it would be divided into four parts. Well, Alexander the

Great was the first leader of the Greek empire. He died in his thirties and the

Greek empire was divided into four parts, exactly like the Bible had described. And then the

Roman empire came along, was stronger than all the rest. And now we are looking at the beginnings of a movement toward globalism and a new world order, a global society empire that point to the coming of Jesus.

So the Bible nailed it on these major events of world history, of world empires.

And then you have all the messianic prophecies, over 300 prophecies in the

Old Testament that were fulfilled in the New Testament by Jesus Christ hundreds of years later. And he'd be the seed of woman that he would die on a cross, he would teach in parables, he'd be born in Bethlehem and born of a virgin that he would ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, be sold for 30 pieces of silver.

They would gamble over his garments as he's on the cross. All these specific and many, many, many others.

Well, in his book, Science Speaks, years ago,

Dr. Peter Stoner estimated the probability of one person fulfilling various Old Testament messianic prophecies.

And they were trying to be very conservative in this. And when they multiplied together the probabilities, they found that there would be a one in 10 to the 28th power chance of someone fulfilling just eight of these messianic prophecies.

And I've put on the screen, this is what that number looks like. One in that number chance of fulfilling just eight.

And Jesus fulfilled over 300 messianic prophecies, showing both the prophecies to be amazing, and then certainly confirming that Jesus is the

Christ. Now we get into something, I guess of everything I talked to you about tonight. If you end up remembering one thing that you can talk to people about when they say, okay, tell me why you believe the

Bible is the word of God. And you're gonna give them some sort of evidence that's something that's not subjective, like, well, it works for me, or just because I believe it.

But something that is more objective, evidential, this would be the one

I think you should remember to tell people. The Bible prophesied in numerous places, the

Jewish people would be scattered from the land of Israel, and then regathered in the last days to the land of Israel.

Here's some examples, and I'm not gonna give them all to you for sake of time, but here's a few examples. Ezekiel 36, 24, for I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.

Isaiah 11, 11 and 12, then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again recover the second time with his hand the remnant of his people who will remain from Assyria, Egypt, Pathos, Cush, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and from the islands of the sea, and he will lift up a standard for the nations and assemble the banished ones of Israel and will gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

Ezekiel 38, eight, this is really referencing, written to the lands that will attack

Israel in the last days, but notice what he says to them. After many days, you will be summoned.

In the latter years, you will come up into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste, but its people were brought out from the nations and they are living securely, all of them.

And then in Ezekiel 38, 25 and 26, thus says the Lord God, when I gather the house of Israel from the peoples among whom they are scattered and will manifest my holiness in them in the sight of the nations, they will live in their land, which

I gave to my servant Jacob. They will live in it securely and they will build houses, plant vineyards, and live securely when

I execute judgments upon all who scorn them round about them. Then they will know that I am the

Lord, their God. And then this one I put in because I think this is so interesting. You're gonna recognize this passage.

For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.

Now, we've all heard that passage and I think it's okay to personalize it and find great comfort in that.

But let me read the next verse to you and see who he was writing to and what he was specifically promising.

He says in verse 14, the next verse, I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I've driven you, declares the

Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile. So this wonderful passage of promise is really specifically given to the

Jewish people that God's saying he's gonna bring them back into the land. He has a future for them and a hope for them.

Well, so what's happened in the last 100 years or so? When the late 1800s, a movement called

Zionism began. Theodor Herzl had a

Zionist conference in Europe in the late 1800s, 1897, I believe it was, that God put a vision in his heart and a movement began.

And a thing called aliyah, which in Hebrew means to come back or to return.

And that began to be the cry of Jewish people and a vision began to come in their hearts.

And some Jews began to come back to Israel, but it was very difficult because it was under the control of the

Ottoman Empire, a Muslim empire. And then World War I happened. We find that both world wars really were significant for God fulfilling these prophecies about Israel.

So in World War I, the British Army and British General Allenby entered

Jerusalem on foot out of respect for the holiness of the city on December 11th, 1917, and they conquered the

Ottoman Empire. And so all of a sudden, Israel and Jerusalem are no longer under Muslim control, which they had been interestingly enough for exactly 400 years or eight

Jubilee periods from 1517 to 1917. And in that same fall of 1917, the

Balfour Declaration was written, which said His Majesty's government, speaking of the

British government, view with favor the establishment and palace national home for the

Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.

Stuff started really happening to make a way for Jews to go back. After World War I, they gathered the winning countries of the war.

The allied nations met in San Remo, Italy and formed this resolution, 1920.

Notice this mandate for Palestine, the British mandate. So the

British government was gonna be overseeing this. And if you look at the bottom of the screen, it says this was a

Jewish homeland, national home. So this whole land area was designated for the

Jews. I highlighted it here in yellow so you can see how large it is. And here, this is in comparison to ancient

Israel and modern Israel. So they really gave them way more land originally.

But by 1922, there was disputes between the British and the French. And so they redistributed the land.

And the League of Nations ratified this in July of 1922 to make all of ancient

Israel, and I want you to notice this because not just a portion of it was given to the Jews in 1922 by a vote of the nations of the world.

All of it was given to the Jewish people. Well, then the

Jews were really coming back in greater numbers at that point. But then World War II happens and the horrors of the

Holocaust and over 6 million Jews were killed. But at the end of that, the

United Nations newly formed, ratified Resolution 181, which again, now they didn't give

Israel all of the land this time, which they should have because they weren't really, didn't have the authority to undo what the

League of Nations had done. But they still designated a specific homeland for Jewish people to come.

And now with the Holocaust in Europe and everything, they came back in greater numbers than ever. And the amazing thing happened in 1948, fulfilling

Isaiah 66, eight. Can a land be born in a day?

Can a nation be brought forth all at once? As soon as Zion prevailed, she also brought forth her sons.

And on May 14th, that scripture was fulfilled and Israel became a nation. They continued to come from all over the world and fulfilling 2 ,500 year old prophecies of scripture.

In the late 1980s, many of you will remember President Reagan said in front of the whole world,

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. And he did. And the Soviet Union crumbled pretty much overnight.

What the world didn't know though, was God was fulfilling his promise to the Jewish people because in the next, as a result of that happening in the next five years or so, about a million

Jews who were stuck behind the Iron Curtain left and traveled to Israel to become citizens in Israel.

And the Jewish population continued to grow. People have continued to come from all over the world in the

United States, Europe, it's happening every year, more and more Jews coming.

Look at this graph, which kind of, this just shows you, this is just so amazing.

The Bible predicting all this 2 ,500 years ago, and here it is. This is what's happened even in our lifetime.

In 1920, 5 .4 % of the world's 14 .2 million

Jews lived in Israel, about 76 ,000 of them. And almost all of them had entered since 1880.

By 2019, 46 .5 % of the world's 14 .7

million Jews lived in Israel, 6 .7, almost 6 .8

million, and it is 6 .8, over 6 .8 million as of this year, Jews live now in Israel.

Look at those numbers. The reason I put the percentages, I think that's what really confirms it.

If it was just greater numbers, we'd just say, well, yeah, that's just a population increase. But the percentage of Jews in the world, and the reason it went from 14 .2

only to 14 .7 is because 6 million got killed in the Holocaust. So it spiked up to 16 .7

million, I believe, and then went down to about 11 million, and now it's back up to 14 .7.

But now 46 .5 % live in Israel. We're watching

Bible prophecy every day happening, and there's so many examples. I do a whole seminar on this and show just some amazing detail in what's happening.

Well, the Bible also prophesied, and for sake of time, I'm just gonna show you these scriptures right here that basically just say, in Ezekiel 36, the land's gonna blossom.

God's going to make the land fruitful again as the people come back. Well, in 1867,

Mark Twain went there, and his book, Innocence Abroad, he wrote this about ancient

Israel. He said, it's a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land, a silent, mournful expanse.

You couldn't hardly find humans around. It was just a desolate land, but God said it's gonna blossom.

Well, what's happened since he wrote that? More than 400 million trees have been planted. The rains have returned, and world -class irrigation systems have been put into place.

It's now a fruit -exporting nation and one of the leading nations in the world in technology, second only behind the

United States in technology, and that leads to another thing.

So the land has blossomed, as the Bible said, 2 ,500 years ago, and then look at these prophecies, 3 ,500 years old,

Genesis 12, two and three. I, God, speaking to Abraham, I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing, and all peoples on the earth will be blessed through you.

Chapter 22, and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed.

Chapter 26, and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed.

Chapter 28, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.

God made a point, didn't he, that the whole world's gonna be blessed through the Jewish people.

Well, we look at this thing called Nobel Prizes, and the slogan attached to it is for the greatest benefit to mankind.

That means these people bless the nations. Well, as of 2017, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to 892 individuals, of whom 201, or 22 .5

% were Jews, although the total Jewish population comprises less than 0 .2

% of the world's population. This means the percentage of Jewish Nobel Laureates is at least 112 .5

times, or 11 ,250 % above average.

Look at that. They bless the nation. One people group that happens to be the one people group

God said in the Bible 3 ,500 years ago, they will bless the nations, and they certainly are blessing the nations.

This country that's not yet 70 years old, it's just now 70 years old, has contributed so much.

I do a whole seminar on this, of the things that is happening in Israel, medical breakthroughs, scientific breakthroughs, agricultural breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs, security and defense breakthroughs.

Israel is leading the world in so many of these areas, cell phones, flash drives, a lot to do with modern medical devices are being developed in Israel.

They're blessing the nations. Then God also said, this passage goes on to say that they will dwell safely therein.

He's gonna protect them and keep them. This map shows an example of how Israel's there, see in the little bitty speck of green, that's

Israel, and all of those nations in kind of reddish pink are hostile toward Israel.

And they're bordered by 22 hostile Arab Islamic nations that are 640 times her size and 65 times her population.

And yet they've survived six, more than six defensive wars since 1947, and just miraculous things happening.

There's a whole movie series against all odds about this and showing, for instance, when they were attacked the day after they became a nation in May of 1948, their army had not a single cannon or tank.

Their air force consisted of nine obsolete planes. They had 60 trained soldiers, only 18 ,900 of them were mobilized and armed and prepared for war.

And yet as these surrounding nations attacked them, they miraculously won as they have every time they've been attacked by the grace and mercy of God.

The Hebrew language has been restored and so many other things happening.

I'm trying to go quickly here to, I know we're coming to the end of our time. The city of Jerusalem also,

Zechariah chapter 12 said, and just look at the last sentence for sake of time there, all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.

Against one city, God specifically said, the city of Jerusalem, not the biggest city in the world, not the most significant for commerce or in so many different ways, you would never pick that city as the attention of the world but the

Bible said 2 ,500 years ago, it will be the most contentious place on the earth in the last days.

Well, what do we see today? We see so many evidences of this that there is no place on earth that there's more contention over than the city of Jerusalem.

And then it's continuing to gain more and more attention and more controversy.

The U .S. opens its embassy in Jerusalem in May of 2018.

Other nations, they acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in that way. And other nations, some followed suit and others were extremely hostile about this.

Contrasting that, this is the Palestinian flag flying in front of the United Nations building in New York since 2015.

And the Palestinians are pushing for statehood and they've already stated when we get statehood and the

UN's real close to acknowledging their statehood, they've said, when that happens,

Jerusalem will be our capital. And the leaders of Israel have said, not gonna happen and the world's watching that development as well.

And this next one is really kind of chilling. This is Islamic cleric,

Saqwa al -Haggasi in May of 2000, Egypt, and they were having a big celebration regarding that.

And he's speaking before a massive crowd that night and he makes these statements.

We can see how the dream of the Islamic caliphate is being realized.

Our capital shall not be Cairo, Mecca or Medina. It shall be

Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem is our goal. We shall pray in Jerusalem or else we shall die as martyrs on its threshold.

And then he led that massive crowd in this chant over and over again. Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem.

Millions of martyrs march toward Jerusalem. Now, what are the chances of a book picking one city 2 ,500 years ago and indicating the nations of the world will eventually gather around it.

It'll be the focus of world attention in the last days. And clearly that is the city.

But the only chances of that happening is if the book that we're talking about is not just the book for men, but is the writings of God.

Well, these are neat things too, but I'm gonna have to just move on. Fulfill Prophecy about 666 and how that fits with the universal product code.

Prophecies about oil in Israel and based on the land and how it was divided and the promises to the different tribes of Israel.

And there's oil been found in Israel today by an oil company based on those prophecies in scripture.

The last two I'm gonna cover real quickly. The Bible also proves to be the word of God by the changed lives of millions and millions of people who accept this message and the

Messiah, the Christ Jesus of the Bible. Look at China, for example, 4 million believers in 1949.

Now over 160 million believe to be over 250 million by 2030, the way the church is growing, even under persecution.

Africa, 9 million Christians in 1900, but 380 million by 2000.

God's doing miraculous things. As people read the Bible, accept this message, their lives are changed and many give their life for this faith.

So it's not easy, but it's powerful and proves there's something real to it.

Even Muslims are coming to know Christ in unprecedented numbers. As the Bible had said in the last days, he was gonna pour out his spirit on all people.

Our sons and daughters would prophesy and old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions.

Well, Muslims are seeing visions and having dreams. There's a movie called More Than Dreams about the amazing phenomenon of Jesus appearing to Muslims in dreams and many are coming to know

Christ today. It's likely that there are more Christians now in Muslim coming to Christ in Iran of all places than anywhere else in the world.

They believe there's over a million Christians in Iran now. God's doing something amazing.

Even Jews are now beginning to come in unprecedented numbers to come to know the

Messiah. Joel Rosenberg says that since Yom Kippur of 2014, millions of Jews have begun searching for the

Messiah, for the atonement of their sins. A website called I Met Messiah, I think it's also called

One for Israel, something like that. The same, these testimonies of Jewish professors, professionals meeting the

Messiah has been established and getting tremendous amount of hits. There's a hunger in the hearts of many

Jewish people and they're coming to know Jesus as Messiah. Had to skip another point there.

And then finally, the indestructibility and distribution of the Bible. For years, many have tried to destroy the

Bible, emperors and nations like Diocletian, the

Roman emperor just before Constantine. He made extreme rulings to stamp out the

Bible, demanding that it be burned. And he boasted, I've completely exterminated the

Christian writings from the face of the earth. And yet the next ruler, Constantine, became a

Christian and requested that copies of the scripture be made for all the churches. Voltaire, the

French infidel in the 1700s, he tried to destroy the

Bible. He boldly made the prediction that within 100 years, the Bible and Christianity would have been swept from existence into oblivion.

But what ended up happening was within 100 years, the very printing press that he had used to print his infidel literature was being used to print copies of the

Bible. And the very house in which he lived was literally stacked with Bibles prepared by the

Geneva Bible Society. There's been so many threats and attacks, both intellectually and through nations and other religions against the

Bible, and yet it stood. Even as of today, the Bible's banned in 52 different countries, and yet the distribution is unprecedented.

Over 4 million Bibles portions distributed each year by United States Bible societies.

The Gideons distributed a billion Bibles in New Testaments from 1908 to 2001, their second billion then by 2015, and now averaging a million every four days distribution of Bible in New Testaments.

And many other organizations are involved in Bible translations. The Bible or portions of the

Bible is now translated over 2 ,200 languages. And there's a movement called

Vision 2025 to have the Bible in all languages of the world in the next few years.

And they're working diligently for that. There's nothing like it. There's no book like it.

All of these areas, including it's the most read book in the world every year.

And all of this points to the Bible is the word of God. So let me summarize for you.

Internal unity, bibliographical evidence, archeological evidence, medical facts in the

Bible, scientific facts in the Bible, fulfilled prophecy of various types, changed lives, and the indestructibility and distribution of the

Bible. These are eight different areas. You can memorize these areas and know in your heart what you would say to people.

You see, if somebody were to ask me, and it's not because I'm that smart or anything, I've just taken time to study this and memorize these points.

If somebody were to say to me, well, why do you believe the Bible is the word of God? I could list all eight of those and give them some details about each one and help them see there's reasons why we

Christians believe the Bible is the word of God. And I hope that you'll take the time to do that sort of thing as well.

So, and as we mentioned earlier, this information's available in my book, Faith and Reason Made Simple.

And then we've made it available in eight half -hour sessions on flash drive,

DVD with student manuals and teachers manual, churches and youth groups and some homeschool groups are using this material currently.

And it's aired on the Christian Television Network across the country.

And it's available on our website at Local Church Apologetics, including the memorization cards that I mentioned earlier.

On the screen now is the ones for the six scientific flaws of the theory of evolution, but there's also a memorization cards for the material we covered tonight.

So go to our website, localchurchapologetics .org. If you wanna know more about this and you wanna get the memorization cards or if you're interested in any of the material and using it in whatever your circumstances might be.

And it's not unusual for me to go long. So I apologize, I tried to go quickly, but I know that I went kind of long, but I would turn it back over to you at this time,

Terry. And thank you all for letting me be with you tonight. Yeah, it was a little bit long, but it was really, really good information.

So we appreciate that. And just one more time, I wanted to go ahead and show your video with the 60 second video.

So just to remind everybody. Do you want to learn how to better defend your faith in the midst of a skeptical culture?

Then consider the faith and reason made simple apologetics video series with author, speaker, and truth conference coordinator,

Rick McGue. Now available on DVD or flash drive. During these eight half hour sessions, you will learn how to defend the

Christian faith in a skeptical culture. How science and faith confirm each other. Six scientific flaws within the theory of evolution.

Eight levels of evidence of a creator. Eight areas of evidence confirming that the Bible is the word of God and evidence confirming that Jesus Christ is who the

Bible says he is. This new video series has been filmed and produced with local churches and Christian families in mind.

With teacher's manuals, student manuals, and companion books all available. The faith and reason made simple video series is ideal for Bible studies,

Sunday school classes, small group curriculum, or for use within the home. To purchase or for more information, visit localchurchapologetics .org.

Okay, so there we go. I just want to quick say, Terry, our speakers are so gracious to come.

They come for free. I mean, I'm paying for the

Zoom. So thank you very much, Pastor Rick, for those 90 minutes.

It was very informative. And if you want to, I think

I have an email for Pastor Rick's ministry. If anybody wants to sign up or get more information, just send

Creation Fellowship's auntie an email, and I will pass that information on to you. Back to you, Terry.

Okay. All right, well, we just want, we're gonna go ahead and cancel, I mean, not cancel, but we're gonna go ahead and end our live stream on Facebook, and then also end the recording for YouTube.

So thank you for joining us if you're out there watching. And also thank you for.