Apologetics Session 8 - The Bible - Part 4

Let's go to the Lord in prayer right now Father there's so many things on our hearts and minds and we first all want to lift up your holy name father

You are a great and a wonderful God father full of truth and mercy and righteousness and Lord you are

Just incredible with what you have created and how you sustain life and create life and father we want to just want to sit before you and learn some things about what you have done throughout history and Lord with that father.

We also were bring some some very much needed prayers to you father We think of this family who has lost their mother for this young girl

Rachel who has lost her mother and Also for the husband John who's lost his wife father.

We pray for that family father. Please be with them. Please comfort them Lord Lord we lift up Bob Nichols and his family father as they're trying to close on a house and Sell a house and get everything straightened out with every pray that you'd be with them and especially because Sue's supposed to have an operation

The same day as all this kind of goes down. So we pray for Sue and we pray for Bob Lord Please help them and if they need any help father, maybe maybe we're willing to jump in If that's needed we thank you for the evangelistic outreach on Thursday and we pray for all the folks who will be part of that we're so grateful for that crew and we'll pray father that Lord your spirit will move among them father and touch many hearts and Also for Good Friday service father.

We're so thankful for that that we can father remember your great sacrifice and then the

Easter morning sunrise service and then Easter services I'm just very grateful father that you're moving in the hearts of so many people in so many ways father and Lord that you would do the same for our group tonight father.

We pray in Jesus name. Amen Okay, so I'll stand up here for a second, but I'll get tired

Yeah So it's very exciting right what what Matt went over was

Thrilling the the fact that not only the Lord created his word and he gave us the evidence of the manuscript

Over the years that that Matt had compiled all this information for us to show us how the textual

Basis for our Bible has been preserved and maintained A Discussion about how the translations were made and we can know and I actually don't have a

Bible with me But that the Bible we have in our hand was actually what was written and the authors

You know knew in their minds they wrote down what they wanted to write down they were not trying to make up stories they were trying to record events as they happen and as God leaded them to and As Matt said as well that all of the scripture was

God -breathed that it was inspired by by the Holy Spirit himself And he was the author using

You know men as the instruments And it was just extremely exciting and then you know comparing the other religions the other textual ancient manuscripts and ancient documents

So we're there right now So we know the Bible was written and it has been captured and what was written is in our hands but the question is

Was what was written true? Matt actually didn't try to answer that question Is what the

Bible says true now? That's very important. We've already talked about if there's truth in the world at all.

Can we determine if there's truth at all? Now we're going to see What truth we can learn about the

Bible so we're going to turn to archaeology tonight Believe it or not, and I think we need to ask ourselves some questions about the

Bible is it a collection of Poetry there's certainly some poetry in it.

Is it a collection of Legends and mythical writings The answer to that is no

The Bible was written as a historical document With an active God in the lives of people throughout history and that is so important I'm going to sit down and read some of the things

I have here in a second But you need to realize that if you're talking about historical events and The Bible it's extremely important that we understand that the

Bible Maintains a truthful record of the historical events that it records

Now, what do we say about other religions? Matt last week talked about the

Book of Mormon Well, the Book of Mormon also tries to have a description of historical events and it does

It talks about this group of people moving from the Middle East into the South Americas and there's wars in there there's talk is about you know, what kind of lifestyle they had how the

Incas and the American Indians came out of that groups and Well, there's no archaeological or DNA evidence

That corroborates those statements There's talks about elephants being over in South America There's talks about tools being used steel tools before steel was invented

Many many many mistakes and no corroborative archaeological evidence

That's a problem if you're writing a book that's supposed to be recording historical events as God works in them

That's problem other religions. Let's say the Eastern religions Aren't necessarily that concerned with historical events why a lot of the

Eastern religions write in Proverbs There are very hypothetical questions

Theoretical questions it is more poetic. It is mythological and legendary, but it's more like If a person is put in this situation

What should that person morally do and those are the kind of questions that Eastern religions answer?

But there's not historical basis in it and I have a real issue with that because I want to know that there's an active

God who cares about human history and who's active in human history and if he is so we have the book that is recorded what he's done throughout the ages a book that just says okay, you know, here's a hypothetical story and You know if this person is going to go war against this nation

You know, what is the moral implications of those things? It's almost like reading a fictional novel Well, the

Bible isn't like that So the panachans the Bhagavad Gita Some of the other documents, you know writings of Confucius and whatnot very proverbial and things but not historically based with an active

God So let's look into what the Bible says about itself and see if we can discern if the

Bible accurately recorded things in history Hopeful us with us

So as I said before it's not a collection of mythical writings and it is not to be interpreted as If the historical content of the

Bible cannot be trusted the Bible itself cannot be trusted Because it was written as a document that recorded events that we are to believe

Genesis was a true record of what happened when God created the world and worked among the nations at the beginning of his creation

So how in the world are we going to tell? if events 3 ,000 and some years ago were actually true

We are going to turn to archaeology to tell us whether the Bible recorded events as true or not and We do have some issues with archaeology

We need to keep in mind that archaeology is I'm gonna say it's an imperfect science

When an archaeologist discovers things They always have a presupposition or they look through the lens of Kind of the mindset they have at the time for instance

Well first archaeology isn't a repeatable scientific method, right

Events in history happen once in time and they are not repeated So if a person finds a piece of pottery at one site

That was it there's no possibility of that piece of pottery ever being created again That person has to dig up that piece interpret it for what it is and the best one the best explanation for the data that is collected is

Often the way the archaeologist makes a determination or a conclusion So but there's not a repeatable test like we think of in our scientific method

So archaeology you have to know that going in that we're going to be interpreting Pieces of evidence that are gathered at one point in time now secondly archaeology

Is definitely going to be fragmentary meaning that you are not going to define or discover

Every single thing that happened in a city or a town or a population

When you dig through and sift through the rubble you're going to find bits and pieces and fragments

Sometimes you're going to find you know Incredible things that you didn't expect to find things that are huge and have a lot of information on it but again, you still have to interpret the data and It's interesting because you know while we were while I was putting this together

Archaeology really isn't as mature as we think it is We think of it as oh, you know

Archaeology has been around since the beginning of time since you know, we're always digging up stuff. Well, not really the statement here

It says it has been estimated that only about 3 % of the 5 ,000 sites surveyed in Palestine or of the 10 ,000 sites

In ancient places in adjacent lands have been systematically examined at this point and Even that statement the 3 % we're talking about that has really only blown up and Blossom since about 1850

It really has not been a pursued science until that time So the people living before 1850

Really didn't have a lot of Discoveries and things they had some ancient writings and they knew about certain things

But Archaeology has really been a new science to say over the last, you know, hundred and seventy hundred

Hundred and eighty years or so Which is kind of a mind -blowing to me and what they're discovering every day is

Also mind -blowing like while I was what I was going to say is when I started this, you know Rich started sending me stuff which was very current and I did not include it in here

Ivan sent me stuff which was like very current and I did include a link to that at the end

But there are discoveries all the time that are proving out more and more things that we were hoping to be true or maybe not

But very interesting that this the science has taken off in these last several years now

You have to be honest with yourself. I Talked about presuppositions just a second ago if you're examining evidence and You want it to say a certain thing?

That's that's bad science. That's that's that that that doesn't work. And if you are a

Biblical apologist and an archaeologist you need to be honest with the data When you see the data and you think it might contradict something

What you do in that case is you write down the results you write down the data that was presented and you say, okay

It looks like this happened But it's possible something later on down the line in archaeology might prove that that statement might not be true

So there's a lot of that that happens in archaeology Where there are things that are discovered that are newer that gives a much clearer picture at times so Saying that I'm going to read this paragraph here.

It says in 1800s. There were many skeptics About the truth of the Bible because archaeology hadn't taken off at that point people thought

You know the Bible talks about this great city Nineveh And there's there's books of the

Bible that are dedicated to talk about Nineveh Nahum and Jonah certainly one but you know and They're like well this this city didn't even exist.

How can we trust the Bible? some thought that the Hittites never existed

Because they didn't have any evidence of the Hittites and so they said well the Bible must be wrong

How can we trust the Bible? Well, if you google your Hittites right now, you're gonna find reams of information about the

Hittites But in the early 1800s, that wasn't the case So moving into the 19th century and beyond which is the 1800s

A door of information as I said was uncovered That opened up civilizations that had long been under the dirt

You know Greece we know pretty well Because there's a lot of documentation from Greece, but civilizations like Babylon, Egypt, Assyria the

Hittites other cultures You know came to life again the Philistines Persia and It was a tremendous boon and it still is a tremendous boon of information just fantastic So with those things said let's push on and most of the work we're going to do tonight is going to be in the

Old Testament The reason is is because the New Testament is much more

I'll say contemporary It's still ancient history, but the documentation we have from the Roman and Greek world

Really proves out most of the events and the cities and places So those things are not in question as much as the things in the

Old Testament. So let's talk about these Hittites Who are these Hittites? Okay, well, they're mentioned in Genesis 11 and Genesis 15

But as I said in the 1800s everyone thought these people don't exist. Hmm.

We haven't found a thing well in 1862 and I'm not going to read all of this, but there was a

Frenchman George Perrault who found a tablet with a lengthy

Hieroglyphic Inscription to it, but they didn't know how to interpret it and they didn't see these types of hieroglyphics before so they were like well

We're not sure what this is. So they just kind of tabled it and this was found in Turkey So if you get a pic an idea of where Turkey is, you know, it's going to be up and then to the left of Israel So then later on we have some

Americans in 1870 Strolling through Hammath and they noticed stones That had been reported and they found some other stones and These discoveries were 200 kilometers north of Aleppo now

Aleppo is a city in Syria And so now you're talking if I'm looking at it myself, so Turkey's over here a series up here and it's north

Okay, so we're talking a pretty big expanse, but the same kind of hieroglyphics were on the same tablets here so then in 1876

Excavations at Carchemish now, that's a hundred miles northeast of Aleppo. So now we have here here and here

So we have a big expanse of territory now and it still had these inscriptions on it

There was an archaeological convention Society for the biblical archaeology in London and a scholar named

Archibald Henry Sayce Announced his conviction despite the critics that the monuments were all attributed to the biblical

Hittites meaning that not only they existed, but their Empire was big very big

Really the size of the Assyrian Empire or the Roman Empire almost So it's like oh gosh, you know, we didn't we didn't hear about these folks before but now we think that well says the next year

The new edition edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published That's not a religious document folks.

That's a historical document and Under the heading of Hittites there were two pages describing the discovery of this civilization and then in 1884

An Irish missionary published a book called the Empire of the Hittites Which he presented to a massive scholar scholarly evidence that defied resistance

There was no question that these folks existed and there was a civilization behind them. There were a lot of skeptics folks but the

Bible was right and Everyone knows that the Bible is right now because like I said if you google the

Hittites You're gonna get to see everything that we we believe we know about them now, and I'm sure we're gonna find out more as we go

Now what about Nineveh? I Didn't write down a lot about Nineveh But again, this was a dig in the 1800s and Layered Austin Henry found outlines of a royal palace

He was unearthing huge slabs of alabaster. I can imagine like digging in these places and finding these huge things a palace

Depicting the power of the Assyrian king and the groveling submission of his enemies within three or four years

Layered had unearthed the civilization of ancient Assyria until then nothing more than a name mentioned in the pages of the

Bible and Had filled the British Museum with sculpture and writing from the birthplace of urban civilization the

Assyrians in 1849 his accounts of his excavations

Nineveh and its ravine and its remains Became an immediate bestseller as the whole world is mesmerized by these discoveries and how immense and Beautiful and ornate these these cities were that these people were unearthing just imagine

But again Nineveh a lot of people doubted that it ever existed The Bible was right again

Now how about that flood a lot of questions about that flood, right well

It's interesting that Most of the skeptics who would say they're well, you know this biblical account of a worldwide flood, you know

It just couldn't be You know this miracle They're the same people that would say we've had how many ice ages over the last millions and millions of years

Where ice covered the earth or ice covered most of the earth and that's that's way they explain you know some of the evidence of You know the fact that you know, there's some

You know crustaceans on the top of mountains and things like that Well, what about the flood do we have good historical evidence

That would tell us that there was a worldwide flood Okay. Well, why do

I have the Assyrians up here? The Assyrians have a story very very similar to the biblical account

And it's called the story of Gilgamesh, you know, I'm gonna give you a good epic of Gilgamesh The story is about a world drowned by a flood and a man who builds a boat and a dove released in search of dry land

Does that ring a bell with anybody? Yeah So this archaeologist he discovered he was realized he was looking at a version of Noah's Ark But the book was not

Genesis. It was the epic of Gilgamesh Written in the damn clay and is actually

The the date of it was 1800 BC, which is very very old This damn clay document they found

So What what's in this epic of Gilgamesh? Well, this is a statue of King Gilgamesh I think

I have his name, right? I don't think it's different from the story I think his name is Gilgamesh and you see him holding an animal here as opposed to I think there's supposed to be a snake

Down here. And so well animals were taken aboard this this vessel that he built

So that everything would be over the world would be able to be replenished again Again, very similar, right?

Let me read part of the story here It says table 11 of Gilgamesh says the gods were displeased with humans a god ia warns this guy

Babylonian Noah to build a square ship with pitch inside and out and to bring animals and the family aboard a

Week -long deluge ensues all of humanity is killed in the flood except the inhabitants of the boat

The boat came to rest on Mount Nyser In Kurdistan the water subsided and dry land emerged the last of three birds sent out did not return

Sounds for me. There's differences, right? There's definitely differences, but think about that for a second

Okay. What did the Babylonians say about a worldwide flood? They have an epic called our taxes

A Tough words folks and a similar sounding story as the Bible and of Gilgamesh Humans have displeased the gods causing alienation a god and key warns

Artaxas Hassus of the coming flood the gods instruct him to how to survive

He builds a boat gathers the animals and birds onto it. All mankind is destroyed except for Artaxas who makes an offering to the gods to restore

Divine human relationships and here's the some of the tablets they found on that very similar again

Why do these stories exist? Okay, what about other cultures and I didn't dig into all of these to say exactly what they recorded

But how many civilizations have recorded a worldwide flood story?

27 I think I have two dozen if you want to throw an extra three in there and go right ahead

But in particular these include Chinese Jewish Greek Mexican Hawaiian Babylonian Sumerian and Algonquin Indian Why do all these accounts exist was there a worldwide flood and Which one is true?

That's a good question for us So what did these extensive stories of the flood tell us?

These stories have many similar points and they also have many deviations, but what can we discern? Are there good reasons to believe that a

Genesis flood account is the original and that the other versions are? exaggerations and elaborations full of You know hyperbole of the story so Let's look at this for a second.

I Didn't write down all the points but only in Genesis is the year of the flood given as we know that it

It was related to Noah's age in the age of Methuselah back in Genesis and it records exactly when it happened according to the ages of these people it talks about how long

Noah took to to build the ark and Exactly who was on the ark for instance

In This story Artahasis Yeah, it seems to be the only one on the boat now

I didn't read that epic but there needs to be some continuity to the story for this to make sense

So, let's see how Genesis matches up with These other stories. Let's talk about the

Babylonian ship a cubicle ship I couldn't save anyone

It wouldn't have been seaworthy and tests have been done with a square ship

Tests have also been done on the parameters that we see in Genesis where I don't have the number of cubits long and cubits wide but people doubted for years that they that this ship type and would have been seaworthy and People made ships like this and put them out there in rough waters to see what would happen and it was incredibly stable

A square ship doesn't cut it and it would not have been able to to To exist in rough waters and if it had been raining long enough for a worldwide flood, there'd be some rough waters

Now what about the length of the rainfall the pagan accounts Don't really have enough time for a worldwide flood seven days.

We see seven days of rain And we're not flood. We see we definitely see floods, but they're very localized right like lumbered in floods all the time

When when a bunch of rain comes anybody lives in Lumberton, we know that but seven days of rain isn't enough the biblical

Account of the rainfall is much more reasonable To believe that that much water came and flooded the earth in addition, of course in the biblical account

It talks about things opening up from the deep and also from above as well. So the biblical account gives

The amount of water that would be reasonable for a worldwide flood Now beyond a miracle, which is not stated

In The accounts of some of the pagan ones For instance the the one

I read first the Assyrian account said the time for the waters to withdraw was a day In the

Babylonian account, I guess it was it's like could that possibly happen in one day? Well, the how long did it take jet in Genesis?

How long did it take the waters to recede? Mm -hmm. It was like it was yeah, I think it was that or maybe even more than that.

Yeah, it was a long time Which which makes sense? And it also makes sense

That because of the water covering the earth and receding like that that we do have Natural formations that we see, you know out west and in other places where we see these tremendous canyons and you know things

So the biblical account again holds true with a statement of reasonableness

Now what about the people itself? The statements about the hero of the story also different differ giving credence to the biblical account because in the pagan stories

They exalt the hero and give him The gift of immortality. So this is like a legend a mythical hero

This guy, you know Gilgamesh or artists artists passus they are granted you know this measure of Eternal life and immortality just because they behave themselves during this flood

But in the biblical account, it doesn't exalt Noah as a super person it says that he did find favor with God, but the story of that account also moves into Noah's sin and Portrays him very much as a human being

Faithful to God in many ways, but also a man who stumbled in many ways just like we would

So given these things which account? Would be the original account of the flood and the more reasonable account which accounts would be hyperbole and Exaggeration You know the the evidence really all points to the biblical record

But the fact that all of these other records exist Also gives credence to the fact that a worldwide flood did happen

Except that you know cultures kind of took it and expanded it and made into a mythical legend I did not record the nations that had a

Genesis story There are also Genesis creation accounts that are very similar across peoples again

There's a few of them, and it's very similar to what I just said there's historical things

That are about places times and events that we see in the Bible and in the other stories.

It's more of You know very poetic very exaggerative language

You know it would read more like a Fictional novel with a lot of swelling words where the biblical accounts more like this happened this happened this happened this happened which

Very much again points to the Genesis account Being the more historical one and the other ones being more stories that people have exaggerated over the years

So that's a little bit about the flood now What about all of the cities events places that we see in the

Old Testament We would hope to find them, and if we didn't find them we may think well gosh

You know we heard about this war we heard about this happening Why don't we see it okay?

Let's see what some of the things we found I'm not going to read this one. This is King Shishak now. That's that's actually a pharaoh and You can see you can read about this

King and first Kings 14 Estella is a Monument it's it's like a stone monument.

That's an erect stone monument that has etchings in it You'll see that word a lot in this document that I have found

King Shishak Hezekiah's Tunnel Everybody been to Jerusalem to Israel you've been in Hezekiah's Tunnel I Believe we saw part of it

Yeah, I've heard if you go try to go down into it, which is pretty long It's kind of a bunch of muddy water down there, so you you get kind of messy

So it might not be the number one on your list if you go sightseeing No, and it's closed in yet, but the fact is it was described in the

Bible. Let's turn to that Um could I have someone turn to I guess 2nd

Chronicles 32 30 Go ahead and read that mr.

Phil just there. I think just 30 the same Hezekiah closed the upper outlet of the waters of Gihon and Directed them down to the west side of the city of David and Hezekiah prospered in all his works

No, okay, I think I had the right verse, but that that wasn't too clear about About the conduit that he built how about 2nd

Kings 2020 maybe that was a little clear But the

Bible does record that Hezekiah built a conduit and that conduit was used during the siege

We're going to talk about in a second when Sennacherib The Assyrian king was sieging

Jerusalem Yeah, second Kings 2020 now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah All his might and how he made a pool and the tunnel and brought water into the city

Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the King of Judah Okay, that's our conduit well in 1838

You know that they discovered this time It hadn't been discovered until 1838 so this time was pretty long

The ancient conduit says of 1200 cubits But you can go see that now so they've uncovered that now

King Omri Was a king of Israel the northern kingdom I am

NOT gonna I'm looking at time here. I thought I was going to get through this real fast But I'm seeing I'm talking more than I thought

I would So King Omri yes, he's he's depicted on this table. It's an Assyrian Tablet or Carving here, and it goes through Shalmaneser three and you can see the years here the

King Omri was around He was a king in Israel. He was verified It also talks about Omri's grandson

Joram but It says that eventually that one of the descendants of Omri was

Jehu Now you remember Jehu From the Bible he was the one

Who took a big stand against Ahab and Jezebel right? Very much so but The interesting thing is is

Jehu is not a grandson of Omri He was from a different line of people all together, but the thing is

This is from the perspective of the Assyrians So all the

Assyrians care about is he was in the line of succession of the kings of Israel They're not necessarily concerned about getting the

You know the descendant tree, right? They're Interested in figuring out who was ruling

Israel at the time and who was giving them trouble in the wars that they were facing against Israel, and that's some of the other things you need to understand when you're looking through archaeology is

If the Assyrians are commenting on The Jewish culture do they necessarily care about getting all the information right about the

Jewish culture? Probably not what they care about is exalting themselves

In the stories that they tell So in this particular case we learn about Jehu and the

Assyrians thought that he was the grandson of Omri. Okay, he's not But it still records Jehu and Omri and then this tablet here

Was another Stella it's called the Misha Stella and that is verifies

That Moab was also In some conflicts with Omri at the time

Like around 18 or 830 BC or so this battle here

As another tablet was found talked about now this battle is not in the Bible the

Battle of Karkar You're not going to find that in the Bible But it talks about Shalmaneser the third

Ben Hadad the second and we do see those characters in the Bible We also see

King Ahab of Israel and it says King Ahab of Israel contributed 2 ,000 chariots to a particular battle

That was fought in between all these forces And this is recorded upon the

Kirk monoliths Which is this thing here? And there's other monoliths that go along with it now the fact that the

Bible doesn't record It means that the Lord didn't necessarily want us or need us to know about that battle but all of these

Historical characters that are in the Bible are recorded on these tablets the city of Ur Would we think we would ever find

Anything dating back that far To say that the city of Ur was a real city that you're talking about going back a long way to the time of Abraham well a stone was found

It had been laid by the king of an unknown name actually of the first dynasty of Ur and Significantly On the stone it says the scribes speak of this as the third dynasty after the flood

So again that flood shows up And the city of Ur comes to life in the historical record and you would think

Really Ur of the Chaldees really was a city that really existed. Yeah Eric Metaxas in his book is

God that has a Archaeological evidence is he says Ur of the Chaldees was like the

New York City of its time Yeah, again, we can do some googling on that and find out what's been discovered about that city

That's going way back so and that's important folks because I may not get to it later but a lot of people

Think the Genesis account is just a myth and a legend That you don't have to read it like it's a historical account of events that happened in people's lives.

You can read it like Just a figurative, you know poetic thing. You can interpret it.

However you want It's an allegory. It's this it's that No, there's certain things we've discovered back from even in the book of Genesis that point to historical truth

And that's very important because Supposedly critics and scholars will always attack

Genesis first revelation next and we should be, you know diligent and take both of those at what the

Lord said his word meant and The words that he used and historical records that he recorded for us

I'm gonna skip over King Solomon here. This is about his building I am going to stick with Daniel and Belshazzar for a second because Everyone thinks the

Bible is wrong about Belshazzar because Belshazzar was not a king of Babylon Belshazzar was the last king of Babylon we see recorded in the book of Daniel and then after that we see the

Medes conquer Babylon So say well, how can that be? He was never a king

The Bonitas was the last king of Babylon How can we resolve that conflict with the

Bible and other historical things we found? well, a

Discovery was made That recorded that Nebonitas inexplicably removed himself for a ten -year period when he went to Arabia leaving the kingdom and in hands of his son

Belshazzar and At the time that was a co -regency he didn't abdicate his throne

But he gave power over to his son who was the effective king at the time and that's documented we have that, you know, everything

I have here is in links and Footnotes or references so you'll be able to look any of these things up Very important these things because people will try to poke holes in all kinds of events

But again the biblical record stands I'm not going to read about King Uzziah I'm not going to read about well, the

Barak thing is pretty cool. I think Barak was described Jeremiah Jeremiah obviously a prophet and that's

Jeremiah was a prophet around the 600 or 600 BC's about in that area when

Babylon was about to destroy Israel and There was a three different deportations that Israel had through the the hands of Babylon 605 find up 597 and 586 and Jeremiah was around for all that and at the time if you remember his scribe

Barak shows up Quite a bit in the book of Jeremiah as a matter of fact Barak was the one that showed the writings to the king and then the king threw a letter in the in the furnace and Burned it up and then they just wrote it again

You know, but Barak has actually showed up say well with this character Barak the scribe actually show up in Some sort of a record that we would have

Let's read Jeremiah 30. Oh, that's a lot of verses Okay, let's not read that That's a lot of verse, but it describes the activities of Barak time and this little thing right here

This little impression this symbol the seal records Belonging to Barak the son of Nehemiah the scribe

That's incredible That we would find something like that To prove that not only did

Jeremiah exist but described it as well way back way back You know, we're talking 600

BC. I Love Sennacherib and A lot of you know why?

Time wise I am NOT going to be able to read all these biblical verses. I'll just summarize

But as you know Assyria was a powerful kingdom and Assyria Rolled over the northern tribes of Israel in 722.

That was Shalmaneser 5 Shalmaneser 5 Assyria kept growing and building its empire

Till we get to the time of Sennacherib and Sennacherib is closing down on Judah and he's closing down on Jerusalem and He says many many

Things to Hezekiah and the people of Judah and Jerusalem Saying all of these other kingdoms fell before me.

You think your God is going to protect you You can forget it.

Well, this story is recorded in 2nd Chronicles. I have up here 2nd Kings It's also recorded in Isaiah 36 and 37

How did Sennacherib do against Judah and Jerusalem Richie just said it 185 ,000 soldiers died trying to capture

Jerusalem, so but it's interesting. What did the Assyrians record about that period of time?

This is what's recorded in the Assyrian history It says as to Hezekiah the

Jew He did not submit to my yoke. I Laid siege to 46 of his strong cities walled forts and to countless small villages in their vicinity

I drove them out 200 ,000 150 people now he did

Surrounding cities and other places in Judah. He did drive people out but in and around Jerusalem.

He did not He talks about the male female horses cattle big and small

And he says himself Hezekiah I made him a prisoner in Jerusalem his royal residence like a bird in a cage

Technically he's right Because he did him in Jerusalem, and he did lay siege

He doesn't account for the hundred and eighty five thousand men that he lost As the angel destroyed them

But his account makes perfect sense The defiance of Hezekiah is recorded in the

Bible You know and and the fact the Assyrian King said him, you know don't trust in the

Lord his God The Assyrians want to record history to show their military prowess and All of the things they accomplished they have a bias when they record history just like any nation does that records history and what's amazing is

You know a true historian a true archaeologist when he discovers something He's going to take a look at it for who wrote it why they wrote it and What it means and how accurate it is, you know, you can look at a lot of things

But many critics will say okay. Well the Bible says this this historical writing

From the Moab's Moabites or from Assyria or from Syria or from the

Hittite or not the Hittites, but I'm one of the other cultures of Philistines this contradicts what the

Bible says, so I'm going to go with this and there's not an account of Which is really truthful or not many times the critics will just say okay if it's in if it contradicts the

Bible the Bible's wrong and That's again bad science, it's bad presuppositions, but it happens all the time in this case

These two stories from the Assyrians and the Bible fit together perfectly and we can get a better picture of that by looking at this

Now what is it that this a picture of? Okay, we recognize the Middle East we recognize the

Assyrian Empire at 824 BC so that was this here

Okay the dark green pretty big Empire But we know they captured the northern kingdoms of Israel in 722 and they continue to expand in 671

BC This is what their kingdom looked like With the dark green and the light green

What is that? What is that little yellow blob? That's standing in the middle of all this green

Judah is Judah to shrinking Judah and Jerusalem's right here

Sennacherib wanted to crush Judah and Jerusalem He never did and the

Bible records that and he records that as well He had a different account of it

But he was honest about it and he said he hemmed in Hezekiah like a bird in a cage how can we explain though the fact that Judah and Jerusalem stood in the midst of this onslaught of a power hungry nation like Syria God's power and it was recorded for us

Even in even in pagan cultures pagan civilization. They were honest enough to record it

So, let's go on you can see all these You know these links and whatnot that I have in here.

So look them up if you if you want to Summary of people discovered in archaeology

From the Old Testament and we're going to see a whole litany of folks here Pharaohs Kings sometimes scribes

Officials and you can see that the nations that they're from where they were written to Or recorded in the

Bible when they reigned or when they lived It's a very impressive list

All those people confirmed and these are people that are confirmed not necessarily like oh we think you know this scrap of Pottery has an etching of this person's name or something that these are folks

These aren't like questionable pieces of Pottery or tablet somewhere where we're not sure the names or we're not sure of You know, if it's exactly the person that's being referenced

Incredible Again Where is this kind of evidence in the other?

religions of the world the other Sacred writings of the world. It doesn't exist even in the

Quran That we would say is a historical type document if we when we later when we look at the

Quran and we're going to see some of the things that the Quran said and Whether that matches up with history or not, it does not measure up to the

Bible What about the New Testament? I said we weren't going to talk about the New Testament But I think there's a couple things that are important Jesus did he really exist?

Is he a myth or a legend? Despite all of the evidence for Jesus Christ as a historical person.

There are still people who would say He never existed. What did Thomas Paine one of our founding fathers say?

This is a mouthful this first sentence, but I want to read it These repeated forgeries and falsifications

Create a well -founded suspicion that all the cases spoken of concerning the person called

Jesus Christ are made Made them up on The purpose to lug in and that very clumsily

Some broken sentences from the Old Testament and apply them as prophecies of those cases so he's saying there's this guy that people say existed

Jesus and They just tried to very clumsily say he fulfilled all these prophecies

And but he goes on And he says and that's so much far from being as this being the

Son of God He didn't even exist as a man That he is merely an imaginary or an allegorical character as Apollo Hercules or Jupiter and all the deities of it as all the deities of antiquity were

There is no history written at the time of Jesus Christ is said to have lived that speaks of the existence of such a person even as a man

Thomas Thomas Paine was not a dumb person We still look at some of his writings you know,

I think common sense was one of them and he was part of the revolution and he was certainly part of the founding fathers

But even at the time when he wrote which was the 1700s the late 1700s

There was a lot of archaeological evidence that hadn't been discovered yet But there were also a lot of documents that were already discovered and known in The whole world at that point that he would have known about But he deliberately chose to say

I Don't I don't believe it. I don't believe he even existed. Well You can be confronted with a landslide of evidence and Still come up with a conclusion that you want to come up with and That's what mr.

Thomas Paine did to say that Jesus Christ did not exist as a man is to ignore a litany of historical documentation

Matt had a picture up last time that showed all of the different peoples

That have written about Jesus Christ at the time he lived These are some of those people it is it's it's the same list basically as Matt had but I have a little bit of like Okay, where do we read it?

And where's the link to it? Roman people Tacitus and Second sit on this

Stoney's you can read all these little things later

Jewish Flavius Josephus and the

Talmud And some people argue about the Talmud about whether the Yeshua in the

Talmud is really Jesus But the Catholic Church believed it so much that in 1554 a papal bull was released to the

Jewish people from the Pope Saying take all the references of Yeshua out

Because you are mocking our God our king so the Pope and the Catholic Church believed it enough to say

Yes, we believe that Yeshua that you mentioned is Jesus Christ and you're mocking him.

That's okay But some other Peoples have also recorded

Jesus Christ and believe he's a physical Man who existed in history

Islam records him as the son of Mary a prophet of God as a historical figure

I didn't write anything in here, but it's just known in the Quran that he they record that the

Hindus Now they look at Jesus as This word here avatar

Yeah avatar for some reason it came up like this in the in the in the links that I had so a chira chira

But basically they say he's an example of a light to any of us in this world We want to take up a serious practice of spirituality

And his message is the same as Krishna or this other guy But they look at him as a historical figured

Chris or a person The Samaritans, what did they say about him?

Well? This is too long to read right now But what's interesting about this particular account if we read through this?

Is that there's a there's a wrote and it eventually comes down to a Roman historian who recorded?

the three hours of darkness At the time when Jesus was crucified and he tries to explain it away as a solar eclipse but But some of the other later document what the

Bob's laughing three hours Well three hours, but yeah, that's crazy in itself, but the problem is is

It's a lunar holiday Passover's a lunar holiday so the moon's over here the sun's over here the earth's over here and in order to have a

Lunar eclipse of the Sun or a solar eclipse the moon's got to be over here on the other side in front of the Sun So that doesn't work out, but even though his assumption about the three hours of darkness didn't work out

His recording the three hours of darkness is very significant for us Because it says that yes that actually happens the way the

Bible said which means yes our Lord was crucified. Just the way it says There are other early sources

Lucian and the Gnostics wrote about wrote about Christ What's the conclusion about Jesus?

The conclusion is he is definitely a historical person Romans Jews Greeks Hindus Islam's Did not write about him as a mythical figure their writings portrayed him as a man that walked the earth

Certainly there are differences between these groups as to the importance of who he was but all of these sources define him as a historical person and anyone who is

Who's really being honest? What would certainly say from a historical perspective that Jesus Christ You know is the most famous person in history

You really have to be honest with yourself and looking at that this person here Galio Again on these tablets here we find out about gallon

Galio is important because he is a pro council That existed at this point in time

The reason that's so great for us is because it narrows down when the

Apostle Paul's ministry was because in the book of Acts It mentions

Galio and because Galio only reigns such a short time in that role We know exactly when that that that event happened in the

Apostle Paul's life And so we can move backwards and forward in the Apostle Paul's life to know that it was

Sandwiched around this 51 52 AD time so that's very helpful Again, you know more evidence of what what happened in the book of Acts in India.

I We're at eight o 'clock now Haven't here the

Tower of Babel is a myth There's you know, there's evidence about the

Tower of Babel that it actually happened again. We're talking going way back in Genesis again About the ziggurats that have been found and building materials

Different accounts We can read all through this again. No great evidence for the fact that That all these things were in place at the time of Genesis the

Genesis record that would You know allow us to believe that the events that happened at that time, especially the splitting of the languages

That's the big thing that people doubt. It's like did that really ever happen? We're all people speaking one language of time didn't languages split and there's some interesting things about language and language theory in here

Which I just wrote down a little bit of that That point to the fact that very much There is credible evidence for a language dispersion at that point in time, so Again, incredible and that goes way way back in the

Genesis again This is another Genesis Consideration here because As I said

Genesis is attacked most book Most attacks are on Genesis from the

Bible and they say well it's supposed to be treated as a story as a legend as a myth

But just looking at how the New Testament writers handled the book of Genesis and all of these things these things were not written down as a

Story that was just made up or we can allude to in a mythical legend It talks specifically about you know

Cain and Abel and what happened with them the birth of Seth The translation of Enoch in the heaven and all these

New Testament References here You know basically show us that the

New Testament writers considered Genesis a historical record of what happened in that day

And that's important to get a hold of So I feel like I've done the fire hose thing right we are really just blown through a ton

I only recorded I mean just a smidgen of what's out there As I said rich and and Ivan and others sending me all kinds of stuff.

I think Bob sent me some stuff a while ago There were websites on here and links on here that I haven't like done the rabbit trails all the way down There's a couple of really good websites.

I like But at the end here What about things we haven't found yet people will still say wait a second we've found

We found the ruins of Jericho. We know where Jericho is. We do not see walls falling down We don't see big blocks of big walls that are described in the biblical record, how can you explain that?

well those blocks May have been very valuable and people may have taken those blocks and use them to build another city somewhere.

We don't know that or One day, maybe we'll just find them just like so many of these other things and we'll say oh

Wow, they're really there You know, you need to consider what's really there and what's not and if there's a lack of something

It doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen Maybe just wait and see what happened.

What's revealed next in them in the archaeological Hey true Look up archaeologist

John Gorshteyn John Gorshteyn says he discovered the walls of Jericho and that from his the evidence is he said

It looks like they fell down flat So that I'm just saying that's from Haley's Bible commentary.

He mentions Gorshteyn's findings. Okay, maybe I didn't even find that one Maybe it's already out there.

Mm -hmm. I did I did mention though a couple other things here. So what about Noah's Ark? What about Egyptian chariots at the bottom of the

Red Sea? What about the Ark of the Covenant? There can be many reasons why we haven't discovered those things yet.

Some of them may not exist anymore I mean we just have to assume that you know Because of the raids of the other nations and the pilfering of the temple and things like that That we might not ever find some of these things but We found so many things at this point

To prove the historical accuracy of the Bible That it is more than than trustworthy a statement to say that is a credible historical document

And in time some of these other things that we were hoping to see we very much may find out

That are coming as a matter of fact I said I haven't sent me something very very recently about Mount Ebal and The cursings and the blessings that came back in Deuteronomy and it's like oh my gosh, you know did

You know Is that that really happened? Just the way the author said so What's the conclusion

I'm going to just read this statement by Millard Burroughs On the whole however

Archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened the confidence in the reliability of the scriptural record

More than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine Archaeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics and has shown in a number of incident

Instances that these views rest on false assumptions and unreal artificial schemes of historical development

This is a real contribution and not to be minimized Archaeology of the whole and in particular archaeology obviously in Palestine So there's some other things down here.

There's a couple links at the back This is the one that I've been sent this link here,

I like this one a lot and I'll just go to this real quick here these guys are breaking news all the time and that you can sign up for a

Periodical here. It's called the Bible in the spade which comes out quarterly, but it has a lot of the

You know the the latest things that have been discovered around the world and And really we're talking obviously mostly

Palestine in the Middle East But incredible but in addition to that this site also has general apologetics and There's many many things

That we can look up here There's so many there's answering critics, there's the physical resurrection of Jesus All kinds of things on this website, and there's other websites like this whether they be purely archaeological or Just general apologetics that Matt and I probably and Ivan have tagged on our

Presentations that we've tried to put forth here. So There's more more evidence and more information that we're ever going to go through But what

I pray is that we find and look at all these things and our minds are blown

By the evidence that's out there But it's not just for us to know more right

It's for us to be able to explain to the person we care about work or the friend or the neighbor

Say Jesus is real and what the Bible recorded is truth and You can trust it because it's a credible document in so many ways and if you rest in his perfect work

You know you can have eternal life I hope we were able to do that. I think

I told you the story last time that I was teaching It was teaching on you know kind of philosophy, and what is truth last time

And Jill and I were playing tennis At our local tennis courts and a lady came up and we asked her to go to church with us

And she said well, I'm more of a philosopher I was like really So I started talking to her about Descartes and David Hume and Plato and Socrates And it was all very fresh on my mind and I had an opportunity to share like much much more truth with her because I Knew you know some of these things and was able to talk to her about a rational faith

You know that's based upon you know a true true events, so it was kind of cool

Now is biblical archaeology going to come up tomorrow at work. I don't know maybe it will

But you have a fistful of evidence if you want to talk to anyone about the reliability of the

Bible, and it's truthfulness So let's close up there's anybody have any questions or anything about some of the stuff we covered tonight one question

Do the various Languages that we're aware of Trace back in any way to the 12 tribes

Well they're gonna be here any direct connection there Well they're gonna be Hebrew right there's a lot of the language study is very interesting, and I haven't gone through it very much at all

I I know that there's some really wild things about languages and and how to determine the kind of all of our languages

Started out at one origin, which is what I was talking about with the Tower of Babel but the fact that everybody who is if we look at the earth and everybody who is right of You know east of Israel Does left to right and then everybody who's the other side does right to left?

Like it's it's almost like there's a dividing line and a central point of like you know there was a delineation there

Where something happened right in the middle? To kind of like this is where different languages got formed and mushroomed out

It is a fascinating study, I've heard a little bit about it. I haven't really studied it very thoroughly though But no real connection to the 12 tribes.

Well the 12 tribes. It's just going to be Hebrew, right? Yeah Havarai, I think is the is it was the name when

Abraham Came out of the early Chaldees You know I I don't

Hebrew still wasn't a language at that point. I'm not sure when it came about I was like Ivan's gonna look it up or something, but Well, I know

I know I'm rich Chuck You probably know better than either, but I know there was the general

Hebrew, but the Levites had a The best way to say is a godly

Hebrew that that Moses and and then spoke Separate from from rest right rich.

It was it was a separation. I think yeah, it was a separation Yeah, I think we're not really boned up on that.

Yeah Yeah, so we're not answering from a point of point knowledge, but I have heard language studies are

Fantastic as far as we'll have to check that out. Yeah, yeah I don't think that's gonna be part of our class, but it's another area that that is fascinating to study through says anyone else have any thoughts on the

Biblical Archaeological record they're finding things all the time Sean Sean McDowell Referenced a new tablet that they just found

Not too long ago. They found the Where they think the origin?

or the original city of Sodom was and the archaeological finds found that They believe scientists non -biblical scientists believe that the city was actually destroyed by an air burst above it a meteor coming in and an air burst that created a

You know made it really hot the pottery that was sitting outside melted Right and and the you know scientists trying to explain it said that maybe the meteor destroying this particular city

Was the origin of the Sodom story right rather than the Sodom story being being a true story, but but nevertheless the the physical evidence is that Where's where Sodom?

Resided the archaeological evidence is that it was destroyed by You know a cosmic event basically fire from the sky for lack of a better term

I heard metaxas talks about that too. Yeah, I know that other Even New Testament characters were doubted for quite a long time

King David was doubted for a long time And there's there's evidence of that there's Pontius Pilate yes doubted for a long time and now we have inscriptions of him

You know there's some big There are some big ones out there a Lot of people doubt whether Moses existed, okay?

Because we haven't found anything in the Egyptian Why would the Egyptians ever record Moses right because that was a tremendous embarrassment to them?

But that discovery that I haven't talked about about the cursings and blessings on Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim Was Moses a historical person?

you know that that points to the evidence that he was and I Don't doubt that we're gonna find many many more things

Now does our faith rest on that? all these archaeological discoveries

No, no it really doesn't but does it give us a reasonable faith to hold on to?

Sure does Sure does isn't a bunch of made -up stories veracity of the

Bible right So does somebody want to close us in prayer tonight? Richie money closes

Heavenly Father we praise you we exalt you we love you Lord. God. We thank you so much for this evening

We thank you for the wisdom that you gave Drew and Matt and Ivan Lord God we thank you for their faithfulness and their commitment to affirm the truth of your divine word

Lord God And I pray that it is an instilled in us a complete faith in the veracity of Scripture and Eliminated any doubts we may have had

Lord God we just give you all the praise and glory in Jesus precious name And I pray that you give the brothers journey mercies on the way home