- Christianity for Beginners.
This is lesson number three in the series,
entitled The Bible.
We're going to talk about the Bible in this lesson.
Most religions, as you know, have records,
holy books, writings, or sayings from their leaders.
For Christianity, the source of its history
and teachings is the Bible.
So in our lesson today, we're going to examine
three main things about the Bible,
including its content, its history, and its claims.
So we start with its contents.
It's very difficult to study the content of the Bible
without describing some of its history as well.
So we're going to review both of these ideas together
in order to understand not only what is in the Bible,
but how it comes to be,
how it came to be written as well,
and so the story of the recording of the Bible
as a written record is the story
of God's communication with man, basically.
So let's take a look at the origin of the Bible.
The word Bible comes from the
Greek word Biblia, which means books.
The complete Bible books number 66,
39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New.
To study the Bible origin,
we have to begin with the Old Testament,
or a better word is the Old Covenant.
This term is very useful because it helps us
understand what the Bible actually is.
It's the details of two covenants or
two agreements between God and man,
the old agreement or covenant and the new one,
which replaces the old.
A little bit like a lease.
If you lease a house, it's got terms and conditions.
You sign, the landlord signs.
You have a lease, you have a covenant with them
and then a year goes by
and it's time to renew your lease.
You sign a new covenant,
some of the same conditions that were in the old
are in the new but you've added
some new things in the lease.
Well, the same idea, the New Covenant,
the New Testament retains some of the old
and there's some new ideas in the new one.
So let's talk about the Old Covenant first.
Study of the Bible requires us to understand
several features of the Old Testament.
Written in the Hebrew language
which is still used today is Israel.
The first person, or first man
charged with actually, the job of recording
events and communication from God was Moses, 1500 BC.
Exodus 24, for example, the words of the Covenant at Sinai.
Exodus 34, the 10 Commandments.
Moses is credited with writing and organizing
the first five books of the Bible,
or what's called the Pentateuch.
Jesus confirms this in Matthew 4:4.
Once God began to use human beings to record his words,
this system continued after Moses.
Joshua, for example, was the next writer after Moses.
We read about that in Joshua 24,
and then of course the prophets
recorded their history and their prophecies
after the time of Joshua.
Read about that in Nehemiah, chapter eight.
So in this way, over a period of 1,500 years,
approximately 28 writers completed
the 39 books of the Old Testament.
Malachi was the last to record in 516 B.C.
There were no other prophets in Israel
until the arrival of John the Baptist,
a long period of time,
the longest period they suffered without prophets.
So all these books were collected and assembled
together into one volume by 400 B.C.
and the Jews had a complete Bible, if you wish,
at least 300 years before Christ.
Look at the organization of the Old Testament.
The Jews had the same Old Testament as we do today,
but they organized it in a different way.
They divided the Old Testament into three main segments.
The Law, which included Genesis to Deuteronomy.
This, of course, was the highest importance,
the priority for the Jews.
Second section were the Prophets,
the former Prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel,
each had their own volume,
and the latter prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah,
Lamentations, Ezekiel, the minor prophets, all 12 of those,
all of these were in one volume,
and then what they called the Holy Writings.
The Holy Writings, poetry, history.
Job, Psalms, Proverbs, all these books.
Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel.
They organized these books into 24 books
instead of our division today of 39 books.
So you had the Pentateuch,
Genesis to Deuteronomy, five books,
the Prophets, the former and the latter, four books each,
and the Writings of poetry and history, 11 books,
for a total of 24 books.
That was the way that the Hebrew Bible was divided.
Today, we have the same books,
but we divide them differently.
The Pentateuch, Genesis to Deuteronomy, five books.
History, from Joshua to Esther, 12 books.
Poetry, from Job to Song of Solomon, five books.
Major Prophets, Isaiah to Daniel, five longer books,
they're called major prophets 'cause they're longer,
the books are longer,
and the Minor Prophets, Hosea to Malachi, 12 books.
We call them the minor prophets,
not because they were less important,
but because their writings were not as long,
and so there are 12 of those books,
for a total of 39 books.
Same material, it's exactly the same material,
except it was just chopped up
and organized in a different way.
The Old Testament story of course.
How many books and laws and how they were divided
does not tell us what the Old Testament is about.
Even though the material was collected
and written over a period of 1,500 years
and recorded by more than 25 different authors,
the Old Testament of the Bible
tells only one unbroken story,
and that is God's relationship with mankind,
and in particular with a certain group within mankind.
Now in history, in human history,
there are a lot of things going on in human history,
nations rising and falling, inventions,
periods of time, and yet through all of this
the Bible is just focused in on one group mainly.
It talks about what's going on peripherally,
around the Jews, a little bit of
world history here and there,
but basically it's laser focused
on this small group of people throughout that time.
In Genesis we have an account of
the creation of the world and how
the environment, society, and human beings
came to be in their present state.
A ruined, natural world, a dysfunctional society,
and a human race doomed to die.
We find out why that happened in the book of Genesis.
In Genesis we also read about a man called Abraham,
chosen by God to be the head of a nation
through whom God would offer salvation to all men.
The rest of the Old Testament books
describe the growth and the development
of this man's family from a wandering tribe
to a powerful and wealthy nation called Israel.
Most of the Old Testament books will contain
information on the war, we're talking about Israel now,
about their wars and their conquests,
their politics, their religion,
their moral codes, their poetry, their general history.
It will also contain prophecies, or predictions,
if you wish, of future events that will
happen to their nation as well as the appearance
and work of the Savior originally promised to Abraham.
Although complicated to read at times
because we may not be familiar with the history
and the social customs spoken of,
the Old Testament is really one story
describing God's relationship with the Jewish people
and their role in preparing a cultural and historical
stage on which the Savior would appear.
The Savior had to be something.
What culture would he be?
What nationality would he be?
What language would he speak?
Well God didn't choose an existing culture
to bring his Son into the world.
He created a culture.
He picked one person and said out of that one person,
I'm going to create a whole nation,
a nation, a culture, a religion,
with laws and history unique to itself
whose only purpose was to form a historical stage
upon which his Son would appear in history, okay?
Talk about the New Testament.
New Testament, like the Old Testament,
is also a story given in various books.
The story it tells is of the life and ministry,
the death, the burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ,
and the subsequent spread of His teachings
by His followers, the Apostles who established
the Christian church in the first century.
There were many accounts written of Jesus' life,
but the official or the inspired books,
referred to as the New Testament Canon, has only 27 books.
I'll explain how these came to be in a moment,
but the division of the New Testament books is as follows.
You have the Gospels, four of these,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These are the eyewitness accounts of
the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus.
One history book, the book of Acts,
talks about the acts of the Apostles
as they establish the church, the Christian church.
The Pauline Epistles, 13 of these,
13 letters written by Paul.
Romans, First and Second Corinthians,
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians,
First and Second Thessalonians,
First and Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon.
The General, what are called the General Epistles.
There are eight of those,
Hebrews, James, First and Second Peter,
First Second and Third John, Jude,
written by various Apostles and the disciple of Apostles,
and then one book of Prophecy, the book of Revelation.
27 books in all.
Now aside from the Gospels,
which are accounts of Jesus' life,
and the book of Acts,
which is the history of
the establishment of the church,
most of these other letters were written to churches
in order to teach and encourage them
in the practice of their Christian faith.
Paul, for example, is answering questions.
He goes in and establishes a church and then leaves.
They have questions, they want to know,
what's going on, how do we do this,
how do we handle that problem, and so most of
his epistles are letters to churches and some individuals,
but mostly teaching about how to do things
and also encouragements to remain faithful.
They applied and completed the original teachings of Christ.
What is of great interest to many, however,
is how this ancient material came to us today
in this number and in our own language.
How did we go from Paul writing in the first century
to this here, written in English that I can read?
How did we get from there to here?
Well, that has to do with
what's called the New Testament Canon.
Many books, of course, were written
about the life of Jesus and several books
were written by the Apostles and their disciples.
How did they decide which books
actually belonged in the New Testament?
The books that made up the New Testament
are called the Canon, the Canon,
from a Greek word which means measuring rod.
So they are the books that measure up, the Canon.
In other words, when the early church examined
all the material that was written about Jesus,
how did they decide which books
belonged in the New Testament Canon?
Out of the hundreds of books and letters,
how did they narrow it down to 27?
I could understand if they narrowed it down to 2,700,
[chuckling]
but how did they get it down to 27?
Well, there were three main factors
that led the early church to form
the New Testament Canon and preserve it in one book.
In the beginning, the church did not
have a high regard for keeping the letters
of the Apostles and the disciples.
I mean, the Apostles were alive.
They were producing many letters,
so there was no urgency in preserving them.
There was a lot of written material that was being produced,
so no one thought that they needed to keep any of it.
They also thought that Jesus
was coming back in their lifetime,
so the need for preserving the material
for the future was not there.
They thought Jesus is coming back.
Paul had to say to the Thessalonians,
"You guys got to get to work.
"If you don't work, you won't eat."
Well the problem with not working wasn't just laziness.
It was like, Jesus is coming, why build the house?
Why get excited?
The Lord's coming, let's just, we'll wait,
and so that lack of urgency also
was felt by church leaders who were not
preserving any of the materials either,
but then certain events took place that required
them to begin collecting and preserving
the teachings of the Lord and the teachings of the Apostles,
things that happened that kind of
pushed them to begin this collection,
the first of which was the Canon of Marcion,
the Canon of Marcion in 140 A.D.
Marcion was a false teacher who rejected
the entire Old Testament.
He accepted only 10 of the epistles of Paul
and only a part of Luke's Gospel,
but rejected everything else,
and he began circulating his little personal group,
if you wish, of letters as the official Canon,
and so the early church was forced to decide
which of the writings were authoritative
and which ones should they collect
and which ones should they circulate.
So this began to roll somewhere around 170 A.D.
Second problem was persecution.
Under the Roman emperor Diocletian,
it was a capital offense to possess a copy,
any copy of the Christian scriptures.
This brought up the question,
well which scriptures are worth dying for?
I don't mind dying for the Lord,
but I don't want to die for a fake letter, you know?
The epistle of Bob, I'm not ready to
be beheaded for the epistle of Bob, all right,
and so many uninspired historical books
were burned and only the most precious,
most accepted works were kept,
and then thirdly, the Codex Form appeared.
Codex is the book form, this form here.
Books with pages, that was the codex form,
where several pages were placed together
instead of using a scroll.
So when the codex form became popular,
it brought up the question,
which books should be grouped together
in one volume, in a book?
This motivated them to keep only the books
that were acceptable in a single volume,
but the main question for the early church
was which are the inspired books?
There was no meeting where they reviewed
all of the material and then they made a decision
as to which made it in and which didn't.
That's not how it worked.
On the contrary, the early church simply accepted
those works that had already been recognized
as inspired throughout the centuries,
but had not yet been collected
and organized into one set, okay.
This was finally done in 367 A.D.
and the 27 books confirmed by the Council of Carthage
later in that century has remained
the same since without a single change.
So we've had the same Old Testament
that we have today, we had the same thing
400 years, or 300 years before Christ,
and we've had the same New Testament
without any changes since the third century.
No changes, same thing, same material,
but in collecting the books for inclusion
in the New Testament Canon,
the early church was guided by certain principles.
Number one, the principle of authorship.
If a man was inspired when he spoke,
well then his writings were also considered inspired, okay?
For this reason, the writings of the Apostles
were quickly accepted into the Canon.
Also the men associated with
the Apostles were also accepted.
For example, Luke because of his association with Paul.
Mark because of his association with Peter and with Paul.
James, who was called the brother of the Lord
and an Apostle, Galatians chapter one.
This of course allowed the Gospels and the letters of
Paul and Peter and James and John to be a natural
selection that was easy.
It was easy.
Those were easy to collect, all right?
A second principle was value of the book.
In some cases a book had a name attached to it,
but it did not read like an authentic New Testament book.
Many uninspired authors tried to gain an audience
by putting the name of an Apostle on their book.
So Bob writes a book,
and he calls it The Epistle of Peter because he knows
if he says The Apostle of Bob,
it's not going anywhere, right,
but if he calls it The Epistle of Peter,
well now he's got a chance to get his material circulated,
and so scholars tell us that it was fairly easy to
distinguish between inspired and fake when you
actually read the documents themselves.
For example, in a thing called the Gospel of Thomas,
in that gospel, or in that writing,
Jesus made sparrows out of mud,
and he was rebuked for doing this on the Sabbath,
and he said,
"Rise up and fly away,"
and the birds came to life,
and they flew away.
Well, you know, nice story, you know,
but not the kind of gravitas that we're expecting
from the Lord and the type of miracles that he performed.
In another one of these books,
there's a story where Jesus, working with his father Joseph,
miraculously stretches a board to be long enough, you know,
to fit what they were building.
Again, you know, yeah, somehow doesn't quite match
the picture, you know?
In other words, when comparing the writings it was fairly
easy to tell the real from the fake.
The inspired books had harmony of thought,
harmony of purpose and style.
There were no contradictions,
and they were accurate historically
as well as theologically.
That was what was important.
A third factor for inclusion was circulation.
The church did not decide which ones were suitable
and which ones were not.
They merely confirmed and collected those books
which had traditionally been accepted by all the churches
but never had been collected into one volume before.
Everyone agreed that Luke had written Luke,
and Luke had written Acts, and Luke's Acts circulated as a,
you know, compound letter in the early century,
and everybody believed and agreed that it was by Luke,
and it was about Paul and you know,
but it had never been included with Peter's epistles
and Paul's epistles and so on and so forth.
So they took material that they knew and that had
been accepted for decades as authentic by the church
and merely collected it all into one volume, all right.
So no new book was introduced,
only those letters and volumes that had wide circulation
and acceptance after long ages of study and review.
The Canon was confirmed 300 years after
the first writings began to be circulated
and for that period of time, that's pretty fast
'cause things moved very slowly in those days.
We also believe that God was guiding
and protecting the process in which His
word was recorded and preserved.
Let's talk about some translations, shall we?
The Old Testament was written
in the Hebrew language, most of it.
Some small parts in Aramaic.
There came a time when the Jews could not speak Hebrew
because of the Greek influence,
and so a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament
was made in the Greek language.
It was called the Septuagint.
It was called the Septuagint because
70 scholars worked on that particular translation.
During New Testament times, the people spoke Aramaic,
which was an ancient language of the region.
However, the books and letters of the New Testament
were not written in this language.
It was written in the common form of Greek,
what's called koine Greek, which was
the universal language of the period,
just like now the universal language
in the world is English.
In those days, the universal language
was Greek, okay, common Greek.
The Greek form remained the standard
as copies were made from the original
and distributed for the first several centuries.
There are in existence today 5,357 Greek manuscripts
of portions of the New Testament that scholars work with.
If you work, if you look at comparisons,
there are more Bible manuscripts
and portions of manuscripts that exist
for the New Testament than there are
manuscripts that exist for Shakespeare,
or for the Greek tragedies.
Nobody doubts Shakespeare lived.
Nobody doubts Shakespeare wrote those things
and yet there's less physical evidence
for Shakespeare's writing than
there are for the New Testament.
Thousands and thousands of fragments
and portions of the New Testament copies that were made.
With time, the Greek was translated into Latin
and other languages but these translations
were always made from the original Greek manuscripts,
and I need to just pause for a second here to comment here.
One of the major arguments against
the accuracy of the Bible is the,
you know what they call the telephone argument.
The telephone argument, you know?
You play that game sometimes with kids at a party.
You tell a story to one person,
then that person tells the story to another person,
then to another, and to another, you know.
You do 10 people and then at the end of the game,
the first person gets up and says,
this is the story that I told
and you have the 10th person get up
and this is the story, once it's gone around 10 times,
10 translations, and people think that the Bible
has been translated that way, from Greek to Latin,
from Latin to German, from German to Spanish,
from Spanish to French, from French to Eng,
but that's not how it's been translated.
Every time there's a translation,
the translators always go back to the original manuscripts
and so the French version of the New Testament
has been translated from the very same documents
that the English translation of the New Testament,
so the scholars always go back to the original manuscripts
to create their translations.
Latin was the language of the
western portion of the Roman Empire
and as Christianity spread westward from its original home
where Greek was the dominant language,
a new version of the Bible was developed.
In 404 A.D. a new Latin version of the Bible
was produced by Jerome who was an early church leader.
His translation from the Greek to Latin
was called the Latin Vulgate, Latin Vulgate.
This became the standard version for study
and church life in the Middle Ages.
Various translations were made into
what are called common languages of the time.
From the fifth through to the 14th centuries,
these included translations into
Gothic or Syrian, Slavic, English, French,
German, Italian, and Spanish.
By the 14th century, there was a renewal
in interest in the Greco-Roman world
and its languages and its literature.
This was brought about by the Renaissance
and so during the Renaissance there was
a great interest in ancient languages,
ancient languages like Greek and Hebrew,
and so this produced a greater effort
to examine the Greek language.
This new trend led to a revival of
the study of Greek and Hebrew languages,
as well as the study of ancient Biblical manuscripts.
[coughing]
This zeal to produce new Bible versions
in common languages translated directly
from the original Greek and Hebrew
was helped along by a new religious movement
called the Reformation.
See, all these historical things,
you know, the perfect storm working together.
Intellectual interest in Greek and Hebrew,
theological religious interest in
the church and in the Gospel itself,
and these things merge.
With the invention of the printing press,
Gutenberg's printing press in 1436,
the technology to actually produce mass quantities
of Bibles in different languages was realized.
I mean, we buy a Bible for a buck, right?
The bargain bin over at Mardel's,
a dollar, you get yourself a Bible, nothing to it.
Only rich people had Bibles, only kings and the bishop,
these people were the ones who had Bibles in those days,
but with the advent of the printing press,
the Bible was now available to the masses.
It's interesting to note that the very first book
to be printed on Gutenberg's new invention
was the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible,
and that was printed somewhere between 1452 and 1456.
This bible was called the 42-Line Bible, guess why?
Well, because every page had 42 lines, 42 lines.
That particular Bible still exists today
and it can be seen at the Gutenberg Museum
in Mainz in Germany which is near Frankfurt.
I went there once, to Frankfurt.
The invention of the printing press
helped spread the Bible in
various languages throughout the world.
The earliest known English translation was in 700 A.D.
and it was a Latin version
with English notes between the lines.
The first complete English translation
was done by John Wycliffe in 1382,
and he was imprisoned for his efforts.
The power, the religious powers that be
did not want the Bible to become accessible to the masses.
The first printed English Bible
was William Tyndale in 1526.
Today Tyndale Publishing, very large publishing house.
There were many translations as
the science of translation and archaeology developed.
Major translation, of course,
was the King James Bible, 1611,
and it became the authorized version
for English-speaking people for many years.
Still a very popular Bible today.
There are many translations and versions
that have appeared over the years.
The Revised Standard Version, the American Standard,
New American Standard, New International Version,
New Living Translation,
each of these have a different style.
People say, well what's so different about these?
Well, for example, the Revised Standard Version.
Very good Old Testament translation,
but the New Testament translation is awkward.
The American Standard was the
best word for word translation,
but the problem was the English was awkward to read.
It was clunky, it was chunky to read.
If anybody who speaks two languages understands this idea.
If you try to translate something directly
from one language to another, word for word,
it doesn't work very well in the
other language if it's word for word,
and the American Standard Version
was an attempt at doing that.
The New American Standard was a correction of that.
It took the American Standard, best word for word,
and it kind of smoothed it out,
made it much easier to read and to understand.
A great study, New American Standard is a great study Bible.
New International Version is a Bible
where the English flows very well,
a kind of a people's Bible,
if you wish, became very popular.
New Living Translation is one of the newer ones,
using the easy-to-read modern English,
and its goal is to give the most
exact meaning using today's English.
So, there are many other, we could spend all night
talking about all the translations,
but these are some of the major ones that have come along.
Some people say, well you just can't
trust any translation because translators
can make mistakes from the Greek.
Of the thousands of translations in different languages,
there are no major doctrines, persons, commands
that are in conflict or in question.
If there are mistake, they are punctuation mistakes
or the names of places or locations
which are obscure in the original language.
The percentage of error in today's Greek text
is less than one percent, less than one percent.
In other words, don't worry about not understanding
the Hebrew or the Greek.
When you are reading the English version,
you are reading 99.9% of what
is written in the Greek and the Hebrew.
You can trust your Bible because
it is accurate as to what God is saying.
What I'm amazed at all the time
is that when I'm reading Isaiah,
I'm reading the exact Isaiah,
the exact words and phrases that the Jews read,
that Jesus himself read.
It says that Jesus went to the synagogue and he read Isaiah.
I'm reading the same Isaiah,
and many archeological discoveries have proven this.
Some Bible claims, what does the Bible claim?
So we've looked at the context of the Bible.
Excuse me, the content of the Bible,
how it came to be written, how it's organized
as well as the various translations that have been produced,
a bit of a thumbnail sketch of the Bible
if we can do that all in one lesson.
One final point I want to consider
and it's, what does the Bible claim?
In other words, what does it say about itself?
Well, very simply, the Bible claims that it is inspired,
meaning that God is the author of the Bible.
Humans simply wrote what He wanted
and guided them to write.
All scripture, II Timothy 3:16 says,
All scripture is inspired by God.
That's not a lot of words here, right?
One, two, three, four, five, six words.
Only six words, but the Bible says of itself,
all scripture is inspired by God,
so whenever someone comes to you and says,
"Okay, well what Paul wrote here,
"that's not really inspired.
"That was his own thinking,"
and I've heard that from many people,
and I say to them,
"Yes, but it says all scripture is inspired by God,"
see what I'm saying?
And so the Bible says this about itself.
In II Peter 1:21, I don't know if I've got this, yes.
II Peter 1:21, he says,
But know this first of all,
that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter
of one's own interpretation,
for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will,
but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
Now, it's easy to make claims,
but why do Christians believe this claim
that the Bible is not just a book
written by good, holy men
but is in fact fully inspired by God?
Well, there are a lot of reasons,
a lot of reasons but I'm look at three briefly,
as we kind of close out our lesson.
First of all, I believe it's inspired
because of its ability to survive.
Despite every effort to discredit its teaching
and claims by government, religious organizations,
philosophers and skeptics of every kind
for almost 2,000 years, the Bible has survived intact,
and despite constant attacks it continues to be
the most translated, most printed,
most read book in the world and in all of history.
Of course, you would expect no less from a book
that says that it comes from God.
Of course it's the most read book.
It comes from God.
[chuckling]
Another reason Christians believe the Bible is from God,
its uniqueness.
One reason why many religions come and go
is that their teachings are demonstrated to be false
or they become irrelevant in the modern world,
but the Christian religion and the Bible
as its source is unique among religious books,
unique in its depth and insight
compared to any other secular or religious book,
and I say this not of myself.
Scholars agree.
Scholars agree, even if they don't believe the content.
They agree that its content is deeper
and more vast than any of the other religious holy books.
It's unique in its unity.
Think now, 66 books, 1,500 years to write,
40 different authors, and yet it is
perfectly fitted together without contradiction,
telling a single story seamlessly.
I mean, we can't even get an accurate report
of what the President said at a conference an hour ago,
[chuckling]
let alone 1,500 years ago.
Unique in its universality,
in that it is read and followed
by every culture and language and perfectly adaptable
in every time period, ancient or modern.
You know, where many Christians are mourning
the assassination of Christians in Sri Lanka,
their culture is, the Sri Lankan culture
is so different from American culture.
I mean, we wouldn't recognize it,
and yet there are Christians there.
They became Christians using the same book
that we became Christians.
Even though their culture and language
is different, their faith is exactly the same.
Why, because of the Bible,
and its ability to relate to any culture, any timeframe.
Only a book with a divine source
could lay claim to such unique features.
There are other reasons to believe
that the Bible's claim is inspired of God,
but one last one I'd like to touch on
just for this lesson, and that is fulfilled prophecy.
Humans cannot accurately predict future events.
To be able to do so is a sign of divine power,
but to do so 100% of the time
is a sure proof that God is at work.
The Bible contains not one or two,
hundreds of such prophecies,
events, people, situations described
by prophets and kings and teachers
that were fulfilled years or even centuries later.
Take for example Isaiah 44:28.
Isaiah says, or he prophesizes,
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 foundations will be laid.
So that's Isaiah who is talking,
God is talking through Isaiah,
and he's talking about a guy, a king, Cyrus,
who's going to come and build up Jerusalem.
Nothing special there, right?
Only one little thing we have to note.
Isaiah lived in 700 B.C.
Cyrus, the king that he named,
lived 100 years later and history records this.
The prophet names him, gives his position
and exactly what he was going to do,
and we know from history that all of this took place.
[chuckling]
That's calling it exactly historically.
Another one, just from the New Testament this time.
This is Jesus, it says,
They were on the road going up to Jerusalem,
and Jesus was walking on ahead of them
and they were amazed, and those who followed were fearful.
And again He took the twelve aside and
began to tell them what was going to happen to Him saying,
Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and the Son of Man will be delivered to
the chief priests and the scribes
and they will condemn Him to death
and will hand Him over to the Gentiles.
They will mock Him and spit on Him,
and scourge Him and kill Him,
and three days later He will rise again.
Accurate prediction, fulfillment of future events
is a definite sign that a supernatural force is at work.
Only God can do this, and he has done it
in the Bible hundreds of times.
This is an example, Jesus saying to his Apostles
exactly what was going to take place in His future.
In addition to this, the Bible is the only book,
the only book or holy book that contains
accurately fulfilled prophecies.
In other words, in one part of the book
at a certain time period in history,
a prophet makes a prediction, okay?
And then you keep reading the Bible
as it tells the story throughout history
and then 200 or 300 years later or whatever,
that prophecy that that prophet made over here
is described being fulfilled over here historically.
The Bible is the only holy book
that contains this type of thing.
No other book, no other book contains fulfilled prophecy.
Only the Bible, and why would no other book
contain fulfilled prophecy?
Yeah, exactly, the question answers itself, right.
So if the Bible is inspired as it claims to be,
you would expect that it would contain features
only possible through divine power
and, of course, the argument is
fulfilled prophecy can only be done through divine power.
Okay, well that's our lesson,
reviewing the content, the history,
and the claims of the Bible,
the book that Christians use as their guide.
In our next lesson, we're going to focus
on Jesus Christ, who is the focus of the Bible records.
We said, what is the Bible about, historically?
Well, the Bible's about Jesus, and we're going to look at that,
answering the question, who is Jesus Christ?
Well, okay, thank you very much for your attention.
That's our class for today.