I need a volunteer in the very back to let everybody know that comes in after I start that they owe me 20 push-ups. I know how to take care of tardiness real fast. Me and the Marines, we love to watch people do push-ups. Even my grandchildren, they do lots of push-ups. My two granddaughters can do 100 non-stop Marine Corps push-ups. How'd you like me and my family? Anyway, I'd like to start with a verse, just one verse, that separates Christianity from almost every other religion in the world. And it goes like this. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That one verse separates Christianity from almost every other religion in the world. And that's what we're here to talk about. Now, why the Bible is true. Why do you believe the Bible? The reason I'm doing this one, because I get challenged with this quite often. I'm going to give you the long version. But in a conversation, you usually have about five minutes or less. But I'm going to give you the long version because I've been given a long time. So we're going to examine five criteria I use to answer that question. Why believe the Bible and not other religion books? Well, one thing I want to caution you on. When I'm challenged with this, I do not talk about other religions. That is not the question. And besides, if I start talking about other religions, they may know more about that religion than I do, and I'll get myself in trouble. The question is, why do you believe the Bible? So your answer will come from the Bible, not any other book. And the other thing is, you don't want to go off criticizing other people's faith, just like we don't want to be criticized. So there are many religions, many books out there. Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Mormonism, Christianity, Humanism. Yes, Humanism has their book called The Humanist Manifesto. Many, many other types of religion books. So two questions. What separates them? And why should I choose one over the other? All right, so if you were challenged today, why do you believe the Bible? There's so many other religion books out there. Could you answer that question? Well, when I'm challenged with that, I look at it as an opportunity to be a witness for Jesus Christ. What I take it as, they're asking me to evangelize them. They may not think that, but that's exactly what I'm gonna do. How to make a decision, here's our five criteria. First of all, is there any difference between religions? How many have ever been confronted with all religions are the same? That's a clear clue, they've never studied religion. Who wrote the book? We're gonna need to find that out. Which book agrees with reality? Which one answers ultimate questions? And who is this God of the book we're talking about? If we don't get to that one, we miss our entire opportunity. Just becomes an intellectual joust there. But that's the one that brings it down to the heart issue. So we gotta make sure we get to that one. So what separates religions? All religions are the same. What about Christianity? Well, here's what separates Christianity from every other religion in the world. It is called do and done. That makes it simple. Well, we're gonna have a simple session here. Every other religion in the world requires you to do something for your salvation. Christianity, it's already been done. It was done when Jesus Christ went to that cross, suffered and died, was buried, and then rose on the third day. It was done. That alone separates Christianity from every other religion known out there. In other words, we do not have to work for our salvation. It's been done. So that makes it easy there. It's called God's grace. Now, also what helps separate is something called prophecy. That makes the Bible unique among most any other religion book out there. Prophecy. J. Barton Paine's Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy lists 1,239 prophecies in the Old Testament and 578 in the New Testament for a total of 1,817 prophecies, or about 27% of the Bible is prophecy. That is more than any other religion book out there. Wow. Let's take a look at some. Genesis 12, Jesus would come from the lineage of Abraham. Did he do that? Yes, he did. Genesis 49, Jesus would come out of the tribe of Judah. That was true. Isaiah, Jesus would come from the lineage of Jesse. That's true. Isaiah, Jesus would be born of a virgin. Micah, Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. Psalm 22, Jesus would be crucified, even before they really had crucifixion going. Psalm 16, Jesus would be resurrected. Then in the 15th century, Zechariah declared that Messiah would be betrayed for the price of a slave, which is 30 pieces of silver. Can you get more accurate than that? That's not something like you see from Nostradamus and all these things on TV, like it's gonna rain in Seattle next year. That's how general some of his so-called prophecies were. But this is specific, 30 pieces of silver. Almost 400 years before crucifixion was invented, Israel's King David and the prophet Zechariah described Messiah's death in words that perfectly depict crucifixion. The prophet Isaiah in 44 and 45 foretold that a conqueror named Cyrus would destroy Babylon, which at that time was considered indestructible. Isaiah made this prophecy 150 years before Cyrus was born, 180 years before Cyrus performed any of his great feats, and then 80 years before the Jews were taken into exile. What a prophecy. Jeremiah prophesied that Israel would be in captivity for 70 years. At the height of Nineveh's power, the prophet Nahum prophesied they would be conquered and never recover. Then we have a prophecy which I think is accurately describing today. Specifically, in the education system, the public education system. 2 Timothy 4, 3, and 4, and it reads, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. Ladies and gentlemen, that is an accurate description of evolutionism today. They've turned their ears away from the truth of God's word, his creation, and made up great stories. In other words, they are worshiping the creation rather than the creator. We have the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible. Accuracy of content. The Jewish scribes, when they copy down the Torah, wait a minute, I thought we were talking about the Bible. What's this Torah thing? First five books of the Bible. When the Jewish scribes copied down the first five books of the Bible, they literally counted every word, every syllable, and every letter to guarantee its accuracy. No other ancient text can make that claim. Today there are more than 24,000 partial complete manuscript copies of the New Testament in existence, more than any other ancient writing. But what about the Old Testament? Anybody here believe the words of Jesus Christ? Okay, yeah, yeah. I put the peer pressure on you, didn't I? Jesus viewed the Old Testament as reliable. 11 times, we hear him say, have ye not read? 30 times, it is written. What is he referring to? The Old Testament. Then we have Floyd Nolan Jones, Chronology of the Old Testament. The Dead Sea Scrolls of Isaiah agree with the Hebrew Masoretic Text. The earliest Masoretic Text, which we have, is dated about 900 AD. Almost no changes have occurred in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 53, for example, contains only one word of three letters, which is endowed after nearly 1,100 years of copying. That's better than we can do today, folks. Now, that's part one. Let's go to part two. Who wrote the Bible, as who wrote these other religion books? Well, I'm not going to talk about that. I'm just going to tell people who wrote the Bible. Contains 66 books. Not 67, as some people claim, but 66. Over 40 authors. Written on three continents. Spanning over 1,500 years. Three languages. And recorded by men from many different professions, such as Moses, a prince who became a shepherd. Joshua, a general. I have to salute him only being a captain. Amos, a herdsman. David, a shepherd who became a king. Solomon, a king. Daniel, a government official. Isaiah, a prophet. Luke, a physician. Matthew, a tax collector. Peter and John, fishermen. And Paul, a scholar. Look at the diversity of people that wrote this book. No other religion book can make that kind of a claim. And here's an amazing fact, written by over 40 men, over 1,500 years, has a unified and common theme from beginning to end. Let me give you a theme of the Bible. Paradise created, paradise lost, and paradise restored. And it all points to Jesus Christ. In other words, the Bible is about what? The redemption of sinful men, the whole Bible. Paradise created, paradise lost, and paradise restored. That is the theme of the Bible. A consistent theme written by over 40 different authors over a span of 1,500 years. So who wrote the Bible? The words were penned by men under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. That's why it has a common theme and maintains 100% accuracy. In 2 Peter, chapter 1, we read, knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 3.16, all scriptures given by inspiration of God. This is not man's own writings. Yes, they penned it down, but it was God breathed that makes it unique. Let's go to part three. Well, this is going fast. We should be finished here in about five, 10 minutes. No, I have a couple slides in here I can spend a whole week on. I always put those in my talks, a slide that I, in case I get in trouble with time. You've seen that with pastors. Three points, first two points are what? 20 minutes long, third point is what, three minutes? Giving those, you know those straight secrets, right? Okay, let's talk about reality. That hits at home for a lot of people. The Bible agrees with reality. It agrees with how this universe got here. Oh, Mike, what about the big bang? That's not what we're talking about. So you can have a big bang or something go bang to have something that can go bang. So the question is, where did the matter come from to create the big bang? And we know from good science and logic, from nothing, nothing comes. Therefore, the universe could not have created itself, and it could not be eternal. Because matter can't do that. We have a little law of science called the second law of thermodynamics. How many out here have experienced the second law of thermodynamics? Everybody better raise your hand. It's called decay. Oh, my man came to our church and he said, we're all decaying. Well, it's true. It's a scientific fact. When did that process start? Before you were born. Wow. I just enjoy being rude. Some of you, think of some of these people had to put up with eight hours of that, and they survived. So the origin of the universe, the only known way this universe could have gotten here, it had to be created by somebody bigger than the universe. Somebody who's not material, because the laws of science says all material things wear down. So it had to be somebody outside this universe. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The Bible agrees with the origin of stars. Oh my, that's not what it says in my biology textbook. It's not what it says in my astronomy textbook. It says stars are forming all the time through naturalistic processes. Can I tell you how that happens? Well, I've read a lot of these textbooks. How many believe everything in a textbook? Good, good, no hands, thank you, thank you. We get these great big nebula. A nebula, it's a big gas and dust cloud. We have to have terms like that so we look smart. Anybody remember that old acronym RGB from computers? And people were, what, what, RGB must be something really technical. It meant red, green, blue. Yes, I'm an old computer person too. We get these great big gas and dust clouds, and they rotate around and around and around like this. And they do rotate around. As they rotate around and around and around, we're told in these textbooks, they begin to gravitationally collapse inward. And they get so dense, they form a new star. And the other day, we found out there was a technical term for that process. And the technical term for that process is called baloney. Anybody has taken a beginning physics class. You do not have to have a degree in physics. Just basic physics knows that cannot be true Because it's a cloud rotates around and around it begins to gravitation collapse inward and that is true But as it collapses inward it generates heat pressure and this is something we can measure We can observe this the heat pressure is always Stronger than the gravity and will always cause that star that cloud to expand outward never inward We can even now peer into these great big things called star nurseries, like the Orion Nebula, the horse head. They're saying these are star nurseries. No, they're not, because we can peer into them with infrared technology now. Know what we have discovered? Every one of them has too little gas, and they're all expanding. So what do you think about our biology textbooks now? They're absolutely inaccurate. What we're finding out now is we're teaching evolution versus science in many cases. So where did the stars come from? Okay, I need somebody to tell me this one. It's somebody in this column right here, or you're all doing pushups. What day did God create the stars? Four, okay, thank you back there, thank you. Four, we got, four, right. And I love it how he says it. And he made the stars also. It was so easy for him to make trillions and trillions of stars, and he did it, in a day. Isn't that incredible? The Bible agrees with the origin of life. Our best scientists in the world cannot even create one small single biological protein. We don't even have to talk about the DNA, the RNA, the organelles, and the ribosomes. Did I see some excitement on people's faces when I said those words? Yes. Right. All we have to talk about, and that's all I ever talk about, when I was in front of the NASA scientists, I only talked about a protein. And that was enough to end the whole conversation. They knew life cannot start by naturalistic processes. It's not possible by any known scientific method. And if you want to get into probability, we'll go there too. It's basically as impossible as you can get. You see, the natural tendency based on how chemicals react is always away from life, never towards it. We know from observational science that life cannot start in the presence of oxygen because at the molecular level, oxygen destroys chemical bonds. We know life could not start if there was no oxygen. Because then we have no protection from the ozone, because it's made of oxygen. We have the ultraviolet rays of the sun come down and turning everything into, and here's your technical term, crispy critters. And we know life cannot start in water. Water is one of the worst places in the universe for life to begin. Because here's a word, here's what happens. Water, there's a process called hydrolysis. Hydro meaning water. Hydrolysis literally means water splitting. As soon as any of the components of a protein started assembling, they'd immediately been destroyed by the water. Wow. So how did life get here? The only known process is there had to be a creator, which agrees with the Bible. The origin of dinosaurs, the Bible agrees with that. I've been to museums all over this planet. What do I see? Dinosaurs. I look at all these books, I see pictures of dinosaurs. What am I not seeing? All the thousands and thousands of transitions that should be there that led up to the dinosaurs. We have not found one true transition leading up to the dinosaurs. It's as if, this might surprise you, they were created after their kind. See, the important question is not what happened to them. That's a simple answer. They're dead. The important question, the real question is where did they come from? Show me the thousands of transitions that led up to the dinosaurs or you're asking me to believe this whole story by faith. I thought we were supposed to be teaching science in our classrooms. The fossil record. absolutely agrees with the worldwide flood. Totally refutes the evolution model. You know what we find on top of Mount Everest, besides snow? Seashells. You know what we don't find with those seashells? Legs. That means they didn't walk up there. How in the world did they get up there? Well, the only possible explanation is at some point in the history of this earth, all those mountains had to be covered with ocean water. Sounds like a worldwide flood, doesn't it? We find whale fossils a third of the way up the Andes Mountains. And we find fossil graveyards all over this planet. Some of these fossil graveyards contain hundreds of dinosaurs. All buried together. And all these fossil graveyards, sometimes thousands and thousands of creatures, fish buried with mammals, buried with dinosaurs. Yes, we do find mammals and dinosaurs together. And they're all laid down in sediments, laid down by water. Sounds like a flood, not long, slow processes. The history, the archeology confirms the Bible. The value of human life. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. And here's the other part. When did God know us? Before the foundation of the world. He knew every one of those babies. And then the design in all life. The incredible design. I'm gonna go through just a couple. How many have seen a draft? Pretty majestic looking creature, aren't they, when they walk and everything? But something very interesting about a giraffe. I'd like to compare that giraffe to us for just a moment. We normally have a brain right about here, don't we? Notice I always led a little leeway. We normally. Some leave it at home. We have a brain right about there. And we have a heart right about here. What's our heart do? It's a big pump, isn't it? Big muscle pumps blood. And it's got to pump blood up to our brain, because you know what happens when we don't get oxygen to our brain? We become extinct. That's the blight word for dead. But it's only going to go about a foot. But what's working against it? Gravity, yes. But it's only going to go about a foot. So we don't need a great big pump, only something about this size. Now, this draft. Some of these drafts get pretty tall, 18 feet tall. and their necks are about six feet long. So their heart has to pump blood about six feet up in the air against gravity. So they need a little bit bigger pump to get that blood six feet up against gravity. So some of their hearts are about two feet in size. That is a huge pump, pumping tremendous pressure to get that blood and oxygen up to its brain. Because if a giraffe doesn't get blood and oxygen to its brain, guess what happens to it? Extinct, yes, yes. What is that giraffe doing? Getting a drink of water. Notice what a giraffe does when it gets a drink of water. Spreads its legs out, puts its head way down below its heart, and that heart is still pumping tremendous pressure, but now it's not going against gravity, it's going with gravity. So why doesn't that giraffe's head pop off? We should find giraffe heads all over the fossil record, but we don't. Because this creature has been designed to do what it does, and it does it very well. All up and down the giraffe's neck is a series of valves and tissues that close the blood flow off as it bends down to get that drink of water. How many giraffes had to lose their heads until they evolved those? See, this whole idea of long, slow evolution does not work. But now we have a little bit of a situation here. Well, that draft's down there getting that long drink of water, what is it not getting to its head? Blood and oxygen, right. What's gonna happen? Gonna get a little dizzy and pass out, maybe become extinct. But God designed this creature to do what it does, and it does it very well. Right underneath its brain, it's got a spongy material that captures the last blood flow as it begins to bend down. So while it's getting that drink of water, it continues to get blood and oxygen to its brain. Folks, this is not called random chance. This is called special design. Now, one of my favorite creatures, this has got to be one of my favorite. I believe the monarch butterfly is an absolute testimony to a creator God and defies any form of evolution. So the question is, how do you go from a caterpillar to a very complex flying insect like a monarch butterfly? Well, let's start here. An adult lays an egg. And it's a tiny, tiny little egg, not one you get a big scrambled egg with. It reaches maturity in 20 days. That's incredible. I know some people that are 60 years older that are not mature yet. But in 20 days, it reaches maturity. Look at the growth from 0.08 inches to almost 2 inches long. Here's something incredible. Increases its weight 2,700 times in 20 days. How'd you like to do that? That's incredible weight gain. That's still not the most important thing. Once it reaches maturity, it looks for a special kind of leaf and builds a silk pad on the bottom of it. And then it builds the chrysalis. Builds a chrysalis. And it builds this thing from the head back. We still haven't got to the most important thing here yet. Once it's inside that chrysalis, the entire caterpillar, everything except the heart, dissolves into a green liquid. May I give you a homework assignment? We're in Sunday school so we can do homework, right? OK. Tonight, I want you to go home and dissolve yourself into a green liquid. The question I have, what will you do next? Nothing. That's the end of your existence. So what happens to a monarch butterfly when it dissolves itself into a green liquid? This is the amazing part. Eight days later, it reassembles itself into a monarch butterfly. How can it do this? This defies any form of evolution. What this is, folks, is somebody had to pre-program the instructions into its DNA to know how to reassemble itself. Because the first caterpillar that dissolved itself in a green liquid, that's the end of the species. unless somebody programmed the instructions or information in the DNA to reassemble itself. This requires nothing less than a creator God, an all-powerful, all-knowing creator God to design this incredible sequence of events. And then it comes out looking like this. What an incredible testimony to a creator. Then we can just look at the cell. Anybody have cells? Yes. I like to use military terms here to describe the cell. It's got energy generators, invasion guards, transport systems, food factories, protective barriers, waste disposal system, communications link, and electric machines that manufacture their own replacement parts. How many high school students ever heard a cell described like that? That's true, though. That's the cell in terms of military. Now, you've got about 60 trillion of these cells in your body. 60 trillion. How long would it take to assemble 60 trillion cells at one per minute? Here's your choices. Anybody take a guess. D, 114 million years just to take 60 trillion cells and put them together. But that doesn't put them in the right order. You see, order counts. We've got to get all these cells in the right order so we have all the right parts in the right places. How long would that take to get them all in the right order? Trillions and trillions of years. You see, evolution doesn't work. but a creator God who's all-powerful and all-knowing does. This is why I believe the Bible. Let's talk about the incredible human body. This is how I get one of my granddaughters in there. How many would like to try that? I guarantee you try it once and you wouldn't get another chance. Incidentally, that beam is only about four inches wide. All right, let's take a look at our incredible human body. If you took all your blood vessels and lined them all up, would that be more than five miles long? Yes, it would. How about 60,000 miles? And they're all in the right place. Can you imagine wiring a machine with 60,000 miles of wire and making it work? You've got a heart that pumps over 100,000 times a day. How many have to oil it? You got red blood cells that transport oxygen tissues and white blood cells that sacrifice themselves for you. When an enemy agent comes in your body, they rush there and sacrifice themselves. Eyes and ears, which are more complex than any machine mankind's ever made. Take, for example, your ear. It's got three major parts. You got the outer part, the middle part, and the inner part. That makes it easy, doesn't it? The outer part is capturing all these sine waves as I'm speaking. Everybody took trigonometry, didn't you? You see all these sine waves coming, and the outer part of your ear captures that. Then it goes to the middle part of your ear where your eardrum is, which amplifies the sound. Then the amazing part is the inner part. The inner part of your ear takes those sound waves and converts them into electrical pulses and sends them to the brain. We can't do that, folks. So whoever did that's gotta be smarter than anybody that's ever lived on this planet. That's why I believe the Bible. The human body, 60 trillion cells. Every second, now this is gonna get you tired. Every second, 10 million cells die and are replaced. Every second you're sitting there, 10 million cells in your body are dying and being replaced. Think of all the work your body is doing right now. You never have to go on a diet anymore. You're just going to work yourself thin. Just sitting there. Some of your bones are stronger than concrete. Don't try to find out which ones. See, we have an example. A nose that can recognize and remember 50,000 cents. How'd you like to forget some of those? nerve impulses that go to and from the brain up to 170 miles an hour. And you get a new stomach lining every three to four days. Because if you didn't, you'd be dead. Because all that stomach acid in there just eats away at that lining. I get one every one to two days because I eat jalapeno peppers every day. A liver that has over 500 different functions. Are you starting to see we are fearfully and wonderfully made? Sneezes that go up to 100 miles an hour. So don't do it in front of somebody else's face. Teeth that start growing six months before you're born. Eyes that are fully grown at birth. And I had to put this one in there. 17 muscles to smile, 43 to frown. So no sad faces today. Using too much muscle. Let's talk about the brain. About 100 billion nerve cells in your brain. Neurons, connections. Over 100 trillion connections. There's more connections in your brain than all the computers and the internet in the entire world. And that's in that three pounds. And your brain can do about a quadrillion calculations a second. I have a question then. If your brain is that fast, why does it take you so long to do your math problems? That's because your brain has to interpret everything your eyes see and everything your ears hear. That's why you need to sleep at night. Because while you're awake, sitting there, not doing anything, your brain is still working. Every human body is a testimony to an all-powerful, all-knowing creator. Guess who those people are? I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. Every one of you sitting there is a testimony to a greater God. Number four, the Bible does answer ultimate questions. For instance, where did we come from? The Bible's very clear of this. Almost as a theme, almost every book of the Bible testifies God is the creator of all things. Starts in the first book of the Bible, goes all the way through to the last book of the Bible. Folks, this is not a secondary doctrine. Every book of the Bible almost mentions God as the creator. Why is there death and suffering? The Bible answers that question. Genesis 131, God's creation was perfect, nothing wrong with it, no death. And then God gave us one rule to Adam and Eve, one rule. Don't eat of this tree. Because if you do, there's gonna be a consequence called death. Well, guess what happened? Just one rule, and they had to go break it. Disobedience, rebellion, sin. And God kept his promise. He said there would be a consequence, and the consequence would be death. Adam and Eve disobeyed, God kept his promise, and death entered into creation. And all of creation came under the curse. Romans 5.12 gives us this. Death came through one man. And Romans 8 teaches also, all of creation groans because of one man's sin. This is why we have death and suffering. This is why we had 9-11. This is why the world today is under such turmoil. It goes back to the original sin. We decide to live by our own rules rather than God's rule. That is the ultimate answer to why is there death and suffering. Then what is the purpose of life? To make it real condensed, love, obey, glorify, and enjoy God. Let's take a look at him. Jesus said, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and all thy mind. We are to love God with every component of us, heart, soul, and don't forget the mind. That means we need to think according to his word, not the world's. Matthew 28, 19, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are to obey God. This scripture is written to all who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ. It is a command. Colossians 3 23 and whatever you do do it hardly as to the Lord and not to men we're to have joy and Philippians 4 4 rejoice in the Lord always again I say rejoice We're to enjoy him That's the purpose of life Now what happens when we die it answers that question And here's the answer It depends on your relationship with Jesus Christ and Him alone. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. What happens when you die does not matter how good of a person you've been. Doesn't matter all the works you've done. The ultimate piece there for what happens when you die is your relationship with Jesus Christ, not anybody else. and it is only Him. And the Bible even answers the questions, how do you determine what is right and what is wrong? Isaiah 45 verse 19. I am the Lord, I the Lord speak righteousness. I declare things that are right. He even gives us rights. Don't we have a document that talks about rights? We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Our founding fathers knew this country would only survive if we had rights that came from our creator. We had very smart people back then, folks. And the Bible tells us that God does give us rights. We have the right to become children of God, to inherit his heaven. He gives us those rights. And folks, no man can take those rights away from you. That's why I believe this. And then the solution. God gives us the standards for how to live. And here's his standard for how to live. Are these still pretty good, 10 commandments? They're not suggestions yet? Okay, they're still good, 10 commandments. Then God says, I am the creator. Genesis chapter one, verse one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Colossians 1, 16. For by him, all things were created in heaven and earth, things that are visible and invisible. He created everything. Therefore, he owns everything, doesn't he? Then he says, you have no excuse for not believing in me. Know what he just said there, folks? There's no such thing as a true atheist. Because everyone who calls themselves an atheist, in their heart of hearts, they know there's a creator. God said so right there. It's just that some people willfully choose to reject it. And then he says, I want your heart, soul, and mind. Not one part, I want all three parts. And then he says this. Here's his standard, and this is gonna be sad. His standard is, you've gotta be perfect. His standard is perfection. And I'll make a real bold statement, because it's easy to make. Not one of us here is perfect. Know what that means? Not one of us here is going to heaven. Because his standard is perfection. And he tells us, for the wages of sin is death. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. No one's going to heaven. That is God's standard perfection. But our God, and this is why we believe him, said, will pay your price. I will send my son, Jesus Christ, he will pay the ransom for you. That's who our God is. That's why I believe the Bible. We have a God who loved us so much that he sent his son to pay for our imperfections, our sins. That's why we believe. And he said this as a standard, my son Jesus Christ is the only way you're gonna get your ransom paid. Nobody else. That's who he is. Now for the final piece, the most important one. Who is God and what is he like? Again, he is the creator of all things. He's a personal God, we can talk to him directly. We do not need any other human mediators. We can talk to him directly. He's a living God, he's not made out of something carved with human hands. And he's a God of love. He loved us while we were still dead in our sins. That's who our God is. He's a God of patience. He waits for us. And He's a God of cares. Cast all your cares on Him. He can carry your burden. And don't forget, He is a God of judgment. He judged this world once by a flood, and He will judge it again. And then, He is a God of mercy. He tells us this. It doesn't matter what you have done. You can think you've done the most horrible thing out there, but our God says his grace and his mercy is big enough to cover it all. That's who our God is. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Do you know him? That's the question. Do you know God? Would you like to know this God? That's where I'm gonna leave you. We do have resources back there. But I wanna just leave you with that idea. Do you really know who the God of the Bible is? Don't get it from somebody else. Get it from the source. We have DVDs back there Genesis and biblical discernment if you want to find out how the church got in such a mess today armies and nurseries We have answers books that will help you answer many questions. We have apologetics DVDs and if you really want to get trained This next June we're having a five-day creation apologetics teachers college We only take 60 people last year. We had a waitlist. It was full three months before it started and So if you're interested in learning how to speak and teach on the subject of biblical creation apologetics, this is the only course we know of in this country to be taught like this. Jerry is already a graduate of this course. He survived me five days. I got about two minutes left. Let me finish with one final piece here. David and Goliath, most of us have heard of that story. Israel's getting ready to go battle against the Philistines. And the Philistines bring out their giant Goliath. Now, the Israelites had three options. Number one, they could have said, oh, whatever happens, happens. That's called apathy. Or they could have rung their hands and said, woo, it's us. Who can fight against such a giant? That's called the pity party, and that's what they did. Or they can be like David and face that Goliath. Many people have had to face Goliaths throughout their lifetime. Some of you may be facing Goliaths right now. They can be spiritual Goliaths, physical Goliaths, financial Goliaths. Many people have had to face their Goliaths. Let me give you just a couple. A young boy was burned so bad, the doctor said he would never walk again. His name is Glenn Cunningham. He grew up and set the world record in the mile. Another young boy was called stupid by his teacher. His mother found out and pulled him out of school, began homeschooling him. His name is Thomas Edison. A couple years ago, I had the privilege of coaching a little girls track team. And our relay team made it to the state meet. Two of the girls couldn't go for various reasons, so I had to put two substitutes on there. Now, I wasn't sure how fast these two substitutes would run, so I took our fastest girl and put her in the second position as a strategy. So if our first girl wasn't fast enough, our second girl would get us back in the race, and we'd be competitive for a while. So they all lined up in the track, and I noticed something very interesting. We had the four smallest girls on that track. And the gun blew. And the first girls took off running as fast as they could, each girl having run 100 meters. As our first girl starts to hand off to our second girl, she steps on her heel. And our second girl goes flat on the track. I've seen this happen in the Olympics, and I've seen it happen in other track meets. The athletes get up, they're angry, crying, maybe yelling, and just walk off the track. Not this little girl. She's been trained. As soon as this little girl hit the track, she got to her feet, picked that baton up, and started running full speed. By the time she had handed off, she had gained back some of what she had lost. The third girl got that baton and continued to gain, and the fourth girl got the baton, and they became state champions. They faced their Goliath. In your Christian walk, some of you may drop that baton. Will you have the courage to pick it up and continue the race to the finish? Thank you, and God bless you.