All right, is this loud enough? Good. So we'll be continuing our lesson on the reliability of the Bible today. Last week we covered Well, we started covering the reliability of the Bible last week, and the major thing that we covered was the inspiration of the Bible. So the reasons we know it was inspired was because the writers themselves thought it and wrote it down. We have that recorded in many different scriptures. you know, the prophets, you know, talking to each other, talking about each other, the New Testament writers referring back to the prophets, New Testament writers referring to each other as scripture. We also have, you know, the early church fathers referring to you know, the New Testament, the Old Testament as Scripture. So we know that the Bible is inspired by God, which is a foundational truth. Because if we don't have that, if the Bible isn't from God, then we have no standard of truth. So that's the main thing we wanted to drive home last week. And then we also started covering canonization. Which canonization just has to do with figuring out which writings are actually scripture. That's all it is. And which belong in the Bible. So we got into that and we covered The Old Testament, we got into the New Testament, but I'll cover a lot of that same stuff again, because we kind of had to rush through it. I was running out of time. So we covered the canonization of the Old Testament and found that the Jews were given the oracles of God, meaning the law, and many books of the Old Testament. And they preserved it in the Ark of the Covenant, which they carried around with them and stored in the temple. And then, well, not store, but they had it in the temple. And then they would routinely pull out what was given to them and read it to the Jews to remind them of what God had commanded. So we know that the Old Testament was given directly to the Jews and then preserved by them and carried down through history. And then it was settled 200, well, at least 200 years before Christ came, the Old Testament was set. We know that. So that being said, I wanted to give you some notes on canonization that I should have included last week, but I didn't have the right resource. So my dad gave me a really good resource about canonicity. And I want to go over just the methods that the church used when they were trying to determine which writings were scripture. We didn't really get into that. I kind of just said that, I mean, we talked about the quotations from, you know, a lot of the early church fathers that proved the canonicity that, you know, they quoted from each book in the New Testament. But I just want to go through some of the methods that they employed in order to figure out which is scripture. So, for canonization, the methods include, it covered the writer, the contents of the writing, the acceptance of the writing, and of course the inspiration and authority of the writing. So as far as the writer, they wanted to make sure that the writer, they asked the question of, was the writer God's appointed man? Was this someone from God given authority to write these things down, or was this a man and a person just trying to gain attention, trying to further his own ideas? Was this actually God's man? With the Old Testament, we think of this as, was the writer a prophet from God? That's how we look, you know, if the man was a prophet from God, if he was receiving revelation from God, then we know for sure that what he was writing down was scripture, because he's receiving it from God. With the New Testament, We don't think of them as prophets. We look at them as, in the case of apostles, were they an apostle of God? And we covered that last week. You know, you knew the scriptures if they came from the apostles. So the Apostles, again we covered this, were eyewitnesses of Jesus Christ. They were with him. A lot of them were with him or they saw him after he was resurrected. Paul saw him when he was countered on the road to Damascus. So they all had personal encounters with God in the flesh. Through that, they had received the promise of inspiration through the Holy Spirit, and we can find that in John 14, 26. So, in the Old Testament, we see, okay, was this man a prophet from God? Was he approved? In the New Testament, we see, we try and look for, is this man an approved apostle? Not just a man saying he's an apostle, was he approved? Okay? As far as the contents, well, actually, one more thing. When the apostles, when looking at the apostles, you have to look at did the writer live in the apostolic age too, right? So like today, I don't know, like sometimes I drive past churches and then you see like the apostle so-and-so is, you know, the pastor or whatever, the apostle, they would say. You know, and we know that isn't the case because there was a certain time period that the apostles were here for a reason. you know, a large part of the apostles was they were eyewitnesses and they were also able to confirm, you know, the resurrection and they were to confirm the truths of the gospel and also the writing, the scripture writing, with miracles too. So they were capable of a lot of things that no one is capable of today and they were given for a purpose. So we have to look at were the apostles alive during the apostolic age? For instance, one example, the Apocryphal in the Apocrypha, which is in the Catholic Bible. It's a group of 14 books. The Shepherd of Hermas was rejected by most Christians early on, on the grounds that it was written after the death of the Apostle John. So this was way after the last apostle had passed away. And so we know that for sure he was not an apostle because the apostolic age ended there with John. So as far as the contents, we can ask, and these are going to be quick questions, do the contents have life? Are they like giving? What are the contents made up of? Are they edifying? Do they build you up? Do they exhort you? And do they stand apart in their spiritual character? And there's a lot of scriptures we can look at, but let's go to John 8, 32. Yeah, and I just want to mention this because the process wasn't just arbitrary. They weren't just going through and saying, well, we think this is it. No, there was a lot of tests they had to go through. It wasn't just said, we think this is it. There's a lot of tests and a lot of questions they had to ask to make sure that it's actually scripture. And by the way, again, I want to stress this. They were not giving the scriptures authority. The church wasn't giving it authority. The scriptures already had authority before the church discovered they were the scriptures. The scriptures are already scriptures. Men just found out they were scriptures. Does that make sense? It's not the other way around. That's really important to understand. So John 8, 32 here, it says, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. So here's just one example of spiritual character, of life-giving content. They contain life. The truth contains life. The scriptures contain life. They edify you. They make you free through the truth. That's just one example. And then also another question concerning the contents would be, are the narratives in the scripture historically accurate? So can you go back in the Old Testament and find, oh man, there's a lot of things to choose from. Say the Exodus. We can actually go back through history and find that the Exodus actually took place for a lot of different reasons, historical markers and things like that. You know, that is extremely important. That should not be looked over. If you can't prove, you know, if the Bible is making historical claims, they should be able to be validated. And so you need to make sure, that's just one example in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Luke especially, he makes about 84 references to historical details when he's writing. And he does that for a purpose so that we can go back and track it and make sure that it was actually historically accurate. So he's a very detailed writer. We'll look at that soon after this lesson. So you have to make sure that it's historically accurate, too. It's not just saying things that didn't happen, right? And that's a given. It's very obvious. As far as the acceptance, the third point would be acceptance, right? Yeah. Acceptance was, you know, this covers the idea, you know, was there a widespread acceptance of the book by God's people? So if something was written and it wasn't approved by the church, and we know that, again, we saw that when Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. So if the church is the pillar and ground of the truth, everything has to be approved and run by the church before you can even say for sure about anything. The church has to approve it and has to understand it and be presented it. If the, you know, if a writing wasn't approved as scripture by the church back then, you know, especially, you know, even within 50 to 100 years after Christ died and rose from the dead, then it was not taken as scripture. It had to be approved by the churches, by God's people. And then this test also applied especially as we looked at the contents of the New Testament. with the apostles and things like that. The fourth point would be, would cover inspiration and authority. And these are going to be very straightforward, but these are just good to think about. Does the Bible, does the book, sorry, does an individual book bear the hallmarks of inspiration? So if you're reading the book, can you tell, you know, sometimes even Could you tell that the writer was claiming that it was inspired? Was the language being used inspired? Was there some form of structure or words given that you could tell was inspired? Does that make sense? So you have to be able to analyze what was being written and run it through tests of inspiration. Is there a thus saith the Lord quality about it? You know, it's very straightforward. You know, is this something that would come from God himself? Are its contents authentic? Right? And that covers, you know, historical accuracy. There's a lot of other things you can look at. Can you, you know, authenticate what is being written by these men? Does it have the stamp of divine authority? You know, does God approve of this? Would God approve of what is being said? Would it be something that He would say? Is it without fable or factual error? And this is, again, very important. Is it just a fable that is being spread by men, or is it something you can go back and track and say, yes, I know for sure what is being claimed here actually happened and actually took place? So each of these tests, you know, those four tests I just talked about, while not necessarily conclusive in and of themselves. So like, if you take just inspiration and authority and you just look at something written, and you just say, is it inspired and does it have authority? That really isn't enough to say, this is from God. You have to combine all of these tests about the writer, about the context, contents about the acceptance of it, and inspiration authority. You can't just pick and choose. You have to use all of them at once. So while they're not necessarily conclusive in and of themselves, together they bear testimony to the real written word of God. So this is just an example of tests that would be used by the early church to make sure that what they had was actually scripture. It wasn't just an arbitrary process. It was very meticulous. For example, in contrast to that, the Book of Mormon fails each of these tests. We look at the Book of Mormon, no one knows who the writer really was. Joseph Smith plagiarized it and dictated it from behind a curtain. The contents make historical and geographical claims that are inaccurate and fictitious. And only a small group of deceived cultists accept it as God's Word. It's not widespread accepted. It's a very small group. And it only exudes devilish seduction, right, what it teaches. It teaches doctrines that are fantasy and contrary to the Word of God. So we know for sure, you know, it doesn't pass any of the attests, the Book of Mormon. We know that for sure. So we know it's not from God. That's just an example. I'm just using the attests on something else. So that's what they would use on the scripture when they were determining it. Now, getting into the New Testament. And we covered a little bit of this last week, but I rushed through it and I didn't like that. So I'm going to cover it. You may have heard some of this stuff last week, but it'll be good to hear again anyways. So as far as the canonization of the New Testament, we cover the Old Testament, found out it was given to the Jews and preserved by them. We know that for sure. And that's a big claim. There's a lot of things that I can't include. And if you want more information about that, there is a lot more information that could be given to you if you want to study that in detail. We just know for sure from a lot of different evidence and a lot of different writings and things like that, that the Old Testament is sure. We know that it is the word of God. So getting into the New Testament, figuring out which writings were scripture, we covered this, but we said that God promised that Jesus would provide new revelation and back it up with miracles in Isaiah 61. Go to Isaiah 61. God makes a a claim that this is going to happen. There's going to be new revelation provided and also miracles are going to need to take place in order to confirm the revelation. It couldn't just be revelation by itself because how would you know? You know, how would you know this is actually revelation without a confirmation of God's divine power on it? So he later promised that his spirit would guide the apostles into all truth, and we see that in John 14. So we know that there's a promise that new revelation is going to be given, and we know that in John 14, God's spirit would guide the apostles into all truth. This means that the only books that should be in the New Testament, we said this again, but we're gonna say it one more time, are those that are authored and or confirmed by his apostles. And that was one of the tests, right? So God preserved the canon of the New Testament through the New Testament church. And let's go to 1 Timothy 3.15 one more time. Because this verse cannot be stressed enough. I didn't say to go there, but I just referenced it. I can give you the verses if you'd like after, but let's go to 1st Sympathy 315. And this scripture is very foundational and can be used in a variety of contexts. It's very important. 1st Timothy 3.15 says, Paul is writing to Timothy in this. He says, But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And a lot of times, you know, we use this in a variety of contexts because it really applies to, it's very important to a lot of things that we teach in our doctrines. The church is described by Paul himself as the pillar and ground of the truth. You know, what does a pillar do? You think about a pillar and a structure, it supports. Exactly. Without that pillar, you know, a large portion of this ceiling wouldn't be structurally sound. Okay? Exactly. So we know that, you know, practically speaking, without the church, the truth of God would have nothing to stand on, right? It would have no support. It would have nothing. Let me rephrase that. it would have nothing supporting it and to keep it for us. Does that make sense? Without a church, we really wouldn't have what we have today. Because it's through the church that everything we have is preserved. Even all the doctrines, it was passed down through a church, through church people. So without a church, we would have no truth, really. So the Church was given the responsibility of discovering, again, discovering what God intended to be in the New Testament and preserving it through every generation. So, like the Old Testament, the Old Testament was given to the Jews, they were given the responsibility of preserving it. The New Testament was given to the Church, no longer to the Jews, to the Church. and they had responsibility of being the pillar and ground of the truth and preserving it through all generations. That's what we take 1st Sympathy 315 as, okay? Maybe you read it differently, but that makes a lot of sense to me. So this we know. We know that there are many letters, for example, that we don't have record of, okay? We know that Paul wrote other letters, and I mentioned last week he wrote a letter to the Laodiceans. We don't have that. Why don't we have that? They didn't pass the tests that we mentioned earlier. It just wasn't from God. I'm sure it had some very valuable information from it, but it just wasn't God's direct word to us. So it wasn't supposed to be preserved as scripture. And this, you know, gives us an insight into the fact that, you know, evidently the church had knowledge. And we know that they did by the tests that we covered. There was knowledge about what writings were scripture. Because again, why aren't all the letters recorded for us? Why is there only some and not others? They had knowledge. They knew exactly what they were doing when they were going through the writings. If all of it was Scripture, then again, it would all be recorded for us. Why not? Okay, so we know that for sure. We also know that the final book of the New Testament, again, was written no later than 80 AD. You know, and this is, again, I want to stress this, this happened really fast. The process of canonization happened very quick. It wasn't long and drawn out. It didn't happen thousands of years later, even hundreds of years later. It was quick. It was within 50 to 100 years, you know, after Christ's death. So it was right after. And this is important to understand. We'll get into this later. The fact that it was so soon that they compiled this all together, you know, really aids in the fact, in the reliability of the Bible. Because, so we know that fables today, what happened to them? We know that there is a story that was passed down through every generation. You may have like a fable in your family or a tale, right? They get passed down through every generation. They're changed. They're twisted a little bit. People add some stuff here and there. And we don't really know for sure what even was the original story. When the Bible, when the scriptures were canonized and compiled and written, it happened so quick, you can't call them fables. Because you know why? The apostles were still around to correct them when they were compiled. The original writer was still around when they were compiled as scripture to say, hey, that's not true at all. That event didn't happen. This is what actually happened. So it aids greatly that it happened so fast. Okay. And again, this happened, the Bible, the New Testament was canonized, meaning the scriptures were found and compiled into the Bible within 50 years of Jesus' death. Very quick. It was not late. It was not accidental. Okay. In 115 AD, an early church father whose name was Polycarp, we talked about this, Polycarp was a disciple of John himself, the Apostle John. So this is direct, this is a direct line. He wrote a letter to the Church of Philippi in which he has nearly 50 clear quotations taken from Matthew, Luke, Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, 1st and 2nd Peter, and 1st John, with many allusions to all of the rest of the books of the New Testament. The only book that he does not directly talk about and does not directly allude to is Jude. Everything else is in there. And if we look at quotations from other church fathers, Jude is included. So here we have someone who is a disciple of John the Apostle in 115 AD talking about the scriptures that we have today. just the same exact ones, and he's quoting from them. And this aids in the fact of our understanding of the canon, because if these early church fathers, Polycarp, a disciple of John, if he knew which was scripture, and if he's quoting from all these books, we know beyond a reasonable doubt, this is the word of God. Because if they're quoting from it as, and sometimes they directly say, this is the word of God. If we know that, then there's beyond a reasonable doubt what we have and what they're quoting from is actually God's word. So there's, you know, again, great reason to believe that the canon of scripture had been set at that time. It was known. That's 115 AD. Okay. That's very soon after Christ's death. with under 100 years still. So it was pretty known by then. It was known, not pretty known. It was known. So the early church fathers like Polycarp, who was a disciple of John, knew that the New Testament was inspired because they knew the books were written by apostles and those apostles had been confirmed by miracles. Again, that test that we talked about. It was written by apostles and it was confirmed by miracles. It wasn't just something they had said. It was confirmed by the power of God, by divine power. That's a large reason apostles were able to do miracles. It was for confirmation of the truth. I lose my place in my notes so easily. This isn't good. through Polycarp and one of his disciples, Irenaeus, we have quotations from 23 out of 27 books of the New Testament as if they are authentic. And in some of those quotations, in some of those cases where they quoted, they specifically say they were authentic. They're taking it to the bank. They're saying this is the Word of God. We know that for sure. The authorship of all four gospels is confirmed by Polycarp's disciples Irenaeus. Many, you know, a lot of scholars, you know, they posit that you can create, recreate almost all of the New Testament. And maybe I'm coding them wrong because I've heard that you can create the entire New Testament from the writings of the early church fathers. So if you go back, you look at all of these, and there's a lot of early church fathers, you can go back and look at all their writings and compile them together and say, you can find the entire New Testament quoted. Isn't that amazing? And again, they're in direct line right after Christ. This is not 500 years later, 1,000 years later. This is right after. They're either apostles, they're either disciples of the apostles, or just disciples of those disciples, like Irenaeus. This is very soon. It appears that they knew what was scripture. Additionally, just extra comments, we have quotations from the New Testament from the Didact, which is a doc... which is... I don't want to get into that. But it's an important... what do you say? It's a document? Or... I mean... Yeah, it's just it includes a lot of quotations. I'll tell you that much. And it was it was it was very important in the churches, too. And then we also have quotations from Clement of Rome, which is another church father, early church father. And Justin Martyr. OK, so all of these these other men, these documents that we have, they all come together and we know from all of them We have the truth. We have God's word, literally. I don't know about you all, but in studying this, this has really solidified me, too. I mean, this is really cool stuff to see and to study and to review for me, because it lines it all up perfectly. Right? And it gives you so many good reasons to say, you know, it wasn't just like someone just said, Oh, this is just God's word. You have to accept it. No, there was, it was meticulous. They had a lot of tests, a lot of reasons to believe a lot of people, you know, they all agreed with each other too, which is amazing. They all agreed on the scriptures. Okay. And by the way, they had no reason to do that. We're going to get into that. They had no reason to say this is God's word because it got them beaten, tortured and killed. Okay. There is no reason for them to agree on this. That aids in reliability too. They got nothing out of this. Okay. That's very important to understand. We're going to get into that later. Talking about the dating, I wanna stress this point, it's really important. And I just want you to go through this thought experiment with me. Most, if not all of these books were written before AD 70, okay? About 40 years after the death of Jesus, 40 years, okay? So imagine this, you're a devout Jew in the first century, The center of your national, economic, and religious life is Jerusalem, and especially the temple in Jerusalem, okay? It has been that way in your nation, your family, and almost every Jew's family for a thousand years, ever since Solomon built the first temple. Most of the newest temple constructed by King Herod was completed when you were a child. but portions of it are still under construction and have been since 19 BC or around that. For your entire life, you have attended services and brought sacrifices there to atone for the sins you've committed against God. Why? Because you and your countrymen consider this temple the earthly dwelling place of the God of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, the very deity whose name is so holy you dare not utter it. As a young man, you begin following a Jew named Jesus, who claims to be the long-awaited Messiah predicted in your scriptures. He performs miracles, teaches profound truths, and scolds and befuddles the priests in charge of the temple. Incredibly, he predicts his own death and resurrection, and he also predicts that the temple itself will be destroyed before your generation passes away in Mark 13, 2 and 30. You can find it there. This is scandalous. Jesus is convicted of blasphemy by your temple priests and is crucified on the eve of the Passover, one of your holiest holidays. He's buried in a Jewish tomb, but three days later, you and his other followers see Jesus alive, just as he predicted. You touch him, eat with him, and he continues to perform miracles, the last being his ascension into heaven. 40 years later, your temple is destroyed, just as he had predicted, along with the entire city and thousands of your countrymen. Here's a question. If you and your fellow followers write accounts of Jesus after the temple and city were destroyed in 8070, aren't you going to at least mention that unprecedented national, human, economic, and religious tragedy somewhere in your writings, especially since this reason Jesus had predicted it? Right? You know, I've heard, you know, writers have said the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem was like 9-11 times 100. It was the worst event in Jewish history up to that point. It was utter destruction. Okay. So this means most, if not all, of the documents must have been written prior to AD 70. AD 70 is when the temple was destroyed and Jerusalem was ransacked. So if no writings that we have of the New Testament talk about this event, this catastrophic event that Jesus predicted, We know beyond a reasonable doubt they were written before because you would include that. Especially if Jesus predicted it, why wouldn't you include it? It would add to his authority, right? So we know for sure a lot of it, if not all, was written before this event. That's amazing. So this fact alone makes the canon very clear as well. The scriptures were determined and set. By the way, you might run into some objections about the Council of Trent, Council of Hippo, which are all Catholic councils. That happened, by the way, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after the death of Christ. And in this, they will object and say, no, the canon was decided by these Catholic councils. The Apocrypha was included, by the way, as scripture. We know that even though it happened hundreds of years later, and it's unreliable, and even though the church had already decided, we saw that in early writings, they knew what was scripture because they were quoting from it already. Okay. This fact alone of the destruction of the temple really disproves that the canon was created so much later by these Catholic councils because it had to be finished before this event because it wasn't included. That's important to understand. I only have a couple minutes. Okay, so the overarching theme here is that God oversaw this process. That's what I want you to understand, too. It was not done by man. Creating the canon and preserving scripture was not done by man. It was miraculous. It has God's handiwork all over it, all throughout history. It was miraculous. It was not done by man and definitely not done by the Catholic Church. We believe that God preserved his words for us and made it clear which writings were actually from him. We believe God is powerful enough to keep his word pure and free from the fault of men. This is a supernatural process. You can't make it any less. If it was done by man, sure, I would totally understand. Well, how do you know what you have is actually God's word? If it was done by man, maybe they got it wrong. Maybe they copied it wrong. Maybe they pass it down wrong. So many things would go wrong, right? That's reasonable. But if God is real and miracles are possible, this is no problem for him. That's what I want you to understand. No problem for him. Oh man. Okay. One more thing to add to the reliability of the canon. Over 5,000 extant manuscripts, extant means in existence today, and manuscripts mean copies of the original text that were written by the apostles. Manuscripts are the copies, okay? Over 5,000, I don't know why I took these off, I need them. Over 5,000 extant manuscripts exist today along with very old translations of the Bible, like Latin. We covered that when talking about the King James Version. We looked at the Textus Receptus and the 5,000, over 5,000, it's over 5,000 manuscripts that agree with each other with over 95% accuracy. They agree with each other. And by the way, they disagree with the Vaticanus and Alexandrian copies. And those two copies disagree with each other. So we have, that's just a tidbit, that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. This aids in establishing the accuracy of the canon of Scripture because, again, they all agree with each other concerning the books of the Bible. You don't look. So none of these manuscripts, over 5,000, add a book or take a book away. They all have the same number. That's more of a mathematical issue there, but if there's over 5,000 copies in other Bible translations, like in Latin and other languages, they all agree. Coming from different people, by the way, and different lines copied down, that aids in the accuracy because we know that these people all agreed. So it adds to the accuracy. Now this leads us to a very common objection to canon when it comes to the KJV because the KJV translators included the Apocrypha. One detail that is all but forgotten and never mentioned in this objection is that the translators were very clear that the Apocrypha was not scripture, but rather a useful tool to study the Bible, an addendum they called it. Today, we can think of it as a study Bible with extra notes. It's just like extra notes on the side, okay? They included it for historical interest, not because they were Scripture. I've engaged a lot of Catholics, especially at school, and the Word of God is always the central issue we always discuss, especially the authority. Because I'm over here saying the Word of God is enough, and they're saying, no, yeah, that's the Word of God, but tradition and Catholic Church and the Pope all adds to it. It gets very frustrating, but this is one thing the Apocrypha is really important to understand, especially in KJV, because if a Catholic has studied, they'll know this and say, well, what do you have to say about that? So they, again, the translators included it for historical interest, not because they were scriptured. They made that very clear. They said it's not scriptured. This is different from the Catholic Bible. The Catholic Bible includes the Apocrypha as scripture in their canon. And this was, again, that was determined back in those older Catholic councils, especially the Council of Trent was an important one. where they determined that. So we see that the early established canon with this was passed down through many ages and we have many copies of it today in the form of the Textus Receptus. Those are those over 5,000 manuscripts that agree with each other and the other languages as well. So we have the canon. It's been passed down accurately. We know that. We can go back and look at the early church fathers. We know what the apostles said. All of that is set and clear. There's a lot more I can say about this. That's going to conclude the lesson on canonization. Next week, we're going to get into more reliability tests that maybe you haven't heard of. That'll be very interesting for you to learn about. It was really interesting for me to learn about. So I'm excited to bring that. That'll be the end of the lesson today. Thank you.