Our theology is going to dictate our philosophy. All right, so what we believe and know to be true in God, about God and His Word, is going to dictate, if that's what we believe, that's what we teach, is going to dictate how we behave, what we believe, and so how we live our lives. And so we're here this morning, if you take your Bibles, turn to 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16. We mentioned this verse last week, but we're going to again this week, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 16. Let's pick it up in verse 14. 2 Timothy 3 and verse 14. And the Bible says here, But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. Now, we are dealing with the doctrine of the Bible. We talked the first week about the importance of Bible doctrine, and there's an emphasis in the Word of God on Bible doctrine. We should know Bible doctrine. Why? Because we have to know when we hear error. We have to be able to defend our faith, all these things. So we talked about the importance of doctrine last week. We began with the doctrine of the Bible, and we went through 2 Peter 1, verse 15-21, where Peter said, we have a more sure word of prophecy. In other words, more sure than when Peter was a witness that the Holy Spirit came down and God spoke, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Peter said we have a more sure word than the voice of God coming down from heaven and that's the Word of God. Think about that. That's how important the Word of God is. And we talked that all the doctrines that we find in the Word of God, the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, of the last times, the church, all these things find their root in the doctrine of the Bible. The doctrine of the Bible is the foundation upon all other doctrines stands. If we are not sure about the Bible, then we cannot be sure about anything else in the Word of God. And so we're dealing here with the doctrine of the Bible, and if you want a subtitle to the lesson this morning, a part two of the doctrine of the Bible is, all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now, we talked just a little bit last week about the word inspiration. What does the word inspiration mean? There's a question for you. Anybody know? We dealt with that. What does inspiration mean? Yes. Point. Okay. It literally means God breathed. That's what the word inspiration means. So we're going to go a little further into this word inspiration. That's what the word means. It means God breathed. I'm going to first of all give the explanation for the word inspiration. Then we're going to deal with some erroneous views of inspiration. In other words, there's people when they hear that word inspiration, they think something else. In other words, they're not thinking, God breathed. For example, we say today, well, Shakespeare was inspired when he wrote that. That's in a different sense that we're speaking this morning. So, the word inspiration, as we already noted here, according to 2 Timothy 3.16, is translated from a compound Greek word, which means, God breathed. Now, the Bible is clear, very clear, in revealing that God is the author of the Bible. We're going to go into some examples of, at the end, the last one will be some of the evidence of inspiration, some of the proofs of inspiration, but let me give you a few Bible verses, kind of just to give you an idea of what God says. For example, Psalm 6811 says this, The Lord gave the word, great was the company of those that published it. The Lord gave the Word. 1 Corinthians 2.13 says this, In other words, the Word of God is not the Word of man. It is the spiritual Word of God. It is what the Holy Ghost teaches. It's not the words of man. Galatians 1, 11, and 12 says this, For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." Now last week we dealt with that word revelation. We said that there is general revelation out there. In other words, there's the revelation God has revealed Himself to every man through creation. and through conscience, but then we talked about there is also specific revelation, and that is talking about the Bible. And so here we see the Apostle Paul says that the gospel that he received was by revelation, specific revelation of Jesus Christ. There are several definitions out there on revelation, but here are two that are pretty concise. First definition is, the inspiration of the Scriptures is that miracle by which the Holy Spirit guided the writers of Scripture to record the words of God without error, without omission, and without exaggeration. The second definition would be this, inspiration is the breath of God expressing itself through a chosen instrument, a human personality. Now we talked about last week, as you remember, I gave the illustration of someone that plays the trumpet. Someone that plays the trumpet, they blow into the trumpet, and to produce a sound. And in a sense, the men that were used of God to write the Word of God were just like an instrument that God breathed through to produce exactly what He wanted. Just like when someone plays the instrument, they want to sound exactly what is written, exactly what the record is. And we talked that the Word of God is settled in heaven. In other words, the Word of God never changes. It doesn't evolve over time. It doesn't adapt to society. It is already settled in heaven. It's always been the same. The Word of God doesn't change. And so what was breathed out through an instrument, through a man, for them to write down or to pen the words down, it came from God Himself. Now, we talked about that We dealt specifically with 2 Peter 1, 16-21, and we saw that the holy men of God, the Bible says, spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And in that passage, as I said earlier, the Apostle Peter was saying that inspiration is superior to the eyewitness accounts because it is not influenced by fallible man. There is no doubt that God breathed out the words to mankind. So when you think about this word inspiration, it's not in the way that we think of, well, these guys were just very smart people that just got inspired to write some things down. That's not the way we're talking about. When you speak of inspiration, we're saying that God breathed through man, into man, and he penned the exact words that God wanted penned. So, as we think of inspiration, there's really two things as we think about 2 Timothy 3.16. He says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. Now, according to this verse, we're going to look at two things, and maybe you want to write those down. First of all, we believe in verbal inspiration. Verbal inspiration. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said this, he says, the Bible is the writing of the living God. Each letter was penned with an almighty finger. Each word is dropped from the everlasting lips. Each sentence was dictated by the Holy Spirit. So we think about when we say verbal inspiration, It means this verbal means by means of words or word for word That's what the word verbal means as used of inspiration It means that every words of the Bible were breathed out by God. So think about it It's not just sometimes people say well the thoughts God just gave man a thought and then man just wrote down what the general thought was No, that's not what we're talking about He says all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. For example, Acts 116 said this, God revealed that not only the spelling of the words, but also the difference between the singular and the plural form of a word is God breathed. For example, we're familiar with the Bible says when Jesus said himself, think about it, Matthew 5, 18, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled. Now, that word jot or tittle, I forgot the picture there. I printed something because I wanted you to see here what this actually means. What does this mean, jot and tittle? I hope I have this in my, yes, I do. Great. Anybody here is an expert in Hebrew? Anybody read Hebrew? Okay, these are the letters of Hebrew. This is the Hebrew alphabet. Now, the jot and tittle, when you look at, for example, at the Hebrew alphabet, you'll find that some letters are very similar. For example, this letter is very similar to this letter. Right? We say, wow, I mean, from a distance, it looks pretty much the same. But I want you to think, as we think about the jot and the tittle, a jot is just a little, it's the smallest letter, okay, of the Hebrew alphabet, which looks like this. That's a jot. And the tittle, notice, a tittle is a little mark that would differentiate one letter from another, which is this one. These two letters look pretty similar. The tittle is this little thing right there. You see how it's different from here? So when God says, okay, that one jot or one tittle The Bible says, that's the words of Jesus, "...shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Think about it, God promised through inspiration as He breathed out His Word, okay, that none of these words or the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet to just a little jot or just a little tittle is not going to pass. In other words, God says that whatever He's spoken out, breathed out, written out, is going to be preserved. Why? Because it comes from God. So, Jod is the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the Tiddle is the small appendage that differentiates between two similar looking letters in the alphabet. So, when we think about inspiration, we're speaking of verbal inspiration. All scripture is given by inspiration of God. Not just parts, all of it. So we talk about verbal inspiration, we're also speaking of plenary inspiration. The word plenary means this, very simple, full. Hence the word all scripture is given by inspiration of God. In referring to inspiration, it means that the full Bible is inspired or that every word is breathed out by God. Now, some people would say the historical parts of the Bible are as accurate as the parts that explain salvation. In other words, some people would discount and say, well, you know, whenever you see the Bible talks about eternal life and Jesus giving the gospel, then that's inspired. But when you look at the historical parts, it's not inspired. No, no. When we speak of plenary inspiration, all of the scripture, every part, every word, is inspired. Whether it's historical, whether it speaks of doctrine, whether it speaks of science, and we're going to go there in just a minute, it is 100% accurate. 100% inspired of God. In other words, some people would have the position that while God inspired the spiritual parts, but the historical parts didn't need to be inspired. People just recorded them. Well, that's not true. Okay? All scripture. Not just the parts. He didn't say some. The important parts are inspired. He says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. In other words, he says also the verse that deals with science are as infallible as the description of heaven. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about plenary inspiration, full inspiration. You know, Jesus said this in Matthew 4, 4. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by what? Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Let me ask you this. Would God ask us to do something that was impossible for us to do? You see, if we didn't have every word, why would He ask us to live by every word? You see, God only, He's not going to expect us to do something that we don't have a record of. He's not going to expect us to follow the very words if we don't have the very words of God. Why? Because they came from the mouth of God. You know, a lot of times people, what they do is when, with the subject of inspiration, they like to reason things and say, well, you know, If you think, you know, common sense, well, let me ask you this. Do you believe in God? Is God supernatural? Well, yes. Could God, if He is God, if you truly believe God, then could He have written His word? You know, a lot of times people discount, they discount what is supernatural because they don't think it's convenient. But let me say that inspiration is a faith issue. The Christian life, we live the Christian life by faith. Do we believe that God has given us His word? Yes, I believe it. So if we believe it, we look at the Bible and say, for example, Proverbs 4.4 says, Every word of God is pure. Every word. Not just some parts, every word. 2 Timothy 3.16, again, he says, All. Now think about it, when you see all, it means plenary. Scripture means verbal, is given by inspiration of God, is God-breathed. So that's why we believe, for example, when we speak of inspiration, we're speaking of a verbal, plenary inspiration of the Word of God. And if we take any other positions from that, then we have to get to the place where we say, well, there's mistakes in the Bible. There's errors in it. It's not all inspired. Here are the parts that are good and here are the parts that are not good. Well, what this does is it places the authority in the hands of man and not in the hands of God. And there's a problem there. Because I am not interested in following a man. I am interested in following God. So we see here the explanation of inspiration. The second thing we see is the erroneous definitions of inspiration. I'm going to give you a few, and you don't have to write those down, but so you get an idea of some of the different positions out there, because some people will speak of inspiration, but when they speak of inspiration, they redefine it. In other words, the definition I just gave you, or the explanation, is what the Bible says. All plenary scripture, verbal, is given by inspiration of God, is God-breathed. That's the Bible definition. Now, some other people will look at the word inspiration, they'll have a different definition. There's the natural inspiration view. The natural inspiration says this, this view understands that the writers of the Bible to be men of great genius who did not need any supernatural help in writing the Bible. God did not breathe out the words. Men were inspired to write these words. This position really disregards what the Bible says about itself. that it came from God. It did not come from man. This was not given by man, but holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. So the natural inspiration means, well, you got a bunch of smart guys, and through a period of 1,500 years, they were so smart, and they just felt inspired within themselves, just like Shakespeare, or someone would paint a painting, and we say, wow, that was, he must have been inspired. That's not what we're speaking of. But that's natural inspiration. That's a false view. There's also those that hold to the view of degree inspiration, which simply says this. This means that within the inspired Bible, some parts are more inspired than others. All the Bible is inspired, but not to the same degree. That doesn't even make sense. Then who is to say what parts are more inspired than the others? Who is to say that? Now what happens is people come up with these views. Why? Because of what the world says. and because of the voices that scream out there. But when we're going to look at the end here, at the last moment, we're going to see that actually all of the evidence, all of the science, everything that archaeology finds and history teaches proves to the fact that the Bible is not just the words of man, it's the words of God. And everything is accurate. There's nothing in this world that's been found or discovered or been seen in the history books that goes against the record of the Bible. The historical record, all these things. So that is the degree inspiration. Some parts are more inspired than others. Then there's the partial inspiration, which teaches this. It means that while some parts of the Bible are inspired, others are not at all. They make a false distinction between the doctrinal parts of the Bible and the historical parts of the Bible. Let me say this. The Bible is either all true or it's all wrong. It's either all true or it's all wrong. You can't pick and choose what you want. It's either all true or it's all wrong and we're wasting our time. But if it is all true, man. That's going to change our lives. And it does. And it has. So, partial inspiration. We also speak of dynamic inspiration. It's another position. The thoughts of the biblical writers are inspired by the Holy Spirit, but not their words. And by the way, a lot of people will take that position, even among independent Baptist churches, to where they say, well, you know, God just kind of gave them a thought and they wrote those down. Let me ask you this. How do you express thoughts? with words. Proverbs 35 and 6 says this, Every word of God is pure. He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him, and put not thou unto His words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. He says, look, there should be no addition, subtraction, think about, of the very words. No words should be added, no words should be taken out, no words should be modified, every word of God. And so some people say, well, you know, God just gave them a thought and they wrote it down. No, no, the very words were communicated. So some people hold to the view of dynamic inspiration. Some people, and this is maybe less common, but some people hold to the view of double inspiration. And a lot of times people, just because you have the Bible position, will accuse you of that when it comes to the King James Bible. But here's the double inspiration. By the way, that's not what we are. This view states that the King James Bible, as a translation, was breathed out by God. in the same way as the autographa, in other words, the original writings. The prominent advertiser of this view is Peter Ruckman. Now, he holds the view that the King James Version is superior to the Greek and the Hebrew. Some believe that the KJV was re-inspired in AD 1611 and supersedes the original. They refer to this position as double inspiration. In other words, let me explain it this way. They look at the Bible, they'll use, for example, they'll even use Bible verses. They'll say that the Word of God is purified seven times as silver tried in the furnace of earth. And they'll look, they'll trace somehow in history, say look, seven times where the Word of God was just evolved and improved over time. And the 1611 King James Bible was the perfection to where God breathed it out again. We speak of inspiration, we're saying, we're talking about what? God breathed out. God breathed out His Word only once. He didn't do it over and over again. Now, I believe the King James Bible, but let me say this, I do not believe, the Bible doesn't teach that, that God breathed out, okay, to other men in the English language, the 1611 that we have today. God didn't do that. But we don't believe in double inspiration, okay? So, and by the way, if God gave out something that was perfect, if his word is perfect, how can you improve on perfect? You can't. You can't, it doesn't get, you don't get better than perfect. And so when God breathed out, it was perfect, and God said that he, and we'll see that, God said he's going to preserve his word to every generation. And so when God breathed out his word, it was perfect. So we reject natural inspiration, we reject degree inspiration, we reject partial inspiration, dynamic inspiration, and double inspiration. What we believe is the Bible position. All scripture, is given by inspiration of God. All right? So, as we think about that, the explanation of inspiration, we see the erroneous definition of inspiration, but thirdly, we see the evidence of inspiration. And by the way, this is just a very small part, because this is really inexhaustible. When I started adding to this, I'm like, wow, that just keeps going. So what I'm going to give you is just really a small part of what we find really in the Word of God and throughout everything else as to the evidence of inspiration. In other words, the fact that the Bible is God-breathed. First of all, we have the testimony of the Bible itself. the testimony of the Bible itself. We've really already read plenty of verses, but let me give you another example. In 2 Samuel 23-2, the Bible says, "...the Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His word was in my tongue." That's pretty clear. Okay? The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His Word was in my tongue. Ezra 1.1, the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah. Now, the phrase, think about it, the phrase, thus saith the Lord, and similar phrases are found over 3,800 times in the Old Testament. Where God says, this is my Word. Thus saith the Lord." You know, even the human writers realized that God was giving them the words. In Exodus 25.1, the Bible says, And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Isaiah 1.2 says, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord hath spoken. Jeremiah 1.1 says, The words of Jeremiah, and then he says in verse 2, To whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah. The judgment attached to adding to or taking away from the words of Scripture shows God's attitude towards the importance of His words. Revelation 22, 18. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. The book of Revelation is not a pleasant thing. And so as we think about that, think, as we think about the evidence of inspiration, first of all, the Bible, the testimony of the Bible itself claims to be the Word of God. The Quran doesn't claim to be the word of God. It claims to be the word of the Prophet Muhammad. You see now, there are a bunch of kooks throughout history that say, oh yeah, I'm speaking on behalf of God. But no book in the world has claimed and has been given to us in the way the Bible has been given to us. A lot of times people have come up with their own religion and their own book, but think about it. You're dealing here with a book that's been written over 1,500 years, that has been used by, that has been penned out by 40 different penmen. Think about it. With all different backgrounds, with all different circumstances, in different languages. And it all comes together. There's no contradiction. That's amazing. So we have the testimony of the Bible itself. We also secondly have the testimony of the unity of the Scriptures. And I just kind of alluded to that. I got ahead of myself. But think about it. Sixty-six books. Now the Bible is one book, but there's sixty-six books. Forty different penmen. Forty different people were used by God to pen out the words. There was also a 1,500-year period of specific revelation. Let me say this. And not one contradiction. That's pretty amazing. I mean, you'll find today people just going back and forth and people write a book and then later they'll have an addition to that book. Why? Because they basically made a statement that was not accurate or not true and they're writing another book just to correct that statement. Not for the Bible. Think about it. And it was written by more than one man. That's an amazing thing. So we see the hand of God. So we see the testimony of the unity of the scriptures, the testimony of the Bible itself. We also see, number three, the testimony of archaeology. I think it's amazing today, there are people in this world that have made it their mission to try to discount the Bible. They'll even study the Bible and look at specific events in the Bible, and they'll go to this place today in Israel, the Middle East, and they'll try to find a place to see if, oh, I'm gonna find something that's going to show you that this book is not true. But it is amazing that every time they go to a place, they find a discovery and say, wow, actually, that's accurate. You know, many people, even has been documented, the people that went out to go disprove the Bible actually became Christians themselves. Who's that? Josh McDowell is one, and I'm sure there's plenty more. Think about it. Archaeology has confirmed the accuracy of the names, the times, and the places of reign, and over 40 different kings by means of documents that were contemporary to the Bible. Think about that. People have looked at documents that have been recorded through history, and they're in agreement with the Bible. Archaeology has confirmed that writing was highly developed by when Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Some people say, well, you know, the people came up and said, well, you know, by that time when Moses lived, nobody wrote, they didn't know how to write. But then they study the issue and they go down and they look and say, oh man, actually people wrote pretty well back then. You'll try, let's try something else. Think about those who have accepted the premise that the Bible is historically accurate have made some amazing discoveries. Over 5,000 places have been unearthed from mentions in the Bible. You read the Bible, you'll get to learn a whole lot more. So we have the testimony of archaeology. We also have the testimony of history. Now, you know, throughout history we talked about the Roman, the attack on the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church. They didn't want people to read the Bible. But if you go to the Roman Emperor Diocletian in A.D. 20, really he lived from 245 to 313. He made a decree in A.D. 303 that every Bible should be destroyed. Think about it, about 300 years after Christ came. He had been told that if he could destroy the Bible, he would destroy Christianity because Christians are a people of the book. They should be, right? Feeling he had succeeded, Diocletian raised a column with an inscription in Latin saying this, the name of Christian is extinguished. Yet Constantine succeeded him in the year AD 312, replaced the pagan symbols with the symbol of the cross. This remarkable change took place in less than 10 years. So an emperor said, I'm going to stamp out the Bible, and then he erects a monument that says, the name Christian is gone. And then within 10 years, and I know that Constantine wasn't probably a saved man, but the fact is he brought the Bible back when people sought to extinguish the Bible. 1,400 years after Constantine, the French atheist Voltaire who lived from 1694 to 1778, boasted, 100 years from my day, there will not be a Bible on the earth except one that is looked upon as an antiquarian curiosity seeker. He says, 20 years after the death of Voltaire, this is hilarious, the Geneva Bible Society purchased his house for printing the Bible. That's hilarious, okay. It later became the Paris headquarters for the British and Foreign Bible Society, which stored and distributed Bibles throughout Europe. I just, that's amazing. Well, Isaiah 48 says this, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of the Lord shall stand forever. There's billions of copies today. So the testimony of history and the word of God, and think about it today, who's attacking the Koran today? Nobody's attacking the Koran. I actually had a student in the school, I had a Bible club, and she, the school brought in a Muslim to teach them about the Koran. And so she asked the teacher, well, can you, I have our youth pastor there at Capitol, could he come in? Well, that's interesting. There's no attacks on the Koran today, but people will attack the Bible. It's always been attacked. But the testimony of history, the Word of God has always prevailed. And by the way, even with the attacks, it still changes people's lives. So we have the testimony of history, we also have the testimony of scientific discoveries. Now let me, I'll mention these very quickly, but let me give you a few here, and these are all recorded in the Word of God. God created the universe out of nothing, Hebrews 11.3. Moisture in the atmosphere goes through a cycle of evaporation and condensation, according to Psalm 135, verse 7. The earth is spherical in shape, Isaiah 40, 22. The earth rotates upon its axis, Job 38, 13 and 14. The earth is suspended in space, Job 26, 7. Tides vary in the late evening and early morning hours, Job 26, 10. The stars cannot be numbered, Jeremiah 33, 22. The atmosphere has weight, Job 28, 25. The stars travel in certain paths. Judges 5, 20. The blood sustains life. Leviticus 17, 11. The chemical composition of man and the earth is identical. Psalm 103, 14. And by the way, the list goes on and on. But I'm saying here that before people discovered that the earth was round, the Bible stated that the earth was round. So people are really catching up. Now think about it, there used to be a practice in America which really killed our president, George Washington. What did they do, remember? When he was sick, they said, well, we got to drain his blood. So they cut him up to drain his blood. And by the way, all the doctors that came to his house that day said, yeah, that's what you need to do. Well, yeah, he died as a result. Well, if you just read the Bible that was sitting on his desk right beside his bed, he would have known that the life of the flesh is in the blood. Now, these are things that the Bible says, so I think that if we study the Word of God, I think we will become more scientific. We'll learn some things. And people that today make great discoveries, the Christian, we say, well, wait a minute, the Bible already said that. God already stated that. So, we see the testimony of scientific discoveries. We also see the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. Think about His words, His works, His resurrection. Think about Jesus Christ, how many times He quoted the Scriptures. Exactly. Word for word. Think about the works that he did and his resurrection. That's all a testimony of the fact that the Word of God is true. It comes from God. We also have the testimony of influence on lives and nations. Think about from Paul who was one that went into people's houses and took them away and put them in prison because they were Christians, who got saved in Acts chapter 9, to John Newton. Think about John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace. Well, before he wrote Amazing Grace, he was a very sinful and wicked man who was a sailor and he cursed and, I mean, you look at his life and study his life, I mean, his life was a mess, but guess what? God changed his life. He became a preacher. George Mueller. We don't know much about George Mueller. We just know he's a great man. But think about it. At the age of 16, he was a drunkard, gambler, and a thief. But when he was 20, he trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. And God changed his life. You know, today, the Word of God is still affecting people's lives. Has it affected your life? Sure has affected my life. So as we think about the testimony of influence, it was funny, there was a preacher, I can't remember the name, but he was preaching in a crowd, it was Salvation Army, and an atheist man came up and said, I don't believe anything you say. And he was an intellectual man, and he says, well, he basically says, you can't help people. Your gospel doesn't do anything for people. And he says, all right, well, you come back tomorrow night, and you bring people that have been changed by your science and all your education, and I'll bring people that have been changed by the word of God. Well, guess what? The guy didn't show up. Because science doesn't change a person's life. It doesn't make them a better person. Education doesn't make someone a better person, but the Word of God, that changes everything. So we have the testimony of influence on the lives of nations. And think about it, almost every single nation in the world bases its set of laws on the Ten Commandments. Not the other books that are written, not the other religions, the Ten Commandments. We also have the testimony of fulfilled prophecies. To me, this is perhaps the greatest proof of the fact that the Bible is the Word of God. Think about the things that were prophesied just for a little while. His virgin birth was prophesied. His birthplace in Bethlehem was prophesied. His forerunner, John the Baptist, was prophesied. His triumphant entry in Jerusalem was prophesied. His side being pierced at Calvary was prophesied. His cry even at the cross, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me, was prophesied in Psalm 22. The darkness that would fall on the time of the crucifixion was prophesied. The mocking at the crucifixion was prophesied. Think about his hands and his feet being pierced before there was even such a practice at a time when David wrote that. Nobody knew about crucifixion. The Romans weren't around and nobody knew about this death sentence that was known as crucifixion, but the Bible already tells us that his hands and his feet would be pierced. casting the lots on his vesture was prophesied, his unbroken bones was prophesied, his given vinegar to drink was prophesied, his being buried in a rich man's grave was prophesied, Christ's resurrection was prophesied, and Christ's ascension was prophesied. Now these are just the ones in the life of Christ, and there's many more. And really before our eyes today, you're even seeing things that are prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes. Just the things that the Bible mentions, you see all these things coming together. And when we think about the Bible, the Bible is not from man. It is not man's record of God. It is God's record of His dealing with man. And you see, if we have a Bible that does not come from God, where we don't have every word of God for us, because He wants us to live by every word, then I don't want any part of it. And nobody should get to the place where they dictate and say, well, this is for us, and this part is for us, and this part is accurate, and this part is not accurate. No, we have to settle one thing. Does this come from God? If it does, then that settles everything. Because God is perfect. He cannot give us something that is not perfect. It's impossible. And as He breathed out His words exactly to the jot and tittle, God has preserved that to every generation. There's no doubt about it. God has kept His word. And by the way, if we get to the place and say, as many people say, well, we don't have the exact the exact words that God breathed out, you know, in the originals. If we don't have that, then we don't have a perfect God. And we have a God that lied. But we don't. You see, a lot of times people, they look and say, they try to play around, they look at history and they look at what men have written. But let God be true and every man a liar. This, the Bible is a faith issue. It's a faith issue. It's not a, well, it doesn't, no, it's faith. Do I believe what God has said? He said he would give us his word, breathe out his word, and preserve it to every generation. Do we believe that by faith or do we not? So that has to be settled in our lives because if the Bible is the word of God, can you imagine how precious this ought to be to us? This is what God wants us to have right here. He wanted us to have a record of His dealing with us so that we could know how we can be redeemed. So we can know how to live our lives in a way that's pleasing, God-honoring, and glorifying to God. And you know, you don't only think about the Bible, but think about every book that's been written about the Bible. All the commentaries, all the books, all the thought. People will take one verse and write a whole book on one verse. That's how rich the Word of God is. There's no other book like the Bible. It's special. Why? Because it comes from the Creator, the Almighty God. If we believe that, the Word of God ought to be precious to us. All scripture is given by inspiration of God.