Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello? As we come together this weekend, I just want to mention the fact that I'm aware that God is moving in great ways on all our campuses. We are blessed to live in this time and this place. I've heard what God is doing over at Westco and at Upland, at Rancho and the San Dimas campus as well.

We've been praying for revival for a long time and it feels as though it's here, that it's coming, especially among our high school students and our young adults. But even it seems to be permeating throughout the church that we are seeing things, that we are feeling things. We are experiencing Christ in a personal relationship that is transforming our lives right here, right now. And one of the things I want to mention is that because we're a church that seeks to help people far from God come near to God, It is a good thing when we do series that are experiential, that we feel the presence of God and that we are greatly encouraged and challenged. But because God has placed on our lives this calling to help people far from God come near, it means we also have to be cerebral at times.

We have to do some hard thinking. I mean, think about it. It's one thing to acknowledge that God created the universe, that there is a creator God. It's another thing entirely to believe that this creator God is whom we discover through general revelation, has revealed himself through the person of Jesus Christ. And that everything we know about Jesus Christ, we read in the scripture. So that means not only do we believe in God, that God has revealed himself through Christ, but that revelation comes to us through scripture. Everything we know about Jesus comes to us, or most of everything we know comes to us through the historical account of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and the epistles of Paul.

So God is obviously not only involved in the gathering together of his revelation that would be passed down through generation to generation, but he's also involved in sustaining this revelation so that no matter what men throw at it, no matter how many times they try to eradicate it, God seems intent on giving it this enduring ability so that man would always have hope and that he could always, if he wanted, to hear the word of God that God is always talking.

Now that tells us that the God of the universe does care about us and wants to communicate to us in a language we can understand. In fact, Hebrews chapter four says, for the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul, spirit, joints, and marrow. And that just means the word of God goes way down deep to a place where humanity searches for origin, meaning, morality, destiny, those deep things that matter to us.

the questions that we ask that determine everything, the purpose of our lives, the encouragement that we need when we go through times of trouble, that deep, deep place. And I've always said that the most difficult questions of life always ultimately lead you to God because he's the only answer. So as we think about the Bible cerebrally, now I know existentially it does speak to our hearts. That's important.

But you and I have been able, we have to be able to defend the scriptures to a generation who's been taught that the Bible is flawed, that it is not the word of God. And movie after movie and book after book takes a shot at the Bible, but God seems intent that it will never be eradicated.

Once you understand the power of scripture, do you know how it has changed human history? Martin Luther was changed by one little verse out of the book of Habakkuk and it started the reformation that the just shall live by faith. The salvation comes not through merit, through earning, but through the grace of God and by faith, trusting that what Jesus did for you on the cross 2000 years ago, puts you in a right standing with God, brings those far from God near to God. And in my own life, Most of you who know my story of anxiety, there are passages of scripture that I have read during difficult seasons of my life that not only have caused me to survive them, but to thrive in the midst of them. And I'm not alone in that. That's the story of human history. Philippians chapter four, verse six is a special passage to me where the apostle Paul says, don't be anxious about anything, but in every situation by prayer and petition, "With thanksgiving, present your request to God, "and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, "will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." So as you look around at the world right now, we are so lost. Think about what's going on. What kind of world do we live in when the most unsafe place in America is in the womb of the mother? What kind of world are we living in when someone walks into a bowling alley on family night and just unloads an assault rifle, an assault weapon, and murders people that he doesn't even know. What kind of world is it when our schools are no longer safe because you never know when someone's gonna walk in with a weapon and just start mowing down children that they don't even know? This is not a safe place anymore. Our nation and this world needs hope, but it continues to eradicate the primary source of hope and of origin, meaning morality, destiny.

And so what I want to do in our time together, I'm going to ask you to do some cerebral thinking, but we'll come back to the existential part. But I want you to realize that what you need in your life is to know that God is always talking and he's always talking to you through scripture. And until you live your life in a posture of receiving the word of God and investing into God's revelation to us, you'll always be uneasy in your soul and your spirit and the things that you're looking for, you'll never be able to take hold of. Here's the problem though. Even though those things are true, we are living in a time and a generation when Our world is being told the Bible is flawed, that you can't trust it as the revelation of God. I mean, they're shot after shot over the bow and now right for the center, that the Bible cannot be trusted or believed in. And even in places of higher education, especially in places of higher education, we're being told that those who believe that the Bible is God's revelation to us are uneducated fanatics that are fundamentally ill-equipped, that are uneducated, that somehow need some kind of crutch to make it through their lives. That to believe in the Bible means that you're ignorant and nothing could be further from the truth.

The other thing that people say about Christ followers is that we just trust in God blindly, that our faith is blind, that it has no objective source or reasons. And again, that's only stated by those on the outside looking in who do not understand that Christianity is as much a cerebral, an ascent to something that is intellectually true as it is an experience. So here's what I want to do.

We have got to push back. In order for us to help people far from God come near to God, we've got to understand the accusations against Scripture, deal with them, and then reiterate why it's so important that our world turns back to God, turns back to His revelation, if we ever hope to be healed and restored.

So let me give you the three accusations just quickly, and it's going to be a little cerebral, but I'm telling you, if I talk fast and it's a lot of information, that's the beauty of today's world. You can go back and watch the recording. You can take some notes and say, you know, I want to be prepared in season and out of season to give an answer for those who are suggesting that the Bible, this Holy Scripture is not the revelation that God has given to us.

And let me remind you again, everything you know about Jesus, almost everything you know about him comes from the revelation of scripture. It's important that we can trust this to be the word of God. And so number one, people will tell us, well, Pastor Jeff, and I've heard this on university campuses, you can't trust the Bible because there are so many translations.

And here's basically what they're saying. They're saying there are so many translations of the Bible because scholars can't agree on what the Bible really said. So each group of translators or scholars gives their own opinion on what the original text actually said or communicated. Therefore, who's right? So we don't know which Bible is the right Bible. Of course, when I hear that, I smile.

Because it reminds me of how few people really understand how translation works, especially with works of antiquity.

Translation work, listen carefully, is a matter of understanding the meaning of a word and then laboring to say the same thing with different words that will be understandable to different people. So the Bible's written in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, so translation work is to translate those languages into another language, in our case, English, but to say the same thing that we read in the original. So let me give you an example and then go back to the translations idea.

We do this kind of thing every day without losing origin or meaning. When I was growing up, we had teen speak. You know, that's the language that teenagers use. Now today, I don't understand teen speak because I'm a boomer. So there's a language barrier. But when I was growing up, a popular thing to say would be, yo, it's chill, bro.

And we would say that. And I started thinking if my grandfather, when my grandfather would hear that, the only part of that statement he would understand would be the word it's. He would think if I were to say that, he would think I broke out into some kind of Egyptian dialogue. So I could just say to my grandfather, granddad, yo, it's chill, bro, really means I'm happy, grandpa. But if I wanted to give a more complete translation, it would go something like this, and you'll see this on the screen. So the word yo, it's chill, bro, is customary but informal greeting in teen speak. Yo, it's the equivalent to grandpa language or grandpa speak when I say hi or hey. Then the word chill. In teen speak, chill does not mean cold. It communicates that a person is happy, satisfied, a situation is copacetic. It's a modern or it's modern derivative of the common boomer speak word chill.

Would not be chill, but would be like cool or it's cool or I'm cool or everything is cool. And then you got the word bro, which in teen speak when I was growing up was a term of friendship or endearment.

It's a shortened word for brother, but a person does not have to be a blood relative to be your bro. It can just be your friend. It's best translated into boomer speak as friend or more colloquially as man. So putting it all together to translate teen speak, which says, yo, it's chill, bro. Into boomer speak, my age group would be, hey, it's all good, man. You say the same thing with different words.

Now, somebody might say who's involved in translation work, that's a little bit simplistic. True, it is. But to think, when someone says, because we are reading an English translation of a Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic text, we can't be sure of what the original actually said. When you say that, you're showing...

A complete lack of knowledge concerning the incredibly meticulous determined work that goes into translation. Okay, Pastor Jeff, I got it. But really, why do we have the NKJV, the RSV, the NASB, the NLT, the ESV, the NIV? Why do we have all those things? And then we have the men's Bible, the woman's Bible, the sports Bible, the children's Bible, the military edition Bible, the student edition Bible, the business leader's Bible.

And so some people make the assumption is it's because the scholars who worked on the NIV thought those people who worked on the ESV or the NASB got it wrong, so they had to write their own translation. That's so far from the truth. These translations differ only in additional items that accompany the text. The text remains the same.

The introductory comment, the study notes, the devotional articles focus on specific groups of people, men, women, children. So it's the application, not the translation that differs.

But the actual translation itself, they don't vary or themselves do not vary. They use different words to render the same meaning. The original text does not change. Think again of the teen speak example. Yo, it's chill, bro. Like, can I not say that in so many different ways without losing the original intent? I could say, hey, it's all good, man. Or listen, everything is okay, my friend. Or you know what? The situation is copacetic, brother.

All of those things say the same thing that the original attempted to communicate. The specific words may differ, but is there really any doubt what these same words are communicating? So no matter what translation you use, the meaning remains the same. So let's take another simplistic example. Mark 10 50 says, throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus. That's the NIV version.

The ESV says, and throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. So did he jump up or spring up? Does it really matter? And the NASB says, and throwing off his cloak, he jumped up and came to Jesus. The NRSV says, so throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And the King James Version says, and he, casting away his garment, rose and came to Jesus. So do any of these translations make it unclear what is actually going on? No. No.

In fact, it's because we have a significant number of translations that communicate the same message that originated from the writers, we now can tell the difference or we can identify false translations. So for instance, Jehovah Witnesses have their own book. And in John 1:1, they claim it's a new world translation. What it really is, it's a translation that is designed to protect a particular idiosyncratic theological doctrine. So in John 1:1, we know it says, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was God, the Word was with God, and later on the Word became flesh." But in the New World Translation, they violate the basic principles of the Greek language when they misidentified the definite article. They say in the beginning, a word, and the word was a God, and the word was with God. Now, if you know anything about Jehovah Witnesses, they purport a doctrine that is not theologically true. That is that Jesus was not fully God, that he was a man who evolved into a God, and you and I can do the same. In order to have that, they have to reconstruct John 1.1, which is why we know the translation cannot be trusted.

The bottom line is you can trust the translations that you have, even though there's so many of them other than the New World Translation, to accurately reflect the meaning and intentions of the original text.

So first, can we trust the different translations of the Bible to accurately communicate the original documents? Absolutely. Second objection though, and this is going to be tough for some of us. Still have you? Come on now. You have to do cerebral work sometimes. This is equipping you to help people who are going to ask you these questions in the future. And let me tell you something about this or this question. Let me tell you, the more equipped we become, the more willing God is willing the more willing God is to send people who need to hear this answer to you. So maybe there's a one life God's waiting to send to you, but he wants to equip you and prepare you before that happens. So stay with me. The second objection is we don't have the original manuscript. So why are we even having this discussion?

In other words, all right, Pastor Jeff, you're telling me that the translations we have today accurately represent the works that were originally written by the apostles, the disciples, or whoever wrote the New Testament. But Pastor Jeff, it's time that you confess the truth here to your congregation. We don't have the originals. We only have copies. Okay, stay with me. Last year, I spoke at the British Library in London. What a privilege it was.

And as I walked out on stage, I thought, my goodness, G.K. Chesterton has been here, Malcolm Muggeridge, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw. The collection of historical writings at the British Library in London, phenomenal. It's amazing. Just a few examples quickly. You have the Magna Carta, Gutenberg's Bible of 1455, full version. You have Handel's Messiah written in his own hand.

You have the Codex Sinaticus, which is the earliest known complete copy of the New Testament. You've got Leonardo da Vinci's notebook, and you're going to be happy to know we have the original lyrics to the Beatles song, Help, as John Lennon scratched them down onto a piece of paper right there in the British Library. Now, I'm here to tell you that beyond the shadow of a doubt, we have the original lyrics of the Beatles song, I think, written by John Lennon called Help. And I'll admit that's pretty cool, but Not that it reaches the treasures of the British Library level of cool because there's some pretty cool stuff there But here's the question is possessing the original piece of paper on which the original was written The only way we can have confidence that we are reading what the author first recorded now if you say yes then nothing of literary antiquity matters because we don't have the originals of any classic and That includes the works of Homer or Plato, the Odyssey or the Republic, the Julius Caesar's Gaelic Wars, the Roman historian Tacitus' histories and annals. None of these can then be trusted to be a true reflection of the original because we don't have the original of any of these. We don't have Homer, Plato, Julius Caesar, anything that they wrote because it was a different time and place. No Xerox machines. They wrote, copied, copied, and passed it down.

But we are able to trust the integrity of the original by the number of copies that we have and we ask the question, do those copies agree? So we don't have any original copies of the Odyssey or the Republic and yet no serious scholar today questions the validity or accuracy of these works of antiquity. Why? Well, that's the question.

Do we have original pieces of paper on which the writers of the New Testament wrote? No. Can we be highly confident beyond a reasonable doubt what these original pieces of paper actually said? Absolutely. This is not an art. This is a science and I want to show you how it works. So I have listed for you on this board, the top of the top, this is the cream of the crop. These are works of antiquity, old books, old accounts of history.

These are the most respected by historians today who have done their homework. So they would tell you in all of these works that what you are reading today in the translation is true.

a replica or is an accurate reflection of what the author originally wrote. So we've got Plato's Tetralogies. We have 200 manuscripts from old, they're copies, and the earliest copy we have separated from the date in which it was originally written is 1300 years. So there's 1300 years between when the author originally wrote and the first dated copy in our possession.

Then you've got Julius Caesar's Gaelic Wars. We have nine manuscripts total, but the earliest copies 900 years later. So there's a 900 year gap between the time that the author wrote about the Gaelic Wars till the time we have our first full copy. Then we go to Tacitus Histories and Annals. We have two manuscripts, but the earliest copy is somewhere between 800 and 1,000 years after the fact that it was originally written.

Home resilient, which scholars will tell you is the best or the, The most accurate work of literary antiquity. It has the most textual attestation because it was written in 762 BC. The manuscripts we have are somewhere around 643 fragmented copies. They're not complete copies, but enough fragmented copies to contrast and compare. And the earliest copy called Ventus A is somewhere around the 10th century. So the gap is still some 1700 years removed from when the document was originally written. Now, Now, let's keep going. The history of Herodotus. We have eight manuscripts, 1300 year gap. Josephus, Jewish wars, nine manuscripts, 330 year gap. And then we come to the New Testament. And this is why people who study history and the validity of old works...

and how accurate they are in reflecting what was originally written will tell you the Bible stands on a plateau all by itself. There is nothing in antiquity like it because we have 5,400 manuscripts. The earliest copies come around 125 to 150 AD, which means the gap is only 45 to 70 years. That's significance because it's within the same generation. So scholars will tell you that's not enough time for legend to appear.

So in other words, if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are writing, even Paul is writing the epistles, if they are writing, they're writing so close to the time of the events that you could actually go back to the town of Bethany and say, hey, who was around when Lazarus rose from the dead? Did Lazarus really come back from the dead? Hey, were those lepers cleansed? Did the blind man see? Was the man really cured by the pool of Siloam?

you could go back and do investigation, which is why Luke begins his gospel the way that he does. He said, "Theophilus, I have done my investigation of eyewitness accounts." So if the gap is only 45 to 70 years, we have no printing presses, it's meticulous copying, and these are the types of sources, papyrus or vellum or parchment, vellum we don't read a lot about, but it's that which is written basically on calf skin.

If you look at the Bible compared to all the other ancient works of literature, there's nothing that even can come close. So in other words, if you can't trust the Bible, if you can't trust that what you're reading now is an accurate representation of what was originally written, guess what? You have to throw out every book of antiquity because nothing is like the Bible. That's why paleographers say that no other book of literary antiquity enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament. Now that should give you confidence, right?

The conclusion is this, the charge that we cannot know what the original documents of the New Testament said is patently and utterly false. The gap between the original documents and our earliest copies is so brief that it becomes a non-issue.

Far from diminishing our ability to identify what the original said, the vast number of existing copies allows us to confidently assert with historical confidence that what Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul originally recorded or wrote down are the same words and thoughts we are reading today. You know, it really is amazing that you have guys like F.F. Bruce, who spent his life studying the compilation of ancient literature, who taught at Edinburgh, the University of Leeds, the University of Sheffield, the Victoria University of Manchester, would make a statement like this. There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

And Sir Frederick Kenyon, who by the way was the president of the British Library at one point and the British Academy, he said this, "The last foundation of any doubt that the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed." That's amazing. So first, can we trust the different translations of the Bible to accurately communicate the original documents? Yes. Translations or translators translate the text accurately but through commentary and marginal notes, emphasize the application of biblical truths for specific groups. Different translations, but the same message. Second, can we trust what we're reading today is an accurate reflection of what was originally written? Absolutely. The overwhelming number of manuscripts in our possession allows us to contrast and compare thousands of copies to see clearly the original wording and intent of each New Testament author.

Okay, third and last question. The accusation will be made. Okay, Pastor Jeff, I got you. The different translations all say the same thing. It's just the application that varies.

And that's the thing about the truth of God's word. You have the foundational truth, but you have applications into every area of life. That's why it's so rich. And it remains rich for the entirety of your life because you're in different seasons. And in every season, the Bible speaks a word into that season to give you this ability to endure and to thrive. That's why it's changed human history so often.

Okay, Pastor Jeff, I got it. And now you're telling me that because we have so many copies and the Bible stands on a plateau all by itself, that it's textual attestation is second to none, that now we can trust that what we're reading today is a representation of what was originally written. Okay, but I have a third question. Here's the third accusation. These aren't the correct books anyway. We're not reading the books because the real books were suppressed. Now stay with me.

During the first, here's how the argument goes, and it's becoming more and more popular as seen in the movie, The Da Vinci Code. So here we go. The accusation is that during the first three centuries of the church's existence, a massive array of documents existed for attention and authority for the Roman Empire.

So you have all these documents and you have all these little communities throughout the Roman Empire that have their own record of the life and teachings of Jesus. And they all contradict each other. And the Roman Emperor Constantine came together and he chose the ones he wanted to keep and the ones he didn't. The one that didn't communicate what he wanted them to communicate, he eradicated. And so one day in the middle of the fourth century, a powerful group of sour-faced bishops got together in a resort town called Nicaea.

And with the backing of the rich patron, Constantine, the emperor, they put a swift stop to all the competitive books about Jesus. Now that's what they'll tell you. That's basically what the Da Vinci Code propagates. And they published a list of documents at the Council of Nicaea and they put it into all the documents that didn't agree with them. Any document that said Jesus was God in the flesh, they kept. Any document that claimed that he was merely a man, they threw away. That's the conspiracy theory.

Now what's interesting is if you've seen the movie or read the book, The Da Vinci Code, the book has sold over 80 million copies. And yes, it probably has something to do with the fact that Dan Brown is an incredible storyteller. But in reality, what happened to that book is any author's dream because it ignited a world controversy and everybody wanted to read it. Even though right on the front page, here's what it says.

All the characters and events in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental. When I was teaching pastor in Savannah, the local television station came down and wanted to interview me about the Da Vinci Code and get my take on it. And I gave all these cerebral arguments, but that wasn't the best argument. The best argument came from our lead pastor who said, all I can tell you about the Da Vinci Code is this. You are dumber when you walk out than you were when you first went in. And basically he's saying there's no history here and he's right.

The story the Da Vinci Code attempts to tell is not at all original. It's been around for a while. Anybody who wanted to eradicate the Bible would try to say that Jesus is just a human teacher, but he was made into a resurrected God by Constantine so Constantine could join the government with religion and to manipulate the masses. And he said all of this happened at the Council of Nicaea where they determined which books would be in and which books would be out.

Now, let me read to you a quote from a real historian, which Dan Brown is not. His name is C. John Somerville, who's made a livelihood of studying history and works of antiquity. He's a member of Advanced Study at Princeton University, a senior fellow at Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions. He's an expert in history and religious studies. Here's what he says.

Dan Brown says that the Emperor Constantine imposed a whole new interpretation of Christianity at the Council of Nicaea in 325. That is, he decreed the belief in Jesus' divinity and suppressed all the evidence of his humanity.

This would mean Christianity won the religious competition in the Roman Empire by an exercise of power rather than by any attraction it exerted. In actual historical fact, the church had won the competition long before that time, before it had any power, when it was still under sporadic persecution. If historians were cynical, you would say Constantine chose Christianity because it had already won and he wanted to back a winner.

Now, what's he saying? Basically this, Constantine did not make Christianity. It was happening long before he was a twinkle in his mother's eye. The deity of Jesus and the victory of Jesus over Roman persecution occurred long before Constantine was even born. Neither Constantine nor the council of Nicaea determined the deity of Jesus. They didn't determine the books of the New Testament. They affirmed what was already determined hundreds of years before.

Unfortunately, the secular world has pushed this ridiculous narrative and it's robbed us of our origin, meaning morality, destiny, and hope. Now let's forget conjecture and drama and deal with history and facts for a moment. And this is why I get frustrated sometimes when people accuse Christians of being blind or possessing blind faith. And then you go out and believe something like the Da Vinci Code. I've actually stood on the grounds of where the council of Nicaea met. It's in modern day Turkey in the principality of Iznik. The council was called together because of what became known as the Aryan controversy.

Arius was a man from North Africa and he claimed that Jesus was eternally subordinate to the Father and was not everlasting, that he was a created being just like you and me. Now let me just tell you a side note here because it's humorous and I need some humor. A legend developed, now the Council of Nicaea is not legend, but we know the difference between legend and actual historical event. But a legend developed, a story developed later that Saint Nicholas, who was a real father in the ancient church from whom we get Saint Nick, stood up at the meeting and struck Arius in the face when he uttered the blasphemous statement that Jesus was not eternal. Now, I thought that's humorous because can you imagine Santa Claus getting mad and slapping anybody? Say it isn't so, Santa. Say it isn't so. That we know is legend. What we know is fact is the meeting in 325 was indeed important, but not because it determined the canon or the Apostles' Creed. Again, both had been long determined before the council even convened.

Hundreds of years before the council convened, the 27 books of the New Testament had been affirmed and determined. And those books were already being read, studied, preached, and declared as the holy word of God. Hundreds of years before anyone who attended the council of Nicaea was even born. And before Constantine was even a thought.

Okay, Jeff, you said the books of the New Testament had long been determined. How were they determined? And this is how we end. Now stay with me. This is important because the idea sometimes has floated that, oh, it was based on feelings, some kind of subjectivity. I think that one goes in and that one goes out. And if it's subjective, how on earth can we classify the New Testament as the word of God?

Was there a criteria and did God guide the process? When I tell you the criteria, you're gonna have to assume beyond a reasonable doubt that God did because here's the criteria. Number one, it had to be written by an apostle. You try to write a book and call it the Bible, You try to write a record of Jesus' life and you're not an apostle? You've not seen the risen Lord? Sorry, this is not going into the canon. Not just anybody could write a book about Jesus and say, here you go. The level of authority was reserved for those whom Jesus himself had specifically appointed as apostles. Now, somebody might come along and say, wait a minute, Luke was an apostle. Yes, Luke was a close acquaintance of the apostle Paul and traveled with him as his physician wherever he went.

And so Luke does his own research on the basis of Paul's testimony. In fact, records Paul's words and the words of his own investigation as he writes to this person called Theophilus.

In short, if you're not an apostle who witnessed the life of Jesus or the resurrection of Jesus, which is why Jesus had to appear to the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, then that type of criterion is anything but subjective. You're not an apostle or a close relationship to the apostle, you're out.

What's interesting is we do know, historically speaking, that through the second to the sixth centuries, there are authors who tried to fool the church by writing something about Jesus and slapping the name of an apostle on it. Now, why did they even do that? Because they knew they had no chance.

of their book or work being accepted unless it was written by an apostle. Now here's the second test. It had to be old, antiquity. In order for a book to have apostolic authority, it would have to be old. It'd have to be written and dated in the first century. This goes back to what we talked about earlier. There's no gap or the gap is so small. So if this book was written after the time the apostles were all dead, no can do. If If it's not old, we can't be sold. And then third, orthodoxy. Most of us don't realize the power of oral tradition in first, second century. This is a time when your word was your bond and we didn't have copy machines. And so a lot of the stories that were passed down were through oral tradition, but they could be then investigated as we put the details together. Then Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John witnessing this.

or at least Matthew, Mark and John witnessing the life of Jesus, Luke investigating the life of Jesus through oral tradition and what had already been written, over time, these documents that recorded oral tradition and investigation were recorded, the canon started to be formalized, and at that point, any book that tried to come in that contradicted anything that had been written by those who were closest to Jesus about his birth, life, death, resurrection, then if it contradicted anything in the Gospels because the Gospel writers were so close to Jesus and had witnessed these things, then it was considered to be non-canonical. It wasn't going to make it. So the point is that the New Testament did not result from some nefarious, late-in-the-day conspiracy in order for Constantine or those at the Council of Nicaea to privilege one set of books and to suppress the others because it didn't give the message that they wanted it to give. In fact, here's the key now, if you really want to know this. The fact is there were no such books.

There were no books to discount or count. The books and authors who tried to sneak in something came much later, not during the time the scriptures were written, and they were reactive challenges to an increasingly strong tradition, which is why they didn't make the cut. They were not written by an apostle. They were not old enough. The apostles had already died, and they were not consistent with what Jesus taught and with the historical realities associated with his birth, life, death, and resurrection.

So do we have the right documents? You bet your life we do. Not one of the documents that make up our New Testament ultimately failed any of these reasonable tests. They are written by reliable witnesses to the life and teachings of Jesus. Now there's one more thing. When I was in New Zealand, I think I've shared this before, there was a young Muslim who came to me and tried to convince me, and it was a cordial conversation, no need to get angry. He tried to convince me that Jesus and Muhammad are the same.

And I've told you my response to him. I said, if Jesus and Muhammad are the same, can I ask you a question? Are they both prophets? Yes, they're both prophets. Can a prophet lie? And he said, no, a prophet cannot lie. So immediately I said, but Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth and the life. And no one comes to the father except through me. He paused. And then he said, well, the Bible has been changed. I said, how do you know that? He said, I feel it in my spirit. Now you think about that.

To feel something in your spirit could be based on something bad you ate last night. We deal in facts. And the fact is we have enough textual information to know that the Bible we're reading today is the Bible that was originally written. I want you to think about this for a moment before I stop into this part. We found the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Those were a major find. They're ancient Jewish manuscripts. They were found somewhere around 1946. Actually, it was a 10-year find because we kept digging. So from 1946 to 1956, we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, and we know they're dated around 3rd century BC, 300 years before Christ. Do you know why they're important? Because we started reading Old Testament passages, and they are identical to the Old Testament passage you and I are reading today. That's uncanny.

How can they be so accurate in their copies? Think about it. You have a favorite book that you read. It was originally written, the book that you like so much, it was originally written 300 years before Jesus was born. The copy you have, you bought at your local bookstore and in some kind of archeological dig, somebody was walking around some ancient ruins and they found a copy of the, a copy of the book that you're now reading, uh, in 2023. You pick it up, You compare your copy that you're reading now with a copy that was found 300 years before Jesus was born and you find they're identical. The meaning is identically the same. Yes, different words because of translation, but the statement, the meaning, the message is identical to what you're reading now. What would you conclude? You would conclude that the years of copying this book have not tainted its integrity.

The Dead Sea Scrolls do not do a lot rather to validate the Old Testament due to the fact that they are nearly identical to the versions of the Old Testament we read today. And because they are dated to 300 to 400 years BC, before the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, Old Testament critics often asserted that the Old Testament books were written well after their events allegedly occurred. Sometimes even as late as 1000 AD. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirmed that these books were written around 300 BC at the very latest.

This is particularly important for prophetic books like Daniel. Old Testament critics asserted for a long time, now watch this, that Daniel must have been written well after 0 AD because its prophecies about the Roman Empire are so unambiguous and vivid. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls lends credence to the book of Daniel being actual prophecy. What are they saying? They're saying, man, Before, scholars said there's no way Daniel could have known all of these events that were going to happen in such detail unless he wrote the book after those things happened. But now we know he wrote the book 300 years before Jesus even came to planet Earth. And so now they're saying on that basis, this definitely has to be a God book. It all tells you this. We have good translations of the biblical manuscripts. Those manuscripts are accurate copies of what was originally written.

The books we are looking at are indeed the right books. The New Testament is God's word delivered to us and has the potential beyond a reasonable doubt to change and transform human history. Now I've gone over, so I have to stop. There's going to be more later, but for now, you know, one of my favorite movies is called The Book of Eli by Denzel Washington. One of our campus pastors mentioned that to me yesterday. So I thought, you know, I'm going to rewatch that. So last night I had about an hour and a half before I was going to do so. I'm going to watch the movie.

In the movie, Eli is one of only a hundreds that survived a nuclear war. At least that's what the movie leads you to believe. And he's had a special calling from God. And that calling is revealed to us over the course of the movie. We're not sure in the beginning, but what we are sure about is he's living a righteous life in a time of corruption. Evil is everywhere, rape and murders, and even cannibalism. But Eli, throughout the course of this dangerous, treacherous journey, is incredibly peaceful while the world is literally falling apart and that peace and joy that he has because he's connected with something greater than himself is compelling and other people want to be around him and they want to know the source, the secret. He lives with a sense of confidence when everybody else is desperate to find hope. His words, every time he speaks, they bring comfort to those who hear because he's always speaking from the source from a book that he's carrying. What I like most about the movie The book of Eli is that Eli never claims to have had some type of supernatural experience where God appears in a sky or bright light and some kind of transfiguration. Eli has memorized the book he's carrying. And over the course of the movie, we learn that he's carrying the Bible. He's constantly motivated by the voice that he hears inside as the voice reminds him of the words that he's reading and memorizing.

And so that when he speaks, other people hear the words of scripture and they tremble with fear and respect while at the same time sensing a deep, deep joy and longing in their souls. My favorite line in the movie is near the end of the movie and it goes like this. Eli is on the end of his journey and he says, after the war blew a hole in the sky, we're assuming nuclear war, everyone was wandering around wondering how they're gonna survive. Then one day I heard a voice saying, It is hard to explain, but it was like coming from the inside. But I could hear it as clear as I can hear you talking to me now. It led me to a place where I found the book. The voice told me to carry the book, that the path would be laid out for me, that I would be led to a place of safety. It told me that I would be protected against anyone or anything that stood in my path. And this comes on the hill when he quoted to the young girl who asked to hear a scripture, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

We learn near the end of the movie that this book has been commissioned by God himself to a safe place where it can be copied and stored for generations to come. This is the book that can restore civilization. This is the book that can bring hope and joy and meaning. This is the book that speaks deep into the soul.

It is the book that is active and alive, sharper, or alive and active rather, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. This is the book that has transformed civilizations. It is the book that can transform your life. And can I leave you with this? I know we've been cerebral. Let's move into the existential. God has promised to make you and me into new beings.

And what you hold in your hand when you pick up a Bible is a tool for transformation. Don't underestimate this. This has taken many men and women and has transformed into something special. This is the greatest investment you could ever make because this book right here, hear me now, restores marriages, sets captive addicts free, brings prodigal sons and daughters home.

mends broken hearts, softens hard hearts, gives hope to the hopeless, purpose to those without meaning, and ultimately it causes the dead to rise again. This is what this lost world needs, and more importantly, it's what you need. God exists. He has revealed himself to the person of Jesus Christ.

And he's communicated his story through the revelation of the Bible, the Holy Scriptures. And if you want to hear from God, if you're a person that says, God, talk to me, God says to you, then pick up the word and read, and it will fill your heart and soul and mind.

Father, thank you for this day, for your love for us, for the peace that comes over us when we connect with your word, to know that the God of the universe loves us so much that he chooses to communicate with us in a language we can understand, word revelation, the place that teaches us about the depth of your love that you would send your son Jesus to die for us so that we who are far from God might come near. And as we come near to God, your spirit lives in us.

and activates the word revelation to us so that any given situation, we have the potential to hear the voice of God speaking to us to give us the greatest victories of our lives. In Christ's name, amen.