It'd be good for us to jump into this guys and talk about, yeah, the origins of the Bible, how we got the Bible. Uh look, the Bible is different in that, unlike the Quran as an example, unlike the Book of Mormon as an example, where uh we're told basically that it was sort of just given, right? God in his wisdom put the Bible together in such a way that when you examine its contents, it could only be supernatural in origin because of the diversity of authors, because of the time span, and because of ultimately the cohesion that we find in it. I think before we dive dive into that, um Mark, the the the significance of having a recognized authority. Like we can't we can't overstate how that is the foundation for our faith as believers. You you remove that authority, we're in big
trouble.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, we we often talk about the Bible being inerrant, inspired, infallible, but if we begin to really break that down, you know, inerrant, that it's not even possible for it to have errors, right? We talk about how if you were to take a spelling test and get 100% on the spelling test, it's without errors, but it was possible for you to have an error. It was possible for you to make a mistake. Well, the Bible is not just without errors, but it's not even possible for it to have mistakes. And any sort of contradiction may be a paradox. Anything that may not make sense to you when put into its original language and understanding with culture, customs, tradition, or do the author write to the original audience, when we begin to understand these sort of things, then it comes alive and it begins to make sense. So, yeah, when we examine the Bible, we understand that the Bible tells us everything we need to know about God and to live a life that is godly. Without it, then every man is left to do that which is right in their own eyes. That's Judges 17, 6. So we need to have a transcendent word from a transcendent being that can stand the test of time, and therefore the message never changes. So to answer your question directly, right? Yeah. So we need the word of God to understand anything with a moral basis. Without it, then it's absolute chaos. Yeah. And which is what we have today.
SPEAKER_01You know, Ray, you always remind people when you're open-air preaching or even witnessing, and and people bring up the perception that the Bible
is not God's word. And even when the element of doubt comes into play, do you doubt God? But you always talk about the insult of not believing God. Can you expound on that? Of denying God's word.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I often do it with people that say, I just doubt some of the things in the Bible. I say, What's your name? They say, Fred. And I say, Where do you live? Down such and such the street. I said, I don't believe that. Did it with a guy the other day, and I says, I said, How's that make you feel? He says, It makes me feel weird. I said, It's insulting, isn't it? Because I'm saying that you can't be trusted. You're a liar, you're not worth trusting. And then if you're a mere man or insulted by my lack of faith in your word, how much more do you think you insult a holy God by a lack of faith in his word? The Bible says, He that believes not God has made him a liar. And it was, I think, Luther who said, What greater insult, what greater impiety can there be than not to believe the promises of God?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so
good stuff. All right, so let's get to the Old Testament then. So one of the one of the earliest lists we have uh affirming the Old Testament from Christianity uh would be a list from Jerome in 170 AD, uh, or refers back to 170 AD, but that's 391 to 94. And that distinguishes the Hebrew canon from the Apocrypha. And so it's important, I think, going back, that we find a distinguishing marker between what we see as scripture and what the Apocrypha is. Because the Catholic Church did add the Apocrypha to Scripture. And it's interesting because that didn't happen until the Counter-Reformation. So it was after the Reformation that then they officially said, Well, no, these are part of Scripture so that they could validate some of the teachings they had, which were not biblical. Ray, you're gonna say Purgatory? Purgatory, yeah, absolutely. Purgatory and other things like that.
SPEAKER_02Just to put, because we're jumping forward to New Testament, which I'm excited to get there, but just to put a maybe a bow on the Old Testament, I think one of the biggest arguments for the authority of the Old Testament is the authority
of Jesus himself. Yeah. Because he looks back to the Old Testament and he quotes it with authority. He looked back at the Old Testament collection that the Jewish people had at that time. Uh, and he did not say there's something wrong here, you got it wrong. Instead, he he quotes it, he affirms it, he says, not a diet or iota will be taken from it, and he says, I am the fulfillment of these things. And so Jesus and the apostles um give us testimony to the authority and completion of the Old Testament in 30 AD. And then moving forward to the New Testament, before we even get to the very important reality of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the arguments over the telephone game, which you're touching on, Mark.
Before even that, we have to take the first step, which is to answer the question: did the apostles know that they were writing God's word? Because many people would argue, no, they didn't know, and for that reason it's not authoritative, but they did know Peter himself calls Paul's writing scripture in 2 Peter 3:15. In other words, the apostles themselves understood that they were writing something. And you might want to ask, like, well, how did they know? It's important to recognize, going back throughout the Old Testament, that God always interacted with his people in the form of covenants. This is hugely important. You think about Moses coming down Mount Sinai. We often see the depiction of him having two tablets with him. I think for whatever reason, maybe because of movies or whatever, we think, well, the first tablet only had five, and the other tablet only had five, there was no room for ten. No, that's not the reason why he had two tablets. He had two tablets, one covenant. In
other words, they were, they both said the same exact thing. Why? Because a covenant was being made, and when you make a covenant, one person gets a copy and another person gets the other copy, right? And so when Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, he brings down two copies of the Ten Commandments, recognizing this is a covenant.
SPEAKER_03I think it's really important to realize that we don't have to be experts. You you guys have got great expertise on the subject. Um most of us don't even know what antiquity equals validity, esoteric, Gnostic Gospels, Council of Nicaea, content of the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc. We just it's beyond us. So I've got a scenario for us just to remind us what this is all about. We've got a a man who's who's grabbed by Russia, United, what was it called? Soviet Union, USSR. I've read books on this, and it was horrific
what they did to Christians. They throw him in jail, Alexander Sol Junits, and it sounds like a disease. Anyway, he was thrown in jail for years. Imagine this guy, he's a political prisoner, not a Christian, thrown in prison, just a little dungeon. The prisoner next door whispers the gospel to him, and he repents on the spot, soundly saved, made a new creature in Christ. He's not given a Bible for twenty years, but he's still saved. Why? He who has the Son has life. God is able to keep him from falling and present him faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. He worships God every day, sings praises to him, understands the cross, understands forgiveness, etc. And so we should defend the Bible. But sometimes we get to a point like I came to with my three Moslem friends. You just can't defend it because they they won't take it. Everything you say, they they rip down. So what we've got to remember is it's the gospel that saved that guy in Russia that's the power of God's salvation, and that's what we're commanded to preach. And when someone becomes a Christian and they live in a place where they can get hold of the scriptures, God opens their eyes, the eyes of their understanding, and the scriptures come alive. And we're just so blessed to have that word, but we don't have to defend it in the sense that Spurgeon said the word of God is like
a lion. You don't have to defend a lion, unchain it, and it will defend itself.
SPEAKER_00Oh man, I love that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00When you write a book, who writes the book? You or the pen. Right? Well, the the author is God. It's it's not John, it's not Mark, it's not the Apostle Paul, it's God. God has moved people as he sees fit, and that's the absolute beauty of this. All scripture, it's it's breathed out by God and it's profitable. We can use it to reprove and to rebuke and to correct and to know that everything we will ever need to live a life godly in Christ Jesus is found in Scripture. And that's not to say that the Bible tells us everything we want to know, but it tells us everything we need to know. And when you come across something you don't understand, you fall back on that which you do understand. And the revelation that God has given us inside of his word is enough. And most people, they're looking for some uh new esoteric word to fall from heaven when they're not obeying the current word that's found inside scripture. Well, that's good,
Mark.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast. Friends, we value your time. So we've created a bite sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship. Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic. Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.