Why Trust the Bible? | A Deep Dive into God's Word

Two UAP document dumps hit .gov sites, major media starts normalizing “non-human intelligence,” and suddenly the cultural temperature changes. 

We feel it too, so we slow down and ask a better question: if the deception is coming, how do we stay anchored when the data looks real but the interpretation is weaponized? Our answer is not fear or obsession. It is Christ at the center, lived out through prayer, fellowship, witness, and a real life in the Word.

We also tackle the pushback we keep hearing: Why trust the Bible at all? We clear away popular church-history myths about Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, then explain how Scripture is God-breathed through real authors while remaining uniquely inspired, inerrant, and authoritative. 

For skeptics, we walk through a practical Christian apologetics framework: manuscript evidence, archaeological evidence, predictive prophecy, and statistical probability, including why Dead Sea Scroll consistency matters, why variants rarely change meaning, and how messianic prophecies point to Jesus with uncomfortable precision.

Finally, we talk about the cost of truth. People do not knowingly die for a lie, and martyrdom past and present forces the question of what the witnesses actually saw and believed. We end with a challenge that is simple but not easy: love the truth, memorize Scripture, and let the Holy Spirit press the Word into your heart until it speaks back to you in real life. 

Subscribe, share this with a friend who is uneasy about UAP narratives, and leave a review with the biggest question you want us to tackle next.

Transcript

Scripture As Knowing A Person

SPEAKER_02 0:06

One of the reasons we read the Bible is because the Bible describes a person, not just the merely facts about a person or facts about a religion, but a person desires to be known. Religion is one of a relationship. Yes, it's a religion, right? James will say that, but it's a religion whereby we grow in an actual relationship with this person who reveals himself as the God of the universe.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

You allow the word to be so imprinted into you that the Holy Spirit begins to speak the scriptures back to you in your moments. And you begin to realize, oh my gosh, this is exactly how his word is supposed to work within me.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

In a time when faith can feel flat, distracted, and disengaged, the Blood and Oil podcast cuts through the noise to reveal the raw, unfiltered work of the Holy Spirit.

Welcome Back And Housekeeping

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Welcome to the Blood and Oil Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:22

Good to see everyone. It's been a couple weeks. Thanks for being patient. Got a couple questions about when we were gonna release the next one. So if there's anyone out there listening live, uh go ahead and and send us some questions.

Calico Base Camp Encouragement

SPEAKER_03 1:36

So uh went and hung out with Jamie Walden. Um fantastic. You guys get an opportunity to go out to Calico Buffalo Base Camp. Uh I know he's got a uh, I think his the the warrior um retreat is up next month, and um got to meet and hang with the fam and yeah, just a glorious time, lots of prayer, and so I would totally uh uh suggest if you got an opportunity to go hang out, um, that you go hang out and um and bless him and his family and his church.

UAP Disclosure And Coming Deception

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Um and you know, today we we wanted to talk about the scripture, and in particular, here's the reason why. Um, for those of you who are keeping track of the uh UAP thing, the the the present trajectory of the culture, we've now had two official documents and like documents, videos, etc., dumps from the United States government on a dot gov website concerning UAP unidentified error phenomenon, other things. Um, in the last three weeks, two of these dumps have come, and there are a ton of videos uh and a ton of other documents. And so it's getting real, guys. It's you know, uh the the reality of the deception that's ramping up is getting realer and realer and realer and realer. And I'm I'm even watching Ross Coulhart uh gives an interview yesterday in which he said he has he has talked to officials uh inside the administration. So we're we're talking, you know, United States administration level presidential admin, um, who are talking to religious leaders presently right now about how to couch this thing when they release it. And and this is not the meeting that we know people who've been involved. It's it's this is a different thing. Um, so he he Ross Cohart confirmed that yesterday. Um, there's a lot of innuendo, there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, there's a lot, just a lot swirling around this whole thing. And so, guys, the the the deception's coming. Yeah. Um one of the videos shows instantaneous acceleration. This this thing floats up and then stops and then boom and it's gone. And we've got nothing like that in the United States inventory, as far as uh we know of, that has right, that has that kind of accelerative power. Like that's that's crazy. Um, even Fox News is you know, whatever whether you like Fox News or not is irrelevant. The fact that they are a major media news network channel that is talking about four different species of non-human intelligence: the the little grays, the nords, reptilians, and uh insectoids. Like this is Star Trek, guys. Yeah, seriously, yeah, yeah, alienation all over again. For real. Um, and and so it, you know, uh what is that? Is that is that a slow drip from the government, like trying to acclimate the culture to to believe the and and by the way, guys, do realize most of the earth is not like us, they don't have this bedrocked secular science-minded thing inside of them. Like they they believe in these supernatural things, they believe in in extra-dimensional beings, they they speak to you know, ancestor spirits. We we know they're demons in disguise, but they're for them, it's it's not gonna be super uh paradigm shaking for something like this to happen. It's us in these in our western, secularized, science-based, 100% um, you know, industrial revolution, modern, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's us who when when this information is released, are this is the language they're using, ontological shock. Okay. The that means questioning everything you hold about reality and the truth of reality. Eric Brilson, one of the the guys who's on the um the leading edge of this for Congress, he said, in this was last week, he said, I'm a born-again Christian, uh, bought by the blood, believe the Bible, this, you know, all this stuff. And he said this. He said, What I've seen has caused me to, uh, it it has, what did he say? It not shaken my faith. It has caused him, it has tested his faith. He he has had to look at what he really believes and the information that he's seen behind closed doors and go, what do I really believe? What do I really, really, really believe? So the this level of ontological shock is coming. What did um, what did uh Tim Burchett say? He said there is an OS moment coming, an O crap moment when when some information hits, it's gonna cause everybody to go, oh my goodness, that's coming. So um, you know, we have a friend. There, there was a number of meetings that happened. We we we have a friend and know somebody personally who was in one of those meetings and got to chat with this this person. And the a couple of conclusions came

Data Is Real Meaning Gets Spun

SPEAKER_03 6:57

out. And the first is that the the data itself is not the deception. So there you're you're gonna see things that are anomalous. You're you're gonna see radar pings on on on something that's returning a radar signature. So, you know, do the math. That that means something is there that has substance that a radar ping is hitting and it's returning a radar ping back. Radar pings, there's infrared, there meaning this is not just a it's not a it's not a a digital hologram that they're reviewing on these videos. So when you see the the black and white grainy videos, guys, there's a lot of information, military information on there that shows you you're not just looking at a video, you're looking at a number of data points that are coming back to you through that video that has substance, FLIR imaging, infrared, all that heat signatures, et cetera. So, so if it were just a hologram, it wouldn't return a a radar pink. It wouldn't have an a heat signature. Okay so so the the the deception is not the data. They they've got the videos, they they've got these these testimonies, etc. The deception is what the data means. So say there's a craft of some kind, them telling you what the craft is is the deception. Not that there was something there that returned it, but perhaps it's the US government pretending that can be a thing. Perhaps it's a spiritual substance manifested into the natural, that can be a thing. Perhaps it's it it is human but non-military, like Raytheon, or that can be a thing. So so the the data itself is not going to be the deception. What they tell you the data means is going to be the deception. Okay. Two three immediate takeaways. Number one, your solution is keeping your eyes on Christ. You keep Christ central in all things. That means that you're in the Bible, that means that you're praying, that means that you're in fellowship. That means that you are the basics of Christianity. Read your Bible, pray, go to church and witness. Like those those are those are the basics of Christian experience. Read the Bible, be with the people of God, have a prayer life, a significant prayer life, not a measly little, you know, five minutes of a month prayer life, but a real prayer life, reading your Bible, fellowshipping with the saints, and then telling people about Jesus. That's your mission set, church. Your mission set is to go into the dark places, to shine the light, and to re reach and save the lost and recover, the recover that which was lost so that people get saved. You keep on those things, you keep that primary, that as number one in your heart. Jesus will take care of the rest. For today, because of that dynamic, the the thing that we wanted to talk about is

Keeping Christ Central Under Pressure

SPEAKER_03 9:54

the scripture. Why do we keep our nose in the Bible? Because one of the lies that we're we're we're being told is going to come out is hey, Christians, you got it mostly right, but you're a little wrong here. How do we know we've got the Bible? Well, why do we trust the Bible? That's a fair question. So I think that's where we want to go today. Um, Terrence, Zane, you guys got any uh opening thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Really quick, man. I think um so I like where we're going with this. I like the resolve to find out why we believe the Bible and not just believe it because it's our parents' religion or because, you know, we were told to believe it. I'll just say this as a quick summary and I guess we'll get into it unless Zane has something to say as well. But, you know, one of the reasons we read read the Bible is because um the Bible describes a person, not just the merely facts about a person or facts about a religion, but a person desires to be known. Religion is one of a relationship. Yes, it's a religion, right? James would say that, but it's religion whereby we grow in an actual relationship with this person who reveals himself as the God of the universe. And so we read the Bible in order to know this God. As we know this God, we can know the truth from the various, you know, myriads of lies that exist in the world, one of which you just described, right? It's the whole Genesis in thing again. Did God really say? That's a that's a iterated statement that that that comes through the lens or words in various ways. Now we see it in you know the alien talk. Is this Bible really true? Is this Jesus really true? Again, back to Genesis. Did God really say? It's the same thing all over again. And so again, we read the Bible to know this God so we could distinguish truth from fiction or truth from lies. So you're not coming up.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Zane? Yeah, it's a great topic. I I just I I feel like the you know, there's so much talk of translations and the history and world, you know, just you know, all the ancillary stuff around the Bible, um, the scripture itself, and and honestly, the Holy Spirit speaks to you when you read it. You know what I mean? If the Holy Spirit's speaking to you, that's that's a that's a genuine um a a an experience that you can't, you know, refute, honestly. You know, that's he he's the teacher, he's the comforter. He's he's here to help us understand the word. Um and that's not something that can be argued against necessarily because of you know, Constantine or whatever other things.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

Yeah,

Nicaea Myths And Canon Confusion

SPEAKER_03 12:11

yeah. And I I think that's probably a a a good spot to start, actually, a lot with, especially with a lot of the the mumbo jumbo that's out there that's like, you know, Constantine determined what books in the Bible were supposed to be in the Bible at the Council of Nicaea and and all that that uh gobbly gook. And and so, you know, the the funny thing is is when you actually study these things and you learn these things, and then you hear these paroded arguments that come out, you're like, you have no idea what you're talking about. Like, for instance, the canonization of the Bible wasn't even discussed at the Council of Nicaea. And the primary issue at the Council of Nicaea was a heretic named Arius of Alexandria who was espousing that Jesus was a lesser deity than the prime deity of God the Father, is the way that that we would conceive of it now. So Jesus is actually not God but a lesser God. We see this repackaged today in in Jehovah's Witnesses theology. Right. And so the the primary issue was that there was this bishop named Arius of Alexandria who was promoting this this um unbiblical view of the nature of Christ. And just so that everybody knows, virtually every theological heresy that is a salvation issue stems from the nature of God or the nature of the gospel. And well so that's it. Yeah, they they all stem from that. They're like, who is Jesus? Who is he? And and and most people are good on the father. They're like, all right, you know, one supreme God created everything, you know, people who believe in God. It it is the nature of of the son, how he relates to the father, the nature of the spirit, how they relate to each other, something concerning are are they fully is is Jesus fully man? Is he part man? Is he fully God? Is so all of all of these these questions of the nature of Jesus or the nature of the spirit and the nature of how the the the triune God interacts with himself within his nature, or something concerning the gospel, what's happened on the cross, what's happened in the resurrection, right? How it is that we apply it to our life, Paul was like, if anyone tells you that that you are justified by works, that is a false gospel, they are to be accursed. So the the these these two areas, the the nature of God, and then the the nature of what's happened in the gospel, those are the two primary places that that theological heresy that means you now no longer have the right God anymore. That's and the and the right gospel, though those are the problems. So so the the council of Nicaea did not determine how many books were gonna be there, or what what's the other one? Uh Zayn, you you know some of these arguments. What what is the other one? Um oh take a note of the council. Let's switch the the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Isn't that another one that's in there too? Zayn. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Constantine changed the dates from Saturday to Sunday, yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah. Yeah, there was like a main, there was like it they make it seem like there was a like a push from you know acts Christianity into like a mainstream, you know, expression that was like branded and stamped and like, okay, this is what Christianity is, but that none of that really happened at the Council of Nicaea, like you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

Yeah. So and and just so that everyone else knows, like the Sabbath is Saturday. It's never been changed. Amen. It's still, it's still Saturday. Like it hasn't changed. What happened is that Sunday was called the Lord's Day because it was the day that they the tomb was discovered empty. And so they began to gather on that day. No one changed the Sabbath. Nobody for the record, no one has ever changed the Sabbath. Yeah, nobody. Yeah, nobody claims to, I don't believe either. Well, no, but there are folks who say that the church did. Seventh-day Avenists try to say that. Right, but they're yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

That's a that's a caricature of what really occurred, though. We're not claiming that at all. Correct.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

That's right. So, so let's you know, clear the record. Okay, so the

God Breathed Scripture Through Authors

SPEAKER_03 16:26

Bible. Council of Nicaea had nothing to do with it. The the reason why we have the scriptures the way that we have the scriptures today is is actually a very, very practical thing that happened. Here's like I was talking to a student in Bible college a couple weeks ago, and they were asking me, okay, how do we have the scriptures? And they were surprised that the answer is not there was some sort of aha moment where heavens opened and gold plates came down. Thank God, right? By the way, that's Mormonism. But I said, Thank God. It was right. It it was not some some dude alone in a cave who a an angel came and and recited words to him. Islam that's Islam. So the way that we have the Bible is very, very unique in all of the holy um books on the face of the planet because it it is, you know, 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scriptures inspired by God, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, training, and righteousness. So the man of God may be adequate and equipped for every work. The the term that are that that Paul uses there is the anusos, and it means that it is breathed by God. So Peter says, men were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And so there is this cooperative thing that happens in the writing of scripture where the Spirit of God comes and the mind of the man is engaged, and there is revelation that is given. And in that revelation that is given, it carries the idiosyncrasies of the person. So like grammar issues exist, style exists, um, lack of education exists. Like Luke is some of the best Greek you're gonna get. Like secular um Greek courses look to Luke for the kind of Greek that Luke represents, which is called Koini Greek, the trade, the trade Greek. They look to Luke because it's so precise, it's it's such a good example of very well written, good grammar, all this stuff. Why? Because Luke was an educated doctor. Oh that's right. But you go to Paul. Paul is is fantastic for run-on ideas and sentences that if you were to put punctuation in it, the you know, Paul does run-on sentences. John the apostle, his Greek isn't that good, and there's lots of Hebraisms in his Greek. So the idiosyncrasies of the writers come through. The perspective of the writer comes through, the training of the writer is apparent to one to another. So this idea of how we got the scriptures like God just puppeted somebody, and then that's not what happened. Thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong. I think there's certain criteria too that were supposed to be met and kept, right? Like Jesus validated the Old Testament, and so therefore, for the Christian, if the Lord Himself val vindicated certain books of the Old Testament, that's why we have them as canon. Uh, and then of course, during the times uh in which the New Testament was uh occurring, the disciples had already accepted these as scriptures. For example, Paul would say in some of his letters, uh talking about his letters that they were scripture. You you quoted one, Timothy, all scriptures God breathed. Now, of course, he's talking about the Old Testament, there correct me if I'm wrong, right? But also he says in regards to his own letters that they were scriptures just like the old testament, you see. Criteria is is not supernatural like like the way in which people might assume. It's really ordinary in the way God um allowed us to uh you know get our Bible. Spooky, like men receiving divine revelation by themselves with no one to see it with them, um, no, no, so no no no spurious things occurring there, but just men using their brain, validating scripture with scripture, saying, All right, in this time particular time, uh when Moses is writing, Jesus himself vindicates this as scripture, therefore it's scripture. As Paul's writing to his churches, other disciples are saying Paul's words is also scripture. And therefore, if the if the divine Christ, who's God, can vindicate the Old Testament, there's no need for argument there. And if the dis disciples is claiming that Paul's writings are on par with scripture, there should be no argument there either. So if that makes any kind of sense, correct me if I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_03 20:42

Sorry, Peter who says that Paul that that false teachers distort the scriptures or distort Paul's writings, and then he equates it by saying, as they do with other scriptures in the scriptures, right? So the the Peter considers Paul's uh writing scriptures. Um the uh so let's read this passage real quick. This is this is one that's always intriguing. This is Daniel chapter 10, verse 21. So Daniel has just received uh direct revelation from, we assume, the the angel Gabriel, who's been wrestling with the Prince of Persia for 21 days. So two sap supernatural entities, one from the good guys, one from the bad guys. The one from the good guys has received uh word from the throne to go and take interpretation to Daniel. So Daniel sees these crazy visions, Daniel's freaked out. Daniel's like, I need to figure out what this means. He sets his heart to receiving interpretation from God. God sends the message by the messenger angel. And as that messenger angel is coming to give Daniel, who's in in bondage in Persia, Babylon, he's going to come and give Daniel the interpretation that he's seeking. Another entity encounters him called the Prince of Persia, and they wrestle for 21 days. Okay. At the end of this, this angel is speaking to Daniel about what's happening. And verse 18, he says, Then this one with human appearance touched me again and strengthened me. This is Daniel speaking about who we assume is Gabriel, verse 19. And the angel says, O man of high esteem, do not be afraid. Peace be with you. Take courage and be courageous. Now as he spoke to me, I received strength, and I said, May my Lord speak, for you have strengthened me. Then he, this angel, said, Do you understand why I came to you? But I shall now return to fight against the prince of Persia. So I am going forth, and behold, the prince of Greece is about to come. So now we're talking three supernatural entities, and here's the key verse, verse 21. However, I will tell you what is inscribed in the writing of truth. So this angel, in his interpretation to Daniel about the beast visions that he had seen in the previous chapters, says the content that he is delivering to Daniel is content that is written in something in heaven called the truth, which is crazy. So there is apparently a document, a scroll, a piece of stone, metal, something that has words inscribed on it that is in the heavens called the truth. The angel is given information from this thing called the truth and told by the one on the throne, it's God, go and tell Daniel. Okay. This means that the way that we consider scripture as Christians is it is the only book on the face of the planet that corresponds to heavenly books. That's it. Heaven is full of books, it's got records, your your life and everything that you've done is written in heaven. And by the way, it's authoritative. You won't be able to say, but I meant this, but I what? And nope. Yeah. Everything, not just what you did, but your motive, all of it's there, which should terrify you. There is a book called The Book of Life, and that's the one that matters. And those who belong to Jesus, their names are written in the book of life. Malachi mentions scrolls of remembrance. So if you are grieved by your culture and you hate the sinfulness of your culture and it breaks your heart, God says to an angel, go and take a scroll and write on it a scroll of remembrance with the names of these who are broken because of the sin of their people. Because God's like, I I I want to remember them. I want to write their names in heaven, that they were broken over sin when they should have been broken over sin, that they they hated the fact that their culture was focused on death and idolatry, et cetera. Okay. That means that this divine revelation, and when when Terence says there's there's nothing spooky and revelation and stuff, what he does not mean is that there wasn't something supernatural. What he means is all of the other ones that claim this special supernatural kind of it's not that way. Paul says in Galatians, he went off into Arabia for three years and he learned the gospel from Jesus himself while in the desert by a personal revelation. So when Paul writes Galatians, when Paul writes Colossians, when Paul opens up the mysteries of the gospel in Romans, he is direct, he is teaching directly from what he received from Jesus himself. So there is that that element, but it's also patently mundane. That's what I mean to say. That's a good word. Right. The the Spirit of God comes and interacts and opens up revelation, and then Paul begins to write, and God gives him revelation. Okay.

Inspired Inerrant Authoritative Explained

SPEAKER_03 25:44

I think the automatic question is then why do we consider that authoritative, but not the prophecy in the local church? Scripture maintains three positions it is inspired, inerrant, and authoritative. And it is the only thing that maintains all three of those positions aside from Jesus Himself. So you can have prophecy in the local church that if it's from God, it's authoritative, but it's not inerrant. Why? Because uh 1 Corinthians 13 says we know in part and we prophesy in part. We see as in a mirror darkly. So yes, it's inspired. The the information is given to me by God, but then I can do the wrong thing with it. Think we talked about this in our prophecy episode. So that means that though it's inspired, it it is potentially errant or potentially fallible is the right way to put it. Right. Doesn't mean that it is, but it means that it it maintains that it is fallible even if it's not fallacious. Meaning it can be fallacious even if it's not actually. And then inerrant, things that carry error or not error. I'll give you an example. My wife writes me a grocery shopping list. That list is absolutely authoritative. That's what she wants. Yes. But she spelled something wrong. That's an error. Well, it's not inspired, it wasn't from God, but it was from my wife. So it's authoritative, but it's not inspired, and it could be errant. These three spheres are how we judge words from the Lord personally, words from the Lord in church versus the scripture. And the scripture is the only one that maintains those three: inspired and errant and authoritative, and we keep those in place. Okay. Thoughts, questions?

SPEAKER_02 27:27

I just like the way you broke that down again. We spoke about that before, but it was a good recap. Really good. Okay. Let me just say this. I think one good question might be, and then you can respond to this. One qu one good question might be, you know, people would say, Oh, every religion makes this claim, right? That their book is inerrant and everything that you just said. How do we distinguish or why would we say then, excuse me, why would we say then that the Bible itself is different and or better than the all the the other holy texts?

SPEAKER_03 27:54

Well, how would you answer that? Yeah. I I I would absolutely agree. And so for the Christian, the fact that the Bible testifies to its own authority is sufficient for us. Amen. Praise God. But for the non-Christian who's saying, okay, well, why is the Bible authoritative? Well, because the Bible says it is. That's what we call circular logic. And circular logic is logic that proves itself by saying that it proves itself. So the Bible, the Bible should be taken as truth. Why? Because it says it's truth. Oh, okay. Do do we have another reason why other than it claims? Like that is sufficient for for us who are believers. Amen. Praise God. All right, moving on. But for the non-believer, that's not sufficient for them. And I understand. I think the first thing is that when it comes to supernatural stuff, why does the devil obey the Bible? That that's pretty that that that is a a pretty telltale sign that you're dealing with something that has authoritative substance. Okay. What I teach our Bible college students, um, and this is I'm gonna give credit to Hank Hanagraph. He is the the Bible answer man. I don't even know. I haven't heard of him in a long time. Wow. Long time. I I don't even know if he's still doing stuff. I think he is. You know what's crazy? He like converted to Orthodox. Did you know that? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Like early 2000s, I believe, right?

SPEAKER_03 29:12

Uh yeah, maybe, maybe the tens or something. But yes, it's been a been over a decade. But yeah, he he he stepped out of uh evangelicalism and became uh Eastern Orthodox, I think that's what it is. Um, but but credit to the Bible Answer Man. Um he the the Bible Answer Man program and such puts out a publication called the Christian Research Journal, and it's representative of what's called the Christian Research Institute, I believe.

MAPS Manuscripts And Text Reliability

SPEAKER_03 29:40

And so you guys can look this stuff up. Um, but he gave an acronym uh when talking about the authority of the scripture called MAPS, M-A-P-S. And the first M is manuscript evidence. And and here's the question that manuscript evidence addresses. Do we have what they wrote? Yes, we do. So we're we're not asking if what they wrote was true. We're we're not asking if if they lied. We're not we're we're not asking this question. The the first question is, do we have what they wrote? So Peter wrote a book. Do we have what that Peter wrote? Was it written by somebody else? Was it so all of these questions are are addressed by the manuscript issue. Okay. Right now we've got about 6,500 plus manuscripts for the New Testament, which means we we they date anywhere from some take date the Magdalen manuscript to within 15 to 20 years of the the resurrection, some dated a little bit later um to the the early second century, 150s to or the midsecond century, 150s to 200s. Uh, but we have so many manuscripts going back to within some 50 to 100 years of when the events that they cover were were they were written within 50 to 100 years of the events happening. Okay. This right now is it is that is one of the strongest testaments to the validity of of the Bible. Because when you when you line that up with other ancient documents, like they are three and four hundred years removed from the events, and they've got three or four manuscripts at the most of the events that they're covering versus the New Testament. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

I was just gonna say, well said, uh if we could teach in the higher education uh schools and such that Caesar was a real person based upon Caesar's Gallic War and the old text that we have, I think 500 copies, something like that, like you said so well, that they're hundreds of years apart, and we could teach that as fact, and certainly we could teach the New Testament as precisely what it says, by who it says it's who said it, right? If the same um rigorous sort of studies and uh methodology we we use to it to to vindicate or validate all historical text, and certainly the Bible by far, because of the shared numbers it has it on to be at the top of the list as this is a fact. Think you you did a good job with Shabnah here?

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Keep muting myself. One of the problems that we run into, to your point, is that people are willing to accept one standard for non-religious text. So they're they're like, okay, I will accept that what we have of the Iliad or you know, Homer's writings, etc. I will accept that what we have for them accurately reflects what happened with them. Well, because there's no claim on them. There, there's no claim to deity, there's no claim to you need to obey or you know, your your your your eternity is in the balance. Like there's there's no claims on them. But the moment that you talk about the claims of Jesus or religious texts, suddenly they they do in false logic, this is called moving the goalposts.

SPEAKER_02 33:11

Correct, correct. But but to your point, though, and this is important to state again, the question is not, are we saying that the Bible is true? We'll get there. What right now the question is, is this what the people who wrote it actually said? Because of the sheer volume alone, we can adequately say that this is what we have today as the Bible in the New Testament, is precisely what they had when they was written. Thing has changed. That whole that old claim of the Bible has been rewritten and so forth and so on, monstrously debunked by history and the finding findings of all these various manuscripts alone.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah. So here's some stats for those who are those who are listening. Plato um is written roughly uh 5th century BC, 4th century BC, and our our our manuscripts go back to 900 um AD, so 1300 years. Um the Gaelic Wars, you mentioned them, uh you know, roughly happened uh first century BCE, and the earliest manuscripts that we have are 90 AD. That's a thousand years. Tacitus, the annals, 100 AD to 850 AD, 750 years. Aristotle from uh 384, 322 BC, so fourth century uh BC, earliest manuscripts we have, the 1100 AD. That's 1400 years. Okay. So, and then the the amounts of the manuscripts, let's see. Um okay, total extent copies of Plato, seven, total copies of the Gaelic Wars, 10. Total copies of Aristotle, 50. Tacitus, 20. Okay, so we're talking within 50 to 100 years for the New Testament and 6,000 manuscripts. Okay, and they agree to about 96% of the text, and where they where they don't agree, you've got no major doctrine is touched. And typically it it's it's like scribal things, like someone instead of saying, right, instead of saying Jesus walked in the room and healed the girl, it's the Lord Jesus Christ walked in and healed the sick girl. It's the same thing. Yeah, yeah. There's just a couple extra words that it's the same thing. So most variants are in in that direction. Okay, so that that's manuscript evidence. Further, early church father writings show citations of those manuscripts, and most of the New Testament, like a large degree of it, can be remade by, if we had no manuscripts, remade by the citations of the early church fathers. We could re we could remake the text based on their citations alone. This means that it means that it's everywhere it's being used and ready, they considered these manuscripts authoritative. Yes, amen. They were using them as scripture, 100%, meaning an accepted and circulated canon already exist, existed before the second century. Constantine didn't do nothing, right? Right. He didn't do nothing. Further, Christianity has inherited the religious culture of the people of the book. Who's that? That's the Jews. So how do we have the Old Testament? Ezra compiles the whole thing at roughly four 450-444, and we have a completed and authoritative text that is the the Torah, the writings, and the prophets, the the the what they call the Tanakh, the the Torah, the writings, and the prophets, and is being used as authoritative by the Jews by the time of Ezra. Why is that important? Because they just lost the temple and they needed to have a grounding focal point, a true north for how to think about God and how to continue to keep the culture that God had given them instituted as they built a second temple and tried to recover their entire um psyche. Yeah. 100%. Further, how do we know then that we have what the Jews wrote? Well, you have the discovery of the great Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest extant Hebrew manuscript that we have is the Mesoretic text, roughly 1000 AD. Well, then they find the Dead Sea Scrolls, it's 1948, something like that, 47. And they find the Great Isaiah Scroll and they compare the Mesoretic text to the Great Isaiah Scroll, and they are virtually identical. So that means you've got a culture of people who over a thousand years hold the written word so sacred that they didn't get anything wrong in copy to copy to copy to copy to copy. So what does that deal with? This whole telephone argument. If you've ever heard someone tell you, oh, well, a telephone argument, one person gets on and they say something, and then they say something, and they say something. And by the time, you know, by the time you're done, the pink elephant that started over there is like a brown bear on the other end of the telephone line.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

Yeah. That argument would make sense, to be fair. It would hold some validity to it, unless uh, you know, uh except the fact that we have archaeological evidence like you're insinuating now. So that whole thing is just blown out of the water just by based upon actual facts. Again, I'm not arguing it is not yet. I'm I'm not arguing that the Bible is true yet. I'm just saying we have what was written long before, like nothing has changed.

SPEAKER_03 39:06

That's right. We we have what they wrote. And the other thing that you have to add to that is one of the other reasons why the telephone analogy doesn't work is because you've got a a culture of people who hold it the word so strongly, so wholly that as soon as one person gets off the phone and they go to talk to another one, they're gonna say, Okay, pink elephant, they're gonna say, Are you sure pink elephant? You said pink. Well, how do you spell pink? Do you spell pink with an I, or did he spell it with an E? Was it with a K or with a C? So, like they are meticulous. Like you, you if you were a scribe and you began to write out the scroll of Isaiah, 66, 61, you know, chapters, whatever 61 chapters, whatever Isaiah is. Let's say Jeremiah, the largest book in the Bible, the largest content of any book in the Bible is the book of Jeremiah. You start writing that thing, you get one stroke wrong. You scrap the whole thing and start again. That's their culture. That's how holy they consider this. That that is how highly they regard the written word as communicating the voice of God. So, so the the the telephone thing doesn't work very well. Okay, what does this mean? It means, guys, that we have absolutely overwhelming evidence that we have what they wrote. So somebody wants to talk to you about, well, we know how do we know what they we what they wrote? Well, do we have what they wrote? Yes, we do. And there's there's lots of of reasons to believe it. Okay. Further, we have dating to within the time of the first century, and if the content was false, it could have been corrected. So you've got eyewitnesses who are enemies of the church that if any of the historical data were wrong, they could come up and say, Hey, sorry, you guys got it wrong. That doesn't happen. Matter of fact, what you have is you have them promoting propaganda to change the facts. Right. So they did not contend that there was no body, they contended actually, there's no body because they stole the body.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_03 41:10

Yes, I love that. So, so if the content were false, it totally could have been corrected. You've got the right now, the New Testament stands at 99.5% accuracy, with the only issues being textual variants or scribe issues. No doctrine is affected. Okay. What does this deal with? We can't trust the Bible as we have it. Yeah, we can. The Bible's been tampered with. No, not the Gnostic Gospels, which are the Nag Hamadi text, and Zayn, you're probably familiar with these terms. They show that there were a plethora of other kinds of writings that were promoting themselves as Christian that were in fact not Christian. We know that they were able to judge between what was true and what was not, what was actually written by a biblical author and what wasn't written by a biblical author. It's like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary. Like we know that those weren't written by Thomas. We know that those weren't written by Mary. Okay. This also addresses the issue of whether or not they were lying. We know that they weren't lying. They believed what they said. Now, that doesn't address whether what they believed was true, but it does address that they weren't lying. Further, the idea that legend and myth creeps into the accounts is done with. There, there is the these things happen within a period of time that there is no time for legend or myth to creep into the accounts. Okay.

Archaeology And The Telephone Myth

SPEAKER_03 42:40

That's that's the M for maps, A for maps, archaeological evidence, and this is historical finds. Without fail, the Bible has been proven over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And when you're done saying over again, take a deep breath and then what? Say over and over and over and over and over and over again again. Yeah. Yeah. And with the coming of the the modern enlightenment era, what we call modernism, the Bible was scrutinized and questioned. And and into this place, there were a lot of assumptions that were made, and and people began to say, oh, well, well, the Bible's not true. The Bible's not this. And I'll give you one of the examples. For a long time, they did not believe that there could have been a dynasty under David because they had no historical evidence that Judah actually had a kingdom around the 1000s BC, which is when, or BCE, depending on your listeners. Um there was no evidence of a dynastic or a dynasty, meaning a king that started a kingdom and had sons from his kingdom and an established kingdom that continued. There was no evidence of a Hebraic dynasty at the 1000s. And so David was made up. He was a national folk hero that somebody in the ancient Testamental period wrote just to just to anticipate this coming Davidic Messiah, and he was completely made up. Until they found the Tell Danstel, which is a a rock that has inscribed on it. Let me look at my date here. That is a dynastic reference that proves that there indeed was a house of David in the 850s to 900s, where in order to have a dynasty, you have to have a sequence of kings that lasts for a little while. Otherwise, it's a flash in the pan.

SPEAKER_04 44:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

Make sense? Okay. Over and over and over again, archaeological evidence proves the Bible. There, there's plenty of it out there. They they claimed Moses couldn't have written the Pentateuch because writing didn't exist at 1400. Well, guess what? 1964, the Elba, the Elba tablets are discovered, and what do they show? That there were laws and customs established in the Code of Hammurabi five, six hundred years before the 1400s. Yeah. So what happens? People are people are accusing the Bible just because they want to accuse the Bible. To me, that's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

There's no other book, to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong, that is so scrutinized, no other holy writ, not the Quran, not any other Bible, the the Indian writings, uh, nothing except the Bible. And I think the the the focused energy in trying to debunk the Bible in itself, to me, one of the reasons I think the Bible is indeed true. Yeah, it's self-authenticating.

SPEAKER_01 45:54

Zane, you got any thoughts mowing around inside, you good? Yeah, I agree with Terrence for sure. There's just like obviously a you know a a dedicated effort to, you know, um completely tear it apart and you know, uh to the point where it's it's demonic in a lot of ways, you know what I mean? It's just there's there's there's absolutely um uh you know an affront, you know, that I feel I feel personally uh affront. That there's an affront that against uh against us Christians for sure, man. When when when we put so much stock in the word, man, and is it has done so much for me in my personal life, you know, and you have folks that are maybe atheists, doesn't matter what their background is, but trying to make these claims and refute these things, and it's like, yeah, let's have the discussion, but let's not do it from a place of um I I I hate the church, I hate Christianity, whatever it might be, and I want to, you know, completely up, you know, upturn your, you know, the foundation of your faith. That's that's terrible, you know. So I'm glad we're talking about this, you know?

SPEAKER_03 46:49

Amen. Okay, P on maps. And here's where it starts getting overwhelming.

Predictive Prophecy As God’s Signature

SPEAKER_03 46:55

Okay. Predictive prophecy. Isaiah 46, 9, God says this, for I am God and there is no other, I am God, and there's no one like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, things which have not been done. So God Himself says that predictive prophecy, and and and I don't mean like prophecy from Yuri Geller, or you know, prophecy from Alien Revelation, or uh that someone I'm talking, or or here here's a very common one. You go and get your mail read to you by a tarot card reader or a psychic at the local, the local psychic place or whatever that the song I'm talking about. I'm talking about genuine foreknowledge about things to come. They can tell you about all kinds of stuff in the past and be accurate because they're watching you. It's called a familiar spirit. They can even tell you about things that are cut are to come, not because they know and see the future, but because they're really, really good guessers. One, two, they've been around since before us, they've been watching us. They know this kind of person acts that way, this kind of person does this, this trajectory in their life means that. Further, guess what? They're real spirits. If they tell you tomorrow you're gonna get into a car wreck, guess what they can do? They can make sure tomorrow you get into a car wreck. But that's not true foreknowledge, that's not true prophecy. That is them making a word look like prophecy because they're bringing it to pass themselves, self-fulfilling the prophets. God alone is the one who knows the beginning from the end and declares things that are coming for real, like the real deal. Okay. God himself states that the evidence for his deity is his ability to declare the beginning from the end. Okay, some examples. Isaiah cites a king by name hundreds of years before he exists. His name is Cyrus.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 48:57

Isaiah 44, hundreds of years before he exists. This is such a problem for liberal scholarship that they will go back and say, hmm, that portion of Isaiah must have been written after Cyrus, because there's no way that he could have known of this guy. Like, so so think about it, okay? Isaiah is is 720s, uh mid mid-eighth century or so-ish. He he's um he sees Assyria come down. This is, you know, um, Cyrus is 550-ish. So we're talking 200 years, 150 years before Cyrus. Medo-Persia is not even a contender on the geopolitical field right now. You've got Assyria during the time of Isaiah, and then after Isaiah, it will be Babylon. And it's not until after Babylon that Assyria and Persia become contenders. So Isaiah is calling out a king by name 150 to 200 years before his people group is even a contender. By name. Here's another one crucifixion in the Psalms. 500 years before it's invented by the Persians. The the detail of what happens in the crucifixion, or Isaiah himself, again, 150 years before the Persians who invented uh crucifixion is talking about as Isaiah 53. They pierced my hands and my feet, they've lashed me, like crazy stuff. Daniel speaks of kingdoms by name. Like when you read Daniel, we talked about Daniel 10 earlier. When you read Daniel 9 and Daniel 11, and you see the details by which he outlines the military and political intrigue moves of a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes, a real historical seleucid king who is the prefigure of the Antichrist. Daniel's mentioning the stuff that this does, this dude does so detailed that scholars come back and say there's no way he could have known that that wasn't written by the guy.

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Written after, yeah. I think when his uh declaration of uh about the Messiah being cut off, the death of Jesus, written in Daniel as well. And the critics say the same thing. This couldn't have been written by actual Daniel, rather, this was written later in time and sort of pulls back into time because they can't debunk it.

SPEAKER_03 51:12

Yeah, and so that one in particular, where he says X amount of days until Messiah, and then he will be cut off. And the the way that it maps is from the decree of Cyrus to rebuild the temple to the day that Jesus enters into Jerusalem on a donkey, the triumphal entry, to the day.

SPEAKER_02 51:30

Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_03 51:31

To the day, by the way, dispensational eschatology.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

I told you they batted really well right now. I know, I know.

SPEAKER_03 51:45

Batting a thousand right now. Okay, here's here's the major one, okay. Three hundred plus prophecies concerning the Messiah. Three hundred plus prophecies. Okay, this leads into the S. So we talked about manuscript evidence, we talked about archaeological evidence, we've talked about predictive prophecy.

Messianic Odds And The Texas Coins

SPEAKER_03 52:09

The last is statistical probability.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:13

300 plus messianic prophecy uh prophecies. There's a book by a guy named Josh McDowell called More Than a Carpenter. I would highly recommend if you don't know Jesus or you're just getting to know Jesus, grab the book and read it. One of the best books. Like I've I've got 30 or so copies down here on my shelf that I give to people when they say yes to Jesus. I even give them to teenagers 10, 11, 12 years old because it's it's just such a good book. And he cites a guy who in the 50s looked at he he did the math for what's the chance that these prophecies are fulfilled in the person of Jesus? Okay. So here's here's his uh here's here's his statistical probability. The chance that just eight of those 300 are fulfilled in one person is 10 to the 17th power. That is a one with a one with 17 zeros behind it. Okay. And if if you do the math on on the fine-tuning of the universe, well, you you compare the statistical probability of the fine-tuning of the universe, the argument for intelligent design, this goes up there with these astronomical improbabilities.

SPEAKER_04 53:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 53:35

Okay. Here's the analogy that Josh McDowell gives. He says if you take an area the size of the state of Texas and you fill it three foot deep with uh half dollars. So the size of the state of Texas, full of half dollars, three foot deep, walk out, grab a coin, spray paint it red, throw that coin back out onto that mass of coins in that area, mix the whole thing up over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, then blindfold yourself, walk out onto that area, the size of the state of Texas, bend down, pick up a coin. The chance that that coin will be the one that you have picked up is the chance that just eight of those prophecies is fulfilled in one person. And Jesus fulfilled over three hundred. Okay, you've got the old testament books, they're written over a thousand years between 1400 to 400 BC. Here's some examples. Psalm 22, 16, Isaiah 53, 5, crucifixion before it's invented. Psalm 22, 18. Watch this. What happens to Jesus' clothes at the foot of the cross? Me too. Okay, there are some things that you could read. Let's like let's let's presume Jesus is going to uh be a bad guy, and he's gonna read some of these prophecies, and he's gonna say, Okay, I'm gonna make sure that I fulfill these. Okay, there are some things that you could make happen. Like, you know, let's let's say this that they're gonna divide Jesus' clothes and they're gonna they're gonna throw dice at the foot of the cross for his clothes. Maybe the day before he figured out who it was who was gonna crucify him, and he went and he paid him silver and said, Hey, they're gonna kill me tomorrow. Um, I'm gonna give you 10 pieces of silver. Can you just like uh cast lots and throw dice at the bottom of the cross so that it look maybe that I mean, just think about how stupid that sounds.

SPEAKER_02 55:31

Sounds stupid.

SPEAKER_03 55:31

Okay, some things he could do. There are absolutely things he could not do. For instance, your name. For instance, where you're born, for instance, who you're born to. How about this one? Zechariah 11, 11 and 12. How much in silver value he would be betrayed for, and then the name of the field that would be purchased by that amount of silver that he was betrayed for. Born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 11, that he would be from Nazareth. Daniel 9, 25, we talked about this earlier. 1,700 uh I'm sorry, 173,880 days from Arta Xerces' decree to rebuild the temple to the time when Jesus comes into Jerusalem mounted on a donkey. To the day. Over three hundred prophecies, Jesus fulfills over and over and over and over and over again.

unknown 56:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

But he fulfills it too. I think it's so fantastic. Even like to your point, you said that perhaps there are some prophecies he could fulfill by his own power, right? We can all do that, make it look like we're fulfilling prophecy and so forth. But even the one with the triumphant entrance, right? He tells his disciples, way in which he did it is so cool to me. He says, you know, go to a certain place and say to these people, Lord has need for a donkey. You imagine doing that? Why would those people listen to you? Yeah. They don't even believe he's living anyway. Right. So the way in which he does these things, anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:07

He didn't pay me my five silver. Tell them I'm I'm giving them a pig instead of a donkey today. I'm like, it's just amazing. Okay.

Translations Text Families And KJV Debate

SPEAKER_03 57:14

So presently, how how do we have our present uh manuscripts? There's a lot of garbage going or our present translations, okay? There's a a lot of folks that have problems with translations. Zayn's nodding his head. Zayn, do you have any off the top of your head you can start popping off as to the issues you've heard?

SPEAKER_01 57:31

Just I mean, just the between the different translations, people want you know to make claims. Am I muted? Oh, just keep going. Demus messages. Go ahead. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 57:41

Um so lots of people because they uh presume that because the Bible was written 2,000 years ago, then the translations that we have today in English are corrupted. That that's the essence of the matter. We we don't have what they wrote. And so how do we have our present English translations? Well, there the it starts with a guy named Jerome who goes and he takes a number of these Greek translations and he translates a what's called a Latin Vulgate, and he creates a Latin translation, and this begins to be used. And then there are folks who are are copying the um the Greek translations, and there's two schools of philosophy that arise in the early church. One's called the the Alexandrian school, and the other one's called the Byzantine school. And the Alexandrian school prefers a word-for-word preservation. So if they've got a couple of manuscripts and they're like, this one's the these five say it this way, but this this one says it this way, I'm I'm gonna go with the five because uh I I want a a word-for-word faithfulness in what was originally written and spoken by the author. And the Byzantine school is gonna look at these five and this one and try to make a a general um agreement between the the one and the five. Okay. So so that those are the two schools of thought that are out there. And it's the reason why you have things like what we mentioned earlier: the Lord Jesus walks in and heals the girl versus the Lord Jesus Christ walks in and heals the sick girl. So so the addition of clarifying, you know, comments or you know, this kind of thing, which are not the as far as substance go, that doesn't change anything. Doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 59:39

Here's the popular one only because it's in my mind. I was debating a Hebrew Israelite, and pardon me for interrupting, but um, there's a passage in Luke that specifies that that this not in the original, but it was added by a scribe because of clarification. It says, by this, he declared all foods righteous, or excuse me, by this he declared all foods clean. The context there, you know, no matter what school of thought you go with, the context is clear. Jesus is saying it's not what goes into the body that makes apparent and a man defiled, rather it's what comes out. And so Christians are not under any diet dietary type laws. That's the point. There's clarification in the Byzantine uh uh um text, and clarity to the context. Namely, Jesus is saying all foods are clean. So to your point. Right.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:20

Yep. Yeah. So the context, like we said, the the whatever variants they are, they don't change the doctrine. None of them change substantially any of the doctrine at all. They're they're all you know copyist errors or scribal inserts, which are, you know, that's that's not uncommon. That's that's regular. So um these these things are are what bring us to the Greek manuscripts. Then we have King James, who gets a guy named Desiderius Erasmus, and he's the guy who creates what's underneath what we call the Texas Receptus, which is the primary text that's underneath the King James, primary text that's uh underneath the New King James and some some other texts that that are out there. Here's the problem with the Texas Receptus. When he creates the Texas Receptus, he's only got about 30 manuscripts, and the earliest that he has date to about a thousand BC. So he's looking at he's looking at Greek, so we're we're talking about the New Testament right now. He's looking at Greek texts that are separated from the events by about a thousand years. So he had he what he had when he when he did his text, he worked with what he had, and that's all that he had. Well, over the last hundred and fifty years, so many archaeological discoveries have happened that we have found. Now, do the math. We've got over 6,500 manuscripts, portions of manuscripts, full extent manuscripts, presently right now, the New Testament. When he was working with what he was translation, translating, he only had 30 to 35. So that's a lot. And he's 1500, 1600s, whatever it is, um, 1400s. So in the last 500 years, we have we have come up with or discovered all of these other manuscripts. And so now the newer translations that we have are operating on the newest information that we have. And now we've got manuscripts that predate the ones that he was working with by six, seven, eight hundred years in some instances. So now you've got passages or you've got translations like the New American Standard that will give an asterisk in the text where it says earliest manuscripts do not include this verse, or earliest manuscripts do not include this thing. And what they're doing is they're trying to maintain the Texas Receptus from the King from uh Desiderius Erasmus because there's a lot of people out there that think that the King James is holy, and the Kingdom is not holy, it's just it, it's it's not. It's you know, Jesus doesn't speak King James English. And which version of the King James Right, this one, that one, yeah, which tech was you know, uh so and and there were actually problems with with some of uh Erasmus's stuff. Like he he was missing portions of the book of Revelation, and so he had to go back to the Vulgate and figure out okay, how would this be rendered in Greek, and then brought that back in. And so, you know, um, and he didn't do a bad job. It's just you know, just the the information. Like guys, the the way that we have the scripture is it is and and this is I think what I want to say, it is so testable. It is testable. You can test it. You you can you can try it. And I don't mean try like trying food, I mean try like like trying something that is tested, tried and true. God in his wisdom gave us this thing called the Bible in such a way that it wouldn't you you cannot accuse the Bible of weirdness like you do the Jehovah's Witnesses, or I'm sorry, uh like you do the Mormons, or like you can with Islam. You you the the the way that God delivered the Bible, you've got 1,400 years of of transmission. The Old Testament is 39 books, New Testament is 27 books, three different languages, 40 different author authors, three different continents, consistent message. You you don't have some dude in a cave that received it, or some dude out in the woods who got plates from heaven that you gotta have special glasses to look at. Like, like as as supernatural as you may want the the revelation of the Bible to be, like heaven opened up and Jesus came down and said, Here's a book. Imagine how how much that could be attacked by people who never saw it. Yeah. Yet God in his wisdom has allowed this transmission and and and sovereignly sat over the transmission of his scriptures in such a way that it is testable that you you can push on it and find no, this is substantial. He wants you to do that too. He welcomes it. 100%. 100%. Um, so that that's how we have our present translations, and so that this there's this this stuff out there that's like, oh, the the newest translations are occultic and they've removed passages from the Bible and read it. No, that's just people who don't know what they're talking about when it comes to the way the transmission is done and the way that that manuscript stuff is examined. The the newest translations that we have, the the the good ones, the ESV, the new American Standard update. King James isn't a bad translation. Like it's it you you like the King James, fine. That it's not a it's not a bad translation. Um I don't use It to study. I used the New American Center in the ESV, but the the King James isn't bad. Like, God bless you. So all of the folks who are trying to say, like that, you know, uh, I was listening to um brother from the East Coast, uh, forgot his name. Anyway, listening to this podcast where they they want to attack these two guys named Westcott and Hort, who were not Christians and uh probably had homosexual tendencies and some other stuff in him. And it's like whether they were that or not is irrelevant to the text. Like we have the text. We have the text. Like you can go back and look. The the the thing, you know, the Vaticanists and and all these other these manuscripts, the Alexandrius, like all these these manuscripts, these full extent manuscripts, and even the ones that are earlier, like you can go back and you can look. Like we have them. So so these straw man arguments or the these these uh red herring arguments to try to muddy the waters and be like, you know, oh, you know, well, you know, King James probably wasn't a Christian and probably had sex with his kids. So what?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:09

That's nothing to do with the Bible, yeah. Yeah. The Bible would condemn that too, and him alongside. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:18

You know, it has nothing to do with the text itself, has nothing to do with the data of the text itself. So, you know, don't don't let them the waters get muddy. Don't don't let yourself be sidetracked by in in here's the right term, weird Gnostic teachings, guys. These are esoteric secret knowledge things that make you make you feel, oh, I I've got information that they don't have, and oh I just stop.

unknown 1:07:45

Yep. Yep.

Martyrdom And The Cost Of Truth

SPEAKER_03 1:07:47

We have what they wrote. Here's the the the question we segue. We got about 15 minutes left. How do we know that they weren't lying? A few ways that we know we have what they wrote. We know they have what they wrote. Uh Terence, I'll let you take the mic just a second. We know we have what they wrote. We know we know that who s who they said wrote it wrote it. Like all we we've got tons of good, solid information that the text that we have is is what they wrote and that it is supernatural in origin and not merely human in origin. Now the question remains, did they lie? Go ahead, Terrence.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

I think in God's wisdom, one of the ways we can know that what they wrote was indeed true was their um dedication to keeping that truth, even at the point of suffering and death. There's no other religion in the world, to my knowledge, again, is vindicated through suffering and death. As human beings, we look, we always look for what we would consider blessings. If our God is God, then he's going to deliver us and so forth. In Christianity, you see the persevering of the saints through oftentimes various means of severe suffering, one of which is persecution. These people are dying because of their beliefs. And rather than recant, they're continuing on to death, saying things like, No, Jesus is Lord, I'll see him on the other side. I cannot turn my back because he alone has the words of truth that leads to eternal life. And I think that in itself is profoundly supernatural, um, even though it's occurring through very uh human means or ordinary means. Um, but that's typically not how people would choose to persevere, but rather that's in God's wisdom, he he uses that as one of the various proofs, and there's others as well, but to me that's the biggest one. One of the various proofs that his word is indeed true, because his people are dying to keep it and not recanting even unto death and suffering.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:43

Yeah, and I I think that that is the the quintessential point is that uh a person will not knowingly die for a lie. They they will not knowingly give up this spark of life in this body if they know that it's not true. Like that's that especially watch this when your kids' lives are threatened. So you've got accounts of families who lions are bearing down on, and if if I remember this correctly, they are being fed to wild animals, attacked by wild animals, them and their families, and they do not recant because they know the truth. They know it's true.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

That's not just something that's archaic, like that that yes, that occurred with early saints. Polycop comes to mind. This happens today in 2026. People in Africa, Uganda, various parts of China are dying for the faith now. They're suffering. There's a book, there's two books. I'll reference both Fox's Book of the Martyrs, which is old, right? So you'll have historic uh persecution, and then you have Torched for Christ, which is more um modern. So you have from World War II, what's that, Tortured for Christ? Okay, Fox's Book of the Martyrs.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:59

Jesus, no, Jesus Freaks.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

I have that. I have that. That's yeah, but DCT of that. Yeah, yeah, I have that. Classic. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:05

So what they did is they they compiled, there's a volume one and a volume two. So anyone who's interested, they compiled stuff from Fox's Book of Martyrs and the other things and brought them all together in in one two-volume work without the weird old English.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

To your point, though, I want to I want to highlight this. You have extraordinary sufferings where, like, like you said, people are watching their kids even being raped. To be fair, I'm not presenting easy believism. I'm talking about real-life situation where anybody in their right mind would recant in order to save their children. And yet these people believe the message so much, even at the backdrop of this atrocity, having your kids be raped in front of you, for example. You can't recant because the truth of Christ is so important, it supersedes their undying love for their kids. And so they die with their kids because they cannot be fair too. Jesus himself said that. He says concerning his people, you know, uh, many of you will suffer and be persecuted for my name's sake. He said, and he prophesies these things. He says, for my sake that you endure there. Some of you will put it, be put into prisons, some of you will die. And then what do you see throughout history? So various kinds, some of which will be extreme killings, murders, watching your children die, and even the so-called ordinary, like having to deal with diseases and not having your dreams fulfilled, and that is a sort of suffering too, but they bear it for Jesus' sake and they live in such a way to demonstrate his superiority over their lives, which is to me clearest proof that Jesus is in fact who he says he is.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:39

Yeah, and I think that there's a lot of crossover between the evidence that we're presenting here that presents the legitimacy of the scriptures and the evidence that presents the the fact of the resurrection. So to Terence's point, the those who are willing to die because they're they're not willing to die, or they're not willing to die for a lie, um, that also proves that they saw him rise from the dead. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, they believe the God of the scriptures.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:12

Right. So what they wrote, they believed, but then the question of is what they believed true, is then evidenced by the resurrection of Jesus, what they've been willing to die for. The existence of the Christian church, guys, like is like whatever with all of her foibles, with all of her errors, with all of her bad stuff, and guys, you know, church hurt is real, and there are a lot of wicked people who've done horrid, horrid, horrid things in the name of Jesus. We don't, we don't want to minimize any of that. It's true. That's happened, it's bad, it shouldn't have happened. But the existence of the Christian church is is a very strong indication of the reality of of what Jesus did. Now, you could argue the same for Islam, but what I would say is that argues that Islam wasn't a man's idea, and it wasn't. Islam is a demonic deception that has demonic power behind it. And so what it argues for is the supernatural nature of what is happening in the movement. And in the case of Islam, it's wicked supernaturalism. And in the case of Christianity, based on life and ethics and values and things that have happened, and the the the primary, there, the primary um definition of love, greater love is no man this, and he lay down his life for his friends. Like that that tells you that the ethics of this of the supernatural side that we represent is good, not bad. Why? Because we don't believe in you know 50 virgins being chained to a chair so that if we blow ourselves up, we can have sex for eternity. Like that's that is ethically bad. That is not ethically good.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

Consider those two religions, by the way, the ways in which they quote unquote conquer. Islam conquers by making their enemies uh submissive to them, right, through wars and things like that. Whereas Christianity, like I said before, conquers through love, and you see that in the persecution. They're not fighting back, they're dying, right? Their God is sufficient to fight for himself, and he says, Vengeance is mine. So the Christians lay down their lives and they conquer that way. Whereas again, in juxtaposition, the uh Islamic, the the Muslims, they conquer by literal war. And if you don't uh subscribe to their ideology, you're done.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:36

Yep, they kill you. How dar al-Islam, Dar el uh jihad, the house of the house of peace and the house of war is uh is how Islam breaks down. Okay, we got uh we got about seven minutes left. Um any any thoughts?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:55

This is an important episode, and I feel like it went too fast, so maybe we could do another one because it's very crucial, especially since we started talking about the whole alien agenda and a lie that's coming. We need to understand, and you guys who are watching need to understand why it's important that we believe the Bible and trust the Bible despite the real things that's coming down the pipeline. And we just barely touch the surface, I feel. And um, but my last thoughts would be do what we talked about, just give

Love The Truth Memorize The Word

SPEAKER_02 1:16:20

the Bible a chance. Um, God is not concerned with you uh finding a lie in the scripture. Scrutinize it, but be honest with it when you find the truth, right? Like when when you do come against the truth that it's positing, don't say, Oh, this is too hard for me. Rather bow to it, because that's what truth should cause you to do. It should cause you to submit to it rather than hide from it.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:38

So yeah, and and I will tell you that the the deception that comes, 2 Thessalonians 2, is sent by God to those who refuse to receive a love for the truth. And we cited Daniel 10 earlier. If there's a thing in heaven called the truth, then and scripture reflects that truth as a mirror reflects a face or water reflects a face, then part of our job is to love the word of God. Part of our job is to love his his scripture. And and there's a difference between God's voice and the word of God, those are different. Um, but you need the voice of the Lord and you need the word of God. And what's gonna preserve us in this time of deception that's coming is that we're so often in his word that we know his style, we know the way he feels, we know his character, and so that when something comes and presents itself, like I I told people this when you find the scripture being so bedrocked into into who you are and into your heart, okay, because your mind is your mind is only a pathway. The heart is where it needs to go, the the the heart is where it needs to land, it needs to engage your affections. When you find the scripture so embedded in in you, it will begin to talk to you in your life. It you will begin to hear scripture spoken to you inside when you're walking through circumstances. I can't tell you how often I hear the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Right here. Because of right here. Or you know, what does Proverbs say? Bind them on your heart and they will speak to you. It's not a metaphor. You allow the word to be so imprinted into you that the Holy Spirit begins to speak the scriptures back to you in your moments, and you begin to realize, oh my gosh, this this is exactly how his word is supposed to work within me. So allow it the time to tell you his his thoughts, his ways, his his ordinances, his commandments, his style, all all of this stuff is included in in what the scripture is. And as as you you you make it a part of yourself. Ezekiel's given a prophecy, and and it's a scroll, and it's the words that he's gonna prophesy to the people, which you know we ends up being scripture, so so it's scripture, and it says that it went into his his mouth and it was sweet as honey, and then it went into his body. Yeah, it became a part of his body. The prophecy became a part of who he was, so that when he prophesied, it wasn't just the recounting of words, but the sharing of the person, the breaking of the man, the sharing of the man. And what what does Peter say to Jesus? He says, Are you gonna go away too? He goes, Where are we gonna go? You have and so here's the math Jesus said to the Pharisees, see, you search the scriptures all day long because in them you think you will find life, but you refuse to come to me. So if you're looking at the scriptures, the the ink on the page and the binding of the book is not the point. The case of glory is the point. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:20

Yeah, that was my first opening point, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:24

To know the person, yeah. Let the word plead with God, plead with the Holy Spirit to allow the word to work inside of you that it causes you to sing. Amen. Amen. That it causes you to worship. Excuse me. Memorize the scripture, guys. There's uh there's a a video, maybe I'll post it on the on the Facebook page, by a guy who goes to China and he's sitting in uh with I think it's 20, 20 Christians or something like that, and these are all leaders of the underground church in China, and um he's got like 15 Bibles, so he doesn't have enough Bibles to give to everybody. And he's handing out Bibles, and so he hands them out, and this one woman has one. He says, All right, we're gonna read from Ephesians chapter whatever it is, and they open it up, and she takes her Bible and she gives it to the gal next to her. Now he knows Bibles in China are important because they're outlawed. Like you you get caught with Bible, you can go to jail for having a Bible. Let that sink in your head, guys. Okay. So he looks at her and he's like, Why like he knows, like she she just gave up this Bible to somebody else? And he's like, Well, you know, what do you, you know? He was curious why, you know, in a country where it's illegal to have them and Christians need them, why did she just give it up? And she goes, Oh, I memorized that chapter. Yeah. He goes, Whoa, you remember the whole she goes, yeah, yeah. When did you in jail thinking about hiding the word in your heart, man? Wow. Come on. He goes, how how many of you have been to prison? They all raise their hands. And they when when they get the Bible, they didn't memorize what they're given before it gets taken from them. Yeah, because the only Bible they'll have is the one that they've memorized. Wow. And as he leaves, like some of these people have traveled, you know, 30, 40 miles, 15, 16 hours or or more, hundreds of miles to come and and sit in this underground place with him, no AC. They're all sitting on on a concrete floor, no comfortable chairs, like willing to pay the price, uh, you know, 10, 12 hours plus to hear the word, to receive from the Lord. And they say, he goes, I'm um, I'd like to pray for you. What would you like me to pray for? And they're like, we want you to pray uh that we become like America. He goes, I'm not gonna pray that you become us. Yeah. He said, In in America, we've got Bibles in every every home, two or three, nobody reads them. You, it's illegal to have a Bible, and as soon as you get it, you memorize it as soon as you can because you know that you might lose it. He said, in America, if you don't have air conditioning in the church, people don't come back. He said, in America, if if the the average statistic is that if church is more than 15 minutes from a home, people don't, people don't go to church. You've traveled 14 hours, some of you hundreds of miles, by by train, by car, by walking, but just to be here to receive from the Lord. So you've sat 14 hours in an un in a non-air conditioned room and come back. He said, in America, if you don't have comfortable chairs, people don't come back to your church. So you've sat on a concrete floor for 12 hours to receive from God. He said, No, I'm not gonna pray that the Chinese church becomes like the American church. I'm gonna pray that the American church becomes like the Chinese church. And so, guys, I want to tell you that our brothers and sisters across the globe are are thirsting for the word of God and we've got it freely. And maybe you're listening to this and you're not in America. God bless you. We, we, God, we ask that you would give everybody the Bibles that they want in the name of Jesus. Guys, give yourself to the word of God. Give yourself to his scripture. You'll find he begins to speak to you through it. You'll find that it begins to speak to you in your moments. And this is what's going the the the relationship with Jesus, keeping your face in his word and going to church with the brethren, being with the saints. These are the things that is going to keep us grounded in the level of deception that's coming. Anyone else closing thoughts?

Final Charge And Questions From Listeners

SPEAKER_03 1:24:47

What's good? Amen. Well, guys, we love you. God bless you, and uh, we'll see you next time. Um, you know, anybody got any questions or whatnot, hit us up, let us know, shoot them to us. Uh, Terrence says he wants to do another Bible episode. I think that's a great idea. So, you know, Terrence, get some questions going. Zane, get some questions going. Anyone listening, get some questions going and send them to us. And and we'd love to sit down and just uh break bread talking about them, see what the word says, and and uh and yeah, see what God does. Amen. All right, God bless you guys. We love you. Blood and oil out. Peace.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

Blood and oil podcast is filmed and recorded by Pastor Jesse and Zane in California with Terrence on Video Call from the East Coast. We thank our supporters. And please be reminded to use your own discernment as the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests may not reflect those of other people, institutions, or organizations. A variety of guests will join us as we discuss modern events through a biblical lens. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. Thanks to all of our supporters and praise God for the opportunity to serve Him in this way. We hope you have enjoyed this episode and pray for blessings upon your day.