welcome everybody to the breakdown your Bible challenge Alan par here man we have been praying for you we've been waiting for you we've been praying and asking God to bless our time together over these next three nights and hopefully Beyond so I'm just thankful I'm pumped I'm excited I'm ready I'm filled with the Holy Ghost I've got my slides I got my water I got my energy I'm going to bring the energy the spirit of God is going to show up in this place today and I hope and pray you guys are ready as well all right I already see some comments people are pumped up they're excited to be here and guys anytime we get a chance to get into the word of God and hear God speaking to us wow what an amazing opportunity all right so we been planning for this for months so if I come with a little bit of extra oomph a little extra energy it's because I'm excited and I am humbled at the privilege that I have to be able to have people come out on a Monday night not to hear from Alan Parr but for me to be a conduit through which the word of God will flow all right we're going to have an awesome time together uh over these next three days all right so speaking of that I want to give you a preview of where we are going to go over the next 3 days all right all right first and foremost night number one tonight we are going to talk about how to defend the Bible to a skeptic if you have ever been in a situation and I'll share this in a little bit later where people start to ask you questions about your faith they start to drill you about why the Bible is true does it have erors in it has it been tampered with has been corrupted why do you believe in such a a an outdated book right we're going to give you and load you up and equip you tonight with the answers that you need so that hopefully you will leave here a little bit more equipped to be able to defend your faith specifically as it relates to the scriptures to people who seek to discredit the word of God all right so that's night number one all right but then we're going to come back tomorrow night you're not going to want to miss any of these nights all right but tomorrow night we're going to talk about how to study the Bible like a theologian if you've ever been in church and you've heard your pastor break the word of God down and you're like man how come I've read that verse and I don't get all of that how come I don't get all of that out of out of the scriptures we're going to show you we're going to equip you and I'm going to show you three things that you need to do before you ever open up the scriptures so that you can set yourself up for an amazing study with the word of God I'm going to show you the four ways that you can hear the voice of the holy spirit in your life and then most importantly we're going to talk about the five levels of Bible Stu study and what our goal is tomorrow is that you will Ascend to being what we call a level five student of the word of God if you want to know what that is you got to come back tomorrow because there's five different levels and I want you to assess what level you're on because all of us want to be a level five student of the word of God and in order to get there we're going to introduce to many of you a way of studying the scriptures that uh the Lord put on my heart it's called the smart method of Bible study each one of those letters stands for a specific step that you want to take as you're studying the scriptures we'll break all that down to you tomorrow so that you can hopefully leave here with some tangible practical tips to take your study of the word of God up to the next level so that you'll be studying the Bible like a theologian and then on night number three we're going to to come back and we're going to talk about how the Bible can unlock God's specific purpose for your life because so many Christians they are they're they're essentially they don't know what God's specific purpose is for them and and and what God wants he doesn't want us to be wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what his will is for our lives no he wants you to be laser focused and and the more you understand what your purpose is the more you'll be able to walk in God's specific calling for your life and we're going to show you how the scriptures can hopefully unlock God's specific purpose for your life so if any of that sounds good if any of that is exciting to you then you are in the right place all right so a little bit of housekeeping all right first and foremost for those of you who got your hands on the challenge success kit all right no it's not a scam I know some of you wrote like oh you know what's going on with this no no no all right this is an opportunity for you to upgrade your experience and so many of you have been writing so uh messaging us saying hey can I still get this after uh I registered hey I tried to get it when I registered and the page went away or whatnot and you've been writing it I've seen some of your comments listen this is an opportunity for you to enhance it it's less than a cup of coffee basically but what you will receive is you're going to get lifetime access to over 400 slides now what does this mean for you why is this important because our goal is to equip you and so what we want to do is want to put something in your hands that you can study on your own over and over again for years not only to strengthen your own faith but most importantly and there's a theme that you're going to hear throughout this week we want to equip you and raise you up to be what we call a DM a discipl maker Jesus left us here to do one thing and that is to make disciples and so what I want you all to do is use these 400 slides after you studied them for yourself and I want you to be able to take them and teach them to someone else also in order to do that you may want to have lifetime access to these recordings you'll be able to go back and watch this we're going to give you a login so this is going to be an actual course you're going to log into the course you'll be able to get access to over probably about five hours of instruction when you put the three nights together we're going to get that to you as well you got a workbook that you'll be able to take notes on for the three nights and then the Afterparty which is going to be after we uh hang out here for about 90 minutes I'm going to hop on a live stream with some of you who have upgraded and we're going to ask answer questions you can ask me any questions we're going to go deeper in what we talked about tonight so um if you want to get your hands on that there's a QR code on the screen there's also a link there but don't worry you don't have to do it now you can do it after we finish but I wanted to make sure you all knew that that was available for you for $5 okay so a couple of other things if you haven't joined our Facebook group maybe you're streaming live here on on YouTube that's great but we want you to get engaged I the the Facebook group has been going off I mean I've been seeing y'all comment back and forth joking with each other making new friends praying with each other um helping each other answering questions for each other some of people have been confused where's the link what do I do how come I haven't gotten this and some of you have stepped right up and you've been great uh community members answering questions and things like that kudos to you so we want want to create a sense of family and Community within that Facebook group so if you are on Facebook group we encourage you to join and not only that guys this is the season of giving we're going to be giving away some cool stuff every single night and by the way with each night the gifts get more and more valuable so in order to be eligible to win a gift you need to stick around until the end of each night and we're going to do a drawing and basically uh there's going to be some we don't call them luck we call them blessed there's going to be some blessed winners and tonight you're going to be able to possibly be eligible to win some of our merchandise tomorrow we got some other stuff and then Wednesday night we got some really good stuff all right so that's all housekeeping stick around to the end we'll do a giveaway and we'll go from there now the most important thing that I really want to encourage you before we jump in all this is pre is is prologue uh is I pray that all of us would lock in and tune in tonight remove all distractions uh uh if you have you know kids try to get them down or what not um uh try to really really lock in because I I I believe that the Lord wants to do something special in this place tonight through uh this word and and so I pray that that your phone is on do not disturb I pray that uh your spouse understands if they're not doing this with you that you are going to be locked in for about 90 minutes and I trust it if you will that the Lord is going to do something special all right so with all of that housekeeping out of the way I want to pray and and and get this challenge off and bathe this challenge in prayer and give this over to the Lord all right so let's pray Lord in heaven we thank you so very much for your word we thank you for all the people who are here tonight Lord we give you honor we give you praise we give you glory Lord we thank you in advance for what you're going to do we pray that your spirit would lead us and guide us in our time together Lord and Lord I pray that you would be able to transform Our Lives I pray that you would equip those who are here tonight and over the next couple of days that they would leave here with a sense of purpose a sense of Courage a sense of calling on their lives Lord as they seek to go deeper in their relationship with you Lord we love you and we ask for you to have your way in Jesus name we pray amen all right all right so uh let's jump in and uh a little bit about me now I know a lot of you may know who I am all right because maybe you see me on Facebook or YouTube or my email list or whatever but some of you saw an ad on Facebook and you said hey this seems cool but I don't know this guy right so I want to just take a few minutes to introduce myself or reintroduce myself to some of you uh but you didn't come to hear me so this is going to be very very brief all right I am a proud graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary I graduated from there in 2004 with my master of the knowled a degree why do I share that because I want you to know who is going to be your teacher over the next couple of days I'm equipped for this I've been trained for this I've dedicated my entire life to teaching people the word of God and teaching them how to grow closer to the Lord I also have a YouTube channel by the grace of God we have almost 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube never thought I'd be able to say that but the Lord is good I'm also a national speaker I travel all over the country uh speaking and doing conferences and different things like that uh youth conferences uh men's conferences uh singles conferences or whatnot I'm also by the grace of God a published author I released my first book last year and most importantly guys I am a family man I am married to my wonderful wife Jennifer we have two beautiful children uh anniah who's seven who going to be eight and our son Micah who is six and when I'm not making YouTube videos writing books and traveling all over the country I am home with my family spending quality time so that's just a little bit about me I'm not going to tell you any more about me the next night and the next night because you didn't come to hear about me all right but I wanted you to understand that this is my life I've given my life I gave up my career as an engineer over 25 years ago so that I could equip myself in seminary to be sitting here before you in this moment some 25 years later ready to teach and equip all right so our goal you're going to hear this theme over the next few days is to raise up a tribe of people that we call the DM the discipl makers everything that we're doing in this Challenge and Beyond the opportunities that we have Beyond this challenge which we'll talk about a little bit later um it's all designed to raise people up to to be a generation of disciplemakers listen we are living in a time right now where Christians are just kind of going about their life but many of them don't have a purpose they're not living and walking and calling and purpose and so what we want to do is we want to make sure that you have the tools training and teaching that you need to be able to take what God has given you your experiences your goods your your the good bad the ugly the triumphs the the failures the the flaws the everything in your life the knowledge and to be able to pass it down to someone else so that their lives can be impacted with what God is doing in your life so that is what we are all about here it let's equip all right so uh let's go ahead and start with night number one all that was just Preamble all right how to defend the Bible to a skeptic now let me ask you a question I want to see in the comment section if you're so bold on a scale of 1 to 10 how confident are you right now in Defending Your Faith specifically claims made against the Bible's Authority all right so um I'm going to go ahead and look at the chat right now because I want to see how confident you guys are so if somebody started coming to you and they started making all kinds of claims that the Bible has errors in it the Bible can't be trusted the Bible's been tampered with it's been changed it's been corrupted or whatnot how confident are you a four I see a four I see four all right uh all right awesome so I see basically 74555 476 46 7 23 four okay two the numbers are coming awesome thank you guys so much for that okay so we want to get you guys up to about an eight or nine that's our goal all right now why is this important this is so important and here's the reason because there are so many groups that do not possess the truth who know what they believe and why they believe it so much better than Christians do when Jehovah's Witnesses come and knock on your door rest assured that they have been trained within their Doctrine to know what to say to you when to say it they know what you're going to say they know your response they they know exactly what they believe and how to clearly defend it which is the reason why many of us are so uncomfortable whenever they come knocking at our door all right now some of you might be comfortable that's cool all right but we got Jehovah's Witnesses we have Muslims they know what they believe and why they believe it they pray five times a day how many of us pray five times a day today very few of us right uh we have Mormons who go on missions uh they've been trained you see them a lot with the white shirts and and the ties and different things like that these are people uh who take their faith seriously and they don't even possess the truth you have Jewish people when my wife and I went to Jerusalem a couple of years ago we took a trip to the Holy Land and we saw people at the Wailing Wall praying and and just seeking their God God right and they took they take their faith so seriously reading the Old Testament and whatnot so if all of these other groups are so equipped to know what they believe and why they believe it and they don't even possess the truth how much more should we as Christians be ready to give an answer all right so let me give you two reasons why a training like this is so important and then we're going to jump in the first reason and by the way anytime you see something underlined for those of you who have the workbook that's going to be your cue to be able to write something in the workbook all right so the first reason why this is so important is because of internal confidence I'm not going to rush tonight I'm going to try to take it slow sometimes when I get excited I go fast I'm not going to do that I'm going to take my time and a matter of fact to force me to do that I'm going to drink get a little drink of water all right internal confidence okay so what does that mean many of us if we are honest with ourselves we believe the Bible but maybe primarily because that's what someone told us that we're supposed to believe or we grew up in church this is the faith that we've always uh uh known but there might still be some questions there might still be some doubts that you may have and so as a result one of the benefits of uh of of apologetics if you will is that it gives you the Christian the internal confidence to believe that you know what this is not just Grandmama's Faith this isn't just Big Mama's Faith no this isn't just somebody else's Faith No now I know for sure that everything that somebody said to me that I should believe is actually what I should believe it gives you the Christian the internal confidence because here's the thing there's a FL to these three nights of this challenge right night number one how to defend the Bible to a skeptic if you don't fully first and foremost Embrace and believe truly in your heart that the word of God that you are reading is indeed just that then how can you actually study it like a theologian night number two and then how can you actually walk in your purpose if all of that is clouded out with a sense of doubt about your own faith in particularly the word of of God the Bible says for this reason make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness goodness with what knowledge the Bible says we should make every effort We should strive we should work hard and do everything we can to be able to add to our faith knowledge right knowledge all right the Bible also says this it says that we should love the Lord your God with all your heart all your soul and all your mind right as as a look it's not a sin to love the Lord with your mind right we love the the the the the feeling and the emotion and and the worship and all of that that's great but one of the ways we can love the Lord is with knowledge equipping ourselves and loving him with our mind all right now the second benefit to a training like this and apologetics in general is an external benefit external confidence and listen so many Christians myself included for years let me just share the story with you I remember shortly after I graduated from seminary in 2004 here I am graduated from Seminary Dallas Theological Seminary and I will never forget this that I was out and about somewhere and somebody started drilling me a skeptic I was an atheist I think and he started drilling me on why I believe that the Bible was true and I had all this knowledge about how to study the Bible but I didn't know how to defend it in terms of why and I remember feeling so nervous feeling so embarrassed feeling so uh had a lack of confidence and I felt defeated after that that encounter with that atheist and I said man here I am a Seminary Student I came and defend my own faith and I said to myself never will I put myself in that position again and that's the reason why the Bible says but in your hearts regard Christ the lord as holy ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you now this means that when you're on the airplane when you're at work when you're talking with your neighbors or any of these things that are going on any situation you want to be ready to give an answer right which means you have to have the answers in your spirit so that the Holy Spirit can bring them up at the right time all right so that's the second reason why this is important all right now the Bible is under attack the enemy his his his one of his main things that he wants to do is he wants to attack the scriptures the Bible even from the beginning of time in the garden what did he say to Eve did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden right even from the beginning of time the enemy wants to cast doubt on the word of God he wants to get people to doubt what God has said is actually true and we see this as a extended throughout the history of time the enemy his job is to try to destroy and cause doubt on the word of God people are burning Bibles uh matter of fact uh back in the 60s they tried to take the Bible out of the schools the Bible got removed from the schools why are all these things happening because the enemy knows that when the Bible is at the Forefront of a society of the at the Forefront of the community and of a country that the word of God can can make a huge difference all right so this is what we're going to cover tonight these four questions you are going to leave with a firm grasp on number one how was the Bible written in other words what was the exact process by which God got his Divine word to the mind and ultimately to the hand and ultimately to the paper or parchment if you will of the writers how did that happened how was the Bible actually written the second question we're going to ask and answer tonight is how did we get the Bible so in other words why is the Bible 66 books is it supposed to be more is there supposed to be less who put the Bible together and how did they make those decisions right uh was it just a group of people who were corrupt and they had an agenda right so so we're going to talk about that the third question and by the way questions three and four are probably the most common and the most practical the third one has the Bible been tampered with so here's somebody who says okay fine I'll give you the fact that maybe just maybe the that that there was a Bible that didn't have any errors in it and it was the word of God way back in the third and fourth Century okay fine but here in the 21st century you can't trust that the Bible that you are reading now is the word of God no no no because it's been changed it's been tampered with it's been corrupted it's been it's been passed through too many hands so how do you answer that we're going to give you everything that you need tonight to answer that and then the last question how can we trust that the Bible is true you might say well I don't understand the difference between that question okay fine if I give you this book right here and I say okay everything in this book is true okay that that might be true and if I prove to you that this book has not been changed since it's been written I don't know when it's been I just grabbed one off my shelf but let's say this book is 5 10 years old I can prove to you that this book today has the same words in it as it did 10 years ago that's fine but does that mean that this is the bi this is true does that mean that this is inspired by God just because I can prove to you it hasn't changed no so we have to show why the Bible was was inspired by God and that's going to be the fourth question woo we we're just getting started y'all all right so here's the good news as much as we're going to talk about defending the Bible tonight the good news is that Christianity does not depend on an inherent Bible it depends on a one event and that one event is the resurrection as my friend Frank Turk says the New Testament writers did not create the Resurrection The Resurrection created the New Testament writers what do I mean by that the New Testament writers didn't come up with or you know they didn't they didn't come up with this idea of a resurrection no the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what inspired is what is that is the the event the key event within human history that even motivated them to even write based on the inspiration of the holy spirit this is the reason why someone can attack your Bible all day long and they might even try to convince you that has errors in it and stuff like that which we'll go into all that tonight but at the end of the day let's just say for sake of argument that the Bible does have an error which it does not that still doesn't disprove Christianity because in order to disprove Christianity you need to disprove one thing that Jesus rose from the dead if you can't disprove that it doesn't matter what you think about my Bible you need to dis prove that Jesus Christ rose from the dead if you can just prove that then you just prove in Christianity and matter of fact Paul says it this way for if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ has not been raised either and if Christ has not been raised then all of our preaching is useless and your faith is useless Paul is basically saying you know what if Christ has not risen from the dead then we wasting our time here tonight all of this preaching is a waste of time and it goes on to say that we as Christians are to be the most pitiful people on the Earth cuz we're spending our time living aivee believing in something that actually never happen our faith is useless so notice that Paul doesn't say if the Bible doesn't have heirs your faith is useless no he says if Christ has not risen then your faith is useless all right so uh let's get into this first question how was the Bible written and this is getting into we're going to teach you some theology tonight some theology this is getting into a theological uh um category called inspiration the process by which God got his Divine word to the mind of the New Testament writers all right so let's just say there's an angry skeptic and this angry skeptic is going to show up a few times tonight and let's say they come to you to say you know what the Bible was written by fallible sinful men how can you claim it was written by some imaginary God all right okay hold up on hold up hold up angry skeptic we coming to you we got an answer for for you all right we have an answer for you so here's the deal God does not give us the exact details in scripture as to how he communicated his word to his people any more than he tells us exactly how he answers prayers right or exactly how he provides for us notice God doesn't say okay when you pray this is exactly what I do this is exactly the steps I take this is exactly how this whole prayer thing works works right or how I provide no God doesn't tell us in scripture exactly the step by step how he communicated his word but the New Testament writers have left Clues behind that give us an understanding of how he communicated his word all right so now uh there are essentially uh here's a couple of them Paul says when we tell you these things we do not use words that come from Human wisdom Paul is saying hey when I'm writing the scriptures I'm not telling you things that that I thought up in my brain these aren't things I heard from other people philosophy or anything no instead we speak words given to us by the spirit using the spirit's words to explain spiritual truths Paul says hey this what I'm telling you it didn't come from us it came through the spirit all right and he also goes on and he says this Peter says above all you must realize that no prophecy in scripture ever came from the prophet's own understanding or from Human initiative in other words no writer of scripture just woke up one morning and say you know what I think today is a good day to write some scripture let me go down get my pen let me just write some scripture because I I think it's a good idea no it didn't come from their own understanding and it didn't come from their own initiative no those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit as they spoke from God now this word moved the Greek word actually means to be carried about like a ship so think about it if there was a ship on the on the on the uh sea and there was no current moving it the ship would not move the ship can only move when there's current right when there's current that's flowing well just let's just say that nobody's paddling whatever but the ship is is is moving when there's a current pushing it that's basically what Peter is saying is that by ourselves we're just a ship but when the spirit of God is that current moving us then scripture is written all right so Paul says it this way all scripture is inspired by God now that Greek word is only used once in the entire Bible it is the Greek word theop noos Theos God right theology study of God Theos God nus Numa wind breath right so when you put God and wind or breath together this is the word that means god breathed Paul says you know how we got the scriptures God God he breathed it into my spirit and I wrote it down all right this means inspired by God so he says he's inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong so the scripture is is is is inspired by God and it's useful for what to tell you what to do that's true to make us realize what is wrong in our lives what not to do it corrects us when we are wrong so it tells you how to get right so it tells you what's what's right it tells you what's not right it tells you how to get right and then it says and it teaches us what to do excuse me it teaches us to do what is right so then it teaches you how to stay right that's four benefits right there I want you to take notice of how I study the scriptures I want to show you how to break it down like that right I just looked at I just demonstrated for you Bible study the scripture I just took four points I could preach a sermon from that it teaches you how what is right what is not right how to get right and how to stay right and God uses it to prepare and equip his people people to do every good work all right here we go so how was this done see brother Allan you say okay that sounds good but how was it done all right let me give you three theories of exactly how God inspired his word these are theories Theory number one is the dictation Theory and this is the idea that God basically dictated the exact actual words to the biblical writers overriding their intellects and their personalities so this is the idea that Peter Paul James uh and these different people Matthew Mark Luke John they didn't they had no personality no intellect and God basically told them word for word exactly what to write down now most Scholars do not believe now there are portions of the Bible that are dictated right the Ten Commandments and things like that portions but most Scholars do not believe that all of scripture is written in this way because there are clear differences in style in educational level as you read the script we may not see it reading the English but the Greek and the Hebrew you can see there's differences in style personalities uh educational level and things of that nature all right so this one we are going to reject we're going to reject the idea that God just dictated all right the second theory is the Dynam Amic Theory and this is the idea that basically the spirit of God communicated thoughts and or ideas to the authors which are put into the author's own words so this is the idea that basically God said you know what Paul I want chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians to be about love and Paul said Okay God I got you I'm G take it from there I'm going to write my thoughts about love right or James I want you to write this chapter about taming the tongue and James said okay I got you I'm going to write on taming the tongue so uh this is the idea that that God did not necessarily um he did not he was not involved in the in the actual words of scripture he just gave them the ideas well guess what y'all we're going to reject that one too we're going to reject that one too and the one that most Scholars adhere to is the verbal Theory maybe refer to the verbal plary inspiration of scripture this is the idea that God inspired the individual biblical writers to communicate his Divine will through their personalities through their intellect and through their educational level even down to the choice of words so God inspired them to write exactly what he wanted them to say so it wasn't just ideas okay I'll write about love I write about taming the tongue no God inspired them to write the actual words but he used their personality and their intellect all right so we're going to go ahead and accept that one I believe that is the actual process through which based on scripture that I read that the Bible was written okay so Charles ryrie keeps it real simple I like it like this all right I like to keep things real simple he says may I don't may not understand everything about how exactly happened but I believe these three statements God breathed it man wrote it so anytime somebody says well you know uh man wrote the Bible yeah that's true man did write the Bible they used their hand and their pen and parchment but God breathed it man wrote it we possess it boom done that's it that's all you need to know God inspired it man wrote it we possess it three things all right so this answers the question were the original writings of scripture inspired by God but now it it we have to now go to the next question how do we know which writings were inspired and which ones were not because there's a lot of stuff that was written about God about Jesus about what happened in the gospels and things like that so now how do we know what which books should be in the Bible and which ones are inspired and which ones weren't all right so now this answers question number two of four tonight how did we get the Bible and this is now getting into a branch of theology called canonicity you might say brother Allan I don't know what that word means break it down make it simple I got you that's my gift to take the cookies on the top shelf and bring them down where everybody else can reach them real simple we're going to make this simple so now Angry skeptic is back all right and angry skeptic says you know what the Bible we have today was put together by sinful men who had an agenda they put whatever books they wanted into the Bible and they left others out have you ever heard anybody say that at some point in your life well you know you can't trust the Bible because you know the people who put the Bible together they had an agenda yeah you know they left some books out there's some Lost Books of the Bible there's probably books out there that should be in the Bible that shouldn't okay we're going to we're going to address all of that okay we're going to address that all right here we go so first Le let's let's make it simple what is canonicity Canon this this word Canon it literally means means a read or a measuring stick that's what the word Canon means a read or a measuring stick I see a whole bunch of yeses thank yous this is great somebody said my husband my husband is asking this question oh all right I'm not GNA call you out but I all right we going to pray for you okay all right all right we going to pray for you for sure all right but okay okay so a Canon it's a read or a measuring stick now essentially when we say the Canon of scripture what we're saying is we're referring to the set of books that we use to measure ourselves by which books should we use to measure our growth measure our beliefs our behaviors this is why it's called canonicity or you've heard the term Canon of scripture all right now you may or may not know this but we did not have a completed Bible until the close to the fifth century right so by the end of the 4th Century the Canon was definitively settled and accepted at a council called the Council of Carthage it was at the Council of Carthage that the Bible was established established the Orthodox New Testament cannon in 397 ad so what does that mean think about this that means that for hundreds of years there were all kinds of stuff written about Jesus all kinds of stuff and some of it we're going to look at just a little bit but but now the question becomes okay well why did they even need a Bible I mean at the end of the day why was a Bible even needed well let's break it down the early church needed to discover not determine which books to and I'm going to give you a list and I'm going to stop right here this excuse me is a very very important distinction that I don't want you to miss out on all right they needed to discover the people who arranged the Bible they did not determine which books were inspired no they discovered which books were already inspired by God they didn't determine oh yeah that's inspired and that's not no they discovered oh yes this is very big difference all right so they need to know which books to conduct their lives by at the end of the day I don't know about you but the Bible is is filled with a whole bunch of stuff that's hard enough for us to to obey right I don't want to be trying to obey some stuff that shouldn't be that I shouldn't have to if it's if it's if it's not supposed to be in the Bible I don't want to have to try to obey and conversely if there's some things that I should be doing and it's not in the Bible then I need to make sure I know what those things are so when I stand before the Lord I I can I can say Okay Lord I I knew that I'm supposed to do this so they needed to know which books so they should conduct their lives by they also needed to know which books should we use to disciple others because the church was growing in the first century it was growing and so they needed to know okay what books should we use to disciple other people what books should we use to teach in our churches right um as churches began to grow should we be using these books what books should we use for proper Doctrine which books are have have sound Doctrine sound Theology and what books should we throw out excuse me and not only that which books should we spend time translating into different languages once again as the gospel began to spread there were there there were uh uh people from all different tribes and different uh languages and different things and they wanted the truth too so the church had to translate so why translate these books if they're not truly inspired right okay not only that which book should we use to refute heresy heresy is a fancy word for false teaching we got a lot of that going on in the church well guess what that's nothing new because there was a lot of heresies going on in the first second third fourth fifth 6th 7th 8th and Beyond centuries so they needed to know which books should we use to refute some of these heresies all right so what were some of the questions that the people at this Council asked to discover which books should be included in the Bible and which one should be thrown out all right let me give you a list of these question questions question number one was this book written by a prophet an apostle or someone closely related to an apostle so if it was written by an apostle then it should be considered strongly considered as potential scripture if it was written by a prophet and in a moment I'm going to explain to you why that's important in just a moment why uh if it was written by an apostle or a prophet or someone closely related like Mark Mark was considered Peter's scribe so he was more likely an eyewitness of all of these things but he wasn't an apostle all right was the book or author confirmed by Acts or signs of God boom that's what I was getting to think about this if someone can part the Red Sea don't you think we ought to listen to what he has to say Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible according to tradition well why should we believe that those books are inspired by God because he was doing things that only God can do right what about the New Testament Apostles Miracles raising people from the dead doing things that only Jesus could do doing things that only God can do so when you see people possessing the power of God doing Miracles that only God can do these Miracles were designed to authenticate the message and ultimately the messenger so if these people are able to do things like Paul's handkerchiefs are falling on people and people are getting healed then I think we better listen to Paul all right okay third question they ask does the message of this book tell the truth about God well that's pretty good question question right when you read this book is it does it tell the truth about who God is his attributes and things of that nature here's another question that they asked throughout history has this book been accepted by the people of God so has the community said this book is a book that we use in our community to disciple to teach to refute heresy has this book been passed down from the so uh from the community and accepted as Doctrine in the community here's another one was the book endorsed by Jesus himself or other New Testament writers as being authoritative this is the reason why if you notice most of the time the questions arise about the authenticity of the New Testament the Old Testament is really not much in question because Jesus put his stamp of approval on the entire Old Testament what did he say in Luke 24 he said the law and the prophets all were writing about me Jesus quoted from eluded to and referenced most of the books in the Old Testament so when Jesus puts his stamp of approval on it when they got together at 397 in counil of the cars they said okay you know what Jesus said these were true then we're not even going to we're not even going to argue it all right not only that um let me give you the next one uh does this book come with the power of God does it change lives I don't know about you but whenever I read the scriptures there's something in the scriptures that resonates with my spirit and and and it and it and it it encourages me to get my life together to get my act together to treat my wife a little bit better to raise my kids a little bit better to get that out of my life to forgive whenever I don't want to forgive to ask for forgiveness when I don't want to ask for forgiveness uh to to tame my tongue right so when you read the Bible does it does it feel does when you read this book does it feel like the power of God is moving does it does it feel like God is is changing lives in this book that was one of the questions that they asked and then uh another question that they asked was this does the message of the book agree with with the message of the rest of the scriptures why is this important because the Bible cannot contradict itself right the Bible cannot contradict itself so it can't say one thing in one place and say something different in the next now let me give you uh let me give you a a funny example of this all right one of the uh books that I'm actually have a video coming out in in a couple of weeks on is the Gospel of Thomas now that sounds like a book that should be in the Bible hey Thomas right Thomas doubting Thomas you know Lord show me unless I see the nail prints in your hands and and in your feet I won't believe right the Gospel of Thomas well first of all this was not written by Thomas all right I don't have time to get into it but this is what's called a dud dudo canonical book um I can't get into it but basically there these are books that were written many many years after these people died but they used their name in the title to try to get some Authority it' be like me coming out with a book now the the authentic writings of Martin Luther King Jr written by Alan par but the but but the book says these are Martin Luther King's writings and I'm putting that out there so people will buy it thinking that it's Martin Luther King some some stuff that he said that he never said okay now look at this this is the last saying in the Gospel of Thomas and this is the Gospel of Thomas says Jesus said this look I will guide her Mary to make her male so that she too may become a Living spirit resembling you males for every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven so uh I see Nicole Vince is like wow all right so okay so I so does this sound like something Jesus would say does it sound like Jesus would say okay uh check this out ladies if you want to get to here's all you got to do you got to convert and make yourself a male because right now you're not a Living spirit and if you want to first and foremost be a Living spirit you have to make yourself a male and then if every female who follows you and they make theirselves into a male then you'll enter the Kingdom of Heaven too so they saw this stuff and they were like man this ain't no this ain't this a this can't be in the Bible right and so they threw books like this out all right Michelle says absolutely not static said that man that escalated quickly Kimberly said no Oda said no way okay all right yeah yeah yeah yeah all right so yeah yeah that I'd be making that face right there just like that some some of y'all made that face right there all right all right wow okay so so here's the thing I believe that the scripture the cannon is closed and what does that mean I believe that basically that means that uh essentially that there are no additional inspired books that are being written included in the Bible they're done the six6 books that we have that's it that's done God is not adding to or taking away any books God does not give extra biblical Revelation on par with scripture such as dreams or visions now I'm not saying that God can't speak to you in a dream I'm saying whatever dream God gives you is for you it's not for you to say I had a dream and now this dream is is now authoritative for the whole body of Christ like some people do online well I had a dream and God showed me this and God's no no no if you had a dream then you keep that to yourself because that's what God may have shown you may have shown you but God's not giving dreams today for for the whole body of Christ all right uh and then um uh this last one here all right the Bible says this by his divine power God has given us everything we need for living a Godly life we have received all of this by coming to know him the one who called us to himself by means of His Marvelous glory and Excellence Peter's saying we don't need any more revelation we don't need any more books written we don't need any more dreams and Visions we don't need any more God told me we don't need any more online prophecies we don't need any more spoken words prophetic words like fine do all that but none of that is on par with scripture because God has already given us everything that we need in order to live our lives all right so that's two of the four questions y'all I know we man we're a little bit behind but that's okay hopefully y'all enjoying this we're going to try to speed up a little bit but questions three and four are the most important so I want you to tune in with me hang in there with me questions three and four are the most practical so stick with me here third question how has the Bible been passed down to us so okay once again I'll give you that the Bible at one point in 397 was indeed the word of God but here in the 21st century I don't know about that not so much it's been changed it's been corrupted it's been changed so many times over the last 2,000 years angry skeptic says that it's impossible to really know what the original said ah this is probably most the most important question of the four because Many religious organizations such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons will suggest that the Bible has been tampered with has been altered and changed and that their religion their faith their denomination has now corrected the problem this is the reason why the Jehovah's Witnesses have the new world translation of the Bible because they believe that the Bible that we read is inaccurate it has errors in it it's been changed it's been corrupted so their goal is to try to restore what the original Bible said which they believe is consistent with their Doctrine and Mormons do the same exact thing this is why you need to be equipped to know how to answer this type of question here we go I first want to give you a history of how the Bible has been passed down from generation to generation just a quick history the first it started with oral tradition and basically during the time of Christ memory and accuracy was highly valued in the society eyewitness eyewitnesses of the accounts accurately passed down events details and even whole sermons from person to person now this is convicting for me because some of us we you know we can't even remember uh for God so loved the world or uh uh the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want and we go oh Lord what's next right these folks were able to remember whole sermons of Jesus because that's how much oral tradition and memory and accurac y was valued and eyewitnesses too because they would be able to come along and say oh yes that's true that's exactly what he said yes that's exactly what happened yes he raised him from the dead that's yes he was sitting over there by that Temple and yes yes exactly what he said what whatever that story that he told you I was there we all were there we saw it it's exactly that way you see what I'm saying so oral tradition and then oral tradition turned into written tradition why because after some time it became obvious that Jesus wasn't going to return right away so now 20 30 40 years after Jesus died they thought Jesus was going to come right back right they thought hey well Jesus said I'm going to prepare a place for you if it were not so I would not told you and my father's house there are many mansions where where uh where I am going there you be also they said okay cool jesz I see you in about two three years 20 30 Years Ago by like uh I don't know Jesus I don't know where you at all right so what they did they had to say you know what we don't know when Jesus is going to come back so we need to preserve these teachings and write them down so we can pass them down to Future Generations guys this is about to get good you do not want to miss it's going to get really good but there's one problem all of the original manuscripts have been lost so how can we trust that it's not been tampered with in other words we don't have the actual paper that Moses used to write Genesis it's lost we don't have the parchment that Paul used to write uh Romans it's lost all we have is copies all we have is manuscripts so what do we do I'm glad you asked so now this leads us to the third one the third way in which the scriptures have been passed down oral tradition written tradition and now copies and manuscripts so what would happen is scribes would meticulously make copies of the original manuscrip I need you to pay attention this is so important lock in with me copies of the original manuscripts and as they did variants some would call them errors contradictions differences this is where you will get equipped in just about 20 15 minutes you're going to get equipped to answer the question about does the Bible have air so stay with me they were introduced into the text because these people these scribes weren't perfect the original writings were perfect but as they made copies a little jot a little tit a little mistake here a little a little comma here a little apostrophe here and it change the word okay here we go Susanna said I stopped taking notes because I can't catch up that's exactly why we got that challenge Suess kit because I told you guys my job is to empty my cup these next three days and I you're going to have to go back and review pause it take the notes that's the reason cuz I knew we're going to we're going to load you up all right we're going to load you up all right here we go so here's a guy who is an atheist who used to teach theology but he's an atheist his name is Bart Man and one of the arguments that he makes about why you shouldn't trust the Bible he says there are over 400,000 varians in the New Testament he said matter of fact there are more variations among our manuscripts than there are are words in the New Testament and he's right I know some of you that makes you uncomfortable but I'm glad it makes you uncomfortable because then you won't be caught off guard when somebody says this to you and you'll be like well I didn't know that right no you're going to know it tonight did you know that when you compare all the different manuscripts of the New Testament there are over 400,000 differences you say brother Allan I don't know why you saying that it's not making me feel that good right and there's more differences than there are words in the New Testament all right all right so now let's get into why the number of copies that we have is so important Plato there's roughly 263 copies of Plato does anybody question today that when you read The Works of Plato that it's the same as it was whenever it originally wrote it no you only have 263 copies we have roughly 2,000 CER copies of Homer's Iliad but when you read Homer's Iliad is anybody ever questioning whether the Homer ilad that you read now is the same as the Homer Iliad who we originally wrote no anybody questioning that they only got 2,000 copies well guess what there are over 5800 copies of the New Testament and over 24,000 fragments of copies of the New Testament and yet people will question whether or not the Bible that we have today is the same as the original writings of scripture but we're gonna debunk that the Devil is a Lie we're going to buunk that all right now not only is it important that we have more copies of the New Testament now I'm going to explain why that's important in just a minute so just all going to make sense just stay with me but what's equally as important is how long of a gap between when the events of the New Testament occurred and when these copies were made let me illustrate it this way Aristotle the earliest copy that we have of Aristotle's writings is400 years after his was written but yet nobody questions Aristotle uh the earliest copy that we have of Plato is 12200 years after Plato wrote it nobody questions Plato Homer the earliest copy of Homer that we have is 500 years after his writings nobody questions Homer guess what the earliest copy that we have of the New Testament is 35 years removed from when the events of Jesus life occurred why is that important for you because if these things that were written in these documents weren't true there were enough eyewitnesses Still Alive 35 years later that could have confirmed or corroborated or could have said no that's not true because we were there that did not happen 35 years later there people still alive there were still eyewitnesses alive so when Matthew Mark and Luke and John were writing their gospels right then then there were people alive at that time who could say no Matthew you need to take that you need to burn that up because that's not true that didn't write you writing lies you lying 35 years the gap of time between when the events occurred that they were writing about and when we get the copies is the shortest Gap when you compare them to all the works of antiquity and yet nobody questions these other books but when you look at all the different tests that are used to determine whether a ancient document is authentic nobody questions those but yet they question the New Testament all right let me see if I can make it simple for you you may ask well brother Allan I still it's it's it's not registering yet why is the number of copies I still don't understand why that's important it's going to click here I'm going to give you an illustration let's just say I text my wife and I texted her this honey I am purchasing a new bed set on Facebook for they want to meet us at starving on Main Street on Wednesday at 700 p.m. now if that was the only text that I sent my wife she would not know how much money I want to spend on this bed set and she also would not know where they want to meet us if that was the only text that I sent her but but let's say okay she say text me back see honey I don't understand that okay can you can you your fat fingers and making mistakes can you can can you come again all right no problem baby I got you so now I come back with a second text honey I am purchasing a new bed set on Facebook for $3,000 they want to meet us at Starbucks on Main Street on weakness at 7 p.m. because you know autoc correct sometime you hit the wrong letter I meant to put Wednesday and I typed in we my my finger put a Aid a weakness and so if my wife only had that that text she might say okay I know how much he wants to spend I know what time they want to meet but I I don't know what day right so she said come again I don't know right so now I give her a third text I am purchasing a new vet set on Facebook for $3,000 they want to meet us on Starbucks on Main Street on Wednesday at 700 p.m. she might say $3,000 for a vet set I'm not sure honey I love you and all but that's a lot of of money for a vet set I don't know what you're talking about right so she still doesn't understand so let me hit her up with a fourth text I am purchasing a new bed set on Facebook for $3,000 they want to meet us at Starbucks on Main Street on Wednesday at 7 p.m. where is Main streak she says I don't know right I hit her up with a fifth text I am purchasing a new bed set on Facebook for $3,000 they want to meet us at Starbucks on Main Street on Wednesday at 700 p.m. now my wife if I just gave her one of these texts she would be confused but because I gave her five text let's just say I let's just go even deeper let's say I sent her text number one 500 times let's say I sent her text number two 400 times let's say I sent her text number three 600 times let's say I sent her text number four 300 times let's say I sent her text number five 1,000 times would my wife because she has all of these copies of all these texts would she be able to put together an understand that I basically want to buy a new bed set on Facebook for $3,000 and they want to meet us at Starbucks on Main Street on Wednesday at 7 p.m. yes because now she's got all these copies she's got all of this information so even though there were some evariant even though there were some typos even though there were some mistakes even though there were some differences say in my text messages because she has all these copies of all these texts she's able to piece together the real in intentional the text that I was trying to say because she has all of these copies together that's the reason why the number of copies is so important all right so hopefully that that illustration actually makes sense all right so now you might say well brother Allan I still want to know what these heirs people say might be The Heirs okay let me give you a couple because I don't want you to get caught off guard let's say 2 Samuel 10:18 and the syrians fled before Israel and David killed of the syrians the men of 700 chariots and 40,000 Horsemen you say okay that's cool but then you flip over to the exact same story in 1 Chronicles and it says and the syrians fled before Israel and David killed of the Assyrians the men of 7,000 chariots and 40,000 foot soldiers but wait a second is it 700 chariots or is it 7000 thousand chariots some of you might not have ever known that that's that that that discrepancy is in the Bible well now you know I don't want you to get caught off guard you see what I'm saying so these are examples of potential things that people might say well the Bible has errors in it all right well my friend Tim Barnett Mr B you might know him from YouTube he says this when it comes to the New Testament it's not the number of variants that's important it's the nature of the variants it's not the quantity of the differences it's the quality of the differences H so let me give you some examples of these 400,000 variations 400,000 variants in the old New Testament okay all right here's some examples barabus versus Jesus barabus okay so one one one copy says barabus the other one says Jesus barabus okay fine you want to call that a difference a variant okay cool no problem all right how about this one bethar versus Bethany okay we know the city that you're referring to right uh here's the third one Gaza versus Gaza one version one copy might say G Gaza but maybe whenever they were making the the scribes that were cop makes copies maybe they accident maybe in the he the Greek there's one little letter that is the difference between those two words okay that that doesn't is my faith in Jesus going to be changed because of Gaza versus Gaza are you serious no Christ Jesus versus Jesus Christ you'd be amazed at how many variations is well one version says Jesus Christ the other copy says Christ Jesus oh there's a mistake can't believe in Jesus can't believe in Christianity oh nope Christianity is not true are you serious no right uh we know he's talking about Jesus right John versus John versus John okay it's John right uh here's another one God or he because in the Greek Capital OS and lowercase OS one means god the other means he okay but in the sentence we know he talking about God same thing cool no problem right so these are things that that that don't make a difference and this is the slide that I want you to get if you don't get anything else less than 1% of the 400,000 variants in the manuscripts affect the actual meaning of the text and none of them affect any major Christian doctrine you said brother Allan I don't understand that take it slow back it up for me what do you mean by that because I need to know what you mean by it affects the meaning okay let me give you an example let's say one copy or man set of manuscripts says Jesus went to Susie's house let's say another copy says Jesus went to Jane's house does that affect the meaning of the text yes it does because Susie's house and Jane's house are not the same so yes that does affect the meaning but does it affect the doctrine no because the fact of matter is whether Jesus went to Jane's house or Mary's house it doesn't affect Christian doctrine it doesn't affect what we believe and none of the 400,000 variants affect what we believe as Christians H that's what you can say that you can say you believe all right here it is by comparing we're we're about to land This Plane y'all by comparing older manuscripts with newer manuscripts we are able to deduce with a high level of confidence that the Bible we have today has been well preserved better than any other another ancient document of from Antiquity what do I mean by that all right enter the Dead Sea Scrolls now before 1947 some this is so important some of the manuscripts that we had were a bit newer right they were a bit newer but in 1947 around the caves of kumran in the Middle East over in the holy land they discovered all of these different copies and fragments of not just the Bible but lots of different writings that basically uh extended from the 3 Century BC this is 300 years before Christ even was born on the Earth to the first century ad and watch this despite minor differences the Old Testament text has remained amazingly intact now whenever I went to uh Jerusalem a couple years ago I broke the rules don't tell on me okay don't don't don't report me but we went to and saw What's called the Isaiah scroll and I took a picture I wasn't supposed to but I took a picture now this Isaiah scroll is the entire book of Isaiah on a scroll and it is one of the oldest Dead Sea Scrolls and it dates about 100 BC now watch this pay attention this scroll that you're looking at on the screen right here is older by about 1,000 years than the oldest biblical manuscripts that they had before so let me repeat that and take it slow before they discovered this Isaiah scroll the earliest manuscript they had was about a thousand years older than this scroll so what they did was they compared this manuscript dated to be about a hundred years before before Christ to the one that they had that was the the oldest one which was about thousand years older and what they discovered essentially was that there were very minor differences which gives us the confidence that the Bible has been preserved amazingly and kept intact thousand years no differences all right one can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that if he hold holds in it that he that he holds in it the true word of God handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries FF Bruce says this the evidence for our new testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning is it not reasonable before we move on to the fourth and final question tonight is it not reasonable that God having inspired the Bible in the first place is not strong enough to also preserve his word too all right here we go fourth and final question for tonight I told you this it's not fluff all right this is this is this is this is the break down your Bible challenge how can we really trust that the Bible is true I'm going to return back to this all right let's just say that that uh I believe that this Bible was there was that there's no change I'm sorry this book there's no change in this book maybe this book was written 10 years ago and now I have a book that's that's the same as the book 10 years ago and I can prove that every word in this book is the same as the one 10 years okay fine but it still doesn't tell me why should I believe this book why should I believe that this is true why should I believe that this was written by God just because it hasn't changed boom that's the reason why this fourth question is important how can we know it was truly written by God so angry skeptic how can you really trust that your Bible is divinely inspired and not just written by men all right I'm going to give you several reasons and this is going to get good is going to get good I love this the first reason is fulfilled prophecy I'm giving you reasons why you can trust that the Bible could not have been written by man it had to be written by God a Divine author there are over 300 prophecies about Christ Alone that were fulfilled in the Bible apart from the other hundreds that were apart from Christ but let's just focus on over the over 300 prophecies just about Christ Alone that were fulfilled in the bible let me give you a couple all right Micah 52 predicts and prophesies hundreds of years before Jesus came that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem it says but you oh Bethlehem EPA are only a small village among all the people of Judah yet a ruler of Israel whose Origins are in the distant past will come from you on my behalf now look at that woo do you see this he will be a ruler of Israel that sounds like the Messiah whose Origins are in the distant past Eternal and he will come from you on my behalf meaning he sent from the father now how how is it possible that somebody could sit down hundreds of years before and write this and it come to pass how did it come to pass well you remember the story Joseph and Mary were living in Nazareth that was Jesus Hometown but Joseph was from Bethlehem and so a couple times a year they had to return to their Homeland to be counted in as census just so happened that Joseph had to returned to Bethlehem during a time when there was a census and while they were in Bethlehem Mary gave birth to Jesus thus fulfilling the prophecy even though their home was in Nazareth je Joseph and Mary had to be in Bethlehem so that this prophecy that was prophesied hundreds of years earlier could be fulfilled you can't make this up you cannot make this up all right let me give you another one real quick my favorite one Isaiah 53 how can Isaiah have written 700 years listen if you asked me to write something down and prophesy what's going to happen next week I wouldn't know what to do let alone 700 years in the future how could Isaiah have written this in the past tense by the way notice these verbs in the past tense how could he have written this 700 years before Christ had even come and look at how perfectly Christ filled it he had done no wrong speaking of Christ Perfection had never deceived anyone his perfect but he was buried like a criminal how do we know Jesus fulfilled this because on the cross he was he was on the cross next to two criminals right he was buried like a criminal he was put in a rich man's grave you remember that Joseph of ARA one of Jesus's disciples wanted Jesus to have a proper burial he was rich so he put Jesus in his own grave Isaiah prophesied this but it was the Lord's good plan speaking of God's intention all along to crush him and cause him grief and when his life is made an offering for sin he will have many descendants that's you and I he will enjoy a long life that means he will live forever and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hand that's just two verses in Isaiah 53 how can a human write that it's impossible all right Peter Stoner a mathematician said this out of the over out of over 300 prophecies about the life and death of Jesus Christ this dude examined only eight of them only eight of the 300 prophecies about Jesus and he found that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled just eight of the 300 prophecies is 1 * 10 to the 17th power that means one person out of 10 to the 17th power of people could ever live who just happen to be coincidentally in the right place at the right time doing the right thing speaking the right things that's how unlikely it is that Jesus would have fulfilled only eight of the prophecies and yet Jesus fulfilled all 300 of them you can't make this up you can't make it up second reason why we believe that the Bible is true is the unity of scripture listen the unity of scripture if you put 40 people in a room 40 authors over a 1600 year period discussing controversial topics if you put them all in a room today and say Hey I want y'all to talk about homosexuality marriage divorce morality right wrong parenting for all that and y'all just talk it amongst yourself do you think they all going to agree no people going to have opinions but the fact that 40 authors from different backgrounds different time periods written over 1600 years all discussing very controversial topics and yet they all have a central message the same message across all of time indicates what that there was one Divine author all right um contrast this with the Quran all written by one man not 40 and yet no errors no contradictions in the Bible all right all right reason number three I love this why do we believe that the Bible is true because guess what I can reconstruct the entire story of the Bible excuse me of the gospel and the life of Jesus without even using the Bible so somebody might say well brother PA I don't believe in your Bible I don't believe in your okay no problem you know what I'm GNA show you without using my Bible that history shows that what is in my Bible is true without me even using a scripture in my own Bible that you say you don't even believe in look at this here are secular most of these are secular historians who would have no reason or bias to want to uh confirm Christianity but they were true historians and wanted to be true to their craft just like you want to be good at your job right plyy the younger says Jesus followers thought he was God H so tonius says Jesus was a real man he was called the Christ and he caused Jewish disturbance celsus said Jesus was allegedly born of a virgin his father was a carpenter and he had miraculous power Josephus writes that Jesus was a wise man and his followers reported that there was a resurrection in the talmud it says that he was executed the day before the Passover and he had magical power phus said Jesus lived Jesus was crucified and when he was crucified there was darkness and an earthquake wow notice I'm not using scripture this is history tacitus says he was called the Christ his followers were called Christians and he was executed under somebody named pilate bar serapian said Jesus was a wise King that the Jews wanted him dead and that his teachings remain today and finally Fon said Jesus predicted the future Jesus rose after death and he showed signs of crucifixion wow even outside writings are showing that what we see in the Bible is not just something made up it's confirmed through history all right reason number four I think I have five and I'm done I'm out your way I told you 90 minutes I'm going going a little bit over all right I got a little excited night number one archaeological evidence Arch ologists are discovering new evidence every day that confirm the stories and details found in the Bible don't remember remember I got a give away that I'm going to give you guys in just a little bit so hang with me all right so check this out let me give you a couple of my favorites this is the heel bone of a crucified man so you might say why is that important well because some some Skeptics will say well you know what uh or they said you know what the Romans didn't crucify there was no such thing as crucifixion they didn't they didn't use that form of punishment to crucify people so there's no way that Jesus could have been crucified cuz the Romans didn't crucify they didn't ah until they found this heel bone right this dates back to the first century ad proving that crucifixion was a common way criminals were executed here's another one I think I just have two it's called the Nazareth inscription now watch this they found this and this was a first century inscript ion that pronounced the death penalty on anyone caught stealing bodies from tombs now answer me this why would there have to be an inscription written across the land that would give people the death penalty if they were caught stealing bodies from tomb I wonder why could it possibly be because the Jews uh were afraid uh or the Romans were afraid that the these Christians would steal jesus' body and then create this rumor that he was he rose from the dead so if anybody was caught stealing bodies from from from from Graves and tombs you're gonna go you're going to die interesting all right reason number five eyewitness accounts why do we believe the Bible is true because as the events of the Bible written down as I mentioned earlier many eyewitnesses to these events were still alive and so if the details were false the stories would have been DED before they were ever spread or copied because the eyewitnesses were there all right number six the faith of the disciples if what is written in the Bible is not true why would the disciples be willing to die for what they knew to be a lie first century Jewish men had no motive for inventing a new religion if you're a first century Jew judian Judaism was an acceptable religion nobody was getting martyred or killed because you were a Jew or practicing Judaism no Judaism was an acceptable religion so if you were a Jewish man what motive would you have to want to reinvent a new religion called Christianity now you're going to be persecuted why why would you want to be a part of something that would be persecuted unless you believed it was true now you may say brother Allan I don't know about that because what about the people who fly planes into buildings they're willing to die for it ah huge difference huge difference my brother and friend Frank Turk says this many people will die for a lie they think is the truth nobody will die for a lie they know is a lie Checkmate see the people that crash planes in the building they die because they think what they're doing is true they genuinely believe that I guarantee you if they thought it was a lie they wouldn't do it right no who's going to die for something that you know why would the New Testament writers be willing to risk their life for something they knew they just stole the body and it wasn't true no doesn't make any sense all right y'all that's all we got for tonight that's enough that's enough all right now I told you guys that I have a uh a giveaway so um that's a weird transition wasn't it all right uh I I want to bless you guys I want to bless a couple people um I think we have three people that will be able to to give this away we we've never tried this before so be patient with us hopefully this will work I don't know if it will I'll try uh Patricia said this is so good excellent teaching um so on so forth so um if if you want to be considered for the giveaway um I want you to uh use your phone or whatever and scan the QR code it's going to ask you for your name and your email address just so we can get in touch with you right if you win or or you can go to the website that's on the screen uh go. let equip.org away BD YB for breakdown your Bible giveaway so it's go .let equip.org [Music] um first and foremost if you upgraded to the challenge success kit uh we are going to jump on the Afterparty it is 8:33 probably around 8:40 8:42 8:43 depending upon when we finish here which should be in about 5 minutes I went a little bit over I wanted to get you guys done in about 90 minutes per night so uh check your email for the link if you did upgrade to the challenges say do me a favor not only check your email check your spam check your promotion folder because sometimes our emails go into your promotions folder if you're on Gmail your spam folder just check them all your junk trash check them all all right because uh we have no control over that um so do me a favor and check that and do me a favor while you're there if any of our emails have gone to your promotions or your Spam folders would you do us a big favor and drag those into your inbox or just you know what to do you know how to do it just tell it it's not spammed so that way future communication from us will land in your inbox and you won't miss out please do us that favor but uh you can join us for the CH the after party now as you can see y'all now you see why we were pushing and and and saying hey if you want to get this challenge success kit you can um we feel like it's very reasonable for $5 and guys that helps us um offset some of the expenses that we had to incur in order to get this challenge going you have no idea how much uh it it uh you know our ministry had to invest in this so this helps offset this so uh it it it's it's a great way for you to support what we're doing if you have not yet gotten your challenge success kit and you now see the value of the first 100 slides and the first night and the 90 minutes and I was going too fast and you couldn't pause it because we're live and you couldn't do any of that and you want to go back and you want to listen you want to take your time you want to do some some notes you want to be able to teach this to someone else you want to share it we want you to use all of that then by all means scan the QR code or just simply go to uh bdb challeng suuccess kit.com and uh you can go ahead and upgrade for $5 and you can meet us for the live stream Afterparty in just a moment all right uh here we go let's see oh two assignments and then we're gonna do the giveaway first assignment I want you to write down your answer to the four questions that we discussed tonight if a skeptic challenge the authority of the Bible what are those questions how was the Bible written how did we get the Bible because remember this is break down your Bible challenge it's not just coming to he brother par this is I want to challenge myself so this is what we're asking you to do write down between now and the next day or two write down how would you answer these questions how has the Bible been tampered with and can we trust the Bible and then finally uh and then fin finally here um do me a favor if you're in the Facebook group take 30 seconds and just go to the Facebook group and do me a big favor what was your biggest takeaway from day number one you don't have to think too hard about it just write that down in the Facebook group let us know how you enjoyed this first night of the challenge and guys you do not want to miss tomorrow night I promise you I know this is a huge investment of your time but tomorrow we're going to dig in we're going to talk about how to study the Bible now that we know the Bible is true we believe it we can defend it now we're going to dig into how do you study how do you break it down and how do you become a level five student of the word of God that is tomorrow night how do you study the Bible like a theologian we're going to get real practical tomorrow but I want you to give me your uh takeaways from today all right so now let's see if this let's see if we can make this thing work uh I um I'm GNA give me a second give me a second before uh let me just make sure I'm set up here before I share my screen all right let me uh let me let me let me set up here let make sure uh okay I'm going to start ah okay yes I think it's going to work all right so I'm gonna go ahead and uh share my screen with you here it is you should be able to see that and and I am going to check the free merch giveaway that's the first night let's see if this thing works we're going to choose three winners and here we [Music] go oh all right we've got we for privacy purposes we've got your um last name uh only last last letter so de Deborah or Deborah W you must be present to win are you here all right a Kathy you're a blessing thank you so much Lacy e La Kathy said your me Ministry is worth the $5 glad to support you thank you uh Lacy e and Nate B all right uh are y'all here okay uh okay well um if if not well you were here most of the time you would not have been able to submit all right so congratulations to our three winners tomorrow we got we got oh guys we got a real good gift some good gifts tomorrow that we're gonna give out as well all right so let me close us out uh in a word of prayer and then we'll be on your way and let's just say it's 8:38 let's just take about five minutes do a little bathroom break get some water I'm going to get some water at 8:45 to about 9:15 is you know sometime we know we just have a little time and don't act like y'all y'all didn't go to the party at 10 11 o'clock at night when you was in college you know this after party it's not too late I know I did and I didn't leave till 2 so we can you know have a little time we're going to get to know each other you can ask me any question that you want about my life about Ministry about the Bible about stuff tonight and I I love to hang out so let's pray Lord we thank you so much for your word tonight wow man Lord felt like we were in seminary class Lord and so I just thank you for the people who have dedicated their time they could have been anywhere else doing anything else but Lord you saw fit to have them here at this time so Lord I just pray that you would um bless them I pray that they are equipped I pray that they feel as if they're more confident and sharing and defending their faith today and I pray that they would use this information to disciple others we love you thank you and pray for an even greater night tomorrow in Jesus name we pray and give thanks amen I love you guys thank you so much for showing up tonight and I hope to see you guys again tomorrow 7 p.m. sharp don't forget to do your homework and I'll see some of you in about five minutes all right God bless I'll see you again