The Search Podcast

Is the Reliable? MINISERIES Pt. 3 of 3 Don Barkley, Area Director – Orange County, CA Authority: Why do Christians think the Bible is from God?

Introduction: The difference between reliable books and inspired books.

The Uniqueness and Unity of the Message throughout. Uncanny predictions about the Future. The authority of Jesus.

1. At 3:55 -The theology of the Bible is consistently and radically different than the pagan religious beliefs of its times. The religions of the , Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome believed that all of reality, including the gods, people, and nature were of the same stuff. The gods, people, the world all came from chaos. The gods are human-like, fickle, sexual, fearful of death. To succeed is to know how to manipulate the stuff of life through deft use of tools like magic and secret knowledge. Paganism is the stage onto which somehow the Jews brought monotheism to the world.

John Oswalt. The Bible Among the Myths. Zondervan, 2009. p.17. at 8:00 -When we ask the Israelites where they came up with these fantastic concepts, they tell us they did not come up with them. They tell us that God broke in upon their lives and dragged them kicking and screaming into these understandings. They tell us that they did their best to get away from him, but that he would not let them go. He kept obtruding himself into their lives in the most uncomfortable ways. If that report is not true, we are at a loss to explain where the fundamentally different understandings of life in the came from.

At 12:00 -The Bible is consistent in its worldview: 1 God, 1 Story, 1 Savior Illustration: Compare to the variety of views in Great Books of the Western World, 2nd Ed. by Mortimer J. Adler, Clifton Fadiman (Ed.), Philip W. Goetz (Ed.). Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. 1990. 50+ authors over 3 thousand years from Plato to Aquinas to Darwin

2. at 17:00 - Uncanny predictions about the Future.

At 19:26 - About the Messiah Examples: Psalm 22 (divide my garments, cast lots for my clothing, pierced my hands and my feet, My God, My God…), Isaiah 53 (Surely our griefs He bore, He was pierced through for our transgressions, The Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him, His grave was assigned with wicked men, He was with a rich man in His death, My Servant will justify the many as He will bear their iniquities), Micah 5:2 (born in Bethlehem and from the days of eternity)

At 26:00 - About nations Example: and the destruction of Tyre in the late 500s BCE: Nebuchadnezzar, 332 BCE Alexander conquers the island city, reconquered by the Muslims in 1291

At 27:00 Ezekiel 26:1-6 (ESV)…Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Tyre, and will bring up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves. 4 They shall destroy the walls of Tyre and break down her towers, and I will scrape her soil from her and make her a bare rock. 5 She shall be in the midst of the sea a place for the spreading of nets…12 “They will plunder all your riches and merchandise and break down your walls. They will destroy your lovely homes and dump your stones and timbers and even your dust into the sea. 13 I will stop the music of your songs. No more will the sound of harps be heard among your people. 14 I will make your island a bare rock, a place for fishermen to spread their nets.

At 29:00 - “The ‘Sidonian’ port of Tyre is still in use today. Small fishing vessels lay at anchor there. An examination of the foundations reveals granite columns of the Roman period which were incorporated as binders in the walls by the Crusaders. The port has become a haven today for fishing boats and place for spreading nets.” Nina Jidejian. Tyre through the Ages. Beirut: Dar El-Mashreq Publishers, 1969, p.139.

3. At 33:00 - The authority of Jesus’ view of the Bible Jesus claimed to be the Son of God with Divine Authority. If Jesus rose from the dead, then he is who he claims to be. Therefore it seems that His opinion about Himself, God, heaven or hell, the nature of God, the church, marriage, money, the poor, should be our opinion. His opinion of the Scriptures should be our opinion of the Scriptures.

A. The testimony of Jesus about past (OT) Scriptures. Various passages where Jesus talks of the authority of OT Scripture

Matthew 22:41-46—Jesus asked them [the Pharisees] a question: What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” They said to Him, The son of .” He said to them, at 34:30 - Then how does David in the Spirit call Him Lord, ?

Jesus is quoting Psalm 110. (also Mark 12:35-37) John 10:34-36 Jesus answered them, Has it not been written in your Law, I said, you are gods ? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, … You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God ?

Matthew 5:17-19 Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the ; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all s accomplished.

B. At 38:00 – What is the definition of Biblical inspiration?

A definition of inspiration: “Inspiration, in the Biblical sense, means that God so superintended the writers of Scriptures that they wrote what He wanted them to write and were kept from error in so doing.”—Paul Little, Know What You Believe. Scripture Press Publications. 1970. p.10.

It wasn’t a committee that decided that the Bible was inspired. It was recognized early, even before the ink hit the page. Moses….the apostles….because their word was validated by God in various ways.

At 42:11 – Take Aways…Synopsis Who decides human value? Could God be the Author of the Bible, using human writers? Does this answer life’s biggest questions? Discover for yourself.

Additional Scriptures and sources:

John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

John 15:26-27 But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.

Recognized by the people of God because of validating signs—miracles. 1 Thess 2:13 …When you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God…

1 Cor 14:37-38 If anyone thinks that he is a , or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.

2 Peter 3:16 …as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you…which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures…

1 Timothy 5:18 For the Scripture says,… “The laborer is worthy of his wages.”

(Luke 10:7)

Acts 2:42 They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.

Encyclopedia Britannica, Tyre “For much of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE the town was subject to Assyria, and in 585–573 it successfully withstood a prolonged siege by the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II. Between 538 and 332 it was ruled by the Achaemenian kings of Persia. In this period it lost its hegemony in but continued to flourish. Probably the best-known episode in the history of Tyre was its resistance to the army of the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great, who took it after a seven- month siege in 332. He completely destroyed the mainland portion of the town and used its rubble to build an immense causeway (some 2,600 feet [800 metres] long and 600–900 feet [180–270 metres] wide) to gain access to the island section. After the town s capture, 10,000 inhabitants were put to death, and 30,000 were sold into slavery. Alexander s causeway, which was never removed, converted the island into a peninsula….Captured and destroyed by the Muslim Mamlūks in 1291, the town never recovered its former importance.”