Major Bible Themes

Okay, we are in the chapter two, The Inspired Word of God, and that's what we're going to talk about today is inspiration. As you look at and study the notes or the chapter, you'll find that the Word of God is inspired, and we can probably deal with what does inspiration mean. What does it mean that this word, your Bible, is inspired? Remember what the word, the term meant? What word? Huh? What was the word?

Inspired. No, the other one you just said. Oh, never mind. What do you think? didn't really dictate to them, but he infused them to them, and truly loved them. The term God breathed, the term inspired means God breathed. And we'll elaborate on that as we get going. And as you look up here, you start with God, and God has determined that he's going to reveal himself to his creatures. And he chose the Word of God to do it. And there were times when he revealed himself directly, but mostly it was through the writings of men that he chose. Do you remember how many men there were?

40. How long did it take them? 1,600 years or something.

And so from God down to the authors to write the Word of God and What he's trying to do, what he's attempting to do is to reveal his purpose and his plan about why he created, what he's doing with you and I as human beings, what he intends to do with his creation, and what he's already done. So it's not a mystery. So we can know. And through these authors, they sat down and they wrote what God breathed into them, he inspired them, and what it does is it guarantees that the revelation of God is accurate and true.

Now, do we still have the originals that the authors wrote? Do we have any? According to the author, we don't have any. We have copies. Now, how reliable are the copies? Very. They're very reliable. How do you know? Because numerous different copies have been found and they all say pretty much the same thing. They check them. They put them together.

But what about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Are they original? Let's talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls. What about them? Anybody know about the Dead Sea Scrolls? They're the most recent discovery of scripture What they have proven, as far as I can tell, what they have proven is that the scripture that we already had is in fact true. They corroborate what we already had. Okay? Aren't the oldest copies like 30 to 40 years past when the originals were supposedly written? I think they're more than that. I think they're like 100 or 200 years. I think they're a little more than that. Now the problem is that from scripture you get the copies, which is what we work off of, but then you have the copies that are coming down and there's some barriers to that, there's language barriers.

What was the Old Testament written in? Hebrew, mostly. And then the New Testament was written in Greek. Did they speak the same Greek today in Greece that they spoke? No they didn't, they don't. We call it Koine Greek. classical Greek. It's not the same, exactly the same language as is spoken in Greece today. So we have translations and interpretations and imagine to get something, to get the book of Genesis all the way from Hebrew through the translators, through the copies to English.

And then how do we know? And I think this is something that the authors doesn't spend a lot of time on. How do I know? When I'm sitting down in my living room reading the Word of God, how do I know I can trust it? Who's going to teach me? Because you have the Holy Spirit in you. Yeah, see, that's the key. We have the Holy Spirit in us who will confirm the words that I'm reading is true. Okay? Now, it isn't a firestorm or fireworks or, you know, hats and horns. It's a confirmation in your spirit that what you're reading is true.

And it doesn't need... Some people have a propensity to study the Greek language or study Hebrew because they want... they just have an aptitude for it. Most of us don't, right? So if you don't have an aptitude for it, are you not going to be as well informed as a guy who does? No. The answer is no. Tell me why. Why not? It's the Holy Spirit that teaches. Say that again? Because it's the Holy Spirit that's teaching you, it's not your abdomen that teaches you.

That's exactly right, it's the Holy Spirit who teaches you and he's the one that communicates what Christ, who Christ is and the Word of God as we discovered last week is exactly like, the written Word of God is exactly like the living Word of God, they're the same. You know when I was in the Bible study with Tom Malloy at work years ago, he would come back from this teaching where he was studying Greek with this guy, and he'd be all excited, he'd tell us all his learning, but the guy that was teaching him Greek was an atheist. I'll tell you another guy, this is not a negative thing, but there's a guy named Spiros Thodiotis, who is a tremendous Greek scholar, But if he sat in this room, he wouldn't, and we talked, we mentioned identification, position, condition truths, he wouldn't know what we were talking about. He knows the Greek language, but what God really means by what he wrote, the spirit has to reveal to him, otherwise you don't get it. You don't get it. You can be the smartest guy on the planet, like Hal's Greek teacher, and you don't get what it says.

Okay? Well, even if you're a little bit dense, We're all a little bit dense. But I'm saying somebody that really has a hard time, doesn't know how to read properly, if you have the Holy Spirit in you then somehow God helps you with explaining it or you get it.

Right? Yeah. It doesn't matter how smart or how dumb you are. No, it has nothing to do with your innate intelligence. Now it helps if you can read. Yeah. You know, and if you're educated and you can cognitively think, but that's not a barrier to God if he wants to reveal himself to anybody. which is proven by all of the cultures all over the world that have been saved.

Well, and the book also suggests that the authors that were writing it didn't necessarily understand everything they were writing. As a matter of fact, they understood very little about some things, but they wrote it anyway. Now, one of the things that's covered in your book is, and I like how Hal and Roger laid this out, they started over here, oops, I'll go back, with the inspired Word of God and then there are theories of inspiration moving all the way over to here to where the naturalistic view in which there is claimed to be no inspiration. So on the inspiration of the Word of God, down here it's said to be verbal and plenary. What does verbal mean? It's actually spoken. Spoken? What else? And from this context, what does it mean?

Somebody look at their book, it's right there. It's direct revelation from God. It's not filtered in any way, it's a direct revelation. What page is it on? It's the second page, 17th. So it's a direct revelation from God. I'm going to read it and make sure we get it right. Verbal means that it's meant that the Spirit of God guided the choice of the words used in the original writings of Scripture. Okay? Now, here's a thought that came to my mind as I started into this. Who wrote the first five books of the Bible? Moses. He must have been a really smart guy. He wasn't around at the time of Genesis, was he? Or when all that they wrote about, he wasn't around, except for when the law came, right? How do you know all that stuff? How do you know it?

Full inspiration. Sure. He was inspired of God. God directly gave him the choice of words to write. Now, interesting thing. Do you pick up Moses' personality in the middle of this? No. Sure you do. You do? Sure you do. Well, suppose his personality was slanted, it would be in the book. Yeah, and it's there. It's there.

One of the interesting things about our man Moses is when he went to see Pharaoh, remember what he said to God? You know, I don't speak very well, and so I need somebody to speak for me. You know what that really was? False humility. This guy was the adopted son of Pharaoh. He was a country conqueror. He headed up their army. He was a politician. He was really smart.

And he goes to God and says, Oh, you know, I can't talk to Pharaoh. I can't speak very well. False humility. So what do you see there? You see the flaw in the character of every one of the guys that ever wrote the Word of God. They're all a bunch of... I mean, check out Abraham. Abraham was declared righteous because of his faith. Read about him in the Scripture and find out what a bozo this guy really was. He's selling his wife off to the king of Egypt. You know? I mean, the guy was awful.

The great thing about Scripture is that God never hides the flaws of the men that are described there, never. Because it isn't about them, it's about him. Now, what's meant by plenary? What is it? Full inspiration. So it's not 80% or 90%, it's fully inspired. Now what you're going to find in contemporary theology is that reform guys are not going to buy all this. And as we go from right to left, hopefully you'll pick up on that. What else is the word of God? It's infallible. What's that mean?

No mistakes. No mistakes, it's accurate. To the last T, it's accurate. You know there are all kinds of, in my lifetime there have been challenges to what the scripture says, archaeological challenges, but you know what, as they discover things, it verifies the word of God, it doesn't contradict them. But you will hear in contemporary society that the Word of God is out of date, out of business, not accurate. It's perfectly accurate every single time. What else is it? It's current. It's inerrant. Current too. Inerrant. And what inerrant means is that it does not contain any error as a statement of fact. But does it show error?

In other words, in studying the Word of God, will you find somebody lying in there? Sure you will. Will you find the opinion of someone who's writing that is not a fact? Sure you will. But when it makes a statement, it's factual every time. So what does that mean to you? If those four things are in play, what does it mean to you? Yeah, that you can trust what it says.

And I think, you know, that the Lord wants us to walk and live by faith. And I dare say that we read the Word of God and subjectively we make a decision whether we believe it or not. Like you're the final decision in your life about whether the Word of God is true.

It seems like this chapter was almost, well, at least the first part of it was almost like this is why you should believe in the Bible, which was really odd to me, because... Because you just automatically should? Well, yeah, it just seemed like justification, almost. I think you're right about that, and I think Louis Berry Chafer, who wrote it, he was writing it right from that perspective. He was writing it so that even a layperson could read it and understand, wow, this is really what it... this book is what it claims to be. And I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. Now... Mike? Yeah?

Why do you think God used humans to write the Bible? Why didn't he just write it and have an angel deliver it? Great question. What do you think? That's that. What do you think? Makes it more believable to see the continuity over 1600 years. Uh-huh. That's one reason I can think of. Give me another reason, anybody. It made it more human. If human people wrote it instead of God. Okay. All right. And all the flaws in it makes it more, hey, they must be talking about you. The flaws are in the man, not in the doctrine. Right. Right? In what it says, there's no flaw. In who wrote it, there's plenty of flaws. But what is God's ultimate purpose? Why does he do everything he does? He does it to glorify himself, right? creates this creation and he creates human beings. Why did he create human beings?

What do you want to do with them? So relationship with us. Louder. He wanted a relationship with us. He wanted a relationship with his creatures. Now under the heading of glorifying himself, why would a relationship be important? Because he wants to manifest his glory through his creatures.

So he creates Adam so that Adam can be loved by God and can comprehend and apprehend who God is and he can love him back. And he can actually have a conversation with God. And that manifests the glory of God through the creature. It's the same thing with the Bible. With using humans to write it, he can manifest his glory through those men, which is what he did. And at the same time he can develop a relationship with each one of them. He's all about, I think God is all about relationship. I think that's what he's up to. He wants us to know him.

And they believed in him so that they were willing to give, well that's Christ, give their life up for it. They would, right? Sure, sure they would. A lot of them did. A lot of them did, yeah. I just can't imagine being Moses and having God reveal to me how he created the world. as I'm writing it down. I'm like, wow, really? You did that? Wow. You know what else just blows me away about Moses is he gets all this wonderful revelation from God and he writes it out and then he goes to the people and he's teaching them and you know what they're doing?

They're not interested. And he's complaining to God. He said, these people, give me a break with these people. Why don't we snuff them out? I mean, he's not happy because they won't respond and they don't live by faith. He gets them out of Egypt down to the river or down to the Red Sea and they're complaining. They're complaining they're hungry. They want to go back to Egypt.

It doesn't sound like any of us, does it? The other thing that's cool about the study of Moses When you put Paul and Moses and compare them, both of them were, you know, leaders of patriarchal kind of men. You don't ever hear Paul complain like Moses did. Paul said, you know, everybody's abandoned me, but I have you, Lord. But he wasn't complaining and whining like Moses did about what a bunch of dummies these people are.

I'm supposed to be leading. Can't you find some, give me some better boys than these, you know. And I don't blame them, I would be doing the same thing. Can you imagine, I don't know how many millions of Jews they are, but they're all against you. You know? It would be like being a Republican president.

Okay, different views of inspiration and the concept view. What was that? What was the concept view? Concept view is this, that God inspired concepts, but he wasn't plenary and verbal, which means it's a partial inspiration, okay? And then it takes it down to partial view. Some of what God revealed was inspired, some of it isn't. Would you say that Anybody has written anything since the Word of God that has anything inspired in it?

Give a good example. Do you think the Green Letters is inspiring? Yes. What do you think? I think it's truth, but I don't know that you could put it on the same level as the Bible. Yeah, it's very interesting because there are people that are so attached to the green letters, the saying is that if they were lost on a desert island, they'd want a bible in the green letters.

Those are the only two books they had, which assumes that the green letters are inspired. No, it's not. It is to the extent that the word of God is written out in there, but Miles's opinions, or all the authors that he quotes, their opinions, are they inspired? As close to the scripture as they get is where the inspired part is. So the only thing that's inspired then would be the Bible? I think so.

And that's the ultimate authority and that's where we ought all to be. It's nice to read books like the Green Letters, but it's not the Word of God. And Miles would be the first one to tell you that. What's the neo-orthodox view? Go back. Why can't those be inspired? What's that? Why can't someone now be inspired to write something? Why couldn't God speak through somebody now? Why was it only possible then? Okay. Anybody?

What is the completed work of the cross? Well, the completed work of what? It's not the completed work of the cross. That's part of it. It's the completed work of the Word of God. Once it's done, it's done. As a matter of fact, we're about, like on Wednesday night, we're going to study spiritual gifts, starting next week.

Would you say that there's men today that have the gift of prophecy which are adding information to the truth? No. No, because the Word of God is now complete, so you don't need prophets. But you have guys that you can call prophets that are people that They have an ability to, more than teachers, they have an ability to translate the word to you personally and have it have a real effect on you. But there's no new, like you see these guys on TV, I just had a word from God, and it's new, and usually what it means is write me a check. But we are apostles of God. Today? If you have faith? Apostleship ended, when did apostleship end? With the death of John. The last one. Because you don't need them anymore. Okay, what are we then? You said that we were something. You are something. What were we? What are we? What you're thinking, we're ambassadors of Christ. Okay, that's the word. Yes, that's the word you're looking for.

So the point being is that people today I think can be like, and the guy I know best is Miles Stanford. Miles Stanford can sit down over the years quietly with the Lord and write something like the Green Letters. But if you know the history of the Green Letters, it's very interesting how it was written. Originally it was 14 letters. And as he ministered to people, he would write, he wrote these letters and they were called the green letters because he wrote them in green ink, because green ink is the color of growth.

Right? And so he, let's say you had an issue about faith. Well, he'd send you the letter on faith that he compiled. And mostly if you read the chapter, it's quotes from other men who had terrific insights into what faith really was and what it wasn't. You had time. How come it's taking so much time? And Miles would send you the letter on time.

And he compiled these letters over the years and somebody said to him one day, you need to write a book. And he said, I'm not an author. And someone next to him said, well, you've already written a book. You just need to put those letters together. And that's how it got together. But it took him years to do it.

But isn't that the gift of exhortation, not prophecy? Yeah, see, he's a man who was an exhorter, and he could explain things in such a way. The Green Letters has two titles. The Green Letters are the principles of spiritual growth. He wrote about the principles, not the doctrine. The doctrine's there, but he wrote about how God worked.

Is he inspired? No, but I think God revealed that to him, that he understood what the principles were and he was able to write them down for you and I to understand. Okay? Is he inspired? Not biblically inspired. No way. But that doesn't mean that someone who is like a person who has a gift of teaching, he can stand up and he can teach what the Word of God says, enabled by the Spirit to do it. And he can explain things. Is he inspired? Not in the sense that we're talking about the Word of God, he's not. He's just explaining what has already been inspired and written. So there's no extra biblical writing today, put it that way. It's all complete. Everything you need for doctrine and practice is there. And if we get moving here, we'll get to 2 Timothy, which says exactly that.

Neo-Orthodox view, still working on that, is that okay for the time being? Neo-Orthodox means acknowledges that there are errors in the Bible and thus the Bible cannot be taken as literally true. That's the Neo-Orthodox view. Most people who are non-believers who think they're religious today, that's the view they adopt. Some of what the Bible tells you is true, but a lot of it isn't. And then the naturalistic view means that what?

Nothing in here, this is written by men, there's nothing inspired about this word of God, nothing. Just another book, just another religious book. Would you say that any part of the Koran is inspired? No. Are you sure? Is the Koran the Old Testament? No, that is not. What is the Koran? Oh, is it the Muslim book? Yeah, it's the Muslim book, that's a good way to say it. It's the Muslim book. Is there anything about the Muslim book that's inspired? No, not one word. Not a single word. Go ahead. I was thinking about the Jewish one.

What's the name of that one? Torah. Okay, is that inspired? Yeah, is the Torah inspired? Yes. Absolutely it is. Sure, it's the first five books of the Bible. Yeah. Okay. We've been through these. The Holy Spirit guided the choice of the words of the original. Now, what I'm going to do, I don't know how I'm going to pull this off, but we're going to try it. Already did that. I've got two sets of slides. Let's turn to Second Timothy 316. And this, I think, might answer.

I know that's kind of small, but I don't know how to make it any bigger. This has to do with verbal inspiration. 2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture is given by inspiration of God. What makes it scripture? It's in the Bible. It's in the book. So would you say all scripture plus the four books I wrote are inspired of God? No, just scripture. And what it means is, right here, is scripture is the whole as a whole in every passage of Scripture, every single line, every single word and phrase is inspired by God. Timothy in the Old Testament, he only had 39 books in the Old Testament to study, right? When Paul wrote this to Timothy, did he have a Schofield New Testament? No way. He had 39 books in the Old Testament. That's what he had.

And it's proof that God protects His Word Copies that are nearly equivalent to the original. That's the amazing thing to me about the Word of God is how protected God has over the centuries. Even through the dark ages in Europe when the only guys that had access to Bibles were monks and monasteries that were hand copying. It's amazing that by the time Gutenberg comes around and they're translating Bibles from Greek to Latin to English and stuff that it comes out to be inspired. Scripture is the utterance of God by which man was directed and guided to right by the Spirit.

2 Peter 1.21 Somebody read that verse because that's a really good verse.

2 Peter 1.21 Holy men of God speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Okay. Moved by the Spirit means, that word move means to carry or to bear. The writers were born along by the Holy Spirit, Old Testament and New Testament. Prophecy, God's revelation, His mind and His counsel. The source of Scripture is God Himself and the way that we have it is via the Spirit of God working through men.

Okay with that? Okay. Analysis. Other passages that you can look up right here and if you want a copy of this I'll make a copy and give it to you. Words from the Holy Spirit. These are all passages from different writers. What's inspired? The thought content? Or the words themselves? It's the words themselves that are inspired. 2,500 times in the Bible, look right here, these phrases are used. Thus saith the Lord, write these words, and God said or the Lord said. 2,500 times in the Bible those words are said.

Hal put this note on the bottom, apart from exact words and grammar, there cannot be precision in the thought or concept. I took the Greek class twice, shows you the aptitude I have. What I discovered though, especially doing the diagrams, translating the words, and doing the declension of the nouns, or the parsing of the nouns, declension of the verbs, and the diagramming, In 99% of the time, whatever verse we were working on said only one thing. It eliminated controversy. So what people thought, well that verse means da-da-da-da-da. If you knew grammar and could diagram the sentence and plug in all of the Greek words into English in the proper tense, it only said one thing. It's amazing. Not everybody, a small percentage of us have an aptitude for languages. I'm not one of them. Craig Case is one of them. He picked up on it right away. And Brian White was one. He picked up on it right away. I went twice.

Couldn't diagram my own name. The prophets did not select the thoughts, nor did they select the words. Who selected them? Who selected them? God did. Sure, God did. So there were a lot of times that they didn't know what they were writing about in the Old Testament. There were times that Paul wrote things that Peter didn't understand. He even says so. When Paul talks about the body of Christ, identification, position in the heavenlies, Peter didn't understand what he meant. And he said so. He said, boy, that Paul writes some strange stuff, but I think he's right.

They simply wrote the exact words that God said. So it has to do with verbal inspiration. The prophet's words originated from God. 2 Peter 1.21 They spoke and recorded God's words. Scripture never originated from man.

Isn't that interesting? You mean to tell me that Paul didn't sort of sneak something in there on his own once in a while. It seems to me at the end of his letters sometimes he'd say stuff, say hello to this guy and say hello to that guy, and by the way I'm signing this, I didn't write it in big letters.

Was all that inspired too? What do you think? Sure it is. Isn't that interesting? How about that? That's a great question. There are times that Paul said, well I got the following, this is my opinion, I didn't get this directly from God, is that part inspired? What do you think? Because wasn't he talking about families and how to conduct your business and he said, this is my opinion about, is that part inspired?

Absolutely it is. Absolutely it is. Because if it wasn't, it wouldn't be there. Now, here's the evidence of inspiration. Jesus Christ coming after 300 prophecies. Here's what he fulfilled. Born of a virgin. And again, if you want copies of this and you want to look them up, I'll gladly make them for you. Born in Bethlehem. Descendant of Abraham and David.

Performed miracles and healings. Sinless, perfect character. betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. Did you know that that was in the Old Testament? That exact prophecy? He would be a sacrifice for men's sins, Isaiah 53. Death on a cross. The cross was predicted 450 years before it was ever invented. The idea of killing people by crucifixion was prophesied in the Bible before it was ever invented by the Romans. Resurrection, even the part where they cast lots for his robe, that was prophesied. Chief cornerstone and stone of stumbling.

He's also in the Old Testament in Ezekiel 36, and we somehow are fascinated with this stuff today, about Israel's return to the land, and notice this. See this right here? Return and unbelief. What's going on right today? Are the Jews in the land? They're part of it, but they're not believers. But they're there, aren't they? And once they go back, the Word of God says that they'll always be in Israel. It won't cease to be a country again.

So, all Israel will be saved? When does that happen? Anybody know? At the beginning of the millennium, right? Every Jew will be saved and they will serve God in the land and dwell in peace. Fulfilled prophecy is unique to the Word of God. In the Koran and other books they try to pull off this fulfilled prophecy stuff.

Were most of you here when that, what was that man's name? There was a man here who was a Muslim, Christian, who gave a talk. He and another guy who is in hiding all the time because the Muslims want his head, have a TV and a radio program that is broadcast into the Middle Eastern countries. What they do is they try to convert people to Christianity and one of the big ways they go at it is they prove that the Koran is not inspired and not infallible and once you can do that to a Muslim he will abandon Islam right away because he thinks they value that book so much that they won't put it on the ground you can't do certain things with it because they think it's a sacred book But they think everything in it is true.

Well, this guy, David whatever his name is. David Solomon of Watchers on the Wall. Yeah, David Solomon of Watchers on the Wall. He had numerous places in the Koran where it contradicted itself. And once you can show that to a Muslim, you've destroyed his anchor. You can't do that in the Word of God.

He was here, wasn't he? Yeah, he was here. He's a friend of Bob Eccles. It is positive and conclusive proof that the Bible is truly inspired word of God. Only an almighty and all-knowing God can infallibly predict the future. Now, this is the part where I'm going to have to ask your help. Here's some examples.

The existence of Belsh, how do you say that, Belshara, Belshara in Daniel 5. In the early 20th century, the prevailing thought was that this guy never existed, that the Bible was wrong because they couldn't find it. They found this thing called the bondus cylinder and it was discovered and proved that this man existed and that he co-ruled in Babylon as it was revealed in Daniel 5, 7, and 29. In the early 1900s people were saying that the Bible was not the word of God because Daniel 5, 7, and 29 were false. They found out it was true. So what you find is that there are multitudes of archaeologists that are finding things that confirm the accounts of the Bible.

Confirm the accounts. I'll tell you a funny anecdotal story. I was saved about four months and one of my partners in my real estate business thought I had gone off the bridge, which I had. So he was going to take me to lunch and try to convince me that my conversion to Christianity was nonsense. Here's the He started in on the Bible. He said, how do you know the Bible is true?

All that stuff in there, it can't be all right. He said, by the way, he said, I read in the paper that they found these bones in Europe that belonged to Christ. So he couldn't have been resurrected from the dead. So I said, were they labeled the bones of Jesus Christ? How do they know? I don't know, but they said they found him.

I said, so what would you rather do, believe what the Bible that has been in existence for thousands of years, or some atheist who dug up some old bones someplace and said, oh these are the bones of Christ, so he couldn't have been resurrected. It's amazing how much faith it takes to believe the lie. It takes more than it does to believe the truth. Scientific accuracy of scripture.

In Isaiah 40.22 it says that the earth is round. In the 1500s you got put to death if you thought the earth was round by the Catholic Church. The earth rotates on its axis as in Genesis and Exodus. The Earth is suspended in space is Job 26-7. This is stuff that those guys wrote that they really didn't understand what they were writing. It's one of many planets. Hydrologic cycle. Anybody know what that is? I do know what that is. Do you know what it is? Everybody know?

This is a water guy and he doesn't know. It's the cycle of how... how water works. Where do you want to start? Out in the ocean, it evaporates into clouds, comes over land, it rains, goes into rivers, sinks down in the aquifers, goes back into the ocean. How many molecules of water are there on the planet? There are more or less now than when it was created. It's exactly the same. It cycles. That's in the Word of God.

It is in Ecclesiastics 1.7. The increasing law. And this is the one I need your help. Do you know what that term means? Well, that's one of the laws of thermodynamics. What's that? It's like it's the second law of thermodynamics. Well, one of them.

And if something just sits out, it will just decay and everything is winding down. Everything's moving towards this. And that's what it means. Things don't get better, they get worse. They get worse. From a higher energy to a lower energy. That's right.

And how many people do you know that will tell you with the advance in technology our society is improving? I don't think so. We're all dying. You're not as smart as your ancestors 500 years ago were. And with the water, you know, so many people say, oh, we're running out of water. Oh, sure. Of course we're not.

If it keeps going round and round... See, when you're a Christian and you understand that, like this guy, he's an island unto himself. It is amazing, yes. Everybody thinks that we're going to punch too many holes in Mother Earth and suck up all the water and we're all going to drink it, and where does it go? Those astronauts up on the space shuttle, they've got one of these programs going. They're recycling everything. So in Psalm 102, 25-27, it talks about this law.

Life of flesh is in the blood. How about that? Do you understand what he means by life of flesh is in the blood? No, you can't live without the blood. So you wouldn't have flesh. Why did God demand a blood sacrifice? It represented death. It represents death. And why death? Why death? Because this thing, flesh, is unacceptable to God. And it can't be fixed. That's why death is so important. How about nuclear fission?

2 Peter 3, 7-10. And the last part that I want to cover, and this is the biggest proof that the Word of God is true. It is the transformation of people's lives. There is no system other than the Word of God that will in fact transform a person's life. And I don't mean behavior modification. I mean to intrinsically change them from the inside out.

Where they are different people. You and I were saved via the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Positionally that day we became new creatures. Conditionally over time, everyone in this room is not like they were the day they were saved. You're different.

The Word of God is the only book that can do that. You can go to any and all and spend all your money on shrinks. You can study all of the great psychiatrists. Psychiatry is the study of the sin nature. It gives you no solution. That's what it is. It's behavior modification and the problem is that it's like trying to teach a dog to meow. It isn't going to happen because sin is sin. The Word of God is the, and I think it's the biggest proof. The fact that a believer is a new creation in Christ with a new nature that the Bible specifically talks about and you can see that transformation in humans' lives.

And in Paul? See it in Paul? I can see it in you. We can see it in each other. But I mean he was so evil. I mean in the Bible. It's amazing. Next week we'll go to chapter 3. And I would recommend, I recommended this last week. When you read the chapter, read the questions first. Then read the chapter and when you see one, put a line by it.

But we're only going to cover, if you saw the first slide, we're only going to cover like three or four questions because we can't cover them all. OK? And you're going to give us copies of that? I'll make copies for you. Oh, that would be so great. As a matter of fact, if you want, I can. We were talking about that. Yeah, I was. So if you want, I mean, this is all... Right, but what I wanted on a piece of paper was...

Do you have a printer? Do you have a printer? Did you buy her a printer? No. She doesn't understand the concept of a computer. Do you have a printer? I have a transcriber. Just put it on the screen and then write. No, this will be great for my sister. Because she's always saying we're on your page. Okay, what we'll do, whatever pages you want are printed out, I'll print them out for you. Thank you. No problem. Let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. Lord, if you discover what inspiration is and that we can trust it just as we trust you father we thank you we pray in your son's precious name amen