Defense of the Faith - History: How do we know what we know? Part 1

We missed last week because of the snowstorm. Hopefully not too many people drove into the church building and discovered that the doors were open because Mike was here, but that we weren't having a service. So I wanted to do last week's lesson because I think it's really actually quite important as a topic. The next two lessons will possibly be able to be combined into one, but my dad and I haven't had a chance to catch up on the schedule because he's been gallivanting around Israel. Now, just a real quick question. Are you going to do a lesson next week on or in the main service where you'll go over your trip?

That's what I'm planning. However, please understand that I'm not responsible for anything that I say or do right now. Okay. I'm getting ready for dinner and then for bed. Okay. Awesome. That's good. So we will hope that you recover in a week's time.

So the discussion put forth in the last few lessons has been about logical fallacies, scientific facts, and how we can know what we know. And we need to be honest about what we can know about history. We need to ask questions like the following. What are the sources we have for learning about and understanding history? So let's ask that question and we'll stop there. How do we learn about history? Okay, so recordings and reports from the events in the history channel right like everything We just watched everybody all throughout history watch the history channel and then One of the writers about history, in the New Testament particularly, is Bart Ehrman, who is a skeptic.

He went to Moody Bible Institute, he went to Wheaton, and then he went to Princeton. He became a skeptic. He's written dozens of books, many of which I have. And in talking with some people recently about that, one of the things I've done is I said, here are the source documents. And I sent by email PDF files of all the source documents about the New Testament background. And one of the things we found is the skeptics are extremely unreliable regarding history. I said, here are the source documents we have, period. Here's all of them. And you found that, compare those to what the skeptics claim and what not, completely unreliable. Totally unreliable. So yeah, the source document issue is a biggie.

Our concepts and where we learn information is really important. We're going to spend a predominant amount of the class this morning talking about what sources we have that are reliable. I'm listening to an audio book called Team of Rivals, which is about Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet that he put together. And the really interesting thing is it's written by a historian. And she actually says at the beginning of the book that it was really interesting to look at the letters and the diaries and the original sources of those involved with the events.

How many of you have ever discovered that rumors that you had heard that were not told as rumors but just like this was information was passed on was wrong and made life decisions or thoughts and prayers and your energies were focused a certain way. Recently we had actually Al who was in this classroom the last lesson, there was some misinformation that was passed around that he was going to hospice. And then we prayed for him, and then he came in right before the main service, and he said, hey, there's some misinformation going on. And it was like, answer prayer, and let's get our communication straight, right? So proper source is good. Since the Bible is a collection of historical documents, is it a reliable collection of documents?

And so we're going to take a look at that somewhat as a principle this week, and then in the next lesson, we'll get into it in more depth. And then the next one here is, how does a worldview impact one's subjective understanding of a document? And my dad hinted in order, well, he didn't hint very much. He talked about the skeptics and how their worldview impacts how they approach things.

The Bible contains both primary source passages as well as secondary source passages. Primary sources would include books like Isaiah. God revealed things to Isaiah, or Isaiah received things and interact with things historically, and then wrote about them. He was the singular first source of that letter, and he's not quoting three or four other authors through history. Secondarily, he's the primary source. However, we can look at things like Moses' compilation of the book of Genesis and see that's a good example of a secondary source. Moses didn't write the original accounts, but he collected them and compiled them down. How many of you had to write a report in school where the teacher had you write down sources?

Let me ask this important question. And you had to have original or primary sources because I remember in my classes it was sometimes very difficult because I picked a topic that I thought was cool, but there were not good resources at the library. This was before the internet, right? So it was very difficult sometimes because I would go looking for a primary source. and I'd come up a bit short. They always wanted some number and it was always like I had like four and they wanted five. And so that was frustrating.

So a primary source is a document or an object. It can be some kind of artifact. It doesn't necessarily have to be a written document. That was written or created at the time of the event. Documents are preferable or preferably by people who observed things first-hand. Obviously, if you get it second-hand, but you write it down as the historian at the time, that's better than somebody who heard somebody whose grandchild, that starts getting outside of even the secondary source realm.

Stan? But you have to admit that Moses' source was pretty reliable. Yeah, and the thing is that we're going to talk about, I think next week we're going to talk a little bit about where things in the text originated, as far as the scriptures were concerned. I think the skeptic looks at the possibility for failure and clings to the failure. Their assumption is that something went wrong.

For example, the Gospel of John was written by someone, but it certainly absolutely couldn't have been John. Why? The only reason why it's not John is because they're skeptics and they really, really don't want it to be reliable, because if it is, then we're confronted with a gospel and some theological truths or ideas that are calling them sinners.

One of the things, you know, in this trip to Israel, one of the things that I had been impacted by and pondered some time ago, in about 1996, Richard Horsley, Horsley, who is a professor of New Testament and religion, wrote that Luke was not actually written by Luke, who lived during New Testament times, but by somebody later. And there were no synagogues, physical synagogues, in New Testament times. And Luke was writing later, and not actually by the guy named Luke, who was written later. So he said, you know, that the Gospel of Luke and the rest of the Gospels are wrong.

That there simply were no synagogues, physical synagogues, during Jesus' time. Wow. And so all of the Gospel writers who wrote about synagogues were simply making it up based on synagogues that were in existence during their time. So Richard Horsley is an example of those who said that there really was no guy named Luke, it was a guy who was faking. being present and writing about synagogues that were present in their time but not existing in Jesus' time. Well, and that was based on not having found any synagogues that were definitely dated during Jesus' time. Well, guess what? When we were there, Early in our visit we saw synagogues, plural, that were dated from Jesus' time, since Richard Horsley wrote that. And they were wrong. strong statements about those kinds of things.

It's often, when we're speaking of the principle of logical fallacies, it's often an argument from silence. Like, if we have not found synagogues, just from a theoretical standpoint, saying there were no synagogues is not the same thing as we have not found synagogues. But if we have not found synagogues, but you're saying there were no synagogues, therefore this is false, as soon as we find a synagogue, you're wrong, and you jumped the gun because you leaned heavily on a logical fallacy and it fell over. It's not an effective way to approach any of the problems, which is why when you talk to an atheist and you say, hey, there's no missing link that's been found between this species and this species, and they say, well, we haven't found it yet, We could say it hasn't been found yet, so that's why I'm skeptical of this position, but it's a logical fallacy to say that there's silence here, so therefore it didn't happen.

So we have to be careful when we approach that. But it's that same thing where they go, well, we haven't found it yet. Well, that's the argument from silence. We can't spend time there, so let's talk about what we do have factually. Well, yeah, it's why it should be left out of the discussion. Yeah, because otherwise both people lean on the same thing that falls over.

So let's get back to written history, though, because I can rabbit trail on that other topic real good. So going back in time, we have found fewer and fewer intact documents of the paper-like form, you know, papyrus and those things. This is in part due to the number of written languages at the time, but also due to the fragility of the mediums that were written on. So obviously, depending on environmental conditions, papyrus and paper-like things will wear out. The other thing that I think is interesting is that the cost and the time associated with education narrows down the number of people who would be involved.

We treat the Internet like it's a given, right? In our first-world, mostly literate American culture, the Internet is a given. Well, of course everybody should have the Internet, and of course everybody should be able to read. Well, the internet isn't very useful if the alphabet doesn't mean anything to you, right? And so education is obviously an important piece of that.

One thing when I was looking and researching written history that I thought was interesting, before we have any records of written documents that are linguistic, we have written documents that are accounting records, numbers, people keeping track of shipments, people keeping track of money kind of things, because Well, currency and finances were obviously very important, and the number side of things we have more records of early, and then things coming on to language.

The other thing that's interesting is that there are actually quite a few historical objects that we have where we don't know the language of what's on the object. So it looks like written something, but we don't know what it means. And so I think that's an interesting principle. If you were a historian and you could figure out what somebody wrote in these forms that we have on stone objects, for example, you'd have your name in the history books for having figured out and deciphered this thing. And the thing I think of as a computer engineer as a software engineer that oh, well, we should be able to use computers and decipher this thing, but There are certain assumptions that we make about linguistic constructs and the way that you would write and translate Ideas into written form that sometimes are very hard to to reverse engineer On on your handout there you'll see there's a square box on the side I was very proud of myself for figuring out how to do this in Microsoft Word because Microsoft Word feels like somebody has a vendetta against me and they're going to make it difficult to do anything. But I wanted to point out something that's very important.

There's a lot of things that we can't know by primary sources and then because we can't know them by primary sources, we can't know them by secondary sources either. They depend on the topic and the information available. There are nearly an infinite number of questions that we can ask that we can't get an answer to.

And it's important that we recognize that as a possibility. It leads to us doing some things and guessing by reason and trying to figure out as best as we can based on the few pieces of information we have. Like if we connect this dot to this dot, it might be this. That's called supposition or assumption or guessing.

When we're talking about historical things, we just want to make sure that we have that as an awareness, that sometimes you'll hear interviews with specialists or people, and they'll just say, well, we think something, something, something, something.

For example, how many of you are familiar with the Egyptian obelisks that they found that are really large and heavy, and they can't figure out how you would raise them up? There's been multiple theories now that have been put forth by engineering classes. It's like actually there are classes where the engineers are assigned. Figure out how you would use rudimentary, simple machines to lift an obelisk up and get it to stand up and have it be in place.

And there's guesses, but the last time I looked, no one had a 100% verifiable example of how this could be done via what we understand about the technology at the time. And we have no primary sources. We can't go ask an Egyptian and be like, how did you do this? Because as it turns out, they're old enough that we don't have any living survivors.

So between things like lacking first source, primary source events and not having deciphered a language yet and things like that, there's still a lot to be learned and researched. I'm sure, Dad, while you were over in Israel, there were one or two places that you couldn't get into yet that you wished you could have gotten into, but they're still excavating and learning things. So that's definitely an interesting thing. So the next section, starting at the top of page two, is about unwritten history, and that's archaeology and anthropology.

There are primary sources that include things that are physical objects, posherds, clay, anything that survived over time. One of my favorite little historical trivia pieces about the Egyptians is that when they went into some of the pyramids and the preserves for the pharaohs, they found pots that were still intact that had honey in them. And the honey was still good. Honey happens to be, because of the bacterial makeup that's inside of it, happens to, as far as we know, not have any expiration date within thousands of years of time.

So the archaeologists, apparently somebody took a dare and they ate some. There you go. Some archaeological whatever. But that's a primary source. That's primary source honey. You could take it. You could run DNA tests on it or do lab tests and see what's in here. Maybe DNA is not the right thing. I don't know how much bee spit is in honey. But if there is DNA in it, you could do some tests and see about what's the difference between bee DNA now and bee DNA then, I guess.

But you're going to have geographical and architectural points. I mean, obviously, while my parents were in Israel with the Hemingways, the things that they saw that were archaeological were their first sources, their primary sources. It is a place, it's physically there. They can date it to an approximate window of time that it's there, and you can go look at it and touch it and see it and walk around it. With the proper permissions, I imagine they even let you look at some of the things and do deeper research on the makeup of the materials that the pots were made out of and things like that. So a good primary for sources. Furniture, clothing, tools.

Tools is actually one of my favorite things that I've seen over time because there's some really clever tools that have been invented. by human beings throughout history, and we use some things today that don't look too different from what people were using historically. They're just attached to computers and lasers, right? So the other thing that I think is important about first or primary sources is when you find these objects, we may not understand how they were used as tools. Hey, here's the thing, and we have an approximation of what it is, but sometimes we'll find something and Either we don't know what it is, or it's just a best guess as to how it's used or what it was.

I'm into archery. Our family does archery, and it's something that we enjoy. How many of you saw a YouTube video recently on Facebook or somewhere else of an archer doing really fast shooting? Did anybody see that? Because the guy got millions upon millions of views, so I figure at least some of those people have had to be at Holly Hills. There are historical writings of archers in history who could shoot very fast with rapid succession with great precision. And modern day archers with the techniques that we use today, including the Olympic archers that go compete for our country and other countries, we don't have that kind of speed and precision.

And this guy has done a lot of research. Scandinavian, if I recall correctly. He's done a lot of research on that and he's been able to come up with a technique that produces similar results. But we don't have writings of what their processes are. We have a guy who's doing the best he can to try to reproduce the same results, but we don't know that it's the same thing. We have the same tools, approximately. We've got bows and arrows, but we don't know that they were used the same way. The arrow went in the string, you pull it back and it shoots out, but we don't know that their technique was identical to what this guy has put together.

The cool thing is that sometimes with unwritten historical objects, we have writing about it as well, and then we can take those too. And that's what I've got there, the corroboration of first sources. Researchers look at the written and unwritten elements in an attempt to piece together the clearest picture of the culture of the people and the events. Examples of this would be Jericho and ruins that reflect the writings that were recorded, documenting the fall of the city when the Israelites marched. Of course, Jericho, they rebuilt it. And then they rebuilt it. And then they rebuilt it. So Jericho's got some layers.

Other things. We actually have historical evidence of a lot of New Testament characters, including Pilate. We found his tomb and his headstone is there. It says Pilate. And it dates to about the time of Christ. So it's not this unreasonable thing that we can doubt the historicity of the account where Jesus talks to Pilate, because there was no Pilate! Well, there is Pilate.

Not only do we ignore the argument from silence if it wasn't there evidentially, but we can prove that he was there. And there's lots of accounts like that. the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and things like that. We have written documents and we can see the debris of those things and archaeologically work for those things.

Any quick questions about first or primary sources before we jump to secondary sources? Nobody, alright. All right, secondary sources, and this is fun. So I mentioned earlier the Team of Rivals book I'm listening to. It's a biography of Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet.

It is a secondary source. The author found a lot of cool first sources, but as soon as she put her pen to paper or her fingers to keyboard keys on a computer or whatever to start writing the book, it became a secondary source. Anything that I write in this paper here, unless I've come up with a really clever, unique idea, is going to be a secondary source. There are a lot of concise secondary histories that have been written. When I was in school, all of my history books were secondary sources. And my favorite irritation that I distinctly remember going through was in sixth grade.

It briefly talked about Jesus and his disciples and it made this like really passive secondary statement about them you know being a religious sect and that was it. I'm like man talk about having more historical evidence than almost anything else with more primary sources because of And what we have in the environment in that area was enough that we have a lot of preservation. There are these religious people, and they were a small sect. Can't not mention them, but that's all you get is like two sentences and you're done.

It was really disturbing. Secondary sources are very, what I would say, edited, or sometimes they'll omit whole swaths of things. Sometimes there's omissions because of lack of information. There's no primary source and so they don't write something, but a lot of times it's edited. So there's a piece to that that becomes very important. Secondary sources, however, we shouldn't see secondary sources and go, this is outright garbage or always evil. There's actually a lot of secondary source type writing in the New Testament that cites the Old Testament but in a broad way.

So I've got as an example here 1 John 1.45 or Matthew 2.23.

So I'm going to turn to Matthew 2.23. follow along if you've got your Bible there.

Matthew 2.23 is actually kind of a fun one. Matthew chapter 2, as it turns out, has several different citation patterns of the Old Testament. And so the way that it is cited is either literal and direct quotes or secondary quotes. but he uses both in the second chapter.

But 2.23 he says, "...and came and lived in a city called Nazareth.

This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene." Well, none of the prophets says directly he shall be called a Nazarene in this way. Matthew is summarizing the prophets. They say some things about him being a Nazarene, but they don't say he shall be called a Nazarene like this. Matthew, I think when we look at the text of the account in the Gospel, he has, inspired by the Holy Spirit, written this and he's summarized accurately this principle that Christ was a Nazarene. It's just none of the prophets said literally word for word this.

So as a secondary, he's pointing to a primary principle, but he's treating it in such a way that it's a broad statement rather than a direct quotation. That makes Matthew a secondary source. I'm just pointing that out not so that you'll think, oh no, Matthew's got problems. But that's an example of a secondary source in the scripture.

Secondary sources from historical times may record events and stories that we do not have primary sources for. Can anybody think of an example even in the New Testament where we have stuff that Paul writes or that one of the authors of the New Testament writes that we don't have primary recordings of from that time. I'm thinking of one particular example, but there's probably several.

No, we have primary sources of that. But Paul's reference to it, however. Paul's reference to it, but yeah, he's writing about it. I'm thinking of something where we don't have a primary source that wrote about it, but Paul writes about it in secondary. All the three Gospels are all primary sources?

Okay, I'll grant you that. But they can interview and have contact with Mary. Interviews can be primary sources. I'm sorry, I put that in the notes and I didn't say it out loud. I apologize. Stan? To answer your question, an example I think would be where Paul referred to Timothy being taught from the scriptures by his mother and his grandmother, and there's no evidence of that particular scripture or language or anything else that they used. Yeah, that would be born of the interview as well, similar to the birth of Christ. Paul refers to the priest that Moses went against, right? Is it Jambres? I should have written down the scriptural reference.

The idea is that we don't actually have, at least in any recordings that I'm aware of, any first account of that. That's a primary source. But that was a tradition that was carried along. that's part of this moving further and further away from primary sources is this idea of extrapolation. And we talked about it a little bit earlier. But much of what has been undocumented by primary sources and even unmentioned by secondary sources is left to extrapolation or best guesses. While these extrapolations often get into the realm of general consensus, they need to be understood as hypothesized. And that's an important nuance there. When we talk about cosmology, for example, where the universe came from, where did everything come from, from a Christian perspective, God can reveal as a primary source, this is how I made the universe.

I spoke it into existence. But because of the skeptic's position that because I can't go touch God, therefore this revelation isn't real, they look at that and they say that's not a thing. But they're not in a better position, right? They can't go back and say, well, we have our historian that was there writing about the Big Bang when it happened. They fall into that same problem of having no primary source. They have the data that they try to interpret, with an agenda, right? But what they end up having there is a hypothesis.

In Exodus chapter 13 verses 21 and 22, and I'll turn there real quick, there is an account of a pillar of fire. How many of you liked that story as a kid in Sunday school? Right? That was really cool. There's a pillar of fire and a cloud of smoke. So 13, 21 and 22.

The Lord was going before them in a pillar of cloud by day to lead them on the way and in a pillar of fire by night to give them light that they might travel by day and by night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people.

Now, what I think is amazing is that that sounds miraculous. But there have been hypotheses put forth by skeptics who think that the Bible is a bunch of malarkey as to explain a natural phenomenon that would be exactly this. That's extrapolation, if I've ever... It's like, well, we're not going to discount the text. We're going to say that this really happened, which is what like the mostly a skeptical just say we'll discount this text. These people have gone so far as to try to come up with a natural explanation for why this thing has happened only once in all of history and worked in front of Israel. It's extrapolation.

It's a best guess, which I would actually consider to be a really terrible guess. The most obvious answer is at least if you're going to accept the text, is that God actually is supernatural and sustaining the universe and can do supernatural things like a pillar of fire. But what they try to do is they try to get God out of the picture. We'll try to take God out of the picture, but we'll extrapolate some fancy way to do that.

Alright, the next two sections, or the next section with the two subsections, we're going to talk about how worldviews impact your perspective on history. And my dad, when we started, began talking about skeptics. One's worldview can have a heavy influence on how history is to be interpreted. And I should be careful, I use the three words, is to be interpreted. How history is interpreted. They're going to want to have an agenda that fits in with an outcome, often is the case there.

So the skeptic rejects all accounts of history to a greater and greater degree the further back in history one intends to investigate. Anything that's precise and written history, the further back we go, the more skeptical they are about the precision of it, because the telephone game That is always my favorite excuse for why you can't believe anything in history is the telephone game. Like, we played that in kindergarten and it didn't work. Therefore, nothing reliable.

That's a bit absurd. But what ends up happening is they take on this agenda and it helps form and shape their their perspective on history. So here's a list of core tenets of a skeptical worldview. Their writing is a recent development in the billions of years of history. So history, from their perspective, it's billions of years, right? So history for them is really tough. Because writing is a new thing.

So once you hit a certain point, it's unknowable, it's undocumented, and it goes back way further than that. So the best thing you can do is extrapolate, which is partially why when you talk about evolutionary psychology as a principle, you have an extrapolated evolution, and then from the extrapolated evolution, you extrapolate back into the present and derive all kinds of things that should tell us about the human brain and how it works. That's like building a really tedious sandcastle with a tidal wave coming. It's like, hey, we're going to guess all the way back this way and then build on that guess. It's like, no, that's a terrible, terrible idea.

Another core tenet is that oral tradition carries almost no weight because it gets corrupted quickly. That's the telephone game. Religion is false. That's their starting basis position is that religion is false. Therefore, religious documents are primarily works of fiction. All of them. Across the board. The next tenet there is attributions of historical authorship of biblical books are to be rejected on account of an agenda of religious leaders. Religious leaders wanted to brainwash or blindfold people so they put together these constructs. and therefore we can't trust any of it.

Well, that's an assumption that you then make all your decisions based off of and then say, see how I proved from my assumption that it was the assumption? Let's just say that that's not how I want my doctor to treat me when I go in for medical advice. You go in, I've got this problem. I'm going to assume it's this. Can we not assume because I really would like to deal with this functionally and really be healed? No, I like my assumptions. That would be bad in medicine, let's not do it in science and in our review of history.

In addition of skepticism of older history, some postmodernists have even rejected things like the Holocaust because they were not there to experience it. And victors write history to paint themselves in good light. I've literally talked to people that hold that position. The Holocaust is very questionable in their minds.

It probably wasn't as bad as what they say. Or it didn't happen, even. Which is nuts. Six million Jews, if they were still alive, would not have gone through the Holocaust, but they killed about six million Jews, not to mention all the other ethnicities that the Germans persecuted. There's people in this room that have lived within that frame of history. That's not a ridiculous thing.

And yet there's people who already have embraced this postmodern, skeptical idea of, I wasn't there so I can't prove it. If you start to think about applying that to the rest of your life, there's a bunch of stuff that you could not... Like, I wasn't there to count all the votes, I don't think that Obama should be our president. If I don't experience that it doesn't exist is a really radical way to interpret all of the world. And yet, there are people that promote that kind of thinking.

But skepticism, because of its agenda, draws conclusions that fit with the agenda. So now that we've talked about agendas as believers, the purpose of this class, our agenda in this class, is that we can walk away from the class feeling like we don't believe in a bunch of mythical things, but that there's actual factual historical things that we can believe in. But there are some core tenets to what we believe that are our foundational elements of faith. And we can't ignore that. But we want to make sure that we can articulate some of those and look at them. But the rationality of what we believe is not based on a bunch of myths. It's actually a lot of primary sources. It's actually a lot of things that are historically provable. That's an important element. So looking at these items here, God made mankind in his image and therefore history is reflective of God. That stands out in stark contrast to we're here on accident. We came from an explosion in the universe billions of years ago, an unknown billions of years ago, and we accidentally got here. That's a pretty significant difference.

God desired a relationship with mankind and chose to reveal himself to mankind. God didn't just make Adam and then take off. Instead, He began a conversation with Adam, and walked with him in the garden, and talked with him, and spent time with him. And then, when Adam sinned, He gave him a cloth, clothes. He was wearing, probably not Calvin Klein, I'm guessing. But he left the garden. And God continued to reveal himself to mankind and continued to put forth truth that only he could know as a primary source. Mankind wrote down details about God's revelation by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is what I'm about to say is supposition. This is the extrapolation. This is extrapolation that I think is not unreasonable, but it is not revealed in the text of scripture. Follow me here.

If the Egyptians had writing, and God sent the Israelites through Joseph into Egypt, And Joseph, we have recorded in scripture, said to his scribes, write down my family's history. Is it possible that only a few generations, because of how long men lived before the flood, of people who lived thousands and hundreds of years with one another could communicate to the scribes what was written down and then stored in the Egyptian libraries until Moses became Prince of Egypt and could compile it down and carry it with the Israelites out of Egypt.

Is that possible? It is plausible. It's a possibility. But we look at it in reference to the Holy Spirit preserving it. In reference to the Holy Spirit having things written down because He wanted to carry on the truth of what was the history of the universe and mankind as revealed. From a biblical perspective, or from a Christian perspective, historical research will bear out biblical accounts. We're not afraid of the archaeologists doing research.

What if they find out we're wrong? Every time someone who takes a skeptical position approaches archaeological things, they're hoping they'll find something that proves the Bible wrong. They're hoping they'll find, oh, see, it didn't go like the Bible said, because we're skeptical. We don't want that to be the case. But the Christian seeks out the archaeological things because we believe it will bear those things out. And lastly, historical records need to show the failings of mankind to show the grace and love of God.

If the skeptic says that the victor always writes, let's just say, the well made up and glossy version of history, the Christian says, No, actually, here, let me tell you about David, the murderous, adulterer king, who was a man after God's own heart.

Let's go look at this guy. That's amazing. Or let's talk about Paul, who was there holding coats while Stephen was stoned, and was out breathing death threats when God showed up to him, Christ shows up to him on the road to Damascus. The historical character of these people is sometimes really sketchy.

Moses murdered somebody. We have one written account of it. We don't know about a lot of what happened in Moses. Moses wrote it. Yeah, Moses wrote it down. He documented it himself. So it did this. Dear Journal. But historical records need to show the failings of mankind to show the grace and love of God. And that is an important thing from a Christian perspective. We see sin enter the world with Adam, and we see God's loving interaction and His revelation to show us and tell us that love. And so we look at history and we go, man, this manifests the character of God and the failings of man in ways so that we can understand God more deeply.

Romans 8.28, the all things includes David screwing up. God used that yucky stuff for his glory. Stan? But isn't that a good thing about skeptics? Because skeptics attack usually the soundest doctrine. to try to get rid of them.

So in a sense, you can't see unless you have contrast, like you have different colors. If everything was the same color, you wouldn't be able to see at all. Well, if you don't have skeptics and all you have is the truth, the truth wouldn't be as valuable unless it's being challenged. Well, it would still be valuable, but we may not have the depth of appreciation.

So the thing is that as we look at history and we see what's there, I really loved that we had written documents that were primary sources waiting to be translated. I love that we had written documents that we knew someday, if we could figure them out, they would mean something, and then we found the Rosetta Stone. Oh wow, now we've got the same document, almost thought for thought, translated between different languages, and now suddenly this language gets opened up and we can start cracking that open and doing stuff. But none of that historical information has negated the truth of what's in Scripture. And I think that's a powerful, powerful thing. Any other thoughts or questions? I think Brian's going to hit the buzzer any second now.

I just know that my dad's going, wait till you hear about what I saw as a primary source of Israel. He sent emails throughout the several weeks with details of what they were doing and I thought, man, I don't understand half of what he's writing here. I can't wait to see the pictures. And then my mom would send pictures separately. You guys should use Facebook. It does awesome things for those things.

Pictures and words. But yeah, so we'll get to hear about the primary sources and those things not too far from now. Alright, let's close in prayer and then we'll close on a record early minute or two. Heavenly Father, we ask that you would just continue to touch our hearts and minds with the source of your word and the reliability of it. and the fact that you do reach out to us to carry the relationship that you so deeply long for through revelation, through inspiration, and Lord, through preservation as well. We thank you for the time that we have as a body to gather together and discuss these things, and we pray for your return. But if you don't return this week, at least we pray for safety and continued growth this week. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.