Well we are in Hour 13 of our Learn the Bible
in 24 Hours, and we're also ... We've crossed the divide. In other words, we've been in the Old Testament,
admittedly somewhat superficially, but still with a background we hope is helpful, but
now we're moving into the New Testament, and we have a couple of sessions here that are
sort of the bridge. I thought it'd be useful for us to spend an
hour to focus on how sure can we be? You know we talk glibly that
most of us in this audience believe the Bible, believe Jesus Christ, and that's fine, but
how sure are you? How much are you willing to gamble? You're gambling your eternity on that in effect. How sure can we be? So we're going to focus on that a little bit. William Thompson, who's known as Lord Kelvin
in the scientific community, pointed out that until we can measure a thing, we really know
very little about it. Well, how do you measure certainty? How do you measure your degree of confidence
that the Bible really is what you believe it to be? Let's attack that in a serious way. If we look at Peter's second letter in the
first chapter, he points out that he says, "For we have not followed cunningly devised
fables when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were
eyewitnesses of his majesty." Now get the picture here. Peter is in the position of having been an
eyewitness to all these fantastic things that occur in the gospel period. The transfiguration, the miracles, and so
forth, but then a couple verses later he makes a very strange remark. He says, "We have also," in other words, in addition
to being eyewitnesses, "we also have a more sure word of prophecy where unto ye would
do well to take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place. Until the day dawn and the daystar
arise in your hearts." This is a strange phrase he uses. He says you have a more sure word of prophecy. You have something in your possession that
is more certain than having been an eyewitness like he was. What does he mean by that? Well that's what we want to explore. The prophetic scriptures according to J. Barton
Paine which is just 1 categorization of it. He says there's over 8,000 predictive verses
and over almost 2,000 predictions on 700 different matters, and that's just 1 reckoning. Clearly, the Bible is more than a few prophecy
books. Prophecy is littered throughout the entire
collection of 66 books. The Old Testament was translated into Greek
in 270 BC. I've mentioned that before, but I want us
to anchor on that tonight to recognize that the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures,
were translated into Greek 3 centuries before the Gospel period. We don't have to worry, for this discussion
we'll ignore who actually wrote the books, when they were actually written. We're going to say we don't care, we know it
was in black and white, in hand in 270 BC because it was translated into Greek. Any competent encyclopedia will confirm that
for you. Now these Old Testament scriptures contain
over 300 specifications that detail the coming Messiah, and obviously Jesus Christ fulfilled
those. That's what we're going to head into. The crucifixion of Christ was not a tragedy. It was an achievement. He was deliberately fulfilling literally 300
specifications. I'll give you some examples. He was to be born of David's family, that's
all through the Old Testament. He was to be born of a virgin. There are several places that elude to that. He would be born in Bethlehem. He would sojourn in Egypt. He would live in Galilee, in fact, specifically
in Nazareth. He would be announced by an Elijah like herald
of some kind. His coming would occasion the massacre of
Bethlehem's children. That's mentioned twice in the Old Testament. He would proclaim a jubilee to the entire
world. His mission would include the gentiles. That's mentioned in Isaiah several places. His ministry would be one of healing. He would teach through the parables, and He
would be disbelieved and rejected by the rulers. That's all laid out in the Psalms and in Isaiah
and, in fact, many places. He would make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem
according to Zechariah and the Psalms. He'd be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces
of silver. He would be like a smitten shepherd. He would be given vinegar and gall. The would cast lots for His garments. His side would be pierced, and His ... Not
a bone would be broken that was specified in Exodus, in Numbers, and in the Psalms. He would die among the malefactors. He ... His dying words were foretold literally. Psalms 22 reads like it was dictated first
person singular as He hung on the cross. He would be buried by a rich man. He would rise from the dead on the 3rd day;
that's several places in the scripture, and His resurrection would be followed by the
destruction of Jerusalem. He Himself highlighted that. And I often point out there are 300 of these
kinds of specifications. Obviously, some of them much more technical.
And I thought what we'd do is, we'd go through each one of them tonight and examine the reference
and how it was fulfilled. And you are chuckling of course because you know I'm kidding. You know I ... But I am going to suggest that
we examine 8 of them as an exercise because I think the exercise will be useful not just
for the 8, but to show you some methodology that you will, I think will lead to understanding. Let's take the first of the 8. In Micah 5:2 ... anyone that gets Christmas cards
sees this on it frequently. In Micah 5:2 we have the passage that Herod's
advisors pointed him to when the Magi visit and asked where he was, where was to be the,
the king of the Jews to be born, and they said in Micah 5:2 it says, "But thou Bethlehem
Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of these shall
he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel whose goings forth have been from
old, from everlasting." We could actually spend an entire week studying
this verse. There's so much hidden in this verse. Not just that He's born in Bethlehem, but
that He would rule in Israel. He's never done that yet. He's going to, whose going forths have been
from old, from everlasting, that His preexistence from the beginning of eternity. His life didn't start when He became incarnate. He simply took flesh. He was incarnate through eternity past, so
there's a lot going on here, but all we're going to focus on for this particular exercise
is the location of His birth. It's in Bethlehem. Why is it in Bethlehem? Well, you have to understand the book of Ruth
because that links the line of David to the town of Bethlehem, and that's ... There's
lots of reasons why the book is so important. Well, if you take planet Earth and you zero
in to the Middle East, and you zero in on Israel, and you're just south of Jerusalem,
as you keep zeroing in on this, you discover there is a town called Bethlehem. It's always been there, and it is, it has
had a population of something less than 7000 people throughout most of recorded
history. So the question is that I want to suggest here, with that background, what
is the probability of some person selected at random over the last several thousand years
of fulfilling this prophecy? How many of you in this room know someone
who has been born in Bethlehem? Some of you are thinking. All your hands should be up. [laughter] Okay, right. [laughter] Besides Jesus Christ, do you know
...? Okay. Well it turns out that you can estimate the
probability roughly of somebody, a stranger being born in Bethlehem? How would you do that? Well, you'll take the population of Bethlehem
as something less than 10,000 which is reasonable, and you'll ... Let's ... At any one time in,
in history, you'd say the average population might have been something around the order
of a billion, so there's a chance of ... 10 to the 4th divided by 10 to the 9th, in
other words, 10, but roughly 1 chance in 10 to the 5th. You, if you had a random sample of 100,000
people, you have a chance of having 1 that was born in Bethlehem, if they're all
randomly distributed. Of course they're not, but that a good, that's
an approximation. Okay, let's take another. You'll see where I'm headed here in a minute. Another one unrelated to this. In Zachariah 9:9, we are told by the prophet,
"Rejoice greatly oh daughter of Zion. Shout, oh daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy king cometh unto thee. He is just having salvation lowly, and riding
upon an ass upon a colt, the foal of an ass." And this, of course, is a famous line to us
as you study the scripture, especially when we were in Daniel. Jesus that one particular time allowed Himself
to be presented to Jerusalem as a king riding the donkey. He was deliberately fulfilling Zechariah 9:9. All right. How many people have presented themselves
as a king to Jerusalem riding a donkey? Well, I know of only one, but that's not
a hard thing to do. You would think that somebody that was presenting
him as king could ride a donkey. Did they? None that we know of, but if I said the chances
of somebody having done that is less than 1 in 100, am I being generous? I think so. You could say probably less than 1 in a million
because you could probably figure out how many kings have presented themselves to Jerusalem
and figure out which ones didn't ride a donkey and come down to a much more rare example,
but I'll say 1 in 100 just to make this simple. You'll see where I'm headed. These will be perfectly adequate. Let's take the 3rd one of the 8. We'll go to Zechariah again. It's an interesting little ... Zechariah is
full of these little nuggets tucked away in various places. Zechariah 11:12 says, "And I said unto them,
if you think good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of
silver." Interesting number. Does that ring familiar somewhere? Okay, we all know that Jesus Christ was betrayed
for 30 pieces of silver. How many people in the last several thousand
years have been betrayed for precisely 30 pieces of silver? Well, I don't know of any, but there may be
a lot that we don't know about. If I say less than 1 in 1000, and am I being
generous? I think so. I think so. Okay, a probability of less than a, is equal
to or less than 1 in 1000. Okay, let's take the 4th one. It's right, it's the next verse, but it's
a little different, so I wanted to separate some aspects here. The Lord said unto me, cast it unto the
potter: a goodly price that I was prized at of them. And I took the 30 pieces of silver
and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. Well now this one gets, this one's a little ...
it gets a little more complicated. We're talking ... how many people that
were betrayed for 30 pieces of silver had the money go to a potter, and all this
takes place inside the temple in the house of the Lord, right? Well, if we go to the scripture,
and then Judas which had betrayed him when he saw that he was condemned, repented of
himself and brought again the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying
I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. They said what's that to us? see thou to that. So Judas gets the point. After he's done his deal, he's betrayed Christ,
he's upset about it, he comes back, and repents and says he's sorry he did
it. He says, "I have sinned and I have betrayed
innocent blood." Now, what, I love that sentence because who
had entered into Judas? Satan. So by Satan's own words, we declared the innocence
of Christ. I think that's very ... That's an interesting
ellipsis there. But, so he cast down the 30 pieces of
silver in the temple, departed, and went out and hanged himself. That's all in Matthew 27. You're familiar with that. But now the chief
priests have a problem. The chief priests took the silver pieces and
said it's not lawful to, for to put them into the treasury because it is the price
of blood. There was a proscription, prohibition of taking
blood money and putting it in the temple, so they got this 30 pieces of silver. They're not about to give it away. What'd they do with it? Well, they had good CPAs on staff there, okay? [laughter] They couldn't put it in the treasury, but
they could use it to pre-pay expenses. See in other words they're pre-paying expenses. They're reducing their anticipated bills,
and the reason is because the temple, when somebody died in the region for whom there
were no heirs, no family, the temple had the problem of dealing with strangers that had
died there. That was an ... Every year there were probably
a few. They, you could make a guess of X numbers
each year, and so they had that expense. There was a potter that had a field that was really
cheap that was available, so they took counsel and they bought with them the potters field to
bury strangers in. It was a low-cost way of anticipating this
expense. It goes on "wherefore that field was called
the field of blood unto this day," so that's in the scripture, Matthew 27. Now let's go back and look at the precision
of this passage in Zechariah 11:13. The price, 30 pieces of silver. The location of the transaction is in the
house of the Lord, and who ends up with the money? The potter who sold the field. All that is included in that little verse
in Zechariah. So what's the ... If I said probably 1 in
10 million, I could ... I'm going to say 1 in 100,000, and I'm being generous. That's pretty precise. Let's take number 5. "And one shall say unto him what are these
wounds in thy hands? Then he shall answer those with which I was
wounded in the house of my friends." This is a very dear one to me personally. I went through a phase when I was a teenager
where I was memorizing Bible verses, and every time I came across some reference that was
prophetic, I would type the verse on one side of the card and the reference on the other,
and I would always carry a few of these with me. I was on a scripture memory kick. Well I came across this one. Ooh, there's one. You know, wounds in the hands. I typed up the little card, but in the coming
week as I went through my cards, I tried, the more I tried to memorize this the more
I stumbled because I realized it didn't make sense. One shall say unto him what are these wounds
in thine hands? And then he shall answer those with which
I was wounded in the house of my friends. And try as I might, I could not visualize
a group of Roman soldiers driving spikes through his wrists into some 12 x 12s or whatever
they were as being in the house of his friends, and so I was puzzled by that, and I realized
I had the wrong mindset here. In John chapter 20, you remember they, He
had appeared to them that, among them that Sunday night, and Thomas wasn't with
them. During that week they told Thomas, guess who
showed up at the prayer meeting last night, you know, and they told him what happened. He was very doubtful. He said, he that as Thomas said unto them,
except I shall see in His hands the print of His nails and put my finger in the print
of His nails and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe. Okay. And then what happens of course, after 8 days,
again, His disciples were within. This time, Thomas was with them. Then came Jesus. The doors being shut and stood in the midst
and said "Peace be unto you." And then he said to Thomas, ooh this must
have been a blow, "Thomas," he said, "Reach hither thy finger and behold My hands. Reach into thy hand and thrust it into My
side, and be not faithless, but believing." "Be not faithless, but believing." Boy, can you imaging how Thomas must have
felt? First of all, he realized that the Lord had
overheard that expression. See, the Lord doesn't miss a word. A little child asks, who is feeling a little
guilty about something asks their dad this, "Is God looking? Does He see everything I do?" And the Father turns to his child and says
"God loves you so much He can't take His eyes off you." [laughter] Thomas answered and said, "My Lord, my God." I visualize Thomas falling to his knees, and
Jesus said, "Thomas because thou has seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and believed." Now when I go back to that verse in Zechariah,
you see, it's a whole 'nother thing. What are these wounds on thy hands? Those with which I was wounded in the house
of My friends. What wounded Christ was not the spikes. It was Thomas' unbelief. Hmm. Well, getting back to our little analysis here,
how many people taken at random have been wounded in their hands in the house of their
friends? Well, I have no idea, but if I said less than
1 in 1000, am I being generous? Okay. Let's take number 6. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet
he opened not his mouth. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter
and as a sheep before shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. We are taking this from Isaiah 53. You can't go through exercises like this without
taking a few from Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. They are so rich with these things, but here
He is. He was afflicted. Oppressed, afflicted. He opened not His mouth. Made no defense, so the question is, how many
prisoners accused of a capital crime, a death penalty situation, make no defense even though
they're innocent? There may have been some in history frankly. There are apparently I think on the record
some people who may have been killed inappropriately, but made no defense, but if I say less than
1 in 1000, am I being generous? I think so, I think so. Okay, let's take another one while we're in
53 here, Isaiah 53. He made his grave with the wicked and with
the rich in his death because he had done no violence. Neither was any deceit in his mouth, so the
question is, how many people died among the wicked and yet were buried with the rich that
were not attorneys? [laughter] Mm-hmm. I'm sorry, I just ... I've learned over the
years of speaking that you can unite any audience by picking on the attorneys a little bit. [laughter] But I didn't mean to be irreverent here. How many people died among the wicked? You recognize the intrinsic contradiction
within that verse? Well, if I say less than 1 in 1000, am I being
generous? Surely. Okay, let's take 1 more, number 8, the last
of the bunch. We'll take 1 from Psalm 22. For dogs have compassed me, the assembly of
the wicked have enclosed me, and they pierced my hands and my feet. This is remarkable by the way, because the
official form of capital punishment in Israel was stoning. This was written 700 years before crucifixion
was invented. It was invented by the Persians and then widely
adopted by the Romans. So how many prisoners taken at random have died by having their
hands and feet pierced? Obviously a lot of people. Millions were crucified by the Romans, but
if I said 1, less than 1 in 10,000, am I being generous? I think so. Okay, so what I've done here ... We've concatenated a list of prophecies, born in Bethlehem, king on a donkey, 30 pieces of silver, temple
potter and all that business, wounds in the hands, no defense though innocent, died with
the wicked yet grave with the rich, and crucified. Now the question is okay, if those are the
probabilities of each one of these individually, what's the probability of a particular person
having fulfilled all 8 of them? Well that's a dilemma because now we're dealing
with composite probabilities, and for the purpose of this discussion, we'll assume that
these things are randomly distributed. Let's talk about ... Let me give you a little
tutorial on composite probabilities. Let's imagine in this audience that we have
60% of you are men and 40% are women, and suppose we blindfolded someone and had him
pick one of you at random in some, under some conditions that would make it equally likely
to be any of you, what would be the chance if he reached out and touched one of you that
it was a female? Well, how would you analyze? Well, if 60% are male and 40% are female,
he's got a probability of 40% or probability of 0.4 that he encountered a female. Are you with me so far? Okay. Let me give you a different example. Let's assume that half, that 60% of you, are
right handed and 40% are left handed. Let's assume for this discussion that those
are randomly distributed independent of sex. They're just ... We've got right and left
handed people in a 60:40 ratio. What's the probability that someone selected
randomly would be left handed? Again, it would be 40%. Are you with me so far? Here's the point I'm trying to make. What's the probability, assuming these attributes
were randomly distributed, of somebody getting a left handed female? Well, what you do is you take the one distribution
and you take the other distribution and you combine those 2 distributions, right? And the ones that met both conditions would
be the product of those 2 probabilities, in other words, 0.4 x 0.4. 0.16. In other words, if, if 40% of you are female
and 40% are left handed, the combination would be there'd be 16% of you would be a good estimate
of the probability of being a left-handed female. Are you with me? In other words, what I'm trying to get across,
a simple way of getting an estimate here is simply to take the product of the ... probabilities. Okay, having said all that, probability of
0.16. Let's take a look at these 8 prophecies. I've made them in powers of 10s, so multiplying
them just becomes a question of adding up the zeros, so you tend to ... Thousand is
10 to the 3rd, and, and 100 is 10 to the 2nd, so 100,000 is 10 to the 5th. 2 + 3. Are you with me? So all you need to do is add up the zeros. The probability of 1 person fitting all these
things would be 1 chance in 10 to the 28th, but I need to work out the total people
that lived, so I take the 100, I'm going to assume 100 billion population as a guess. So if I take the combined probability as 10
to the 28th divided by 10 to the 11th, I now have still a very large number. A number by 10 to the 17th. Now if we were in a statistics class in graduate
school or whatever, and I was going to try to get across to you what I mean by 1 chance
in 100, what do I mean by that? Well, the way I'd demonstrate that is I might
get a bucket. I would put in that 100 silver dollars. I'd take 1 of them and mark it with some lipstick
or nail polish or something, and I'd mix them all up, and the chance of my reaching in there
and picking 1 at random is 1 chance in 100 of getting the one I marked. You with me? That's a way of demonstrating what I mean
by that ... That's a stochastic statement, and most people are not familiar
with dealing with that, so that's ... That's ... Okay. So what I want now, what I need to do to demonstrate
this probability that we're talking about here is I need a bucket that will hold 10
to the 17th silver dollars. That turns out to be a pretty big bucket. That's a lot of silver dollars. In fact, if I wanted a bucket of 10 to the
17th silver dollars, I'd need to take the state of Texas and fill it with silver dollars,
and it'll end up being about 2 feet deep. That's 10 to the 17th silver dollars, so what I would do then is pick one of you, blindfold you, and put you into a situation
where you have an equal likelihood of being exposed to any particular ... I mixed them
up in such a way and route you in such a way that you have an equal chance of getting
any one of those silver dollars. You're going to reach down there with your blindfold on
and pick one. The chance that you got the one we marked
is 1 chance in 10 to the 17th. Does that get it across? So you with me so far? You recognize that? It's a way of demonstrating just how unlikely
that is, but we're not through. I said we had 300 ... prophecies to deal
with. We took 8 of them. Let's assume I take another 8, so I have 16
all together. To spare you the time, we're not going to
actually pick up another 8, but if we did, the 8 that I would add would be more technical,
more precise, less likely. I'm going to assume for this simple analysis
that the next 8 are no less likely than the ones I've already picked. That's a very generous assumption, obviously. So I've got 300 to choose from. The next 8 would be more specific, that is
less likely than the previous one, but I'm going to assume no decrease in likelihood. I'm just going to add 8 of an equivalent kind,
so now I have 10 to the 28th times 10 to the 28th. We add the exponents, so that's 1 chance in
10 to the 56th, but again, I subtract out my 10 to the 11th population over that time. So I now have 10 to the 45th. Okay? So now I want ... I need a bucket of silver
dollars that'll hold 10 to the 45th silver dollars. That's a lot of silver dollars. Let me give you a feeling for how many that
is? How big a bucket do I need? I need to make a ball of silver dollars that
is 30 times the radius of the Earth to the sun. Can you imagine? You can't imagine that many, and 30 times. 30 times the distance to the Earth to the
sun, a ball of silver dollars. Now in this case, we'll get our volunteer
that's going to pick. And we've marked one of these and mixed them
all up. I've got one of you blindfolded and in a space
suit, and sent them out there under conditions that would make it equally likely to be exposed
to any of them, and you reach into it, and if you pick the one that we marked, that's
1 chance in 10 to the 45th. So I'm going to do this one more time because,
you say this is getting a little ridiculous Chuck. This time instead of doubling, I'll just triple. I'll go from 16, I'll go to 48. Bear in mind, I've got 300 to choose from,
but I'm going to reach in a little further and I'm going to again assume there's no decrease
in likelihoods. Actually, I can find prophecies there that
are so rare they stand on their own in terms of this kind of analysis, but let's just assume
that the next ... that the rest of them, to make up 48, have, are no less likely than the first
8 we pick. That's 10 to the 28th multiplied by itself
6 times, 10 to the 168th, and now I have to subtract my 10 to the 11th out of there, so
that's 10 to the 157th. That's a pretty big number. [laughter] How big is it? Well, the first problem I've got, the silver
dollars won't work. They're way too big. I need something small. I need the smallest thing you can imagine. What is the smallest thing you can imagine? An atom, huh? How's that? It may surprise you to learn that there are
estimates of the number of atoms in our galaxy. I want to make a ball of every atom in our
galaxy. It turns out there's a commonly accepted estimate
among scientists of about 10 to the 66th atoms in our galaxy. Well, that means if I make a ball of every
atom, if I'm going to consider them as my sample, that's ... I'm way short of what I
need. I need 10 to the 157th. Okay, so I'll make such a ball for each atom
in the universe. So now I've got 10 to the 66th x 10 to the
66th. Well, that's 10 to the 132nd. I'm still far short of 10 to the 157th. Okay. I've got a ball for every atom in the universe
consisting of as many atoms as there are in the universe. I'm going to imagine that crazy exercise happening
every second since the universe began. Well, that's about 10 to the 17th seconds
if you do the math, and now I'm still only 10 to the 149th. I've made a ball of atoms equal to all the
atoms in the universe. I'm going to do that for each atom in the
universe, and I'm going to do that whole silly thing every second for 16 billion years. Is that a big number? I am still short of my 157. In fact, I'm short by over 100 million to
1. So you said, now you say, okay, this is pretty
silly. What? What? What's your point? Here's my point. I am more convinced that Jesus Christ was
the Messiah of Israel than I ... I'm more convinced of that than of any other fact in
my command. I'm more convinced of His identity than I
am my own. Now, I have no reason to doubt my identity. I've got a birth certificate, I know my parentage,
etc. There's nothing, there's no little gimmick
here, and yet I also realize I know, I could not attach this kind of certainty to any other
fact I know of. And incidentally, we've only dealt with 48
of 300, so you get some idea of why some of those estimates aren't that critical. You follow me? If I can make it even looser, you're still,
you're out in beyond the realm of reasonable doubt, beyond the realm of reasonable doubt,
and incidentally, in going through through this little exercise, I've missed the most
amazing ones. You can do an analysis of the genealogy of
Jesus Christ and be astonished at the precision of issues that are tucked into that genealogy. I won't do it now because we'll do that when
we get into Luke and so forth about the virgin birth and all of that and the daughters of
Zelophehad and the blood curse pronounced on Jeconiah and so on. The specific identification prediction of
the precise day that the Messiah would present Himself as king to Jerusalem that which we
encountered in Daniel chapter 9, take that 1 prophecy alone, and it is equivalent to
everything we've done so far, that one alone. Astonishing precision, and there's a whole
bunch of Old Testament Midrashic prophecies and other ones. What we're dealing here with is what I call
the scarlet thread. It starts with God's declaration of war on
Satan in the book of Genesis in which God indicates to Adam and Eve that His plan of
redemption will involve the human race. This is not going to be a super angel, it's
not going to be some other thing. It's going to involve a man, but it's going to
be a perfect man. In fact, it's going to involve a nation
being called. We find that out in Genesis 12 and following. Abraham was called, and so it's not, it's
not going to come from the human race, it's going to come from a specific subset of that,
namely the nation Israel. In fact, within that, it's going to come from
a particular tribe, the tribe of Jacob, and within that, it's going to be from the family
of David, so this is ... the precision here is astonishing. One of the interesting things to discover
is as God progressively focuses on His plan of redemption, as He reveals the details of
His plan throughout the scripture, that gives Satan an opportunity to try to thwart it. You can study your Bible from cover to cover
from the point of view of Satan's attempt to thwart the plan of God. As God reveals another little glimmer of insight,
it allows Satan to focus more. When God announces that it's going to come
from the human race, that allows Satan the opportunity to try to corrupt the human race,
and that's led to the hybrids and all that weird stuff going on in Genesis 6 and subsequently. When God calls Abraham in Genesis 12 and following,
now Satan can focus on the descendants of Abraham to try to thwart it. And Satan attacks
all kinds of, contrives all kinds of hassles for Abraham. The famine in Genesis 50 that finally gets
them down to Egypt and all the rest. When they get down to Egypt, the destruction
of the male line by the Pharaohs was an attempt, but, of course, 1 was secreted out as you all
know. The story of Moses and so on. Pharaoh's, even after Pharaoh, finally after
the death of the firstborn, he finally lets them go, but then he repents of that and goes
after them to try to wipe out the nation. Pharaoh's pursuit. Each one of these things is Satan's attempt
to somehow thwart God's plan. When God tells Abraham that his people will
return to Canaan after 400 years, that gave Satan 400 years to lay down a minefield by
again using the Nephilim, the Rephaim, these corrupt tribes within the
land of Canaan. That's why God told Joshua to wipe out every
man, woman, and child of certain tribes. He had a gene pool problem, but then in 2
Samuel 7 when God goes even further and says it's going to come not only out of Abraham
and out of Judah and so forth, it's going to be out of the family of David. That allows Satan to focus on the family of
David. We find all kinds of attacks on David's line. Jehoram kills all his brothers, but he misses
one. The Arabians slew all but Ahazariah. Athaliah, the queen, kills all, but Joash
is spared. There is always a plot where some servant
hides a baby and saves the day, you know, but, the attacks again and again. King Hezekiah is assaulted in Isaiah 36 and
38. We get to the book of Esther, the whole plotline
of Haman was to wipe out all the Jews in Persia. That was Satanic in it's root because he's
trying to thwart the plan of God. If Haman had succeeded, there would have not
been a temple, there would not have been a redeemer. There were major, very cosmic issues underlying
each one of these. When you get to the New Testament, it doesn't
change. Joseph finds his betrothed is pregnant, and
he fears for her, but God sends an angel and you know the story. Herod attempts to wipe them out when he gets
the vision from the magi and realizes that there's a pretender out there. He slaughters all the children 2 years and
younger. That was all predicted in the scripture, and
he does that. He attempts to do that. When Jesus opens his ministry at Nazareth,
they try to throw Him off a cliff. He slips away. In the gospel period there are 2 storms at
sea, and those storms should not be underestimated. Those ships and those storms were manned by
professional seamen who knew those waters. Several of them were in a business partnership
together in fishing. They knew what they were doing. They knew those waters. They were terrified. I'm going to suggest to you that those storms
weren't normal storms, and I suggest there's also something else, but when Jesus calms
them it says He rebuked the sea. No, I think they were Satanic in
origin personally. And, of course, the ultimate strategy was the
cross, and there's a summary of all of this in Revelation chapter 12 which we will
touch on when we get there, but the key point I want to get across is Satan is not through
yet. He's not through yet. He knows that there is a prerequisite condition
to the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ, and that's for the nation of Israel to repent and to petition
His return. And that's why he is after the believing Jews. The Jews that have accepted Christ are marked
by Satan as targets. 8,000, 8,300 predictive verses according to
one category. 1800 predictions on 700 different matters. The Bible is prophecy. There are no other equivalents on the planet
Earth. The Islam's Koran does not stand up under
scholastic scrutiny in a lot of ways, but it certainly does not hang it's reputation
on it's ability to predict the future. It can't even get it's own historical facts
straight. The Hindu's Vita, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book
of Mormon. None of these ... All these religious books
have no concept of hyperspaces that we now know exist. The Bible does. None of these have the audacity to hang their
credibility on their ability to lay out history before it happens. Nostradamus' Centuries was an ambiguous thing. Occultic mediums, channelers, new age spirit
guides, what have you. None of them hold a candle to what the Bible
has said all along. These specifications are filled. He would be born of a virgin, and He was. He would be born in Bethlehem, and He was. He would be taken into Egypt according to
Hosea 11:1, and He was according to Matthew 2. In fact, when you go to Ethiopia, it's kind
of interesting. You find those episodes of Mary and Joseph
and the child visiting the temple that was set up in the Tana Kirkos Island back in
those days. He would heal the sick and make people whole
according to Isaiah 53, and He did according to Matthew 8. He would be crucified according to Psalm 22
and many other passages, and He was in Matthew 27. He would die for our sins according to Isaiah
53, and indeed He did as is all through the New Testament. He would be raised from the dead the scripture
predicts, and indeed He was. Besides the Messianic prophecies, the other
thing that I want to establish some sensitivity on your part for is the major prophetic themes
that occur through the scripture. Not just Israel ... Jesus, but also Israel. The nation Israel. It's origin, it's ups, it's downs, and it's
destiny is all laid out in advance, and the attack by the world on the Abrahamic covenant,
God's covenant of the land to Israel is the world's attempt to thwart, it's Satan's attempt
to thwart that prophecy, but he that keepeth Israel will neither slumber nor sleep, the
scripture assures us, but it will be troubling times there. The city of Jerusalem, the entire world going
to war against Jerusalem; that's coming. The city of Babylon is destined for a dramatic
destruction that it has never seen, and it is becoming ... It is beginning to get rebuilt. It has a destiny according to the scripture
of emerging as a major power center on the planet Earth. We are going to watch that in front of our
eyes, and you are going to find many, many Bible-believing people caught by surprise
because of their lack of recognizing the precision of God's word. Russia is going to invade the Middle East,
and God is going to intervene in that invasion in a very dramatic way. Russia and her allies are all detailed there. The technology of the weapons is all detailed
there. The rise of China as a superpower, probably
the dominant fact of the next few decades in front of us is the emergence of China as
a, not only an economic giant, but as a military giant with major, major concerns over the
Middle East. China and Europe are desperate for energy,
for oil. We want it too, but we have alternatives, they
don't, so they are on a collision course. Europe and China are on a collision course
over the Middle Eastern oil. Watch that be ... That's going to be an increasingly
important subject forthcoming. I even heard talk that Babylon may, the UN
may move to Babylon, planting itself right in the middle of the oil patch for lots of
good reasons. They've obviously got to do something; it's
a mess right now. The rise of Europe as a super state. Recognized by many prophecy buffs for some
of the right reasons and some of the wrong reasons. The rise of the Antichrist I don't think
will be from Europe. He'll be from the Middle East. He'll be from Assyria. Scripture makes that pretty clear I think. And while all this is going, the Bible talks
about a one-world Christian pseudo religion, a pseudo Christian religion. Ecumenical religion. It's not the new age. Some people figure it's the new age. No, it's going to be a Christ replacement
kind of thing. Anticristos in the Greek means a pseudochrist,
a false Christ. And while all this is going on there's going
to be a, attempts to establish a global government. You know, you read these things in the Bible
and it sounds like you're cribbing from today's newspaper. And, of course, while all this is
going on, there'll be a rise of the occult in ways that we can't even imagine. So that leads to the challenge that I've made
several times in this study. I want you ... If you accept what I put on
the screen, you flunk this course. I want you to challenge this preposterous
statement. I'm suggesting that we are being plunged into
a period of time about which the Bible says more than it does about any other period of
time in history including the time that Jesus walked the shores of Galilee or climbed the
mountains of Judea. Now that's an audacious statement because
the Bible has a lot to say about the gospel period obviously, but I'm going to suggest
to you that it even says even more about what's coming. For every, for every one of those 300 prophecies
that were fulfilled in Christ's first coming, there are at least 7 for each one of those
of His 2nd coming and things related to it. Now how do you challenge this rather audacious
statement? You need to do 2 things if you are going to
be a competent steward. One is you've got to find out what the Bible
says. Not what Chuck Missler says or whoever your
favorite teacher might be. No, no, find out what the Bible says for yourself. I believe God with reveal things to you
that no one else has seen yet. There are prophecies to that effect in my
mind. That's part A. Part B of the assignment, find
out what's going on, and you won't on the 10 o'clock news. You gotta find out what's going on in Israel
and Jerusalem. In Russia, Europe, China, and our country
and so forth. And we try to monitor 10 strategic trends. Probably more than a dozen now. We're going to add a few. As we ... We've been monitoring these trends
for the better part of more than a decade through various intelligence sources we have
and are trying to continue to cultivate, and we publish these in forms of briefing packages
on each one, but even more to the point, we publish a little newsletter. It's free on the internet. A little 1 pager. We call it e-news, no cost to you if you sign
up. Give us your e-mail address and we'll send
you a little 1 page every week of what's happened this week that's Biblically relevant and the
links on the internet that are following that development competently. Most of them are not Christian things. They're intelligence sources of different
kinds, and just the fact it's on the internet doesn't make it reliable. We try to highlight the ones that are reliable
that are tracking the particular development we're interested in whether it's in Jerusalem
or China or whatever. Every week you'll get ... It's no charge. This is just something we do, and our
attempt, because we're trying to get you to be a prophecy buff, not really. That's not the point. We want to continually make you aware that
this book is what it claims to be. It's a living word, and this,
the prophecy emphasis is just ... We treat it not so much ... We're not trying to predict
the future. We're using it as an apologetic. It's a demonstration that God means what He
says and says what He means, and He authenticates Himself several ways, but prophecy is one
of them. We're going to show you some others in the
next session. So one of the things that we're going to undertake in the next session is
we're going to explore a little bit about the New Testament. We've finished the Old Testament. That's sort of behind us now as far as our project's concerned. In the next session we're going to move into
a look at the New Testament, but before we plunge into the Gospels and the rest, that'll
be the following session, we're going to take a look at how did we get the New Testament. There's a lot of nonsense floating around
about the Gnostic gospels, and there are all kinds of people that are attacking the legitimacy
of the New Testament, and they do it for money. It's great merchandising. Authors have made millions by publishing blasphemous novels. But where did we get the
New Testament? How do we know it's real? Who decided what makes up the books,
and we're going to try to talk about that, but more importantly, we're going to show
you a way to prove to yourself it's authenticity, and it may surprise you. It'll be a fun session, but the main thing
as we've just finished, ... we've finished a unit now with the Old Testament
behind us. One of the things I'm hoping has already started
to happen, and I certainly hope it'll happen before we're through is a transition taking
place from being a serious student, taking notes and understanding the book that we're
saying to where you're really beginning to get a relationship with it's author, with
the Lord Jesus Christ because he's alive today. And the reason we're doing this is for you
to develop a personal relationship. It doesn't matter what church you go to. It doesn't matter what denominational affiliations
you've found comfortable. That's not the issue at all. The issue is your personal relationship with
Him personally, and that's where, that's the whole ball game. And hopefully this is all a means to an end. The more you know about the Bible, the more
you'll know about Him, and the more you know about Him, the more you'll realize who He
is, and He'll become a moment by moment personal resource to you, so. So that's it for this session. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we just thank You for the confidence
that we can have in Your word. We thank You Father that You've gone to such
extremes to communicate Yourself to us and to communicate to us Your plan of redemption
to extricate us from the predicament that we find ourselves in. We thank You Father that You've provided a
destiny for us that's too fantastic for us to possibly deserve or to earn our way to,
yet rather Father, You have paid the full price for that destiny on our behalf. We just pray Father, that through Your Holy
Spirit You would continue to illuminate Your word, that we might more fully appreciate
what You have done and what You are doing and what You will do. But above all these things Father, we pray
that You'd help each of us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ, that we each might thus become more pleasing in Your sight, that we each
might become better stewards of the opportunities that You've placed before us. As we commit ourselves into Your hands without
any reservation, in the name of Yeshua, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
