The Truth About the Truth- Doug Batchelor

thank you so much friends for coming those who are here want to welcome those who are watching to the foundations of faith program you know jesus tells us that there's a storm coming he said the wise man builds on the rock and when the storm comes the house stands the foolish man builds on the sand and when the storm comes his house falls and it says how great is the fall of it and i assume that's because it's a great storm that's coming some of you have seen this picture that has gone viral it's of a house that's in gilchrist texas where the owners actually survived a hurricane it was warren and pam adams in hurricane rita 2005 their house was destroyed and so they hired a good contractor and architect they liked the area by the ocean there they said let's rebuild we have insurance but they said let's rebuild a house that can withstand a hurricane and they dug deep and they put their concrete pillars down deep and they built 22 feet above sea level well then a few years later hurricane ike came by in 2008 scoured every house around them but their house stood because it was founded well and they went down into the rock you know i have a feeling that's going to be something like it will be in the future there's a storm coming and we need to be building on the rock interesting quote from the book of evangelism are church members building on the rock the storm is coming the storm that will try every man's faith of what sort it is believers must now be firmly rooted in christ or else they'll be led astray by some phase of error let your faith be substantiated by the word of god well here we are we've just crossed over the threshold of the 500 year anniversary of that great reformation and as recently as this week some very popular protestant televangelists and speakers have said the protestant reformation is over and that's really stunned i think a lot of people who understand what the reformation was all about because the things that martin luther protested against have not changed catholic church is still issuing indulgences people are still praying to idols some christians believe you go right to heaven or hell when you die before the judgment day and the resurrection they disregard the fourth commandment there's just a long list of areas where professed christians have fallen and we need reformation today now the great reformation was based upon five major principles you've heard this before solo scriptura which means the bible alone solo grazia grace alone solo christo christ alone solafide faith alone and solely dale gloria to the glory of god alone these are the fundamental foundational principles of the reformation and we're going to be talking about these and more this week now i probably should let you know that the reformation isn't over that there's a whole lot of reformation that needs to happen part of the three angels message the second angels message in revelation 14 says babylon is fallen come out of her my people god has people that love him they know something about him but they're caught up in a lot of confusion spiritual confusion there's all kinds of doctrines of devils and misunderstandings out there and people are looking for the truth now see if this makes sense to you the way i understand it when jesus comes back there's two groups that both claim to worship the same god one will have the beasts mark and they'll worship the beast the other will have the seal of god and they will worship god events are going to happen in the world just before the second coming that is going to shake and polarize everybody into one of these two groups people are going to rally around the beast and the other group is going to rally around christ and his word there is going to be a revival among genuine christians and a call to return to the faith that was once delivered to the saints do you think when jesus comes back he's coming for people that are all fragmented and broken and confused about what the truth is or is there going to be a revival and a real reformation that'll bring people back quote for you great controversy you know that book 148 the reformation did not as many suppose end with luther it is to be continued to the close of this world's history from that time to this new light has been continually shining upon the scriptures and new truths have been constantly unfolding and this movement is a result of people who got back to the word and studied those truths that had been forgotten and you know the reason we're passionate about this we see this happening all the time at amazing facts and it's really simple we just preach the word and people are flabbergasted they said i've never heard this before just got a message from a brother in alabama by the name of daniel he says we've been watching the amazing facts programs and i have been a christian in the bible belt all of my life and i never heard these things before i have learned the truth about death i've learned the truth about the sabbath i've learned the truth about godly living and he said when i go visit my daughter in san jose i want to find out when you're in because i want to come up and meet you we get these letters all the time from people who've been raised in kind of quasi christian churches but they don't read the bible anymore and you know there's some folks in our church that don't read the bible anymore we think we're going to be saved by osmosis by sort of going to a church but doesn't the lord tell us that many will come to him saying lord lord and he'll say i don't know you and that would include some of our own people now during this series i want to tell you what we're up to this is a special revival program we're going to be talking about a number of the pillars of the faith and the three angels message that are neglected by christianity if you're a good adventist pastor a revivalist or an evangelist you know about these they're the 10 s's because they all start with the letter s some of it's been creatively done scripture sin satan salvation sabbath state of the dead sanctuary spirit of prophecy strength that's the health message second coming and you want to make sure and be here next sabbath for the second coming and some of you know that at the end of each one of these programs starting tomorrow night we're inviting bible questions we're going to have a few minutes of live facebook bible questions on any of these subjects because we want to make the truth plain tonight our message is about the bible and we've titled it the truth about the truth so what is truth some of you remember when jesus was being tried for his faith he was brought in pilate wanted a private interview and in john 18 37 christ says for this cause i was born and for this cause i've come into the world that i should bear witness to the truth and everyone who is of the truth hears my voice and it's still amazing to me that pilate would be standing in the presence of christ and say what is truth what is truth that means a person could be standing in front of the incarnation of truth and not know what truth was and you say lord could that be me he said what is truth and then he went out he asked the sad sarcastic rhetorical question it's kind of like the devil in the garden saying to eve hath god said you know can anyone really know there's so much confusion out there about religion can we really know is there any absolute truth and i want to tell you yes there is absolute truth but the philosophy has been circulating in our culture that everybody can kind of manufacture their own truth and whatever is true for you is true whatever is true for me is true and everybody's sort of has their own truth and you can just identify yourself any way you want and suddenly it becomes true you know what i'm talking about but the fact is you don't want to get on a plane with someone who just decided to identify himself as an airline pilot and he never flew a plane before and you don't want to have brain surgery by a guy who woke up and said i had a good night's sleep i think i'm going to do brain surgery and i believe and so it must be true there are certain absolutes and jesus is the absolute truth so what is truth well first of all jesus says i am the truth he tells us i am the way the truth and the life and again you can read in john 17 17 he says there sanctify them by your truth you know why we're talking about this subject there is a sanctifying influence in the word of god he says sanctify them by your truth is what jesus said thy word he's speaking about the word of god is truth now just to make it clear the bible is technically not truth except as it is the truth about the truth because who is the primary truth the reason the bible is the truth is jesus is the word but jesus is the essence of truth right and so when a preacher tells you the truth from the bible about jesus what you got is a preacher telling the truth from the truth about the truth but jesus is the truth christ also said you search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they that testify of who this talks about jesus jesus is the one who saves jesus is the truth and so if we want to be set free where do we find the answers what is your relationship to the bible and if i if i could emphasize a single point tonight and have it really stick it would be this radar jamming radar jamming do you know when one country takes their military and they invade another country they don't want the other country's radar to detect where they are and so they send out a bunch of false signals and static as loud as they can to confuse their radar so they just don't know what's going on the devil has been jamming the radar of christians with outside messages so we are missing the message of god there has never been a time in the history of humanity when the people of god have been more bombarded by false signals than today how many messages did you get today yeah i used to live in a cave and i bet i get a lot of messages i mean i was a hermit but i get message after message and when i land i'm on an airplane you know you turn off your phone when you're flying and i land and as soon as i turn on my phone it goes people start looking at me because all the text and the messages start to pile up well those are legitimate work messages but what about the messages that bombard us just as you drive down the road and the ones you self-inflict depending on what you're listening to on the radio or what you're watching on tv or the videos or the dumb youtubes and things that people fill their minds and and we think just going to church and owning a bible is going to mean we have everlasting life the deceptions in the last days are going to be so convincing and so powerful that if it were possible the very elect would be deceived how are we going to prevent from being deceived it's only going to be through familiarity with the word of god we are going to need to know how to turn to the bible and say thus saith the lord because the devil the devil reads the bible and he's going to misquote a lot of things now i'd like to take you to what i think is a wonderful story in the bible and you find this a couple of different places first of all it's going to be in second chronicles chapter 34 14 you also find a parallel story in second kings 28 8 took place about 624 bc it happens during the time of a young king by the name of josiah he is the grandson of manasseh manasseh was a very very wicked king and somehow amnon his fathers had a good son and jose grew up with just a pure heart matter of fact you know the bible identifies josiah as even being better than solomon and david and jehoshaphat and hezekiah it says there was no king before him there was no king after him that sought the lord with all of his heart there's no record of his unfaithfulness and when he came into being king the temple had been neglected through the time of manasseh they put idols in there and he wanted to affect the revival he said to the priests let's get back to work let's let's start cleaning up the house of god let's bring the people back to worship jehovah and in the process of cleaning out the house of god you can read where it says here hilkiah answered answered and said to chapin the scribe i have found the book of the law in the house of the lord now the very fact that he said that it would make you think well were you surprised to find the bible in the house of the lord shouldn't we find the word of god in the house of god could it be that god's people could have reached a point in their history where they could go to the house of god and be shocked to hear the word of god and here the priest is going voila what is this he's unrolling the scroll and he gets to the end it's signed moses he had found evidently an original copy of the book of deuteronomy that moses wrote out and put in a pocket by the ark and it somehow becomes separated from the ark and it was in some antichamber and before he threw it out if you ever have a problem throwing out books and we just we collect books i said karen can you go through the books let's get rid of the problem is she doesn't know if it's a good book so she has to read the whole thing before we throw it out well that that's really hard to do so i said well i'll take care of it but i had the same problem so he said well i'll throw these things out and he's gone it's the book of deuteronomy and he reads it he brings it to the king and this is i want the point i want you to get he comes the king and he says we found the book of the lord in the house of the lord and they read it to the king and as they're reading it to the king he hears these things and he tears his clothes and he cries and he realizes how far from the word of god the people of god have wandered and so then he says gather all the people together everybody in the kingdom they could and the bible says the king went up to the house of the lord with all the priests and all the people great and small and he read in their hearing the words from the book of the covenant which had been found in the house of the lord the word deuteronomy means a repeating of the law now he thought the word of god's only going to do them some good if they hear it you're not saved by owning it when we hear his words that's where the power is the word has a sanctifying influence that's what we just read jesus said i remember this last week in preparation for preaching on the reformation as i did last sabbath i listened to most of the book great controversy as i was driving again had a long drive and i remember reading where martin luther was in a monastery and he finally found a whole copy of the bible and he was thunderstruck because he had never seen the whole copy of the bible and here he was a priest he was a monk i said wow this is i had no idea all these other books were part of the bible and what brought about the reformation he found the book of the lord there it was covered with dust and some cloister somewhere what do you think's going to bring the final reformation a final renewal of the reformation is going to take place in response to the people of god rediscovering the word of god in the context of prayer to god and if we start to pray as they prayed and if we search the scriptures again you're going to see the same new life so as you read in this story after they find the book of god he reads to the people from the book of god they find it by cleansing the temple he believes it he repents he confesses he goes to church he shares it with the people and then the king took a stand and they renewed the covenant and a reformation took place it says they started to keep forgotten holy days they had neglected the passover and it said they had a passover in the days of josiah unlike any they had had since the days of samuel the prophet and it all happened when they rediscovered the book could it be that after 160 years or so that our church may have lost the book of the lord we say what do we believe well yeah you know we kind of have some of the basics but we've forgotten the fundamentals well you know we're going to read some of the bible tonight i've been to churches before i've been all different churches different denominations i've actually seen pastors go through gymnastics with their bible where they wave their bible and they throw their bible and they hit their bible and pound their bible and they never open it and read it have you seen that or you've seen where you know they open and they read like half a verse and the guy talks about politics for 45 minutes i like to kind of use the question answer method jesus used to ask questions who do men say that i am what were you arguing about on the road and i'd like to begin with some questions about the word of god first of all is the bible really from god or is it just a collection of human fables what does the bible say about that second timothy 3 16. you know this one say with me all scripture is given by the inspiration of god aren't the kids in that picture good looking one of the middles my youngest son that's about 10 years ago another one second peter 1 21 holy men of god spoke as they were moved by what the holy spirit this is not just black ink on white paper this is inspired he said the words that i speak to you they are spirit and they are life there's something living about it the bible says the word of god is quick and powerful it is living that's what that means and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword well the bible makes a lot of predictions do the bible prophecies really come true now the reason i include this question is some people say why should i believe the bible well i think the bible is different from any other book in that it has a power to foretell the future do you know how remarkable that is to have 100 accuracy in its prophecies and that means the only one who could do that is god because you and i don't know what's going to happen tomorrow do we but to predict something that's going to happen in a thousand years or 500 years you have to be all-powerful to do that and the bible is filled with prophecies like this isaiah 42 verse 8 and 9 god says i am the lord behold the former things have come to pass and new things i declare before they spring forth i tell you of them god knows the future he knows your future you have a choice about your future he just knows what you're going to choose that kind of messes with your head doesn't it again isaiah 46 9-10 i am god declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things that are not yet done and you know whenever i go out and i share about the the word of god we like to talk about that great prophecy in daniel chapter two where here the prophet outlines the history of the world's kingdoms the ones that in particular would have an impact on the proclamation of the word and it's in that great image there and he said we all know this babylon medo-persia greece rome the divisions of the roman empire and then ultimately the stone coming in and you look through the panorama of history and all of it happened right on schedule how could god know that except the bible is supernatural and there are hundreds of prophecies in the bible that you could point to that have come true we're really excited and amazing facts we're doing a new dvd called 40 prophecies that prove the bible is true to help just build faith in the bible so then you can give them bible studies number three is the bible accurate when it speaks about areas of science and health people say well it's an ancient book and they just they were uneducated back then and you can't trust the bible now that we're sophisticated and we understand science and you know as long as you cook your pork well you can eat it everything's okay and we think we know more than god the bible is a hundred percent true you know i love to share the story about back in the eighteen hundreds do you know that eighty percent more women who had their babies born in the hospital died than the ones who had them at home and the doctors were mystified why this was happening and a lot of people went to the doctor for a simple procedure in the primitive hospitals back then and the doctor would say well the surgery was a success but the patient died and it's because the doctors back then used to go from one patient to the next they didn't have the masks they didn't have the little hoods they never rubber gloves they went with like a butcher's apron they didn't wash their hands they did not wash their instruments as they went from doing autopsies to doing living surgery and so so many people died from infection and blood poisoning and along came a very religious doctor young doctor named joseph lister and he read in the bible what the bible said about washing when you come in contact with the dead body and sanitation and he said we need to start washing and he opened a clinic where they began to implement these very stringent measures of cleaning and sanitation and they noticed that a lot more people were surviving in his hospitals first they mocked him they said he was crazy the nurses complained about all the extra measures and he insisted but before it was all over he was knighted because he had discovered the germs louis pasteur also came around the same time germs were spreading and just killing all these people they say that if joseph lister had come a few years earlier there would have been one third fewer deaths in the civil war because most of them were due to infection because they didn't understand the basics of sanitation that he got from the bible the bible also gives us some other interesting scientific facts you can read for instance in job 26 7 it says he hangs the earth on nothing you might not think that's a very profound statement but that was written during a time when all these different religions said well the world has to rest on something it's on the back of a turtle or it's on the back of atlas shoulders or god says no it hangs on nothing and again the bible says he sits above the circle of the earth in isaiah 40 verse 22. well they thought the earth was flat or there was square and god said oh it's round and it talks about the wind having weight and there's just the principles in the bible are clearly scientific they're true it's accurate what about bible history how do we know it's just not a fabrication a collection of fables is what i used to believe well look at john 19 35. this might sound like the bible's kind of answering itself but john says and he who is seen he's writing about himself what he saw happen has testified and his testimony is true and he knows that he's telling the truth so you might believe john in revelation he says i john am telling you you know we believe in the mouth of two or three witnesses something is declared true how many gospels are there four do you know we have more information about jesus than we do about alexander the great but i never hear anybody questioning whether alexander the great really lived we have more historical information about jesus than we do about julius caesar but i never hear any agnostic or atheist questioning the existence of julius caesar but we've got the testimony of matthew mark luke john peter paul james and these people are first-hand witnesses they saw jesus luke who interviewed a lot of people that saw jesus he writes you know luke and acts as a letter of his testimony to theophilus and so you know i've got one little extra biblical quote here from josephus who is a jew contemporary of the apostle john and he's writing in a jewish history by the way you find this antiquities of the jews book 18. and it's chapter three section one through five now about this time jesus a wise man if it be lawful to call him a man for he was a doer of wonderful works and a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure he drew over to him both many of the jews and the gentiles he was the christ he says this is a kind of matter of fact he was the christ and when pilate at the suggestion of the principle men among us had condemned him to the cross those that loved him at the first did not forsake him for he appeared to them alive again the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him and the tribe of christians so named from him are not extinct to this day that's an extra biblical contemporary historical account of jesus and it's shocking that here you've got one of the most respecters not the most most respected jewish historian josephus flavius josephus and he's saying this was the christ some have even surmised you know he must have been a disciple of john the baptist or something because he sure sounds like he believed that jesus was the one and then of course you've got the the dead sea scrolls you know 1947 there's a dispute about whether it was one or two bedouin shepherd boys were out looking for some lost goats one of them threw a rock up in a cave and heard a clatter that he knew was not normal on investigation he found the cave full of these ancient scrolls started cutting them up and selling pieces of them to dealers in bethlehem and they eventually tracked back where they got this and found they were 2 000 year old copies of sacred writings part or whole of the old testament with the exception of the book of esther i've been to the shrine of the book museum in israel where they've got one of the most carefully guarded museums i've ever been to three and a half feet of reinforced concrete on the roof and it's to guard the word of god and i've been in there and you see the entire book of isaiah and i had a very educated guide with me i still remember his name was mussy and i said i just pointed to a spot and he for him it's like you and i reading ancient king james but he said oh we studied it i can read it i said well read that and he looked at it for a minute and then he had to read and translate to me and he was telling me the story of seneca rib when the rabbishaka was taunting hezekiah and as he's reading it i got these chills and i thought 2 000 years and it hasn't changed god has miraculously preserved his word and and archaeologists from that part of the world say the most trusted document they have for the ancient kings is the bible and the word of god i think is something you can believe historically what other evidence is there for the inspiration of god's word that would be our fifth question it says at beginning at moses and this is luke 24 27 he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself how many of the scriptures talk about jesus all the scriptures from moses to malachi jesus rose from the dead and he preached a sermon to the disciples where he showed through all of that that he was the messiah now for me some of the strongest evidence that the bible is true are the prophecies about jesus first coming before you even get to the new testament see i come from a jewish background and so it was absolutely mind-boggling for me how much of jesus i found in the old testament i ended up writing a book about it because i'm so in love with the subject that christ is everywhere he is the sum total the whole book jesus doesn't appear just in the new testament he starts in genesis and i see jesus in the life of joseph i see him in moses stretching out his hands i see him david weeping on the mount of olives i see him in abraham climbing the mountain to sacrifice his son i see jesus all over i have jesus sightings all the time when i'm reading the bible and you see the prophecies just consider the prophecies about his first coming the time of his birth is foretold the place of his birth that he be born of her virgin mother the type of ministry that he would have the events of his betrayal and the specifics the manner of his execution his resurrection his ascension read psalm 22 my god my god why have you forsaken me and in that psalm it says they pierced my hands and my feet the psalm that jesus quotes from the cross later in that psalm tells about his crucifixion so that the people there would catch it that day it's a supernatural book and yet we neglect it what will our answer be to god people have died to preserve the bible and make it available to you and me you know there's two conflicting proverbs one proverb says absent makes the heart grow fonder you heard that when you don't have something you finally have it you just you love it and the other proverb is familiarity breeds contempt one way the devil gets christians to ignore the bible today just baptize them in bibles and they'll stop reading it they'll think by just having it everywhere that's a substitute for having it in their heart it doesn't say thy word i have hid under my pillow that i may not sin against you it's not by word i've hidden in my nightstand or i've got it in my car glove box by where i've hidden where you've got to read it to get it there what do i gain by accepting the bible as god's inspired word i don't have time to talk about all the things you'd gain you'll be wiser the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom you can read psalm 119 verse 100 it says i understand more than the ancients because i keep your precepts there's a blessing in revelation pronounced on those who hear read and keep the things it's not just hearing the word psalm 119 verse 98 tells us your commandments make me wiser than my enemies it'll raise your iq if you read the bible nothing is better and you can you can remember the bible i remember we had a young man came to our church in sacramento a few years ago i was amazed his father said he's memorized the whole book of revelation he's working on the book of daniel would you like to have him do a demonstration i first i tried him out and he really did he had to memorize the whole book so we brought him up front he was like 12 13 years old and i tried to encourage the members i said we need to hide god's word in our heart so look he's got the whole book of revelation i think jesus had memorized the whole book of deuteronomy every time jesus was tempted by the devil he said it is written it is written it is written and he quoted from the book of deuteronomy what should i do if i have trouble believing the bible you know i sometimes i have doubts as things i don't understand if you want to have better faith in the bible just wait until suddenly you have a spiritual experience and you feel goosebumps in the hair go up on the back of your neck what do you do faith read in romans 10 17 faith you want more faith faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of god as you read the bible it inspires you with faith when i started reading the bible i had no intention to believe it but as i read something happened to my faith and my faith was shifted from the things of the world to the things of god someone once came up with an interesting acronym the bible b-i-b-l-a stands for basic instructions before leaving earth isn't that good this is the manual if you want to know where you are and where you're going you need the word of god you know how many of you depend on your phone now for a gps to get around i remember as a young evangelist going out and making visits and i had to use a map and it took us forever to find somebody especially when i lived on the reservation in new mexico and you'd go you know e 19. see little road and you see a little foot notice there's a big cactus here make sure and go around that and it just it was really difficult to get around and now you just you know type things in and you just know where you are in order for those things to work they have to receive signals from satellites that are up in the sky if you get one satellite you still really can't tell where you are you get three satellites and you can triangulate and when i'm flying in the gps in the plane if you get like seven or ten satellites you have your altitude you can really get an accurate fix on your location so if you want to know what the truth is it's not one scripture it's here little there a little comparing scripture with scripture and you need at least the mouth of two or three witnesses to establish that and we have that in the word of god our foundational faith is built upon a mountain of evidence that corresponds we have a lot of scripture for what we believe can the words of the bible help me day to day in my fight with temptation and my desire to be like christ it's the most important thing people say i'm struggling in my christianity and i say are you reading your bible well you know i'm really busy i say do you think there could be a connection you know you go see the doctor he might say well how's your appetite i haven't got much appetite well you might be sick you'll lose your appetite and if a christian doesn't have an appetite for the word of god if a child of god does not have an appetite for the word of god that tells about the son of god then something's wrong with a relationship if you want to see a reformation we need a revival in reading the bible you'll have a revival of holiness when we have the weapon to fight temptation again psalm 119 11 thy word i've hidden in my heart that i might not sin and i think i also gave you the verse there talking about the word of god is a sword it's a weapon you read this in hebrews chapter four the word of god is quick and powerful you read in ephesians chapter six taking the sword of the spirit which is the word of god you read in revelation jesus is coming and what does he have a sword coming out of his mouth that's obviously a symbol but what is that sword what's the power of christ how did god bring the world into existence god said here you've got a book where god says will you neglect that and be innocent in the judgment i said well i had no idea what you wanted he said well it was in the book sorry am i coming on too strong or maybe we need to be reading our bibles oh but there's so many other messages out there pastor dying you can lose your appetite for good food by eating bad food and i think that's something that's been happening among god's people is by the time we get done with the devil's junk food we have no appetite for the main course from god that affects church attendance we get so hyper stimulated with the entertainment of the world we come to church and we wonder why the pastor can't entertain us because by comparison pastors can't compete some are trying which is unfortunate because the word of god ought to stand on its own merit you know i heard an amazing fact that the university of haifa has managed to condense the entire hebrew bible so that you can fit it on the head of a pin i know it's mind-boggling this is a couple years ago an amazing fact they actually created each letter by bombarding a golden plate with atoms and they ah don't ask me how they did it i read it online it must be true someone googled it to me i did there's an article on it and here i'll show you something else that's equally amazing back in 1921 there was a prisoner named a shilling he was a a counterfeiter a forger he was imprisoned in sing-sing prison good old-fashioned sing-sing and um when he died they came into cell and he had passed away from old age and they were collecting his personal effects they noticed in his top pocket that he had seven street pins six silver one gold and one of the guards was curious about that and he knew he was an engraver and he was a forger and and he always saw him working under this magnifying glass so he took the pins and he looked at them under the magnifying glass and he was astonished when he saw something on the head of one of them and they got this very powerful magnifying glass they looked at the head of one of the pins and a shilling had inscribed the entire lord's prayer on the head of a gold pin and there's a picture of it i forget it's 264 characters and however many words there in the lord's prayer and god doesn't want his word inscribed on a pen in a pocket by our heart he wants it in our heart he wants to write his words in our heart in our minds we need to fortify our minds with his truth matter of fact there's a statement from the book great controversy only those who fortify their minds with the truth of god's word will stand through the final conflict the bible have power to affect my life personally absolutely therefore if anyone is in christ he is a new creature old things are passed away all things are made new the bible makes you into a new creation you can also read in psalm 119 105. you're wondering about god's direction for your life it says your word is a lamp under my feet and a light to my path god's word will guide you it's the lamp the light that leads us to his kingdom and if you want to get through these last days it's not just a lamp it's the rock upon which we build we need to fill our minds with the word of god every day whether i feel like it or not because you may not always feel like it i carve out time to feed myself on the word of god not just what i do for like sermon preparation but this morning i wake up i use my computer and i'm always reading through the bible every day except sabbath six days a week for years now i'm always reading through the bible and you know what i barely make it just like you and if it wasn't for the fact that i have a devotional life with all of the radar jamming that the devil's got that's mixing up the signals going to god's people and you're going to hear confused signals coming from all different places even in christ they among god's people there was confusion even among the apostles there was confusion you need to know what you believe and why you believe it you know i remember that amazing event back in 2010 when those 33 chilean miners got trapped three miles down in the mountain by road over half a mile directly and first they came in they didn't know if anyone was alive they started just kind of in desperation they thought we'll put down a few pilot holes and see if we can find some pockets and maybe there'll be some sign of life or we'll hear something and after two or three pilot holes you just six inch holes they pulled up the drill and there was a note on it and it said 33 of us are still alive and then also the world got a hold of that story and they thought how do we save these men from what could be easily a hopeless situation and they got the drilling experts from around the world that all came together and said and they had to bring this gear out into the middle of the and what is it that academia anaconda something desert daring challenge actually i'm saying it wrong anaconda no anyway in the desert way in the middle of nowhere in chile up in the mountains there was a copper gold mine and they finally got some experts that coordinated they had people everyone from submarine psychologists everybody chipped in to try and help these men sustain life in the dark and they finally got a hole big enough where they could start squishing supplies emergency life-saving supplies down to them food and and water and some basic sanitation things and they would send up notes and they say please send this and a couple of them sent up a note and said please send some beer and they sent down a note and they said no that's the last thing you need when you're in a life-threatening delicate situation is to lose your wits someone else sent up a message they said we need spiritual help they sent down 33 new testaments and two full bibles because they knew from experience that the bible has a way of saving people's lives do you know a bible is in the life raft on the airplanes you fly yeah my dad was in the airline business went to the summer camp one day and all the kids were playing on this rubber raft that my dad donated they they pulled the lever and all these co2 cartridges exploded this big life raft and and all the kids were out there playing and one of them said pastor doug there's a bump in the middle of the raft and i went and i said well let me get that out we don't want you to get hurt and i i opened up the bump and it was the survival gear and i took it ashore and i just curious so i'm pulling it apart i thought what do they put on these planes in the life rafts to help you survive if you get crash land in the ocean well they had a patch kit for the rafts because the ladies jump off the plane with high heels i guess and they um they had like fishing gear they had water distilling they had first aid they had vitamins and i couldn't believe it when i felt the square package and i pulled it out they had a bible somewhere they discovered that the bible helps people stay alive in emergencies friends there's a storm coming and we need the word of god how can this new heart and this new spirit happen do you want to have that experience friends it says in second corinthians 10 verse 5 oh taste and see that the lord is good blessed is the man who trusts in him friends heaven and earth is going to pass away but god says my word will not pass away can you say amen and i'm telling you from personal experience over 40 years ago i was living up in the mountains in a cave running around like a maniac using drugs naked eating out of garbage cans and stealing i was a big zero and i finally picked up and started reading a bible somebody left in my cave and it completely transformed my life and so you'll never convince me that the word of god does not have supernatural power if i should start neglecting the word of god i'd lose the power if you want to see a renewal and a revival and a reformation among god's people we need to read our bibles you say amen to that friends how many of you would like to say before we close this presentation by god's grace i want to spend time in his word i believe his word is spirit and life i want to hide his word in my heart and have a renewal if you want to have a revival it's not that far away open the book and read his word can i pray to you for that purpose friends father in heaven lord tonight as we come together for this special series we long to have revival in our hearts and lord i pray that you will be with each of the people who are here those who are watching that we might take advantage of the wonderful gift that you've given us in your word a gift that has come to us an incredible sacrifice i pray lord if there's anything in the in our lives that's creating background noise so that we're neglecting our relationship with you you'll help us to identify that and help us to have a revival and a renewal in our experience help us to put away the things that are distracting us from listening to the voice of jesus and i pray that we might all experience a revival and a new birth bless your people lord bless your church we know jesus is coming soon and we want to be ready we thank you and we pray all of this in jesus name amen

Channel: 11:11 Ministries

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Id: KKqTKI17Hb8

Length: 47min 52sec (2872 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021