Transcript

(Jeju Leadership) Morning! You're so happy here this morning because you took the first turn exam. Woo! Yay! You're in for a real treat this week. Dr. John Barnett is here, and he's here with his wife Bonnie. And they are a real blessing. It's been wonderful to have them. I don't have any other words. This is like number four, four times they've come and shared, and we are blessed with them for two weeks. He's suffering a little bit from a cold, so we've got them wired up, so he doesn't have to speak so strong or loud. And he has a wonderful pastoral ministry. We knew them in Tulsa, Oklahoma and now in Michigan near Lansing, Michigan. And so, pastoral ministry. But also really, he's been a pastor to pastors. There are many pastors and that, he'll explain to you. They have a great online website with resources. So, not only do you get classes this week and next week, but you'll have resources on the whole Bible that you'll be able to use over and over and over again to be able to use.

But, I would just encourage you, as you're learning, and you hear things this week. You're going to, it'll stretch your mind. You'll be thinking about all kinds of questions, and there's nothing more they love doing than over a meal to sit down and just talk, and spend time. And Bonnie when they're here together, besides the teaching ministry, just their life on campus and how they relate to each other and to you guys has as much impact as the class itself. I just really want to encourage you, don't unplug. Plug in and really enjoy, and you're going to be blessed. Especially with Leviticus and Hebrews, those two were put together not by accident. They go together on purpose, and you'll find this class really prepares you for next week and how that all fits together.

But, let's begin with a word of prayer, and welcome John and Bonnie Barnett. Oh Lord God, how we thank You that we can take time to just focus on Your word and to really learn. Lord, we pray that you would open up this book and the concepts of all the things involved in the book of Leviticus and Hebrews. Lord, I pray that You would make them, help us to see the importance in our personal lives. And that You would prepare us what You have for our future. God, You know years from now where we will be and people we will be leading, and things will be doing. I pray that this would just be foundational, and You would use this, first to change our hearts and lives and to think the thoughts to match Yours. And then Lord that we would be able to use our lives effectively for Your service. So we thank you for John, please give him strength this week and for his voice as he speaks and that your Holy Spirit would speak through the classes to us. We pray, in Jesus name. Amen.

(Dr. John Barnett) Steve is a great blessing, and Rhonda. I'll never forget the first time I saw him. It was at the World, whatever it's called at Schroon Lake. And he was sitting over, as I was speaking, over there on the left. I can still see him. He was the busiest person I'd ever seen. Every time there wasn't something going on, he was on his laptop working. And much like you, he's like a big teenager, electronically. And it is such a blessing to meet him and to see his enthusiasm for what the Lord is doing here. I feel very much like Paul in 1 Corinthians 2. He said, I was with you in weakness and much trembling. And I didn't come with excellency of speech, so I'm going to probably be very subdued to my normal self, because I feel sick.

You probably couldn't tell that, you probably thought I was always this way, but I'm usually very excited. But I'm going to do my best to keep you awake. Because I was a professor for many years. I do terrible things. When I was in Latin class as a student, our professor taught Latin so, so many times he's taught it. He could teach with his eyes closed. We went through all of the translations of Julius Caesar. He knew every Latin. He could translate it with his eyes closed. It was unbelievable to see him. And so he would, he had a seat like that. He'd lean and he'd lecture with his eyes closed. And after a while, guess what would happen? He would fall asleep every time I noticed that I had gotten the class's attention and I'd say, and so we would all pick up our chairs, just like these, our desk and turn and face this way. And so, he would wake up and he'd see us, and he'd be confused. And he would move his podium to the other side of the room, and his own chair, and he would drag it, and he'd keep going. And he'd fall asleep. And I'd go, And we would do that three and four times a class. And did you know I finally stopped. I felt It was like when the Bible says, don't put an obstacle in front of a blind person. He didn't know we were doing that. He just moved back and forth. And so, I stopped.

Another thing, I'll tell you one more thing. When I taught at the Massachusetts Seminary, many of the men there came to seminary with wives and children, they worked full-time jobs and were full-time students. So, they worked all night long and would come to my class. I had the first hour 8:00 AM seminary, historical theology. Which is very boring for some people. And they had worked all night, and they would be drinking coffee and trying to have their eyes wide open. And sooner or later one would collapse into sleep. And I had made a deal with the class, and I make the same deal with you. If the person next to you falls asleep, just tap them and say, he asked you to close in prayer.

I would be speaking along and all of a sudden somewhere in the room, a man would stand up and say, Lord, we're so thankful for this class. It's been such a blessing to my life. Everyone would laugh. And they realize they've been caught. So, you have permission to do that.

But okay, let's do the Book of Leviticus. You have your syllabus. We're going to cover pages 1 through 6. On your calendars, the two quizzes aren't listed. The first one is of course, by 9 a. m. on what day is that? Thursday? So, make sure you do quiz 1, 9 a. m. Thursday. When is quiz 1? 9 a. m. Thursday. On your sheet, make sure you make a note, because this is one fourth of your grade. Understand that? It's a big event. So, on Thursday at 9 a. m. is quiz what? One. Ichi. Ichi. On the other side of the sheet. Yeah, I speak Japanese, so don't be watching me. Right? Quiz ichi is Thursday when? 9am. Okay, and the second one is on Friday at 8 o'clock. That's quiz 2, that's Leviticus 9. The 7th hour is quiz 1, the 9th hour is quiz 2. Those two will constitute half of your grade.

When you study the Book of Leviticus, how many of you actually own a paper Bible? One like this. You actually have one? Do you all have one with you in school? Okay. For the third hour today, we're actually going to use the paper Bible. And there are not notes in your blue stack, because I'm going to encourage you to underline and mark stuff in your Bible. Now, here's why it's important. For your quiz, you're allowed to have your paper Bible with you. Because I'm going to allow you to exactly use what you wrote in your Bible. Because that's my goal for you, to connect the truth with the passages in the Bible that you have. Your actual copy of God's Word. And I'm going to show you what I mean by that.

And the reason that's so valuable is, I've been around prior to the electronic world and since the electronic world. My first computer in 1984, none of you were even alive in 84, were you? Okay, you were alive, you were in diapers. But the rest of you were not, your parents probably weren't even married yet. But in 1984, my first computer was this big, actually this big. And it only held 10 megabytes. All it was, was a heavy, tiny screen, green typewriter that did nothing except make you have a headache. We thought it was the greatest thing in the world because you could erase things without whiteout. Whiteout was paint that you painted onto paper when you type things, and it was wrong. You would paint it over with white. We thought it was so exciting to type and erase without painting. And so that was my first computer, that big. And you can imagine, that was a portable computer. We carried that around with us. And it was hilarious. But, what I've seen is, because being in seminary, master's seminary, downtown seminary, many young people today are disconnected from a paper copy of the Bible. And the reason I believe that's important is this.

Can you see there's colors in writing? Now watch. Do you see any colored writing on that page? You see? Is there any on this page? Did you know, whenever I'm looking for any verse in the Bible, everything I've ever underlined or colored or written, as I'm going by it, I'm seeing it. But on my electronic Bible, When I type in 1 Corinthians 2, it opens right there. What do I not experience? The writing. The way our minds are wired is, if you see something that you previously wrote, thought about, remembered from some other message or something, and your eyes go over it, your synaptic connections, the brain connections, bring that back just by a glance. That's what we've lost with the electronic world. There is no reminiscence, remembering of past things you've learned. And I've seen that with the seminary students that I teach nowadays. They only are studying the passage they are at. And as they go between them there's no stimulation of what they've already learned. In Hour 3, if I ever get to it, if I don't stop talking, we'll never get there. But in Hour 3, I'm going to show you the power of reminiscence, because what I'm going to teach you in Hour 3 is what you're going to see on both quizzes. So, I'm actually giving you the answers to both quizzes, and you get to write them in your Bible. Is that simple? Is that fair? Okay, you better believe that.

Okay, let's go through Leviticus. What we're doing in this hour is we're going to look at why we should study Leviticus. First of all, we believe in the doctrine of Inspiration. I know Word of Life well enough, and because we believe in the doctrine of Inspiration, in this first class we're going to look at God, inspiration, His Word, the Bible, and how God has revealed what's most important to us.

Now, there are two elements of inspiration. All of you know this. How many of you have ever seen a red letter Bible? Okay what does a red letter Bible mean? All the words of whom are in red? Jesus. So, you understand what I mean by red letter Bible. In the Gospels, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Bible printers type the words Jesus said in red. You understand what I mean? How many of you don't understand what I mean? Do you have red letters in Japan? Do they use red letter Bibles? How about Taiwan, Korea? In Korea you have it. Does that mean the red letters are more important than the non-red letters? No. All of it is the Bible. See? All of it is the inspired word of God, but some of them don't come through the scripture authors, they're actually only directly what Jesus said.

Now, why am I telling you this? Because Leviticus up here, almost every single word of the book of Leviticus was not what Moses said. See, through the life of the author, Paul talked about, and Matthew talked about life inspired by God. It was the word of God. But it was inspired through the life of the author and became the word. But some parts of the Bible are like the red letters. Every part of Leviticus, it's almost the most completely dictated part of the Bible.

For inspiration, let me explain to you a little bit about inspiration, okay? So, this is where we're going, this is the whole week I am together with you. Why I'm teaching this is, my prayer for each of you, is that you'll get an A, and that you will learn something. And it's this, that God, and this is what I prayed for you, this is what I prayed this morning. By the way, guess what time I woke up? 2:30am. I've already been up for seven hours. I'm quite excited getting ready for this class.

 So, I've been praying that God would stir in you a deep and abiding love for Jesus Christ.

The book of Leviticus completely portrays what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross in ways that will astound you. In fact, the book of Leviticus, how many of you have read it? All of it? High. Go high. Let this keep you awake when you move your hands up. How many of you are going to read it because it is on the assignment sheet. Okay. The rest of you, how many of you would say it's a little hard to read? All this cutting open animals and taking out their intestines and burning their hides, it's really gross. How about all the skin diseases that they scrape off on their bodies and they're dying of these diseases. The book is very hard to read. It really is. But, it's the most beautiful picture of Jesus Christ, maybe in the whole Bible, and I'll show you what I mean by that. What I hope happens is that you get this deep and abiding love for Christ that can only be satisfied by spending time with Him and His word.

Okay, this is my wonderful wife. I'll point at her, right there. Now, some people, it says in the book of Hebrews, get to live with angels. It actually says that in the Bible. You all know it says that in Hebrews 13, that be careful how you treat people because sometimes people that come into your life are angels. That's Hebrews 13, if you're reading it yourself. At night, I actually do this, when I wake up at night, when I woke up at 2:30 am this morning, I real cautiously went and looked over at Bonnie to see if her wings were out, like angels have. And they're never out, but I know she's an angel. Okay, so that's my wife. And by the way, that's my email address, and if you ever want to email me, I'd love to hear from you.

This is our family. We have eight children. Eight wonderful children. This is my wife, not one of my children. She looks like one of my children. I'll just go through order. This is my oldest son, Johnny and his wife Rebecca. And Johnny is the creativity director at Facebook, if you've ever been on Facebook. He's amazing. He also invented, have any of you ever used, what's his app called? Boomerang. He invented that. You ever used Boomerang? How many of you know what Boomerang is? Yeah. So that's an example. He was with Instagram and now with Facebook.

This is my daughter, Estelle, and she's a Christian school teacher in Honduras. She started a missionary school. She has 100 students. Half of their students are rescued from trafficking. In Central America little girls at about age 10 are taken into prostitution unless they're enrolled in school. So, in the jungle, she's enrolled a hundred of these students and they wear this little school uniform, like you're supposed to wear in proper school. And the traffickers don't touch 'em because they know they belong to the government schools. And so, it is a way of rescuing kids by immersing them in English and putting them in school and sharing the Gospel with him. This is my son Elisha. He's a videographer. He's also much into movies and making photography. This is Elizabeth, my youngest. This is my son right here. James works at the Denver City Rescue Mission. His building alone has 3,000 homeless people every day that they get to share the Gospel with. In America, I don't know where you come from, but in America, many people live on the streets. In Denver, just his one building, there are nine buildings in Denver, his building has 3,000 homeless people that he might be the only one that shares Christ with them. My daughter Julia here, is a hospital administrator in Honduras. My son Joseph is a missionary surgeon, and my son Jeremiah is at UCLA, Los Angeles, wants to be in international law. All of them know the Lord and love the Lord.

This is Bonnie and I. We've both been saved over 40 years. How many of you are born again Christians? Saved. You're saved? Raise your hand. Good. You know the Lord? Good. We've known the Lord 40 years. Longer than all of you have been alive. It's amazing. Bonnie's testimony is such a blessing. I was born in a Christian home, and they led me to the Lord. Bonnie was not. And she lived the way everyone lives without price until someone started sharing the Gospel with her and giving her Gospel tracts. And at age 21, she came to know the Lord. We've been serving in ministry, and I put little dots there to show you all the places. Right now we're in Michigan, that's this part of America. Prior to that, we were in Oklahoma. Prior to that we were in Rhode Island, right there. Prior to that, I was a seminary professor and a pastor with John MacArthur at the Master's Seminary College. Prior to that, I was going to school in South Carolina, pastored there, headed to Georgia here, and also went to school at Dallas. I went to Bob Jones University there, Michigan State University there, Dallas Theological Seminary there, and the Master's Seminary there. So, I pastored five congregations. Bonnie and I have traveled to, just like we're doing right now, to 60 different countries. You can hear me talk about that. We've been through a lot of changes.

When I started ministry, there was an Iron Curtain, the Soviet Union. And we used to take Bibles behind the Iron Curtain. Thousands of them for the believers. And for me, it was my joy to present to someone the first copy of the Bible they ever held in their life, because the government didn't allow Bibles. We would take them in and deliver them to the people. Which is a fascinating thing to do.

For any of you that have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn page, a Twitter page, an Amazon page, a Pinterest. I have probably 1,200 videos on YouTube and Vimeo. And they're all just my name, all those things, if you like electronic stuff. Okay, now, here we go. What time is this class over? 15 minutes. 9:50 am.

Okay, here we go. We got a lot to cover. Why should we believe our Bible is true? If you're at the Word of Life Bible Institute, you're here because you must believe there's value in there. But how can you defend why the Bible is true? And that's called apologetics. How to defend what we should believe about inerrancy. The word inerrancy right here. Means that the Bible is absolutely breathed out by God through instruments, human instruments, and it comes out as the very Word of God. Now, you've heard that all your life, and you've heard, you've been told that. How can you defend that to someone who doesn't believe it? See that's what we all are in training to do, and I know you've probably already had a doctrine of inspiration class, but we need to trust the God in the Bible, and that's really the beginning.

By the way, all this is written down, you don't have to take any notes unless I say something that you want to ask a question about. And if you want to ask a question you can just raise your hand if I said something too fast, or if I am not clear. I would love to pause and, just get my attention. And I will answer your questions. But my question to you is, do you really trust God's Word enough to defend it, when people ask you why you believe what you believe?

First of all, this is what the Bible presents as the scope of human history. God created everything from nothing, it actually says that. So that, the things which are made were not made of things which do appear. Sometime after that, Adam and Eve fell into sin. Sometime after that God killed every single human on Earth, except for eight. And there's a Chinese character that's a boat with eight little figures on it, which is amazing that in every culture of the world there is a flood myth back there somewhere. It's captured right into the Chinese language. And it's captured in the literature of the whole world, because this was a global event right here. God killed everyone, except for Noah, his three sons, and their wives and Noah's wife. Then, Abraham, the Exodus, David, the Exile, the Church, and here's even Israel becoming a nation again.

The book of Genesis covers all the way from nothing, all the way through the end of Joseph's life. And then all of the nation of Israel from the time of Moses all the way through the destruction of Jerusalem is what we find the scriptures are centered around. And you don't have to, that's just to give you a framework.

But why should we trust the Bible? Because the Bible is the revelation of all that God wants us to know about everything we need to know. The Bible is not comprehensive, it's not Google. It's not Wikipedia. It's everything, now think about this, everything God wants us to know.

Okay, here's a quick question. How many of you have been saved more than one year? Raise your hand. Okay, now put your hands down. How many of you have read the Bible more than one time? Raise your hand. Good. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Let me ask you this, how long does it take to read the whole Bible? Guess, someone guess. 72 hours. That is correct. Is it really? Exactly. You are a genius. But only for a 6th grader reading out loud. For a 6th grader, which would be what, a 12 year old? To read out loud. To hold the Book and read it out loud, not stopping, just continuously reading at a 6th grade level. 72 hours. That's all it takes to read the Bible. How long does one soccer game last? How many? Three hours. How many hours can you play a video game? Oh, who's an expert? Who are you pointing at? What's a normal video game? Playing time for normal people? I usually play three or four hours. Three or four hours. Now in your mind, think about that. God says, all that God wants us to know about everything we need to know is in the Bible. It only takes 72 hours to touch on all of it.

Yeah, I know people that know every word to, I don't even know their names. Amy's somebody, and Miley's somebody, and Justin's somebody, you know all the, who's the most popular now? Selena? Or who? Yeah, yeah, of the pop singers. Who? Justin Timberlake. I know people that know every word. When it plays, you see their mouth going. They know the words to those songs. They do not know all that God wants us to know about everything we need to know. Because they spend more time listening to Justin than to God, to be honest. You know, they do. Remember, if God hasn't revealed in His word, it's either a secret, or it's not important. And so, He really focuses on what we need to know. So, the more of God's Word we trust, the more you know about all the really matters in life. So, that's why we trust the Bible. I want to know what God says and I've spent my life reading His Word.

In fact, I was, how many of you are nineteen? Anybody nineteen? Nineteen? Look, the only nineteen year old. When I was your age Wait a minute, which one are you? You're not on this chart. Me? I'm across from Cynthia. So, you're John? Yes, sir. Okay, when I was your age, I'd only read the Bible through once in my whole life, and I was sitting like you in Bible school. A professor got up, and he was about, he was even older than me. I'm old, he was really old. And when he taught the Bible, I, at the other class, I said, I've never heard anybody teach like you before. And he walked over to me and he said, son, when you've read the Bible for at least once for every year you are old, you'll be able to teach the Bible like I do.

I said how old are you? He says, 80. And he said, I've read the Bible more than 80 times. And I was 19. I had read it once for $100, someone paid me. They said, if you read the whole Bible, we'll give you $100 to go to camp. Christian camp. So, I did. I read the whole Bible in 72 hours to go to camp. I don't remember anything, I just did it. And I was sitting in Bible school to teach the Bible the rest of my life, and I've only read the Bible once. That man challenged me. He said, if you want to affect, if you want to know the Bible, and communicate the Bible, you've got to master the Bible, and it has to become more important than all other information coming into your life. So, I decided I would start reading the Bible through once a month. How long does it take? 72 hours. So out of 30 days, I only needed 2 hours and 20 minutes a day. I had 2 hours and 20 minutes. I used to do everything you guys do. Just waste time and hang out and listen to music and do all kinds of stuff. And I found out if I got rid of a lot of that, I had 2 hours plus every day that was not assigned to work or school or eating. And I started reading the Bible through once a month, and I did that for two years. And when I was 21 years old, I read the Bible 24 times. And I've never stopped since then. Because I want to know everything God wants me to know about what's important in life.

If you look at John 17:17, the first reason you need to trust God's word is, it says this happens to you. And you don't have to turn there, I'll just read it to you. Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth. God says His word is truth, and only that can sanctify us. What does sanctification mean? It means to make us useful to God. The bottom line is this. We have a choice every day of either being useful to God or not. Every day. That's all that matters. Did you know at the judgment seat of Christ, standing in front of Jesus, do you know what He's going to measure? How much our life was useful to him.

It doesn't mean you have to be a missionary. It doesn't mean you have to be a pastor. You don't have to come and lecture in Korea. It's just being useful to God. My father built cars for General Motors for 46 years. He stayed in the same building, he worked on the same line, he did almost the same job for almost 50 years. Yet, every time they gave him a break at the auto company, he rushed to the table, opened his lunchbox, pulled out his Bible, studied it, and men would come and sit with him. And they'd say, why are you reading the Bible? And he would find out that those men were alcoholics, divorcing their wives, addicted to drugs, or pornography, and they'd say to him, you're so different. And he would sit in that factory and touch people's lives. No one else could get near. None of those people went to church, none of them. But by him being useful to God, he was able to reach a group of people nobody else ever got to. Because he was in the Word, and the Word sanctifies us, and makes us useful to God.

God says our walk can only begin with a settled conviction of the truthfulness of the Bible. That's what it says in Romans 10:17. The Bible says what it means, and it means what it says.

So, here are seven reasons. This is how I defend why the Bible is true. Number one, the most important, and if you don't get the other six, this is really the most important one. How do we know the Bible is inspired? One reason, Jesus said it was. Jesus believed this book was the very word of God. He believed that the Old Testament, every bit of it was inspired. He called the Old Testament scripture. And so, He believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. He actually, He believed that every one of God's words were inspired by the Holy Spirit. He says in Matthew 5, and every word was without error. Therefore, Jesus believed this. Jesus affirmed, that nothing the Bible says about science, history, or moral areas are wrong. Everything the Bible says about science, or history, or morals, Jesus said it's true. Now think about that. That's what inerrancy means.

So, what did Jesus do? He affirmed that Adam and Eve were real. He affirmed Noah was a part of a global catastrophe. He said everything was destroyed. Jesus believed that. It isn't just because Sunday school teachers say that. Jesus believed that. Jesus believed Abraham was a person. I remember once I was called, when I was in one church, I had just moved there, and I was unloading my books. I have 5, 000 commentaries on the Bible. I love books, and it fills a room. I was putting them on a shelf, and the phone rang. And my secretary said, it's the local radio station. The talk show man has to ask you a question. You're the new pastor in town. I said, Okay. And it was a town with a million people, and it was a most listened to program. So, in that moment, I was talking to more people than I would ever talk to in my life, because for that moment, the number one radio talk show host of Tulsa, Oklahoma had me on the air, and I didn't know what he had done. I was a conservative Bible believing pastor, and he had on the phone all of the mainline denominations who don't believe the Bible, who don't believe in inspiration, who don't believe in the deity of Christ. United Methodists, and all the Unitarians, and all those things. They were already on there, and they called me, because he asked them a question. All those other pastors on the radio, he said, how do we know? How do we know that Noah, Adam and Eve, and Abraham are literal? In fact, he said, no one before David is for sure a historic person. And all the pastors agreed with that, with him. They all said the Bible isn't true, those are all just stories and there's no way to prove it's true.

He called me. I said, hello. He said, you're on the air, pastor. And he says, there are five other pastors with me, and this is lunch hour, and all of Tulsa's listening. And he said, we only have one question for you. How do you know that Adam, and Eve, and Noah, and Abraham, and Abel, and David are literal people? I said, why I know they are literal because the Bible says so. He said, give me a better answer than that. He said, tell me why you believe Adam, and Eve, and Noah, and Abraham, and David are literal people. I said, because Jesus did. And there was a long pause in the radio. And he said, we'll be right back after this break because Pastor Barnett's going to keep talking. No one's ever answered my question before. He said, get your Bibles ready, he's going to show us. And for the next 20 minutes, it was fascinating. He said, what else did Jesus believe? And I took him through. I showed him what it says. And so, I believe the Bible is truly God's Word because not only did Jesus say so, all the writers said so.

There's a harmony of conviction. All of the writers were totally convinced the Bible's true. Look what David said, The Spirit of the Lord spoke by me. David said that God came through his life, spoke by him, and made the Word of God. Now the best illustration I can give of what inspiration is like are these windows. If I put red, clear paper over the windows, and the sun was shining outside, the sunlight would purely come through the window, but what would it pick up? Red color. Is it still pure light? Is the light any less pure when it comes through red colored plastic on the windows? Is it still light? Yes. Is it pure sunlight? Yes. What did it pick up? The color. If you go into fancy churches that have stained glass windows, and the sunlight comes through the window, is it sunlight outside the building? Mm hmm. Is it sunlight inside the building? Mm hmm. What's the difference? It came through the glass and picked up the color. When God used 40 people to write the scriptures, 40 men, every one of them, it picked up the color of their life.

If you know Greek, Peter didn't like school, we can tell. The Apostle Peter, his writing is atrocious. He uses words that are different, he just wasn't liking school. He was a fisherman. Luke, the book of Luke, Luke is better Greek than almost any Greek writer in history. Better than Homer, better than the Iliad and the Odyssey, better than any famous Greek writer is the Greek of Luke. So, the pure word of God came through the life of the author. And it's still the pure word of God, but it picks up the color. But one thing all of them were convinced of, that it was the Spirit of God.

Two basic discoveries, the Bible has 66 books, penned by 40 authors, over 1,400 years. The more we study the word of God, the more that we see this message is from outside our world. How do I know that? Because nobody on Earth could know what the writer is saying. Let me show you some examples.

The Bible is united and when I say that, what I mean is that most of these men, 40 different men on 3 continents, over 1,600 years, 60 generations, never met each other. In fact, most of the Bible writers never read what the other people wrote. Yet, when you look at it, it's one integrated message. When you read what Moses wrote, it exactly aligns with what all the other writers wrote, even though most will never confer with each other about what they were going to write. It's unified. Every word, every detail, there's one unmistakable fabric woven from prison to palace, desert to jungle, hillside to holy places. It's one common message that God inspired.

Another reason is because of fulfilled prophecy. I love the book of Revelation. I love the prophetic parts of the Bible. Only the Bible has prophecy in it. I hope you realize that. The missing element in every other sacred scripture in the world. The Koran, the Hindu, the Bhagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon, the sayings of Buddha. None of them dare to have prophecy. I don't mean vague prophecies. I mean specifically naming events in the future. That's what God does. He said, I'm staking My existence, that I'm the real God, by this happening in the future. And He said that's my calling card. So, the scriptures tell us, as in Isaiah 41:21, present your case, says the Lord. Bring forth your strong reasons, says the King of Jacob. God says, prophecy proves that I'm God. And if I was teaching prophetic literature, I'd show you a lot of them.

Here's another one. Because the Bible is scientifically accurate, this is really fun. The last few chapters of Job would be enough to prove the extraterrestrial nature of the Bible. Have you ever read a science book? It's almost funny, what they used to believe about science. Because they didn't have drones, they didn't have satellites, they didn't have cyclotrons, they didn't have computers. But what does the Bible say about science? What God says scientifically is right from the start.

Here's some examples, okay? Astrophysics, you know what it says in Job? Where is the place where white light grows? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof? God says that darkness is not the absence of light. God says darkness and light are two separate entities. Did you know we didn't know that until the 20th century? Dark matter. 99 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter. Right there, that line. 99 percent of the mass of the universe is dark matter. Astrophysicists are saying there's almost like a balance and it's everything is held together by. We don't even know what it is, it's a framework that's out there that's not visible. They call it dark matter. They don't even know what it is.

How about this? Gravity. Job says, can you loose the bands of Orion or bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? You say what's that? Did you know the Pleiades? Anybody know what the Pleiades is? You've never heard of it? A constellation, 7 stars. They're the only stars in the sky you can see that are connected by gravity. There are 7 stars that are close enough that they're held together by a gravitational field. Every other star you see in the universe so far away from the other stars there's no connection. Look what the Bible said in the book of Job. Can you bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Orion's three stars, unexpelled, equally are a gravitationally connected entity. Only God would know that. They didn't even know what stars were hardly back then, the early scientists.

Oceanography, the Book of Job says, again, the springs of the sea. The springs of the sea? The ancients knew about currents on top of the water. There are actually rivers that flow through under the water that are currents that only oceanographers in the 19th and 20th centuries, when they started diving, found. And God knew that and spoke of that.

How about this? Ornithology, that's the study of birds? Does the hawk fly by wisdom and stretch her wings? The migration of birds is unbelievable. A bird can go back to the same place, and they don't even have Google Maps, and they can find it every year. In fact, little birds that are hatched in Louisiana, can find their way all the way to Chile, where they've never been in their life. How do they know that? God built in a system for that.

How about this zoology. How do, there's one type of salmon, 50 million of them get home? They know the exact time to return from their spawning spot as far as 4,000 miles away. They all return every time the same weeks in June and July. That's how the commercial fishermen get them. They only come for those weeks. And every sockeye salmon comes to the same river. No matter where they're left by their parents as eggs in the river. They grow up, flow down the river, go out into the ocean. Some of them go as far as Hawaii. And they come back to that river in Alaska every year. How is that possible? Did they evolve that way? How many of them went to the wrong river? Until they learn to go back to the right one, but you only get one shot to leave your ace. You know what I mean? It's just unbelievable, the migratory ability.

The King of the Universe, our creator, didn't leave us out. We have a compass, we have a compass far exceeding what salmons have, and this right here, God says, I want to show you the path of life. And I'll use My Word for that.

Oh, we only have four minutes, let's go, or we won't ever get through this. Number six, because the Bible's archaeologically verified. Here's a guy, Sir William Ramsey, he was an English skeptic. He didn't believe the Bible, and so he was wealthy and bored, like 18th century people used to be. And he said, I'm going to disprove the Bible. And he says, I'll do it this way, I'm going to take the book of Acts, and I'm going to show you that none of those places in the Book of Acts exist. Now, how many of you have ever heard of the Book of Mormon? Not one geographic place mentioned in the Book of Mormon exists in the world. Not one. There's not one tribe of Indians or geographic location in the Book of Mormon that's legitimate. But what they tell you is, they haven't been discovered yet. What the reality is, it's not true. Ramsey took the Bible, in his day, none of the cities in the book of Acts had been found yet. And so, what he did is, he took Acts 13 and says, Paul got off the boat at this town, and that port is still there, and it says he walked two and a half days, and stopped and taught the Bible. And it names the city. So, what did Ramsey do? He took a boat to that town that we know where it is. He walked the way Paul walked, two and a half days. And he says, okay guys, start digging. Guess what they found? A city called Antiochus Epiphanes. And Antiochus is a town that's named in the Bible after a famous leader, and no one had ever excavated it since it fell into disrepair 2,000 years before. He got so excited, he took the book of Acts and went and found every town. Following how many days it says Paul walked. He found Lystra, he found Derbe, he found Iconium, he found the city of Antioch, he found them all. At the end of that, he became a believer. Because the Bible is historically accurate.

And here's the last reason. Because the Bible has endured through the ages. The Bible sought to be destroyed by more people. From Chairman Mao. All the way down to the early Roman emperors that destroyed all the Bibles. But God has kept it.

Also, the Bible is integrated. I could go through this, but the New Testament is connected to the Old Testament. It's concealed in the Old Testament. It's revealed in the New Testament.

Here's why we study the Bible. It answers these questions. Who am I? Gives us our identity. Why am I here? Our purpose for life. Where did I come from? Our origin. Where am I going when I die? That's my destiny. The central theme of God's Word is that Israel is a nation He picked. Christ came through Israel. The Creator became a man. That's the center of history. Christ died to purchase us. He's alive today. And knowing Him is what life's about.

And so, the whole Bible is built around this. I call it the Scarlet Thread. The seed of the woman, Genesis 3. Abraham called from Ur of the Chaldees, modern day Iraq. The tribe of Judah singled out. The dynasty of David. A virgin in Bethlehem. A tree on which Christ died. Another garden from which He arose.

And there we go, is that it? Well let me give you this, then you can go. It appears we're now being plunged into a period of time about which the Bible says more, than about any other period in history. And that's the future.