 So glad today that I'm a defiantly inspired preacher. Amen. I preach by the inspiration of God Amen dive into the Bible with the scuba girl the Holy Ghost and see the treasures of God See what the things of God by inspiration put those scriptures together and make them harmonized No, it's a garden. Oh scripture Oh Whatever that scripture is have you whether's Genesis the vinegar's numbers the Maccabees? Cheshire, I don't get what it was It's given by inspiration of God Someone wrote me and said well, how do you know that the so-called apocrypha is it right? I don't see where That in nowhere in the Old Testament or in the New Testament I don't see where the old in the New Testament talk about any of those books I don't see where the Old Testament talk about the book of Philemon. Hey, man, but you read it I don't see where the Old Testament mentioned the book of Philippians, but you read it The Old Testament doesn't mention the book of Romans. Uh-huh, but you read it. Do you see what I'm telling you? Let's go. Why? Oh Strip is given by it. How do you go to take on? Oh scripture God we gonna have a look at what God told Ezekiel eat the whole roll They are not inspired scripture these books were not accepted as canonical scripture by the Jews To whom the oracles of God had been committed as the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 3 verse 2 They were not a part of the books laid up in the temple and considered holy in Palestine or anywhere else for that matter the books themselves Refute the claim of their own canonical standing either by containing clear and irreconcilable contradictions and historical errors or By themselves making reference to the already closed canon of the Old Testament Likewise the Lord Jesus and the Apostles though surely aware as we have seen of these books And their contents never once cite them with the authoritative phrases It is written thus sayeth the Lord all the phrases that are used to identify scripture, which they do with the Old Testament books There will always be those people who think or who would say that there are books missing from the Bible That there are books that for whatever reason through some sort of conspiracy through maybe the Catholic Church Through Constantine or whomever that these books were taken out So the question is is that true? Well, the answer is no, it's not true though There are books that may have some meanings some importance that have some value that may even be esteemed highly Does not mean that they are qualified to be part of the canon All the books of the Bible all the canonical books Those in the Old Testament and the New Testament that make up the 66 but what we call the 66 books They are either from prophetic or apostolic authority or under the guise or hands up an apostolic authority The Bible is not the only thing that was ever written. It's not the only thing that's ever written about God But the Old Testament has been in place since long before Jesus came So we had the Old Testament canon canon since long before Jesus came And the Apocrypha was not part of the Old Testament canon Long before Jesus came it wasn't recognized as part of the canon and then New Testament Was received early on By the church mainly because of apostolic authority or connection to apostolic authority And so none of the books that don't make the cut so to speak the 66 books Belong in the Bible now there will be some that are gonna come back and say no I disagree so on and so forth But you shouldn't have this issue amongst anyone with any serious scholarship certainly from any pastor Who is spending time supposedly spending time in the word and where we derive our faith and belief in? Christ from However, there is such a man Who does have a pretty large following? Who holds to this belief that there are more than 66 books in the Bible that the books of Jasher and the book of Enoch for example belong in the Bible of Jasher I Thought it was a lost book like the keys of Solomon and ain't lost we got it Now when you listen to his arguments arguments this doesn't really hold up jumped on pastor Jennings Because I've preached from the book of Jasher right and he said I should leave the book of Jasher alone And his reasons was he said because there is some inconsistencies with birth dates and numbers and He said well if if Jasher was inspired of God Then they wouldn't be no type of tap type of graphical eras or things like that And then he went as far as saying there is no Different dates of events or men birth dates nowhere in the 66 books He said if you read the 66 books, they all will coincide with birth dates and things like that Are you sure the book of Samuel made reference to the book of Jasher not me That was written for I was born. That's right You can't blame me for the book of Jasher, that's right You can't blame me for the contents of a book. That's right. All I can do is make reference to the book Now here's his problem when he refers to to Jasher one We won't get into any sort of discrepancies that he wants to try to equate with some of the books in the Old Testament they may have there may have some sort of Copious errors Such as you'll find in 1st and 2nd Samuel 1st and 2nd Chronicles and so forth where there might be some numerical discrepancies I'll talk about that in a second, but the big issue with the book of Jasher is that No one has ever seen it. Where where is it? Why isn't that book in the Bible? I mean after all we have copies of it, right? You can get on the internet and you can get this book of Jasher or Josh Sure, you can get it. You can you read it. Why isn't it in the Bible? Because doesn't exist today Whatever book was being quoted from in Josh or Samuel. We don't have it. You say no, no, no I don't that is not that book that is something written centuries later a Forgery claiming to be that book It is not the biblical book of Jasher the reason that book is not in the Bible is because that book is not Extent it did exist. It was a book in the ancient world All right, the only way we know about it is because the Bible mentions it We don't have any we don't have a scrap. We don't have a reference We don't have a fragment. We don't have inscription on a stone We don't have something from Dead Sea Scrolls. It gets us back to it. We simply do not have it The the book that exists calling self. Yasha is a known later forgery And so what dr. Brown is talking about is that when he says excellent We don't have any surviving copies. We don't have a manuscript. We don't have a paparazzi We don't have a fragment. We don't have any inscriptions We don't have anything that tells us that this book is actually in existence There just is none now will there be some sort of discovery soon who knows but at present No, which tells us that so far God has preserved his word and over these thousands of years We haven't had any new discoveries that give us reason to believe that there are any new books or books that Like this one that should be included now the other thing about the book of Jasher is this One we're not even sure if it was actually a physical book. There is some question about that But let's just say that there is since we don't have the actual copy of the book and again It's not stated that the book should be Mentioned as or put alongside of the rest of scripture But what what he's talking about and what he's quoting from and what he refers to is this Late written book from either the 16th or the 17th century that is clearly bogus that is clearly false You won't find any legitimate scholarship Any scholars that will say that this book is a legitimate book But it would take him to go and quote that book or to make or elevate that book to the same level of scriptures We'll talk about why in a second, but he also does that with the book of Enoch, but Prophecy I want to give you boys homework that's yelling about the only books on the 66 books. All right. All right Boys that are hollering. That's right. There's only 66 books. I want to give you an excitement. Listen. That's your teacher I ain't got even if you don't preach what we preach. I'm your teacher anyway If the 66 books are the only book Write me back and show me out of the 66 books where you can find the words of that prophecy The one thing that we need to remember is that the people that Actually contribute to the writing of the Bible weren't the only people that ever wrote there were writings before there were Letters sent out to people there were wedding invitations. There were deeds of sales There are all these different things and so because we find a writing does not mean that that writing ought to be in the Bible Now, how do we know that the ones that we have are the ones that should be there and that there are no books missing? What about other books? How do we know that we have all the books that we should? Because God preserved his word That's how we know because God preserved his word And there's nothing lacking in what we have do we believe that we have these Thousands of manuscripts and portions of manuscripts and that and then you know New Testament times, you know The the early church received these these these documents, you know received these epistles received these letters received these Gospels and that somehow in the midst of all of this with all of these documents being written by hand and spread out all over the world that we collected up one stream of them and burned them all I Mean is that really what we've come to believe? First of all, why? Why? Because guess what there are other things out there like I told you the Acts of Paul and Tecla the gospel of Thomas and these other things The these other these other types of writings. They're out there So evidently this this burning business wasn't too successful, right because there's stuff there That's out there. The other thing is we know where they come from We know what kind of literature they are so to think that God cannot and has not and did not preserve his word Well, then if that is the case and what would what would what would be your reason for thinking that what we do have is Authentic or that any other book that we can think of should also be included the the gospel of Thomas the gospel of Mary all these Other books that we know for a fact that we know for sure that aren't part of the canon What's to stop anyone else from putting those in there? What's to stop anyone else from saying that these books absolutely belong Trying to prove that the book of Jasher belongs it takes a sophomore argument to do so Now the book of Enoch a little bit different because we do have the writings of the book of Enoch though No one no scholar actually believes that it came from the hand of Enoch But it is addressed it is quoted in Jude Verse 14 so let's look at it It was also about these that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying behold the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy one Yes, there were some early church leaders that highly regarded Enoch and even regarded the scripture But it's the same with other books like the epistle of Barnabas. There were other ancient books So the shepherd of Hermes there were certain things that were highly esteemed and some even thought should be on the level of scripture But ultimately the consensus of the body was that this was not Inspired and here's the long and short of it with Enoch There are passages in it that could be of scriptural worthiness But other passages that would not be that would seem to be more visionary speculation or simply not on the par with scripture and even though Jude quotes Enoch he doesn't quote it as scripture as it is written because the New Testament even quotes pagan poets So the fact that it's quoted does not in and of itself make it scripture now So piggybacking off what he said a couple things ought to be remembered One it is a later writing the book of Enoch after the close of the Old Testament canon But also before the New Testament canon and it should be noted that the book of Enoch is a book that you can Angling from that you can get some understanding from and remember that just because a book is important or you can find some value from it Does not necessarily mean that that book ought to be in the canon There are a lot of great writings, but don't deserve the honor of being part of God's inspired word a book can be important And useful such as first or second Maccabees But still not be canonical and just because some other book outside of the Bible or writer is quoted does not mean that Bible or that book should be part of the Bible Paul quotes in Titus Epiminities, but that doesn't mean that we should go and read the book that writing Because it's not an accurate book. It's not an accurate depiction. It does not give us biblical truth Something can state a truth, but not be fully truthful or trustworthy So in this case evidently there was a prophecy of Enoch about these men, which is why Jude repeats this prophecy But it doesn't mean that the entire book or the entire writing belongs in the Bible And again what the writer does not do is equate this as Scripture The way that the Bible in the New Testament would equate other Old Testament writings as Scripture Now here is the bigger issue the issue that I find absolutely Ironic and just really comical. Do you know Jennings does not value Hebrew or Greek? You can't come face the truth of God with Hebrew, Greek and Latin Only thing work here is Bible Bible work here Yo Hebrew, Greek and Latin is good But brother It don't help you here And there's a reason why because as he stated he didn't he hasn't studied theology. He didn't study in these these deeper Discipline is to get a better understanding of the scriptures, which could have helped especially learning Hebrew and Greek and learning systematic theology Explain how I know what I know How is it that I'm able to go into the scripture to strip them down? That's right As using fractions break them down to the lowest common denominator. That's right My divine skill was godly given. I didn't go to no seminary school never took no Bible course and never studied theology Never never. I didn't go to no seminary school never took no Bible course and never studied theology Amen, never why and what's the danger? Well, the danger is you discount You dull or nullify the effectiveness of the gospel of the book Because if you start impugning the book as though there are parts missing Well, then that means is this book is not totally trustworthy And who knows the word of God better than the Bible well Than you do and that's the other part because if you demean and you Discount the Bible in certain areas what has to happen is you are naturally Inflating your view especially in front of your own followers your view of yourself And so they look at you even more so because they believe that you have the truth of God But if you're gonna call your church and your organization the truth of God but you discount the truth of God as in his Bible and Impunet by saying that there are missing books in other words that the book is incomplete Well, then you don't have the truth of God neither do we and so to think that God is not a God Who can sustain his word preserve his word keep his message so that we can have it and that not be accepted by all of Christendom There's a huge problem. What the Catholic Church? Had tried had tried to get rid of that's right. The question is why did they try to get rid of it? So to make that argument It's a soft mark argument that the Pope or Constantine had anything to do it You do realize guys that the Canon was closed long before Constantine was born Long before there was a Pope and so the Catholic Church had nothing to do with the books that we have the Catholic Church Does have the apocryphal books that were that came in and at the Council of Trent. However, we're not speaking about those We're speaking in his case about the book of E knock in the book of jasher Those books that issue was it was was was long settled before there was the Catholic Church of Pope or Constantine And so I would just caution anyone that if there's someone saying that there are extra books or there are books missing and who Gives us any sort of reason to distrust the Bible Then that person ought to be avoided. Amen