 Okay, the recording has started, but I think Collins lost Collins, but anyway, Collins should connect back. Let's take a moment to pray and let's get started. Can somebody please pray with us together. O One Heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord, for this beautiful day, this beautiful morning. Lord, we thank You for gathering each one of us, Lord, by Your mercies and with Your grace, Lord. For as we begin this class, Father God, we pray, Father God, we ask You for Your Spirit of understanding, Lord Spirit of wisdom. Father God, we pray, Father God, that every word that pastor will teach us, Father God, let us hear it and let us grasp it, Father God, and let us understand it, Father God, help us, Father God, to understand every word, Father God, especially Father God, this teaching. Lord God, we give into Your hands, we give our pastor into Your hands, Father God, anoint him this morning, Father God, as He teaches us. Lord, whatever we hear, Father God, help us to apply it in the extension of Your kingdom. In Jesus' mighty name, we pray. Amen. Okay, good morning once again and thank you for connecting to the class. I hope that if anybody's been dropped out, they will connect back and waiting for Collins to connect back. All right, so very quickly, let me just, what we have done so far in our course here is to look at creation and give evidence to, you know, look at creation and see how creation points us to create a God. So we did that in lesson four. Now, I know we've missed a few classes. So what I'm going to do is I'm not going to cover some things in class. I'll just, let me just share this with you. So usually in this part of the course, the initial part of the course, in talking about creation, we also address two important things. One or other, the question of origin, how did everything begin? But we address it from two perspectives. One is how did the universe start? So that is one question, you know, and over here, we talk about the popular theory referred to as the Big Bang. So as far as the scientific community would, you know, teach us and you know, nowadays, this is what is being taught in school and college about the origin of the universe. This is the Big Bang theory. So we would address that because a lot of people just, you know, just believe in that theory without examining it. So we would address that. Then there's also another important theory, which has started schools and colleges, which is having to do with the origin of the species, which is, we refer to that as evolutionary biology. And of course, the main proponent of that was Darwin. So it's often referred to as Darwin's theory. And then from there, there is an extension of ideas of how life came on the planet. So that's another area we would address. Now, again, you know, these are things that are being taught at school and college. And so young people usually learn this and, you know, sometimes they don't question it. They just, you know, they just believe it. And so we address that saying, wait a minute. You know, this isn't what, you know, it's contrary. It's only a theory. It's only an idea, but it's contrary to what the Bible is teaching, but creation, which we tend to step to one and two. You know, it's contrary to that. And so how do we respond to it? So apologetics, you know, how do we give a defense or an explanation for what the Bible is teaching us about creation? In response to the Big Bang theory and also Darwin's theory. Okay. Now, so usually we cover that. Now, what I'm going to do is I won't cover it in class. But what I'll do is not because, you know, we're kind of doing the same teaching in our Sunday services during these few weeks. What I'm going to do is I'm going to give you the full notes and I will link the Sunday sermon to that. And so for three, just for these three lessons, I would request you to go to the notes and also listen to the sermon, which is almost like a lecture. Except that, you know, it's not an interactive lecture, it's a Sunday sermon. But I would request you to do that just for us to catch up on these three lessons, catch up on time. Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it, put the links to it, put the notes and the lecture notes and the links to it in the class section. You can download and just and watch these three videos. This is just because I missed quite a lot of classes in the past few weeks. It'll help us catch up on time. Now, after I do this, if you have any questions, you're welcome to, you know, bring it up in class. If you want me to still explain something, we can do it in class, or you can just send me an email and I'll be happy to, you know, respond to that. So I'm just asking for your cooperation of these three lectures, which I will give you the lecture notes and I will link you to the Sunday sermon video so that you can just take some time to watch it, understand it. Basically, it is how we should respond to these theories that are there. These are science theories, but they are against the Bible. They're against what the Bible is the one and two are teaching that God created everything. So the Big Bang theory, Darwin's theory are opposite to these things and how do we respond to it? Okay. So that's what today we are going to move forward into some skipping those lessons. I would request you to look to the notes and watch the video. Today, we're going to go directly into lesson nine, which is a little change in our secrets of lessons. So the first part of lessons to lesson eight had to do with creation, existence of God, and how did everything come into being. Now we're changing. We're going to go to lesson nine, which the notes I've shared, which has to do with the Bible, the authenticity and accuracy of the Bible. Now, we believe the Bible is God's word. It's inspired by God. The Bible claims that for itself. We will look at the scriptures. But then from a practical side, how did the Bible come to us? And how do we have, you know, like today, many of us have so many different, there are so many different English versions of the Bible. How did these, you know, how did all these versions come about? How do we know that what we are reading in our language in English, most of us are reading in English. How do we know that this is correct? This is, you know, the correct text. How do we know the Bible is reliable and it is authentic? So we want to look at that part of apologetics, because some people question, hey, you're reading a Bible. Oh, it is just some mass. Somebody wrote the book. Somebody wrote up some stories. They think it's fiction, you know, like how people write books on fiction. They think about it like that. Oh, just somebody wrote something and you're reading it. You're saying it's God's word. But if we understand the practical side, this is how the Bible came to us. And it is actually very amazing. When we look at it, this book is really amazing. Right. So we're going to get into that. Everybody with me so far. Any questions? Any? No questions. Okay. All right. So let's get into lesson nine as we talk about this, about the Bible. Right. What are we trying to answer? What are we trying to understand here? How do we know that the text of the Scriptures, when you and I are reading the Bible, how do you know it's correct? How do we know that it is, you know, it's not something different from what was actually written by the prophets and the apostles? Yeah. So that's one question. The other question is about canonization, which is why and how these 66 books that we are reading in the Bible, why do we say those 66 books are God's word? Because there were a lot of other things that were written during that same time. Why are those things not included by these 66 books? You know, some of us are aware that there is a section called the apocrypha that exists actually in the Catholic Bible. So they have another extra section, you know, so we have our six, the Protestant Bible 66 books, but the Catholic Bible has 66 books plus several other books called apocrypha. So, you know, what about that? Why do we not consider that to be holy scripture? God's word. We want to answer that question. Another question we want to answer as we talk about the Bible is, why are there so many different versions of the Bible? I'm talking especially about the English version in other languages. There may not be so many, but especially in English. Why is there so many versions? And then how do we know which one is the correct version? Because sometimes between two versions or two or three versions, if you put them side by side, you look at the same verse. It is saying something. Sometimes it's saying something very different. So it can be very confusing. And some people can point to that and say, hell, what are you saying? How can you say a Bible is God's word? Look, these three different versions, they're not literally saying the same thing and so on. And they can question us about this. So how do we respond to that? So these are the kind of questions we want to be prepared to answer. Now, one of the most powerful things that when people question us about the Bible, one of the most powerful things that we can tell is how the Bible has impacted us personally, that we can share that. You see, this Bible, why I believe the Bible is not just another book. It's because the Bible has affected my life. We can all share how it has affected our lives personally. How our lives have been changed by reading this book. So in addition to all the information that we can share, which we are going to learn, I think when we also share our personal testimony, like you see the Bible has affected me. So I believe it's not just some ordinary book like reading the newspaper or some magazine. This word is very powerful. It has changed my life. And then you can give your testimony of one or two examples of how the Bible has changed your life. And so that is a very powerful thing when we respond to questions about the Bible. So let's start talking about the Bible. Just get some background information. The Bible itself, we know it's either very loved by many people or it is very hated. Some people just are enemies for the Bible. There are people who have treated it with utmost respect. And there are people who have tried to just completely destroy it. Some examples in AD 303, there was this Roman emperor who wanted to completely remove Christianity on the face of the earth. And he wanted to completely destroy scripture. Destroy the Bible, get rid of every copy, burn it. But of course we know he wasn't successful. There was even a French philosopher, Walter, and he seemingly boasted that within 100 years Christianity would die out. Bible would disappear. And what's interesting is today hardly anybody know about Walter, but the Bible is all over the world. Exactly the opposite of what he said. And I tried to look this up. I'm not 100% sure, but it is said that the Bible Society bought his house and started printing Bibles from his house. And I'm not 100% sure of that story, but it's what it said often. So for many centuries, people have tried to destroy the Bible. They've tried to speak against it. They've tried to criticize it. They've tried to question it. They've tried to point problems in it. And yet the Bible is the most widely distributed, widely translated book in the whole world. If we want to see what is the most popular book in the whole world by default, number one, Bible. There's nothing else that comes close to it. So it's such an outstanding book over centuries. So today we have bestsellers and we go by bestsellers by if they can be the number one selling book in one, seven days, one week, then it becomes a bestseller. That means if it can last for seven days, it's considered number one bestseller they put. That means for seven consecutive days, one week it was most purchased over. But the Bible is not a one week bestseller. It's been number one for centuries, centuries. And that is truly amazing. Now what is the Bible claim for itself? The spiritual side. We are familiar with this. Second Timothy 3.16 and 17, the Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. So this is so amazing. This book, the Bible, the scripture is claiming, is saying this is given by inspiration. It's God inspired. It's God breathed. And you know, so second Peter chapter one verse 20 and 21, it refers to a scripture that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. That means it wasn't like some man sat down and wrote something. It's not a private, some person sitting and writing some fiction. No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. And he says, prophecy, that means this inspiration of scripture. It didn't come by the will of man. It wasn't man who thought it, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. So how did the Bible come to us? How did the prophecy and inspiration of scripture come? People were moved by the Holy Spirit. So it was, of course, there were men or people, but these were people who were moved by the Holy Spirit. So this is what the Bible claims for itself. That means it's not just an ordinary book. These are the words that God breathed or inspired by God through ordinary human people. So God is behind these words. Now, we know the Old Testament. Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and few parts of it was written in Arabic, Daniel and so on, portions of Daniel and Ezra, because that was the time they were taken into exile, into Babylon. So while most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, there are little portions that were written in Arabic. Now, the Old Testament was written between 1400 to approximately, these are approximate dates, between 1400 to 400 BC, over a period of 1000 years. So remember, we are counting BC going from before Christ. So between 1400 to 400 BC, the Old Testament was put together. Some approximation, sometimes we would say 1600 BC or something in that range. So it was written in that period of time for over a period of 1000 years. And we have had 40 different authors who have written all of the books in the Bible. So now if you had the New Testament, the New Testament was of course all written in Greek within a short period of time between 50 to 95 AD. So this is about a period of 45 years, short period. So the Old Testament was written over a period of 1000 years, the New Testament over a period of 45 years, within the first century, right after the birth of the church. So we are looking overall about a period of 1000, actually 1500 years now, that 400 years was a followed BC. There was a quiet period of time. So 1400 BC up to 1000 or 200 AD. So we're talking about 1500 years approximately. I'm not saying this exercise, but approximately between 1400 BC to 100 AD. In that time period, the books of the Bible were it. And we know Bible consists of 66 books, 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament, were written by 40 different authors. So 40 different people were instrumental, were used by God to write these 66 books over a period of 1500 years. And many of these people did not meet each other and did not sit down and discuss things. Of course, they got a chance to read or listen to some of the other writers. So obviously, for example, the New Testament writers knew the Old Testament scriptures because they were Jewish by tradition. So they had some exposure, but they did not sit down and consult. It's okay, let us write like this right now. They were in different periods of time. They never met each other or different periods of time. They wrote what they were inspired to write. So this is some general information. How did the Bible get transmitted? If we go back in time, 1400 BC, all the way to the time when it was canonized around 380, and then translated into Latin and other languages and eventually into English. How has the Bible been transmitted? So in the early days, of course, they would write in scrolls, scrolls initially made of papyrus or a form of paper. But it was not like the books that we have today, but they were scrolls, long sheets of paper, and they would write portions and scripture on it. And then later on, there were leather scrolls on which they would write. Leather scrolls, of course, would last longer. And then later on, we had forms of books, like books, as we know today, left and right side, which again were made of papyrus or animal skin. So this was the material used on which it was written. But everything was hand copied. So obviously there are no printing presses in those days. Because everything was hand printed. So you can imagine people sitting and writing. So there were these crimes, the Jewish crimes, who would sit and hand write things on these scrolls. That's how they would make copies. So till about 2nd century AD, it was all handwritten and copied by hand. Now, these books are called codex. They started writing. So these were scrolls, and this was called as codex. Now, just to get an idea of how meticulous they were in hand writing, in hand copying. And we will see. We will see later on when we talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls, how amazing it was. But these people were so serious in their work when they were hand copying, or hand copying the text, that if there was any major error, the entire scroll, where there were errors, was destroyed. And they started again. So that means they wanted to be precise. They wanted to be very accurate in their copying, making a copy of the text. So that if there were errors in their copying, it was, okay, you have to start again. The scroll had to... And you can look at this here. The scroll is not an easy thing to work on. It was very meticulous. We had to do it very accurate. If there was error, start again. And of course, they kept making copies so that when this paper was not something that could last very long, if it was worn, if it was damaged, they had new copies already. So like this, you can imagine, think about all the people who sat and made copies. We're talking about the scribes. And they passed down the text through centuries like this. Now, when copies were made, they were also distributed geographically, geographic areas. So just making a mention of this, because we will see why it's important later. So that means the scribes in one region, they copied. When copies went over to another... I mean, we're not talking about different parts of the world. We're talking about different regions, at least. They made copies. So they had copies over there. It was almost like, you know, you can imagine different libraries. Okay, there's a library in, say, in this one city. There's also another library of those manuscripts in another city. And not far away. We're talking about all of the Middle East region. But they had copies in different regions, which means that if anything was destroyed in one place, there were copies preserved in another place. So we're basically talking about the Middle Eastern Mediterranean part of the world, where these things, you know, libraries or copies of these manuscripts were kept and written and maintained. Now, just a little change in thought that generally speaking, and we're not talking specifically about the Bible now, we're talking in general. When we look at ancient manuscript or text of literature that comes from ancient times, that is, BC or AD, there are two important things we would look at. Or, when I say in general, people look at. And this is referred to as two things. One is number of manuscripts. How many copies of manuscripts do we have? Because if we can cross-reference manuscripts and see that the text is the same, then we say, okay, this is consistent. So that's the original text. So number of manuscripts is very important. Secondly, another important thing is the time gap. By time gap, we mean the time between when the first original text was written. That means usually when the author lived or the events happened. The time from there to the time that we have the oldest available manuscript. So the time gap. So these are two important criteria. To say that the text is authentic. How many manuscripts you have? And what is the time gap? The smaller the time gap, it means we are closer to the time of the writing, the time of the event, the time of the author. And therefore, the time gap is small. Therefore, the higher reliability of the text. That means because less chance of errors coming in with copies being made. So the closer you are, yeah, be pretty close. It's reliable. Less errors would have come. Okay. Let me pause here. With me so far, everybody understood about number of manuscripts and time gap. Everybody's with me? Okay. Yes, first. Okay. Thank you. So to say that some text is reliable. We look at these two things. Okay. So, you know, any kind of any kind of text were written by some philosophers. People will say, Oh, Plato wrote this Aristotle wrote this. So and so wrote this. Okay. Now Aristotle Plato, they lived 300, 400 years BC. They applied the same criteria. Right. So let's go back to the notes. Now, look at this. All right. This is comparison. All right. So Plato, he lived around 400 years before Christ BC. He was a Greek philosopher. How many manuscripts are there of his work about 250 manuscripts? What is the time gap? The time gap is 1,300 years. I mean, that is the closest we can get. That means Plato lived, say 400 BC. We only have copies of his work from 1,300. Oh, sorry. From 409, 900 AD. Closest. That means the closest of his manuscripts come from 900 AD. Somebody in 900 AD had made copies of what was supposed to be Plato's work. So think about that, right? He lived around 400 BC. We have copies from 980 of his manuscript. How many? 250. So like this, you can look at other people, you know, another Greek historian. He did this kind of pronounce his name. Eight manuscripts, 1,300 years. Another Greek historian, Herodotus, eight manuscripts. So only eight copies are known to exist. Time gap. Think about Aristotle. Again, a very famous Greek philosopher. So these two people are very famous, Plato and Aristotle. Now we're not sure how many manuscripts are there. But regardless, the time gap is about 1450 years. So something similar. So he lived around 300 BC. And here we are about 1180 when we have the earliest manuscripts. So 1450 years gap. And today, you know, people may quote, oh, Plato said this. Aristotle said this. But in reality, they don't know that there could have been so much. And there's such a big time gap from the manuscript we have to when he lived. So so much could have changed. People, you know, copying errors would have come in. You don't know. So it may not even be what he said. Others could have changed it. So like this, you know, you can look at a lot of historical work and see. Look at the numbers, you know, 14, 15, gap of 700 years and so on. And including on the way up to the work of William Shakespeare. Today, you know, Shakespeare is taught in schools. And they say, OK, this is all written by Shakespeare around 1680. OK, wonderful. But what do we know is that in 37 of his plays, of the plays he's written, there are actually a hundred passages that are disputed. That means they're not sure if this is actually what Shakespeare wrote. Or whether it has been changed and modified. So Shakespeare wrote many plays. And out of that, in 37 plays that he wrote, there are many passages, a hundred passages where it's questionable whether it is actually what he wrote or whether it's been changed. So even as recent as 1680, there are question marks. What do we know about the Bible? So let's look at this. The last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, like he said, was 400 B.C. And then there was a period of what we refer to as the silent period. But there was no prophet. So Malachi was the last recognized prophet. And when we talk about canonization, we will come back to this once again. When we talk about the last recognized prophet. But Malachi was 400 years before Christ came. And then for 400 years, the Jews did not recognize any prophet. So everything was quiet. So the last book, Malachi was 400 years before Christ. Then around, so by 400 B.C., the Jews had the 66, I'm sorry, these 39 books, which we know of 39 books, which we refer to as the 39 books of the Old Testament. Now they didn't call it the Old Testament. We are calling it Old Testament. But for them, that was the Scriptures, the Jewish people. So from Moses till Malachi, the Jewish people recognized the writings of the prophets, which we know as the 39 books, as sacred scripture. Okay, so and we will come back to this as I said about the canonization. We will talk about why the Jews selected these books. We will come back to it later. Now we're only looking at time period and number of manuscripts in time gap. We're just focusing on that. So by 400 B.C., the Jews recognized these books as their holy scriptures. After that, they did not add anything because there was no known prophet among them. Malachi was the last one. Everything was very quiet. Then around 200 B.C., that means 200 years before Christ, all of these scripture texts were also translated into Greek. Because by that time, the Greek Empire had conquered that area and then subsequently the Roman Empire had come. That became a common language for the people. So we had a translation of the Hebrew text into Greek. So that's referred to as the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, what we call as the Old Testament scripture, or we can say the Hebrew scriptures, Septuagint. So they translated that into Greek because that was the language being used commonly at that time because of the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire. Now then, of course, then we have the New Testament period, which I have not shown in this sketch. We have the New Testament and we said, the New Testament scripture was written between 50 to 180. It was all done in that 45 years. It was done. I'm not showing that, but we're looking at the Old Testament. Now, up until 1947, which is quite recent, about 70 years ago or something, the oldest copies of the Hebrew scriptures was from 900 AD. So we had text of the Hebrew scriptures, but the oldest copies was from 900 AD. So the time gap, remember it was finished like around 400 BC. Between 400 BC to 900 AD was 1300 year time gap. And this was what was available because of the Jewish crimes, Masoretics, Masoretic texts. So that was what was available for us from 900 AD with a gap of 1,000 years. So the initial translations were made from that, fine. But what happened in 1947? I'll discover this and we'll go for a break. This is really amazing. In 1947, what is known as the Dead Sea Scrolls was discovered. So basically there was an area called the Cumberand Gaves. And there was a shepherd boy when looking for his lost goat. And as you can see in this map, somewhere here, around the Dead Sea. So he went looking in there and then he found lots of jars, clay jars in these caves that were kept there. And inside these jars were leather scrolls. And so obviously the archaeologists and people who research and they control of these things, they came in, they took over all of these things and they began to investigate, what are these scrolls, when was it from and so on. So just these pictures of the caves and so on. So what did they find? In the Dead Sea Scrolls, they found every book of the Old Testament except for Esther. Esther is one of the books of the Old Testament. But other than the book of Esther, now we don't know why it was missing, but other than that, every book of the Old Testament was present. And these copies were made before 1780. So what did we say? Previous trial to this, the oldest copies were from 980. Now we are getting copies of the Old Testament which were before 1780. Why did they say 1780? Because that was time Jerusalem was destroyed. So before Jerusalem was destroyed, these scrolls were kept and preserved here. So it was before 1780. And that means some of them were from the 1st and 2nd century BC. So we are going now, we are actually going closer to 400 BC. We are getting scrolls from the 1st and 2nd century BC. Remember, Malachi was finished by 400 BC. That was the last prophet. Now we are getting scrolls from the 1st and 2nd century BC that was preserved in these caves. And we are discovering them in 1947, almost 1900 years later. These scrolls are being discovered of so amazing. And what is even more amazing is, so they are from 100 to 100 BC. What is more amazing is this, that when we compared the scripture text from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the latest available text that we had, which was 900 BC, that means we are looking at scripture from almost 2000 years. So 980, we said 980, right? We went to 980. That was the oldest now. And we are talking about text that was found somewhere here. So 1100 years, sorry, 1100 years. 1100 years. I made a mistake here, I think. So we are talking about this time gap. The Dead Sea Scrolls found here. And what was written here, what we had here, 980, what was written here. When we compared the text, I say, I lost my place in this note too. The text was practically unchanged. So the text in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which was 100 BC, to what we had in 980, the text remained unchanged. So if you think about the book of Isaiah, the book of Isaiah was actually written to 750 BC. We found Dead Sea Scrolls from 150 BC. Before that, we had text from 980. So this is 1,000, approximately 1,000 years, plus let's say another 750 years. And I just rounded it up. So 1,750 years. What did we see? This scroll from 150 BC from the Dead Sea Scrolls was identical with what was written in 980. And so we are saying essentially we have the confidence that the text would have remained unchanged from 750 BC all the way to 980. That's almost 1,750 years. If you round it up, 2,000 years, the text has remained unchanged. But we know for sure that between 150 BC and 980, the text is identical. 1,000 years, nothing has changed. So what are we saying? We are saying that what we had originally had from 980 was identical to what was found in 150 BC, the Dead Sea Scrolls. And so this adds to our assurance or confidence in the accuracy of the scripture text, Old Testament. All the Old Testament books except Book of Esther, but essentially all the Old Testament, we have so much confidence that the text was so accurately copied by these Jewish scribes because we have the Testament. We can see it here. They have copied it so exactly by these scribes. And we know the text has not been changed. I know we are already into a break time. I hope everyone's following me so far. It just builds your confidence in the Old Testament scriptures. And we will talk about the New Testament as well. Let's take our break. I will come back and I'll just pick up from here. And if you have any questions, we can take it at that time. Let's go for a quick break and come back. Okay. Thank you.