 our prayer time. I'm pretty blessed by what you do up here. It's great. All right, you're the very first ones to actually see this book. No one else has had a chance to see it, so they said we want to reward paradoxes by making it actually be the first to access this. And people say why four editions? Well, we launched Reasons to Believe 33 years ago now. It was based on the principle that the more we learn from the book of nature, the more evidence we'll have for the supernatural, handy work of God. And each of the four editions we've been able to show that advancing research exponentially gives us more evidence for the Christian faith and reliability of the Bible. This fourth edition has been altered more than any other previous edition. There are 80 new pages of content in the book. Now, I did take 12 pages out, mainly because we didn't have a book on the origins of life or the origin of humanity when I brought up the third edition. We do now. So I was able to strip that down and just say, hey, go here. And what really appealed our editors, I was able to take out about 800 citations to the literature because we have those online. And so, I was able to trim down. However, they did notice I added about 800 citations. So I kind of bounced out. But people ask me, what's really new about the book? Well, I basically show you how the case for God creating the universe and designing for a benefit is literally orders of magnitude stronger than it was in the third edition. But I also spend some time dealing with the latest attempts by atheist scientists to try to bypass the God of the Bible. And, you know, we're just talking before class how Hawking's come up with his new statement that we don't have to have a beginning to the universe. We can actually have an infinite period of cosmic contraction that precedes a period of cosmic expansion. Well, I actually deal with that in the book, explain why that's not a viable loophole around the God of the Bible for two reasons. One, interestingly, comes from Stephen Hawking's research partner, Roger Penrose. Roger Penrose pointed this out, gee, almost 10 years ago, that it's impossible to join the geometry of a contracting universe for the geometry of an expanding universe in the same way it's impossible to take the singularity of one black hole and link it up with the singularity of another black hole. How many of you have ever heard of wormholes? Okay, yeah, Star Trek, wormholes. Wormholes are mathematically possible. If you can link up, perfectly link up the singularity of one black hole with a singularity of another black hole, you can travel from one space-time realm through the wormhole to another space-time realm. But here's the problem, it's physically impossible to get the two singularities to touch one another. And even if they were to touch one another, they would instantly evaporate. They're not stable. So black holes make for great science fiction stories, but as I say, mathematically possible, but physically impossible. Likewise, Roger Penrose pointed out, it's physically impossible, especially given the very high entropy of the universe to join a contracting phase of the universe with an expanding phase. But what Hawking was really appealing to, he says, the space-time theorems would fail in what's called the quantum gravity, or you say, what in earth is that? Well, that's when the universe is so young, so compressed, and so hot that quantum mechanical effects dominate the gravitational effects. And since we really don't know how quantum gravity works, they say we can speculate anything we want. And so they basically speculated that the quantum space-time fluctuations in the quantum gravity era, and incidentally, era is really probably the wrong word. We're talking the first 10 millionth of a trainth of a trainth of a trainth of a second. It's the shortest era that anybody ever talks about. So, but they do call it an era. And it's in that era where these quantum mechanical effects could conceivably be big enough that you actually get around the space-time theorems. However, to get around it, the quantum space, the quantum fluctuations in the quantum gravity era have to be large. If they're small, then the space-time theorems hold all the way back to t equals zero. There is no escape. Well, physicists, and I mentioned this in this book here. They've been presuming there's no way we can measure the size of the space-time fluctuations in the quantum gravity era. Therefore, we're free to speculate. Now, in one sense, I'd say that these atheists are on thin ice because they're putting all their faith in something we have no idea what it's all about. I mean, that's like me saying my wife doesn't exist, even though I've been married to her for 40 years, because I may have been deceived by some unknown physics that goes on at a higher dimensional realm that has created this amazing hologram that has been deceiving me for 40 years. I mean, that's a possibility, but it's a remote possibility, and it's based on something that I don't know. I remain married to my wife based on what I do know, not based on what I don't know. Well, likewise, and I got a whole chapter in the book you're talking about, how atheists are now forced to defend their atheism by appealing to what is impossible for us to know. And that's really not how anybody... Well, you know you're in trouble when you can't cite any knowable evidence to support your position. All you can cite is unknowable evidence. However, what has happened in the last 15 months, and we managed to get it in the book here, is what we thought was unknowable as now knowable. In this sense, we found a way to actually measure the size of a quantum spacetime phone when the universe is younger than a 10 millionth of a train of a train of a train of a second. Why? Because the size of these quantum spacetime fluctuations actually gets magnified in the images of very distant quasars as they light travels over billions of years. So if you've got a long light travel time, and it's especially effective if you're looking at a short wavelength, like ultraviolet wavelengths or x-ray wavelengths. So the shorter the wavelength, the greater the magnification, the longer the light travel time, the greater the magnification. Bottom line is, if the quantum spacetime fluctuations are large, it will blur the images of distant quasars and blazars at ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. Well, what I report here in the book, those observations have been made. The images are sharp. We measure no blurriness at all. The fact that we can't see any blurriness means that the quantum spacetime fluctuations are way too small to enable the atheists to any possible escape from the conclusions of the spacetime theorems. So there is a God. All right. We knew that all along, but now we've got even more compelling evidence for that. So, but yeah, yes. Yeah, I'm basically saying you want to put your faith in what can be tested, not what cannot be tested. And that's kind of when the new thing with atheism, they're putting their faith in what can't be tested. Well, we're all taught that's not the way to do science. It's not the way to investigate whether a woman should be your future wife at basing it on what you don't can't possibly know about her. I mean, that's, you know, a whole principle. You get to know people to determine what kind of relation if you want to have with them. And that's what the Bible tells us about God, get to know them by what you can know and test. And the Bible is what attracted me about the Bible long before it became a Christian. It's the one holy book that challenges to put everything to the test. Test the spirits, 1 John 4-1, 1 Thessalonians 5-21. Test everything, hold fast to that which is good. If it can't be tested, don't worry about it. Face your faith on what can be tested. Lots of things can't be tested. But we document in the fourth edition here, there's a lot more we can test today than we were able to test in the third edition. And the Christian faith passed consistently with flying colors. Anyway, you're the first ones to have access to the book here over there at the table. And they actually have a special way cheaper than anything else anywhere. I think it's what, if you buy one copy, 15 bucks, you buy two is 20. Why are we giving you that deal? We want you to think of a non-Christian. You can put this book into the hands of why do we say that? Of all the books that we have published at Reasons to Believe, this one has brought more people to faith in Jesus Christ than any other one that we've brought up. Well, as you go through the book, you'll discover that a lot of the chapters are an easy read. But I have some chapters in there for the skeptical physicists with PhDs in theoretical physics. And so I give it to them in the detail that they need. You're willing to take my word for it and just skip on to the easy to read sections. So, but keep in mind, the book was written to be a tool to bring non-christians to faith in Jesus Christ. So yeah, there are a few technical areas here. Nevertheless, it's equation free, not a single equation in the book. The fingerprint of God, I've actually got some differential equations in there, but they told me for this one, no, we got to take those out. So we did. All right, yes. No, it's only in softcover. We're actually bringing this out through Reasons to Believe Press. That's how we're able to get it out so fast. So because you have a go with a commercial publisher, it's another year before you see it. And hey, we want you to have it right up to date. Yes. Well, the title of the chapter I have on that is responding to non-empirical evidences for the no existence of God. So that's what they're doing. They're appealing to that which can't be measured or tested. But as a mark of how secure a Christian faith is that the opponents of Christianity have to appeal to that which is not empirical, that which can't be observed, measured or tested. So all right, I'm going to be jumping into our study on Isaiah. Although next week, I am going to tell you about a brand new scientific discovery. Hell is frozen over. Okay. Well, we'll see if that passes muster right a blog article about hell freezing over. My guess is the editors are going to change the title. But the whole point is there's a new discovery that shows us that the Hadian era of Earth's history is actually a frozen era, not a Hadian era. Hadian refers to Hades. And that model for the past 40 years of the early history of Earth is that the first 800 million years of Earth's history, the Earth was hellishly hot. There's a new discovery that tells us it was not hellishly hot. It had intermittent hot episodes, but it was predominantly frozen. I'll talk to you about that next week because we need to get into our study. Last week, we burned the whole class with new discovery. So we're not going to do that this week. We need to push on through our study in Isaiah. And what I'm doing on purpose in our study on Isaiah, incidentally, if you don't have the study questions, I've made up a list of 10 questions that we've been going through as you go through the book of Isaiah. So we've got some others here anyway. You can send those around for those that don't have them. We only printed 300 copies of it and we keep running out. So that's the way it goes in this class. All right. But then we're looking at question one. And kind of what I'm doing on purpose in this class is basically showing you the way I research and study the Bible. And hey, big disclaimer. I'm not saying that this is the way you must do it. It's simply the way I do it. Because a lot of people ask me, can you actually show us how you go about developing these studies? So that's what I'm doing. But please don't get the wrong impression. There are many different ways to research and study the Bible. So this is the way I do it. And hey, this is the way it works for somebody who's on the autistic spectrum. But I just wanted to show you that. Now, it's actually the same technique I use for going through the book of nature. And to give you a quick outline, what we're doing with each of these 10 questions is I'm having you do what I typically do, go through the whole book of Isaiah in 10 or 15 minutes, speed read it, and pick up all the relevant verses that you think might apply to the study question. So we did that in the class and it was amazing. Every one of you got through it in 15 minutes or less. Now, some of you did bring out your smartphones into the Google search, but that's okay. You can do that with modern technology. Those people finished in five minutes. But those of you who didn't have smartphones, every one of you got through it in 15 minutes. But what we do next is we actually take that list of verses. And notice what I encourage you to do. When you assemble the possible verses, be generous. Include everything that might conceivably apply to the question. Then you take that list of scripture passages. And that's kind of what we're doing now, going over the list of scripture passages. And we actually look at each passage. And we delete the ones that we say, no, that's not really relevant. It might be relevant for question six. And so you save it. But it's not relevant for question one. As you can see here from the slide, we deleted five passages or four passages from the list that we developed before. But we retain these. And so we'll be looking at this next set of passages that we assembled. And notice I included one that we could put an extra passage there. But having looked at the passage, I think we were more than generous in terms of assembling the passages that pertain to question number one. Okay, that's step two. Step three is we're actually going to look at our reduced list of passages. And we're going to read through the whole list together rapidly. In other words, you just don't try to analyze each passage in depth. What you want to do is read through all the passages fairly rapidly to kind of get a general sense of what these texts are saying about the study question. And step four, we go through one verse at a time and dig up everything we can from the verse that pertains to the question. Then we're done with that. We go to question two. All right. But people ask me, well, how did you assemble the data for the book and probable planet? I use kind of the same approach. Looked at all the scientific journals relevant to the subject matter, read through the titles rapidly. All looked at was the titles of the papers and basically assembled a list of all the research papers that might be relevant for the books content. Then I went back over to second time and I read all the abstracts. And by reading the abstracts, I was obviously not I thought that was relevant, but it really isn't. Then I came down with that reduced list. And then it began to go through each of the research papers in detail, make notes and basically kind of first of all, no party step three was read through all the research papers quickly, get a general sense of what they're saying, how they integrate and go through them in detail. Say, how long did that take you for the book and probable planet? That was three years. So yeah, it took a while, but the net result was the book and probable planet. You say, is it going to take us three years to get through the book of Isaiah? No, it's not going to take us three years. It's not quite the same as having to read 60 different science journals in depth. We're looking at just 66 chapters. So yeah, it's not going to take us that long. And question one will probably take us the longest. The rest of them will be able to get through quickly. Because once we get practiced with this, we're going to be able to speed things up. Okay, if you don't have the question in front of you, question one is, what Isaiah passages address the beginning of the universe? What do these passages say about the universe? How can we use these Isaiah texts to persuade people that God exists and the Bible is the word of God and also looking at exactly how does God bring about the beginning of the universe? Because we're noticing that these passages we go through and not only declares that God is responsible for creating a universe, it gives us insights on exactly how he creates the universe. And I think we're also going to notice how repeatedly these Isaiah texts say, I did it all by myself. I didn't need gravity like Stephen Hawking says. I didn't need previously existing space and time. I did it all on my own independent of anything else. That's going to come through loud and clear. But I think this is where we left off with Isaiah 43.7. And what we're going to try to do, and hey, this is going out in the worldwide web. So I want you to be loud when you come to the microphone here. We're actually going to move the microphone over a little bit so that we can actually get you on the camera. So that's about right. So I would like to get a line here for a volunteer for Isaiah 43.7. And then we're going to go down these different passages. My goal is, hey, that clock's not moving. We've got lots of time. So my goal is, we'll actually get through this whole list this morning. Let's see how well we do. So if I can have a volunteer come up for Isaiah 43.7, bring your Bible or smartphone up with you and read the text in a loud voice. And then stay here at the microphone because I'm going to ask all of you, is this passage relevant to question number one? And the majority says, yes, we're going to include it. If all of you say no, we delete it. And notice these four passages that we deleted, I noted we got a unanimous vote here. We basically discussed it long enough that people said, nah, Rudy, that might apply to another question but not specifically to this question. And hoping that's how it's going to work out. I didn't really see a split vote on any of the things that we dealt with. I was crystal clear that it is relevant or not. So starting with Isaiah 43.7, come to the microphone. Gloria. Isaiah 43.7, everyone who is called by my name and whom I have created for my glory, whom I have formed even whom I have made. Okay. Is that relevant to question number one or should we just drop that one? What do you think? Drop, drop, drop. All right. Yeah, I would agree. Isaiah 43.10 to 11. Do we have a volunteer? This is the longest one on the whole list here. So somebody is, oh, right. Somebody's got some energy here. Great. You are my witnesses, declares the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he before me. There was no God formed and there will be none after me. I even I am the Lord and there is no savior beside me. Okay. Is that relevant to question one? Okay. Some are saying drop it. Do I have anybody saying that we should include it? You think we ought to include it? Okay. What are some reasons for including it or some reasons for dropping it? Yeah, go ahead, John. He does say before me there was no God formed and therefore he was formed. Yeah. He says he's first. Yep. Yeah. He's first, so don't drop it. So don't drop it. Well, I think you're getting to it. It doesn't explicitly mention the beginning of the universe, but it does make the point that God alone is the one who is a creator. And did you notice a subtle little addition in this text? Only one creator, but it mentions two creators. Did you catch that? So this question is also going to be relevant to the question we have on the Trinity. Did you see that it was mentioning another participant in creation? Yeah, exactly. So he mentions another person in addition to himself as part of the creator, but then he says, I alone have done it. There's just one creator. So we're actually going to be using this text when we come back to our question on the Trinity. So I mentioned previously of all the books of the Bible, the book of Isaiah, and this includes New Testament books, all the books of the Bible. It's the book of Isaiah that gives us the most doctrinal content on God being three persons and one essence, but there's a hint of it right here in Isaiah chapter 43. And it's in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it's in the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's correct. Telling us this book indeed dates back previous to the second century BC. I don't know whether you're aware of that, but of all the books of the Bible, the only book that's available in this entirety in the Dead Sea Scrolls is the book of Isaiah. So on display, incidentally, I think there's going to be an organization bringing a replica, an exact replica of that scroll found in the Dead Sea Scrolls here to the Los Angeles area. I'm actually working with an organization that's going to make that possible, let you know when it happens. So yeah, are we going to include it or are we not going to include it? All right. Okay. Well, you know, if it's a split vote, I'm going to kind of throw it in. If everybody says no, we drop it. Okay. Or if only one person says yes and everybody else says no, we drop it. But I think we ought to keep this one. Okay. Next one up. Oh, I need to go over here. And whoops, let me go back to this one. Come on. Can you get out of here? So yeah, we deleted one, but we're keeping that one. How about 43, 18 to 20? Do we have a volunteer coming up? Thank you. Remember not the former things or consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing. Now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals, and the ostriches. For I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. To give drink to my chosen people. Okay. What do you think about this one? Do you recognize this passage or someone in the New Testament that quoted this? That's right. Yeah. So this text does show up in the New Testament. Of all the books of the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah is cited the most in the New Testament. So this is one of those texts. But is it really relevant to anything about the universe, the beginning or God, the Creator? No. All right. So let me exit this and draw it. Okay. And now we got Isaiah. Whoops. Here we go. Isaiah 4424. All right. Got a volunteer here. Good. I wanted to do this one because it really does fit the question. 4424. This says the Lord your Redeemer who formed you from the womb. I am the Lord who made all things, who stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself. That's a keeper, right? How much more explicit can you get? All right. The first, I mean, what's interesting is the Jewish theologians living as much as 800 years ago saw these texts on Isaiah and says, Isaiah is telling us the universe is expanding. In terms of a scientist actually saying, hey, this is true, not until 1925. Okay. A trivia question. Who is the first scientist to speak about an expanding universe? Hubble was 1929. There is somebody in 1925. George Lemaître. George Lemaître was an astronomer, a physicist, but also a Belgian priest. He was a Roman Catholic priest. He based it on the equations of general relativity. So, I mean, after all, he wasn't burned at the stake. In that case, Einstein knew it, but he decided not to tell anybody. Well, yeah, it was George Lemaître that basically pointed out that Albert Einstein's original theory of general relativity, before Einstein altered it, he says that's the correct theory. That's the correct theory. The universe is not static and eternal. It has a beginning and it is expanding from that beginning. Now, he claimed he meant nothing theological about it, but none of his peers agreed with him. So they all felt that as a Belgian priest, he was making points that no, independent of the Bible, I see this just from the equations of general relativity. And incidentally, it was his paper that basically persuaded Einstein a couple years later to say, my fix of my theory of general relativity is the biggest mistake I've made in my life. Because when he published his theory of general relativity, the reigning paradigm is that the universe had no beginning and it was eternal. So he says, my equations tell me that it has a beginning and is not eternal. I need to add a term to the equations to get rid of the beginning and to keep the universe eternal. And so he did that and later realized no, especially with Edwin Hubble. Incidentally, right here in Pasadena, Albert Einstein came, spent some time with Edwin Hubble. Edwin Hubble took him up to the 100-inch telescope, let him look through the telescope and Einstein said the universe really is expanding because he was actually able to see the evidence that galaxies that are farther away from us move at a faster velocity away from us than galaxies that are close. And that's when he said, my fudge factor that added to my equations is the greatest mistake I made in my scientific career. Here's the irony. We brought back that fudge factor. No, we have attached a different sign to it and a different value to it, but it's basically the same fudge factor and that's dark energy. But instead of making the universe eternal and getting rid of the expansion, it actually makes the universe expand faster. So yeah, change the sign, change the value, get what Einstein wanted. But actually what he thought was as big as a mistake once you made certain adjustments turned out to be right on target. When did we discover that? 1999. So aren't you glad to be alive today with all the stuff that's happening? Okay, hey, we got diverted. Let's go back to the text here. We're at Isaiah 45, five to seven. So can I have a volunteer to come up and check that out for us? You need to get to the microphone. I am the Lord and there is no other beside me there is no God. I equip you though you do not know me that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. Okay, what do you think? Is that a keeper? Why do you think it's a keeper? Okay, yeah, he creates the light and he creates the darkness and isn't it in the strings? We're going to find out you need both light and darkness for us to be here. He created both. Is it darkness the absence of light though? How can you create darkness? Well, when I was an undergraduate student that's what I was taught. Darkness is the absence of light. We now know that darkness is a substance, is something real. Actually see a hint of that in Job 38 verses 19 and 20. You can check that out if you want where God says do you know where darkness resides? Actually treats darkness as a substance and we now know that the universe isn't predominantly dark. Incidentally, all those stars and galaxies and planets you see have it's only 0.27% of the universe. 99.73% is dark stuff and the dark stuff is tangible. Yeah. I'm looking at the New American Standard Version. I'm wondering what others say. It's in present tense and one forming light and creating darkness. Is there some continuing process? Don't worry, is he talking about the beginning of the universe and what are the translations? Well different translations put it in different ways but actually what you'll see if you look at all the texts that talk about how God creates light you'll see that the Bible claims that God did that in the beginning but there's also an ongoing process. So why he not only sustains it he's reshaping the light and darkness as the universe evolves from the beginning to the present. And we've got a question here that we're coming up after we get done with number one. What does Isaiah say about the subsequent history of the universe? I think we're going to be coming back to this text. So yeah don't be surprised a lot of these scripture passages we're looking at they're going to show up on multiple lists. So this passage talks only about the beginning of the universe but what happens after the beginning. But yeah I think it's a keeper. So we'll keep that one and now we got 45-12. Do we have someone that can read 45? Okay come up. I have made the earth and created man upon it. I even my hands up stretched out the heavens and all their hosts have I commanded. So what do you think? Is that a keeper? Yeah that sounds like a no brainer doesn't it? It's very specific and explicit. So we keep that one and now we got Isaiah 45-18. Do we have a volunteer? What do we do? Thank you. Isaiah 45-18. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens. He is God who formed the earth and made it. He established it. He did not create it empty. He formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is no other. Let's keep it. Yeah I think that's another no brainer we keep that one and that's going to be a passage we'll spend some time on because it's making some really significant statements that God actually created the universe with the idea of having a planet that's loaded with life. Incidentally there's never been a time in history when our planet has not been as loaded with life as it is right now. We're at the maximum time in terms of the at diversity of species here on planet earth. Everything previous to us it was less full of life. We're here at the fullest time. We'll be looking at that. All right 45-18 we got 46 9 through 12. Can we have a volunteer for that please? Or 46 9 through 11 sorry. If no one comes up we got someone coming up great thank you. Starting in 45 first nine. Remember the former things long past for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me. Declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done saying my purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. Calling a bird of prey from the east the man of my purpose from a far country. Truly I have spoken. Truly I will bring it to pass. I have planned it. Surely I will do it. Okay what do you think? I think on the declaring the end from the beginning nature of times. Yeah I think that brings in the creation. I think you got a good point there. I agree. See how compliant this class is? You got a question? Yeah but that also tells you what kind of creator he is. In other words when he created the universe he actually had the end product in mind as opposed to something that I create where I don't know how it's going to end up. So yeah it tells us something about that. Okay the next one up is 48 12 to 13. Can we have someone else come up? Well we got one here. Great thank you. You know what I love about the fact is that we're getting different people coming up for every passage. This is wonderful. Go ahead. Isaiah 48 12 to 13. Listen to me Jacob. Israel whom I have called. I am he. I am the first and I am the last. My hand my own hand laid the foundations of the earth my right hand spread out the heavens. When I summon them they all stand up together. Okay I think that's another no brainer. We keep that one. Okay all right. Hey I think we're actually going to achieve our goal. Look how fast we're moving through these texts. Isaiah 50 verse 3. Okay. Well you're waiting. Can you comment on this spreading out? Do you think God in I mean this is how you're just your speculation but is for the ancient peoples I'm seeing them looking at the skies and the vastness. But do you think there was a purposeful insertion of that language for us now in the 21st century? Well that's how ancient Jews theologians thought about it and what's interesting is there's 11 texts in the Bible that speak about God stretching out the heavens and eight of them are here in the book of Isaiah. Probably seven of them are in the book of Isaiah. Well I think the ancient people who are Bible scholars would say this is repeated seven times in the book of Isaiah and the verb forms are in different verb forms. It's not the same verb form every time. God must be making a point here. It's more than just kind of what a painter does in a canvas and so I think that would have caught people's attention and it's something we're actually going to study. The fact that it's repeated seven times in the book of Isaiah using different verb forms tells us this is a larger point and actually we're going to be looking at the verb. It's not well translated into English where it says stretching out. That's basically how it's done in all the texts that we see in the Bible. Jeremiah included, Job included, but the verb natah has its base definition expansion and so one sense we have a translation issue here. So I myself was reluctant to think about this as an explicit statement about expansion until I came across John Ray a Hebrew scholar and theologian and he says let me tell you about the verb forms. He walked me through all the verb forms and said these are not just figures of speech. It's explicitly telling us that the universe is expanding from the beginning and basically said it's a wonderful apologetic for now exactly. Is there only one definition for the word or is there four like with YAH? Well like all Hebrew almost all Hebrew words there are multiple definitions but the first and primary one is expansion. So hey we'll actually look at that but yeah it is interesting how many of these texts we're looking at mention the stretching out of the heavens and when it talks about the earth it's a spreading out of the earth different verb so okay. I say a 53. I close the heavens with blackness and I make the sackcloth they're covering. Okay what do you think? Yes. Okay closing the heavens with blackness. Okay how about 51-13? Isaiah 51-13 the Lord made you with his power he made the earth and spread the sky over the earth but you forgot him so you are always afraid that angry men will hurt you those men plan to destroy you but where are you now? Okay what do you think? Is the verb for spread over the earth that verb form different for the stretching out? Standing right here I don't know the answer to your question I'd have to get out my yeah I have to look at any original Hebrew to answer it. Something you might have a smartphone that actually answers this question so it is different okay see. Yeah wonderful age we live and you don't have to figure out all these books just pull it up on your smartphone. All right pretty soon you won't even need me here right. Okay Isaiah 51-16. We're keeping that one. Basically look at what it says in the first part you might argue against the latter part but the first part I think is quite explicit. Okay I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand. I who set the heavens in place who laid the foundations of the earth and who say design you are my people. Yes another no for anything. Okay yeah we keep that one. All right how about Isaiah 64-8 you will thank you. Okay Isaiah 64-8 yet you Lord are our father we are the clay you are the potter we are all the work of your hand. Okay is that relevant to the universe? No. Relevant to us maybe but not the universe. Yeah drop it but you know what we're going to be picking it up for another one of the questions we got on our list. So okay look look how fast we're moving through this. Isaiah 66-1 we have someone to come up here we go thank you. Isaiah 66-1 thus set the Lord the heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house that he built unto me and where is the place of my rest? Okay it does mention the heavens and the earth but does it really pertain to the beginning? Probably not. Verse 2 might okay want to come up and read verse 2 incidentally I think that's the most patriotic tie I've ever seen. For all those things hath my hand made and all those things hath been set the Lord but to this man will I look even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trouble at my word. Okay what do you think about verse 2? Yeah a lot of people say yes. All right let me go in here and fix that for us. We're going to take away one but we're going to add two. Well okay we only chopped two from the list I mean just said we can also get rid of this one down here. I included this just in case you came up with something that wasn't on the list. So here we go. So we took four off the first list two so our list of 30 is now down to 24 texts. So now how much time do we have left? Because this clock is not helping me. We've got five minutes so that's it okay and we're not going to have time. Okay what we're going to do next week I'm actually going to have all these verses up as slides I've already got them prepared so you kind of see what I got here. We're actually going to be looking quickly at all 24 of these texts and I'm just going to flip up the slides one after the other then I'm going to be asking you the question what do these texts have in common with one another? So it's going to get kind of a big picture of what they have in common so don't focus so much on the specific details let's kind of pull out what they are telling us in common about the answer to question one and then we're going to actually go through each passage one at a time and try to dig out what the text is saying in detail that's where you can ask me questions okay what is the verb what is the noun and we're going to actually try to learn everything we can from the particular texts go all the way through and that will take us to the end of question one then we jump into question two and question two says what Isaiah passages address the features and history of the universe so we're basically going to be looking at what these texts say about what happens after the beginning you know we're going to discover a lot of these texts will talk about the beginning of the universe also talk about the subsequent history of the universe so a lot of these will be including as well and how can we use these Isaiah texts to persuade people that God exists in the Bible is a word of God so I want some discussion here and we already had a little bit here you know the Isaiah texts really are speaking not just about a beginning of the universe but the expansion of the universe this tells us that the Bible has predictive power and some of you were around a few years ago when I did that debate with the religion editor for the skeptics magazine Tim Callahan and our debate was does the Bible have predictive power and he was claiming well you know everything in the Bible is not predictive is talking about happened in the past but here in Isaiah we got some examples this book was written 26-2700 years ago it is telling us stuff about the universe that no scientist knew was correct until the 20th century so yeah well what Tim Callahan was doing a lot of our debate you can actually the debate's available you can see it under in our store at reasons.org we have the full debate in audio form is that he focused on the book of Isaiah or probably the book of Daniel and tried to claim that Daniel was written in the 5th or 6th century AD not the 5th or 6th century BC so it's a predicted nothing everything is in there had already happened it was just a historical report so a lot of our debate was well exactly when was the book of Daniel written and he basically made his case making the point well there's musical instruments mentioned in the book of Daniel that were invented by the Greeks and the Greek technology followed the Persian technology therefore couldn't have been written by the Daniel of Nebuchadnezzar's court but actually there are only three instruments mentioned the Greeks had all kinds of musical instruments only three of them are mentioned in the book of Daniel and those three were actually invented in the 8th century BC and were widely available throughout the Middle Eastern world by the time of Daniel so they already were in the Persian Empire now if he had cited cases of musical instruments that weren't embedded until the first century of BC he would have had a case not all of Daniel's in the Dead Sea Scrolls but portions of Daniel are so how could he claim therefore it wasn't written until 18th well evidently he didn't know about Daniel portions of Daniel being in the Dead Sea Scrolls the fact that they are means that it has to precede the 2nd century BC and if it precedes the 2nd century BC there is no other possible candidate for the author other than the Daniel of Nebuchadnezzar's court and you have to he basically was trying to claim to that Daniel wasn't a real figure but then you got to explain how is it that you got this you know defeat of the Babylonian Empire followed up by the rise of the Persian Empire and then the collapse of the Persian Empire as a result of the Greeks because yeah if you read the book of Daniel it talks about the Assyrian Empire the Babylonian Empire the Persian Empire the Greek Empire and there's actually a couple of texts that talk about the Roman Empire that's all in the book of a Daniel so yeah I think is a dramatic example of predictive success and of course the most significant prediction of book of Daniel is the date of the timing of the coming of the Messiah so the destruction of the temples mentioned there as well as also the second coming book of Daniel talks about two comings of the Messiah gives a date for the first one does not give a date for the second one but yeah it's a text often show Jews saying hey you believe Elijah comes twice look at this Daniel guy he says the Messiah comes twice so why not consider Jesus of Nazareth as a candidate for the Messiah so remember we had a Jew here in the class who became a Christian and uh yeah Alan Feinstein Feynman Feynman Feynman right and uh our class was having a dialogue with five rabbis because what Al would do he would ask questions in the class take him back to his five rabbi friends get their answer come back to here and get a comment on it so we actually had a running relationship we actually had five rabbis attending the class so that I'm actually being here because there's a q and a going back and forth through Al and you know Al is now in Toronto he's probably listening to this because I know he subscribes to this but I think we all miss Al because he was a professional Hollywood comedian and don't you all miss the fact that he would come with these incredible bits of humor here in the class but it was in this class where he gave his life to Jesus Christ so anyway but that I think my five minutes are up yeah I remember him well keep Al in mind because he's watching us uh from Toronto as uh and that's really our biggest audience we have your people here we got people participate live streaming but our biggest audience are people who download the mp3s and the mp4s including a lot of people who are part of the class kind of moved away in fact I think yeah our largest audience is in mainland China so yeah having been there a lot of people there are fluent in English so they've got more Christians than we have so yeah let me bow in prayer father in heaven we do thank you for the worldwide web and the outreach we're able to have here in the paradoxes class thanks to the way you design the universal planet so not only could we have a place where billions of us can live here together but have the technology and the wealth uh that we can learn these things uh from your book of nature and your book of scripture and be equipped with the tools we need to take the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ to all the people groups of the world not in millions of years of literally in decades father may this be the generation that sees the completion of the great commission and our entry from this creation into the new creation so give us many opportunities I prayed even this week to be able to share our faith the reasons you've given us to believe with people don't yet know you and by your spirit lord may we see them respond to you as creator lord and savior in jesus name amen