 Hello and welcome to the third episode of how to rightly divide the word of truth and in this episode we're going to look at how the Bible is structured and why books are written. So this is going to be somewhat longer than previous episodes I've done in this series quite rightly so and actually I'm still not going to give it the time that it truly deserves. So in the previous episodes we've looked at resolving contradictions such as the hour of Jesus's death and we've looked at how to define words in the Bible such as repentance. So building further on this leads to understanding the purpose of which different books are written in the Bible and the purpose of a given passage as that is crucial to resolving contradictions and how words are used according to the respective purpose. So building on what we previously learned this is kind of a penultimate automaton really to to see all the deal. Once you can understand why different books are written in the Bible, once you can understand their style it's a lot easier then to understand how to resolve contradictions and how to define words properly. So that's what we're going to look at in this episode. So the first rule that we're going to look at, if available, look for certain verses which give a specific reason why those books are written. Now this won't work for every book in the Bible though. For other books you will have to familiarize yourself with the overall content of the book to really grasp what its purpose is. But for some books we can just look at a purpose that's given to us. So looking at a few examples then if we start with the Gospel of John chapter 20 1331 and many other signs truly digits in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book but these are written that you might believe that Jesus the Christ the Son of God and that by believing you might have life through his name. So John wrote his Gospel with this intention that you would believe on Christ as a result of his Gospel testimony and in doing so you would receive eternal life. So it's in a way you could say it's the optimal book to show somebody the Gospel onto salvation in a basic way and establish the foundations before exploring more advanced passages on the topics such as Romans or Galatians or Ephesians, etc. In the first epistle of John it says and it gives several actually statements. So in chapter 1 verse 4 it says and these things write we on to you that your joy may be full. In chapter 2 verse 1 it says my little children these things write I on to you that you sin not. Later in that same chapter in verses 12 and 13 it says I write on to you little children because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. I write on to you fathers because you have known him that's from the beginning. So there are other verses like that in one John as well. So John wrote his epistle with quite a wide variety of purposes there. So it's not written with any one purpose in mind. It covers quite a few items in short quick statements. So for this reason it's perhaps a more difficult book to understand. Some statements could even be taken in opposition of things that that John wrote in his gospel. So this epistle would require careful study but look for those purpose statements and a couple of other examples would be 2nd Peter 3 1 the second epistle. I write on to you stir up your minds by way of remembrance in 2nd Corinthians Paul writes in chapter 13 verse 10 therefore I write these things being absent less being present I should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord has given me to edification and not to destruction. So there are just some good examples of where we can look at a book in the Bible and we have verses that actually tells the reason why that book or that particular chapter or paragraph if you like it was written. Okay, it gives us a purpose. Now you might ask why does this matter? Now there are probably many reasons that one could answer that question, but let's just pick one. So for salvation, for example, it has implications on how we define biblical terminology and what is required for salvation. So let me show you that in practice. So in previous videos, this channel has dealt with the issue of repentance for salvation. Many people define repentance as turning from sins and so they apply that as part of the gospel to be saved. Well, as we saw from the previous slide, John's gospel has a purpose for why it was written that you would believe on Christ and have eternal life. That's essentially why the book was written. Now over and over and over again in the gospel account, Jesus frequently affirms believe, have eternal life, believe, have eternal life, believe, have eternal life. Jesus does not emphasise, sorry spelling mistake there, but he does not emphasise doing anything else for eternal life in the gospel of John. The gospel of John never mentions the word repentance once. It certainly never says to turn from your sins to be saved. It never uses that phrase or terminology. I have already done a video about repentance and salvation on my channel if you want more information about repentance. Some videos on John's gospel are also already available on my channel as well. You can check those out. It's part of the series biblical salvation settled once and for all. So we have touched on this already in those videos, but obviously I'm looking at this from a different angle for this video. So with this in mind then about about repentance, so that there's two conflicting points of view on this issue of repentance, which they specifically mean turning from sins. Now, I reject that definition for salvation, but again see the repentance video. But there's an issue of whether that turning from sins, if we assume that that's what repentance was, is required for eternal life. So one person will say, well, the gospel of John is written to tell us how to be saved and it never mentions repentance once. So we don't have to turn from our sins to be saved. And we'll say that repentance means turning from unbelief towards belief. Whereas someone else will say, well, John also wrote the book of Revelation in which he documented Jesus telling us to repent several times. The context of repentance being turning from sin every time the word is mentioned, particularly in Revelation 2 and 3. So the thing is, if the gospel of John is written to tell us how to be saved, but doesn't mention repentance, but we have to repent of our sins to be saved, you ultimately have to say that the gospel of John failed its intended purpose. It doesn't meet what it set out to do. Moreover, Jesus didn't use symbolism about end time events to steer people towards obtaining eternal life in this book. It was written that you might believe. The book of Revelation, though, is not written intentionally to tell unsaved people how to have everlasting life. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus taught his own disciples about watching out for end times. And the letters in Revelation are directed towards established churches of people that already believe. So the Revelation is not written to tell you how to have eternal life. John's gospel is. OK, so John's gospel is telling us to believe and it's written for eternal life. Revelation is telling us to repent. And in Revelation, it does actually mean turning from sin, but it's not addressed to you to tell you how to have eternal life. It's addressed to people who already believe and churches have to clean up this act or clean up that act. Now, even with a written purpose of John's gospel, there are some particulars in mind. So John wrote his gospel that we would believe have eternal life. And Jesus keeps saying in John that we need to believe have eternal life multiple times throughout this gospel account. But hang on a minute. Didn't Jesus also say in John's gospel to sin no more and if you love me, keep my commandments? That that is true. John's gospel, Jesus did say that. So let's explore what's going on there. So with that in mind, yes, it's true. John's gospel, Jesus says, sin no more. And if you love me, keep my commandments in a book that's written that we would believe in have eternal life. So what we need to ask ourselves, what is the purpose of John's gospel overall? What is a gospel account? And are there isolated passages in John that have their own purpose not directly related to the purpose of the account overall? All right. Well, a gospel account is it's a written testimonial. About Jesus's time on it. That's what the four gospels are in a very similar format, actually, to the history books of the Old Testament. You can kind of call the gospels the history books of the New Testament, if you like. Although the difference with the Old Testament history books is that the author obviously adds a lot of doctrinal statements in the narration about who Jesus is, particularly in John. So John documented the words that Jesus told, but also the surrounding context of why he said those things. For what purpose and but also as well, who was he talking to? So over and again, Jesus said, believe, have eternal life, believe, have eternal life, believe, have eternal life. Now, he did say sin no more to two people. They said it to the healed man at the pool of Bethesda. That's in John five and the woman caught in adultery, John eight. However, and this is important, in both of those conversations, he never told either of those two people to believe in him, nor did he mention eternal life to them. OK, so in both of those conversations, never touches on those subjects. So we can't really say that eternal life is the context of that same. When he said, sin no more, but never mentioned believing, never mentioned eternal life, eternal life is not the context of telling them to sin no more. OK, if it is, well, then this there's something missing from John. There's something missing from those stories. Now, Jesus did also say, if you love me, keep my commandments. But who did he say that to? He said it to his disciples. He didn't say it to Nicodemus or the woman at the well or the Jews. He was telling to believe on him. He said it to people who were already his disciples, and that's in John 14. And again, eternal life was not the context of that conversation. The conversation continues in John 15, where Jesus reemphasizes his commandments to abide in his love and then immediately in the next verse 11, a reason is given for saying that. These things have I spoken on to you that my joy might remain in you and your joy might be full. So as you can see, it's got a different reason behind why Jesus said that than, you know, it did when he said to believe on him. So then in summary, John's Gospel overall was written that we would believe in having eternal life over and over again. And that's exactly what Jesus tells people in his gospel in this gospel to do, believe and have eternal life. In the two conversations where Jesus said, sin no more, he never mentioned eternal life to those individuals. When he said, keep my commandments, it was to his choice disciples so that their joy might be full. And once again, eternal life was not the context. John's Gospel is a gospel, so it has an overall purpose that it does successfully meet. But John also documents additional conversations that Jesus had with certain people about other issues not all connected to eternal life. Now, me personally, I think that makes perfect sense. I don't think that's confusing at all. So is that confusing that if John wrote his gospel for the purpose of us believing on to eternal life, but then some isolated conversations Jesus has and not about eternal life? Well, the thing is the account has an overall purpose. But being a gospel account means that John simply documented what Jesus did and said in various situations, which may or may not be directly related to his overall purpose. So he still said his purpose was that we might believe and have eternal life. He didn't say, these things have I written on to you that you might sin no more and have eternal life. OK. So we should read Jesus's intimate conversation with his disciples about obeying his commandments and being full of joy. And it's right that we desire to aim to do that. But for eternal life, it still comes back to our belief. And the conversation Jesus had to his disciples should compel us to believe the gospel testimony for our eternal life. But that doesn't mean that we achieve it by obeying his commandments, though. So moving on to rule number two, then, and this is going to be somewhat more complicated to explain, but understand the general literary style of how different books in the Bible are written. So what is their introduction and ending? What is the overall style of writing? What are the overall general themes of what the book is talking about? So we're going to have to spend a fair bit of time on this. Now, I don't want to scare anybody who is not particularly academic. I'm not that academic myself, to be honest, but even in secular literature, OK, you don't need to be a scholarly or literary expert to distinguish different types of writing. OK, I'll just give you some basic examples. So if an article begins with once upon a time, you can guess that it's a fable or a fictional story. If an article has big, bold title with less emphasised paragraphs, it may be either a news article or an information article or a blog of some kind. And even without reading an article, if you were to just scroll through it, as long as the quotes are in a different kind of a font and format, you can probably guess where the quotes are when it quotes somebody. If a letter begins with deer, so and so, then you know it's either a personalised or a dress letter or a general male address to a specific person. If the address on the front of the letter is the occupant or the householder, even without opening the letter, you probably know it's a general governmental notice for every household, irrespective of the identity of who lives there, or it may be spam marketing material type of thing. If an article is fairly short and has rhyming words or a certain rhythm to the words that and short sentences start on a new rose or this evenly sized paragraphs, you can probably guess its poetry or a song, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You don't need to be an expert in literature to really understand this stuff. OK, basic human beings with common sense and a decent grasp of their own natural language understand this stuff. So just to give you an idea of literary styles, let's take the epistles, for instance. Well, typically they start with an introduction, as well as ending salutations as well, usually naming the address and identifying the adressees with personal message or a greeting. So the written in the style of a letter addressed to a group of people or an individual in some cases. But because it's Christian literature, doctrinal statements may also be included in the letter as well. OK. So, for example, in Romans one, we have Paul, that's the address. We have some doctrinal statements. He's a servant of Jesus Christ called to be an apostle. And then in verse seven, it says to all that be in ropes, we have the adressees. OK. And then he gives some personalized greetings in there, like grace to you and peace from our God. Ephesians one, very similar. Again, we see Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, so very, very similar there. And then it's got the adressees to the saints, which are ethicists to the faithful in Christ Jesus. So because it says to the faithful in Christ Jesus, we know it's not just relevant to the Ephesians, but it's relevant to us as well. And then, you know, it says, grace to you and peace from God. So again, we have that personalized message there. James, when he writes his letter, he introduces himself. James, he gives a statement about who he is. He gives his adressees to the twelve tribes, which are scattered abroad and he gives a personalized word. He just says, greeting there. He's a much simpler man of words, perhaps than Paul, you might say. And then in Peter's letter in his first epistle, again, we have his name, Peter, the adresser, an apostle of Jesus Christ. So there's a statement. We have the adressees to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia. And we have the personalized greetings and the doctrinal statements there again. And you have a couple of oddities. So in second John 1, the adresser is not actually named. So John doesn't actually name himself in his letters, interestingly. It's just to the elder. And then we have a personalized message there. And then Jude, last example. So again, we have the adresser. We have the adressees, doctrinal statements and personalized messages or greetings. Now there are some epistles in the Bible which do not start with a personalized or a targeted introduction. So they jump straight into doctrinal matters. So we have to rely on texts further into the writings to establish that those writings do indeed have an audience and in a particular manner in which they were written. So for example, if you take Hebrews 1, Hebrews 1 contains absolutely no introduction whatsoever in the way that other epistles do. He just straight away starts making statements about God. God who at sundry times dot dot dot immediately talking about God and the sun and making doctrinal statements all the way towards the end. And in a way Hebrews almost sounds like someone just got up on a pulpit and just started preaching a sermon straight away without any delay. But we do know it's an epistle rather than a transcription of a sermon though because it still ends with a personalized ending and declares that it's written. So I beseech you, brethren, suffer the word of exaltation for I have written a letter. So we still know that it's a written letter. It's not just a transcription of a sermon or the minutes to a meeting or something like that. One John, one also doesn't have an introduction straight away. It makes doctrinal statements first. Very similar beginning to John's Gospel actually immediately making declarative statements about Jesus. But then verse four does show us we write onto you. So it doesn't really have a clear target audience but we clearly see that it's a right a letter and it may even be a plurality of people multiple people were involved in writing that letter because it's we onto you rather than John himself. And again, John doesn't even introduce himself as the addresser of this letter. Much in the same way then, other books in the Bible have their own literary styles and this determines how they are grouped in the Bible. So history books, they're all set in the past tense. They're all written like a story. They're not written like a newspaper article or a bulleted list of events or something like that. Most of the time the stories are written in chronological order unless it's clear when the general narrative moves away from the immediate story, or there may be a list like a census or a genealogy of some kind. Sometimes it's a sort of side story. So for example, if you take the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, it actually happened before the end of Genesis 10 as proven in chapter 10 at verses 20, 25 and 31. So strictly speaking, it's not an exact chronological order but it's very clear that the narrative takes a pause to look at an alternative story and then it will resume where it left off. And although the first books in the Bible generate Genesis to Deuteronomy, they are books of the law but they're still written in a very similar manner to the other history books. So likewise documenting stories in the past tense and occasionally documenting various lists such as Old Testament law. Poetry books are very different. They've got many more present and future tense and statements than the history books. Poetry books require more careful discernment versus maybe a direct doctrinal statement or a poetic analogy. The tenses don't necessarily prove whether something refers to a future or a past event either. And to sort of wrap up this point, prophecy books are written like a combination of history and poetry. Sometimes they record historic accounts like a story in a similar manner to the history books. Other times they are more poetic and use a lot of imagery. Gospel accounts and acts read fairly similar to the history books except that the author may add a lot of theological statements about who Jesus is particularly in John's Gospel. The book of Revelation reads like a combination of Old Testament prophecy books but also the Gospels and the way that it makes theological statements about Christ but with a sprinkling of epistles in Revelation 2 and 3 although it's not written in the same style as the epistles per se. The book of Job has sort of bookends that are written like history while the big chunky bit in the middle is written more like poetry but rather interestingly in the form of a conversation and the appropriately named book of Proverbs. You're not going to believe this but it's written like a list of Proverbs and you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Hopefully you get the idea. Now this raises the question then, why does that matter? Well, as with rule one, it does affect how different books of the Bible should be utilized in application to what we believe is Christians on a variety of subjects but including, very importantly, salvation onto eternal life as we just looked at when we were in rule one. Now rule two is quite complex for some viewers so we'll break it down into two common sense points but I will have to spend quite a lot of time on each point. So the first common sense point then is that in matters of salvation, so let's pick up on the salvation theme again because it's an important topic to be fair. The Bible is not written like a step-by-step furniture building manual that you got from IKEA or something. So what I'm trying to say is you can't just take random statements from different parts of the Bible and make those a requirement for salvation when Jesus spoke to many, many people about their eternal life and never instructed those individual people to do so. So when the Bible says go and sin no more or if you love me keep my commandments or be baptized every one of you or come together for the Lord's Supper, et cetera. Now let's look at an example of why that is. So a good example would be that the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Now in John chapter six Jesus talks about eating his body, drinking his blood in order to have eternal life which the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches interpret to mean partaking in communion or what they would call the Eucharist. A study video is already available on my channel about John chapter six if you want more information about this particular topic but the Gospels are historical accounts of what Jesus said and did. They're not church instructional letters such as Paul's epistles or Peter's epistles. So they don't tell the church how to operate when they gather together. Now there are instructions contained in them in the conversations Jesus had and sermons that he preached for whatever purpose was intended for those respective audiences. So the audience of communion didn't exist at this time. It would not exist until after this event at the Last Supper. John's gospel does not even document the Last Supper itself only the conversations after it. Now this then presents us with a list of seemingly unanswered questions if we're going to take the Catholic view. If the ordinance of communion is so fundamental to our salvation in other words we have to take communion regularly to have eternal life. It raises a lot of problematic questions. First of all, why is Jesus telling a seemingly random group of Jews who are not yet baptized in the faith by the way that they need to follow an ordinance that does not even exist? Yeah, okay. Why tell the Jews in John six but not somebody else in John four or John five or somewhere else? Why did Jesus not instigate communion at the beginning of his ministry or why didn't John the Baptist instigate it in preparation for him? Or why didn't the disciples administer communion when Jesus sent them out to the highways and hedges? Why didn't Jesus give this instruction to Nicodemus or the woman at the well or the neighboring Samaritans or the Jews in John five or the Jews in John seven or the Jews in John eight or the man blind from birth that he healed the scribes and the Pharisees but he did repeatedly tell all of those people to believe on him. That's what he keeps telling them. He doesn't keep telling them, eat my flesh and drink my blood. So he's not telling people if he was to take the communion view that he's not telling these people to come and get communion, okay. Moreover, if you actually pick up your Bible and read John chapter six, Jesus explained to the Jews in John six what he meant by eat my flesh and drink my blood. He never gave communion as the definition. The definition he gave was perfectly consistent with conversations he had with other people when discussing how to obtain eternal life. So in John six 35 and Jesus said on to them I am the bread of life. He that comes to me shall never hunger. He that believes on me shall never thirst. So he defines it for you and it's the same as what he's been saying in the other chapters. It's got nothing to do with communion. And he also says later in 47 to 48 very, very nice on to you. He that believes on me has everlasting life. I am that bread of life. So it defines it for you if you just read it. Now a Catholic objection that I have heard before is that John was writing from a liturgical point of view. In other words, he was instructing the church with the importance of this ordinance as a church practice because he was already thinking about communion in mind when he wrote it. But this is an argument made from silence or a lot of probably maybes. John's gospel is a gospel. Okay. It's a written account of the conversations Jesus had where John is just faithfully documenting what Jesus said. He's not putting his own personal spin on Jesus's sayings to make some sort of communion teaching out of this. That's not how the gospel reads at all. Someone's invented that. Moreover, it's not an epistle written to the churches of God to tell them how to conduct services. Jesus did give instructions in his sermons and conversations which apply to churches such as the Sermon on the Mount, for example, in Matthew's gospel. But the context of those teachings is self-evident because the story will move on when the context changes. So with the context of the teachings being self-evident, when Jesus said in Matthew 6, take heed that you do not your arms before men to be seen of them, you don't need surrounding context to tell you what that teaching is self-evident. Okay. But whereas when he says, eat my flesh and drink my blood, you need the surrounding context to tell you what he means by that. And John gives it as in chapter six and it isn't communion. Okay. He already gave us the context. Now, another objection one might have, not just from the Catholics, but from anybody really, is that we need to use the whole Bible. So even if Jesus didn't tell Nicodemus or the Samaritan woman to do this or to do that, but he told someone else to do it somewhere else, that's what we then need to do to have eternal life. So for instance, when the Bible says, go and sin no more or if you love me, keep my commandments or be baptized in every one of you or come together for the Lord's Supper, they'll say, well, yes, Jesus didn't say it to everybody, but he did say it to some people or at least the Bible says it. So we still need to do those things for eternal life then. Well, this argument would carry weight. If the Bible was written like an Ikea or a Lego instruction manual, you know, step one, check you have all the parts, step two, do this, step three, do that. But that's not how the Bible's written, okay? The Gospels document Jesus's individual interactions with lots of different people in parceled events. So if Jesus was talking about eternal life and didn't tell someone to get baptized or repent of their sins or keep his commandments, but we have to do those things, you essentially accuse Jesus of not preaching the gospel fully and correctly by failing to tell them to do these essential things. Bearing in mind also that different writers are writing to different audiences about different things. So when James wrote about being justified by works, he wasn't writing to unsafe people to tell them how to be saved. He addressed the letter to his brethren. When Peter wrote about giving diligence to make your calling election short, again, he wasn't writing to unsafe people to tell them how to be saved either. As we looked at with rule one, we saw that John's gospel is written intentionally that the reader might believe and have eternal life. So we must allow his gospel to be self-sufficient for his purpose, okay? And the problem with trying to read the Bible like an Ikea or a Lego instruction manual. So if you were to say, well, first you have to repent of your sins and then you have to believe and then you have to get baptized and then this has to happen and then you need to keep going to church and so on. Well, the Bible would be a very, very, very badly written instruction manual, okay? An instruction manual is written in a way that makes sense, the steps go in logical order. So you read in the correct direction. So you start on page one, you read from left to right, you go down to the next line, you read from left to right, you work your way down the page and then you go to the next page and so on and so on and so on. That's how your Ikea furniture building manual is printed. That's how your Lego instruction manual for your kids is printed, okay? It's designed so that you can read it in that way. But what people end up doing is they try and read the Bible like a conspiracy board with all these strings joining all these different bits together. But the problem is though everybody will get their own random ideas as to what the truth is. And just ask yourself this, why do you think there are so many different interpretations and heresies? It's because this is how people read the Bible where it's jumping around like this and it doesn't make any sense. So for our eternal life then, well, do we get baptized or don't we? Do we take communion or don't we? Do we walk in obedience daily or don't we? Do we have to be sinless perfectionist or don't we? Everybody has their own different views about this because this is how they read the Bible. There are so many different versions and checklists and to-dos about in the gospel of the world but works are the one thing that they all have in common. And again, it's because the reading the Bible like all these dots that join random bits together that don't really join together in any logical, consistent way. Now I touched on the same example in my previous video. Let's just look at this example again about being born again. And this is how people read the Bible like a convoluted conspiracy board that makes no rational sense instead of just a logical list of books that each one in its own way makes perfect sense when you just read it in a normal order. Okay. So in the previous video, we looked at the example of being born again. Lots of people have their own disjointed interpretations about what this means. So you ask three different people, you'll often get three different answers. And just as a personal anecdote, a friend of mine and I were out in Manchester evangelizing and we confronted somebody who was giving out tracks and these tracks said, repent of your sins to be saved. And we asked this person, we said, can you show me in the Bible where it says repent of your sins to be saved? And she took us to the passage in John three about being born again. But I didn't ask her where the Bible said be born again. I asked her where it said repent of your sins to be saved. But she took me there because she said, well, that's what it means. So that's a fourth answer that's not even on this page. So what people do is they just pick random passages or doctrines that aren't directly connected to the issue and then make that the definition of it, right? Well, if you just simply go to John three where Jesus mentions the term being born again, all you have to do is read the book in the sensible order that John wrote it and Jesus will tell you A, what it means and B, what it entails and how it can be achieved. So you read John three verse three, Jesus said you must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. Well, what does that mean Jesus? Well, he tells us what it means further down in the conversation in verses five and six. He says, you've got to be born of water and born of the spirit. You've got to be born, you know, that which is born of flesh is flesh, that which is born of spirit is spirit, okay? So you've got to be born in the spirit. That's what being born again means. Well, how do I do that, Jesus? Well, then he goes on to tell us, God so loved the world that he gave the only begone son that who so ever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So there's your definition of being born again if you just read John's letter in the sensible order that it was written instead of just picking something randomly and saying, well, that's what it means. And that passage doesn't even mention being born again or have anything to do with the subject whatsoever. Now, yes, obviously that being said, we do need to cross reference in the Bible because a given passage might not give us enough information about a subject matter or because an issue might be conflicting and so we do need the help of another passage but make sure there's a clear connection. So both passages must be talking about the same subject or at least at the very least make sure the same keywords appear. So like justified or repentance and we have dealt with that in previous videos of the series. So when I dealt with the issue of defining what words mean in the Bible, if you're gonna define what repentance means, don't say you have to have all this hatred for sin because of this passage that tells us about how awful sin is when that passage doesn't even mention repentance. You can't define repentance from a verse that doesn't mention repentance, okay? Pick something that's relevant to the same subject or at least the same keywords are appearing there. And I know I've already asked this question but why does this matter so much? Well, if you read the Bible in such a convoluted way, so for example, if you define being born again as walking in obedience based on a verse that never mentions being spiritually born again or if you define repentance as turning from sin because of a passage about sin that never mentions the word repentance. Well, you make Jesus and the apostles sound like insane people who can't write cohesive books or have cohesive dialogues. In other words, you make them sound like crazy people, all right? Now, let's just consider comparing the Koran versus the Bible, right? Now, even in a paradigm where neither books were true, so let's just say for the sake of argument that even the Bible isn't true. Well, even as pieces of literature, the Koran and the Bible, the Koran is not even remotely comparable to the Bible. It doesn't even remotely measure up because the Bible contains a variety of literature. It has history, it has poetry, it has personal letters. Now, if you were to say that the Bible has contradictions as people will claim, well, the thing is the conflicting passages were very likely written by different people looking at things from a different perspective or describing different unrelated contexts that have nothing to do with each other. So when Paul says we're not justified by works and James says we are justified by works, well, there are two authors who are actually talking about two completely different things because Paul's talking about righteousness, James is talking about profiting the brethren. We dealt with that in previous videos in the series, all right? So it makes sense because the literature in it actually makes sense. When you read the Koran though, it's almost like a mixture of proverbs and laws where the author is just outputting various statements but many of those statements, they're not even connected to each other. So the context changes very flippantly and unexpectedly and moreover it's lacking the historical context regarding when Muhammad received those prophecies and for what purpose. So if you were to say that Koran has contradictions, well, the conflicting passages are very lacking in context and they're written by the same author who can't even get his story straight, okay? So the thing is you're making Jesus and the apostles sound like they wrote the Koran instead of the Bible because we're just jumping around in all these different places and statements that don't make any cohesive sense, right? The Bible is not written like that. It's written as a collection of books and each book is a sensible book that just makes sense. If you just read it like a normal person reads any normal book. So I know we digressed quite a lot there. Let's get onto the next common sense point. So remember that rule two is understand the literary style of the Bible. So common sense point number two then is that in matters of science, understand that none of the books in the Bible are written in the style of a school textbook. So the Psalms, Job, Isaiah, they use creation as a common theme in some of the points that they make but they're not intentionally written to let's say explain the shape of the planet or the astronomical nature of the universe. Now a good example of how the Bible is very widely misappropriated in this way is the flat earth view. So people who propose this will take various verses out of the Bible like the ones that you see on the screen here and when it says things like the breadth of earth and the foundations of the earth, the end of the earth, the world will be stable, it shall not be moved and the four corners of the earth and that type of thing. And these are just a small handful of verses that are used to justify the notion that the earth is flat according to the Bible. Some flat earth Christians even associate belief in the flat earth as being essential to the gospel itself. They'll deny, they'll denounce people who don't believe in the flat earth as heretics who essentially reject the gospel of Jesus Christ because they don't accept his words. But the flat earth view relies on pulling verses rather randomly from a variety of books but none of the Bible is written in the literary style of a school science textbook. So while the Bible makes references to the nature of creation, particularly the beginning of Genesis, this is not the purpose of most books in the Bible. Many of the go-to verses about the nature of the earth primarily use analogies or hyperbole or metaphors either to highlight the severity or the scale of a matter, relative to the Israelites at least, or to help man understand heavenly and spiritual things but from a more earthly perspective. So to start making scientific claims about the shape of the earth based on verses not intended for this really requires a lot of cherry picking because there's other verses you could cherry pick to say the opposite really. The Genesis account and the resulting issue of creationism as incompatible with evolution is a different matter because of the literary style and purpose of Genesis relative to other books. Theistic evolution has many inconsistencies because of that very reason. So the Bible makes claims about creation that are incompatible with the general accepted scientific consensus on the nature of biological evolution or the origins of the universe. And so for example, if we compare Genesis with Psalms and Job, well, Genesis is a history book. It's written like a history book. So if you were to interpret the Genesis account poetically or figuratively or allegorically, you would then have to explain why the creation narrative prior to the flood is incoherent with the rest of Genesis which is then written as a chronological book of history as with any other history book in the Bible. So trying to reconcile evolutionism with Genesis is very problematic. Psalms are primarily the poetry or prayers or songs that they're not intended to be used as scientific school textbooks. They're not intended to teach sailors about astronomy or navigation. Psalms are very often quoted in the New Testament as Old Testament references to Jesus Christ. That's their primary purpose, more or less. In Job, this is an unusual book because the very beginning and ending read more like a history book, whereas the big chunk in the middle, that reads more like a conversation in the form of poetry. But even in the story-based chapters, there's not really a strong focus on the actual timing of when Job's story took place or how important it is to fit it with the rest of biblical chronology. The year in which Job lived, it doesn't really seem to be remarkably important to the story or the overall purpose of the book and that that's why it's kept in the poetry group. So many of its references to creation are actually Old Testament references to Christ and we'll look at that shortly. Or there's some other spiritual principle that the book is actually trying to teach us. Now, despite what I have just said though, even with the history books, while they should not contain large sections just to be dismissed as poetic or allegorical or figurative, that doesn't mean that there aren't isolated statements that are hyperbolic or figures of speech for the very same reason that we have these same concepts in our language today. So as for the prophecy books though, we know that they do use a lot of poetic and figurative language. So let's take Deuteronomy and Isaiah. Well, in Deuteronomy 28, 49, it says, the Lord shall bring a nation against you from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose tongue you shall not understand. In Isaiah 11, 12, it says, and he shall set up an ensign for the nations and shall assemble and out the outcasts of Israel and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. So for example here, Deuteronomy and Isaiah described other nations as being from the ends or the four corners of the earth. And so, well, is that being literal or is that just being hyperbolic or metaphorical? Well, in our English language today, we have various idioms and metaphors and hyperbole that we place in our own language, even though the surrounding context of what we are saying is still meant to be taken seriously and literally. So a really good example of this is the idiom elephant in the room, okay? And so when we talk about an elephant in the room, this refers to an issue that does need to be addressed, but it's being intentionally ignored or not acknowledged. So although it is an idiom, there is no literal elephant in the room, but there is an important issue that should be taken seriously despite the use of that idiom, okay? So the statement itself, elephant in the room, is an idiom, but the surrounding context and meaning is not meant to be taken metaphorically or allegorically or figuratively. If there is an elephant in the room, there is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, not a figurative problem, but it's not because of an elephant, okay? And moreover, we can demonstrate that the Bible uses hyperbole, otherwise you would have to insist that the Bible stories are incoherent. So for example, let's take the size of the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, his kingdom. Well, in Daniel 2, 37, 38 says, you, oh king, are the king of kings, for the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power and strength and glory, and where so ever the children of Menduel, the beast of the field and the fowls of heaven, he has given into your hand and has made you ruler over them all. So, and he says, you are the head of gold. So it's saying to Nebuchadnezzar here, you are the king of kings, you know, your rule extends over all the earth, all men wherever they dwell and even the animals as well are in your hand. Daniel 4, 22 says, it is you, oh king, that has grown and become strong for your greatness is grown and reaches onto the heaven, your dominion is to the ends of the earth. So we have two very, very dramatic verses here, well, three actually, but two dramatic passages talking about the extent of Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom and just how big his power really is. So if you were to interpret these verses then, as the flat earth has interpreted their cherry-picked verses, you would have to believe that Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom quite literally reached the height of heaven and the very ends of the earth, all the way until the so-called Antarctic ice wall that NASA is apparently patrolling now. Moreover, he could even command the very birds themselves to obey his will based on that passage. So, you know, perhaps he could sing the animals to clean up his palace like Snow White or something. But the thing is, if you read the book of Daniel, you'll know that it was prophesied and historically documented as well that the Medes and the Persians would take over his kingdom and other kingdoms would then take over those. So if Nebuchadnezzar ruled over all the ends of the earth, where did these kingdoms come from? Okay, that doesn't make sense, that doesn't align. Daniel can't even get his own story straight if that's how you're going to read the Bible. So you might ask the question then, well, why you was hyperbole at all? Why not just say his kingdom was very big? Well, the Bible, remember that the Bible claims that holy men spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost to speak in 2 Peter 1,21. The Holy Spirit did not take over their bodies in some weird form of possession and cause them to write these things. So, while the Bible is inspired, it's got breathed, each book does have some of the personalized viewpoints and the writing styles of its respective authors. So Paul's writing style was very different from Peter's writing style, but the same Holy Ghost inspired both of those men to write. With that in mind then, so from Daniel's perspective, the world was a very big place. Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom would have seemed very, very big at the time, whereas by today's standards and more recent history, it doesn't seem very large for an empire. There were no trains, planes, and automobiles in Daniel's time. A lot of the Babylonian Empire spanned desert, which is very difficult to traverse even today, the world seemed a much bigger place. Moreover, we don't really know how much Daniel and the Israelites would have really known about the wider world. You know, we don't know how much they knew about kingdoms much further away in West Europe or North Eurasia or Southern Africa or the Orient. It's not to say they didn't know about them, but we don't know how much they knew about them. Even if they were aware of their existence of the further kingdoms, they may have been so far away that their influence on the Jewish world was fairly negligible. So as a matter of perspective, it certainly seemed like Nebuchadnezzar's power spread to the end of the earth. At least that's how it seemed like from Daniel's point of view. And so if we actually understand this, by understanding this perspective, we can then understand and explain why the Bible would have some verses where people are saying it makes fake or false scientific claims. So for instance, as we dealt with in a previous video, the Hour of Jesus' crucifixion varies in different gospel accounts, but we know that the mechanical clock wasn't invented. Sun dials were used at least in the day and the stars by night. If the weather was good enough and if the measure had sufficient knowledge to understand how to measure time this way, obviously a sun dial's a bit more straightforward, but measuring the night by the stars, well, the constellation changes throughout the year. So the concept of an hour was much more fluid than it is in the modern era because we have clocks, they move at a fixed pace throughout the day. It doesn't matter what the affairs of the sky are, what the weather is like, how long the sunlight is. It doesn't require any human intuition at all. An hour is a very fixed concept in the modern era. It wasn't a fixed concept when Jesus was crucified. And so to wrap up this point, let's just look at a couple of short examples. So in Isaiah 60, 16, it prophesies, you shall also suck the milk of the Gentiles and shall suck the breasts of kings and you shall know that I the Lord am your saviour and your redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob. Now we can assume that any Christian with at least a double digit IQ doesn't literally believe he will one day suck at the breast of a male king. I think it's fairly obvious most people aren't gonna take that literally. Psalm 58 verse eight says, as a snail which melts, let every one of them pass away, like the untimely birth of a woman that they may not see the sun. Now if you think that there's a conspiracy here in science to deny the fact that snails actually melt, you can actually test this yourself if you're worried about the science on this, although don't tell it any animal rights activists. But salt doesn't literally melt a snail, okay? Salt rapidly dehydrates them and gives the visual appearance that they are melting as their mucus is drawn out and they squirm and dry out in response. Now I have heard somebody use that verse to argue that the Bible is making false scientific claims. If we read the Bible like the flat earth has read the Bible, well then we'd have to say that science is wrong to say that snails don't melt because they must surely melt because we have this verse here. Well, the thing is, we don't need modern science to tell us that snails don't melt or that men can't lactate, okay? The Bible is not making scientific claims here. We know that Isaiah was prophesying and because he was prophesying, he was using figurative language to describe heavenly things because that's how prophecies in the Bible are written. And I think it's rather obvious in Psalm 58 here that he is using a snail melting as a simile for something else, nothing more. This is not a school science textbook. He's using a simile here. Now, even if we know scientifically that snails don't literally melt, we still have this saying of melting a snail using salt because it looks like that. And it's just using that as a simile for a different point entirely that he's actually trying to get across. So, I think if someone's intellectually honest about this, I don't really see what the problem is here. And that's gonna lead us onto the next rule. So, rule number three, in combination with rule two, understand when the Bible is being literal and when it's being figurative. And remember that we already looked at the example of the elephant in the room. So, something can still be idiomatic or it can still be a metaphor even in a literal kind of context. One of the criticisms that non-Christians have against Christians is that we sometimes cherry pick when we decide to take the Bible literally and when we don't. So, some Christians, if they're a bit backed into a corner about a particularly uncomfortable subject in the Bible or whether being challenged on the science of the Bible such as the creation account, Christians get a bit defensive and that while it's just being figurative or it's not being literal. So, someone will then throw that back at you and say, well, you think it's literal when it said God created the earth but then you think it's metaphorical when it says he did it in six days. So, that's what the recusing is of, is essentially cherry picking there. But then what I'd say to you about that is ask yourself this question. Okay, these people that will throw that at you, if they turned on the television, right? And they saw one of these three programs just instantly, that's just what you see quickly in your mind. You would figure out very, very quickly between these three shows, which one is the educational program, which one is the news and which one is an entertainment show. You don't need to see the logos in the corner. You don't need to see the opening theme song. You don't need to see any interludes or advertisement breaks or any idents or logos or anything like that. Even if you're just looking at those three pictures now, you know which one is which. You know which one's the entertainment. You know which one is the news. You know which one is an educational program. You don't need to be an expert in television to understand that. Okay, just any person with a brain understands that. So they'd figure it out pretty quickly. Well, guess not, it's not difficult most of the time to tell when the Bible is being literal and when it's being figurative. The problem is that many people, and it's not just non-Christians, it's Christians as well, but many people are just willfully ignorant about this. Okay. Now, what I'll do is just to help you with this rule, we'll subdivide it into sub-rules just to make it a bit more broken out so we can understand this one a bit better. So sub-rule 3A, generally speaking, maybe not so much with poetry and prophetic books quite as much, but generally speaking, interpret the Bible literally, except when it's very, very, very obvious that it's not. Now, anybody with a competent grasp of their own language should be able to do this with secular literature. All right. Now, a good example would be the snake in Eden, referring to Satan. There's part of the Bible that's more literal, there's part of the Bible that's more symbolic and we're gonna show how those two things tie in together. So in the Genesis account, we see an event where a snake is able to speak to Eve that, and there's the verse there, it's in Genesis 3.1. Because the Bible likens Satan or the devil to a serpent, some will interpret the story in Genesis here as being just symbolic, that Satan spoke to Eve directly and did not actually cause a snake to talk. Now, sometimes non-Christians will straw man Christians in order to ridicule them, essentially, as if we believe in talking snakes like in Harry Potter. But the thing is though, we don't, okay? Snakes don't conventionally talk. Christians don't believe that there are all these talking snakes out there here and everywhere. For Christians like myself, who interpret Genesis literally, we believe that at one time in one individual circumstance, somehow Satan was able to use a snake to speak because for whatever reason that we don't fully understand, he was unable to communicate with man directly, okay? So there's your Genesis verse there on the screen that the serpent was more subtle and he spoke to Eve in the garden. Now, if we take the Genesis account as a whole book, it's written like a history book, very, very similar to the books of the law, the books of kings and chronicles and Ruth and Esther and so on. It's written like it's a historical account. There's no compelling reason to assert that the first few chapters up until the flood were just symbolic or analogous or figurative or allegorical. And then to say that the rest of Genesis, such as Abraham's and Joseph's stories, suddenly for some unexpected reason, become a literal story now. To interpret only the first few chapters in this way is to not interpret Genesis consistently, all right? So since it's written like a history book and it's grouped with other historical books, it's not grouped with the poetry, it's not grouped with the prophecy sections of the Bible. We must then assume that this was a literal story. That being said though, we should not reduce Genesis three to being a story about a talking snake, okay? That the talking snake is not the issue. It's not the fundamental focus of the story. Rather, since the snake in some way represents or is the mouthpiece of Satan, the enmity described between mankind and the snake describes the relationship between mankind and Satan himself, not mankind and snakes as a particular animal. So in Genesis three 15, it says, an eye or God in context will put enmity between you, the snake and the woman and between your seed and her seed and it shall bruise your head and she'll bruise his heel. So in Genesis, the enmity is described between woman's seed or mankind, more particularly believers actually, but let's not worry too much about technicalities there and the snake seed, all right? And it's not really snakes as a particular animal as opposed to any other animal. That's not the purpose if you understand the whole Bible in scope. So this same enmity in Genesis is then reflected in Revelation. So because we've got the first book in the Bible and the last book in the Bible, this is kind of like a nice bookend actually to the whole story of God and humanity and Satan. So Revelation 12 looks retrospectively at the war between the dragon or Satan and the woman, which we can assume to mean mankind, although more specifically God's people rather than just anybody in mankind. Now Revelation is a prophecy book. It's not a history book and it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. That's how it's written. John was experiencing a vision being shown to him by God. These visions were symbolic in nature, though they do represent real things and events. Sorry, the spelling mistake there. So because of this, unlike the Genesis account, we can take a more symbolic interpretation of Revelation. We don't have to assume that God's people are one literal woman or Satan does not have to literally look like a snake or a dragon, okay? So Revelation 12, we have Behold the Great Dragon in verse three and it's his enmity with the woman if you look at the whole chapter in context. And then down in verse nine, it says the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent called the devil or Satan. And then when the dragon was so that was cast onto the earth, he persecuted the woman and the dragon was Roth with the woman and went to make war with the remnant of her seat. So there's that enmity there between the snake or also known as the dragon and the seed of the woman. So in Revelation, we have a symbolic reference to the serpent as connected to the literal serpent in Genesis, okay? So then to conclude this, we assume that the dragon and the serpent in Revelation only figuratively represent Satan, not literally. However, it must be assumed in Genesis that Satan did literally use a snake causing it to talk to be able to communicate with Eve. And that's why the serpent is used as a figurative representation of Satan in the book of Revelation. Now it would be nonsensical if Revelation used a giraffe to represent Satan figuratively or symbolically because Satan did not cause a giraffe to talk and the giraffe does not really provide a very good earthly representation to Satan. You know, a giraffe does not crawl on its belly for instance, for the rest of its days as a snake does, which is in reference to Satan being cast out of heaven down to the earth. A giraffe is not an animal that's typically at enmity with mankind as a snake is, which is a dangerous animal, some of which are poisonous to humans. Perhaps you could argue that's a picture of Satan's toxic enmity with mankind, particularly God's people. So I hope that you can see if you've got a brain in your head, it's not really very difficult to bring something that's literal and bring something that's figurative and see how they both tie together. Me personally, I think that was a super simple example and if you can't understand that, I think you're being willfully ignorant. Sub Rule 3B then, if you consider yourself to be reasonably intelligent, assume that people in the Bible were equally as intelligent and don't engage in this chronological arrogance that just asserts that everybody in the Bible was a stupid, uneducated, bronze age sheep herding nitwit. That's just spoken by people who don't know what they're talking about to justify their hatred for God, okay? Just assume that they were equally as intelligent as you are. Now, be fairly brief on this, but again, as we've looked at, when you hear the expression elephant in the room, you know there isn't an elephant in the room. When you say, if you've ever heard this saying, your children are driving you up the wall, everybody knows you are not literally being driven up a wall. When you hear the expression, burn your bridges. You know that there will not be a literal bridge burning, all right? And unless you are a flat-hard, you can still use expressions like sunrise, sunset, even though the sun isn't literally moving up or down in the sky because from man's perspective, that's what it looks like, okay? So in Isaiah, when he said, the Gentiles that you shall suck the breasts of kings, going back to this example then, assume that Isaiah was intelligent enough to understand that men don't breastfeed, all right? He's employing a metaphor here just as we do in our own language today, probably more often than you realize that we do it actually, but assume that Isaiah knew that, all right? He's not just making some weird claim there. In Acts 749, it says, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. And this was Stephen quoting from Isaiah. So again, assume that Stephen and Isaiah were both intelligent enough that they knew there wasn't some literal place in the earth where if you were to take your camel over there and go and have a look at it, you can see God resting his big giant feet on a footstool, on the earth like it's a giant footstool, okay? They would have known that they were intelligent enough to figure that out. There wasn't a literal place on earth where somebody could go and see God's feet resting upon him. Now, we may have more collective knowledge in our society today, but that doesn't make you any more personally intelligent than the people who lived in the eras of the Bible, okay? Isaiah knew this, Stephen knew this, it wasn't a problem for them. They were intelligent enough to figure this out. Sub rule three C, and we sort of discussed this in the first video already actually about resolving contradictions, that the context of a given passage will tell you what the overall purpose of that passage is. So let's take Psalm 19, one of the Psalms that the Flat Earthers will use in verse four and six as backing up the Flat Earth because it says, end of the world or the end of heaven. Now, once again, anybody who has a basic understanding of literature and an IQ of hopefully at least double digits can know the purpose of this Psalm and it's not to make geographical claims about the world map. Now, the reason you can prove this is because even before verse one, we have this header to the Psalm. A lot of Psalms have an interlinear here. And it says to the chief musician, a Psalm of David, all right? Point in case to the chief musician. It doesn't say to the chief editor of Britannica or Wikipedia. This is a hymn to be sung. It's not an entry submission to add to the world encyclopedia or the Hitchhiker's Guide to Cartography, okay? Now, the first verse of this Psalm gives us a purpose, singing about how the heavens declare the glory of God. The firmament or the sky shows his handiwork. That's the purpose of this Psalm as we jump into it, okay? In verses three and four, it says there's no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. In them, he has set a tabernacle for the sun. So in verse three and four, we see their voice is heard in every language and their line is gone through all the earth. Who is the they that this there is referring to? Well, as per verse one, it's the heavens, okay? It's the heavens where their speech can be heard in every part of the earth, in every tongue, every language. The heavens are not a single line. So when it says their line is gone through all the earth, well, we know that the heavens are not a line, okay? Especially not under the Flat Earth Dome model, all right? The sky's not a line. We could interpret this line as being a measuring stick to where the heavens stretch to, which is all over the earth, okay, all the earth. Their words, we can see in this Psalm, is the voice of the heavens, which is heard by every speech, every language. So it doesn't matter what language you speak, the heavens declare the glory of God to you. You can hear its voice by the very fact that you see. If you can look up and see the heavens, it declares its voice to you, whatever language you speak. Since words are only meaningful, if there is somebody to hear the words, the ends of the earth does not define an Antarctic ice wall so that there is a definitive line where the voice ends. Rather, it defines anywhere on earth where mankind can be found, which does indeed have an end. So anywhere where there's man on the ends of the earth, he can hear the voice of the heavens declaring the glory of God. And so this map ought to show you this idea that all the ends of the earth in all directions where the heavens declare the glory of God in every language. It doesn't matter what shape the earth is for this Psalm to work. It doesn't matter whether it's flat, doesn't matter whether it's circular, or it globe, even rectangular. It could even be triangle shaped. It doesn't matter because the ends of the earth where the heavens declare that glory of God in every language is wherever man is there to hear in his own language the heavens declaring the glory of God. And after these verses about the end of the earth, the Psalmist then goes on to explain that the law of God is perfect there in verse seven and eight and the law works to the conversion of the soul, which is similar to a New Testament saying actually that the law is our school master to bring us to Christ. It goes on to say in verses nine and 10, that we should fear the Lord that his judgments are true and righteous to be sought out and desired as a sweet thing. So that there again the purpose of the Psalm, nothing whatsoever to do with the shape of the earth. So the purpose of the Psalm is not to provide an insight into geography or geology or astronomy. This is not a scientific journal entry. It's a song. The song testifies that the heavens and the earth testify the glory of God, that it has a creator, God of the Bible, whose judgments are just and right. Since this declaration goes out to all the earth in every language, Christianity is not like a regional religion. It's not supposed to be the white man's religion or the Western tradition. The law of God applies to every man and every language, irrespective of where he lives. There is only one God for all creation, as opposed to the gods of nations, which many other people believed in at the time when the Psalm was written, where every country would have its own God. The justice and glory of God applies to mankind, irrespective of what shape the earth is, which is completely irrelevant to this Psalm. And let's just see how we would actually apply this Psalm in practice, all right? So if you go on YouTube, you can find a video about Christianity, using that term very loosely, to be honest, but Christianity is spreading in Mongolia, and it's got the Buddhist Dalai Lama as the thumbnail, because in the video, he comments on this issue about Christianity taking Mongolia by storm, all right? Now, in this video, if you watch it, he says for Westerners, it's better to keep their own tradition in religious faith, whether that's Christianity or Judaism to some extent Islam. Similarly, Tibet and Mongolia are traditionally Buddhist, so it's better to keep their own tradition. Now, his English grammar wasn't great, so I'm not perfectly verbatim quoting him. I've slightly paraphrased what he said, but you can find that documentary, you can see what he said. In essence, that's what he said. So according to his own argument, it doesn't even matter whether Buddhism is actually true or false, it's just a tradition that he thinks should be kept because that's traditionally Mongolia or Tibet. But we see as Christians that Psalm 19 declares the heaven, says that the heavens declare the glory of God of the Bible across the entire world to every man, every nation, every language. Christianity is not merely a Western tradition that we keep because it's nice or cute or a fun thing to do. The name of Jesus is to be declared in every nation and every language, including Tibet and Mongolia and he's just gonna have to deal with it. This is a much more accurate purpose of the Psalm than the Flat Earth, okay? Moving along to sub rule 3D, since the Bible points forward to Jesus in the Old Testament because that's how verses are quoted frequently in the New Testament, apply this as the lens through which to see verses that people would normally try and make scientific claims with, so in other words, look for connections to Christ, all right? Now the reason that I assert this is that we don't need the Bible to tell us what shape the planet is or how to do algebra or how to understand and learn foreign languages or how to use fire and the wheel. Mankind can and has already figured this out, all right? Left to his own device as man can still figure that out. But left to his own device as mankind is not capable of knowing the true God and that he needs salvation, which can only apply in one method through believing in the man Christ Jesus. Unlike various sciences, like whether it's geology or astronomy or whatever kind of science you want to pick, mankind would never be able to figure this out on his own without revelation from God, all right? And just to qualify this, if you were to read some parts of other non-Christian religious literature such as the Book of Mormon or the Rig Veda and the Gospel of Thomas, for example, well, some parts of those writings, they sound like they were written by somebody who was either very, very drunk or high on drugs, okay? Some of the statements that they make. Left to his own devices, these are the books that mankind comes out with. These are his religions, okay? That's why he needs revelation from God to understand that. He doesn't need revelation from God to figure out how to start a fire or how to make a round wheel, all right? He can already figure that out. So let's take an example that we have actually looked at in a previous video in this series and following what we've also looked at in this video. Let's use Job 38 as an example of this case in point. So Job 38, the first few verses of it, deal with a lot of creation theme, okay? So there's two doctrines that are propped up using this. So the Flat Earthers will use this statement about having foundations to justify their belief in the Flat Earth. Some will also use verse seven that it says all the sons of God shouted for joy as being angels because this passage shows that mankind was not around at the time of the creation of the Earth to witness this event. But then this view would contradict Hebrews one explaining that the angels are not the sons of God. So I already touched on that in the previous video, so I won't address that here. But it's rather obvious that this passage is creation themed. God shows Job in verse four, he was not around at the creation of Earth, he lacks understanding. So mankind can have all these theories and science about how the world came about, whether it's under the creationism banner or whether it's under evolution, but no amount of science will ever give mankind a definitive answer. He was not there at creation, he cannot know for sure, okay? Now then, moreover, looking at the language being used in this passage, the Earth does not have a literal cornerstone. So when it says who laid the cornerstone, the Earth is not a building, all right? It's not a square shaped building. Even according to the Flat Earth view, if we look at how foundations or cornerstones are used across the Bible, we can see that this passage here is an Old Testament reference to Jesus Christ. So a few good verses to qualify this in Ephesians two between 19 and 22. It talks about the foundations of the apostles and prophets Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. First Peter two, six, quoting Isaiah, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone. Mark 12, 10, quoting the Psalms, the stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. So we see that foundations and cornerstones are really more about Jesus than they actually are about the shape of the planet, okay? That's the purpose of how the Bible uses them predominantly. Now, Christ is the center of the Bible. He's mentioned on almost every page in the New Testament and the Old Testament contains abundant references to him. This is the lens through how we should interpret passages like Job 38 in the Bible. It was not intended to tell you about the earth's geological or geographic or astronomical properties. It was intended to point you towards Christ, okay? So we spent quite a lot of time on rule three. Let's move on to rule four and this actually deviates from the previous rules that we were dealing with. This is quite a different rule here. So establish the difference between historical documented events that may also be specific to certain characters in the Bible and what commandments or principles apply to us as New Testament believers. So for example, what Jesus himself was able to do as the Christ is not necessarily the same as what he's telling us to do, we being his body but not Christ himself, okay? So one good example to qualify this point is that within charismatic and Pentecostal and NAR circles particularly, it's interpreted that because Jesus and Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles being men did many mighty miracles and works that New Testament believers in filled with the Holy Ghost should have the same authority to cast out devils and perform all of these healing miracles, left, right and center and speaking tongues and so on and so on, okay? The list goes on. But this is where we must differentiate between documented history about specifics that apply to those people versus the commandments and principles and teachings that they taught to be applicable to us generally, okay? So if we take the Gospels, the Gospels are primarily concerned with who Jesus was, what he said and what he did. So as we know, it doesn't take a genius Christian to figure this out that Jesus did perform many, many miracles including a lot of healings and a lot of casting out devils. But if you actually look at Jesus's detailed teaching where he gives us quite a lot of explanation to his teaching such as a very good example is the Sermon on the Mount, you'll notice that healing is not a considerable topic. So in Matthew five, he starts off with Sermon on the Mount. He starts off with the Beatitudes in the first 12 verses. Then in the next seven verses, he goes on to talk about the salt of the earth. Then he goes to talk about murder and anger. Then he talks about temptations, then divorce, then oaths and forgiveness, then loving your enemies. And then he goes into Matthew six and it's giving arms, prayer, fasting, treasures in heaven, worry not. And then Matthew seven, it's judging, asking and receiving the narrow gate, false prophets and rock and sand, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, I could go on obviously with everything that's in the other gospels, but you'll notice that in three chapters, we have all of this detailed teaching and teaching about healing is noticeably absent despite the fact that Jesus did so many healings, okay? Furthermore, we have many parables on a variety of subjects other than physical healing. So we've got things like the parable of the sow and the seed and the wheat and the tears and the mustard seed and the leaven. That's the righteous versus the unrighteous. You've got the parable of the treasure in the pearl. That's the value of the kingdom of God. You've got the parable of the full net. That's again, the righteous versus the unrighteous. You've got the parable of the lost sheep, which is about how Jesus comes for those who are his. You've got the parable of the unforgiving servant. That's about forgiveness. You've got the parable of the hired laborers, which is the last shall be first, the first shall be last. And then you've got the parable of the two sons and of the vineyard and the wedding banquet, which is about accepting Christ or rejecting Christ. So again, we've got all these different parables with these variety of subject matters, but once again, healing is not a considerable subject matter for these parables. Okay, he's not trying to give us healing teaching with these parables. Carrying on then, if we read the epistles where the writers gave us as New Testament Christians all these different instructions of things that we need to do. They said to us things like, you need to overcome evil with good. You need to do the works of the spirit, not the works of the flesh. You need to be subject to higher powers. It talks about doctrinal matters like the spiritual Israel versus the hard-heartedness of physical Israel. You've got how to deal with contentions in the church. You've got church eldership. You've got teachings on marriage, eating food sacrificed onto idols. You've got doctrines teaching about Christ and salvation, the ministry to the saints, the laboring in the gospel, the dead in Christ, pretoit, and again, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I could list them all. There's too many to list here, okay? But again, the teachings in the epistles about healing is a very lacking subject. We have references to potential illnesses or infirmities such as Timothy's stomach or Ephroditus in Philippians, but almost no teaching on the subject as a doctrinal thing. Like, you know, there's no passage in Romans where Paul talks for an entire chapter all about healing and how it applies and how we do it and this, that, and the other. Arguably, what I would say is probably the most obvious teaching on healing in the New Testament in the epistles is in James chapter five. And even in James chapter five, we still only have two verses on the issue with absolutely no reference to authority or supernatural power in relation to healing. So the most clear teaching in the epistles on healing is two verses, which don't even deal with the authority that Jesus gave to his apostles. Now elsewhere, we do have isolated verses which are applied to healing and the Pentecostals will make doctrines out of those verses on healing, but healing's not the given context of those verses. So for example, they'll take this statement by his stripes, you were healed past tense in 1 Peter, but the correct context is actually Christ bearing our sins. If you read the chapter, that's what it's talking about there. It's not dealing with our physical infirmity. That's not how Peter uses that quote. When Mark 11 says, Jesus says, when you pray, believe that you receive them. Now I think modern Bibles actually say when you pray, believe that you have received and it sounds like it's a past tense thing. So the Pentecostals will use that to propagate this idea that you should pray for healing as if you've already received it, it's already been done. But again, if you read that in context in Mark 11, Jesus is talking about prayer generally. He's not dealing with healing specifically. And in the examples of prayer that we see in the New Testament, they don't pray as if things have already been received. Okay? They pray, you know, come Lord Jesus coming, our Father who is in heaven, you know, give us our daily bread, not thank you that you have given us our daily bread. Okay? And so that all just really reinforces rule for, understand something that happened in the Bible, but don't make everything that happens in the Bible personally about you. Okay? Because what Jesus was able to do being the Christ is not necessarily the same thing that he's sending you out to do. Okay? And so to bring this study to a close, we've got our last rule, and I'm not gonna do any scriptures on this because we've already looked at a good example really. Although the Bible is subdivided into many books, it is still a compendium of books. And so it's still important to read the whole Bible and familiarize yourself with the big picture. Now, the reason we won't look at examples is because we already kind of saw this in Job 38, you know, not taking that in isolation and making it about creation, but actually seeing how the foundations point to Jesus Christ. And the reason that we see that is because of other verses in the Bible that deal with Jesus Christ being the foundation. And so do familiarize yourself with the big picture as well. Okay? So with all that said and done, if you've read it this far in, thank you for your time and I hope that that's helped you. My channel currently while doing this video is still in infancy. There's not a lot of content on my channel yet, but in-depth studies are already available to help you understand salvation, particularly on the issue of repentance, what that actually means, and eternal versus conditional security. I may add more videos to this particular series about how to divide, if I can think of some other good themes on the topic. So God willing, I hope one day to be able to make some more meaningful content on creation that I was able to cover in this series. So thank you very much for your time.