 I want to jump into the message today that I have titled, Why You Can Believe the Bible. Now, I didn't always believe the Bible. I thought it was like many people, fairy tales, myths, legends that convey certain morals, certain values that we should live by, you know, Judeo-Christian principles and such, but isn't actual history, isn't actual fact, isn't, it was written 2,000 years ago. In a way, this was a primitive culture, writing these things. We can get some value, but it's not real. And if someone were to ask you if it was real, what would you say? Would you say, well, this is how I was raised. I was raised Christian. Okay, well, what about the Hindu person who says this is how I was raised? I was not really going to help anybody who's trying to learn more about the faith, learn more about the Bible is curious about Jesus. It's not going to work. Well, what about, well, it worked for me. You know, I was, I was an alcoholic. I was addicted to drugs. I was deep in depression. I was suicidal and, and I came to church and, and, and the Bible worked for me. Now that's great. That's incredible. And that's, that's part of it, obviously. But tell that to the person traveling to Costa Rica to take ayahuasca drug trip and it's working for them and their addictions are gone or tell that to the person going to AA 12 step program and they don't have alcoholism anymore work for them. So just because it works for someone, just because it works for you doesn't mean it's necessarily true. In fact, in science psychology, the placebo effect is a very powerful force where they would give a literal pill full of just sugar water instead of the actual medicine, yet it would do the same effect as the actual medicine just because people believed it. It doesn't mean it was true. It doesn't mean it was actually the medicine. Well, what would you say? You know, maybe you'd say, well, I've experienced God. He revealed himself to me. You know, I, I tangibly felt him. I had that experience. I was born again. I know God is real. Well, that's essential. That's necessary. That's part of it. But still, the same could be said for other people and many different other religions experiences. That's a subjective experience. And even when we interpret scripture, we don't rely on subjective experiences. We rely on the word of God, the facts in the scripture. And the same goes when you look at the world and the attack on the Bible, it is massive. And the attack is coming from an intellectual realm. It's hitting at the intellectual space saying that the Bible is myth. Bible is not true. It's not history. Can't believe it. Can't believe it as a result. And when we look at society, the degradation of our morals and our values, it's directly linked to a lack of belief in the Bible. And when we look at statistics, a Gallup poll from 2022 said that 40% of Americans believed that the Bible was the word of God and to be taken literally in 1980. Now that number is half, 20%. And this seems to be a trend. Another study by the Barna group in 2020 discovered that only 6% of American adults have a biblical worldview. So only 6% of people see the world through a biblical lens of what the Bible says. It just goes to show there is a very strong lack of belief in the Bible. Now why? Because of a lot of objections towards the Bible. We look, actually we see in God's word that these objections have not just popped up in the past 100 years or 200, 300 years with the Enlightenment era and scientific method coming to fruition and all these different things which really the first scientists were Christians and the first universities are founded by Christians. But this isn't some new thing. We actually see that Luke in his prologue addressed this aspect of knowing the facts for what they were experiencing. Luke chapter one, he says, in as much as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us. It seemed good to me also having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first to write to you and orderly account, most excellent theophilus, that you may know the certainty of the things which you were instructed. The certainty of the things which he was already instructed. He was already, he already heard about the gospel. He already heard about Jesus. He already heard about the teachings and was attending gatherings and hearing these things. But Luke here was writing, I'm going to give you an exact account mentioning the exact places that people were, where they were from, the Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man who's member of the council or Lydia of Thyatira who was a seller of purple dyes and giving the exact name, description, location of people. So you might be able to know the certainty what you've been hearing. That you could go to that town, find that person, Simon the Tanner of Joppa who was Peter was staying with and go ask him, is this real? That you could have certainty in their time to know what was being said, what was being written was true. Luke made that clear. And for those who believe the Bible's a bunch of stories, that was also the same case in the Greco-Roman world. The audience of Paul and Peter and the early apostles, people are thinking this is just myth. This is just fabrication. This is just kind of mythology and tales. Peter writes this. He says, for we did not follow cunningly devised fables. He makes it very clear when we may known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty emphasizing this was real. This happened, I saw it. Hence why the apostles and the disciples all went to the death being crucified, burned and tortured, thrown into the gladiatorial games because they saw what they saw and they were gonna die preaching it. And here he is emphasizing and he continues, we received, for he received from God the Father, honor and glory when such a voice came to him from the excellent glory. This is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased. And we heard this voice which came from heaven and when we were with him on the holy mountain. And so we have a prophetic word confirmed which you do well to heed as a light shines in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation. For prophecy never came by the will of man but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. This is truly divine. This is truly originating from God from the Holy Spirit even though it's using human vessels to write it. And here he is emphasizing this, what you're reading, what you're hearing is from God. And some people actually believe that now it wasn't just fables, maybe it wasn't just myths, maybe they were like hallucinating. Maybe they were, you know, having some sort of visionary experience but wasn't actually real. We hear this today, same thing. Back in the day, that's why John said that which was from the beginning which we've heard, which we've seen with our eyes which we have looked upon in our hands have handled concerning the word of life. That's Jesus Christ. The life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us that which we have seen and heard we declare to you that you may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. He's writing these things that people might be able to join the community of humans on earth who actually knew the Creator who knew God because he has fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. He's writing, I touched him, I handled him, I was with him. These are eyewitness accounts and John was described as the apostle who was on the bosom of Jesus, lounging with Jesus. He was there. He went to the death preaching what he had seen, what he experienced and you got to take it seriously from even a historical perspective. But how can we even know the certainty of those things? How can we even know that what they said then was true just because they said it doesn't make it true? Well, the Bible as a whole as science has progressed has actually become more and more and more verified. Now, you might have heard the opposite. Theory of evolution, different things that we've kind of realized the Bible is not true. Well, archaeology actually really came about in the 1700s and as technological innovation, scientific innovation in that field has improved, we've been able to find literal artifacts proving the Bible that otherwise hundreds of years prior you would just say, it's in the Bible that existed. Now it's in the Bible and we also found the exact evidence of it existing has been increasing and increasing. And I want to mention just a few in 2012. A seal that was used to put on tax shipments in Israel was found. It's called a Bula was found that said the name Bethlehem on it and it would have been used to put on a tax shipment traveling from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. And this was discovered in 2012. Prior to that to say David was from Bethlehem. A skeptic would say, there's no Bethlehem. We have no evidence. There's no evidence. David is mythological. The Bible is wrong. Jesus born in Bethlehem. Now Bethlehem didn't exist. We have no evidence. We have no evidence. Here we've got evidence and evidence is only increasing as there's more excavation, as there's more archaeology being done actually proving what is in this Bible has been true for all the hundreds of years and all the skeptics saying things is becoming more and more verified. Another one called the Pontius Pilate stone. Pontius Pilate, one of the only evidences in writing that we have was from a Jewish historian at that time who also said that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. But there was no necessarily archaeological digs the Roman Empire evidence in that regard yet 1961 a stone that you can go to in Israel actually got to see it. It says prefect of Judea the governor of Judea just like the Bible says Pontius Pilate has dedicated this and then it ends. Verifying Pontius Pilate was real more of the biblical story was real. It's only increasing the seal of Hezekiah. They found it in 2015. Hezekiah was a king in the Old Testament. They thought they had found his tunnel which they did but skeptics would say no, we haven't really found anything that he was actually a king kind of another mythological figure. Bam, they found another seal resembling the name Hezekiah. And one of the most interesting ones and the last one I'm going to mention is a graffiti actually they found in Rome just like you'd see in the toilet stalls a bunch of graffiti and on the you go into city downtown Portland just graffiti everywhere. Well, it's just human nature. We'd like to defile things and this was going on in ancient Rome and what's interesting is you'll see behind me this image and if you sketch it to where you only see what was engraved without kind of the rock it shows a man looking at a cross a crucifix with like a donkey head guy is on the cross and what the what the inscription said was alexamenos which is a guy's name worships his God. It was the Romans making fun of a Christian for worshiping a man who was crucified and died on a cross as God from the Romans not from the Bible because they thought it was absurd and stupid to worship some man who got crucified as a murderer a robber you know those people get crucified he's your God you know they worship the emperor they're making fun of a Christian for believing in that showing that belief was real that Jesus was God people were following him at that time outside of scripture archaeological dig discovered it. It's truly incredible and if you have more interest in that it would you know take a semester to go through all the amount of evidence that there is but there's a book by Titus Kennedy called Unearthing the Bible I highly recommend you see but what makes the Bible different than maybe other religious texts you know you hear that kind of all religions are the same what makes it different why is it better well one way is analyzing the manuscripts the actual writings that we have from that time and the earlier the manuscript to the event that it described the better the more reliable the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism which I had to study when I was becoming a certified yoga instructor you got to study the Vedas talks about various yogic philosophy and the Vedas are said to have been composed around 1000 BC yet the earliest manuscripts we have is 2000 years later and about 1000 AD it's about 2000 years so when people try to say oh the Bible 2000 years ago is written we don't even have what it is you know we don't even have what it might have said then so we can't even trust it okay we'll apply it to apply it to this religion apply it to Hinduism the Buddha was believed to have lived and taught around 600 to 500 BC and his teachings were orally transmitted and we have a very small fragment of a manuscript from the first century BC that's hundreds and hundreds of years the rest from the 8th century AD that's even more hundreds of years I studied Buddhism that was the first kind of religion they call it philosophy that I came across in my search online you know meditation mindfulness these different things seem logical but I never researched I never knew this I never looked into it I never heard anything about the Bible in regards to this kind of evidence and why it's historically true in fact when I was being witnessed to a guy I was getting free Bible study from a guy that I that reached out to me and I was like thinking I was going to convert him kind of to New Age get out of the church he's kind of deceived by this dogmatic religion but he was really just kind of giving me as I saw free Bible study every week and I ended up getting connected to another guy who I go to coffee with who's in my college and for the first time in my life I hear a statement that I was like what the he said you know multiple years ago I didn't I didn't believe in this but I've come to realize that this book the Bible is actually one of the most historical books in the world and I was like what like you know I thought this guy was a smart guy I think you know he's like seems like a he seems like a smart guy I've never heard anybody say that and I was like huh and so you know I never researched it never heard about it my whole life I just grew up thinking that this is just a bunch of fairy tale and if it worked for you great you know what I mean great I'm glad it's improving your life but it's not the truth but we look at Buddha I didn't I didn't realize that manuscripts come way way later you can see the same thing about that the Taoist scriptures of China the Chinese philosophy they call it Qi Gong like harnessed your Qi your energy the yin and yang symbols is kind of Chinese philosophy well I was going to go study under a Qi Gong master he ends up having a family emergency I have my tickets to China so I still went experienced kind of the Kung Fu Panda terrain it was incredible actually went to the place I was going to go study as well but he wasn't there and I was fascinated by Qi Gong never realized this but the Taoist scriptures the Tao Te Ching it's approximately it was Orly transmitted for about 300 to 400 years before it was Lao Xi even wrote them so just a very long gap in terms of is this really what was said is this really what happened because people say that against the Bible all the time now the Quran is where it gets interesting because the Quran the manuscripts we have are around the time of Mohammed but here's here's the important detail Mohammed the Quran is trying to say that Jesus didn't get crucified didn't resurrect wasn't the son of God was merely just a prophet but he's saying that 600 years after the historical event happened 600 years after why would we believe that rather than all the evidence we have in the actual century that it occurred by multiple eyewitnesses corroboration you know if you're doing an investigation how many eyewitnesses they sound the same story yep Mohammed one story 600 years later trying to say this you know little did he know that there'd be a bunch of evidence coming out that you need to take seriously the New Testament as a historical fact in fact the New Testament the earliest manuscript we have is about 125 AD and then many many more in that century in the century following many many more actually 5600 total that we have but back that was decades within the life of Christ and something I want to mention too about the kind of Jesus was a prophet you might you might hear Jesus was enlightened man Jesus might have been an ascended master well here's the thing and and see as Lewis put it greatly he was a former atheist turned Christian he wrote Chronicles of Narnia and other great works but he said you can't say that Jesus was a prophet because it's clear multiple people the testitude Jesus professed that he was God John chapter 8 he said before Abraham was I am the Jews went to go stone him because he was worthy of blasphemy equating himself to be God was illegal at the time unless he was the Christ which he was but and and he escaped among them and then the high priest literally on his trial said are you the son of the blessed one the Christ and Jesus respond and affirmed him and that made him worthy of execution and sentence of blasphemy right then and there Jesus made it clear that he was professing to be God so what do you do with that well there's only three options either he was crazy person thinking he's God running around you know maybe on some drug trip like I'm God I'm God trying to try to you know just actually believes that he's God he's actually a lunatic he's actually psychotic thinks that he's God but he's not not much of a prophet not much of an enlightened man or he was a literal liar like he deceived people he knew that he wasn't God but he could get people to think that he was he could tell people he could make these 12 disciples believe he was this special and might have had some supernatural sorcery powers and make him out to be some God well then that means he was a liar he was deceitful that he wasn't a prophet you can't venerate a prophet or number three is he's exactly who he said he was he's God you can't call him a prophet or an enlightened man according to the historical data and that's a very important thing to to to understand another unique thing about the Bible and about Christianity compared to other religions is the amount of prophecies supernaturally said prophecies written down prophecies prior to the coming of Christ and I'm only going to mention a few here born in Bethlehem as written prior Micah chapter five first two born of a virgin Isaiah the prophet he spoke about this therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called man Emmanuel which means God with us preceded by a messenger I'll send my messenger who'll prepare the way before me then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple the messenger of the covenant whom you desire will come says the Lord God Almighty this was John the Baptist who was identified and who personally identified as the messenger to prepare the way for the Christ for Jesus in which he did and which they spoke about in the Gospels he entered Jerusalem on a donkey Zechariah 9 9 shout Oh daughter of Jerusalem behold your King is coming to you he is just and having salvation lowly and riding on a donkey Jesus wrote in on a donkey okay maybe he could fabricate that maybe he knew the prophecy he got on a donkey well let's continue Betrayed for 30 pieces of silver and the silver was used to buy the potter's field Zechariah 11 12 and 13 this is exactly the price that Jesus was betrayed by Judas Iscariot 4 30 pieces of silver and after Judas regretted it he went to the priest he threw it onto the ground in the temple and he went and committed suicide and the priest said man this is blood money we can't put this in the treasury let's go buy the potter's field with it literally occurred hands and feet pierced this one's interesting it says they pierced my hands and my feet I can count all my bones they look and stare at me they divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots which also happened separate prophecy same portion here hands and feet pierced was the only way really people's hands and feet get pierced and then get they look and stare at me that's the method of crucifixion but when this was written the method of crucifixion wasn't even invented in the entire world the Persians invented it centuries later so you couldn't have even known or seen some sort of execution using crucifixion when writing this yet it was written and it was fulfilled no bones broken Psalm 3420 protects all his bones not one of them will be broken according to Roman custom every crucified person was actually clubbed with an iron bat to their legs to break their bones because dying a crucified death was not just like bleeding out it was actually suffocation because they're hanging on the cross they get suffocated a lot of the time and they die that way so to prevent the suffocation they would kind of push up on their legs because they were pinned in on their legs they'd push up to kind of get more air so they would break their legs break their shin bones so they couldn't do that and they would bleed out more it happened to both the thief and the other guy on the cross both thieves on the cross and it didn't happen to Jesus but that was the custom it was also pierced side Zechariah 1210 they pierced him in his side water and blood came out now these are only a few of 200 to 400 prophecies based on your interpretation of scholars 200 to 400 prophecies regarding Christ that he fulfilled a mathematician by the name of Peter Stoner said okay what's the odds one guy you know doing this what are the odds of one guy just fulfilling eight of them and he estimated that one person to fulfill just eight of these would be a conservative estimate about one in 10 to the 17th power 17 zeros after after 10 well what does that mean well he found an example to kind of you know where we can understand a little bit better think of Texas now fill Texas the entire state of Texas East Texas West Texas all of Texas two feet deep in the silver dollar coins now mark one of them send somebody out blindfolded and the chances that they select the one that you marked is the chances that one person would fulfill all these prophecies this is only divine this is a way that God verified his word verified Jesus Christ verified the the divinity inspiration of these things occurring that we might know whoa this is way beyond man you know men didn't just write this and fabricate some story and create some religion there is an outside divine force putting his stamp of approval on the story of the Bible which is written over the course of a thousand five hundred years by 40 different authors most of whom never even knew each other so they couldn't be corroborating the same story and connecting all the pieces gathering having meetings on how to how to explain this thing completely not logical you might be thinking okay well what if you know what if these prophecies were put in after to make it seem like they were fulfilled but they didn't actually exist there in the beginning you know that Jesus did these things and then they kind of went back into the scriptures and added these kind of esoteric sounding prophecies to make it look like Jesus was actually fulfilling them when really he wasn't well that's when we get to another discovery called the Dead Sea Scrolls now the Dead Sea Scrolls it's at the Dead Sea in Israel you can actually go visit I went to go visit and they discovered in these caves you might see the drone footage behind me it's actually drone footage I took while in Israel but incredible place where they found so many manuscripts going back hundreds and hundreds of years but here's the incredible thing Isaiah which basically has the most amount of messianic prophecies the Book of Isaiah it happened to be the scroll that they found in its entirety so the whole Book of Isaiah was found intact now this Book of Isaiah proved that the prophecies many of which I just read and if you want to read more go to Isaiah chapter 53 which is incredible to read about Jesus the suffering Messiah all of these prophecies the most prophetic book verifying these prophecies was dated to hundreds of years before the time of Christ and the Book of Isaiah that we have now in the Bible is the same Book of Isaiah that was back then it verified the small differences they had in spelling and pen strokes and other minor differences had zero effect on the interpretation or meaning of the text it completely verified that what we have this is the truth this is historical year after year it's becoming more and more known yet why is the world rejecting it why is the world rejecting these things why are we not taught these things in public schools why are we not taught these things in everyday life because it's a spiritual war there is a spiritual war for people to understand the truth of history the truth of God's relationship with humanity but for those who do the research for those who look in they see that this is reality that the Bible is truth another thing you might be thinking is okay well maybe back in the day the Bible was true but it's 2,000 years later the Romans the Roman Empire with a deep state cabal, luminati whatever you want to you know luminati came much later but some rogue faction trying to control and suppress humanity gained a hold of those scriptures altered them changed them to enslave the masses to instill domination to control people with religion and dogma okay well how do you answer that well to do that would be a conspiracy of let's say biblical proportions and here's why we have over 5,600 New Testament manuscripts now that's just in the original language of Greek now you take in Syriac we have 350 Syriac a different region in that area Coptic which is the Egyptian region we have about a thousand Latin ten thousand translations of the Greek we have available right now to change the texts a group of either political rogue leaders or even overzealous monks some people believe or try to say or just any group of people would literally have to go across the entire known world at that time that had these manuscripts in all these different languages in all these different places under different governments under different rules would have to go in at the same time break into wherever they were stored and seize them edit the texts cover up everything they're editing with technology that never even existed back then in regards to pen and quill and ink do it all the exact same way put it back nobody finds out nobody writes about it nobody there's no evidence for it put it all back and that's only one step once they're successful then then they have to go to all the writings of the early church fathers because the early church fathers they quoted from the original Greek and the New Testament and we could have over half of the New Testament from just their writings so they would have to go find all the early church fathers writing like one of them Polycarp who was a direct disciple of John the Apostle and many others who quoted from the Bible quoted from the New Testament they'd have to go edit it with the exact same lies at the exact same time nobody ever finding out completely covering it up you want to ask me what requires more faith to believe either history the evidence or a complete conspiracy of literal biblical proportions requiring more faith to believe in the Bible yet that's the intellectual attack these are the attacks against the Bible these are the reasons why many people don't come to church don't believe think it's all a fairy tale because they're told these lies they watch a movie like Da Vinci Code and they think it's all edited they don't do any research like me honestly I didn't do any research into this stuff just sent a bot into it you know Christianity's too big to actually be true and too many people believe it and you get drawn into these different new age ideologies or even just different religions thinking it's a bunch of malarkey well it's not the case the Bible is true the Bible is the word of God and the same attacks that people put against the Bible like oh you know we don't have much evidence for it well okay what do you learn in public school you learn about what the Roman emperors you learn about Caesar you learn about Plato for Caesar we only have about 10 manuscripts of Caesar and the Gallic Wars the history yeah we learn that all throughout public school don't learn learn a word about the New Testament in public school I didn't learn a single thing about the Bible didn't learn a single thing and then you got Aristotle philosopher his poetics less than 50 manuscripts Herodotus Greek historian less than a hundred Plato about 250 less than 250 and the earliest one's 900 years after his death so if you're trying to say that the Bible doesn't have evidence how about you apply that to all the other things that you're believing and all the other things you're believing in class and you're believing in history class when you don't even actually look into it you can't put that against the Bible because the Bible has massive amounts of evidence the Bible has been verified not only supernaturally with prophecies but literally archaeologically as we're becoming more aware of how to excavate it how to find these things it's only becoming more real that this is true and we're all faced with a question do we believe it and many people an unbelief a spirit of unbelief what it does without even researching what it does is it prevents you from actually developing your relationship with God because you have these questions that you hear in the back of your mind and you're like okay yeah maybe church is good maybe my kids are being impacted at youth and maybe my wife's a better person or whatever it might be maybe things are good Judeo-Christian values and you know she's going to church but I'm just going to come to support her maybe you're thinking these things but in the back of your mind like this isn't actually real you know God isn't actually real Jesus wasn't actually God or because some of these deceptions might be lingering what that wants to do is it wants to prevent you from knowing your creator it wants to prevent you from knowing the one who died for your soul who created your soul who knows you more than you know yourself the one that he has for your life on what you're called to do because there's a spiritual war and the enemy the forces of darkness want you to not get closer to the very commander of the army of good the one who leads the forces of light of righteousness on this earth and that unbelief is going to prevent you from fulfilling the destiny that God has for you the destiny you're meant to live so I want to encourage you if either you know today you believed but you didn't really fully kind of believe you're kind of you know thinking in the background maybe this stuff isn't true or if today you were exposed to some information that you've never been exposed to before you've heard some of the things I mentioned but you've never heard necessarily a better response I literally scratched the surface this is just the very tip of the iceberg of the amount of evidence it would literally take so much more time here even more facts that have the same wow factor that the Bible is truth the Bible is the Word of God you can rest be assured committing your life to these scriptures is built not only on your experience of God but on history on evidence and on science this book is real and when you devote your life to it you begin to activate your destiny you begin to be the person that you've called God is real God is real Jesus is real Jesus was God all the apostles they went to the death fighting for this truth yet many people now are rejecting it for the wrong reasons for the lack of information I want us to rise to our feet