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Series Code: ETM
Program Code: ETM220001S
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00:19 My topic today is the question that atheists cannot answer.
00:24 Now if they could answer it they wouldn't be atheists 00:27 anymore, and here is the question. 00:30 If the Bible is not a divinely inspired book 00:36 why are its prophecies so incredibly accurate 00:42 in minute detail? 00:43 We're going to explore that today on the presentation 00:46 let's pray. 00:47 Father in Heaven, as we study Your Word gives us confidence, 00:52 in the inspiration of scripture. Help us to know that Your Bible 00:58 is not the product of man but the product of the Living God. 01:02 So grant us your wisdom as we study. In Christ's name. Amen! 01:07 The Bible is a remarkable book, the evidence for its inspiration 01:14 is obvious for those who approach it with an open mind. 01:19 Now what is inspiration? Is it that God dictated 01:23 every single word and the prophets wrote it down? 01:26 Not at all. 01:28 Inspiration works on the mind so God revealed to the prophets 01:33 visions and dreams and then they wrote those visions 01:37 and dreams guided by the Holy Spirit. 01:40 At times God impressed their minds and they wrote in the 01:44 language of their culture and day the very thoughts of 01:50 God's Word. So when we take the Bible in our hands 01:54 it's not the product of human thought, 01:57 it's the product of Divine thought. 02:00 Now the evidence for the inspiration of the Bible 02:04 is incredibly, incredibly remarkable. 02:08 When you look at the scripture you find for example 02:14 that in over 1,500 places the Bible declares that it inspired 02:21 by God. In addition to that, you notice as well 02:27 that the Bible was written in three languages, 02:30 it was written in Hebrew in the Old Testament, 02:33 in Greek and in Aramaic. 02:34 Although written in three languages, it was written 02:40 by over 40 different authors over 1,500 year period of time. 02:45 Consider this now. 02:48 Let's suppose that we are taping this here from 02:52 Thompsonville, IL, and lets suppose that I went out 02:55 on the street and began to ask people about the subject 03:00 of death. Now let's suppose we said, what happens when 03:03 a person dies? 03:04 Well, let's suppose we took a group to Chicago, 03:08 you see people walking down the street 03:10 one person would say well, when you die it's nothing 03:13 you go into the grave, that's it. 03:14 Another person would say when you die you are reincarnated, 03:16 another person would say when you die it's heaven or hell 03:21 another person would say, when you die, you rest. 03:22 Well, we asked some subjects about heaven, 03:24 questions about heaven, most of these people 03:27 when you start asking them these questions, 03:31 what's going to happen? 03:32 You're going to get all different kind of answers. 03:34 But yet in the Bible over a period of over 1,500 years 03:39 in the Bible over a period where you have 40 different authors 03:43 and they're talking about death, the second coming of Christ, 03:46 they're talking about Salvation, they're talking about Heaven, 03:50 these very complex topics but yet they don't disagree. 03:54 They all have this common agreement, and you see a common 03:59 mind behind the Bible. 04:01 We call this the cohesive unity of the Bible 04:05 We call it the fact that the Bible hangs together in such a 04:10 remarkable way written over vast ages of time by 04:14 people on continents, free languages, 04:16 people who didn't know one another. 04:19 But there is something else about this very very sacred 04:23 book, over 1,150 manuscripts of the Old Testament exist. 04:30 Now what does that mean? 04:31 It means there are copies of the originals that are ancient 04:35 copies that were found in monasteries, found in synagogues, 04:41 found in caves, you can take these 1,150 different fragments 04:46 or different complete manuscripts and you can 04:48 compare the one with the other and they agree. 04:52 Now look at the New Testament, in the New Testament, there are 04:55 5.800 manuscripts, 5,8000, more than any other ancient 05:02 literature, but these manuscripts don't conflict 05:05 with one another, they agree. 05:07 So whether it is the cohesive unity of the Bible, 05:10 whether it is the manuscript of the Bible, 05:13 they indicate agreement, but most of all 05:18 the prophecies of the Bible silence atheists. 05:22 So I am going to look at some of those prophecies with you 05:24 today, in fact, God Himself says that one of the things that 05:30 distinguishes Him as God is His ability to know the future. 05:35 Looking here at Isaiah the 46th chapter, verse 9, 10 05:41 and the scripture put it this way. 06:02 So why does God say that there is nobody like Him? 06:07 What is the ability that sets God apart from all other Gods? 06:12 Here is that ability. That ability is His ability 06:17 to tell the future. 06:19 That our all-wise Creator who created this world He is the 06:26 architect of the future and Bible Prophecy reveals 06:30 God's foreknowledge, God's ability to know the future. 06:34 Now in the Bible, there are 2,500 different prophecies. 06:39 How many are there? 2,500. Two thousand of these prophecies 06:44 have already been fulfilled there are about 500 that are 06:48 not yet fulfilled that they are in the future. 06:51 Now these prophecies deal with nations, they deal with cities, 06:56 they deal with individuals, they determine the rise and fall 07:01 of kingdoms and so let's look at a few of these prophecies 07:05 from the Bible. The first prophecy we want to look at is 07:08 the prophecy of Egypt, Egypt and we are looking at this in 07:13 Ezekiel chapter 32, Psalms Proverbs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, 07:17 Ezekiel chapter 32. In Ezekiel Chapter 32 there is a prediction 07:24 regarding Egypt and it says starting with verse 12... 07:28 By the swords of the mighty. By the what? 07:32 By the swords of the mighty. 07:45 That word pomp, in other words that is wealth. 08:04 Now if you let your eyes drop down even further, 08:07 it talks about the fact that verse 15 says when I shall make 08:25 So here Bible Prophecy predicted very clearly that the wealth 08:31 of Egypt would be robbed... talk about Egypt 08:37 ruled the world for 30 centuries, over 3,000 years but yet it was 08:44 attacked, its wealth was plundered, the Assyrians attacked 08:49 Egypt, the Babylonians attacked Egypt, the Persians attacked 08:53 Egypt, Alexander the Great, and the Greeks attacked Egypt. 08:57 The Romans attacked Egypt and later on, Napoleon did. 09:01 And today when you look at Egypt you see these vast barren 09:05 deserts but it is only a shadow of the past. 09:10 Take the great kingdoms of Egypt and the great cities of Egypt 09:16 take a city like Memphis in Egypt, that was just a 09:20 magnificent city, amazing city, with its temples and you take 09:24 Karnak in Egypt, these beautiful temples with columns 09:29 multi-million dollar...Today if you would ever try to 09:33 build a million-dollar structure just lavish structures 09:37 but the ruins spread for miles in Memphis and Karnak. 09:43 Today Egypt's wealth has been plundered, we've read about 09:50 The Great Grave Robbers in Egypt who came and plundered the 09:56 wealth of the Pharaoh's that was buried with them in 09:59 the Pyramid and you look today and this prophecy 10:04 about Egypt indeed has been fulfilled indicating the 10:09 truthfulness about God's word. 10:11 You look for example at prophecies that Daniel 10:14 made about the great nations that would rise. 10:18 It's a familiar prophecy to many Bible students 10:21 so I won't deal with it in detail but I do want to mention 10:24 to you that this prophecy is quite remarkable found in 10:29 Daniel chapter 2, it's another one of those great Bible 10:32 prophecies because here in Daniel chapter 2 the king goes 10:36 to sleep one night and has a dream, he's King Nebuchadnezzar. 10:39 He attacked Jerusalem in 6005 B.C., he took Daniel's 10:44 friend's captive brought them back to Babylon to rule this 10:49 puppet kings. And one night Nebuchadnezzar has a dream 10:53 he goes to sleep and he dreams of this great statue 10:56 with a head of gold breast and arms of silver, thighs of brass, 11:00 legs of iron, feet of iron and clay and then a rock cut out 11:06 without hands and smites the image. 11:07 Nebuchadnezzar wakes up and he couldn't remember his dream. 11:11 Have you ever had a dream that you could not remember? 11:13 Maybe you ate a little bit of too much pizza before you went 11:16 to bed at night. No, but that wasn't Nebuchadnezzar's 11:19 problem was it? 11:20 And you wake up and you have this dream and you just can't 11:23 remember what you dreamt, it's exactly what happened to 11:26 Nebuchadnezzar. He calls in his wise men and he says 11:28 unless you interpret the dream, your head's going to be off 11:32 and the death degree hangs over their head. 11:34 Daniel requests time to pray and he goes to pray and God 11:39 reveals to him the dream and Daniel comes in before the king 11:42 and you find that Daniel says to the king in 11:46 Daniel chapter 2 verses 27, 28. 12:12 So there is this God in heaven and then Daniel says to the king. 12:40 So here, Daniel reveals exactly exactly what the king saw. 12:47 But then Daniel goes on to the interpretation of that 12:50 and he says king, you are this head of gold, in other words 12:54 the Babylonia Empire would be the head of gold. 12:57 Then you will raise another nation, Medo-Persia, 13:00 then another nation, Greece, then another nation, Rome, 13:04 but notice what the prophecy doesn't say, 13:06 it doesn't say there will be Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, 13:09 Rome, then another kingdom, then another kingdom, 13:12 and another kingdom, not at all. 13:13 The Bible doesn't list 17 kingdoms or 22 kingdoms, 13:19 it lists the four great nations that rule the world 13:22 in Daniel's day, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome 13:25 then it says Rome would be broken up into 13:27 10 separate divisions. 13:29 It was, then it says that these iron and clay would never mix, 13:34 they did not. It says that they mingle themselves with the 13:37 seeds of men that are there would be intermarriage. 13:41 Napoleon of course intermarried to try to establish a Napoleonic 13:47 order of Europe and you have The Great Kings of Europe 13:51 trying to establish the unity of Europe but just as iron and clay 13:56 don't mix, they didn't mix. 13:57 And then it says after these things a great rock cut-out 14:00 without hands, the eternal kingdom of Christ would come. 14:04 See, here's a problem for atheists and the problem 14:08 for the atheist is this, why is it that the Bible is so 14:12 incredibly accurate? 14:13 Egypt, desolate, wealth gone like the Bible predicted. 14:17 Why is it that the Bible is so incredibly accurate? 14:20 Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, they followed one another 14:23 just like the Bible said they would. 14:25 Rome was divided, you know the great Gibbon, 14:29 Edward Gibbon who wrote the Decline and Fall of the Roman 14:33 Empire talks about the images of gold, silver, brass, and iron 14:40 that were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome. 14:46 So, how could these things be so accurate? 14:49 You want to talk about an accurate prophecy. 14:52 Let me give you another one that's just really really 14:55 quite remarkable and quite incredible Prophecies. 15:01 Here's one that talks about Babylon's attack on Jerusalem, 15:05 Jeremiah 32, verse 29 talks about the very attack of 15:12 Nebuchadnezzar on Jerusalem. 15:14 And the Bible talks about that and predicts these events 15:18 before they happen, the prophet Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 32 15:24 verse 29...And the Chaldeans, now Chaldeans is just another 15:27 name for the Babylonians... 15:31 Jerusalem... 15:44 Israel had drifted away from God and here Jeremiah 15:48 comes and predicts the very events that would happen. 15:52 The Bible does not guess, it knows. 15:57 One of the greatest evidences of Bible accuracy, 16:01 its inspiration is this fulfilled prophecy. 16:06 Now, if you think what we've been discussing is quite amazing 16:10 and it is, wait until you hear these next few prophecies. 16:13 Did you know that it was Cyrus, King of Persia that attacked 16:22 Babylon and overthrew it? 16:26 Now Cyrus was named 150 years before he was born in prophecy. 16:32 Somebody says Pastor Mark, are you serious? 16:36 Are you kidding me here? I'm not kidding at all, look it, 16:39 Isaiah chapter 44:28, Isaiah verse 44:28...and this is 16:45 if I were using some vernacular language I would say this is 16:49 Mind Blowing. 16:50 I mean this is so astounding, Isaiah chapter 44 verse 28. 17:31 So here God names Cyrus and He names him 150 years before 17:39 he is born. And He says if Cyrus would be His shepherd 17:43 to allow Israel to go back and rebuild Jerusalem, 17:47 now you remember in 605 B.C. 605 years before Christ 17:52 Nebuchadnezzar attacks Jerusalem the first time, 17:54 takes Daniel captive, he attacked it a second time 17:57 in 587, burns the city. 17:59 Daniel's in captivity for these years and the Bible predicted 18:04 a 70-year captivity. 18:06 The captivity is coming to the end and Cyrus attacks 18:10 Babylon invades it, is very much in favor of religious 18:16 liberty and allows the Israelites to go back and freely 18:22 worship and rebuild their city. 18:25 Now here is the remarkable thing when archeologists were digging 18:31 in the ruins of Ancient Babylon in 1879 there was this 18:39 amazing discovery, so these archeologists you know 18:41 they're digging and digging and they find this little 18:45 nine-inch cylinder and they look at it 18:49 and they are able to read it and it's the story of Cyrus 18:53 overthrowing Babylon and allowing the captives of Israel 19:00 to go free and allow people to restore their worship. 19:04 If the Bible is not inspired how could it name Cyrus 19:12 one hundred fifty years before he was born? 19:14 How could it describe his very activity? 19:18 Remember too in the prophecy that we read, 19:21 it said the two-leaf gates would not be shut? 19:23 How did Cyrus attack Babylon? 19:27 He attacked Babylon this way. The river Euphrates 19:32 ran underneath the gates of Babylon and as it did 19:37 it was almost impossible to attack and overthrow the city. 19:42 The Babylonians had an adequate water supply, 19:45 their walls were so high that and so wide that two chariots 19:51 could race side by side on top of the walls. 19:54 The Persians surrounded the city but they were unable to get the 19:58 city to fall. Then Cyrus got this brilliant idea, 20:04 he dammed up the river Euphrates diverted it out into the desert 20:08 area...When he did that, the water level beneath the gates 20:14 dropped, Cyrus marched his army underneath the gates 20:18 but there were gates along the riverbank inside the city 20:22 but Belshazzar was having a drunken feast so those gates 20:26 were left open just like the Bible says the two leaved gates 20:31 that is the gates along the river would be left open. 20:34 If the Bible is not an inspired book, how does it know those 20:38 intimate details? Bible prophecy reveals the accuracy, 20:45 the truthfulness of the very very Word of God. 20:50 But we're not done with our prophecies yet. 20:53 There is yet another one that we must take a look at. 20:56 It's the prophecy of Tyre and Sidon. 20:59 Now the prophecy of Tyre is another remarkable prophecy 21:02 in scripture. Tyre is a city in Lebanon right on the 21:08 Mediterranean Coast, it's a fantastic city, 21:10 I've visited Tyre, tramped around there and taken a look 21:16 at its ruins. You find the story of Tyre in the Book of 21:20 Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and we're going to 21:23 go over to Ezekiel chapter 26. 21:25 We've been talking about King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon 21:28 and he attacked Tyre and the prophet made a prediction 21:33 regarding Tyre in Ezekiel Chapter 26 and we're going to 21:39 look first at verse four and five and let's go back 21:44 and pick up verse three as well. 21:55 That's critical, we'll come back to it. 22:15 And then if you go a little further in Ezekiel chapter 26, 22:19 it follows through this prophecy, verse 12. 22:47 Now let's look at this prophecy, let's look at what 22:49 the Bible says it says one, many nations, not one would 22:54 come against Tyre. It says two, that Tyre's ruins 23:00 would be thrown into the sea. It says three, 23:03 there will be a plate-like the spreading of nets, 23:05 it would be desolate not rebuilt. 23:06 What happened? Nebuchadnezzar attacked Tyre 23:11 it took him 13 years, why? because the city was not only 23:15 along the coast but there was a little island city and that 23:19 Nebuchadnezzar could never quite get that island city 23:22 and so he never destroyed it. 23:23 Now some critics say wait a minute Nebuchadnezzar took 23:25 13 years, he attacks the city but he couldn't destroy it 23:31 and so the prophecy wasn't fulfilled. 23:33 Wait a minute. Two hundred fifty years later 23:36 Alexander the Great came and Alexander the Great sees this 23:41 island city, it has amazing walls of the city right down to 23:45 the sea. He struggling to attack it, finally, he isolates 23:50 this island city puts it under siege then he takes the timbers 23:55 and the ruins and the columns that were left in the water 24:00 and left on the shores by Nebuchadnezzar. 24:07 And 250 years later what does Alexander do? 24:10 He takes all these ruins, he builds a causeway out to 24:15 old Tyre attacks it and overthrows it. 24:19 What did the Bible say? Many nations would come 24:23 against the city. They did. The Bible said it would be like 24:26 waves of the sea, army after army attacks Tyre 24:30 and if you look for the old Tyre, you can't find it. 24:32 It was one of the wealthiest seaport cities, 24:35 it was a city of lavish splendor. 24:37 Here, the ancient prophecies of the Bible clearly revealed 24:44 and God's Word is true and in the book of Isaiah chapter 40 24:52 verse 8 the Bible puts it this way. Isaiah 40 verse 8. 24:58 As you and I take the Bible in our hands, it is a divinely 25:03 inspired book, it's a book that clearly speaks to our 25:08 generation, the Bible is filled with hope, it's filled with 25:13 encouragement. If you need hope, open the pages of 25:17 scripture, if you need encouragement, open the pages 25:21 of scripture, if you need forgiveness open the pages of 25:26 scripture. If you need power in your life, open the pages of 25:30 scripture. The Bible says in Isaiah 48 verse 8 25:45 echoing and re-echoing down the corridors of time 25:50 are the words of this ancient book...You know there's an old 25:55 song that goes something like this. 25:57 Ancient words ever true, changing me and changing you. 26:03 The greatest inspiration of scripture, the greatest testimony 26:09 that the Bible has inspired is the lives that its changed. 26:14 I've traveled around the world stood on the great platform 26:19 of the world, preached in Africa, and seen which doctors 26:24 come to Christ, seen people demon-possessed, delivered. 26:29 I've stood on the platforms of the world in Europe 26:34 and in bastions of secularism like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, 26:40 seen many women come to Christ and have their lives changed. 26:44 I've stood in the Kremlin Auditorium and watched God 26:49 move upon communist hearts, atheistic hearts and seen 26:55 them change by the Christ of this book. 26:59 I have preached in India the Hindu populations, Pakistan, 27:07 the Muslim population, Indonesia and as I've traveled 27:11 the world and opened the Word of God for these last 50 years 27:16 or more, I've seen Jesus touch hearts and touch lives 27:21 and I don't know what your situation is as you are 27:25 watching the program, I don't know what you are struggling 27:29 with but Jesus wants to speak to you, Jesus wants to touch you 27:35 by His grace. Why not give God a chance. 27:39 Take the Bible, open the gospel of John and read about this 27:45 Christ who can change you what He's done for others 27:52 He can do for you for He is the life-changing Christ. |
Revised 2024-02-29