How We Got Our Bible L5

Opening

Alright, now, Peter said we have a more sure word of prophecy. And last week, last week we left off with the Lord's promise, a very important lesson, the Lord's promise that His words would continue in His apostles. Right? And we went through that. He said, sanctify them through thy truth. Now, what truth? Thy word is truth. And He said that He would bring His words into remembrance, that His word would continue in them, and that He would show them things to come. So, the Lord promised a continuance of revelation through the apostles. And last week, we showed how just like the Old Testament had prophets, the New Testament had apostles and prophets.

And they were not just the twelve. There was Paul, an apostle born out of due time, but we went through that list in Acts. And then, Jude and Silas were prophets. And so, there were prophets that God used to establish the New Testament books, just like He used prophets to establish the Old Testament books. Very important. Okay. Let's see here. Brother Dan, would you mind just opening us in prayer, please, brother? Amen. Okay. So, real quick here, we'll look at a couple of these. Okay? We know that the apostles, right? We know that the apostles, the twelve, were promised the words of God. But look what the Bible says. Look about Paul's epistles.

Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And the Bible is unique among books in this regard. Not only that it claims inspiration, but how many times it claims inspiration, how often it mentions it. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And look what Paul says, which things also we speak. 1 Corinthians 2.13. Which things also we speak. Not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth. So, Paul says that what he was teaching was taught by the Holy Ghost. He says, I'm teaching what the Holy Ghost teaches. Look at Galatians chapter 1. Galatians chapter 1. And, it's one of those deals is that once you start seeing it, you can't unsee it in the Bible.

How much the Bible talks about itself being the words of God. Right? Now, we're aware that the Old Testament was the words of God. But the same claims are made for the New Testament. Galatians chapter 1, verse 11. But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. Remember what Peter said? No prophecy of the scriptures is of any private interpretation. Verse 12. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by revelation of Jesus Christ. So, Paul's gospel was revealed directly to him by Jesus Christ. In fact, he says in verse 17 that after he got saved, he didn't go up to Jerusalem and get stuff from the apostles, which would have made sense.

But he went to Arabia. Right? And so, he went to Arabia. Paul went to Arabia in the wilderness and got his revelation in the same way that Moses got his. Okay. So, the apostle Paul was given the words of God. Look at one more. There's a lot of them. In 1 Corinthians 14, he says that his words are the commandments of the Lord. What he writes in 1 Corinthians concerning the apostolic signs and the sign gifts to Israel, tongues and prophecies and that kind of stuff. He says, these are the commandments of the Lord, what I'm telling you here. Again, look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.

So, we see these claims. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 13. He says, for this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because that when you received the word of God which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the what? The word of God. Look what he says in 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 2. He says, for what commandments we gave you by what? By the Lord Jesus. So, Paul wrote and spoke by God's authority. This is all over the place. And it's everywhere. Now, even he claimed inspiration for his teaching on marriage in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And so, the Apostle Paul was given the words of God.

Okay, so we talked about the Apostles, right? And the group of men with them at that time. And then we have 14 books, right? Romans through Hebrews, that were penned by the Apostle Paul. Okay, so these are the men that wrote the New Testament scriptures. Paul was both an Apostle and a prophet, as we saw last week. Now, when we speak of the authority of New Testament scripture, I want you to look at 2 Peter chapter 3. 2 Peter chapter 3. The authority of New Testament scripture. 2 Peter chapter 3. And firstly, we will look at what the New Testament says about itself and authority. And then we will look at some of the things that the contemporaries and the first generation following the Apostles said about the scriptures.

Okay? 2 Peter chapter 2. Excuse me, chapter 3, verse 2. He says this. That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets and of the commandment of us, what? The apostles. So, as all writers of the New Testament era, they appealed to the authority of the Old Testament prophets. The Old Testament scriptures were understood to be the word of God. But notice there that Peter puts the words of the holy prophets right along, excuse me, the words of the apostles right along with the holy prophets. He says you don't need to just be mindful of the words of the holy prophets. You also need to be mindful of the words of the holy apostles.

These guys were not bashful. They were not shy about saying that they had the words of God. That they accompanied with Christ and he gave them his words. Both when he was with them and through his Holy Spirit when they left. Okay? When he left. Now, look at this. Look at 2 Peter chapter 3. Because, and this is an interesting study. I just was reading something this last week about a guy who did a thesis on it. And he, the reluctance of the early church to accept the Pauline corpus. And, of course, our understanding of this is very limited because the vast majority of the early writings of the early church fathers, the first few centuries, has been lost.

They're all gone. And we have some. But we don't have a full representation. But there were reasons that the church through the ages has struggled with the Apostle Paul. Of course, the main one being that we are inherently religious. Right? The Lord says, I want a lamb. Cain says, how about my garden? Like, immediately. We're just that way. Right? I mean, you can be taught free grace, the gospel, the grace of God, and salvation. And we will find a way to make it a system of works. We will find a way to do it. We'll find a way to make ourselves more holy than other people. It's just in us.

The Lesson

It's in us. And Paul goes the other way with that. And it just flies in the face of human nature. And in centuries, millennia, of every culture's priesthood, whether it's the oracles of the ancient Greeks or the druids of the Celts, people have their religion. They have their holy men. You see? And so Paul sets us free. And it's weird how we don't want to be free. All right? But look at 2 Peter chapter 3. 2 Peter chapter 3. And look at verse 15. He says, An account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation. All right? So our salvation is based on the long-suffering of the Lord, in a sense.

And also he's talking about the return of the Lord there. But look what he says. Even as our beloved brother who? Now that's quite a thing because, in Galatians 2, Paul records where he chewed Peter out for not walking according to the truth of the gospel. And, Peter might, be impulsive sometimes and do some things that are wrong, but he owns it. He owns it. And he moves on. He moves on, man. And that takes humility. It takes humility to know that everybody in Christianity has recorded in several places where you messed up. Imagine that. Everybody knew where he denied the Lord. And he's like, yep. I'm still preaching. Right?

That takes humility. Real humility. A guy might want to hide and be like, oh, no one wants to hear me. Well, they don't want to hear you. They want to hear the Lord through you. Right? And that takes real humility. But look what he says. And they count that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved Paul, brother Paul, also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you. So he says, Paul wrote to you guys. Paul wrote to, Peter wrote to the strangers, right, Jewish Christians scattered throughout Galatia, right, and Cappadocia, Bithynia. That would be what you would call modern-day Turkey, south of the Black Sea, right?

Paul also wrote to the Galatians, right? We know that. Okay, so look what he says. He says, he hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them these things, in which are some things hard to be understood. There's some things that are hard to get. People are still arguing about Hebrews. People are still arguing about Romans, right? Which they that are unlearned and unstable rest, as they do also the other writings, under their own destruction. Is that what it says? What's it say? Did you see that? All Scripture is given by inspiration to God. Do what Peter called Paul's writings in his day? You're talking he wrote this in probably, what, 62, 65 A.D., something like that.

I don't know what date you got in your Bible. I got 66 in the Schofield Reference Bible. They all take a stab at it, right? But he's a contemporary of the Apostle Paul. What's he say? He already calls Paul's writings Scripture in 66 A.D. You remember the lesson we had where Daniel quickly recognized that Jeremiah's writings were Scripture? There was just something that God did in the early church through his Holy Spirit, where when people saw it and knew where it came from, they knew it was the Word of God. That's the only way you can do that, right? They didn't have a Levitical priesthood that said, okay, you five guys sit down and decide what the Bible is.

No. And we'll talk about this next week. We'll talk about the books. Next week, we're going to talk about the books that they argued whether it should be in the Bible or not, and which ones were like, everybody's like, oh, yeah, those have to be in there. We all know that those should be in the Bible. And we're going to talk about, once we get out of this introduction this week, we'll get into that in the first few centuries of how the Bible got to us from the Apostles. Okay. So, but, I distracted myself there because I love this subject. What was I saying? Someone get me back. Yeah, the Scriptures.

Yeah, they're already the Scriptures. They're already the Scriptures. People already knew, just like Daniel knew Jeremiah's stuff was Scripture. God was involved. And we'll talk about that more. Now, let's look at another one. This is an interesting one. Look at 1 Timothy chapter 5. Now, Luke was a companion of the Apostle Paul. He traveled with him. And Luke also had contact with the other Apostles because he says when he writes in the first three verses of Luke, he says that this has been given me by the people that were with him. And so, Luke was around and he ended up with Paul. But he also had contact with the Apostles.

So, he's a member of that early group. Right? He's a member of that early. You remember in Antioch it said there were certain Apostles and Prophets at Antioch. Right? And they weren't the twelve. Okay? So, where did I say go? 1 Timothy 5. Yeah. Look at 1 Timothy 5. 1 Timothy chapter 5. And look what he says here in verse 18. Paul's talking about paying ministers. He says, For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. Right? Well, what's that? That's Deuteronomy. That's in Deuteronomy. But then he quotes another scripture. And the laborer is worthy of his reward. Right? For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn.

And the laborer is worthy of his reward. So, Paul cites scripture in telling Timothy, right, about taking care of the minister. The first one is very well known. Don't muzzle the ox that treads out the corn. That ox, when he's grinding, you ought to be able to dip down and eat. Right? Okay. But the second one is actually a quotation from the New Testament. Look at Luke chapter 10. Luke chapter 10. So, Paul, looking over at his doctor, who might be in the same jail cell with him. He's like, well, that guy's got it. Look at Luke chapter 10. Oh, he's got it. I mean, I know I have it.

I mean, I talked with the Lord face to face for three years. I know I have it. Paul was not in any way shy about saying that. Right? I guess you wouldn't. After three years of knowing the Lord, would you, like that, would you have a little confidence? Hey, guys, I'm the apostle of the Gentiles. Like it or lump it. Who told you that? Jesus. Luke chapter 10. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give. For the laborer is worthy of his hire. See that? The laborer is worthy of his hire. Paul quotes Luke as scripture. Right? That's early. That's very early. Luke 10.

7. Sorry. Luke 10. 7. All right. So you got that. All right. What are we talking about? The authority of the New Testament scripture. All right. Now the last one. Look at Revelation chapter 22. Revelation chapter 22. Who was just talking to me. I was talking to someone just the other day and they're like, I'm arguing with someone at work because she doesn't. She says she doesn't accept Paul's writings because, Paul never said his words were scripture. And I was like, well, Peter did. Well, she doesn't believe second Peter should be in the Bible. Well, that's convenient. That's convenient. Now, look at here at, and that, by the way, is what you do.

That's what you do. If you don't like it, throw it out. All right. Now, are you in Revelation 22? Hold your place and look at Deuteronomy chapter 4. Deuteronomy chapter 4. That's the M.O. Don't like it, throw it out. Deuteronomy chapter 4. over and over and over again, Heinrich Schliemann, I think, Schliemann, Schliemann, whatever that guy's name was. The guy that studied all of the classics, which were considered myths, and said, I'm going to go over to, I'm going to go over to Western Asia, and I'm going to find Troy, the mythic Troy, with Helen and Achilles and all these guys, right? And he did. He found it. He found it. the writings of Herodotus, right?

And all of these early Greek writers, he wrote about Pharaoh Necho circumnaving, navigating Africa. That would have been 2,000 years before Vasco da Gama did it. You see. And he makes, just kind of dubiously, in his notes, he says, they observed that when they got to a certain latitude, the sun was in the northern sky, which it's never in the northern sky if you're north of the equator. So they made, that's called astronomical observations, right? It's all discounted as myth. Why? Well, because, Homer and these guys, they'd write, and they'd write something like that seemed very sane and scientific, and then the next chapter, they're in a cave with a cyclops.

Right? But have you read the Bible? Have you read about Samson killing all those dudes with the jawbone of an ass? Do you understand that there were giants in the earth in those days? And the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took them wives of all that they chose? And there were giants in the earth in those days? And also after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and made marriages with them? Is that what the Bible says? Okay. So all those Greek mythic heroes of legends, what were they? They were gods. Now, it might have been corrupted over time.

Little g-gods, you understand. Fallen angels. All right? Why did they throw those guys out? The same reason they throw the Bible out. You can't take this book as a scientific book, because this book also says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Well, throw that thing out. Right? If I don't like any of it, I throw all of it out. That's what they do. Mark it down. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verse 2, You shall not add unto the word which I command you. Neither shall you diminish aught from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. See? Now, that's the law, the Torah, right?

Nobody touched that. Don't mess with it. Right? Solomon says in Solomon 30, verse 5 and 6. Right? Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar. Okay? So, there's a command not to mess with the words of the Old Testament. Now, look at Revelation chapter 22. Revelation chapter 22. Look what John says. Verse 18. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto those things which God, these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life.

Look at that. John makes a pretty strong warning there for those that mess with that prophecy that he received directly from Jesus Christ. Okay? So, John made the same warning, gave the same warning for messing with his book as Moses gave for messing with the law. What do we call this? We call this the authority of New Testament scripture. And when Paul said all scripture is given by inspiration of God, he's not just talking about the Old Testament. He's talking about the New Testament. Now, when you go beyond the death of the apostles, right? We think that John died in about 100 AD. He was the only one of the apostles, historically, that did not die a violent death.

Though he was persecuted, they say that they threw hot oil on him or dipped him in a vat of boiling oil. He suffered immensely. He was exiled to the Isle of Patmos. However, they say he was the only one that didn't die a violent death. And he outlived most of these guys by quite a few years. They say he was very young when Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Remember, he outran Peter. Right? Remember that? So, he was young. He lived a long time. And about 100 AD, there were men then that lived into the second century that had actually known him. Right? Polycarp of Smyrna, right? Would have been the most famous one.

Born in 69 AD, about the time Paul died. But John still had 30 years to go when Polycarp was born. Polycarp knew the apostle John. Ignatius of Antioch knew the apostle John. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon. All the way over in Roman Gaul in Western Europe. Then accompanied with, he knew Ignatius. And he, or excuse me, not Ignatius. He knew Polycarp. Right? Just one generation removed from the apostle John. So, these guys knew John. Now, speaking of these guys. Did I move? There it is. All right? So, then we talk about the early attesting to the inspiration of New Testament scripture. All right? One, Clement, bishop of Rome. Right? He wrote a letter to the Corinthians.

Very similar, in a sense, to some of the stuff Paul wrote to the Corinthians. Essentially telling them to get along. Telling them to get along. And there's a couple things. Now, look, Clement is born, the apostles were probably anywhere from 20 to 40 years old when Clement was born. He's born around the time of Christ's resurrection. He lived till about the time John died. Okay, what did he say? He said that Paul wrote to the Corinthians in the spirit. Not only that, but he never claimed inspiration for his own writings. In fact, none of these guys did. All of these guys were very clear that the gospels and that written by the apostles was different from their writings.

And they never made the same claim for their scriptures or their writings, which is different from what the apostles wrote. The apostles made inspirational claims for their writings. These guys never did. Never did. All right? Justin Martyr, who lived from about 110 to 165 AD, he said that the gospels were written by men, full of the Holy Spirit. All right? And then Irenaeus, who I already mentioned, he said this. He said that the apostles received the gospel by divine revelation. All right? So Clement's in Rome. Justin Martyr is in Greek or Roman Palestine. Irenaeus is in Western Europe. They're all over the place. And he said, also, Irenaeus mentioned that the gospels were four and only four.

We'll talk about that in a second. But the idea that the apostolic writings were scripture was very early. And it just, it existed long before there was ever a statement made like, hey, this is scripture and this isn't. And everybody agreed. Indeed, it existed latent in their minds and in their hearts. They knew the Old Testament was the scriptures. And they knew that the apostles' writings were from God. And they accepted them as such. Right? Right from a very early time. Long before any council got together and said, okay, these 27 books are the Bible. Christians as a whole already accepted these and rejected other ones. Long before. In fact, at least 26 books, at least 26 books were translated from Greek.

The Bible was written in Greek. Okay? Were translated from Greek into Latin no later, no later than 150 A.D. And we know that because guys in 150, 160, 170, 180, right, were already quoting the Bible, not in Greek, but in Latin. And so there's even evidence, little evidence, that it was translated almost immediately into Latin, 120 A.D. So, I mean, that's only 20 years from the death of John. Okay? So 26 books, at least, translated into Old Latin by 150 A.D. 22 books, at least, translated into Old Syriac. All right? That'd be the native dialect of Palestine, the Aramaic, that Palestine absorbed up into Syria, up into the Armenian regions.

Old Syriac, used in Antioch of Syria, right? People spoke it there, in addition to Greek. So, long before any council got together and said, these are the 27 books, people were already taking the writings of the apostles and saying, yeah, you don't need that one. Right? And this stuff was already getting passed around. Do you remember what Paul said? He said to the Colossians, he says, make sure that this letter is read in Laodicea. Send it over there. So, immediate, they already were passing around Paul's writings. That's in Colossians chapter 4. Okay, so early guys saying that the apostles' writings were scripture, and I think maybe we'll hit a couple of them here.

Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, he died in, I don't know what time I say he died, 220, 202. There's dyslexia again, 202. He was born, Irenaeus was born in Smyrna, which would have been right on the west coast of what today is Turkey. That's where he was born. But there was a group of missionaries that came out of Asia Minor very early and evangelized Roman Gaul, which today is France. Okay? And so, in fact, when the Christians were experiencing, and this is an interesting note in church history, when the Christians were experiencing persecution in Gaul under Marcus Aurelius, Richard Harris, the, yeah, in real life, a real persecutor of the Christians, when they were, and this is about 175, 177, they wrote a letter back to their supporting churches, right?

And who'd they write to? They didn't write to Rome. They never sent a letter to Rome. Why? Because they didn't come from Rome, and there was no Pope in Rome. All of that was invented later. There were no real Popes in Rome until really Leo, in the 5th century, Leo the Great. And the real, the first official one was probably Gregory, 100 years later. Okay, but, so when they wrote back, talking of their persecutions, they wrote back to these churches that John had written to in Revelation, that existed there, all right? And so, the, and even into more of the modern era, not quite there, but in 1177, I guess we'll get into all this, but 1177, I think it was, Peter Waldo and some guys from the Italian Alps showed up at the Third Lateran Council to Pope Alexander and presented him with a copy of an old Latin Bible.

This is the Bible we read and preach. It was different from Rome's Bible, from the Latin Vulgate. And they claimed that it had been copied, copied, copied, copied. It had come out of Judea through Asia Minor, through Syria and Asia Minor, and made its way into the Italian Alps, and they'd had it since the 2nd century. Now, he burned it, by the way. Sure he did. He burned it and started burning them. Don't you read that Bible. It tells on me. Keep it locked in the church. And that's what they did. But that's all to come. It's a precious heritage that we have, the people that suffered for this book.

Precious, precious, and that's all to come. Now, Irenaeus, what did he say? He quoted the New Testament over a thousand times. And what's amazing about this, he wrote against heresies, and he knew Greek and Latin. He was a native Greek speaker, but he also knew Latin, and he wrote in Greek to combat some of the heresies that were more in the Greek East. And the vast majority of his writings are lost. We don't have most of his writings. He wrote a bunch. We just have just a small fraction of what he actually wrote. But even at that early time, he quoted the New Testament over a thousand times. He quoted or alluded to, just in what we have of him, he quoted or alluded to 24 New Testament books and appealed to them for authority.

Irenaeus said that there were four Gospels and only four. He was very clear. There are four Gospels. There are only four. There's not the Gospel of Thomas. There's not the Gospel of Judas. These guys knew very early that these weren't. What people are doing now is they're digging a hole somewhere, right? They're uncovering a house, and in that house, there's a trash can. And they go to the trash can. Now, I'm being euphemistic here. They go to the trash can. They dig in the trash. They find a book that someone threw away, and they say, wow, this was important back then. That's what they do. And I love archaeology, and I love that science.

I love all this stuff. But at the same time, they make stuff up. They do. All you've got to do is watch the History Channel and watch some chubby-handed, fat-faced guy that has never split a quart of wood in his life sitting in his armchair saying, back then, we don't really know. Just shut up. what I'm saying? I can't handle it. I can't handle it, you know? You don't know anything about this life, let alone the one you worried about, you know? Go talk to a girl or something. All right. Back to the subject at hand. Polycarp of Smyrna, who lived from 69 to 155 A.D., you don't have to write this down, right?

He quoted Matthew, Mark, Luke. He quoted Acts, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, which was the one that a certain faction did not want to put in the Bible. And we'll study that next week. We'll learn why they didn't want it in there. And then 1 John and 3 John. All right. And so let's just go through these guys really quick. Here's Tertullian. Now Irenaeus, he's in, all right, so he's in the Western Roman Empire. He's all the way up in France. Okay. Tertullian is a bishop in North Africa. So Latin North Africa, coastal Mediterranean North Africa, the land of Hannibal.

Okay. He was, he wrote and spoke Latin and Greek. He quoted all four Gospels. He quoted all of Paul's epistles, every one of them. He quoted 1 Peter, 1 John, and Revelation. So 4, 14, 3, 21, 22, right? And that's Tertullian. Here's Origen. Now he's in the second, he would be in the, he would, his work would have been in the early to mid 3rd century. Origen now would be over in old Egypt, all right, in Alexandria. And he moved from Alexandria to Caesarea and started a school there. And we'll talk about him more later. However, by his time, now this guy had a lot of issues. A lot of issues.

However, by his time, and this guy was a great student and a great collator, a great seeker of manuscripts and information. All right. Not just of the Bible, but of everything. He just was one of those guys that sought out old evidence and old records and just filled his life with books. And he quoted the Bible like crazy. And I think Origen, I can't remember how many times Origen quoted the Bible, but it's far over 10,000 times. And he refers to all 27 books. He said that there's 27 books and they were considered scripture in his time. And now, continuing on real quick. And we'll get to all these guys a little more.

I'm just talking about that the 27 books you have, all right, the Apocrypha, right, and the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Enoch, all this stuff. For the vast majority of Christians knew that they weren't the Word of God. They knew. And you can even tell by the way they're written. It's like reading the Bible and then reading the Book of Mormon. Like, he's trying to make it sound like the Bible, but it's not landing. Right? It's not. All right? There's no authority there. Great verse. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life. Right?

What does he say earlier? He says, the words of another they will not follow. They will not hear. You just know it's the Lord's voice. Okay? Then we got Eusebius, the first church historian. He witnessed firsthand the destruction of manuscripts under Diocletian, that awful persecution at the end of the third century, beginning of the fourth. A great researcher and historian. He's who we get a lot of the information from in the early church. He recognized 27 books. He says there's 27 books. He said there's five, and this is what we're going to talk about next week. There's five that some people are arguing about. But there's 27. Okay? The ones that you have.

Closing

And he also rejected the Apocrypha. Now, when we get to a very clear statement here, we have Athanasius of Alexandria. He was a bishop and an apologist. He's the guy that argued with Arius and why they called the Council of Nicaea. Right? Arius theorized that Jesus Christ was some sort of a demigod. He wasn't the same as the Jehovah of the Old Testament. Athanasius stood for a more orthodox understanding that Jesus Christ is God, manifested differently, manifested in the flesh. That's why they called the Council of Nicaea. All right? This is what Athanasius said. He said that the 27 books are inspired. He called them the wells of salvation. I think I have his quote up there.

Do I have it? Oh, yeah. These are fountains of salvation. Referring to 27 books. That they who thirst may be satisfied with the living words they contain. In these alone is... You see what he says? Alone. In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness. Let no man add to these. Neither let him take off from these. For concerning these the Lord put to shame the Sadducees and said, Ye err not knowing the scriptures. And he reproved the Jews, saying, Search the scriptures. For these are they which testify of me. We'll add one more to that. We'll add old Jerome. And Jerome, born in Dalmatia but lived in Rome, Syria, and Bethlehem.

A great cataloger of ancient manuscripts. We're going to study him a lot and talk about how they... The circulation of manuscripts in Latin and in Greek and the notes that he made on them. Talk about how we got our Bible. All right? That's coming up. But Jerome said this. He said there's 27 books as inspired and that's it. That's it. So it was... Now, who are these guys? These are now three centuries removed. Okay? But you understand that the statements that these guys are making, this is way after the average Christian already had a Bible. with most or most all of the books, a handwritten Bible, right? Or I say average pastor, right?

And was using it and was preaching it and people were getting saved. Right? There were 100,000 Christians in the world by 100 AD. All right? From 120 in the upper room to over 100,000. Two to 300 churches, at least. Churches grew exponentially. Then with the persecution, it just kept growing. Right? That's what Tertullian said. He said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Right? And so the church kept growing and people kept copying. And people kept passing them around. And so there was not official recognition of this. Official recognition until, all the muckety-mucks got together and decided. And the Council of Laodicea recognized all books but Revelation.

That shouldn't surprise us. We like every book except Laodicea. There's just some stuff in there. We're going to... Really? All right? Council of Damascus at Rome. The Council of Hippo. Councils of Carthage, 397, 419. All recognized 27 books. But really, all these councils did. You want to read in your Bible what the Bible says about councils, by the way. All right? But all these councils, all they did was recognize what the Holy Spirit had done two and a half centuries before in the church. And so when we look at this, when we look at this, do you remember we did this? The environment of Old Testament transmission. Right? We talked about everything that the Old Testament went through.

Right? The occupation by the Moabites. Jerusalem and the temple burnt. The inhabitants of land taken into captivity. Occupied by all these nations. Right? The Levites themselves had several areas of apostasy. And yet, after all that, right? Plus, 400 years of silence between Ezra and Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ showed up in the temple. He showed up in the synagogue. Right? And what did he say about those 22 books? He said, they're scripture. And he never corrected one word of them. And he said, the scripture can't be broken. And heaven and earth shall pass away. But my word shall not pass away. Right? Now, when we get into the New Testament, okay, and we talk about no less than 10 persecutions and Bible burnings in the Roman Empire in 200 years, and Christians in manuscript nearly wiped out by Diocletian in 300 AD, Antioch was burned by the Persians to the ground, the center of Bible Christianity in 256 AD, endured intentional corruption by early heretics, old Latin Bibles censured and destroyed by the Roman Church from 1200 to 1800 AD until the Spanish Inquisition ended, old Greek and Syrian Bibles endured 1,000 years of Muslim occupation, the cradle of Christianity occupied by the Ottoman Empire from 1453 to 1917, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, along with the major Western languages, have undergone significant changes.

The church itself has gone through great eras of apostasy. Here's the question. If the Lord preserved the Old Testament for 1500 years under similar circumstances, did he? Unless we're doubting the words of Christ, then we can all go home. Right? Could he have preserved the New Testament as well? Right? This is what we have to understand. We have to understand that God oversaw not just the initial inspiration, but the collection and gathering and copying of the Old Testament. He had to have. Or else, what are we doing here? Right? But scholarship takes it that God breathed this book and then left it to man, and how men are. Right? And that's so they can come in and tell you what the Bible is.

That's what it is. But if we have faith to believe that his Old Testament was the word, could the New Testament be his word too? I think we know the answer, but that's... So we're going to get into in the next couple weeks, right, how it got to us. And I hope so far this has been a blessing to you. Father, we love you. We thank you for your word. Please bless the next service. Amen. Okay.