Hello, friends. I'm Paul Scharf, Church Ministries representative for the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. I'm here today at Shepherds Theological Seminary in Cary, North Carolina, with Professor of Bible Exposition, Dr. Doug Bookman. I've had the privilege of interviewing him before here for my page on Sermon Audio, and we're back again following this year's 2022 Shepherds 360 Church Leaders Conference. Dr. Bookman, we had about a thousand pastors here, I understand. That was good. Tremendous time. I was here as an exhibitor, spoke in a church in the area last night. Dr. Bookman went to his workshop on Tuesday. Fantastic explanation about the centrality of the Mosaic Law in the theocracy of Israel, but today we're going to turn our attention to the Gospels and the integrity of the Gospels. Your title for this is? Well, just that, I guess, the eyewitness character of the Gospels in the New Testament. So before we launch into that, I'm going to ask you to pray for this recording. All right. Thank you much. Thank you so much. Father, we love you. We thank you so much for your word. We thank you for Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We thank you for Father, we thank you for the ministry that you give us, each one individually, and ask that you would enable us by your grace to be faithful to that stewardship and even in these moments that we have together. And thank you in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Dr. Bookman. I'm just going to kind of listen as you talk about the integrity, the veracity of the Gospels. I know it's a passion, a lifelong pursuit of yours, not only on the pages of Scripture, but in the land of Israel. Please tell us what's on your heart. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Paul. Honestly, any chance I get to share this with believers. And what we're going to talk about, I think, believers rather intuitively embrace, but because there are some attacks on the integrity of the gospel, some very significant attacks on the historicity, the factuality, the dependability of the gospels, it's worth stopping and talking about it for a minute. You know, one way to introduce the subject is to ask the question, why four gospels? Now, I am persuaded, and I teach the life of Christ, and in order to come to an understanding of the life that Jesus lived and the ministry that he carried out, you have to take those four Gospels, because no one of the four Gospels is or claims to be an exhaustive telling of the Jesus story. Every one of them is selective. To make that point, I like to say A little Bible quiz for our listeners. What are the three cities, which according to Jesus himself, the three cities in which he did most of his mighty works? And interestingly, those three cities are Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. According to Matthew chapter 11, he calls down a curse on the cities in which he did most of his mighty works. Now, what's curious with regard to the present discussion is that how many miracles in the New Testament, in the Gospels, are actually recorded as having happened in Chorazin? And the answer is zero. Matter of fact, the only time Chorazin is mentioned is when we are told that it was one of the three cities in which he did most of his mighty works, which is to say, for our purposes, that the gospels are deliberately, carefully selective. And that is, each of the four gospels as a deliberate audience. He is addressing a specific question, and under the superintending ministry of the Spirit of God that we call inspiration after 2 Timothy 3. He is selecting, he is arranging, sometimes he is emphasizing, repeating, omitting various elements of Jesus' life. And so every one of the four Gospels is deliberately selective, but by the same token, as in any historical pursuit, anytime you're trying to recover for the life of, for instance, the life of any man, you're going to find all the sources you can, And you're going to compare them and weave them and so on. And that's exactly what we do. Now we do it with the confidence that every scintilla, every syllable of all four Gospels is absolutely true. But this business, we call it harmonizing issues in, as I like to say, and I'd ask your listeners to hear this, When you harmonize the Gospels as God intended, by the way, Christians, the earliest one we have is from the second century AD. So Christians have always done this, have always worked to harmonize the Gospels. And when you do that, you come away with what I like to say is as full and complete and coherent a life of Jesus as possible. And I think that's absolutely, God expects it of us. The Gospels are arranged to make that available to us. but it's a work unto itself, that is the harmonizing. Now, having said that, so my point is, if it is important, and I believe it is, I think it's clearly God intended, that we have a full and complete coherent life of Jesus, why didn't God just give us one gospel? Take all the work out of it. If we only had one gospel, we just follow the story, but we've got four. And so it behooves us, it becomes our sacred obligation and opportunity to harmonize them. But that takes me back to my question, why four gospels? And I believe the question is simply this, and I'm gonna interrupt myself here, I sometimes do that. But I would just try to make the point to our listenership here, that our faith, the faith of the scriptures is grounded as is no other set of philosophical or religious claims. Our faith is grounded in real history. God broke into history. We call it event revelation. I like to say in times past, in diverse ways, in various seasons, as the author of Hebrew tells us in the first verse, at various times, God, I like to say, perpendicularized himself and he broke into human history. Now in these last days, he has spoken unto us by his son, and that is the most dramatic and extended season of event revelation. Jesus was the living word, and all about his life and his teachings, all of that is revelatory. It's God making himself known. So my point is that our faith is grounded in history in every way, so important. I like to tell people, and this will not come as a surprise to anybody, that most of history happened a long time ago, for heaven's sake. And much of the set of historical claims in which we have invested the eternal safekeeping of our soul spirit, and the very fact that this or that believer is watching this video would suggest he's also investing this life in the truth of historical claims that happened a long time ago, And which include really, I'll use the word, rather bizarre claims, like that a man died on a Roman cross and three days later, he came out alive. Now that happened a long time ago. It's almost, I mean, let's say this, we wouldn't intuitively believe this if we heard it about other people, we wouldn't believe that a person died and came back from the dead, that doesn't happen. We have, as I say, staked the eternal destiny of our soul spirits on the truth of those historical claims, happened a long time ago, rather stunningly bizarre. Why should we believe that? And there is a biblical answer to that, and I'm gonna broaden it out. On what basis can we have rational confidence in the claims of an ancient historical document? And the answer is, and this is a biblical, answer. The answer is eyewitness testimony. And I get that out of the oft-repeated about three different distinct times, the Old Testament, where we're told in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every matter be established. And in point of fact, that is a jurisprudential canon that has to do with the court of law. But what are you trying to do in a court of law? You're trying to recover history. And so it's an immediate application that if we If God is going to contrive to give us confidence in the factuality, the truthfulness of these historical truth claims through the generations, it's by reason of the fact that the records were written by eyewitnesses, and furthermore, that they then were distributed at a time and in a place where they were liable to falsification. Now that's kind of heavy, but stay with me, listener. Let's back up. I'm asking why four Gospels? Well, think about it. The reality is, and I know that many will think, well, wait a minute, it isn't the spirit of God who brings us, amen and amen, but the spirit of God doesn't ask us to surrender a rational thought to jump into some abyss of irrationality and silliness and so on. God honors the reality that in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every matter be established. It's a historical canon. And the fact is now, let me, diverge very, very briefly. The reason I can get myself a bit exercised about this in this day and age is because there are so many, even in the evangelical world, and even in the professing inerrantist world. Now, that's not real clear to you, don't worry about it, but those who will say on the one hand, they believe the Bible is absolutely without error, But then they'll turn around and insist that by reason of the habits, the literary genre, perhaps, of the first century, It was okay to make up and add details and to change stories and so on. So the gospels, the big story is, this is what we're told by evangelicals. I mean, we've been told this forever by the unbelieving Bible critic, but we're told in our circles today that, well, it's okay. The gospels are not entirely as to the slightest detail entirely dependable, but that's okay. And my point is simply this, that number one, God has been so gracious to give us these absolutely undeniable eyewitness accounts. Now, I know that this may, well, I'm gonna make a few statements, Paul, and I'm not gonna take time to defend them, though I really could. But let me just talk about the provenance of the Gospels, the four Gospels. That is what we can recover. We can recover a great deal about how these books, how and when and by whom these books were produced. And there is absolutely no question, although it is denied in many quarters today, but there is no question that the first Gospel written was Matthew. And the reason I say that is because we have very, very early patristic, that is early Christian thinkers, writers, and so on, writing sermons and journals and so on. And they affirm again and again that the first gospel written was Matthew. And Matthew was written at a time when the Christian enterprise was entirely Jewish. The gospel was still going only to Jews and the Jewish proselytes. Acts chapter 11, when they were scattered abroad because of the persecution, they went preaching the gospel to the Jews only. Now, praise God, this is another we can talk about to be sure, but God is going to affect this monumental change by which the gospel is going to go to Gentiles as Gentiles. That's going to be Peter at Cornelius's household and Paul on his missionary journeys, the Jerusalem council, that's coming. But I would argue that Matthew was probably written by about 44 AD. Now, the argument there is simply that the fathers remember Matthew as the collaborative work of the 12, including Matthias, not Judas. And once they were scattered after the persecution of Rosarond Stephen, there was no opportunity for collaboration. So at any rate, I would put Matthew, and he was an eyewitness, and he's writing in the company of the other 12, the other 11, and so on. So what you have is a remarkably stunningly well eyewitness attested record of Jesus' ministry in the book of Matthew that is written specifically to address the Jewish world. The grand question of Matthew is, Jesus is Messiah, why no kingdom? And Matthew lays that book out to explain that the reason Jesus, though he is beside him, bring a kingdom is because of rejection. And he's going to come again. Now that's Matthew. Now, I would argue that the next book written was Luke, and it was written probably in the early sixties while Paul, maybe 58 to 60. And while Paul was at Caesarea Maritima for two years, this is not the two years in Rome, but this is after he had been rescued in the temple. taken down by a huge military contingent at Caesarea Maritima, and he's there for two years, and he assigns Luke. Paul had come to realize, A, that it would be good to have a telling of the Jesus story that was less entirely Jewish, and B, that the gospel was going to the world, and so a Gentile telling would just be to balance, not to replace, but to balance, to supplement Matthew's telling. And so he, by the direction of the Spirit, assigns Luke, who is a great historian, not an eyewitness, but he tells us in his preface that everything he wrote was eyewitness testimony. And he's got those two years to do the research. I think Mark has written as sort of a part of that. And so, and then John, of course, is written about much later in the mid 80s, perhaps late 80s, but nonetheless to supplement the four. Now I've got to be done. The point is simply this, that you've got Matthew to begin with, along with the other 11 who seem to be involved very much in the production of that book, And eyewitness, you've got Luke carefully researching eyewitnesses. You've got Mark, which is in fact Peter's telling. All the fathers acknowledge, and nobody questions this, that Mark is really writing down Peter's telling. So there's an eyewitness. Then you've got John. So you've got stunning eyewitness. And furthermore, that story, let me just conclude with this. One of the explanations, one of the unbelieving critical explanations of the feeding of 5,000 and it's silly June it's absolutely beneath even the dignity of a response, but just to make a point here. One of the unbelieving anti-supernaturalist explanations is that Jesus was there in the Plain of Bethsaida, and it was a large crowd late in the day, and he says, help them find food, and they can't find it. A little boy comes out, I got the little lunch. When he did, dozens of other people, you know, said, well, I'm not going to say anything, but I brought my lunch too. And so they all shared their lunch. And by the time they got done, everybody had enough to eat. All right, now that, and then of course, time went by, and this wasn't written down for a hundred years, and by the time it got written down, it was all blown up into this silly miracle story. That's one explanation. Now, here's my point. No believer would hold that, but my point is this. If you, as everybody is willing to do, and it's dangerous, want to put Matthew very late, so maybe he's 40, 50 years after the fact, everybody who ate the dinner that day is dead and gone, you could maybe get away with that. But what about if Matthew was written within about a decade after Jesus ascended to the father? And now somebody shows up in some village in Galilee and says, everybody, I got something really special. He's got this book tucked up under his arm and he pulls it out and he opens the scroll and he begins to read the book of Matthew. And almost all of the people who were there that day are going to listen to the story. Now, if all that happened really, was that they all got real generous and shared their lunches. When you read the story about the miracle of multiplying, they're all gonna say, listen, it was a nice afternoon. Give us some, cut us some slack here, but what's this miracle business? But what about if there are still almost all of those people are still alive? Now, what I'm saying is that it's important that the gospels are written by witnesses. They were circulated at a time and in a place where eyewitnesses were still there. And if the stories were myths and made up, they would be called out for it. And let me just say one other thing. There is a community of unbelieving Jewish leadership who is desperate to find some historical chink in that armor and would have called out anything. So here's my point. We have four gospels because we have this remarkable, just remarkable overflow almost of eyewitness testimony. And those books were written and circulated when they were perfectly liable to falsification if there were things made up and so on. And therefore they are proven absolutely historically undeniable, unimpeachable by any reasonable set of historical canons. So, sum it up. There are those today who are willing to play fast and loose with the factuality of the Gospels. Don't go there. Our faith is grounded in history. That history is recorded, especially the life of Jesus and so on in the Gospels. They are absolutely factual in every detail. And therefore, they can, in fact, be confidently woven together to give us this remarkable fabric, this harmonized story of the life of Jesus. Excellent, Dr. Bookman. And we're going to leave that topic there, just a short overview of the absolute truthfulness of the Gospels. Thank you so much. That's Dr. Doug Bookman, Professor of Bible Exposition. We're at Shepherds Theological Seminary, Cary, North Carolina. Thank you for listening, friends. And this was a very special interview today. I hope it was a real blessing to you. Thanks for listening.