Dear Lord, I give myself away, tis all that I can do. At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rode away. It was there by faith I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day. Thank you. You may be seated. Good morning. Now, I know better. You're just trying to keep me in, see if I'm, see how alert I am. Open your Bible up to Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 13. We've been having a good day. We had good services this morning. I just have been having a sense of the Lord's pleasure in a lot of things that are going on. Jeremiah 29 verse 13 says, and ye shall seek me and find me. when you shall search for me with all your heart. There's a humility that needs to be there, but the promise is you seek for me, you're gonna find me. That's because God wants to be found. Because we know God has to initiate that. We love Him because He loved us first. If He had not initiated the whole thing, there wouldn't be anything to find. God would be hiding, and if He doesn't want to be known, there's no way to know Him. We know Him because He wants to be known. He wants to be found. Unfortunately, very few want to actually find God, that is, find Him as He is. As Jesus said in John 3, 19, men love darkness rather than light. Many want to find God or something higher than themselves. according to their own pleasure and desire, not the way God is. They want to find a different God, a God that's more suitable to them. Well, our church is expanding its ministries online as well as into the community, and we're reaching more people, and I was sharing with our group this evening that with the national resource ministry that's taking place, I sent out some more translations in Spanish this past week, but I've got one enthusiastic student out of all those so far. Of course, we've only been going for two weeks, so who knows, it takes a while to fill that out, especially if you don't, especially if you're in a third world country. There's things going on, makes it a little more challenging. But there are some really good things to look forward to. But as I was pointing out to our group, one has responded. It might be, the guy in Kenya, I haven't heard from him. He was writing me every day. So when it all stopped after the materials went out, I thought, well, this makes a good point. I mentioned this a couple weeks ago. The materials are available to anyone who wants to ask for them and use them. Whether they believe in salvation by grace or the deity of Christ or whatever, the material is going to go to them. And then they're going to have to decide if they want to use it or not. But who knows, someone might get saved out of that. One of the things that I learned from Brother Hammett, who's over there, he said, the best way to describe it is, in a lot of countries, third world countries, there's spiritual chaos, anarchy. I mean, people just don't know. They don't know what they don't know. They don't know what to teach. They want to be religious, And they go about, as Paul wrote about the Jews, they seek God in zeal but without knowledge. And as the man from Kenya told me, what we need is someone to come over here and train us and teach us and give us materials. So that is a big need. We're hopefully, and I hope you're praying with me about this. I've been praying for someone to, for the Lord just to raise up somebody who will have that burden and that vision to find key leaders in other countries who are looking for materials who will use those materials. We're ready to scale up. We can go into any country, any language right now. And so just praying, everything's in place. We're just praying for the Lord to raise someone up who has that burden. Now, speaking of online ministries, Josh Crawford presented his vision this morning for an in-house ministry, social network for our church members. And that's in addition to the online ministry that's going out around the world. It's offering a secure network within our church on an exclusive private server, and the connections keep everyone feeling safe. connections to others in the church. Now, the larger vision that Brother Josh has shared with me is to build domains for other churches who want secure private internet and internal networking among their churches, and especially for those who don't have members who can do such things, and set up those They don't have the technical skills to set something like that up in the church. So this is a vision that Brother Josh has had. It's a burden on him and something we can pray about. Another ministry popping up here, potentially to help other churches. And of course, that's what we're here for, right? Helping churches grow, be strengthened, be encouraged, be better equipped to do what? Well, to fulfill the Great Commission. That's what we're here for. So we're always praying for new ministries, people to rise up and pursue those interests that God is burdened with. So we currently have a public presence that reaches out to the world audience. I'm on Google, Facebook, everything that you can imagine. For me, I want to be found. I don't have anything to hide. I want people to find me. Because when they find me, now if any of you have ever seen me out there, gone and searched around, You're going to hear the gospel. You're going to see opportunities to learn, get into Bible studies. That, I want to be found. Now, when it comes to financial business, my social security number and Amazon, yeah, I keep that private. And I don't want anyone to know about that. But other than that, man, I want to be known. I want to be found. And that's what we need to be doing. We need to be thinking about these opportunities to reach out and make the gospel known to people. And it has to be done, as with anything, it has to be done with wisdom. And with caution, but man, what a tremendous opportunity there is for that to occur. And even like reaching out to other countries around the world. I mean, we can supply materials to them. And like the one guy in Kenya said, we need Bibles too. We don't have any Bibles. We support a couple of Bible printing ministries here in the church. Yeah, we can contact them and have Bibles sent to them. And we got plenty of materials. So what a tremendous opportunity just to expand the kingdom of God, to get the word of God out and be found. Well, see, that goes back to the theme I started out with. God wants to be known. And what is our job? To make God known. We want to make sure that people can find God, find the truth. There's a lot of competing voices out there. And we need to make sure that our voice is not only known and heard, but competitive. Because Satan's designed a world culture to discredit God's word and God's message. And anyway, I think it's exciting to see ministries expanding and new ones popping up all the time. And that's what we're doing with the National Resource Ministry as well. In our Sunday evening lessons, I've been presenting worldview concepts that are absolutely essential for understanding our times. A lot of Christians don't spend much time on it, they don't think it's really important, but then they're not the children of Issachar. Someone's got to understand our times around here, understand it correctly and have some spiritual discernment and understand the importance of it. Having an understanding of our times is important because it allows us to make, well, be better informed about what's going on, wiser in our decisions and our abilities to counsel and give some direction and leadership to others. Because after all, what does God call us to do as Christians? To be leaders. That's what it is. I mean, you can't be a teacher without leading somebody. And so there's inherent in the call of being a Christian and a disciple to be a leader. And a leader needs to understand what's going on in their world, otherwise You're going to give some bad advice or you won't be able to give any advice at all if you don't have an understanding of what's going on in the world. We live in a world that needs to be understood. Why? Satan is in charge of this world. He's designing the culture. How can you protect yourself if you don't know your enemy? Remember, politics here, and really, I can say, yeah, Christians need to be in politics. They need to be involved in politics. They need to understand how to interpret the politics around them. But remember, that doesn't mean you have to get everyone else to run out and run for office. That's not what that's all about. As I have defined and talked about politics in previous lessons, politics is simply disagreeing about how things ought to be done around here. That's all politics is. It's just, I don't like the way you think about it. Well, I don't like the way you think about it. All right, we're engaged in politics now. That's all that is. It's about government. It's about governing. It's about the laws, the rules. Somebody's got to make up the rules around here. And if you disagree, that's politics. Anyone who says they can't be political is deceived. If you disagree with the way things are being done, then you're engaged in politics right there. That doesn't mean that it has to be nasty. It just means, hey, I disagree. Satan has tricked a lot of Christians into thinking they shouldn't be engaged, they shouldn't be discerning, or they shouldn't be concerned about politics. But Romans chapter 13 contradicts Satan's deception. Much of the Old Testament contradicts this perspective. Likewise, the Spirit of God contradicts the view that Christians should withdraw from politics. Well, I shouldn't disagree with you. because that would make me feel mean and bad. Well, hey, I have discovered, and particularly with the ministry God's called me to since the very beginning, since the day I was saved, it's been apologetics. It's been giving answers to people. And I've always lived in a world of debate, disagreement. You don't have to hate people. to disagree with them. You don't have to get mean and nasty with people just because you disagree. You ought to be able to talk about it. I'm not offended that someone disagrees with me. Big deal. But man, that's not how everyone feels about it. There are people today, if you don't agree with them, they want to kill you. Well, that's the other crowd, right? They're obviously not under the spirit of God. But we have a calling to provide leadership and Christians need to be and are expected to be outspoken and providing godly leadership in their communities and telling people what they ought to do. Wow, no one ought to tell someone else what to do. You don't think they ought to be told to get saved? Everyone needs to get to say, you don't think that people ought to be told not to sin? I mean, we are commissioned as Christians to be engaged in telling people that they're wrong. You have to learn how to do it tactfully. You're wrong in love. You're sincerely wrong, you know, that sort of thing. God has assigned Christians to fulfill the role of being ambassadors in this world, to present his message, to represent his ways, to persuade others to do likewise, and to teach how to join God's league of ambassadors. I mean, we're recruiting into God's army. And those who understand our times and our roles as Christians understand the need to give answers to those who ask for the reason to believe, to repent, and to be convinced that God's way is the right way. In Isaiah 118, God said, come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And in 1 Peter 3, verse 15, we're exhorted to be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you. I've shown you answers already to the four fundamental questions that serve as a bedrock for all worldviews. The correct answers to these questions, to these four fundamental questions, lead to one conclusion. Jesus Christ is God and the Bible is his word of truth. Answering the four fundamental questions establishes the Bible as having the correct worldview, the biblical worldview, among all the competing worldviews. There are many voices and many worldview choices offered in this world that's ruled by Satan as its God. But for those who will seek God with humility, truth can and will be found. Religions that don't recognize Jesus as God in the Bible as his inspired word are false worldviews. By systematically answering just four fundamental questions, the field of competing worldviews narrows down to just one, God's worldview. That's what makes this so beautiful. I love this. Four questions, answers to four questions, Man, you can establish the biblical worldview as the legitimate worldview. In the previous lesson, I began presenting evidence for the inspiration of the Bible. But there's four categories of evidence I'm developing on. Number one, unknown truths supernaturally revealed. Number two, prophecies supernaturally fulfilled. Number three, supernatural Bible discoveries. like equidistant letter sequencing, and number four, the supernatural harmony of the scriptures. The first evidence for biblical inspiration were the unknown truths recorded in the Bible. These are claims made in the Bible that were unknown at the time. They were written down and oftentimes contrary, a contradiction to the prevailing wisdom of the day. Then thousands of years later, discoveries have been made showing, guess what, the Bible was right. This is not a claim that the Bible is a science textbook, but it is scientifically correct. the Bible's track record of being shown to be right again and again and again, despite the prevailing science and wisdom of the day, gives strong reason to believe the Bible regardless of what prevailing theories in the human and scientific populations might be. Humanism That is, conclusions derived from human imagination are not reliable. God's word is reliable. We know this to be true both by confirmation of the Holy Spirit and by the evidence of unknown truths recorded in the Bible. For example, and I mentioned this, I started off, I'll just do a brief review. In 1000 BC, King David wrote of the ocean currents 2,800 years before the ocean currents were even discovered. It was a naval officer by the name of Matthew Mowry who became known as the father of oceanography. He was reading the Bible. He read this passage in Psalm 8, 8 that talked about the paths and the seas. Went out, looked for it, and published the results that, hey, there's paths in the sea. There's currents out here. Man. It's over 1,000 years after the Bible talked about it. In 960 BC, the wind currents in the Earth's atmosphere are referred to in Ecclesiastes 1.6, which says, the wind goeth toward the south and turneth about unto the north. It whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to its circuits. You know, the winds start out here in the equator of the Earth. And overall, in a big general picture, they rise because warm air rises, right? And cool air descends. So where's the cool air? It's up in the North Pole and the South Pole. Guess what? The warm airs rise around the equator, they make their way to the poles, and they splash across the face of the Earth and make their way back. Just like Ecclesiastes says. It's going up there to the north. How do they know that? Well, it wasn't found out till the 17th and 18th centuries, like Galileo studied it, 2,500 years after it was written down and recorded in the Bible. How did those guys know that there were currents in the atmosphere? In 700 BC, the wearing out of the universe and the heavens ceasing to exist. are described in the Bible in Psalms 102, 25, and 26. Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure. Yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment. I mentioned last time that this is what we call today entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics. Things wear out, but who could have envisioned thousands of years ago that The stars are burning out. They're not always going to be there. The Earth is waxing. The Earth is wearing out. Who could even imagine that? It was not thought that way. We had a very, humans had a very permanent view of both the stars and the Earth. There's no wearing out. But it is wearing out. Well, that was the static view, the unchanging, non-wearing out view, lasted for 2,500 years after the Bible wrote about it, waxing old. And then it's discovered, guess what? The universe, including the earth, is wearing out. In 1500 BC, Genesis 15, verse 5, was written saying, look now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to number them. In other words, you're not going to be able to number them. At the time Genesis was written, it was thought to be a contradiction to Genesis that the number of stars was finite and countable. In fact, ancient astronomers, such as those in Babylon and Greece, estimated there were about a whopping 2,500 to 3,000 stars. Today, over 3,900 years later, after the Bible wrote about the enumerability of the stars, it's been estimated that over 100 billion stars exist just in our Milky Way galaxy. And that's just one galaxy. And there's over two trillion galaxies. with the unobservable, and that's what they refer to as the observable stars. What about all the unobservable stars? The stars are literally innumerable, just like the Bible said. How could the writers of the Bible have known the stars were innumerable? When the prevailing human wisdom was, there's only a few thousand up there. Whoa, this is, who could have known? In 2000 BC, Job wrote that the earth was suspended in space on nothing. Nothing. Now, the prevailing ancient philosophy, and just by human experience, everything sits on something. And the understanding was that the earth was resting on something. No one knew what it was, but they had a lot of proposals. In 624 through 546 BC, Thales of Miletus proposed that the earth was floating on water. Others propose the Earth was resting on the shoulders of Atlas, a turtle on a pillar, et cetera. It had to be sitting on something because nothing just sits on nothing. Well, 3,600 years after the Bible said that the Earth was sitting and suspended in nothing, Sir Isaac Newton comes along and says, the Earth is sitting on nothing. How did the writers of the Bible know the earth was not resting on something in contradiction to the prevailing thinking and wisdom of their day? As science discovers more insights to give us more accurate understanding of our world, statements in the Bible are shown to be correct after all. Though when written, they contradicted the prevailing scientific and philosophical understandings of their time. Divine inspiration by the creator of the universe was guiding the prophets to say and to write things that would be correct, even though it was thought to be incorrect at the time. And by inspiration, the Bible contains God's correct descriptions of his creation. A second category of evidence of the four we're covering here, the second category for biblical inspiration is prophecies of future events. Prophecies describing the arrival and the identity of the Messiah of God to come, we know as Jesus Christ, were miraculously fulfilled and demonstrate supernatural insight, foresight, and control over future events. Prophecies of future events are possible because there is a God who can know, does know, and controls all things. Furthermore, because we've shown that Jesus Christ is God, we should expect and not be surprised that prophecies about Jesus Christ were fulfilled. The prophecies about Jesus Christ, who is referred to as the Messiah of God in the Old Testament, are known as messianic prophecies. Messianic prophecies were an important means of helping people identify Jesus as the Messiah. Every prophecy served as a landmark pointing to the Messiah. specifically to Jesus as the Messiah. Like the address on your house, the prophecies help people identify the promised Messiah. They point to the time, the place, and the person. It's that guy. The disciples referred to the messianic prophecies in their writings. Number one, as evidence to their contemporaries, who could easily dismiss it if it wasn't true, that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, whom God prophesied would come. And remember, even the Jewish leaders were going back and checking their scriptures, coming out of Bethlehem and talking about, well, what if it's true or not? They didn't want it to be true, but it took them three years before they could dismiss it. And two, the disciples were referring to messianic prophecies as verifiable claims to their contemporaries, who would have firsthand knowledge of whether these things were true or not. If the disciples were wrong, the truth of Christ fulfilling the prophecies would have been easily disproven and dismissed, and there would have been no following. And the entire Christian movement would have collapsed and failed right then. Also, number three. Critics would have been in debate, and debating the claims, whether they were fulfilled prophecies, if the events and claims were really falsifiable. But when we look back into ancient debates, written debates, between Christian apologetics, Genesis, and other critics in the first and second centuries, like Tertullian, They never mentioned such debates ever taking place about the prophecies Jesus fulfilled. The fulfillment of messianic prophecies recorded thousands of years before Jesus' birth is evidence of divine inspiration of the Bible. How was it written in there and then fulfilled? It's been calculated that Jesus fulfilled over 300 messianic prophecies. removing all doubt that He is indeed the promised Messiah and that the Bible must have been inspired. So let's just take the few minutes remaining just to kick off some of these messianic prophecies. Consider some of these that have been fulfilled by Jesus. In about 539 B.C. it was written to begin with, and most importantly, Jesus would be resurrected, the Messiah would be resurrected, which has been shown to be verifiable. We already did that several weeks ago in Psalm 1610, saying, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to seek corruption. I'm not going to stay here. Well, Peter referred to this reference in Psalm 1610 when speaking to the Jews, his contemporaries, about fulfilling this prophecy. In Acts 2, verse 31, Peter said, he, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This is the prophecy Peter was using and referring to so his contemporaries would see. This is the Messiah that was promised to be resurrected almost 500 years before Jesus was even born. Jesus' betrayal by his friend was prophesied in Psalm 41 verse 9. Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me. Judas Iscariot was the friend that betrayed him. That was written about 980 BC. In about 520 B.C., it tells us that Jesus, the Messiah, would be sold out for 30 pieces of silver in Zechariah 11, verse 12. It says, and I said unto them, if ye think good, give me my price, and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver. How many pieces of silver did the Jewish leaders pay to Judas for the betrayal? 30 pieces of silver. Jesus was accused by false witnesses as prophesied in Psalm 35 verse 11. False witnesses did rise up. They laid to my charge things that I knew not. Isn't that how it is with false witnesses? They always know more than you do. Jesus was wounded and bruised as prophesied in Isaiah chapter 53 verse 5, which says, and he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. Jesus was smitten and spit on, as prophesied in Isaiah 50 verse 6. I gave my back to the smiters, my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. Jesus was mocked, as prophesied in Psalm 22 verses 7 through 8. All they that see me laugh me to scorn. They shoot out the lip. They shake the head, saying, he trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing he delighteth in him. Jesus' hands and feet were pierced, just as it was prophesied in Psalm 22, verse 6. For dogs have encompassed me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. Jesus was crucified with thieves just as prophesied in Isaiah 53 verse 12. Which says, therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death. And he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. That's the Messiah they were looking for. Jesus' garments were taken and bartered for by gambling, as prophesied in Psalm 22, verse 18. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. Jesus was given gall and vinegar to drink, just as prophesied in Psalm 69, verse 21. It says, they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Jesus' bones were not broken while on the cross, though the other two men had their bones broken, just as prophesied in Psalm 34, 20, which says, he keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken. Jesus' side was pierced, as prophesied in Zechariah 12, verse 10, which says, and I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his own son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. Darkness during the crucifixion was prophesied in Amos 8, 9. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. This is rather an interesting prophecy because this is actually confirmed by a debate between Tertullian and another philosopher by the name of Julius. They were debating why it was dark during the crucifixion of Jesus. Oh yeah, it was dark in the middle of the day. Jesus was born of the seed of a woman, a virgin as prophesied in Isaiah 714. Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel. Matthew 1 verse 18, 24 and 25. Point out, now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise. When his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found a child of the Holy Ghost. Being born of Mary made him, made Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of Man. Yet Jesus was born of God, as prophesied in Psalm 2, verse 7. I will declare the decree. The Lord has said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Again, in Matthew chapter 1, 18, 24, and 25, it says, now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Being born of God made him the son of God. Jesus being a descendant of Abraham was prophesied in Genesis 22 verse 18 saying, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice. Jesus being a descendant of Isaac was prophesied in Genesis 21 verse 12, saying, and God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of thy bondwoman, and all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed, which Paul explains in Galatians, the Messiah, be called. Isn't that remarkable? There's so much there. And I'll pick up with this next week and we'll finish our messianic prophecies and make the point here that all of these prophecies, just fulfilling eight of these prophecies is just mind boggling. But here you have, to fulfill just eight of the 300 messianic prophecies would be one in 10 to the 17th power. Now that's 1,700 quadrillion. or 1,700 million billion chances. When Jesus was born, it's been estimated that only 100 billion people even lived during that time. And that falls way short of making the probability of one in 1,700 million billion even possible. But someone fulfilled it, miraculously fulfilled it. Just eight. Now when you start adding it all up, let me give you this number, you probably never heard of it. I never heard of this number. Dr. Stoner calculated the probability of fulfilling 48, not the 300, just 48 prophecies to be equal to one in 10 to the 157th power. That's 1710 duotrigontillion. You ever heard of that number? This number is so big, you would have to say a trillion, 145 trillion times. That's amazing. The fulfillment of the prophecies just fine tunes it and makes it impossible for counterfeits. That's what it is. It's like a specific address in every prophecy just called out a whole nother group of people. They can't. Yeah, a bunch of people have been born in Bethlehem, but how many of them were boys? Oh, that just eliminated 50%. And how many of them were born at a time when all the children were said to be, a decree was made to kill all the children? That just eliminated a bunch of them. You see, every prophecy just eliminates, eliminates, eliminates, till finally there's only one possibility. And even then, that one, that's impossible because there's more prophecies that he has to fulfill. And how many of those were going to be crucified? And how many of those that were crucified, which probably none others, how many of those were resurrected? How many of those were doing miracles? How many of those were teaching? How many of those had a following called disciples and continuing the work on? And how many of those? I mean, it just keeps going on and on. It's a miracle. It shows that the Bible indeed must be inspired by God. Amen. that you know the sad part of all of that is that the average