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Hello folks, this is Pastor Mike Hoggard coming to you from Studio 2012 with another Watchman
Video Broadcast.
You know, every time I come in here and get ready to record one of these Watchman
Broadcasts, I always get everything ready here, got my former friends here, ready and available.
And I have my long-time friend, this Bible here and always try to pray before I start
talking, hope and pray that God will just bless something that I do, or bless his word
as it goes forth.
When I got done praying just now, I noticed that my Bible was open to Ecclesiastes.
I just came in and opened it and set it down, you know, it's a table prop.
More than that though, and where it fell open was Ecclesiastes, chapter 12, and I had
this verse underlined, Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter.
(Ecc 12:13) I'm going to be dealing with a very, very serious matter today and it does
matter, it matters to me and it hopefully, it matters to you.
And I want you to draw a conclusion by the time I'm done, giving all of the information,
all of the verses that I have for you.
I'm going to try to lead you to a conclusion.
My hope and prayer is that it's the right conclusion, the correct conclusion, not
according to me, and not according to you and not according to any other man, but
according to the word of God.
I want to draw you to a conclusion on what you believe about the Bible.
Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,
Fear God, and you should, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.
(Ecc12:13)
Why were you born?
Why are you here?
Why are you living in the day that you're living in right now?
Why are you listening to this?
Could be that you desire to know truth.
It could be that somebody just gave you this in a DVD or someone said, hey, you need to
watch this Youtube video or whatever.
But our responsibility is not to play baseball, it's not to have sports, it's not to
have mega-churches or anything like that.
Our entire responsibility is summed up this way:
Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be
good, or whether it be evil.
( Ecc 12:13-14)
One of the things that I absolutely know, is that number 1, I am going to stand before
God one of these days and give an account for the things that I have done, and the secret
things, that means the things that I have thought or the things that I think in my mind.
Those things will be brought into judgment one of these days.
And so, I approach this subject with fear and trembling.
Not just of the hope that you will receive what I'm going to give you today, but the
idea that I know that every word that I speak today, not only is it being recorded now
for everybody to watch, but it's being recorded in heaven and God will bring these words
either for me or against me one of these days.
So I have to make sure that what I say comes from and is based upon what I know to be
the entire truth of the word of God.
So we're going to be dealing with this issue of what I have right here, I have the King
James Bible.
And then over here I have something I got in college, this is the Greek New Testament.
Actually I have another one, the interlinear Greek New Testament, see, because when I
was in college, kind of cheated a little bit.
Let's see here, I have the Living Bible, I have something called The Book, I have the,
let's see here, which one is this one.
The New Revised Standard Version, I have the New King James Version, I have the New
International Version.
They're all different versions, different translations of the Bible.
And a lot of people want to say, well they all say the same thing, they just kind of
use
a little different language.
We're going to show you that they don't all say the same thing.
There's a major differences between these and this.
In fact, there's even major differences between this one and this one.
These don't agree, they don't agree, they don't get along very well.
And so we're going to deal with this issue.
Now, you can either have a closed mind because you were taught as I was taught in a
seminary or Bible College or from a pulpit, you were taught that there is no such thing
as a perfect Bible.
You were taught that, that's what I was taught.
And I want you to just kind of not think of, he's King James Only.
That's a cult!
I don't want you to think that way because, really, that's not what I'm going to teach
you.
I'm going to try to teach you that number 1: I believe in the inspiration of God, the
plenary, verbal inspiration of God.
That God when Jeremiah was writing, God said every word that Jeremiah wrote down.
Those are the words of God.
I'm going to show you that from the Scripture.
Number 2, I believe in the preservation of the word of God and I'm going to show you
that from the scriptures.
I'm going to show you how that works.
How God preserved his word from the scriptures.
Then I'm going to show you something that I really want you to understand.
That I'm getting this from the word of God.
I'm getting this from the Bible.
That God not only inspired his word, he not only preserved his word, but God translated
his word into the language that you and I use right now.
He, he's the one that did that.
And if you're going to have problem getting over that hump, I want you to at least give
me about an hour or two of your time, because I'm going to try to explain this, at least,
here's what I want, I just want you to at least hear me out on this.
And if you find that scripturally, not what the manuscript evidence says, not what Dr.
so and so says, not what you've heard in Bible College and seminary, because I heard it
all and I used to believe it.
But not based upon what you already think but based upon number 1, do you fear God and
do you fear his commandments.
Do you believe that what is written in this book is correct and is right?
Do you believe that?
And so I'm just going to ask you a question, which, which Bible should we believe, which
one should we use?
And I'm going to let you be the judge.
I'm going to let you judge yourself on this issue and knowing now, knowing that both you
and I are going to stand together probably side by side in front of the same judge, the
same God and he's going to use a standard, he's going to use a perfect measure to judge
both you and I.
He's not going to judge you differently than me or me differently than you.
We're going to be judge the exact same way.
How is God going to do that is the question.
I want you to understand where my heart is today.
It's not to make you followers of Mike Hoggard, it's not to make you part of the King
James Only crowd.
It's to get you to understand and believe that your hope, and that you can still believe
in the Bible that God spoke, and preserved.
God speaks this way to us in the language that you and I speak.
And I'm going to show you that from the Bible.
So, let's, in fact, here's what I want you to do.
Psalm 34 verse 8, the Bible says,
O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him and then
Psalm 18:30, As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the Lord is tried: he is a
buckler to all those that trust him.
So here's what I'm wanting you to do according to the scripture, I want you to taste
this.
How do you know you're not going to like it?
How do you know you are going to like it?
But I want you to taste this idea, I want you to hear me out on this and I want you
to
try this in your mind, based upon all the evidence that you think you have, I want you
to
taste and see whether or not what I'm going to show you today is good.
And I'm going to let you be the judge on this issue.
And here's how we're going to start.
We, we're going to go all the way back to the beginning.
We're going to find out how we ended up with, with these.
We're going to find out how we ended up with this 1611 Bible, how we ended up with all
of these including the Greek text and so on.
How, how we did this.
And we're going to follow this from the Scriptures.
We're going to let the scriptures be our guide.
The question arises, how can I hear from God?
Do I hear God in an audible voice; do I have dreams and visions?
Do I believe that I can hear God from the pages of the Bible?
And I'm going to show you the standard that God himself set down for mankind.
Because, remember, it's that standard that you and I are going to be judged by is the
standard that God himself sets down and he sets it down, I believe, according to his
word.
Let's go to Exodus, chapter 17, verse 14, the Bible says,
And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in
the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out of the remembrance of Amalek from under
heaven.
I want you to notice that God told Moses to write this for a memorial in a book.
And you and I both know we've played that game before where I'm going to say something
to you and then you turn around and say it, and by the time it gets to the 20th person,
the 20th person repeats it, it's not the same as what I said it originally.
And, here we are, we're dealing with what was original.
Let's say that God told me something.
Let's say that I'm Moses, and God specifically told me words to say to everybody.
Well you know as well as I do that by the time they get around to this person here
orally, that the words that this person has, is not the same words as the original words
that were given.
And so what God plainly told to Moses was, write this for a memorial in a book.
And so we have the first 5 books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
Deuteronomy that the Bible says that Moses wrote these things down and he wrote them
down
in a Book.
Deuteronomy 17, verse 18,
And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write
him
a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priest, the Levites.
And this was the law concerning Israel.
God says you get into the land, I know for a fact that you're going to want a king
because I can see into your future and when he becomes king, I want him to sit down and
I
want him to write out a copy of this law in a book.
And I want him to rule according to, not what he heard, not was passed down by oral
tradition, not what Grandfather told him how the old days used to be, he's going to rule
according to what is in the book.
It's been written down and preserved that way.
Deuteronomy chapter 31, verse 24,
And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a
book, until they were finished.
In other words, this verse is telling us that Moses wrote down all the words of God, the
law, he wrote it down in a book, until, in other words, he wrote the very last thing
that
God said.
He wrote it all down.
And so this is where we get into the plenary, verbal inspiration of the Bible.
That God took all the words of the law of God and he wrote them down and they were
finished.
It was over with, it was done when God, when God stopped speaking, that's when Moses
stopped writing.
That's what we believe from the scriptures.
1 Samuel 10, verse 25, Then Samuel told the people the manner of the kingdom, and wrote
it in a book, and laid it up before the Lord.
And Samuel sent all people away, every man to his house.
The manner of the kingdom, how God rules, how God reigns.
What God's word is, what God's law is, what are his expectations of us?
And what you and I can expect from God, these things were written down by Samuel in a
book.
So we have Moses being part of the authorship of the Bible, we have Samuel writing down
the things of God.
Job, chapter 19, verse 23, Job said, Oh that my words were now written!
oh that they were printed in a book!
Well, they were Job.
They were printed in a book.
Every word that Job said concerning this ordeal that he went through, somehow, someway,
maybe Job wrote them down or somebody else did, but they wrote these things down to
memorialize.
You know if you have a situation where the police get involved in something, let's say
if it's a traffic ticket or an accident or anything like that, the police show up.
The first thing they do is they pull out a pad and a pen.
What do they start doing?
They start memorializing the events as they are told by the witnesses.
Why?
Because lawyers and judges, people in a court room know that witness testimony, after
the event, let's say a day or a week or a month or a year, let's say a law suit is going
on here and they know that people tend to forget or they tend to change things in their
mind to suit some other idea that they have.
But the police officer shows up and he immediately starts taking down names, license
number, phone numbers, and he draws out a map of what car was doing what, he draws out
the weather.
He memorializes everything that he can in a book and those generally are accepted as
fact in a court of law.
And so Job is, and here we have Moses, we have Samuel saying the exact same thing.
They were given to us by God and as soon as they were given to us, we memorialized them,
we wrote them down in a book.
Paper and ink last an awfully long time; it lasts longer than our thoughts do.
And so that is the method that God used.
Isaiah, chapter 30, verse 8, Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in
a
book, that it may be for the time to come forever and ever.
In this verse here, God is clearly saying to Isaiah, Isaiah the words that I gave you,
write them down right now.
Note it in a book, write it on a table or a tablet, write it down so that it will be
for a time to come forever and ever.
God not only wanted it written down for that time right then, which is the part of the
doctrine that we believe called the inspiration of the Bible or the inspiration of the
word of God in the original, what we call the manuscripts.
In other words, these scrolls or the velum, and I'll explain that in a minute, the
scroll that Isaiah had before him, he's writing, he's writing from right to left, because
it's in Hebrew, and he's writing these things down on the table or on the note book or
the pad, or whatever he's got, he's writing these words down as God is giving them to
him, and it's intended by God himself, it's intended that these words that Isaiah wrote
down would be forever and ever.
That was God's intention all along, is that the words that he wrote down, not only then
were they inspired word of God, that God breathed words.
But God has always intended to preserve these words forever and ever.
Jeremiah 30, verse 2, Thus speaketh the Lord God of Israel, saying, write thee all the
words that I have spoken unto thee in a book.
God's commandment is that they are to be written down in a book.
Why?
So that number 1, when people read it, they say, well, when everybody reads this book,
they're reading the exact same words.
I mean you and I both know that we go hunting or we go fishing, or we go shopping or
whatever, we have vacation, where some of it happens, we all know that every time we
tell
the story, we tell it just a little bit differently than we did before.
But God, God's not complacent with that, he's not happy with that.
He wants to make sure that everybody that reads his Book is reading the exact same
thing.
Ezra, chapter 7, verse 6, This Ezra went up from Babylon; and he was a ready scribe in
the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given:
and let me stop right here.
We have Ezra, we have Moses, we have Samuel, and we have David, who wrote down Psalms.
We have other writers, we have Solomon, who's a part writer of the Bible, we have
Isaiah, we have Jeremiah, we have the prophets and then we have a guy by the name of
Ezra.
Who came after all of these men, he is part of the ones, who came back from Babylon, and
Ezra had with him, because God had even decided to preserve the books that were written.
He decided to preserve them, even when the Israelites were in Babylonian captivity for
70 years.
And so Ezra comes back from Babylon and the Bible describes him as a ready scribe in the
Law of Moses.
The word Scribe, it's an easy word, if you go to the doctor and he gives you, he says
you're going to have to take some medicine, I'm going to write down a pre-scription, that
word script, a pre-scription, or whatever, basically means to scratch something down.
If you've ever seen a doctor, they scratch it all out, ok.
But it basically means to write it down.
And that's what, Ezra's job was, he was a ready scribe in the Law of Moses, he was
faithful to God.
We see Ezra standing up behind a pulpit of wood to preach and teach the word of God.
There was so much power in the word of God that had been preserved by the hands of Ezra,
there was so much power in it, the Bible says that when Ezra stood up and he opened the
book, the people all stood up in reverence to the book and they said, Amen!
Amen!
(Neh 8:5-6) And I believe in that kind of reverence to the Word of God.
I don't just think I have the dictation of crazy men or their fanciful stories or their
mythologies or whatever, I don't think I have that here.
I think I have in my hand, in this table in front of me the very words of God and I
stand in awe and reverence to what is written down in this book, and so God is using
these men as he gives them his words, he is using these men to write these things down
so
that they could be for a time to come forever and forever.
And you need to think about, let's, let's tell another story from the Bible.
We have Josiah; Josiah's days there was no book to be found.
There was no law, and so Josiah wanted to serve God, he wanted to do what was right,
didn't have a way to do it.
Until they went through the temple and they found the book.
God had preserved his words in a book so that when Josiah read them, he was afraid; he
had the fear of God in him because he wanted to keep the commandments of God.
And when the book was read to him, he ripped his clothes and he wept and he begged God,
God, I understand my fathers have been wicked, and I understand that you said that you
were going to judge us.
Lord, please don't do this in my lifetime, give us another chance.
And God harkened to the words of Josiah, the prayer of Josiah, because Josiah hearkened,
he listened to, he gave attention to, and he obeyed the words of his God that were
written in that book.
Josiah had reverence for the word of God.
That was the Old Testament, now we get into the New Testament time.
We have a guy by the name of Luke, the Bible says in Luke, chapter 1, this is the
beginning of Luke's gospel, and he's writing to someone named Theophilus, because
Theophilus wants to hear the story of Jesus.
Tell me the story of Jesus.
So, here's what Luke said, in verse 3-4,
It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very
first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know
the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
In other words, Theophilus had heard stories, he had heard things about Jesus and he
believed them, from the mouths of other people, but what Luke was saying here was, he
said I thought it good to write it down for you so that you would know the certainty of
the things that you have already heard.
And so what did Luke do?
He wrote them down; he memorialized them in a book.
I want you to think about this, let's say that all the things that Jesus did 2000 years
ago had never been written down but we were counting upon faithful men to tell us the
truth for 2000 years.
Well, I tell you what, having a story being passed around for 2000 years, things would
definitely get lost, we wouldn't really know if we were telling the truth or not.
But we know that we have these writings that go almost all the way back to the time of
Luke.
Almost, all the way back to the time of Isaiah, and we know that the things that he
wrote down, God had them write down for a memorial so that every generation would know
the words of God.
1 John, chapter 5, verse 13, the Bible says, These things have I written unto you that
believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and
that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.
Luke wrote them down.
Isaiah wrote them down, Jeremiah wrote them down, Ezra made sure that everything was
written down and compiled correctly.
That was one of his responsibilities and that everything was faithfully preserved.
That was another responsibility of the scribe was to make sure that if he was making a
copy of a manuscript, it was his responsibility, as a ready scribe in the law of the
Lord, to make sure that what this new copy says is exactly what the old copy said.
You know why, you know why they had to copy them?
Because they knew that his old copy wasn't getting any younger.
It's kind of like us, we don't get any younger every day, we get a little bit worn out.
We get rough around the edges and things end up not working anymore.
And so he knows and understands that there needs to be a brand new fresh copy of the
original and God used him to preserve his word.
And so, now in the New Testament day, we have the same thing.
Only in this case, Luke is not really a ready Scribe, he's not a Levite priest, but he
does fall in the category of what we call the priesthood of the believer.
You see in the New Testament now, you and I who are born-again, we are all King's and
Priests before the Lord.
And so God just used a plain man, according to the Bible, he was a Gentile, according
to
the Bible he was, he was a physician, he was a doctor.
And yet God used him to just write all these things down for a memorial in a book.
John the same thing.
He was just a guy that God called, he believed God and what God told him, John wrote
them down, why?
These things have I written to you that ye may know that ye have eternal life.
(1 John 5:13)
Where does our knowledge of eternal life come from?
Does it come from, well, the priest told me that I was going to heaven, after I went to
purgatory for a while, or the preacher said I was saved.
How, how confident are we, because, don't preachers make mistakes?
Don't some preachers tell lies?
Don't some preachers fall into unfaithfulness?
Yes.
So if a preacher tells us this, how true is it?
And yet if we read it, because it's been written down, we know that we can believe it.
Revelation, chapter 1, here's John again, and he sees Jesus face to face, and Jesus
says, verse 11,
Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a
book, And send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, unto Smyrna,
and unto Pergamus, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto
Laodicea.
So Jesus, himself, is saying that everything that you see John, I don't want you to just
try to remember it because we know historically, that John was on the tail end of his
life.
He received the book of Revelation and the visions of Revelation not too long before
he
died.
He was upwards somewhere around 92, 93, some say even 96 years old when Jesus showed up
to him.
So the clock is ticking on John's life, and Jesus said John, the things that I'm going
to show you, just write them down.
Just write them down.
And I will make sure, that these words are kept and preserved so that everybody will
know what's going to happen in the end of time.
Everybody can see heaven like you saw it because you describe what you saw and you wrote
it down inside of a book.
And so we have Old Testament and New Testament people that God used to write these
things down.
The words of God, and so in Hebrews chapter 1, verses 1-2, the Bible says,
God who at sundry times and in divers , or diverse manners, spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets.
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all
things, by whom also he made the worlds.
And so we understand now that God spoke in the Old Testament through the prophets, and
the prophets wrote everything down.
We also now know that in these last days, God speaks to us through his Son in the New
Testament and these men wrote these things down so that you and I would know exactly
how
God speaks, because it's written down in his word.
Now, here's what also the Bible says, 2 Peter, chapter 1, verse 20, Knowing this first,
that no prophecy of the scripture, and let me, let me stop right here, let me give you
an
idea of what the word prophecy means.
Some people say, well, prophecy, that's telling the future.
Well, it kind of does have something to do with that, but if you, if you ever read in
the scripture where God was saying to Ezekiel, son of man, prophesy unto these people...
prophesy and say unto them.
You'll see that like over and over and over in the Scriptures.
The word prophecy means to speak that which God has given you.
That's what prophesying is.
And so knowing this first, that no prophecy which is just the words of the Lord being
made plain, prophecy of the scripture, here again, let's stop right here.
Notice that since Ezra was a ready scribe, meaning he wrote them down, that all the
prophets, all the apostles, the words of Jesus himself given to us in the Gospels, they
are what we call the scripture.
They are the words, not just floating around in air from one person to another.
They are the words written down on paper.
No prophecy of the scriptures of any private interpretation.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
(2 Peter 1:20-21)
And so, here we have these men, we have Moses, we have Solomon, we have David, we have
Isaiah, Jeremiah, we have these men, we even have Enoch, the Bible talks about in
Genesis, chapter 5, we have his words recorded for us all the way down in the book of
Jude.
God made sure that the words that Enoch spoke some 4,000 years before, 3,000 years
before, have been written down and noted in the book.
Jude wrote them down because they were given to him by inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
And so these prophecies came not by the will of men but holy men of God spake, and they
wrote down, as they were moved, inspired, by the Holy Ghost.
And so here we have the doctrine that says that when these men wrote this down, they
wrote down every word that God said.
Now, some people, some scholars believe that like Paul, he was just, he had these
thoughts, God gave him these thoughts, and then Paul said, you know, I think we should
probably write it like this.
Tertullius, what do you think?
Yeah, I think that's pretty good.
And so they think that Paul wrote down the thoughts of God, that's not what the Bible
says.
The Bible says that they wrote the very words down on that papyrus or velum, or whatever
it is.
And so we have those originals being written down.
Now here's, here's one of the problems that we have.
We don't have any of the original papyrus or velum that Moses, Isaiah, David, Jeremiah,
Luke, Paul, Jude, John, the original, like this piece of paper right here that I just
made some marks on, ok?
That doesn't exist anymore.
Doesn't exist.
And so, the doctrinal statement given by most colleges, churches, ministries, pastors,
whatever, they say that we believe the Bible to be the inspired word of God in these
original manuscripts.
There's a problem with that.
These don't, they're not around, they don't exist anywhere.
I don't know why.
Maybe some guys got them locked up in a footlocker somewhere, I don't know.
But I'm just saying that as far as we know, these original papyrus scrolls, things like
that; they don't exist anywhere in the earth, anyplace.
So, if God wanted his words to be preserved, and remember what he told Isaiah, write it
down for a memorial in a book, that it can be for the time to come and then forever and
ever.
So, you have to understand that God would have had a plan, God himself, who is in charge
of giving the words to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Luke, then would have had a plan to make
sure that those words were kept around.
I'm going to show you from the Bible, God's plan for keeping those words around.
We talked about Ezra, Ezra the Bible says was a ready scribe before the Lord.
And Ezra's responsibility was to make sure that the books that he had were preserved.
We're talking about the transmission of text, we're talking about God using the Old
Testament Scribes, you remember Jesus dealt with some of these people, the scribes and
the Pharisees.
The scribes pretty much all they did, they were the copying machine of the Old
Testament.
Back before they had copy machines, and mimeograph machines, and even type-setting, you
had men who did nothing in life but sit and go, aleph, daleth, and they would write down
one letter at a time, one word at a time so that the old manuscript, if it passed away,
we would have a complete copy of what used to be.
Ezra was one of those scribes.
He was an example of that.
And by the way, Ezra was faithful to God.
You know what Ezra did?
When Ezra had this old book in his hand, he believed in his heart that it was the very
words of God and that that book was sacred.
So that by the time he gets around to preaching and teaching the law to the people,
after they had been in exile for 70 years.
They had been eating Babylonian food, and seeing Babylonian TV shows, and Babylonian
religious guys that at the end of 70 years, Ezra comes back and because God used him to
faithfully preserve the words of the Book, Ezra stands up with the scroll.
He opens the scroll and everybody stands up and says this is the word of God.
We give reverence and respect to the word of God.
They respected that book, they feared that book.
And they stood up and they said Amen.
Before even the book was written, they said we know that, that's the word of God.
Before it was read, they said we know that that's the word of God, and we respect it,
we
reverence it, and everything that we now hear from that, we already say Amen to.
Which means, let it be established, let it be so, we agree with what we're about to
hear.
Because we already know that this is the words of God.
So that's how it was done in the Old Testament.
Now in the New Testament, the scribes, the Pharisees, as of above A.D.
70, God kicked them all out of Jerusalem, so they're all scattered all over the place
and
here we find a bunch of people without a job.
And so God is giving his New Testament.
He's telling Luke write this down.
He's telling Paul, write these things down, write these letters down, pass them to the
churches.
So the scribes, the Jewish scribes, they're going, we don't believe in that Jesus and
we
certainly don't believe in that New Testament stuff.
So they didn't write it down.
How did God do this?
He did it through what we call the priesthood of the believer.
It was the believer, the church member who is helping to write these things down.
Let me show you a verse in Colossians, chapter 4, verse 16, this is the Apostle Paul to
the Colossians, and he says,
And when this epistle is read among you, cause it to be read also in the church of the
Laodiceans; and that you likewise read the epistle from Laodicea.
So we know that Paul wrote something to the Laodicean church, we don't know what it was.
No, it's not some lost book of the Bible.
But anyway, when Paul wrote this letter to the Colossian churches, he said you need to
send a copy over to the Laodicean church, they need to hear this too, this is for them.
And so we understand, as Christians, that when Paul wrote to the Romans, he wasn't just
writing to the Romans, he was writing to us.
It was intended that what Paul wrote here was spread to all the churches, 1 Corinthians
likewise, Colossians likewise, Philippians likewise.
When Jesus gave John the letters to the churches and the vision of revelation, he said
you send it to all these churches; every church gets the same copy.
And so when John is writing this down, there is an understanding that he has to copy
these words down accurately, so that all the other churches can have what the other
churches had.
So, here we have an example, Colossians, what you write down, Paul, the words that I'm
giving you, you send it to the Colossians and you tell the Colossians to take this and
make a copy of it and send it to the church at Laodicea, so that they can have the exact
same verses, so they can have the exact same words.
And so we know, according to scripture that these early letters, these gospel accounts,
were sent out to people and those people made copies of them.
No, not typesetting, not mimeograph, there was somebody, a learned person in that church
or in those churches who were writing these things down.
They were doing it faithfully.
This is the priesthood of the believer, the common man, the fisherman, the tent makers,
ok?
These were common people who had enough education to be able to write these letters and
these words down in Greek, they're in Greek, so I have to write this way now.
So they're writing these things down, and these letters are being forwarded to other
churches and these churches, these bishops are reading these letters.
They're un-scrolling them and they're reading them and they scroll them back and then
they unscroll them again and read them and scroll them back.
So here's what happens, ok?
I want to show you this; this is my Bible, ok?
I've had this since I was 16 years old.
This page here, it's ripped and if I'm not real careful, and it's got a little coffee
stain here too.
I have 2 Bibles that I use all the time.
This one's got rips and tears in it, my other one that I use behind the pulpit, it's got
a section of Revelation that is removable!
You can take it out, put it back in, take it out, put it back in!
I always try to keep it in.
But I know that someday, I'll lose that and not have it there.
But don't worry, I can go get another copy of that same Bible.
But you understand that the more you use a Bible, the more worn out it gets.
It gets frazzled, and then it just gets used and worn.
You ever seen a hundred year old Bible, these things are huge, but boy they come apart,
the paper gets brittle and it comes apart very easily.
Every one of these churches that it's being sent to, they believe that this is the very
words of God and so they handle them carefully, and they say that, man, Paul wrote this.
I'd better make sure that what Paul said gets written down perfectly.
And so they were copied into the thousands, all over the place, they were copied and
copied and transmitted and read and un-scrolled and rolled back and unrolled and rolled
back again.
Here, read this and here you read this, let me copy this down and give it to this church
over here so that they can have the same thing that you and I have.
And they believed that they were the words of God.
Now, at the time of John, God finished these words that he said.
And they were a complete record of everything, that you and I are supposed to believe.
They were a complete record.
Let me give you an example of that.
2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16, All scripture, let me just stop right here, all the
scribe's words, all the things written down, the complete form of the entire Bible from
Genesis to Revelation, I'll show you something out of Revelation here in a minute, all of
those words were faithfully and accurately written down on paper.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, let me stop right here.
I heard in Bible College, because they teach you a lot of Greek, ok?
And they say now, the original Greek here, of this, is theosnostos, which means, Theos
is God and nostos is like pnuema or pneumatic tools, or pneumonia, it's air, it's breath,
so they said the original says god-breathed, and I went, Ohhh, the original says
God-breathed.
Wow it doesn't say that there, doesn't say God, well, I found out that, see I just
decided to learn English better, in-spir-ation, the word spira, that little part of that
word inspiration there, you know what it means?
Haaaa, respiration, you know what inspiration is?
It's taking inward, respiring, sending out.
All scripture is given by, the breath, the inspiration of God.
See, says it right there in English.
It is an accurate way of saying exactly what was in the original Greek.
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect,
throughly furnished into all good works.
(2 Tim 3: 16-17)
Here's what Paul, the doctrine now, that Paul is laying down, is that all of these
Scriptures that we have, all of these books that we have, we collect them together, call
it the Bible.
He said it is completely and totally sufficient for everything that you and I need to
believe.
Now, somebody comes along a thousand, 2 thousand years later, and says, but wait a
minute, I have a revelation from God, I think God is kind of like this, and Paul is
saying, now, if this guy says this, and it's not in the scripture.
Then he's wrong and the scripture is right.
It's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, so that if I think of
something, and I think well maybe God's like this, and I'm reading here and I'm going,
oh, no, no, God said he's like this.
I have to believe this and I can't even believe myself for whatever doctrine or idea I
came up from.
So, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be
perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
So every work and every deed that God ever intended or wants out of the believer, God
ordains and dictates that it will come through the pages of the preserved scriptures.
That's what God said.
And we believe it.
Revelation, chapter 22, verse 18, here is, here is by inspiration of God, the very last
book, in case there's any question in your mind now.
John is the last apostle alive.
Paul's dead, Peter's dead, Jude is dead, James is dead, they're all dead, every one of
them, except John.
He's the last apostle alive and Jesus comes to him, gives him 7 letters to send to 7
churches and then he gives him the revelation, showing him the anti-Christ, the last
days, showing him the heavens, showing him the lake of fire, showing him the tree of
life
in heaven, the temple of God, the New Jerusalem.
God is showing John these things and it's absolutely beautiful and he writes all of
them
down and then, then John testifies at the very, very last verses of the whole Bible,
say
this,
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If
any
man shall add unto 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, and out of the holy city, and from
the things that are written in this book.
He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly.
Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
And so John writes down, John himself writes down and he says, number 1, this book is
done, it's complete, it's finished.
You remember the 10 commandments?
They were written in stone, on the front and on the back.
Do you know why?
Because when God wrote them down, he said, number 1, I'm writing on front and back of
these tablets, so that nobody can add to them.
Same principle here.
Is that nobody can add to, you can't have the Book of Mormon added to this, you can't
have the prophecies of Kenneth Copeland where he said God told him that he could have
died on the cross.
You can't add those words to this book, they're not real.
And then he said that anybody who takes away from, see the 10 commandments were written
in stone, why?
Because you can't erase stone.
Can't do it.
Nobody can take away from the words of this book and then Jesus himself, Jesus himself
pipes in and says,
He which testifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly.
In other words, Jesus was saying amen, I approve that.
The very last words were given by John and Jesus at the very end of the book, they're
saying, as of this point here, it's over with, it's done.
It's complete.
It's perfect for everything that you and I need to believe.
And so we have, the faithful transmission of every word of God, that there is.
Now, I'm going to put this up on the screen.
And take a look at it.
This is like one of those early manuscripts, early copies of the Bible.
Now I mentioned this before.
That if you know, like if you know, a grandmother or grandfather and you have their
Bible and they were faithful to the word of God.
They didn't go to Bible college, they didn't learn Hebrew and Greek, they just believed
the words that were written in that old Bible, that they had.
You know it is worn out and, and, it's got news clippings in it.
My grandmother saved news clippings and family mementos she shared, she put inside of
that Bible.
Old letters that she had and a family Bible is usually a very sacred treasure to a
family that loves one another and we wouldn't dare even think of altering what we have.
We want to try to take care of what we have.
But you know as well as I do that the more a Bible is read, the more a Bible is used,
the more a Bible is believed.
There are probably, in my Bibles, tear stains, because I have wept at times over, the
word of God.
Little tear drops from my eye and lands on the pages of the Bible.
Those papers don't deal well with humidity and tears and coffee, doesn't deal well with
that, so it kind of breaks it down over time.
And that's what you have.
You have, you know, from 2000 years ago; you have these things being written down on
papyrus or velum.
Let me tell you what that is.
In fact, where we get the word paper from, this paper right here, we know it's a wood
product, where we get the word paper from is papyrus.
Here's what they did, there was these long reeds, it was basically a form of grass, is
what it was.
A big grass, and you know, even the grass that you have in your yard has like little
layers to it.
Well, they would take this papyrus reed and they would take it and they would splice it.
They had these really good layers, they would take them, and weave them together, ok,
like this and like this.
They were all woven together and they would lay and flatten them out.
They would kind of wet them down a little bit, and then they would flatten them out
and
let the dry in the sun.
When they was all good and dry, then they had paper, papyrus.
That's where the word paper comes from.
They would have papyrus.
Now they have something laid out here, big and long that they can start writing on
because ink goes very well with paper.
And it's amazing that God designed it this way.
So they write all this down.
Then they take it very carefully and the roll it up, ok?
And they have that ready.
The Bible refers to the roll of a book, so even the work book in the Bible refers to,
like a scroll, or a collection of scrolls together.
And so the Apostle Paul used parchments, is what he referred to, but then there was some
that were written on what is called velum, which was like animal skin, like lamb, like
real soft or something like that.
Like leather and it was processed a certain way, but anyway they would take the skins
of animals and then they would write down in ink these things on this velum and the ink
stuck to the leather, the animal skin, just like it did the papyrus.
And you just can't lift the ink very easily off of these things.
Now, over time, what happens is that this papyrus, it ends up looking like this.
Put that back on the screen, it ends up looking like that, you can plainly see there
down at the bottom that there's parts missing.
It's kind of like buying a book and you're reading this really, really good book, it's
like a who-dunit, and at the very end of the book, it's going to tell you who the
murderer was.
You get to the end of the book and you find out, that the publisher didn't put that page
in or somebody ripped it out.
And you're going, I don't know what it says!
So what do you do?
You go get another copy and you find out who did it.
So here's what happened, ok?
They took these things and when they started getting wore out, they said, you know what,
we need to copy this down, we need to memorialize this, so that we can hand this down to
future generations just like God said.
Just like he said.
He said write it down, so it'll be for a memorial for ever and forever.
Now, as I mentioned before, if, let's say that this was the original that Paul wrote
something down on.
We don't have this.
Probably for this reason, it just got destroyed with use.
So what we have is copies.
Now, you have to ask yourself the question, did God ever preserve his word past these
originals?
Did God preserve every word?
Well, I believe that he did according to the scriptures.
Let me show you something here; remember that this was grass, papyrus, or velum, animal
skins.
Let me show you what God intended with these things right here.
Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 6,
The voice said, Cry.
And he said, what shall I cry?
All flesh is grass,
Stop right here.
All flesh, animals, is grass, papyrus.
Those were the two things that these things were written down on.
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: the
grass withereth,the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely
the people is grass.
The grass withereth, and the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever.
(Isa 40:6-8)
Let me just make this very plain for you.
God knew, God knew that when they wrote down on here that eventually this original would
vanish away.
God even knew that what he spoke to Jeremiah, eventually, when Jeremiah was dead, if
Jeremiah did nothing but receive the words of God, and didn't write them down, they would
have died with Jeremiah.
God knew also, that if all God wanted for man was this original parchment here, God
surely knew, because he said this, that grass and flesh, animal skins passes away, it
fades away.
It doesn't last and God knew that.
But he says here, but the word of our God shall stand forever.
So, while God anticipated that these originals were going to crumple into pieces and not
ever be seen again, God had always intended, it was not just some afterthought made up
by
King James only people.
It is the very word of God that said, I will preserve my words and they will stand
forever even if the paper that they're written on doesn't exist anymore.
God said that he would preserve his word.
It's what he said.
And I believe that he has.
Past this.
I believe what he said.
Look at 1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 24, For all flesh, Peter's quoting, Peter is quoting
Isaiah, and he says,
For all flesh is as grass, and the glory of man as the flower of grass.
The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord
endureth for ever.
And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
You know what Peter is saying?
Peter is saying that God not only preserved his word past the ability of this piece of
grass to maintain it, but it's the very same word that produces the gospel that's
preached unto you!
Who's Peter writing to?
Well, he was writing to the people of his day, but we know and believe that he was
writing to us today.
For this generation for ever (Ps 12:7) is what the Bible says.
And so he's saying here, he's quoting the verse and he understands that these little
pieces of paper vanish away.
But the gospel is going to be, what is it according to Matthew, chapter 24, the gospel
of this kingdom is going to be preached to the entire world and then shall the end come.
So, it was God's idea, Jesus himself knew that his word would exist and the gospel would
be preached, based upon that word, not just from the original manuscripts.
Let me give you another verse of scripture here, I just kind of thought of this.
Remember what Paul said to Timothy?
Now, you have to understand, that what Paul and Timothy had of the Old Testament was not
original manuscripts.
They didn't have those originals, you know what they had?
Copies.
They had copies of the originals and you know what Paul said to Timothy?
He said,
And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, (2 Tim3:15)
Timothy knew them since he was a child.
He knew what the Bible said.
And Paul called them Holy Scriptures.
That's because Paul believed that from the Old Testament, God had faithfully preserved
his words, even past the grasses or the vellums, the flesh's ability to hold on to it.
God had faithfully transmitted his word through copies to the day when Timothy, a little
boy, was hearing the gospel preached and he believed it.
He knew the Holy Scriptures.
Now, does corruption show up in the Bible?
Doe the devil hate the Bible?
He hates it.
He absolutely hates the Bible.
So, here we have the devil showing up, as soon as God now first speaks to man, we have
the devil showing up.
So first we have God speaking his law to Adam in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 16,
And the Lord God commanded, there's God commandments, the man saying, Of every tree of
the Garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Now this was God's commandment to Adam concerning sin, concerning the law, this tree.
Adam, here's, here's one law, all you have to do is keep one commandment.
This is all you have to do is just obey one rule.
Isn't that interesting, that all Adam had to do was just keep this one rule.
He didn't have 600 some odd laws, he just had one.
Said, see that tree?
Don't eat it.
You can sit by it, you can weed-eat around it, you can throw the fruit at Eve if you
want to, you just can't eat it!
You cannot eat it.
And what do we see happening?
That was the oral command of God to Adam.
God of course did not write it down then, Moses did later.
God gave the oral command to Adam and it was Adams responsibility to faithfully transmit
his word to Eve.
Somehow, someway, because it wasn't written down, something got lost.
Because we know that when the devil showed up to Eve, he said, now the devil shows up,
Genesis 3,
Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the
garden?
Now the devil immediately is casting doubt on whether or not God said this.
And have you not heard that from pulpits, have you not heard that in Bible College?
We're the critics of the Bible.
It is our job to question whether or not God really said these words or not.
I've heard that before.
Doesn't sound right to me anymore, does it?
Because that's the first thing the devil did, Yea hath God, did God really say this?
How can you know that God said this?
Is it written down anywhere?
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden, now, if it had been written down, Eve
could have said, well, it says right here, ah, the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it, for the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely
die and God said we can't eat of this tree.
And then he says in verse 4, And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely
die.
And I want to stop right here.
He is directly contradicting, giving the exact opposite of the words of God.
He is, God said Thou shalt surely die, Lucifer said, the serpent said, just add one
word, not.
Ye shall not surely die, For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And Eve had already said, God said we can't eat of it, neither can we touch it.
You see here we have the devil taking away from it, but we have because what is in the
wicked nature of man, we add to it.
We like to take what God said and say, now God said this, I want to tell you what I
think you ought to do.
And we always add to things to the word of God.
That's because we have a wicked heart and Eve, already, is going, ah God said we can't
even touch it.
But, God never said that.
He never said that.
And sin and death was introduced into the world because of one thing.
Adding to or taking away from the words of God.
Both Eve and the devil together were complicit in corrupting the original word of God.
And they both faced the wrath of God as a result of it.
In 2 Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 3, here's what the Apostle Paul says of this very
event, he said,
But I fear lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety so your
minds should be corrupted, there's that word corrupted, from the simplicity that is in
Christ.
In other words, go back and follow the method of Satan in the garden of Eden.
Go back and find out what happened, because just the way the serpent beguiled Eve, is
the same way that your minds would be corrupted.
Why? How?
By adding to or taking away from the very words that God said.
And so we know that corruption took place all the way back, as soon as, the commandment
came out of God's mouth to Adam, here comes the devil.
God creates Eve, now here comes the serpent, going after the weaker vessel, and he's
corrupting God's word and Paul's saying right here, right now, there's people out there
still corrupting the word of God.
Notice in Jeremiah, chapter 36, verse 22,
Now the King sat in the winterhouse in the ninth month: this is Johoiakim, and there
was a fire on the hearth burning before him.
And it came to pass that when Jehudi had read three or four leaves, he cut it with a
penknife, and cast it into the fire that was on the hearth, until all the roll was
consumed in the fire that was on the hearth.
You see, man hates, wicked man hates these words, hates them.
And so they brought what Jeremiah had Baruch, the scribe, write down and Jehoiakim, as
soon as they were read, let me have those.
Whish, whish, whish, cuts them all up, throws them into the fire and they're burned and
destroyed.
And He's going (brushing hands) ha, now there's no more word of God.
Really?
Jeremiah, chapter 36, verse 32,
Then took Jeremiah another roll, gave it to Baruch the scribe, the son of Neriah; who
wrote therein from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the book which Johoiakim king
of Judah had burned in the fire: and there were added besides them many like words.
You know what God was doing?
Preserving it!
Even past the originals, because the originals are gone now.
And God preserved his words.
Just because Jehoiakim, just because the devil, just because the scholars don't like
certain parts of the Bible, they take them out.
God's still going to preserve his word.
That's what he said; it's what he promised past the originals.
Acts, chapter 13, verse 9,
Then Saul, (who also is called Paul,) filled with the Holy Ghost, set his eyes on him,
he's referring to a guy by the name of Bar-Jesus who was a false prophet, And said, O
full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all
righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?
So here is Paul, trying to preach the gospel, to a man by the name of Sergius Paulus
who wanted to hear the truth.
Here we have a false prophet who does not want him to hear the truth, doesn't want him
to hear the word of God.
So he wants to pervert the right ways of God.
He's saying, if this guy hears this, I won't have power over him anymore and you need to
understand the wicked nature of man.
They love to have power over other men.
They get off on that.
Some people like money, some people like women, some people like having power over
everybody and in order to do that, they have to pervert the right ways and the words of
God.
2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 17,
For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of
God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.
Paul was saying that in his day, there were already people perverting the words of God.
They were corrupting them, they were taking the words, the letters that were being sent
back and forth from the churches, and the gospels and the Old Testament, they were taking
them and corrupting them.
Taking stuff out, making sure that nobody read what these men wrote down.
So here we have, while New Testament believers were busy copying these words and passing
them around to one another, there were people already corrupting the words of God.
You see it in the book of Genesis, the devil was doing it.
Kings have done it, they hate the word of God and then we have people in the days of
the
early church who hated the words of the Apostle Paul.
They hated the words of John, they hated the gospels.
Fiercely, they hated it because it didn't match their presupposed ideas.
It didn't match their mystery religion.
And so they said, we've got to corrupt the word of God and so already there were, there
were other gospels being written, like the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Mary
Magdalene, things that Mary Magdalene never wrote down.
They were writing them down, and they were saying this is a gospel too.
And so we have what we call the last books of the Bible, they really don't belong there
because Mary didn't write it, Thomas didn't write, Peter didn't write the gospel, but
they want to make you think they did.
So they put Peter's name on it and they start corrupting either by adding to or
corrupting by taking away.
Copies were being made that when the scribe was going, you know this says Jesus came in
the flesh, God came in the flesh, ah, I don't agree with that, I think Paul was wrong.
I'm just going to change that a little bit, so he made a corrupted copy, deliberately.
Deliberately corrupting the words of God because he had an evil heart.
Hated Jesus, hated God so he deliberately corrupted the word of God.
Now, I'm going to show you this, I'm going to show you this up on the screen, ok?
You need to understand, in the Garden of Eden, there was the tree of life, and there was
the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
And they were both in the midst, isn't that interesting, they were both in the midst of
the garden, and God gave Adam free will.
He gave him choice, he said Adam, you can choose which ever, whichever one you want,
the
choice is yours.
Remember when they stood Jesus up in front of the Israelites and they had Jesus and they
had Barabbas, they got Barabbas, dirty, smelly, nasty-looking Barabbas, who was a
murderer, a thief, and everything else and they stood him there and they stood the Holy
One of God here.
Here's Jesus, the Holy One of God, the Word of God himself, and they stood up the
murderer and they said, choose!
And isn't it interesting that practically everybody chose the bad one.
Adam chose the bad one.
And so it really is a choice, God offers you a choice to make.
And so we have the pure vine of Christ which is the word of God, the pure vine.
We're looking at how we got our Bible and then we have the corrupt vine of *** and
I called it that for a reason, I'll show you why in a minute.
1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 23 says,
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God,
which liveth and abideth for ever.
And so here Peter is saying there is an incorruptible seed that comes from an
uncorrupted vine and a corruptible seed that comes from a corrupted vine, the vine of
***.
Eve believed the corrupted version, so did Israel in choosing the murderer over the Holy
One of God.
They chose the corrupt one.
A lot of people choosing the wrong vine.
They are.
Let me show you this in Deuteronomy, chapter 32, verse 31, the Bible says, For their
rock is not as our Rock.
Notice there's 2 rocks.
Even our enemies themselves being judges.
For their vine is of the vine of *** and the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are
grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their wine then is the poison of dragons,
and
the cruel venom of asps.
Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?
You know what God's saying here?
He's saying there's a real vine and then there's a corrupt vine, it's the vine of ***.
Now I want you to think of what fruit then would come out of the vine of ***?
What fruit would be produced as a result of that?
And so it's corrupt, he said their grapes are bitter, they're gall.
Then their wine is the poison of dragons, the venom of asps.
The serpent, the serpent poisoned Eve with his words, he poisoned her by corrupting the
word of God.
A corrupted form of the Bible went into Eve and poisoned her and she died.
And he says is it not laid up in store with me, sealed up among my treasures, you know
what God means by that?
He said in my word, in my word, I'm going to show you the difference, how you can spot
the vine, how you can know which is the vine of *** and the real words of God.
God is saying to you, I'm going to show you how you can know between the truth and the
lie.
Now in our next study we're going to continue this, in our next study, we're going to go
through and we're going to find out how we can know the true vine from the vine of ***.
I want you to think of this.
Think of what Jesus said, he said I am the Vine, you're the branches, he that abideth
in me bringeth forth much fruit.
But we already know that the Vine of *** has poison in it.
And so this really is where we're going.
I have all of my former friends here, because I was Bible college trained, I can read
Greek, oimen oin theos farentes, I can still read it, ahoites, filipsios, I can still
read it.
Don't know what it says, can you read this?
Probably not.
And I'm not saying I'm better than you, because really I know I'm not.
But I was trained that this is the real Bible and that all of these Bibles, and they
even admit now, they even admit that this has errors in it.
They even admit it.
Oh yes, we don't think, we don't think we have it all, we don't think we have
everything, they admit that.
And that all of these Bibles, now, the Living Bible, the Book, the New King James, NIV,
all these other translations, they say, I used to believe that these were not really
the word of God.
Oh, it contains parts of the word of God, but some of them we don't have any more.
I used to believe that.
That poisoned me.
And it produced some really, really bad fruit in my life.
This, however, I take and believe as the truth, it has nothing but good for me.
Nothing but good for me.
And so I'm going to show you in the next segment of this how you can know the difference
between the true vine and the fake one.
Let me illustrate this way, Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah.
We know that from Scripture.
We also know from scripture to be sober, be vigilant for your adversary, the devil, as
a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.
2 lions.
How do we know the truth?
2 Vines, how do we know?
2 ways that we get our Bible.
I'm going to show you that.
How can we know what the truth is?
I will show you that from the Bible.
How we can know .
How we got this Bible versus, how we got these.
If you were told that well, these are just updating the language, that's not true,
that's not all they did.
They decided to go away from the traditional line to an entirely different one and I'll
show you that in the next segment of this.
This is Pastor Mike, I love you, pray about what you hear from me, because both you and
I are going to have to stand before God one of these days and give an account of the
decisions that we're making right now.
And I take that seriously.
So what I say to you, I say in love, and I want you to know what I've found.
This is Pastor Mike, I love you, God bless you, bye bye.