Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / J.B. Hixson: How Did We Get The Bible We Have Today?

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J.B. Hixson: How Did We Get The Bible We Have Today? · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Friends and family in Christ, thank you so much for tuning in and watching, listening,
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whatever platform you're using.
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We appreciate you and all glory to God for what we're doing here.
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I think we're three and a half years in.
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By the way, in a couple of weeks, we'll be recording episode number 500 of World View
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Matters.
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It's just like, to me, that's just astounding.
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But anyway, praise God.
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We've got JB Hicks in our guest today, Pastor JB, not by works.org and such a blessing
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to have him come and speak to you guys.
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Brother, good to see you.
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Thanks for your time.
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Hey, great to be here, David.
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You know, I just, I'm so proud of what you're doing.
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So excited about World View Matters, you know, your voice is like a warm, winter blanket.
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It's just people love to just hear you.
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The minute you started talking, I'm like, yeah, that's David.
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And it's going to be a great show.
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And it's just so encouraging and edifying.
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So thanks for what you do, my friend.
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There's a little behind the scenes.
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I was talking about wanting a snow here, so that's funny.
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And I love your background.
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But friends, before we jump in to the topic today with JB, about how we got our Bible,
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where did that come from and a little history there?
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Let's talk about the conference.
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Worldview Matters, conference.com.
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I want to mention some of the speakers.
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And Brianna Klassen, Harbinger's Daily, Alex Newman, Olivia Melnick, Tim Chaffee,
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Jay Seeger, Jake Jacobs, Gary Koss, Scott Shera, Mark and Amber Archer with fearless features.
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Laura Perry Smoltz, former transgender Elijah Abraham is pictures not there because
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he gets death threats and we have to protect him.
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I just praise God for all these men and women of God to come to the conference.
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We are still looking for sponsors.
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So if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you will, if you were to jump on board
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and sponsor, you'd get your little logo there.
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Every logo you can click on, it goes to the sponsors website.
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So that's just the beginning, but we would love to have more support.
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If you're interested, get a hold of us.
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There's a link up on top of the site there that says sponsors, just click on that and
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you'll get all the info and the different levels and just pray for the conference.
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That's the biggest thing you can do friends and coming up May 1st and 2nd in Green Bay.
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Delta Hotel, JB, we're holding it at a hotel because unfortunately there's this competitive
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nature with pastors and churches.
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And I thought to have it at a neutral venue might be the best bet on for it.
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It's sad we have to think that way, but we're holding it at a hotel.
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You speak at a lot of conferences.
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Are they at hotels, churches, combination?
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Well, we have for years, 20 years or more and then we've hosted quite a few too.
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And it's always in, which way do you go, hotels are much more convenient.
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People from out of town can come and stay right there, but they're more expensive, right?
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And then you've got the downside you talk about with churches.
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People tend to identify the conference with that denomination or something.
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So it's in the Lord's hand, but wow, what a lineup for that conference.
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Man, I wish I could be there.
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We just have Alex Newman at the Blessed Hope conference down in Orlando.
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Of course, all those guys I know and love and man, I may God use it to really build up
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the faith of the body there.
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Yeah, it's going to be amazing.
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A different areas of expertise and just I believe at this time where one of the themes
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is redeem the time.
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The body of Christ really needs to understand the times and redeem the time.
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I think it's going to be a benefit to our family in Christ that attends.
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So you've got a conference coming up at the end of March 27th and 28th.
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It's the Midwest Prophecy Conference here.
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You are one of the heavy hitters, Tommy Ice, Tom Hughes, Lee Brainard and Jack Hives.
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Tell us about that.
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Yeah, well, I'm trying to lose some weight, David.
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So I don't know how heavy I'll be by then, but we'll see.
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Yeah, that's a wonderful conference.
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Many of your audience probably is familiar with it.
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A lot of people might have even gone in past years, but Joe Bell is the pastor.
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There at Calvary Chapel, Lafayette, Indiana and great church, great ministry and just
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honored to get to be invited this year.
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As you mentioned, all of my, all of the speakers are friends of mine that we've had on our
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show with the possible exception of Jack.
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Obviously, I love Jack Hives, respect him.
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I don't think he's been on our show though, but Lee and Tom and Dr. Tommy Ice, great line
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up and folks can get the details there at notbyworks.org March 27th and 28th.
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And it's free, by the way, free, live stream and free in person.
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So a great opportunity to hear some great teaching.
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That's awesome.
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And you can get the link.
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It's on your homepage of the website.
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Yep, it sure is.
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Okay, notbyworks.org.
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So I mentioned your book before we got on.
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I love this one.
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The last day's apostasy.
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The great last days apostasy, JB, I know we've talked about this on a previous podcast,
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but why did you put the great last days apostasy?
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Because we know apostasy is prophetic.
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We know it's going to happen.
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It's happening now.
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Just look at the church in America and just it's sad, really, but it just explained that
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briefly.
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Just give us a little description.
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Yeah.
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So there were kind of two, two things in my mind behind that title.
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First of all, the whole premise, of course, is that apostasy is getting worse and worse
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the closer we get to the rapture.
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So great is kind of a superlative in the sense of, you know, significance, you know, greatness
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of the apostasy if you want to put it that way.
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And so it truly is.
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We are living in the great last days apostasy.
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But also years ago, back in, I think it was 2012, if I remember right, I had a book called
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The Great Last Days Deception.
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And so it was kind of borrowing from that book, which was real popular back then.
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That book, The Great Last Days Deception, ultimately was expanded significantly into the
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three volume spirit of the Antichrist set that we've talked about a lot on your show
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for the last few years.
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But so, you know, just kind of keeping with that theme.
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And just for me, it just sort of rolled off my tongue.
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The great last days apostasy, how the American church is falling away.
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So, yeah.
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Yeah.
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You have to call out the American church.
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Come on.
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I'm kidding.
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Well, that's sweet.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, for sure.
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Yeah.
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That was my focus just because I'm not well versed, obviously, in the church global.
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I've done limited travel, but, you know, this is where I live.
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And so, yeah, I've got to call it like I see it.
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Yeah.
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Well, yeah.
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We are not unlike some of these other, like the UK or Europe, what's happened there.
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It's just sad.
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But we see similar science happening in America with churches closing down or the false teachings
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or different things.
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But let's move on to the topic, J.B.
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I want to read something here.
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I found online.
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I thought this was kind of a good summation, and then we'll talk about the Bible and this
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word canon and other things, whatever you want to do, because you did an extensive series
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at your church on this topic, how we got the Bible that we have.
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So, the Bible was written on three continents, Asia, Africa, Europe, and three languages,
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Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek, by over 40 different men, shepherds, kings, prophets, fishermen,
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a doctor, across roughly 1500 years, yet it tells one continuous story and cohesive
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story, creation, the fall, redemption, Christ.
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Different writers, different centuries, different cultures, one voice, because behind
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the human hands was a divine author, men held the pens, but God wrote the story.
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I thought that was really neat to sum that up, and that way.
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Go ahead.
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Go ahead and share your thoughts.
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I pointed that out a lot.
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You left out one occupation among the human authors of the Bible.
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Don't forget Amos the Fruit Pinscher.
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So what?
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The Fruit Pinscher.
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Amos the Fruit Pinscher.
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Yeah, that's what the Bible says.
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So yeah, he was a Fruit Pinscher.
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I don't know what that is, but that was his occupation.
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Anyway, so yeah, you know, when we speak about the Bible in academic circles, you'll
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often see it written in journals and documents.
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The author of the Bible, capital A slash little A, U-T-H-O-R, to signify the fact that
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it's got human authors, but that they were carried along by the divine author, God,
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the Holy Spirit, and so it really is a book like no other.
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As you said, the cohesiveness of it, I mean, you can't, no human being could have orchestrated
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this if they wanted to.
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I mean, across continents, across 1500 years, cultures, languages, and yet, for example,
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just one example that pops into my mind.
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You go to Revelation 12, and it speaks about that dragon of old who is Satan, right, and
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the devil.
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Well, you go back to Genesis 1500 years earlier when Moses was writing the first five books
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of the Bible during the wilderness wanderings from roughly 1446 to 1406, and God inspires
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him to speak about that dragon in the book of Genesis, the serpent who comes in obviously
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after his failed coup attempt tries to, or does attempt to eve.
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So, how do you explain that other than by God's divine hand?
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Again, people might think, oh, well, maybe John who wrote Revelation read that, or, you
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know, this is a different day even in the first century.
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They didn't have digital technology printing presses.
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They didn't have access to the scrolls from Genesis that they could just go to the library
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and pull them out.
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So, I mean, yeah, obviously John had read the law on the prophet, so I get that, but
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I'm just saying there's so many examples of cohesiveness between the scriptures from
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cover to cover that it can only be explained by divine authorship.
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So, I want to add to that, too, by one of my favorite scriptures, when we have this topic,
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this is really amazing to me.
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We have to slow down and read 2 Peter 1, and you know where I'm going with this, JB,
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I love this because we forget, you know, there's fulfilled prophecy, Bible prophecy,
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right?
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Jesus fulfilled hundreds.
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We've got archaeology, we've got so many things, but there's eyewitnesses.
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Check this out.
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For we did not, I'm reading in verse 16.
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We did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power in coming
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our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
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And then it goes on verse 19, so we have the prophetic word made more sure to which you
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do well to pay attention as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the
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morning star rises in your hearts, verse 20, but know this, first of all, that no prophecy
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of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of
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human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
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I love, especially the way that ends JB, go ahead and share.
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Yeah, I mean, that moved by the Holy Spirit, that word moved is a verb that is used in the
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book of Acts to speak of the wind, catching the sale of a ship and moving that ship along
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the surface of the sea.
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And that's exactly what the Holy Spirit did.
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You know, it wasn't wrote dictation.
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These men of God wrote, according to their own styles and personalities, and Paul, for
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example, was quite well known for his, what we say in academia, neo-logistic tendencies,
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meaning making up words, Paul literally makes up words, and the inspiration of the Holy
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Spirit, just to make his point, he puts words together.
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And all of that's fine.
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None of that impunes the doctrine of inerrancy.
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The Bible tells the truth.
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It is 100% accurate, scientifically, literally in every sense, but it is unique in the sense
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that the Holy Spirit, as you read, carried these men along so that what they wrote was the
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self-revelation of God.
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David, basically the Bible, this God's way of saying, here I am, look at me.
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God had revealed himself in general revelation through a number of ways, conscience, nature,
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those types of providence, world events.
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But at a particular moment in time, as you said, beginning some, you know, well, 1500
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years before Christ, 1400 years before Christ, God broke the silence and began to reveal
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himself in the written word, and that word is what we now call the Bible, and it's quick
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and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword.
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Amen.
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It's powerful.
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Yeah.
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Amen.
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There's a chapel there in Sidelia, Colorado.
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You did an extensive series on this topic, didn't you?
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How many series?
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Yeah.
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It ended up being 20 weeks.
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I've taught this for years in a variety of frameworks and settings, but it's a very
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important subject to me going back to my teaching days, you know, the first class you take
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at any Bible college or seminary is called Bible study methods, you know, or hermeneutics,
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right?
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And it's foundational to every other area of theology.
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If you don't understand what you hold in your hand when you pick up a Bible, your theology
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is going to go off in a thousand different directions.
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So we have to learn how to study the Bible in its literal grammatical, historical sense,
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and that begins by understanding how we got the Bible.
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So yeah, folks can check that out on our website.
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We have different series, it's organized by series.
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So just look for the Bible study series on our videos page, and you can see all 20 of
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those videos.
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We also have a much more in-depth 15 week self-guided study of how to study the Bible, proper
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Bible study methods.
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It's literally David the same course I taught at the college and graduate levels.
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We've just tweaked it a little bit to make it more self-guided, but all the audio lexers
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are there, all the textbooks, all the everything you need to study this in depth.
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And it's essentially like you would get at any seminary.
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So we believe in correctly handling the word of God is foundational.
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So you preached on the same course that you taught years ago.
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So are you saying the Bible hasn't changed in all these years?
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The Bible has not changed, that's right.
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I, the Lord, do not change God's does, and this is his self-revelation to mankind.
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And so yeah, we used kind of a general roadmap to go from truth in God's mind, the creator
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of the universe, all the way through to truth in our minds, which remember the goal of
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Bible study is to change our lives.
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The goal of Bible study is not to get smarter or win Bible trivia games or get a degree.
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The goal of Bible study is to change our lives.
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And so it's a process.
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How did we go from truth in the eternal creator's mind all the way to truth in our mind that
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we apply to our lives and change our lives?
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And that involves key doctrines like revelation, inspiration, preservation, illumination,
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all kinds of things that emanate from the Bible themselves.
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And we, we defined those terms and, and talked about them.
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Speaking of preservation, how important was the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls to
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this topic we're discussing?
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Huge, huge.
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And we actually talked about that at length or the latter part of this 20 week series.
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But yeah, you know, 1947, and they're still discovering things to this day, but you
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know, they discovered these scrolls that took us back a thousand years, literally, in
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terms of what we have extant or, you know, on hand available in existence of the Old Testament.
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So up until that time, the oldest, you know, Old Testament documents that we had preserved
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that we had uncovered through archaeology were from about the year 800, the 800s AD.
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When we uncovered those scrolls, it took us back to 200 BC.
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Wow.
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And the amazing thing about it, Dave, is when they compared, and there are a lot of guests
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that you've probably had on their far more knowledgeable about the study of the, the
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Kumaran caves and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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But the, the big picture is when we compared what was a thousand years older to what we
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already had, they were almost identical, very few scribal errors or tweekings.
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And so that just shows you the divine preservation of God's Word.
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Why is that so significant, JB?
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Because a lot of critics will say things have changed, the Bible has changed, it's not
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the same as it was originally written.
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But that was a huge thing.
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The whole, I mean, we've had the whole manuscript of Isaiah for one.
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And why is that so important that it was the same?
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Yeah.
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Well, of course, words mean things.
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And it's an easy argument for naive skeptics to make to say, oh, well, it was written
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by humans.
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And so they're going to change it and tweak it and this and that.
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But when you can show the consistency of it and show that from the moment the quill
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hit the sheepskin under the off, you know, inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it hasn't
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changed.
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Now we have translations.
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Yeah.
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That's a whole new subject, right?
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Yeah.
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And that's part of the journey that we went on in this series because it started from
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the original documents, then you have to translate them, then you have to study them
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and co-late them and put them into what we now have in various English translations.
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And they're different.
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Each one has a little different approach, a new American standard, New King James, N-I-V
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and the like.
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But yeah, it's critical to understand and it really speaks to the divine authorship like
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nothing else that these words have not changed.
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Jesus said, not one jot or tittle will by any means disappear till all is fulfilled.
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And Peter in the same passage that you quoted talks about how the grass withers, the flower
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phase, but the word of Lord stands forever.
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So JB, I want to talk a little bit about the word canon and who decided what books were
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in, what books were out.
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But before we do that, are there a couple Bible translations that you would warn against
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such as, it's not really a translation, it's a paraphrase, the message, avoid that one.
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But JB, are there any of those?
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Because there's a lot of translations out there.
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Can you give us a little insight on that?
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Yeah.
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So you said it well.
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Anything that's paraphrastic or thought-for-thought idea for idea is not what you need to use for
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serious study.
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I mean, to me, a paraphrase is no different than a commentary.
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It can be helpful at times if you want to just get a sense for maybe what someone thinks
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this verse means.
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But when I'm studying the Bible, I want to know what God said and use basic Bible study
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methods to come to the correct meaning of it.
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I don't want a short circuit that process by going to some paraphrase, right?
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So there are a lot of paraphrases out there.
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You mentioned one of them, the message of living Bible, lots of others.
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And all English translations fall somewhere on the continuum of what's called formal equivalent,
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often called word-for-word, more dynamic equivalent, often called thought-for-thought.
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Every English Bible, to some extent, has to paraphrase by that, I mean, there's not always
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one for one equivalence from one word in Greek or Hebrew into an English word.
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For example, in Hebrew, the concept of anger is signified by a Hebrew idiom of the
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nostrils flaring.
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So the text might say the king's nostrils flared.
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Well, it means the king got angry.
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The paraphrastic translation is going to say the king got angry, which is true, but that's
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not what the text says, right?
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I want to know what the text says.
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In that case, it's sort of a no-harv, no foul, but there are lots of other examples where
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scholars will paraphrase it and they're wrong.
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And so I want to know what the text says, and I'll figure out what these idioms mean
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from other resources like manners and customs books and so forth.
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So for me personally, I'm a majority text advocate, which simply just means there's two schools
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of thought in studying the ancient manuscripts for the Greek text, and I hold to the majority
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text view.
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So for me, that's New King James, but in terms of translation techniques, I'm very fond
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of the New American Standard.
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Obviously, the King James, it obviously, it's got some old English verbiage that you
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have to be able to wrestle with, but as far as it's word for word, I like the translation
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technique.
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I'm not a big fan of the ESV.
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I don't want to offend any of our listeners, but it's more Calvinistic.
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Obviously, the entire translation committee, I know some of them personally, are reformed
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scholars.
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And so a lot of the decisions that they made in various passages lean heavily toward a
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Calvinistic benton.
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And you know how to deal about that.
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In fact, a lot of people jokingly call the ESV the elect standard version because it's
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so thorough.
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Calvinistic.
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That's good.
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But, you know, obviously, every English Bible is just that.
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It's a translation.
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The Bible was not written originally in English.
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But for me personally, I like the New King James, New American Standard versions like that.
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My first Bible was Charles Ryrie study Bible, 1981, New American Standard, and I've loved
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that version since New King James.
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Those are my top two.
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And I like it.
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And don't use the message or weird translations like that, in my opinion, paraphrases.
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The amplified to me is very interesting.
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If you want some like an extensive, you know, given different ways, you can, you know,
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explain something.
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But JB, we're running out of time and I wanted to ask you, oh, by the way, the Geneva Bible,
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how did that was the first one that came to American shores if I'm not mistaken?
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Yeah, we get into, we get into some of the history of the Bible transmission and some
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of the early Bibles, Wickliffe and the Geneva Bible and so forth.
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So I would just encourage folks to check that out if you want more study.
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But yeah, I mean, it all kind of came about in the 14, 1500s as, you know, that we got
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into the Renaissance era and then the, you know, the industrial era with the printing
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press and then of course, it's just Katie Bar the door from there when you get into the
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late 19th, early 20th centuries, it's just an onslaught of different translations.
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And I might add to when choosing a translation, you know, you got to be aware that like so
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many things in the publishing industry, you've published many books, Dave, you understand
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it.
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Money is a big part of it, you know, these days, publishers just continue to come out
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with new translations, you know, the nurses Bible, the, the fireman's Bible, the police
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means Bible, the teenagers Bible, the children's Bible, the this and that and, and it's all
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just about making money, you know, unfortunately, the Bible, you know, and that's so sad.
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That's a reflection of our times and commercialism and maybe the U.S. a little bit, but money.
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So I think I wanted to touch a little bit on how they debated the divinity of Christ,
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but that's, I think for a whole other podcast, the council of Nessia, talk about constant
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team, but I think I'd like you to explain the word canon and that part of how we got our
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Bible before we run out of time.
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Yeah.
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I'm so glad you brought that up because it gives me a rare opportunity to correct your
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phraseology there a moment ago.
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You talked about canonicity being how we decided what, what, what was in the Bible.
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Well, I make a big deal about the church, human beings did not decide what was in the
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canon.
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Thank you.
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God.
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Right.
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So the church determined what was inspired simply by discovering it, right?
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So it's like if you're panning for gold, you don't get to hold up a piece of pyrite
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and declare this is gold because it either is, or it isn't, and the same thing is true
24:00
with the word of God.
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So yes, it took the early church some 300 years, 400 years, well, really 300 since the book
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of Revelation had been written to uncover and discover all of these divinely inspired
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books.
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But it wasn't the church or the creeds or the councils that sort of decreed thus, say,
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if the council, this is the Bible.
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Next point.
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Next point.
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Word is God's Word.
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So the church discovered the canon and it did not determine the canon.
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That's the way I like to say it.
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But they were there all along, right?
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And it started with Paul's letters, for example, or the gospel writers and they would circulate
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them, but over time they would, the original documents would disintegrate and eventually
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they would just have copies because the scribes would copy all of these.
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And so we can rest assured David that the Bible we hold in our hands accurately represents
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the words that God gave the human authors of the Bible at the beginning.
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Could you speak to in the last couple of minutes the fact that you know there are enemies
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of God throughout the centuries that have burned, you know, parchedments and scrolls and try
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to eliminate and get rid of the Word of God, get rid of the Bible.
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But yet we have more copies and accurate manuscripts than any other literary work in world
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history.
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Speak to that for a moment.
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But just the Greek manuscripts along were somewhere in the neighborhood of 6,000 manuscripts
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or manuscript fragments.
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And you compare that to things like Tacitus or Euripides and we have literally like three
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or four.
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I'm going off memory, but it's definitely less than ten.
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And we build history on that.
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I mean, entire academic history departments extrapolate from these four or five manuscripts
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of these Greek historians, ancient history.
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And yet they thumb their nose at the Bible, which has thousands of attested manuscripts.
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And you know, it's stood the test of time.
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I love, I know we've only got a minute and a half left here, but I love the old poem.
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I can probably say it from memory, but it goes, I stood beside the blacksmith's door and
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heard the anvil ring, the vestber chime, and looking in upon the floor, I saw old hammers
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worn with beating years of time.
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Well, how many anvils have you had said I'd aware and batter all those hammers?
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So just one said he, it is the anvil that wears the hammers out, you know, and so I thought
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of the anvil of God's word, though for centuries critics blows have reigned upon the anvil still
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remains to the critics that are gone.
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Oh my goodness.
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That's awesome.
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Yeah.
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That's awesome.
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Yeah, the critics are gone.
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I just think of the psalm that says God, the Lord and heaven laughs.
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He knows their days are coming and they're fighting against God psalm too.
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JB, thank you.
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We didn't do it as much justice as your series that you preached on, but I think it's a very
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important topic to remind people, especially maybe newer believers and younger Christians
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to understand man didn't put this together and it's not even though God used man through
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the power of the Holy Spirit who drove, spoke through God to get the Bible down on paper,
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it's God's word.
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And we have to remember that.
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So thank you, great topic, brother, so good to have you on, not by works.org, I have
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a great time at your conference and Lord willing, we'll do this again in the very near future.
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Thanks JB.
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Thanks so much, Dave.
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God bless you.
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God bless.
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Thanks friends.
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Another great topic.
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I just love talking about history and the word of God and so much we can cover on this
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show, but thank you for your support and prayers, especially.
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And please pray for the conference and in the planning stages and the support.
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God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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See you next time.