Latest / The Immutable Word / EP055 Why Baptist? The Bible - Part 2

Transcript

EP055 Why Baptist? The Bible - Part 2 · The Immutable Word

• 0:00
  So, the first three are the Bible plus tradition, the Bible plus scholarship,
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  and the Bible plus experience.
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  The last one is what Baptistic people believe, and that is the Bible plus nothing.
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  That means there's nothing that can supersede or correct the Bible.
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  The Bible will always override and supersede tradition, scholarship,
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  and experience. Always.
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  That means if I'm reading my Bible and it says something about the nature of
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  God's word, the inspiration of his word,
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  the purity of his word, but then I'm talking to a scholar and the scholar tells
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  me, oh, this is an error here and this was an addition or interpolation by a
• 0:41
  scribe or here's a scribal mistake that was made,
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  I will always defer to the Bible as being the pure, perfect word of God.
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  Welcome back to The Immutable Word. We're continuing our series of Why Baptist.
• 0:54
  If you haven't caught the previous episode, we ran through an introduction.
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  And just as a brief recap before going into the next lesson or the next episode,
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  we had started examining Satan's strategy to seek worship and create a one-world
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  religion through ecumenicism. See, I can say it.
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  Establishing the doctrine is the only valid test of truth for any church or movement.
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  So, we also emphasize that God's word is the final authority.
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  And then secondly, distinguish between the New Testament church as the invisible
• 1:29
  organism or the body of Christ and the visible organization,
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  the local assembly of believers.
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  We traced the two lines of church history, the true path being of,
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  what is it, Antioch versus… Alexandria. Alexandria.
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  Yeah, that's right, Egypt. And then noted historical evidence for Baptist antiquity
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  predating the Protestant Reformation.
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  Finally, we looked at the five stages of departure into apostasy and summarized
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  our current responsibility around the three pillars of the local church, right?
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  Well, yeah, and I want to just clarify, you know, when we…,
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  And the reason why we did that, it was just the high-level quick takeaway,
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  is that we did it because we're just saying, why is it even important to discuss
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  why we're Baptists? That's the whole point of it.
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  So, that's what all those points, like you just mentioned, about the ecumenicism
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  under Satan, the difference in doctrine, the biblical pattern of New Testament,
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  obviously the authority of the Word of God.
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  But all those things encompass or are under the umbrella of why does this even matter?
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  Well, I mean, why can't you just go to the church of your choice?
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  That's the whole point of it.
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  Like, why are we even studying these Baptist distinctives? So,
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  that's what we wanted to establish in the introduction, the last episode of it.
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  So, just kind of as a quick takeaway for everybody.
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  Yep, for sure. And by the way, happy Ishtar. It's a sweet, right?
• 2:57
  Something like that. We're getting close. Have you ever thought about the bunny rabbit laying eggs?
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  Where does that even come from? Anyways, we won't go down that path.
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  All right, so what are we talking here in episode two? We're talking about...
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  I didn't think about that.
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  I just did a couple posts on the resurrection, the timeline.
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  I always do that every year during this time just because it's a good refresher.
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  Apologetically, the arguments, the objections, the resurrection.
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  What most people don't realize is the resurrection is the most...
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  That's the pinnacle doctrine of Christianity at the end of the day.
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  We talk a lot about the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the pre-tribulation rapture,
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  the dispensational study of scripture. But at the end of the day,
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  if there was no resurrection, none of that would matter.
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  So Jesus Christ said there was only one single sign that would be spoken against,
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  and that's the sign of the resurrection, because he was talking about Jonas being in the whale, in.
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  So, that's the definitive doctrine. And I've known Christians who have been
• 4:02
  Christians for 20 years walk away from Christianity because they think the Bible
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  is full of contradictions on the chronology of the timeline of the resurrection.
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  Just that? Just the resurrection? Just that. That's the resurrection.
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  That's why there's so much argumentation over it.
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  There's so much debate over it. I mean, it's probably worth going over at some
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  point because the resurrection is critical.
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  They think that there's, you know, there's contradictions in the timeline.
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  How many women showed up? Because in one passage of scripture,
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  you have three women that show up, and one, you have four, and one,
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  you have two, and another one, you have one. So, how many people showed up?
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  So, when Christians are challenged with these questions, they don't know how to respond to them.
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  Did the women buy spices twice? Why isn't it Good Friday? Because it was before the Sabbath, right?
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  Well, if it's before the Sabbath, Jesus Christ had to be crucified before the
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  Sabbath, he had to be put in the burial. That's what Joseph of Arimathea.
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  So, Saturday is the Sabbath. That's why Protestants, Lutherans,
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  Presbyterians, Catholics, all of them celebrate Good Friday.
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  Anyway there's a lot of stuff in that that's what I'm saying it's like you know
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  you talked about the Easter Bunny thing I think and there's definitely a line of.
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  Discussion you know we could talk about Alexander Hislop covered it thoroughly
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  in his 1200 page volume wait wait
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  wait how did she go into all that just because of the Easter Bunny yeah,
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  yeah because the reason I say that is because yeah I mean I get it and there's
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  Christians that we know of that you know.
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  They celebrate with Easter bunnies and eggs and all that, and it doesn't really
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  have anything to do with the resurrection of Christ.
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  There's more pagan connections there. But my point was, the positive end of
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  it is people should study the resurrection, the timeline, the events leading up to the resurrection.
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  Because, again, there is, I'd say, apparent contradictions.
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  There's no contradiction, but there's apparent contradictions,
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  and it's very difficult for Christians to reconcile the timeline.
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  You have a pretty comprehensive study on that, right?
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  I mean, that could be, that's a future podcast, but I think that'd be a good
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  one. That's what I mean. Yeah.
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  I've got a study where I cover the importance of the resurrection,
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  comparative religious study on, you know, every other religion out there versus Christianity.
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  It all hinges on the resurrection.
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  The fact that, you know, if you found the bones of Muhammad,
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  you could still be a good Muslim.
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  You know, you found the bones of Buddha, you could still be a good Buddhist.
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  But if you found the bones of Jesus Christ, you couldn't be a Christian. Yeah.
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  That's, I mean, again, it's the pinnacle doctrine.
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  It's the foundational pillar of our entire religion, what we believe,
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  I guess, if you want to call it religion.
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  But here's the other thing. You know, recently I've been in talks with,
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  you know, some people that are emphasizing, you know, preaching the gospel about,
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  you know, and including the blood of Christ in the gospel. Otherwise, it's not a true gospel.
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  If you think about, if you go through scripture, where was Paul challenged the
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  most? Was it on the blood of Christ or the resurrection?
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  Resurrection. Yeah. He constantly preached about the resurrection.
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  He constantly defended the resurrection because it was the one doctrine that
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  literally would turn, you know, our entire faith on its head.
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  He makes an entire reductio ad absurdum argument in 1 Corinthians 15 that if
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  there was no resurrection, that we're, you know, we're men most miserable because
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  there is no resurrection. There's no faith and we're yet in our sins.
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  You know, you never see Paul defending the faith with the blood of Christ.
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  You never do. You don't see it in the book of Acts. You don't see it,
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  you know, even though he mentions the blood a lot, Romans 3,
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  Colossians 1, you know, in other places, Ephesians, he mentions the blood over and over again.
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  And those passages are certainly attacked.
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  And the blood is important. But I just think it's interesting that these same
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  guys that emphasize the blood, the blood, the blood, you never hear them defending
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  the resurrection, the resurrection, the resurrection.
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  And the resurrection is what's going to cause a Christian to leave their faith.
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  So, anyway, maybe we'll do a study on that since we have Easter coming up.
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  Yeah, why not? And people really spend a lot of time on that.
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  When I think about Easter or resurrection, it's just another event in the Bible maybe.
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  It goes a lot deeper than that. But yeah, we should cover it.
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  It should be a really interesting study.
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  All right, so what are we covering today? Sola Scriptura? It's the first act.
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  Remember, we have the acrostic that we said lays out the Baptist distinctives.
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  B is the Bible alone as sole authority. So that's what we're covering.
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  There's the Latin phrase that was popular during the Reformation is called Sola
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  Scriptura or Scripture alone.
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  You had the five sola, sola fide, sola gratiae, sola, and so forth and so on.
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  Those are the five solas of the Reformation, and one of them was a re-emphasis
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  on scriptural authority.
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  So, that's why we just adopt the term, we call it sola scriptura,
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  it just means scripture alone, but it's the first letter in the acrostic of
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  Baptist, which is Bible, as the sole authority, or our final authority.
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  So, this right here is
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  what are the entire baptist distinctive you know
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  the distinctives plural rest upon
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  you know that so the other ones the autonomy of
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  the church the local church the priesthood of the believers the two ordinances
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  individual soul liberty save regenerated you know members membership to offices
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  and separation of church and state none of that matters if you don't get the
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  first distinctive right,
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  So, essentially, when we say the Bible is our sole authority,
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  what we're saying is it's the final authority, is the supreme standard for defining
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  our doctrine and establishing our theology.
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  When we talk a lot about division in the church and people causing problems,
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  at the end of the day, unity is dependent upon theology, doctrine.
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  If we're not unified by doctrine, you're not a church.
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  Another thing, too, I want to bring up, there's a book I would highly,
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  highly recommend our listeners get.
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  But it's called The Pillar and the Ground of the Truth by Kyle Stevenson. Brother Kyle Stevens.
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  Stevens, sorry. And it's probably the most comprehensive.
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  I say comprehensive. I would just say this. It's the most definitive doctrinal
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  treatise on the church, the doctrine of the church of any other book I've ever read. It is phenomenal.
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  He does such a great job of defining what the church is.
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  You know, some of the things like, for example, he talks about the last days,
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  their importance, the corruptive influences of other religions,
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  the waxing spirit of the Antichrist, the waning effectiveness of the church.
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  He talks about the Laodicean age.
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  He talks about the fact that we're not a Roman Catholic church.
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  We're not a Protestant church. We're not a charismatic.
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  We're not a mega or emerging church. He talks about scripturally,
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  the Bible, you know, that scripture says that we're local.
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  But here's what's interesting. He says, scripturally, is it Baptist?
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  Scripturally, is it Baptist?
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  And the answer to that is it's not.
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  But his next chapter is, scripturally, is it Baptistic?
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  So, I wanted to read what he says here because I thought it was very insightful.
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  So, he says this, scripturally, is it Baptist? There is no verse that qualifies
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  that only Baptist churches can be the pillar and ground of the truth.
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  He says, just like Catholicism is not mentioned in the Bible,
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  in spite of what Catholics wrongly think about Matthew 16, 18,
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  neither is Lutheranism, Methodism, Presbyterianism, or any other denomination, including Baptists.
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  John the Baptist was only a Baptist in the sense that he baptized under repentance
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  for the remission of the sins of the people.
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  John was a Jewish prophet, the forerunner of the Jews' Messiah,
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  and by Acts 19, 1-6, his baptism was antiquated and put on the shelf.
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  For Paul, re-baptized John's converts. So, despite the Baptist briders having
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  hijacked and misconstrued John's ministry, John the Baptist was not a Baptist
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  in the denominational sense.
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  So he says, denominationally, Baptists have a great deal of scriptural history during the Church Age.
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  And properly speaking, they are not Protestants in the sense that their history
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  was separate, always separate from Roman Catholicism.
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  And they never came out of Catholicism in protest.
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  But once known as Anabaptists, they were hated by Catholics and Protestants
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  because they won Catholics and Protestants to Christ and then baptized them again.
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  And they all, you know, obviously, those other, the Protestants and the Catholics,
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  you know, advocated infant baptism, which the Baptists.
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  So, here's what he says. He goes, so all of this to clarify that the Holy Scriptures
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  do not endorse a particular denomination. So, I want to make that clear.
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  And the reason I say that is because if you ever run into a Church of Christ
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  person, Church of Christ, some of those guys are very, very well studied.
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  And I'm going to tell you what, if you are a Baptist and you run across a Church
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  of Christ that is well-educated, get ready and buckle your seatbelt because
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  they will put you to the test.
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  You better know your scriptures and you better know what we believe about baptism
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  when it comes to talking to— I mean,
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  that's probably the one group where I talked to a guy who wasn't yelling at
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  me, who wasn't cussing me out, who wasn't calling me names, who wasn't putting labels on me.
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  He literally, he says, well, let's sit down and let's open the scriptures.
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  And he went through scripture after scripture and scripture and tore me to pieces.
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  And so you got to be very careful about Church of Christ, guys.
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  But here's what they say, that we adhere ourselves to a denominational label.
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  So this is why I think this is so important, what Brother Kyle Stevens says.
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  He says, all this to clarify that the Holy Scriptures do not endorse a particular denomination.
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  The key is not adherence to a sect, a division, or a faction of Christianity.
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  The entire issue is wrapped up in the faith in and conformity to the Holy Bible.
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  So, Acts 2.42 says that newborn Christians continued steadfastly in the apostles'
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  doctrine and fellowship. So the issue that's always been at hand is alignment
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  with the Bible, not a denomination or group.
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  So, this is why I think it's appropriate that our first, the first distinctive
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  is that as Baptists, we hold to the Bible as our final authority,
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  not the Baptist denomination, okay?
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  So, in light, the Catholic Church, for example, they were never a partaker in
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  the truth of scriptures.
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  So, people like Wycliffe and Erasmus, they were heroic in their endeavors, right?
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  Their labors, they were all in spite of holy, unholy mama, because they were both Catholics.
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  During certain phases of history, the Methodists, Presbyterians,
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  Congregationalists, and others were tremendous contributors.
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  But the greatest proportions of these have now dropped off the radar and they've
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  forfeited their savor and their light and their holy spiritual stewardship in
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  the truth, okay? So, scripturally, so that was scripturally,
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  is it Baptist? So, the answer is no, it's not.
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  Scripturally, here is the correction, and this is what I want our listeners to embrace.
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  Scripturally, it is Baptistic.
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  It is Baptistic. There's a difference between being denominationally Baptist
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  as opposed to being Baptistic.
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  So, this distinction is made because
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  the scriptures prove themselves to be Baptistic in their very nature.
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  Now, while many Baptist churches, fellowships, and conferences have departed from sound doctrine.
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  And some who even call themselves Baptists were never scriptural in many aspects,
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  those whom god has used throughout the centuries of
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  the church age either as individuals or groups have
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  been steadfastly committed to a short
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  list of vital biblical precepts so
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  he mentions like the waldensians the albigensians the
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  moravians the noatians the montanist the dotnist all martyred
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  by the tens of thousands did not call
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  themselves baptists but they were profoundly baptistic
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  okay so they were baptistic because they
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  conformed themselves to the truth of the scriptures so essentially
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  in anyway i'm not going to read the whole chapter i would
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  highly recommend the pillar and the ground of the truth by brother kyle stevens
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  but here's what he's saying essentially he's saying that these waldensians albigenses
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  these groups they had baptistic baptistic distinctives that made them different
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  and separated from the roman catholic church
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  and from many other state churches that the protestants
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  fall under okay so the the importance is
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  not that we're labeled baptists because the problem is is you can cut i mean
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  what if you run across a free will baptist you know free will baptist believe
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  they believe you can lose your salvation hard shell baptists are calvinists
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  they believe that you are elected and you can never lose your salvation because
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  you're going to persevere to the end both are unscriptural positions.
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  Even though they use the label Baptist. You see what I mean?
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  So, when we study these Baptistic distinctives,
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  the first one being the Bible is the final authority, what we're basically arguing
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  is that the reason why we are Baptists today by name is because they hold to
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  New Testament Baptist distinctives.
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  Baptistic distinctives, if that makes sense.
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  So, the first one being the Bible is our final authority.
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  So, B, Baptist, the acrostic, the first one is Bible, is our final authority.
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  So, what do we mean by that? We just, when it comes down to the Bible as being
• 18:25
  our final authority, what exactly, how do we frame that?
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  Well, final authority is ultimately the way we define it.
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  It's the supreme standard for defining and establishing doctrine and theological unity.
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  That means if you and I disagree on what salvation is, the Bible should settle the answer.
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  If we disagree on what the doctrine of baptism is, the Bible should settle the answer.
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  If we disagree on what the definition of marriage is, or the role of the husband
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  or the role of the wife is, the Bible should settle it.
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  That's what we mean by final authority. It's the final arbiter.
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  It's the sole tribunal for resolving all conflicts regarding church polity,
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  that's church government, tradition, or teaching, okay?
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  It is the unshakable foundation of objective truth.
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  So when we say, well, what should we believe about this? Brother Gammus,
• 19:22
  what should we believe about this? You know, Brother Allen, what should we believe about this?
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  Well, the Bible is going to be the final decision maker.
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  I think it's interesting in John chapter 12, Jesus Christ is speaking.
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  Let me grab the verse here.
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  But in John chapter 12, Jesus Christ settles the matter.
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  Look at this ultimate statement of final authority and what he says.
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  John chapter 12, and I believe it's going to be like verse 48. Yep.
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  Let me start just by context. Here's what Jesus Christ says in verse 42,
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  John 12, 42, he says, Nevertheless, among the chief rulers, also many believed
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  on him because the Pharisees did not confess him, lest they should be put out of their synagogue.
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  For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.
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  Verse 44, Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me,
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  but on him that sent me. So, he's establishing rule.
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  He's not saying that Jesus Christ doesn't have authority.
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  He's saying his authority on earth as a prophet is established by God.
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  So, by proxy, you know what Jesus is doing in verse 44?
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  He's validating every prophet in the Bible.
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  If a man claims to be a prophet of God, then he is saying the words that God gave him.
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  That's the validation. So, guess what that does? That establishes people like Peter,
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  Paul, James, and john as writers of scripture because they
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  also peter does it this way he connects himself
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  with the old testament prophets and he declares that peter's writings are scripture
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  anyway that's a different study but it's just interesting that he's so i don't
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  want you know verse i want verse 44 for people to go oh jesus christ is trying
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  to validate himself saying that he's not god that god isn't going to give him
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  authority no he's validating his ministry as a prophet and.
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  He says, verse 45, he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.
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  Verse 46, I am come, he goes, I am come a light into the world that whosoever
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  believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
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  Verse 47, and if any man hear my words, W-O-R-D-S, not his principles,
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  not his ideas, not his philosophy, but if any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not.
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  He says, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
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  This is his first advent. verse 48 uh-oh here's
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  the kicker look what he says he that rejecteth
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  me and receiveth dot my
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  w-o-r-d-s my words
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  hath one that judges him the word the
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  word the word he says the word that i've spoken the same shall judge him in
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  the last day so guess what that is by definition he is saying that the words
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  of God are the final judge when everything is settled.
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  When the ages have come to an end, and in Revelation 20, the Bible says that
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  the dead, both small and great, are standing before God, it says the books will
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  be opened and the dead shall be judged according to their works.
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  Jesus Christ is basically saying in John 12, 48, that there is no greater authority
• 22:30
  than the Bible, than the words of God.
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  So, when we talk about the final authority, that's what we mean.
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  The proper scope is the final authority of faith to practice,
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  using scripture as the manual for common tasks.
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  You know, like, for example, just trying to say, oh, well, you're trying to
• 22:46
  say all truth is, and we'll cover a little segment here on what soul of scripture
• 22:51
  is not, but when we're not saying that you use the Bible to tell you how to bake a pizza in the oven.
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  What we're saying is it's the final authority on religious practice and doctrine.
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  That's what we're saying.
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  When it comes to what the Bible says about the soul of man, the spirit of man,
• 23:11
  the body of man, soteriology,
• 23:13
  the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of salvation,
• 23:17
  and so forth and so on, the Bible is the final authority when it comes to those doctrines.
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  So, the final rule, the Bible is the sole rule for faith. so it surpasses reason,
• 23:29
  philosophy, and institutions, okay?
• 23:31
  So it's not, we don't run to an institution like your church and the Catholic
• 23:35
  Church, for example, are going to tell you that the church is the final authority
• 23:39
  because it's the only sole interpreter of Scripture.
• 23:43
  Well, if the church can tell you what scripture is actually saying, guess what?
• 23:48
  The church is the final authority. So, here's the thing, too, to understand.
• 23:55
  But the Bible and God and His Word are basically, it's the precondition of truth,
• 24:02
  meaning that all absolute preconditions for political truth, ideological,
• 24:06
  cultural, moral truth, are all rooted from the Bible.
• 24:10
  That means if you find a political truth, right?
• 24:14
  So, like, for example, that men should have a free conscience to vote for who
• 24:19
  they please, right? And not be coerced by it.
• 24:22
  Men should, you know, believe whatever ideological philosophy they want and
• 24:27
  commit themselves to it. Nobody should force them at gunpoint.
• 24:30
  Where does that truth derive from? It comes from
• 24:33
  the Word of God because that's what god honors he
• 24:36
  honors the individual conscience of man
• 24:39
  so so that's what we mean by the the
• 24:42
  bible is the precondition of all truth because if any truth you find like you
• 24:46
  and i are our managers right at work so are there biblical principles that we
• 24:51
  follow in leadership how we manage people how we communicate right the balance
• 24:56
  of those things well where those truths derived from the Bible.
• 25:00
  And so the Bible is the precondition. And Jesus said in John 17,
• 25:04
  17, you know, we quoted this verse many, many times, but sanctify them by thy truth.
• 25:09
  Thy word is, is truth, not a truth, is truth.
• 25:13
  The divine nature of scripture, the fact that it's not inspired by,
• 25:17
  it's not the word of men, it's the word of God. 1 Thessalonians 2, 13.
• 25:21
  This boils, this basically forces all the professing Christianity into four confessions.
• 25:28
  Or four beliefs, or four worldviews, however you want to look at it.
• 25:32
  It comes down to this, okay?
• 25:35
  Professing Christianity generally approached the Word of God,
• 25:38
  the authority of the Word of God, in one of four ways.
• 25:41
  Number one, it's the Bible plus their tradition.
• 25:46
  What do we mean by that? That means if, you know, I believe the things the Bible
• 25:50
  says, however, my church teaches such and such tradition.
• 25:54
  And if you find a contradiction between the tradition and the Bible,
• 25:58
  the people that hold this view will always cede their authority and defer their
• 26:04
  authority to tradition.
• 26:05
  That's what they'll do. So if there's a conflict between your tradition and
• 26:08
  the Bible, they'll pick tradition. All you got to do is talk to any Catholic.
• 26:13
  If you say, hey, well, you know, the Bible doesn't show us anywhere.
• 26:15
  That you're supposed to pray to the dead.
• 26:17
  The Bible defines saints as living Christians that are actively involved in a local church.
• 26:24
  You're not supposed to pray for them. The Bible says that Mary had children.
• 26:28
  Well, our church has always taught that she's a perpetual virgin.
• 26:32
  She never had any children other than Christ.
• 26:35
  Well, the Bible says this, well, I don't really care what the Bible says my
• 26:38
  tradition. See, that's the first view.
• 26:40
  It's the Bible plus tradition. If there's a conflict between the Bible and tradition,
• 26:44
  they'll go with tradition. The second one is the Bible plus scholarship.
• 26:48
  And these are our friendly anti-King James guys.
• 26:52
  These are the ones that will run to scholarship and say, well,
• 26:55
  you know, such and such Greek teacher teaches this, and such and such Greek
• 26:58
  professor, and such and such Greek lexicon defines this word,
• 27:02
  so therefore the King James Bible translates it incorrectly.
• 27:05
  So when you say, well, here's the problem I have, the Bible says the words of the Lord are pure words.
• 27:10
  The Bible says in Jeremiah 23, there were men that were perverting the words of the living God.
• 27:15
  The Bible tells us, you know, that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, not by men.
• 27:20
  So why are we running to scholarship? Yeah, but this Greek scholar says this,
• 27:24
  or the more accurate and older manuscripts say this.
• 27:29
  So what they're doing is there's a conflict between the Bible and scholarship.
• 27:34
  They'll always run to scholarship as their final authority.
• 27:38
  So, the Bible plus tradition, Bible plus scholarship. And the third one is Bible plus experience.
• 27:44
  This is your Pentecostals. These are your Mormons. I just have a burning in
• 27:48
  my bosom. I just feel like this doctrine is right.
• 27:52
  Oh, but I had this dream, you know? I just, I feel the fire of the Holy Spirit
• 27:56
  telling me this is a true doctrine.
• 27:58
  Yeah, but that's contradicting what scripture says.
• 28:02
  And you know what they're going to say? Well, but I feel this.
• 28:06
  And that's what they'll tell you. Matter of fact, you talk to a Mormon.
• 28:08
  They'll tell you they have a burning in their bosom. When you say,
• 28:10
  what makes you believe the Book of Mormon is right?
• 28:13
  Well, I just, because I just, I feel like it's the right one.
• 28:17
  Why do you, why are you a Mormon? Because I just feel this, this burning sensation
• 28:21
  in my bosom that this is the right church.
• 28:23
  They will literally go to their experience and their feelings over what the Bible says.
• 28:29
  So if there's a conflict between the Bible and their experience,
• 28:32
  they're going to always defer to their experience.
• 28:34
  So the first three are the Bible plus tradition, the Bible, the Bible plus scholarship,
• 28:39
  and the Bible plus experience.
• 28:41
  The last one is what Baptistic people believe, and that is the Bible plus nothing.
• 28:47
  That means there's nothing that can supersede or correct the Bible.
• 28:52
  The Bible will always override and supersede tradition, scholarship,
• 28:57
  and experience. Always.
• 28:59
  That means if I'm reading my Bible and it says something about the nature of
• 29:03
  God's word, the inspiration of his word,
• 29:05
  the purity of his word, but then I'm talking to a scholar and the scholar tells
• 29:09
  me, oh, this is an error here and this was an addition or interpolation by a
• 29:15
  scribe here's a scribal mistake that was made.
• 29:18
  I will always defer to the Bible as being the pure, perfect Word of God.
• 29:23
  Now, that's the four views of authority when it comes to the Bible.
• 29:28
  So, the Baptist distinctive is the Bible is always right.
• 29:34
  It should always dictate what our traditions, our polity, our culture,
• 29:40
  everything, it should be dictated by the Word of God. That's what we that's what we believe.
• 29:44
  So, another thing about the kind of like the nature of scripture is,
• 29:48
  you know, why do we accept the Bible over all these other things, right?
• 29:52
  Why do we believe it over a catechism or a statement of faith or the Westminster
• 29:57
  Confession, right? Why do we choose the Bible to, you know, as the final sole
• 30:03
  authority above those things?
• 30:04
  Well, number one, it's the self-attested authority that the Bible gives us.
• 30:09
  So, you know, like for example, Matthew 22, 29.
• 30:11
  You know what Jesus Christ does there? He says, he answered them,
• 30:15
  says, you do err not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.
• 30:19
  It was a question about a woman marrying, you know, which husband's going to
• 30:23
  be hers, you know, when she goes to heaven.
• 30:27
  And so, he says, you do err not knowing
• 30:29
  the scriptures. He was correcting theological error with scripture.
• 30:33
  So, he used scripture to correct a theological belief, a theological doctrine.
• 30:40
  You know what that means for us? That's a precedent.
• 30:43
  That means I can judge theological doctrine with the scriptures.
• 30:48
  See that? I can judge whether or not a non-dispensationalist is incorrect with scripture.
• 30:53
  I can judge whether a Catholic, Presbyterian, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness,
• 30:58
  Muslim, if they're theologically wrong with the scriptures.
• 31:02
  The scriptures will always be the final authority in matters of faith and practice.
• 31:07
  So it corrects our error. Not only that, in Mark chapter 7, verses 9 and 13.
• 31:14
  Jesus says that he goes, full well, you reject the commandment of God to keep
• 31:20
  your tradition, or you've made the word of God of none effect because of your tradition.
• 31:26
  So, what is Jesus Christ? What's the precedent he sets there?
• 31:30
  That scripture has supremacy over tradition.
• 31:34
  Now, it doesn't say that all tradition is bad because later
• 31:37
  on in like in first thessalonians 2 paul says
• 31:41
  you've learned traditions from us right so
• 31:45
  what's going to be the guardrail for those traditions scripture if you adopt
• 31:50
  a tradition that violates scripture you you reject the tradition that's it's
• 31:56
  that simple okay so it's not it's not a false dichotomy the catholics will always
• 32:01
  set up a false dichotomy and tell you well you know,
• 32:04
  you either believe the Bible or you believe tradition.
• 32:06
  No, you can have good traditions. There's nothing wrong with good traditions.
• 32:10
  So, the supremacy over tradition, it corrects error. Sufficiency,
• 32:13
  the Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, it's sufficient for doctrine,
• 32:18
  reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness, right?
• 32:21
  Verse 17, that it would make the man of God perfect and throughly furnished unto all good works.
• 32:26
  That means that when it comes to religious duties and responsibilities and obligation
• 32:30
  because of our stewardship of the truth, right?
• 32:33
  The scripture is sufficient.
• 32:36
  To supply everything the Christian needs to serve him. You don't need a Bible Institute.
• 32:43
  You don't need a bookshelf, you know, full of commentaries. You don't need a
• 32:49
  statement of faith. You don't need creedal statements.
• 32:51
  All you have in the Bible is all you need to properly serve God in the capacity that he calls you.
• 33:00
  That's what 2 Timothy 3.16 and 17 says. So, it tells of scripture is sufficient for that.
• 33:06
  So, scripture can correct theological error, scripture is superior to tradition,
• 33:12
  and scripture is sufficient to supply the believer with everything they need to serve God.
• 33:17
  Now, all of this, by the way, contradicts the Roman Catholic Church.
• 33:21
  This is why I'm going through this. But understanding the self-attested authority
• 33:26
  of scripture is important because we're not saying this because we like it.
• 33:31
  We're telling you this is because this is what the Bible actually reveals to us. Okay.
• 33:36
  Then not only that, 2 Timothy 2.15, believers are commanded to study the word
• 33:41
  of truth, not study church traditions, not study church creedal statements,
• 33:47
  right? Not study church catechisms.
• 33:50
  That's not what it's telling. It says, study the word of truth.
• 33:55
  And he says, why? So that you could be approved of God. That's it.
• 34:02
  So that means that the requirement of study, the requirement of studying scripture
• 34:06
  is necessary for the Christian to be approved of God.
• 34:11
  That means I don't have to go to an institute.
• 34:14
  I don't have to listen to what the Pope says. I don't have to follow any Christian commentary.
• 34:19
  I don't have to do any of that if I am just studying the scriptures.
• 34:23
  That alone is enough to make me approved of God.
• 34:27
  Okay? And by the way, these are all premises that are proving the Bible as a final authority.
• 34:33
  What's the first premise? It corrects error. Second, it has supremacy over tradition.
• 34:38
  Third, it's sufficient to supply the man of God with everything they need to serve God.
• 34:43
  And what's the fourth one? Is that we have a requirement, an obligation to study
• 34:47
  the word of truth and nothing else, no other religious document.
• 34:51
  And then, of course, the believers are commended for stats, commended for analyzing
• 34:56
  the teaching by searching scriptures.
• 34:59
  So, Acts 17, 11, the Bereans, they were more noble than those in Thessalonica
• 35:02
  and that they searched the scriptures daily to see whether those things are
• 35:05
  so. So, what is that precedent?
• 35:07
  The precedent is if you want to validate or prove whether a doctrine is true,
• 35:13
  you do it by searching the scriptures, not the commentaries, right?
• 35:18
  Not the sermon outlines, not the traditions of the church, not the catechisms,
• 35:23
  not the confessional statements.
• 35:25
  You search the scriptures to
• 35:28
  validate and analyze whether a doctrinal teaching is true or not, period.
• 35:34
  And then, of course, the authenticity of a preacher or a speaker or a teacher
• 35:40
  is 1 Peter 4, verse 11 says they have to speak as the oracles of God.
• 35:47
  Isaiah 8.20 says if they speak not according to this word,
• 35:51
  it's because there's no light in them so the mandate of
• 35:54
  the preacher and of course paul tells timothy
• 35:57
  preach the word he didn't say preach your
• 36:00
  opinion preach your commentaries preach your ideas preach your agenda he says
• 36:04
  preach the word the word is the mandate so again what's the self-attested authority
• 36:09
  of the scriptures that it corrects theological error it's it has supremacy over
• 36:14
  tradition it's sufficient to supply the believers with everything they need to serve god,
• 36:19
  It's the only way to be approved of God is by studying it and searching it and rightly dividing it.
• 36:25
  It's the analysis tool for incorrect doctrine, right?
• 36:30
  And the way you test the authenticity of a preacher or a speaker or a teacher
• 36:35
  is by lining up what they say with the Word of God.
• 36:39
  So, with all that being said, you know what conclusion we come to?
• 36:43
  The Bible must be the final authority of the believer and the church. Okay?
• 36:50
  Now, the second part of this is the canonicity and the origin of Scripture.
• 36:54
  So, we know, because if you look at some of the arguments, especially the Catholic
• 36:58
  Church, their position on the canon is pretty simple.
• 37:01
  They argue and claim that the Church established the canon at the Council of Nicaea 325 AD.
• 37:07
  They're the ones that decided. And there's also the Council of Trent in 1500
• 37:11
  that settled on the final books of the Bible, which they add,
• 37:16
  you know, like 11 more books, you know, whatever it is, 77 books.
• 37:21
  I can't remember the exact number.
• 37:22
  But anyway, they add the Apocrypha and things like that to it.
• 37:25
  But they're the ones that claim that the UK, he goes, if you're going to try
• 37:28
  to use the Bible as your final authority, the problem is, is you're not honoring
• 37:31
  the church that gave you that Bible.
• 37:34
  So, either the Catholic Church gave us the Bible or God gave us the Bible.
• 37:39
  That's the two choices you have.
• 37:41
  But they argue that you got your Bible from the Catholic Church.
• 37:45
  That's what a Catholic will tell you.
• 37:46
  Now, the problem is these critiques, this criticism of Sola Scriptura, it's fallacious.
• 37:53
  It's a circular argument because the Bible does not—and this is what they'll say.
• 37:58
  Well, you're arguing in circles. The Catholic Church will say to a Protestant
• 38:02
  or to a Bible believer, you're just arguing in circles. Because you say,
• 38:06
  well, we have to, you know, we have to go by what the Bible says.
• 38:09
  Where do you get that? Well, I get it from what the Bible says.
• 38:12
  Well, that's a circular argument. You're using the Bible to argue that you need to use the Bible.
• 38:17
  And so, the rebuttal to that is, the Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3.16,
• 38:23
  it says, all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
• 38:27
  It never says the church has given us the scriptures. Never.
• 38:32
  It does tell us that the church is the ground and pillar of the truth.
• 38:36
  That's the basis of Brother Stephen's book.
• 38:38
  But what the pillar is, it's upholding the foundation.
• 38:41
  It's sitting on a foundation, I'm sorry. The church is sitting,
• 38:44
  is a pillar that's sitting on the foundation. What's the foundation? the Word of God.
• 38:48
  You cannot have a church without defining what a church is, and you can't define
• 38:52
  a church without God's definition in Scripture.
• 38:56
  Remember when we talked about the revelatory epistemology? We said we have the mind of God. Why?
• 39:02
  Because we have a Bible. Guess what? How do we know what a true church is?
• 39:07
  Because the Bible defines what a true church is.
• 39:11
  It's just like, how do I know I have a marriage that honors God?
• 39:14
  Because you are meeting the requirements and stipulations of a marriage according to the word of God.
• 39:20
  Period. That's it. It's as simple as that. It sounds complicated, but it's not.
• 39:26
  What people don't like is they don't like having to be submitted to the Bible.
• 39:30
  That's the problem, you know?
• 39:31
  So, here's the biblical rebuttal to the two arguments that the church gave us
• 39:36
  it, and we're arguing in circles.
• 39:37
  So, the Bible said in Psalm 119, verse 89, forever, O Lord, thy word is settled
• 39:42
  in heaven. That means God established his word long before it was put and written for him.
• 39:48
  So, the revelation of it in written form was the process of inspiration.
• 39:54
  That's where we get, and then eventually leads to preservation.
• 39:56
  That's why we believe we have the exact copy of the words of God in the English
• 40:00
  language in the King James Bible.
• 40:02
  But it was first settled in heaven. It wasn't something that God arbitrarily
• 40:06
  left a man to come up with.
• 40:09
  There's an analogy I like. The argument is the church no more gave us the New
• 40:14
  Testament than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.
• 40:17
  What did Isaac What did he What did he finally come to the conclusion Regarding
• 40:24
  gravity What was it he discovered it Right Gravity existed long before Isaac Newton existed,
• 40:33
  So, Isaac Newton didn't invent gravity, he discovered it.
• 40:37
  Guess what? The nature of Scripture is that Bible believers and Christians discover
• 40:43
  the Word of God that was inspired and preserved by God. It was God's job to
• 40:51
  preserve Scripture, right?
• 40:52
  Psalm 12, 6, and 7, Thy Word, O Lord, he goes, Thou wilt keep them,
• 40:57
  thou shalt preserve them from this generation.
• 41:00
  God obligated himself to preserve those words. And if scripture is inspired
• 41:05
  and given by God, he's the originator and he's the sustainer of scripture.
• 41:12
  So the misunderstanding of the
• 41:16
  Catholics are that we're arguing that we magically came up with the Bible.
• 41:20
  No, no, no. We're establishing a God-derived argument that God is the one that
• 41:26
  said he would preserve his word.
• 41:27
  God is the one that said that all scripture is given by inspiration of God.
• 41:31
  God is the one that says that he would preserve his word from this generation forever.
• 41:36
  He even says, like in the book of Isaiah, he says, you know,
• 41:39
  the heavens and earth pass away, but he says, the word of our God shall stand forever.
• 41:42
  The leaf will fade, you know, the earth will fade, all this other stuff,
• 41:46
  but his word will never, ever, ever, ever cease from being, period.
• 41:52
  So, that's the Newton analogy. But then there's also a theological precedence.
• 41:56
  The canon was a theological reality before it was a historical reality,
• 42:02
  meaning that, you know, God knew exactly what books would belong in scripture.
• 42:07
  There were no missing books.
• 42:09
  Because in order to, if you argue that God, that there was missing books in
• 42:13
  the canon, then what you're arguing is that God was insufficient to preserve
• 42:17
  his words, and he lost them.
• 42:19
  And he required, he had this dependency on scholarship to find them.
• 42:23
  I mean, it's essentially what you're arguing for.
• 42:26
  But here's what the Bible says. The Bible calls us a priest of believers, 1 Peter 2, 5 and 9.
• 42:31
  Also, 1 Thessalonians 2, 13. You know, remember the commendation that Paul said?
• 42:37
  He goes, you receive the word of God as it is in truth, the word of God, and not the word of men.
• 42:42
  He said, you Christians at Thessalonica received the scriptures and believed
• 42:48
  that they were the word of God and not the word of men. That was a discovery.
• 42:53
  That's not an invention. Okay?
• 42:56
  Not only that, Acts 2.41, the Bible says that they received the word gladly.
• 43:00
  So the word that was being preached by Peter and the apostles,
• 43:04
  the word that was being preached by Jeremiah, Isaiah, Habakkuk,
• 43:07
  Nehemiah, all these men that were preaching the word of God,
• 43:10
  people received it as the word of God.
• 43:14
  They realized and recognized its authority.
• 43:17
  Remember that statement they said about Jesus Christ? He spake never as any
• 43:21
  other man spake. and he spake not as the scribes and the Pharisees as one having authority.
• 43:28
  And remember what Jesus said? He goes, if you hear me, you're not hearing my
• 43:32
  words, you're hearing God's words. See that?
• 43:35
  Again, that's why that validation is so important.
• 43:37
  What Jesus Christ is saying is the words that I'm speaking, I'm not inventing them.
• 43:42
  He says, I'm speaking what God told me to speak. So that's what he's saying.
• 43:46
  He goes, I'm not speaking my words. So guess what? That's the same posture that
• 43:50
  you and I have as Christians.
• 43:52
  I'm not speaking my opinion when I give you scripture. I'm telling you what the Bible says.
• 43:57
  It's the same precedent that was set by Jesus Christ and the apostles.
• 44:01
  Now, the Roman Catholic Church, they don't understand this. Because again,
• 44:06
  and he even says, the words I speak unto you, they're spirit and truth.
• 44:09
  So it goes beyond just the physical words. So that means that his word was a
• 44:14
  theological reality before it was a historical reality.
• 44:17
  Before you could hold them in their hands, the word of God was already established.
• 44:21
  Then you also have the witness of the Spirit that also shows us what Scripture is.
• 44:26
  You know, He bears witness from the Scriptures. So, there's different places
• 44:30
  like in, let me read some of these verses here just for clarity.
• 44:33
  Romans 8.16, or 8.13, or 8.16, I'm sorry. Romans 8.
• 44:40
  And it's important to understand, again, the reason why we do this is because
• 44:44
  we're trying to prove that, hey, we're not making this up because we just feel
• 44:49
  like it's necessary. We're trying to show you that we come to this conclusion
• 44:52
  because this is what's proven in scripture.
• 44:55
  It's a scriptural evidence-based conclusion, okay?
• 44:59
  So, Romans 8.16, the Bible says this, the spirit itself beareth witness with
• 45:05
  our spirit that we are the children of God.
• 45:08
  So, there's a witness of the spirit that is interacting with us.
• 45:12
  That means believers have this special relationship with the Holy Spirit where
• 45:17
  we can recognize what are God's words and what are not God's words.
• 45:21
  Well, how do you do that? You do that by the revelation of God.
• 45:25
  So, if God tells you, I'll give you an example.
• 45:27
  You know, God says the words of the Lord are pure words, right?
• 45:29
  He says that every word of God is pure in Proverbs chapter 30.
• 45:33
  So, if you come across a passage in Scripture that's a contradiction.
• 45:38
  Is that representative of pure words?
• 45:41
  If you find an actual contradiction in scripture or you
• 45:44
  find a place where there's a false teaching in there like worshiping devils
• 45:49
  or praying to dead saints right or you see the same man dying three different
• 45:56
  ways and they're all contradictory to one another the reason i say that is because
• 45:59
  that's actually what you find in the apocrypha you find those false doctrines.
• 46:04
  So, just by God's own definition of his words and his spirit bearing witness
• 46:10
  to our spirit, because remember in 1 Corinthians 2, on our revelatory epistemology episode,
• 46:17
  we said that it's the Holy Spirit that reveals the deep things of God.
• 46:22
  So, that's why what we're saying here is that the Holy Spirit is bearing witness
• 46:28
  with our spirit so that when we read scripture, we understand what that scripture is.
• 46:33
  John chapter 16, Jesus Christ also makes another statement here about the Holy
• 46:40
  Spirit's job when it comes to truth.
• 46:42
  Remember, he says, sanctify them by thy word. Thy word is truth. Right?
• 46:46
  So, Romans John chapter 16 verse 16.
• 46:49
  13, he says, how be it when the spirit of truth, that's what he calls him,
• 46:54
  is come, he will guide you into all truth.
• 46:58
  Notice, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear,
• 47:02
  that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come. Right?
• 47:07
  Well, why is that important?
• 47:09
  Because 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter identifies that when these apostles spoke, 2 Peter 1 and verse 20,
• 47:18
  it says verse 20 knowing this first that no
• 47:21
  prophecy the scriptures of any private interpretation for the
• 47:24
  prophecy came not in old time by the will of man it was
• 47:27
  not a man's arbitrary will that decided
• 47:30
  to write down scripture he says he says but he goes it didn't come by the will
• 47:35
  of man but holy men of god spake as they were moved by the holy ghost see that
• 47:41
  that means scripture is the product of the holy spirit he is the author of scripture
• 47:46
  that's what we found out in 1 Corinthians 2.
• 47:49
  He's the one that reveals the deep things of God, right?
• 47:52
  So, the Holy Spirit bears witness to Scripture, not us.
• 47:56
  So, that means if we know that they originated from God through the Holy Spirit,
• 48:02
  the Holy Spirit's going to bear witness to it.
• 48:03
  So, when I read something like the Apocrypha, or I read the Maccabees,
• 48:07
  or Bell and the Dragon, or if I read the Encyclicals of Rome,
• 48:11
  if I read the Catechisms,
• 48:12
  and they contradict what the Bible says, there is a Holy spirit of truth inside
• 48:17
  of me that says there's something wrong with that.
• 48:20
  That does not line up with what this Bible says.
• 48:23
  And a lot of my Catholic friends or ex-Catholic friends that have gotten saved,
• 48:27
  one of the first things they come to realize is that Bible is saying something
• 48:32
  that my church doesn't teach, or that Bible is saying something that contradicts what my church teaches.
• 48:40
  There's a line drawn in the sand, right? And then, of course,
• 48:44
  Christ's precedent, what Christ does in Luke 24.
• 48:47
  Is he actually outlines the Old Testament canon.
• 48:51
  And Luke 24 is, you know, it's after the resurrection. He's on the road to Emmaus
• 48:57
  and he's talking with those two disciples.
• 48:59
  In Luke chapter 22, 24, I'm sorry, verse 44, he says this.
• 49:04
  He says, he's actually talking to the disciples in verse 44.
• 49:08
  But he says, as he goes, he said unto them, these are all the words which I
• 49:11
  spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written.
• 49:15
  So were written, past tense This is finished Old Testament scripture Were written in,
• 49:22
  number one, the Law of Moses Number two, in the Prophets And number three,
• 49:25
  the Psalms Now what most people don't realize Is what Jesus Christ just did
• 49:30
  Is he outlined the Hebrew Old Testament The Hebrew Old Testament is divided
• 49:35
  into three parts The Torah,
• 49:37
  which is the Law of Moses The Nabim, which is the Prophets And then the Kethubim,
• 49:43
  which is the Psalms and the Writings like, you know, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon and stuff.
• 49:47
  So that is, that's the three-part division of the Old Testament.
• 49:52
  And Jesus Christ did not add the Apocrypha.
• 49:56
  And he never quoted the Septuagint, which a lot of people like to argue.
• 50:01
  Those are Catholic conventions, okay? The problem is, is those support Catholic
• 50:06
  doctrine, where you get, you know, prayers or purgatory.
• 50:10
  Those doctrines, they come from the Apocrypha. Most people don't realize that.
• 50:14
  So, when Jesus Christ outlines the canon, and he doesn't include the Apocrypha,
• 50:19
  but your church includes the Apocrypha, which should I choose? Which should I believe?
• 50:24
  See, the Bible plus tradition, or the Bible plus nothing?
• 50:29
  See, this is why we're trying to establish this argument that the Bible is the
• 50:33
  final authority, not your church, not your philosophy, not your dogma,
• 50:38
  not your theology, right? That's what's important.
• 50:42
  So, but anyway, that's, so that's the canon. The origin of scripture is that it comes from God.
• 50:48
  That is the reason why it has sufficient authority over everything we taught.
• 50:52
  I don't know. Any thoughts? Any questions, Alan? A couple thoughts.
• 50:56
  Just going over everything that you just covered. The Bible makes it easy.
• 51:00
  Because when you covered the Bible plus tradition, the Bible plus scholarship
• 51:07
  or authority, and the experience, they all require work.
• 51:14
  They require more than it's actually needed for your belief system.
• 51:20
  You only need the Bible for all things. And that obviously is going to influence
• 51:25
  your belief system or your theology, you know?
• 51:28
  And here's the problem is tradition is man-made, scholarship is man-made,
• 51:33
  and experience is man-made, right? And it's all subjective.
• 51:38
  So if God, if Jesus Christ defines scripture as objective, why would we create
• 51:44
  an authority that's subjective, right?
• 51:46
  There's this long-standing argument that the Catholics argue that they have
• 51:51
  the same doctrine that they've believed for 2,000 years, which is very untrue.
• 51:54
  I could show you where popes disagreed with each other.
• 51:57
  There's all kinds of problems that, you know, when it comes down to it.
• 52:01
  There's one of the things I was going to mention here is here's like,
• 52:05
  so there's this line of scriptures.
• 52:07
  We did talk about it. I'll talk about briefly the two manuscript streams.
• 52:11
  And I don't want to, you know, overdo it because we did talk about it a little bit in depth last time.
• 52:16
  But, you know, these Baptists, these distinctives is that, and again,
• 52:21
  Baptistic distinctives, right?
• 52:23
  Maybe not in name, that's not the argument. We don't argue that Baptists have
• 52:28
  been around since John the Baptist. We don't argue that.
• 52:30
  John the Baptist was not part of the church. He was a friend of the bridegroom. He wasn't a bride.
• 52:35
  He was the last Old Testament prophet according to Jesus Christ, okay?
• 52:40
  But we do believe that the distinctives, we see this throughout the church.
• 52:45
  So, they're unique because they're biblical distinctives, they're biblical doctrines.
• 52:51
  They're confirmed by aligning them with New Testament scripture.
• 52:54
  So when we see somebody reject infant baptism, it's because they see believers
• 52:58
  being baptized in scripture.
• 53:00
  Right? We see them rejecting a singular pope that is over all the churches on
• 53:08
  the planet. We don't see that in scripture.
• 53:10
  Okay? Standard of operation. You know, the two offices.
• 53:14
  That's why these other distinctives, the two ordinances, they're baptistic.
• 53:19
  And whenever you look at church history, they adhere to these things.
• 53:22
  And they exclude, even though they may have, like, we have some creedal beliefs.
• 53:26
  We do have a statement of faith, right?
• 53:28
  And to me, that's just an organized way to articulate what you believe.
• 53:32
  But that does not, if there's a problem with my creed or my statement of faith, I reject it.
• 53:38
  If the Bible, if there's a contradiction with what we say we believe,
• 53:42
  with what the Bible says, you throw out what you believe. It's that simple, right?
• 53:47
  But here's the thing, what we see in church history, and we mentioned it before,
• 53:51
  is two streams of Bibles.
• 53:53
  You see Bibles that come from Alexandria, Egypt, and that's rooted in Gnosticism,
• 53:58
  humanistic philosophy.
• 53:59
  It brings in all these Catholic traditions.
• 54:02
  The Gnosticism and humanistic philosophy are things that origin,
• 54:07
  you have origin, you have Jerome with his Latin Vulgate, and several other men
• 54:13
  in church history that were supporting Catholic doctrines.
• 54:18
  It's because they introduced humanistic philosophy with the Bible.
• 54:21
  They mixed the Bible plus tradition or scholarship. And of course,
• 54:25
  what you see is that you see two primary manuscripts that stand on top of the
• 54:32
  mountain of all these modern versions,
• 54:34
  and that's Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Sinaiticus.
• 54:38
  There are two Greek manuscripts that literally all your modern versions are rooted in.
• 54:44
  So when somebody goes, oh, well, you know, the best and oldest manuscripts disagree
• 54:48
  with the translation of the King James Bible, what they're actually telling
• 54:52
  you is that we have two manuscripts out of 6,500.
• 54:58
  That disagree with the King James Bible.
• 55:00
  So therefore, we're going to take what we call the minority text,
• 55:03
  these two. It's actually about 40 manuscripts that agree with each other.
• 55:07
  But 6,500, over 90% of those manuscripts agree with the King James Bible.
• 55:14
  Anyway, there's some stuff about how they reclassified the families and stuff
• 55:19
  to change that number to make it look like the King James doesn't have as much evidence.
• 55:24
  But the truth of the matter is, is those 6,500 existing manuscripts.
• 55:29
  So, these are Greek parchments. They can be codexes, which are books.
• 55:34
  They can be literally a piece of a parchment that has one or two or three verses on it.
• 55:39
  Of course, you found the Isaiah scrolls that were in the Dead Sea Scrolls when they uncovered them.
• 55:45
  And large portions of Isaiah match exactly the King James Bible.
• 55:49
  And those are older by several hundred years than the Vaticanus and Sinaticus.
• 55:54
  How come there wasn't this great scholarship-wide revival to say,
• 55:58
  you know what, we're going to reject Codex Sinaticus and Vaticanus because they
• 56:02
  disagree with the oldest manuscripts we just found. They never did that.
• 56:06
  It's dishonest. Anyway, the fact is, and this is what people don't realize about
• 56:11
  those two manuscripts, is they actually disagree with each other in the Gospels
• 56:15
  alone over 30,000 times with each other.
• 56:20
  So when you read that God's word is yay, yay, and nay, nay,
• 56:25
  that our word is true because God is true, and that his word is pure and that
• 56:29
  there's no perversion or leaven in his word, but you find two manuscripts that
• 56:34
  disagree with each other 30,000 times, you're going to say that's the word of God.
• 56:39
  Do you know the Vaticanus, the entire book of Revelation is missing from the Vaticanus?
• 56:44
  You know what both of these manuscripts do have? They have the Apocrypha. Hmm, interesting.
• 56:50
  But the Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 4.2, it says, You shall not add unto the
• 56:54
  word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought, that you may keep
• 56:57
  the commandment of the Lord which I command you. Three times he says that in Scripture.
• 57:01
  Don't add or remove Scripture. And in Revelation, he says, if you add,
• 57:05
  I'm going to add these plates into you.
• 57:06
  If you take away i'm going to take away your name from the book of life
• 57:09
  that's what that's what god said i didn't say that right that's
• 57:12
  what god said so again you're either going to choose and
• 57:15
  believe what the bible says about it or you're going to believe what scholarship
• 57:18
  says about it so another problem is that the theological integrity of these
• 57:23
  two manuscripts are corrupt this it contains deletions that attack the deity
• 57:29
  of christ the blood atonement the virgin birth you know what Paul said in 2
• 57:32
  Corinthians 2.17, he says,
• 57:34
  for we're not as many which corrupt the word of God, but as of sincerity,
• 57:38
  but as of God, the side of God speak we in Christ.
• 57:40
  So he said in his day, that's the first century, people were corrupting the word of God.
• 57:46
  So you know what that defeats? The oldest is best argument.
• 57:51
  Because if you found a manuscript that was as old as Paul's writings,
• 57:56
  there's a chance it could be corrupt, right?
• 57:59
  Because he was talking about it then. So, and Jeremiah said that there was men
• 58:03
  perverting the words of the living God, Jeremiah chapter 23.
• 58:07
  So, I'm sorry, you know, the oldest is best argument is a bad argument.
• 58:11
  But I'm telling you what, you pick up an NIV, you pick up an ASV,
• 58:14
  you pick up the New Living Translation, any of these Bibles,
• 58:18
  and you're going to find passages where, you know, in the last,
• 58:21
  you know, 12 verses of Mark, you know, Acts 8, 37.
• 58:25
  You have different passages where it'll say in the subnotes or the footnotes,
• 58:30
  the oldest manuscripts do not contain this phrase.
• 58:34
  So, anyway, that's why you'll find omissions in these new modern versions.
• 58:39
  But here's the thing, and this is the distinction. Again, we're talking about
• 58:42
  Baptist or Baptistic distinctions, right? The Bible is the final authority.
• 58:46
  And this is what the Catholic Church will argue. All Bibles are the same.
• 58:50
  Scholarship will argue the same thing. All Bibles are the same.
• 58:53
  There's no major doctrine attacked.
• 58:56
  There's no major doctrine. This is what the apologists, I just heard Frank Turek,
• 59:01
  you know, we talked about him, Frank Turek and David Brown.
• 59:03
  You know they're just saying hey these are scholarship and and
• 59:06
  just scribal differences that's all they are there's
• 59:09
  no there's no real doctrine affected so this
• 59:13
  is what they'll say but here's here's my question if there's
• 59:16
  no such thing as a catholic bible and the true bible why was
• 59:20
  it in you know during the the dark ages when the catholic church was ruling
• 59:25
  the world they were burning protestant bibles or they were burning bibles of
• 59:32
  the voodoo of the albigenses of the moravians why were they burning their bible if it's the same bible.
• 59:39
  Must be something in there that they didn't want anybody to see.
• 59:41
  In the Council of Toulouse in 1229, they decreed, this is what they decreed,
• 59:45
  the Catholic Church did, that laity could not possess Old or New Testaments in the common tongue.
• 59:51
  It was punishable by death for the average person to carry a Bible.
• 59:57
  And you know what's interesting? In the institute I'm taking,
• 1:00:01
  Asheville Baptist Institute, Brother Keener had made a comment about,
• 1:00:05
  he was doing an analogy of how a type of Christ in the Old Testament.
• 1:00:09
  With the temple and a lot of the sacrifices and stuff.
• 1:00:13
  But it says there were certain access to what's called the common people.
• 1:00:17
  He used that phrase, common people.
• 1:00:19
  And there's a statement that Jesus Christ, the Bible says in the New Testament,
• 1:00:22
  that the common people gladly heard Jesus Christ.
• 1:00:26
  It was the common people that received the preaching of Peter and the apostles, the common people.
• 1:00:33
  That was always the preferred audience were the people that desire.
• 1:00:37
  Remember Jesus said, he goes, I didn't come to call the healthy,
• 1:00:41
  I've come to call the sick.
• 1:00:43
  He would go to the ones that wanted truth, right?
• 1:00:46
  So isn't it interesting that there's this pattern and precedent in scripture,
• 1:00:51
  this principle, that God wanted to appeal to the common people, the laity.
• 1:00:57
  He never wanted to see religious hierarchy or superiority in religion.
• 1:01:04
  And yet their decree in Toulouse was that the common tongue,
• 1:01:09
  The laity could not have a Bible in their own language.
• 1:01:13
  Groups such as the Waldensians, they were persecuted and their scriptures were
• 1:01:17
  destroyed for refusing Catholic authority.
• 1:01:20
  This is, here's the prohibitions by some of the popes. So, Pius VII,
• 1:01:24
  he called scripture distribution eminently dangerous to souls.
• 1:01:30
  It was dangerous to distribute scripture.
• 1:01:34
  Think about that. Leo XII, he labeled the Protestant Bible, the gospel of the devil.
• 1:01:42
  Now, why would a pope say that if all Bibles are the same? Help me square that round peg.
• 1:01:48
  Gregory XVI, he condemned the possession of Bibles in the vernacular or in the common tongue.
• 1:01:54
  I'm sorry, but there is a history of Catholic suppression of the Word of God.
• 1:01:59
  Isn't it any wonder that this is our first distinctive, that the Bible is our
• 1:02:04
  final authority, not tradition?
• 1:02:06
  So, there's a reason. Why are you a Baptist? Because they carry and honor the
• 1:02:11
  Baptist distinctive that the Bible is a final authority.
• 1:02:14
  Not the traditions of men, not scholarship, not feelings and emotions, right?
• 1:02:20
  Let's see. So here's, I'm going to lay out the argument just to kind of finish up the episode.
• 1:02:25
  You know, so this is the argument. Premise number one, the principle of divine
• 1:02:29
  origin precondition, which means objective truth requires an absolute precondition
• 1:02:35
  of absolute objective truth.
• 1:02:37
  Because God is the author of truth, his word is divinely inspired.
• 1:02:42
  The Bible serves as the supreme and unshakable objective foundation for all
• 1:02:47
  doctrine and theological unity.
• 1:02:49
  That's the first premise. So, there's the principle of divine origin and the precondition of truth.
• 1:02:55
  Number two, premise number two, the principle of self-attestation and sufficiency.
• 1:02:59
  The authority of the canon is determined by God, and it's attested by the scripture itself.
• 1:03:05
  It's not granted by church councils or human tradition.
• 1:03:09
  Scripture is sufficient to thoroughly furnish the believer, meaning it contains
• 1:03:13
  everything necessary for faith and practice without the need for additional
• 1:03:18
  ecclesiastical creeds or commentaries. or whatever, right?
• 1:03:22
  So, the second premise is, there's the principle of self-attestation and full
• 1:03:27
  sufficiency for the believer.
• 1:03:29
  Premise number three, the principle of providential preservation.
• 1:03:33
  God has promised to preserve his words for every generation.
• 1:03:35
  This necessitates, today, a recognizable,
• 1:03:40
  incorruptible line of manuscripts, which is the Antiochian manuscript line,
• 1:03:45
  that is historically distinct from the corrupted line of manuscripts,
• 1:03:49
  which is the Alexandrian Egyptian ones, which alter key theological doctrines, period.
• 1:03:56
  So, the first premise, the principle of divine origin, Scripture comes from God.
• 1:04:01
  Premise number two, the Scripture is self-identifying as its own authority and
• 1:04:07
  sufficiency for all the doctrine.
• 1:04:09
  And number three, that God promised to preserve his words.
• 1:04:13
  And then number four, the premise number four, the principle of historic identification.
• 1:04:18
  The Roman Catholic Church historically has suppressed vernacular translations
• 1:04:22
  of the preserved line of Bibles that existed.
• 1:04:25
  So, like the Old Latin Vulgate, the Syriac Version, the Waldensian Bibles,
• 1:04:30
  and so forth and so on, the French Bibles of the Alps and stuff of these groups
• 1:04:34
  that were Baptistic, okay?
• 1:04:37
  They historically have destroyed them. However, the King James Bible is the
• 1:04:41
  ultimate culmination of that line of scripts.
• 1:04:44
  Even though the Roman Catholic Church tried to destroy the Bible, they didn't.
• 1:04:48
  God still ended up preserving his word in 1611, just as he promised.
• 1:04:53
  So, it was the priesthood of the believers, and we're going to go over that
• 1:04:57
  doctrine later, but it was the priesthood of believers that recognized what
• 1:05:02
  God's inspired text was.
• 1:05:04
  They're the ones that recognized the correct line of manuscripts that honored
• 1:05:10
  the theological unity and integrity of God himself.
• 1:05:14
  They didn't attack the deity of Christ. It doesn't attack the blood atonement.
• 1:05:18
  It doesn't attack the virgin birth. It doesn't attack the resurrection.
• 1:05:22
  Okay? So, that's what we see in
• 1:05:25
  these line of Bibles that eventually culminated in the King James Bible.
• 1:05:30
  So, because of the divine origin of Scripture and the necessity for it being
• 1:05:35
  the precondition of all truth, the self-attestation and sufficiency of Scripture,
• 1:05:40
  the promise of providential preservation, and the principle of identifying the
• 1:05:46
  correct historical text— The conclusion is, therefore, the King James Bible
• 1:05:50
  is the preserved word of God is the sole final authority for all matters of faith and practice.
• 1:05:55
  Acting as the final arbiter over tradition, reason, and all human institutions.
• 1:06:01
  Now, how do we connect the premises to the conclusion? Here's the inference.
• 1:06:04
  If the Bible is the divinely inspired precondition of truth,
• 1:06:09
  and if God fulfilled his promise to preserve the word in a pure manuscript stream
• 1:06:14
  that is sufficient for all matters of faith,
• 1:06:16
  then any authority added to or placed above this preserved word of God is a
• 1:06:23
  rejection of God's command.
• 1:06:25
  Therefore, we must have a perfect Bible today, and we argue that it's the King
• 1:06:29
  James Bible, that it's representative. So, the King James Bible is the final
• 1:06:33
  divinely preserved authority for faith and practice. That's what we say.
• 1:06:36
  It represents the pure Antiochian manuscript stream.
• 1:06:40
  Manuscript stream. I keep saying screen.
• 1:06:43
  Surpassing all human tradition and reason, it's the inerrant word of God,
• 1:06:47
  it is sufficient, and it is the objective standard by which every theological
• 1:06:51
  claim, every theological argument, every theological doctrine,
• 1:06:55
  and every church institution is judged by.
• 1:06:58
  So, what is the first Baptistic distinctive?
• 1:07:03
  It is that the Bible is the sole and final authority for all matters of faith and practice.
• 1:07:09
  So, that's the argument. That's the first one when we're arguing about why we're Baptists.
• 1:07:14
  It's because Baptistic people have always put the Bible as a final authority.
• 1:07:20
  So if you go to a church or a denomination, I don't care what the label is,
• 1:07:23
  doesn't matter, and they add tradition over Scripture,
• 1:07:27
  they add experience over Scripture, scholarship over Scripture,
• 1:07:30
  then I'm sorry, that doesn't match or fit the pattern of the New Testament church,
• 1:07:36
  period. I like the three aspects.
• 1:07:39
  You could be anybody that's searching for a church to go through or go to.
• 1:07:44
  And if, like you just said, those three are in there, it's an indicator of some sort of compromise.
• 1:07:52
  And it's a quick way to identify that there's a problem here.
• 1:07:55
  That's right. You have the Word of God. I'd say that's a huge takeaway.
• 1:08:01
  And if people ask you, hey, why are you Baptist? I mean, that's one way to articulate it.
• 1:08:07
  We put the Bible first over everything. It's scripture, scripture alone.
• 1:08:12
  There's nothing else to add to it. It's scripture alone, and that's the bedrock of our understanding.
• 1:08:17
  So, if there's one thing anybody can walk away with, one thing that they can
• 1:08:22
  get out of it is why you're a Baptist is because of scripture alone.
• 1:08:26
  You don't need anything more than that. We just say the Bible is the supreme
• 1:08:28
  authority for our church.
• 1:08:30
  It's above the pastor. It's above the congregation. It's above the presbytery,
• 1:08:35
  the elders, the deacons, whatever group you want to say,
• 1:08:38
  that the ultimate authority that dictates how we should practice our faith and
• 1:08:43
  what we should believe is rooted in scripture, period.
• 1:08:46
  Is the unshakable standard the ultimate judge over all human reason,
• 1:08:52
  tradition, and personal experience.
• 1:08:55
  I think that's it. Anything more to add? I'm afraid to ask.
• 1:08:59
  No, I just want to, that's why my recommendation to our listeners is write the
• 1:09:05
  acrostic down in your Bible, B-A-P-T-I-S-T. So, B, Bible is our final authority.
• 1:09:12
  A, autonomy of the church. We'll go into that in the next session.
• 1:09:16
  P, priesthood of believers, priesthood of all believers.
• 1:09:19
  T is two ordinances, which is baptism and Lord's Supper.
• 1:09:23
  I is individual soul liberty.
• 1:09:25
  S is saved, regenerated membership of the church. T are two offices,
• 1:09:31
  which is bishop and deacon or pastor and deacon.
• 1:09:34
  And then the last S is separation of church and state. So if you want to join a church,
• 1:09:41
  or if you're looking for the right church to join, you can use that acrostic
• 1:09:47
  as kind of a measurement tool to determine, you know, is this the best church to be a member of?
• 1:09:53
  If you go to the church because they have a coffee bar, or you go to the church
• 1:09:56
  because they have big movie screens, or you go to the church because you like
• 1:09:59
  the rock music that's playing there, you know what I mean?
• 1:10:02
  If you like it because the guy wears shorts and he just likes to do a little
• 1:10:06
  talk, and Scripture's obviously not their final authority.
• 1:10:10
  Scripture doesn't dictate their standards.
• 1:10:13
  Scripture doesn't dictate their music.
• 1:10:16
  Don't—that's the wrong church. Run as fast as you can from that location.
• 1:10:21
  That is not the right church.
• 1:10:22
  Well, as appealing as it can be to have a coffee bar nearby.
• 1:10:26
  I'd love to have one, too. But that's not—again, if that's the only reason—
• 1:10:30
  Is that the focal point? You're choosing the wrong church.
• 1:10:34
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:10:37
  All right, we'll close up number two here. So, we covered the first,
• 1:10:41
  the introduction in the previous episode. So, if folks haven't had a chance
• 1:10:46
  to check that out, do that. It's a good foundation.
• 1:10:49
  And this is a solid one to start with. It's easy. It's the Bible.
• 1:10:54
  Yeah, and you'll find that all the other points, right? the A-P-T-I-S-T,
• 1:10:59
  all those hinge on this first one.
• 1:11:02
  Yeah, so it all makes sense. There's a logical sequence to all of this,
• 1:11:07
  which is good. They all tie together.
• 1:11:10
  So, yeah, catch the first one. If anybody has any questions or would like to
• 1:11:15
  ask anything about this or other topics, feel free to email us at theimmutableword at gmail.com.
• 1:11:21
  Yeah, and I said before that, you know, we can give you a quick one-pager.
• 1:11:27
  You can print it up, put it inside your Bible, and it'll cover the basic acrostic
• 1:11:31
  and what each of them mean and the scriptural support for it.
• 1:11:36
  So, if you guys want that, just email us and we can get that to you.
• 1:11:39
  And believe it or not, I'll be working on the website. What? So, hopefully.
• 1:11:44
  Yeah, I know. It's crazy, right? Oh, speaking of which, a little plug-in.
• 1:11:48
  So, Brother Randy Keener, they're the ones that host the podcast Unmovable Apologetics.
• 1:11:55
  They started a website called watchmanswarning.com.
• 1:12:00
  And maybe we can put that, plug that into the description. But in Watchman's
• 1:12:04
  Warning, so not only does it have their podcast episodes and articles that Brother
• 1:12:09
  Keener and Brother Caleb Hickman, they're the two hosts of the podcast,
• 1:12:13
  they put them, but they also started putting articles that I've written as well on there.
• 1:12:19
  And they're also promoting our podcast as well. So check them out.
• 1:12:23
  They've got really good material.
• 1:12:25
  And their theme is very similar to ours. You know, it's apologetics,
• 1:12:30
  it's biblical truth, doctrine, Baptist history, things like that, that they cover as well.
• 1:12:34
  So, it's a great resource for Christians out there. Nice.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah, we really got to have them on the podcast at some point soon. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:12:41
  So, I know we've been talking about it. But yeah, we'll put that in the description
• 1:12:46
  and the links and all that stuff so that people can navigate and see all your authorship.
• 1:12:51
  Yeah. I write very short articles so that I don't— I'm not in danger of making a ton of mistakes.
• 1:12:59
  So it's like the more succinct and brief and concise I write,
• 1:13:04
  the less mistakes I'll make.
• 1:13:06
  That's why you have a... That's right. Check your work, validate it.
• 1:13:10
  I fondly, yeah, I fondly invested in Grammarly, man. That's actually a very
• 1:13:14
  good tool. I appreciate Grammarly quite a bit. It's a great investment.
• 1:13:17
  Yeah. Every time it corrects me and I write, because I'll just write stuff off the top of my head.
• 1:13:23
  No, sometimes it's just like, it's a horrible mess, grammatically speaking.
• 1:13:27
  I think of our dad. Our dad was so horrible at spelling mistakes and grammar.
• 1:13:32
  It looked like he wrote stuff with a crayon. Smartest guy I knew.
• 1:13:36
  But he was horrible when it comes to grammar and stuff. It was so funny.
• 1:13:40
  Yeah, we ought to put some pictures up of, so we have the Bible and our logo,
• 1:13:44
  right? And you see all the notes written in big block letters.
• 1:13:48
  But we ought to put some pictures of that up. Yeah, that was good.
• 1:13:51
  For posterity's sake, it is pretty funny.
• 1:13:54
  But yeah, good stuff. All right, man, we'll go ahead and wrap it up there.
• 1:13:57
  We'll see everybody next week. We'll probably do number three next week or maybe
• 1:14:01
  throw a different episode just to kind of mix things up.
• 1:14:05
  Yeah, I've been thinking about, you know, probably wouldn't be,
• 1:14:08
  since Easter is this Sunday, maybe our next episode we could do something on
• 1:14:12
  the resurrection. I think that'd be good.
• 1:14:14
  Maybe we'll do something like that next. That would be really good to cover
• 1:14:18
  that in detail, and it's appropriate for the time.
• 1:14:21
  So, yeah, why not? We can have a special Eshtar episode.
• 1:14:24
  Eshtar. That's right. Eshtar.
• 1:14:28
  All right, cool, man. Well, we'll see everybody next week. Thanks for joining us.