The theme for our evangelistic meetings this year is "Timeless" and I am giving the second talk in the series tonight on the "Timeless Word." I wanted to pass my notes along to you. So here they are attached below. I hope you enjoy the reading.
Timeless Word
Timeless:
1. remaining invariable throughout time
2. having no beginning or end
-Enduring, ageless, eternal, undying, everlasting
God’s word is Timeless…enduring.
• Don’t know what your opinion of the Bible is…there are lots.
a. A Good book. A bogus book. A book that has changed many lives. A book that is for some and not for others. A confusing book. A book about God.
b. Whatever your opinion about this Timeless and Controversial book, I would like everyone tonight to ask themselves this question.
• Can the Bible really be God’s way of speaking to me?
• Different arguments people have against God’s word…how it stands up to them. Use stories to illustrate arguments and how they have been refuted
a. Not historically accurate
• Jericho
1. This has been one story that people often have used to say the bible is not accurate because the account of the battle of Jericho as portrayed in the bible could not have happened.
2. Walls collapsed outward when armies siege a city, they are pushed inwards. There had been no city found where the Bible said it was suppose to be
3. In 1930 it was found by archaeologists. Professor John Garstang, British archaeologist said “As for the main, fact there remains no doubt that the walls fell outward so completely that the attackers would be able to clamber up and over their ruins into the city.” -Kennedy
• Events in Acts
1. Sir Willam Ramsay was a wealthy atheist with a Ph.D from Oxford in England. He set out on an archeological expedition to disprove the events recorded in the book of Acts
2. What happened? He spent 25 years doing research and wrote book after book. This was his final conclusion, he uncovered hundreds of things that proved the accuracy of the book of Acts, and he declared that the book of Acts was exact in its description of history down to the most minute of details. At the end of his research he converted to Christianity -Kennedy
• Millar Burrows from Yale, wrote this “In many cases archaeology has refuted the views of modern critics. In an number of instances it has been shown that these views rest on false assumptions and unreal artificial schemes of historical development. The excessive skepticism of many liberal theologians stems not from careful evaluation of the available data, but from an enormous predisposition against the supernatural.” -Kennedy
b. Translations have been messed with…not authoritative
• It would be reasonable to expect errors in the copying of the Bible over the last 3 thousand years, especially since copies were made by hand…some monk in a church…not Kinkos. How do we know that the Bible we have today is the same as the original? Or Is the Bible Authoritative? –Pope
• 2 ways Historians prove how authoritative a historical document is.
1. How close the oldest copy is to the original.
2. How many times the document has been copied and how similar those copies are.
• Until 1947 the oldest copies of the Old Testament in their original language, Hebrew, were dated to the 800’s. They were only copies of a few books. -Pope
• 1947 Dead Sea Scrolls found…they were dated to 100 B.C. They had copies of every book of the Old Testament. And Those copies were almost exact compared to our other documents. The differences they found were in punctuation. -Pope
• No other historical book can boast anything like this. The closest historically authoritative document to the bible is thousands of times less historically authoritative.
• Why is it even important for the Bible to be God’s timeless word…standing up against all criticism? It is important to know that the Bible is God’s word and trustworthy because the Bible tells us how we can know God…how we can have a relationship with God.
a. We lost it all
• Mention the fall and sin
• What did we lose…a relationship with God b/c we are born spiritually dead
• Ephesians 2…dead.
b. He did it all
• God became man, Jesus, to show us what it is like to have a relationship with God.
• Then he died that we might live…that we might live in relationship with him.
• Bible tells us the way to life in this relationship is to trust Jesus and love Jesus
c. We get it all
• We get the desire of our hearts, eternal beauty, joy, bliss
• This is found in a relationship with God.
• Heaven…by the way is not some sing-along in the sky forever.
• If you have never really read God’s word asking it to speak into your life…a great place to start is the Gospel of John.
