(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Now, the part of the chapter that I'd like to focus on there in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 is just the very beginning of the chapter where the Apostle Paul says, And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. And then this is the key verse that I want to home in on, verse 5, That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. So what I want to preach about tonight is the subject of what is the place of our faith, what does our faith stand in? What do we have our faith in? Why do we believe what we believe? Why do we believe the Bible? Why do we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Why do we believe that this book is the word of God? Now different people will say, well, you know, there's all this evidence that supports the Bible and it's scientific and it's historical. But is that really why you believe the Bible? Do you tonight believe the Bible? Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ because you've seen scientific evidence? Or because of a historical record somewhere? Or because of what a scholar has taught you? Does your faith stand in the wisdom of men tonight? Or does your faith stand in the power of God? Now all of us, when we got saved, our faith was based upon the word of God. I mean the Bible clearly tells us, so then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. You know, we know that the sower sows the word and he sows it upon the good ground and he sows it among thorns and all these different things. You see, when somebody first hears the Gospel, they hear the word of God. What causes one person to believe on the word of God and another not to? Well, it's a personal choice that one makes to believe the word of God. But what is that faith based on? It's based upon the word of God itself. Basically we hear the word of God and we believe what we hear. Why do we believe it? Because of the power of God's word. You see, the Bible, God's word, is unlike any other book that exists on this planet. Unlike any other book that has ever been written. And so the greatest proof, in fact the only real proof that the Bible is the word of God is the Bible itself. The Bible is the proof. Because when we look at the Bible, we see the awesome power of God's word and we see a book that has never been able to be imitated or duplicated successfully. Because only God could write the Bible. Man couldn't write the Bible. For example, we look at all the other things that God made. You know, God created us as human beings. And with all the scientific advances that science has made, they cannot create life. Even the lowliest of God's living creations, you know, if we were to go down to the single celled organism of, you know, the paramecium or the amoeba, and all the way up through the animal kingdom, we think about different types of animals, all the fishes and all the different reptiles and amphibians. Even the quote-unquote simplest of them, man can't create, man can't duplicate because there are just many things that only God can create and only God can do. You know, you even look at the magicians that faced off with Moses in the book of Exodus and they were able to duplicate some of the miracles that Moses did. You know, turning their rod into a serpent and causing water to turn into blood. The magicians used enchantments to perform miracles and lying signs and wonders, but yet there was a line that they just couldn't cross and they basically were unable to turn the dust into lice. They were unable to perform some of the miracles and they said of Moses, you know, this is the finger of God. I mean, Moses is doing miracles that cannot be duplicated. And we know that only God has created the human beings that are on this planet, the animals that are on this planet. And we know that when we look at God's Word, we're looking at the creation of God. This is a book that was produced by God, written by God. In fact, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And so man has frequently tried to duplicate the Bible or create imitations of the Bible whether it be the Book of Mormon, whether it be the Koran, whether it be the Apocrypha. You know, man's feeble attempt to produce scriptures of the caliber of the Bible and it always fails miserably. Why? Because the Bible is an amazing, powerful book that man cannot even come close to creating. That's where my faith is tonight. The reason I believe the Bible tonight is because I've heard the words of the Bible and the power of God's Word is what convinced me of the truth of God's Word. My faith is in the Word of God. My faith has come through hearing the Word of God. And every one of us, when we got saved, we heard the Word of God and we believed the words that we heard because of what those words said. But then what's interesting is that later, after people have been saved a long time, they start feeling like they need to place their faith in something else. And they have these classes sometimes, you know, and I don't know a whole lot about this, I don't really care about it because I just care what the Bible says. But you know, I know in these seminaries and Bible colleges, they have classes of apologetics. And sometimes these classes of apologetics are saying, you know, we need to be able to give a reason for the hope that we have in Christ Jesus, which, you know, is true. We do need to be ready to give an answer and give a reason and be able to explain why we believe the Bible and why we believe in Jesus Christ. But often these people are coming to the wrong conclusion because they want our faith to stand in the wisdom of men. They basically want to say, well, we believe the Bible because look at all this scientific proof of God's existence. First of all, scientific proof of God's existence does not prove that the Bible is true. Or they'll say, well, we, you know, we have all this historical documentation to prove that the Bible is true because, for example, you know, the Bible talks about the Hittites and lo and behold, there were people called the Hittites. Therefore every word of the Bible must be true. That is a faulty logic. Just because the Bible talks about things that really existed does not mean the Bible is true. You say, well, how do you know the Bible is true? Because of the power of God. That's how I know the Bible is true. It has nothing to do with, you know, a historian or a scientist or a scholar or all these facts and information that are always being disputed and argued over. You know, that is for people of very little faith. If you need a bunch of scientific evidence to believe the Bible and a bunch of historical, you probably just don't have any faith because our faith is when we hear the word of God and we believe the word of God. You say, well, do you just believe everything you hear? No. I don't believe the word of God because the word of God has power. Other things I listen to and hear don't have power. And that power is lacking and that power is not evident. Now let me show you some scriptures here to show you where our faith should stand and to show you why the word of God is powerful, how we know it when we hear it, and the impression that it makes upon us. Look if you would to John chapter 7. We're going to go through some scriptures in the book of John. John chapter 7. People often say, how do you know the Bible is true and the Quran isn't true or the Book of Mormon isn't true? But look what the Bible says in John chapter 7. This is when Jesus is preaching at the temple and basically there's a warrant out for Jesus' arrest. In fact, a lot of people were thinking that he wasn't even going to show up at the feast because these people want him dead, they want him arrested. And so Jesus Christ here begins to preach in the temple and the chief priests and the Pharisees, they send officers to go arrest Jesus in the temple. Look what it says in verse number 44, it says, and some of them would have taken him, but no man laid hands on him. Verse 45, then came the officers to the chief priests and Pharisees and they said to him, why have you not brought him? The officers answered, never man spake like this man. Now look at those words. I mean, here are guys that are just used to just following orders. They're not really used to thinking for themselves. I mean, they're just being said, hey, you need to go arrest this guy. This is their job to go place this guy under arrest. They've got the arrest warrant from the chief priests, from the Pharisees, they're sent to arrest him. And as they're going to arrest him, they hear his word. They hear Jesus preaching. They hear the word of God and they're just unable to arrest him because they're just right there, they just believe the word that they hear. The power of God's word makes such an impact on them that they say to them, never man spake like this man. And honestly, we can to this day say, never man spake like Jesus. You know, Joseph Smith didn't speak like this man, Mohammed didn't speak like this man. I mean, all of the fraudulent and fake scriptures that claim to be God's word, they can't stand up to God's word. They're fraudulent. I mean, you put them next to God's word and they're laughable. They're a joke. And here we see the power of God's word that never man spake like this man. And look at the response from the Pharisees. Then answered them, the Pharisees, are ye also deceived? And watch what they say. Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on him? See these are the type of arguments that people use whose faith is not based on the power of God's word. Because their faith is not based on the power of God's word, because their faith didn't just come through hearing God's word and just believing God's word because it is unlike any other word that they've ever heard, now, you know, they have to go to experts. And they say, well, if none of the rulers have believed on him, if none of the Pharisees have believed on him, if none of the religious experts, well then what he's saying must not be right because these scholars and these experts, you know, they're not confirming the word that he spoke. But see, that's not where our faith is tonight as Christians. Our faith is in the power of God's word. So they appeal to experts, you know, have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Nicodemus saith unto them, he that came to Jesus by night being one of them, doth our law judge any man before it hear him, and know what he doeth? They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophets. Then it's just a personal attack on just where he's from. You know, nothing to do with the content of the word. It says, oh, you just don't know the Bible. These people just don't know the law. Of course, they don't have any particular scripture to point to that contradicts what Jesus is preaching. They just, oh, you just don't know the Bible. Oh, you're from Galilee. The experts don't agree. Okay, now look if you would at John chapter 10. So we see here that in John chapter 7, wouldn't you agree that there was something special about God's word? Where people who'd heard a lot of preaching, they'd heard a lot of religious talk, but when they heard Jesus they said, never man spake like this man. Look at John chapter 10. And the Bible reads in John chapter 10 verse 4, and when he putteth forth his own sheep, talking about the good shepherd or Jesus Christ, when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers. So this is talking about his sheep, which is referring to believers or those that are saved. And the Bible tells us that God's sheep know the voice of the shepherd. They hear his voice and it says a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him, for they know not the voice of strangers. So in John chapter 7 we saw people that were struck by the power of God's word, they instantly believed it to the point where they neglected even to do the job that they were sent to do. But in John chapter 10, do we not see it clearly taught that those who are saved can distinguish between what is God's word and what is not God's word? Didn't the Bible tell us here that when we hear God's word, and we hear something purporting to be God's word, claiming to be the shepherd, but really it's the voice of a stranger, isn't the Bible telling us here that we will be able to know the difference? Jump down if you would to verse number 8. It says, all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. Do you see how the sheep can differentiate between what is the word of God and what is the voice of an imposter? Go to John chapter 16, John chapter number 16 and look at verse number 13. The Bible says in John 16, 13, how be it when he, the spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and he will show you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine and shall show it unto you. So in John 16, 13, the Bible's telling us that the Holy Spirit of God will guide us into all truth. It says he will guide you into all truth, so is it part of being saved, the fact that the Holy Spirit will guide us and show us, hey, this is true, this is not true. And if there's something that we don't understand about the Bible, or if there's something that we don't understand doctrinally, if we ask of God, if we lack wisdom, we ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and abraighteth not and it shall be given him. I mean if we ask but we not receive, if we pray to God and we say, Lord, I want to understand the Bible, I want you to teach me the truth, I want to know whether this is true or whether that is true. I want to know whether the preaching I'm hearing is right. I want to know whether the teaching I'm hearing is right. Is the Holy Spirit there to guide us into all truth? And won't we be able to find the truth? If we seek the truth, we will find it. And if we hear something that's right and something that's wrong, won't we be able to just discern between the two if we're saved? Look at 1 John chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2, and we'll see something similar taught in 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2, the Bible reads in verse 18 of 1 John 2, Little children, it is the last time, and as ye have heard that antichrists shall come, even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us. But they went out, that they might be made manifest, that they were not all of us. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things. I have not written unto you, because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Jump down if you would to verse number 26, it says, these things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. People that are trying to get you to believe false doctrine, trying to trick you, trying to pass off something fraudulent as the word of God, or trying to teach you false doctrine as the true doctrines of God. But look at verse 27, but the anointing, and if we get the context from what we just read, we know that the anointing is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost of God. The Holy Spirit dwells within us that's there to what? Guide us into all truth. And it says here, the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. Now look, do we need to go to scholars and historians and scientists to figure out what the truth of God is? Is that how we figure out what's true? Is that how we figure out what is God's word and what is not? What is false doctrine and what is not? Or do we just need to hear the word of God, and as long as we have the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth, to teach us of all things, and to help us to know the voice of the shepherd when we hear it, and to flee from the voice of strangers, isn't that all we need according to the Bible? We just need the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit to teach us, that's all we need. There's such a colossal difference between that which is spoken by God, written by God, taught by God, and that which has been conceived in the heart of man that is fraudulent, that is false. Go, if you would, to Psalm 19. Psalm chapter 19 in the Old Testament, and while you're turning to Psalm 19, let me read for you from Luke 24. Now in Luke 24, this is when Jesus Christ has already risen from the dead, and He's making appearances unto various of His disciples and various of His followers that had already believed on Him. He's showing Himself alive to them by many infallible proofs, and He shows Himself to some men that are on the road to Emmaus, and at first they didn't know Him. Their eyes were restrained that they couldn't see Him. But in verse 31 of Luke 24 it says, And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him, and He vanished out of their sight, listen to this, and they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us, by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures? So basically the evidence that what they're hearing is legitimate is basically the power of God's Word. I mean, when they heard God's Word, you know, their heart burned within them, okay? And basically when the men heard God's Word in John chapter 7, they said, Never man spake like this man. In John chapter 10, all the true sheep of God, all those who were saved, when Jesus came on the scene, they heard His voice, they recognized it. They said, This is the voice of the shepherd. Other false Jesuses and false Christs and false prophets that had come before, they knew them not. They knew that it was a stranger, they knew it was a strange voice. Look at Psalm 19, and of course this is a psalm that's praising God's Word for its power and so forth, but it says in Psalm 19 verse 7, The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the hard. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. So the Bible is telling us here that if God said it, if it's God's Word, if it's the testimony of God, if it's the statue of God, if it's the Word of God, it's going to be perfect, it's going to be right, it's going to be true, it's going to be clean, it's going to be enlightening, it's going to be pure, it's going to endure forever, it's going to convert the soul, it's going to make wise the simple. I mean God's Word has all this power and all these great attributes associated with it that obviously we should be able to, as believers, identify God's Word. And when we hear God's Word, we'll know, hey that's God's Word, that is true, that is right. And I can't tell you how many times throughout my young life, because I got saved when I was only six years old, and I can't tell you how many times throughout my young life I sat in church and I heard something preached and something just told me, this isn't right. What I'm hearing is just not right. And I couldn't have even told you chapter and verse why what I was hearing was not right, but I just knew this isn't the truth. This isn't right. There's something wrong with this. And I remember when I was growing up we only used the King James, I only had a King James Bible and that's all the churches that we went to use. But I remember when I was about 12 years old we started going to a church that preached the NIV. And I remember just every time I heard the NIV it was just like, there's something wrong with this book. You say, well you're just used to that old Elizabethan English. But that wasn't it. It was just there was something wrong with it, just the weakness. It was just so weak, it just wasn't powerful. It just wasn't pure. It just wasn't God's Word. And you'd hear it and you just knew there was something wrong with it. And I remember I just always stuck with the King James. And I remember my youth leader, when I was 13, taking me aside and saying, why do you have a King James Bible? You can't understand that. You need something easier for you to understand. And I said, well I just like the King James. He said, no, why not get one of these new ones? And I didn't really know what to tell him. I didn't know any of the doctrine, I didn't know the arguments. I just said, well I just want to, and I'm not saying this was right, I'm just telling you what I said. I just want the original. I don't want something modernized. I just want the original. He said, well this isn't the original. I mean the original is in Greek and Hebrew. I said, yeah I know, but I just want the old one. Why? I don't know. And I remember he said, well you know, I just think that maybe they just knew the language better back then. And so since they were closer to the actual, I mean that argument doesn't make any sense, but that's the argument that was made because I didn't have an argument. I didn't know why, but I knew one thing, I wasn't switching to that piece of junk that they were using. I mean that's all I knew. And I couldn't really explain to you why. I couldn't really articulate it in a logical argument that made sense, but I just knew that the book that I read was the Word of God. And I knew there was something wrong with these other new ones. And then I just remember hearing a lot of doctrine that just, I couldn't really tell you why, but I just said, man there's something not right about that. And then later I studied and read and then I found the verses that disproved the stuff that hadn't set well with me. I firmly believed that was the Holy Spirit just guiding me into all truth throughout my young life. Because even as a six year old boy when I got saved, no I hadn't read the Bible much. And by the time I was 13, 14, 15, still had read the Bible little. I had read it some, but somehow though just having the Holy Spirit inside you guides you into all truth and helps you to realize what is right and what is wrong. And when we see scriptures and verses and things that claim to be God's Word, when we hear a preacher who's preaching and he claims to be preaching God's Word, we as God's people can know the difference. You see there's a school of thought out there. It seems that they just discount everything supernatural and they just discount the Holy Spirit out of the equation. They think that we're going to get people saved just by showing them scientific data or historical arguments. You know you can go down to ASU and find these bunch of atheists down there and you can argue with them all day long and you can have all the best arguments in the world, but that's not going to get anybody saved. Because you can't argue somebody into salvation. Because faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. People get saved by hearing the Word of God preached to them. You take the Bible, you preach it to them, they either believe it or they don't. It's their choice, but the Word of God is the evidence. The Word of God bears witness to the truth of itself. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Now it's interesting, I was talking to a guy recently and he was trying to tell me that the Apocrypha was inspired by God or that the Apocrypha should be in the Bible. And he said, yeah, he said, you know, everybody who rejects the Apocrypha, he said none of them have any good reason to reject it. He said they don't have any historical data to reject it, they don't really have any arguments that make sense, and he said, you know, they just reject it just because. Just because they just think it's Catholic so they just don't want it. And I told him, I said, well here's why I reject the Apocrypha, because I actually read a few pages of it and it was just immediately obvious to me this is not God's Word. He said, well are you qualified to make that determination? Well if I have the Holy Spirit inside me and I'm hearing words that are claiming to be God's Word, somebody's claiming that they're God's Word, the Roman Catholics claim that they're God's Word, and when I'm hearing the words, the Holy Spirit's telling me that's the voice of strangers. You know, that's a good enough reason for me to reject the Apocrypha right there. Because if it's not agreeing with the Spirit that's inside of me, you know, then that tells me it's not of the Lord, it's not of God. But it's interesting, I got a few quotes from the Apocrypha here, it's interesting because, you know, I just opened the Apocrypha at random. You know, I didn't really do anything scientific, I didn't read the whole thing cover to cover, but I just started leafing through it and just reading some of the pages. And honestly, the stuff that I was reading, I was just looking at it like, are you serious? And honestly, the thing that's interesting is that when the King James Bible was translated, they translated the Apocrypha also. And if you get an old replica of King James or an original King James, you know, they put the Apocryphal books between the Old and New Testament, not mixed in like in a Catholic Bible, but in a separate section called Apocrypha at the top of every page. And the reason that they put it there, if you look at the writings of these people around that time, they basically put it there as a historical reference. Just like in the original King James, there's all these charts about Easter and calendars and reference material, you know, like you get a Bible, it's got maps and dictionaries. So they put it in there as a reference material. They didn't believe that it was the inspired Word of God. You know, not that I care what they believed or didn't believe. But if you look at the Reformers and people who put it in the Bible between the Testaments, you know, Martin Luther and them, they just believed, well, it's interesting, it's historical, but they did not believe that it was the Word of God or that it was inspired by God. But whether they did or not, if you doubt whether the Apocrypha is inspired by God or that it belongs in the Bible, because look, the Catholics have it in their Bible. Just read some of it and then read some of the Bible. Just compare, for example, there's a book in there called Wisdom. You know, there's Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom of Jesus of Sirach. These books are written in the style of the Book of Proverbs, but if you were to read some of the Proverbs and then read these books, you're going to instantly see a massive difference because the Book of Proverbs is unbelievably deep. I mean, good night. So many people read the Proverb of the Day, right? Where, you know, you take the month, it has about 30 days in it and there are 31 Proverbs. So you know, let's say today's the 29th, you read Proverbs 29. Who does that in here? Who does that all the time? You know, several hands are going up and I like to do that at various points in my life. I don't always do it, but I'll go through phases where I'm always reading the Proverb of the Day and it never gets old. I mean, does it ever get old? I mean, and don't you always learn new things and it's always things that you can apply that day. You open these other fraudulent Proverbs and they are not the same. I mean, you just instantly just look at it and just be like, this is of a lower quality. Now is there anything in the Holy Bible right here that we would look at and say, this is low quality? I mean, think about it. Is there any book in the Bible? Think every book from Genesis to Revelation. Is there any book in the Bible that you look at and say, this just isn't the quality of the rest of the Bible. Even just from a literary standpoint. See, because anything God does is going to be amazing. Anything God does is going to be powerful, it's going to be perfect, it's going to be converting. I mean, but you look at what man does and, you know, can be good, bad, indifferent. So I've just opened up the Apocrypha and just looked at some stuff in it and then I also looked at some verses that other people had compiled from the Apocrypha. You know, first of all, one thing that I noticed that was very strange is that in this book, The Wisdom of Jesus of Sirach, this guy just hated women. Now, you know, when you read the Bible, there's nothing derogatory about women in the Bible, is there? I mean, is the Bible just this book that degrades women? No. I mean, that's what people will accuse it of just because they don't understand what the Bible's teaching that women are supposed to submit to their husbands, obey their husbands, severance their husbands, be obedient in all things. You know, they see that and they think that's degrading, but that's not degrading at all. We know that's not degrading. The Bible has nothing but respect for women, tells us to honor women, but just randomly flipping through this book, Wisdom of Jesus of Sirach, I just noticed he's just attacking women like on every page with just some really offensive statements. Like I thought this was interesting. It says, all wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. Let the portion of a sinner fall apart. So basically it's just like, all the wickedness in this world isn't much compared to like the wickedness of a woman. I mean, that's just the worst. What does he mean by that? And then listen to this, same book. This is chapter 22 verse 3. An evil nurtured son is the dishonor of his father that begat him, and a daughter is born to his loss. So having a daughter is a loss, according to this book. And honestly you can't blame the translation because it's translated by the King James translators. And yet you read it, it doesn't make any sense. It says, and listen to this, listen to this scripture that basically is telling you basically that you can just divorce your wife if you just, if she just won't obey and you just don't like her. I mean, listen to this verse. This is from the same book, the Sirach, chapter 25 verse 25 and 26. Give the water no passage, neither a wicked woman liberty to gad abroad. If she go not as thou wouldest have her, cut her off from thy flesh and give her a bill of divorce and let her go. So here's what the Catholic Bible is saying, or this apocryphal book is saying, that even some non-Catholics have accepted a scripture. It's just telling you, oh, your wife's not going the way you want her to go? Just, you know, I know you've been made one flesh, right? But just cut her off from thy flesh and just send her away, give her a bill of divorce and kick her out. I mean, is that what the Bible teaches? Your wife doesn't do what you want, well then just divorce her and kiss her goodbye. No, the Bible says that God made them male and female. He said, what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. So there's all kinds of contradiction. That was just a few scriptures I found, but it was like whole chapters that just had the word woman in every verse. Oh man, wicked women, oh the wickedness of woman, oh man, you don't want to give birth to a daughter, oh just divorce her, she's an idiot. I'm just like, what is this guy's problem? You know, what is this deal? I think that's all the women's stuff. And then I also, I looked up some stuff, like for example this statement that's made at the end of 2 Maccabees, 1537, it says, Thus went it with Nicanor, and from that time forth the Hebrews had the city in their power, and here will I make an end. The guy writing the book is saying, here will I make an end. And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired, but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto. So basically he's saying after he wrote this whole book that some people are claiming is inspired by God, well that's the end of my story, and you know, if I did a good job, I hope I did, but if I didn't, if it was just a bad job, that's the best I could do. I mean that's basically what he's saying. I mean did you hear when I read it? I know it's kind of weird old English, but you know, that's basically what he's saying. I mean that's not the words of someone who's inspired by God, who's writing down Holy Scripture. It's not even claiming to be inspired itself. The book itself is not even saying that it's inspired by God. Okay how about this? This is from the book of Tobit, okay? This is in every Catholic Bible, and I mean this is the Apocrypha, okay? This is Tobit, and they don't call it the Apocrypha though. Catholics call it the Deuterocanonicals, okay? But anyway, Tobit 6.6, okay listen to this, Then the young man said to the angel, Brother Azarias, to what use is the heart and the liver and the gall of the fish? And he said unto him, Touching the heart and the liver, if a devil or an evil spirit trouble any, we must make a smoke thereof before the man or woman, and the party shall no more be vexed. You were smoking something else besides that fish when you wrote this, alright? But then it says, you know, as for the gall, it is good to anoint a man that hath whiteness in his eyes, and he shall be healed. I thought whiteness in your eyes was pretty normal, but what do I know, right? So basically, you know, you look at these scriptures and again, this is just a few examples. Don't believe me? Pick it up and start reading it. It's nonsense. It's jibber-jabber. I mean, and you know what? Even though there's all this historical evidence that the early church fathers, I mean, they read the Apocrypha. Well, so what? If we look at it and it's nonsense, and it's not of the caliber of the Bible, it's not of the power of the Bible, we instantly know this is not a legitimate scripture of God's word because all scripture is given by inspiration of God and this is clearly not inspired by God because it's false. There are other things in the Apocrypha that talk about, you know, praying for the dead, that they be loosed from their sins. You know, this is perfect for Catholics with their false teaching of purgatory and other things that prop up Catholic doctrine and so forth, you know, telling you that if you, you know, give money to the poor, that's going to basically atone for your sins and, you know, other doctrines that don't appear in the Bible. So you say, well, you know, why, Pastor Anderson, why do we reject the Apocrypha? I mean, it was in the original King James, you know, in that special section between the two testaments. We reject it because it's clearly not inspired by God because you just read it and it's not inspired by God. And the illustration I like to use is that if we took a diamond and a cubic zirconium, who knows what a cubic zirconium is? It's a false diamond. It's a man-made imitation of a diamond. If we put them side by side, you and I from a distance might not be able to tell the difference because we're not experts, but if we took it to a jeweler, he would be able to tell us which one was made by God and which one was made by man. And he wouldn't have to know the history, would he? Would he have to say, well, hold on, where did you get these? Oh, you dug this one out of the earth? It's real. Oh, this one came from a laboratory? It's man-made. Okay? He would just look at them and see the product that man cannot duplicate what God has created. Same thing with the cell phone towers that are made to look like trees. You know, if you say, I've never seen one before. You probably were just duped. You thought it was a real tree. But anyway, you know, you see these cell phone towers and they make it look like a palm tree. And if you're in Northern California, they make it look like, you know, an evergreen or whatever. They make them look all different depending on what part of the country you're in. But they are so fake, I mean, they don't even come close to looking like a real tree. Now, if I told you, hey, that's not a real tree, that's a cell phone tower, well, since when do you have a degree in, you know, since when are you an, what is it, arborist? Arbologist? Are you just making that up? Is that real? Okay. You know, since when are you an arborist or an arbologist? I don't think that's right, but whatever. You know, show me your, oh, since when are you an expert in science? So I guess you wrote your PhD on trees. Your thesis. No, because just anybody, even the layman, can tell that that's not a real tree. Because why? It's man-made. And then you see a tree that God made? It's totally different. And, you know, they're always making artificial flowers and artificial plants. You can tell the difference though, can't you? Because it's so obvious. Well, look, the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, the Quran, whatever fake scriptures, they are like that cubic zirconium. But actually they're not, because the cubic zirconium is pretty convincing. I'd probably be fooled by it. They're like that cell phone tower. You know, and here's the thing, to those of us who have the Spirit of God, we think it looks just as ridiculous and just as silly as that cell phone tower. When people quote us the Quran and quote us the Book of Mormon, it's like they're showing us that cell phone tower saying, this is a real tree. But they're blinded, my friend. And listen, people that are not saved. The Bible says that the God of this world has blinded the minds of them which believe not. And many people that are not saved, they cannot tell the difference between the true scriptures and between a fraudulent scripture. They can't tell the difference. Why? Because they don't have the Spirit of God. They have the veil over their eyes when they read. That's why scholars and experts are often fooled and even very smart people and people are thinking, you seem like a very intelligent person, but yet they're often fooled by these things. Why? Because it's a spiritual matter. They are deceived by evil spirits. They're deceived by Satan. We are enlightened by the Spirit of God. That's why they can't see it and we can. It's interesting, there's this other fake scripture out there called the Gospel of Thomas. Who's ever heard of this? The Gospel of Thomas. The whole building has their hands up. The Gospel according to Thomas. And one of the reasons why this is so well known is because I guess there was a Hollywood movie. I've never seen it or even know what it's about, but apparently there was a Hollywood movie and this Hollywood movie made a big deal about the Gospel of Thomas and how, man, this was hidden away. It's real scripture, but like the church establishment didn't want people to see these scriptures and so they've been hidden, but we're going to find out the truth of Jesus Christ teaching through the Gospel of Thomas. Did anybody see that movie or know what I'm talking about? You know, you're afraid to admit it, but anyway, there's a movie like that apparently. But you know, you saw all the hands all over the building that have heard this Gospel of Thomas. What about the Gospel? I mean, where do you know that it's just Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I mean, what about the Gospel of Thomas? Well I've got here in my hand the Gospel of Thomas printed off the internet where all truthful and righteous things are to be found. So I printed this off, the Gospel of Thomas. I mean, you don't need to be an expert, folks, to figure out that this is not real. First of all, it doesn't even tell the story of Jesus' life. Doesn't even talk about his death, burial, and resurrection at all. It basically just is a list of just quotes of Jesus. These are the sayings of Jesus. I read what some experts had to say about the Gospel of Thomas. They said, because we have a manuscript of the Gospel of Thomas dating back to around 200 AD, this is showing us a really early version of the Gospel. You know, I mean, this is before it had been, you know, perfected. So this is more like the early view of Jesus' sayings. And basically the view that later on it was changed to be like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But hold on a second. Is 200 AD really that early? What year approximately was Jesus Christ crucified? Like what, 33 AD approximately? So isn't 200 like 167 years later? So think about 167 years ago. What if a book was written 167 years ago and then we're just writing a new version of it or a new copy of it today in 2013? What year was it 167 years ago? Do we have any math savants in the room that could tell us just instantly, just that fast? Come on, that fast. It's already too late. What? You got a calculator? 1846. So a book that was written in 1846, right? If we have one that was printed in 2013 of that book that was written in 1846, that's pretty early, right? No it's not. That's hundreds of years later. But anyway this Gospel of Thomas and these experts say this is probably more accurate to what Jesus actually taught than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John because it's such an old manuscript from 200 AD. Just listen to some of the Gospel of Thomas and tell me if this sounds like it belongs in the Bible. And then this is what the Catholics will try to tell you. Like, well if it weren't for the Catholic church, you wouldn't even know what books to put in the Bible. Who's ever heard that? The Catholics are the ones who decided which books went in the Bible and which ones didn't at the council of whatever. You know, all these different councils that they had. You know, the Catholics are the ones who gave you your Bible. Of course their Bible has different books in it than ours, but whatever. But they're like Catholics are the ones who even decided what... It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are inspired by God since every single page of them is filled with power and filled with wisdom and filled with perfection. And when you read them, your heart burns within you, doesn't it? I mean when you're saved, you know it's God's word when you read, it's powerful. Let's see if the Gospel of Thomas, everybody, who here has the Holy Spirit living inside them tonight? Okay, well then you should be able to tell whether the Gospel of Thomas is legit or not, right? Okay. Now the Gospel of Thomas is not broken into chapters, it's just like 114 quotes. It's like 114 verses, okay? Here's verse 114. Tell me if this sounds legit to you. Simon Peter said to him, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life. What is with this anti-woman stuff? Good night. Wait, oh, you think that's weird? Wait until you hear what Jesus replied. Jesus said, I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven. Yet a minute ago I said, who's heard of the Gospel of Thomas? Every hand in the room goes up. Why? Because there's all this talk about, oh, the Gospel of Thomas, ooh, the Gospel of Thomas, ooh, something's missing. And here's what's funny. People who haven't even read the whole Bible are out looking for some other scripture. I mean somebody who hasn't even read the whole Bible, ooh, the book of Enoch, ooh, the book of Thomas. Why don't you read the 66 books God gave you about 30 times, then we'll talk. People who haven't even read it once cover to cover their, ooh, these other scriptures. Okay I mean is that the weirdest thing you've ever heard in your life? Okay I got more here. How about number 15? Jesus said, when you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your Father. What in the world? I mean Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, he was born of woman. What is this talking about? And again, more anti-woman talk, it's strange isn't it? Listen to number 30. Jesus said, where there are three gods, they are gods. Where there are two or one, I'm with them. I mean this doesn't even make grammatical sense, folks. Okay listen to this, here's number 37. His disciples said, when will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you? Jesus said, when you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the Son of the Living One and will not be afraid. Now look, these scholars, man, these guys know what they're doing don't they? Who even took the time to translate this? Who even wrote this, it's weird. Okay listen to this, 42, this one's really deep guys. I mean you know those really profound short statements in the Bible like Jesus wept, pray without ceasing? Listen to this one, Jesus said, become passers-by, period. What in the world? Okay listen to this. This is number 53, number 53. You don't need a degree in theology, folks, to figure out where the Word of God is. I mean look, do you ever feel this way when you're reading Genesis through Revelation? But everybody's out searching for some other scripture, some other revelation, some other prophecy. Look, why don't you just realize the treasure that you have in your hand with the holy, perfect Word of God. Look this is how the Book of Mormon is, this is how the Quran is. Whenever you read this stuff, it always comes out like this. It's true. Listen to this, this is what did I say, number 53? His disciples said to him, is circumcision beneficial or not? He said to them, if it were beneficial, their father would beget them already circumcised from their mother. I mean this is crazy. Listen to this, okay and this one just, I know this is hard to believe, but this one just take the cake. That's why I saved it for last, okay, 108. I know it's hard to believe that anything could be weirder than what you just heard, but 108, Jesus said, he who will drink from my mouth will become like me, I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will become revealed to him. And look, what they do though, now look there's 114 of them, I just read for you 7 of them that were hand picked, the 7 weirdest ones out of 114, but here's what they do, a lot of those other 114 are just quotes from the Bible, just from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to mix in to make it seem real because there's a lot of good statements in there that are just plagiarized from the other books and then some of them are straight from Matthew, Mark and Luke and then maybe just a little change, just a little different, just a little tweak. The devil always tries to mix in a little truth with the lie, but look, I don't think anybody here is going to say, well I need to look into the book of Thomas a little more, you know, I need to do a little more research, you need to get your facts together Pastor Anderson, no because you just look at it and you just know it's trash, same thing. You know, look at the book of Enoch, it's nonsense. It's just this mumbo jumbo, blah, blah, blah, I just barely glanced at it and I saw this one part that people have often quoted, you know this whole teaching of the hybrid human angel thing which is not biblical, but basically it said that these women, you know, that had these relations with angels or whatever, this false doctrine. It said that they beget children that were 300 cubits tall. That's pretty tall. Now you say, well I don't know what a cubit is. A cubit is a foot and a half, okay. Now turn if you would to 1 Samuel chapter 17, 1 Samuel chapter 17. Because 1 Samuel 17 tells us about a man who was a giant, right, Goliath. The Bible talks about the men who were the Anakims, the sons of the giant, and it talks about Sihon and Og, king of Bashan, king of the Amorites, and it talks about how big their bed was, it talks about how tall they were, and when the Bible talks about these giants it actually gives us a size associated with it, okay. Look how tall Goliath was. It says in verse number 4, there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Geth whose height was 6 cubits and a span. Six cubits, that would be about 9 and a half feet, and a span, talking about the size of someone's hand. So what we're talking about is someone who's just a little over 9 and a half feet tall. That's what the Bible's talking about, giants. It's not talking about a guy who's 450 feet tall. Okay, a 45-story building. Think about a 45-story building. I mean, imagine giving birth to that. That's going to be a Caesarian, you know what I mean? Can you imagine? So what I'm saying is, you know, don't let people spoil you with this vain tradition or with this scholarship or with their history or with their science. You know, they just come at you with the experts and the facts. Look, if that's what you're going to base what you believe on, if you're going to sit there and look at all the facts and the history and the evidence and the science behind it, look, you know what's fact to me? What this book says. Because honestly, I've read this book for my whole life, I grew up reading it, I read it every day, and every day I'm amazed by it. Every day I'm in awe of it. Every day I love it. Every day I learn from it. And no matter how many times I read the same passage over and over again, I'm constantly seeing new things. I'm constantly learning new truths. It's constantly teaching me and correcting me and guiding me and the Holy Spirit opens it up to me every time I read it and it's clearly God's Word and then anything else that's put in front of you where somebody says this is God's Word, you read it and it's just evident, oh but you don't know the history, it doesn't matter. It's fake. It's fraudulent. I mean the Bible even talked about the fact that when a false prophet comes to you he might even perform miracles. But if what he's saying doesn't jive with the word that you've already heard, don't believe him. Paul said if anybody comes to you preaching any other gospel, let him be accursed. The Antichrist will do lying signs and wonders. Janus and Jambres did lying signs and wonders in front of Moses in the book of Exodus. And what happens is the Bible, for example in the book of Jude, gives us a prophecy that Enoch gave verbally. It doesn't say that he wrote a book, but that he verbally gave that prophecy, then what somebody does is they go and they go write a book of Enoch just like the Bible talks about the book of Jasher. Just like the Bible talks about, go to the end of 1 Chronicles, 1 Chronicles chapter 29. You say, well why do you even preach on this? Because we want to know why we believe what we believe. This is your apologetics class. You know why you believe what you believe? Because the Bible is powerful, the Bible is always right, the Bible never contradicts itself, the Bible is filled with power, the Bible can save your soul. And all these other books, they're weak, they're empty, they're void of all these things. Look at, for example, 1 Chronicles chapter 29. It says in verse 29, Now the acts of David the king, first and last, behold they are written in the book of Samuel the seer, and in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the book of Gad the seer. So look, these are books that we don't have today. It's not that we're missing anything of God's word. First of all, sometimes when the Bible makes reference to other books, like in Esther 10 it says the books are the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia, or for example, the book of Jasher is referenced, a lot of this could just be referring to books. Not necessarily that they're the word of God, but that they're just books. I mean who here reads books other than the word of God sometimes? Of course, because there are all kinds of books in this world. Just because the Bible references a book doesn't mean that it's inspired by God. Now these books right here, if we have a book that's called the book of Nathan the prophet, you know we can assume that that's probably his prophecies that were the word of God. That's him prophesying the word of God. But what we probably have is we have those in another book of the Bible. Those same prophecies. God did not preserve the book that Nathan wrote, or the book that Gad wrote, but that if what was in those books was God's word, which it probably was, it's just preserved somewhere else. For example, the Bible makes it clear in Matthew, it talks about the fact that it was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, and then it quotes Zechariah, the book of Zechariah. Now look, who lived first, Jeremiah or Zechariah? Jeremiah lived long before Zechariah. Jeremiah was preaching before they went into the 70 years captivity, Zechariah is preaching after. So these men are separated by about a hundred years in time. So that means that stuff that was written in the book of Zechariah, God's words that are written in the book of Zechariah, were being preached by Jeremiah a hundred years before that. Maybe even before Zechariah was even born. So just because Zechariah is the one who wrote it down in the Bible, Jeremiah preached that a hundred years earlier. Just because Jude is the one who wrote it down in the Bible, Enoch preached it thousands of years before. It's God's word, it was spoken by the prophets. And so we are not missing anything today, because God promised to preserve His word, He said heaven and earth shall not pass away, but My words shall not pass away. So if the book of Gad was God's word, those words have not passed away, they're found somewhere else in the Bible. Somewhere else, it was just a historical account that those men wrote, maybe they were just chronicling the kingdom, and it was just a historical book. It wasn't inspired, it wasn't God's word, so it's not preserved. But look, if it isn't preserved, it's not God's word. And obviously Satan has an agenda to produce imitations, to produce fraud, hey, cunningly devised fables, Jewish fables. The Bible commands us to flee these things and avoid these things. Stay away from these things, look. If a book is mentioned in the Bible, book of Jasher, book of Enoch, don't you think Satan is smart enough to think, hmm, the book of Enoch doesn't exist. The book of Jasher no longer exists, let's make one. And let's put a bunch of stuff in it that's true, but then let's put a bunch of false doctrine in it. This is the book of Enoch, this is the book of Jasher, but you know what, any saved person can tell that this stuff is not legitimate. And we need to stop going and searching for, you know, for some lost unicorn of God's word and just read the Bible. And you know, you say, well Pastor Anderson, I don't want to just put my trust in you to tell me what's right and what's wrong. Look, if you're saved and you've got the whole experience, you'll be able to tell that these things are fraudulent. Anybody doubt? Katarmas is fake? I mean look, wisdom of Sirach, whole bunch of stuff contradicting God's word. Tobit is telling you to smoke a fish if you've got demons. I mean it's just, you know, if you're troubled by devils, why don't you get saved? And if you're saved, then that wicked one touches you not. So anyway, I just wanted to preach this message tonight just to show you, you know, where does our faith lie? Why do we believe what we believe? Where's the evidence? Why do we accept these 66 books and no other? What makes these 66 books different? Well you know what? If you have to even ask, you weren't listening to the sermon. There's a colossal difference between these books and any other book that's ever been written. And the only people who say, well I can't see the difference. I can't see the difference between the Tao Te Ching and the Bible. I can't see why the Bible's any better than the Quran or the Book of Mormon. It's all just a bunch of fairy tales. They're blinded. Anybody who's saved and has the Holy Spirit in them can instantly tell the difference. Can easily say, whoa, that isn't right. That's not biblical. And then those that are not saved, you know when they hear the Bible, when they hear God's word, you know what? They have the power to get saved because faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God. But their faith needs to rest not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. And remember Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. It's God's word that has the power to save. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for preserving your word for us. We thank you so much for the power of your word that could help us. First of all, it's what God has saved, faith in your word. It's what keeps us saved. It's what shows us how to live our lives. It's the basis of everything we believe, everything that we stand for, everything that we do. Thank you for making it so obvious what is the truth and what is not the truth by making your word so clear, so powerful, so rich. Something that no imposter, no matter how eloquent, could ever even come close to duplicating. We thank you for your word and we love you and in Jesus' name we pray, amen.