Topic: HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE . . . . . . . . . . Mobile Conference 2007 (Read 60486 times)

Kat · « **on:** November 12, 2007, 11:24:36 AM »

Mobile Conference 2007 How We Got The Bible
link to audios
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,2641.0.html
page one:
Audio 1 - 1st and 2nd posts
Audio 2 - 3rd and 4th posts
Audio 3 - 6th and 7th posts
Chart - OT Books - 5th post
Audio 4 - 8th and 9th posts
Masoretic codex pics - 10th post
Audio 5 - 11th, 12th, 13th posts
Audio 6 - 14th and 15th posts
page two:
Audio 7 - 16th and 17th posts
Audio 8 - 18th and 19th posts
Audio 9 - 20th and 21th posts
Spurious passages - 22th post

THE MOST POPULAR BOOK IN HISTORY

Currently the complete Bible is being translated into over 500 languages. The New Testament alone has been published in nearly 1,400 languages, with the Gospel of Mark in over 2,370 languages.

The annual expenditure for Bibles in America is currently nearly a half billion dollars, that’s a lot of money. The average American household contains four Bibles. I have a couple more than that.

Jesus said; “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world for a witness to all nations; and then shall the end come…. And {before the end comes} the gospel must first be published among all nations” (Matt. 24:14; Mark 13:10). Moreover, Jesus said, “The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but My words shall never pass away” (Mark 13:31).

Now either that is true or Jesus Christ is a liar. I mean that’s as simple as it is, right. Either we have these words today or Jesus Christ is a liar. I don’t think Jesus Christ is a liar!

Latin, biblia; Greek, biblion - means book; from sheep and goat skin (vellum) to clay tablets, to papyrus (a reed material along the Nile river). Now we have fine printed paper, as thin as this paper is, it‘s very strong and durable.

The First printed Bible - Gutenberg Bible, a Latin Version (AD 1455). Facsimiles cost $10,000. There are 48 in existence in various conditions, 3 - 10 are nearly perfect (but none are for sale), they are valued at $100,000,000+ each.

The printing press was invented about AD 1450. Within a few years the Bible went to print in Latin, though it’s a Vulgate Bible. So the first Bible was a Vulgate, and you can buy a reproduction of it. It’s where they photographed the pages, so it’s the exact thing only photographed and then they bind it in a book, it’s for $10,000. From the wed site that I borrowed some of the material (the chronology order of the English versions), you can buy one page of a real Gutenberg Bible. Just one page... in other words they took a Bible and they are just selling it by the page and you can buy one page for $100,000.

Now a lot of Gutenberg’s, well people say they are valued at 20 million, 30 million, 40 million, or 50 million, whatever. But of course that is what they were valued if people owned them 20 or 30 years. The truth of the matter is there is not one Gutenberg Bible for sale any where in the world. They think there were 185 copies and believe it or not, there are 48 left, which is amazing. After 550 years there are still 25% of them left, of the 48. But greatsite.com says if one ever did come up for sale at Sotheby’s or someplace, it would probably go between 1-2 hundred million dollars! So that’s a pretty valuable book.

My Old German Bible... this Bible looked this old, just like this, 100 years ago. I’m 66 and I remember when I was a little boy and this was the exact condition it was in, it hasn’t changed one wit. So for it to get into this condition it took a couple of hundred year more than that. Now this Bible is in the first European language. Unfortunately the first few pages are missing, close to 25 or 30 pages are missing, so I don’t have the date when this edition was made. But there were 3 editions, the first 1743, 1763 and 1776, so it’s one of those. Either way it doesn’t matter which edition it is, it’s a couple of hundred years old. It’s not worth anything really, it’s worth something to me, but it’s not worth a lot of money, maybe 3 or 4 hundred dollars, because it’s in bad condition. If it was in mint condition, then it could be worth some money. But collectors are not interested in Bibles that are in this bad condition. Although from about page 30 on it would be considered in perfect condition, there is not a page pulled out anywhere from there. I’ve put tabs in here, and here is where the Apocryphal starts.

All early Bibles have the Apocryphal, you understand that? Wycliffe - The Great Bible - The Bishop’s Bible - The Geneva Bible - Martin Luther’s Bible - The King James - The Catholic Bible - The Vulgate - The Douay - The Rheims, they all had the Apocryphal books. It wasn’t until late in the 1800’s that they did not put the Apocryphal books in and they just had the Old and New Testament.

So I know for sure this one I have is an American Bible printed in one of those 3 dates. Because at least under the New Testament page here, it has it is printed in Philadelphia. I seem to identify with my subjects more if I have a connection and here I have a connection with the first Bible printed in the United States. Just 67 years after printing was invented, Luther printed the New and then the Old Testament. Martin Luther’s Bible was the first complete Bible printed in America.

This Bible’s been in our family I guess maybe a couple hundred years. My great great great grandfather, Abraham Schmidt came to America 4 years earlier in 1739. So when it was printed he was already here. He was German, German reformed. He donated land for building St. Mathews German Reformed Church and cemetery in Kunkletown, Smith Valley, Pennsylvania. Four years later the first European language Bible was printed in America. I don’t know if that Bible came through Abraham Schmidt or which one of my family lines that it ended up in our household. You can buy a facsimile that looks like new for $6000 at great site.com.

But where did ALL these Bibles come from? Where did that German Bible come from? Most importantly, are these Bibles complete? Are Books missing? What about all these Lost Books? You know the Lost Book of Eden - The Book of Enoch - the Book of Jasher and all of these. Which Scriptures did Jesus and the Apostles use? Did the Catholic Church decide what is and what isn’t Canon? How can we know for sure? So we are going to answer these questions.

WHAT IS “CANONIZATION?”

There is nothing mysterious about how or what is meant by canonization. It merely means that a book or writing has to be recognized, approved, or officially used or read or marked or stamped by the highest servants of God, as genuine and inspired of God. Well who does that?

All the examples we have, it was always a very high official of God’s, either a priest - a governor - a king - a prophet. Generally no one less had the authority to say this is Scripture. Now it could be counted Scripture by merely the use of it. If it was used regularly, taught regularly, spoken or read regularly then it was considered Scripture. If it was made part of the ceremony at the Tabernacle and later on even more so at the Temple, like where David set up singers and so on. So then whatever they used was considered Scripture. So it could be by usage, it could be by declaration that someone just says, ‘this is Scripture’ or it could be that they put a stamp on it, like Hezekiah did.

Josiah made all the Scripture in the Square Block form of Hebrew. So any of the old Scripture, if they weren’t Square Block form then you could say, ‘I don’t know if Josiah approved that or not.’ So there are ways we can know what is scripture.

There are 7 periods of making some kind of gesture as to what is the Scripture. What are the Scriptures that are God’s Word, in which God put His approval on the Books that He desired to be collected and maintained as His divine Scriptures? We are going to see how they were passed on.

Now the good thing is we don’t have to go back to Moses and Elijah, Nehemiah, David and Solomon to have a good idea what constitutes Scripture. What authority can we go to, to jump forward a thousand years or so?

THE WITNESS OF OUR LORD
[The Most Credible Witness To The Canon]

Our Lord is, of course the most credible witness as to what should be Scripture and what should be in your Bible that there is.

Now, here we are going to learn some interesting things. The third Synoptic Gospel was written by the physician Luke. Luke was a Greek name, but there are some who contend he was a Jew. I think most scholars think he was a Gentile and there seems to be a good reason for how he wrote, if he was a Gentile.

He was one of Paul’s closest and dearest traveling companions. You can see this in Col. 4:14 and Philemon 1:24 and others. Luke wrote the Gospel according to Luke, and also the Book of Acts, which introduces the Gospel to the Gentiles - Acts 9:15; 10:45; 11:1; 13:47; 15:7; 21:19; 22:21; 26:23; 28:28.

Act 9:15 But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name to the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel:

First He mentions “to the Gentiles” and this is Luke, he wrote this. So Luke is letting the Gentiles know and if you have a red letter edition, that verse is in red, those are the words of our Lord and He said these Scriptures are to go to the Gentiles. Well now if we are going to send ‘the Scriptures’ to the Gentiles, we’ve got to know what ‘the Scriptures’ are, right? Does Luke inform us as to which of these Scriptures, are to be considered the Scriptures, the gospel and all these messages? In Luke 2 it’s a very interesting little story and Luke is the only one that carries it. My Bible heading says ‘Simeon’s Prophecy.’

Luke 2:25 And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon…
v. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
v. 30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation
v. 31 Which You have prepared before the face of all peoples,
[Now notice what it says in verse 32]
v. 32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.

Notice that he mentions the gentiles first. This is a little reversal from what the Jews always did and what Paul always did. It was always to the Jews first, then to the Gentiles. Here we have the Gentiles first and then the Jews In the book of Acts we just read, “to the Gentiles” and then to Israel also. Why should that be? Well maybe because we have a Gentile writing it. Maybe he understood already that God was going to leave off with Israel and go predominately to the Gentiles.

I mean Paul still at the end of his ministry, he’s still going to the Synagogue of the Jews, when he goes to a city. But in Palestine Jerusalem he shook the dirt off his feet and said, “I go now to the Gentiles.” (Acts 18:6).

But you see there are some things covered by Luke that aren’t in the other gospels and Luke wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Luke wrote that book. Now let’s turn to something really interesting. So to go among the nations, we already read in Luke 2. Now let’s read this.

Luke 24:46-47 And He said to them, thus it is written, and so it behooved Christ (He is talking about Himself in the third person) to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

So where did Christ according to Luke... because the others don’t word it this way, but Christ did say this. It’s just that Luke was the only one that picked up on it, because he’s a Gentile and this means a lot to him. All nations, okay.

Now it says in verse 46 “thus it is written.” Where is it written? Where is this prophecy that He should go to the Gentiles, where is it written? There was no New Testament yet. Christ hadn’t called Paul yet, there wasn’t no Epistles of Paul. Christ was just resurrected from the dead that day or within so many days. But where is it written? Now we are talking about the Old Testament.

We read something else that the only place in the Bible that you will find it is back in verse 44. We are going to learn where it is written.

TRIPARTITE DIVISION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
THE LAW OF MOSES - THE PROPHETS - THE PSALMS

Luke 24:44 And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in THE LAW OF MOSES and in THE PROPHETS and in THE PSALMS about Me.

There it is. That is called the Tripartite Division of the Old Testament, the Law - the Prophets - the Psalms. The Psalms are also known as ‘the Writings.’ So Christ is telling us there is 3 divisions of Scripture that prophesy and talk about Him; the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.

This is the only New Testament Scripture that mentions this Tripartite Division of the Scripture. The Jews in Jersalem had the proper Scriptures, Rom. 3:2 "...unto them [the Jews] were committed [Gk.- 'put in trust and charge of'] the oracles [Old Testament Scripture - divine utterance, I Kings 6:16, Heb. 5:12, I Peter 4:11] of God." Paul is here confirming that the Jews in fact HAD carried out this commission of the Jews.

But why did Luke record this? Well certainly not for the Jews, they knew what the Scriptures were. The Jews didn’t need to be told what Books constitutes the Scriptures… but maybe the Gentiles did. All you had to do was go to the Temple or go to any Synagogue and you could see what the Scripture are. But these were not the Synagogues of the Gentiles. There were no Synagogues of the Gentiles, they had no Holy Scripture, Hebrew writings or the Law of Moses. So Luke is writing this for the benefit of Gentiles. That’s US! Us Martin Luther people. So we know what scripture we should be looking at, the Law - the prophets - the writings.

You could go into any Temple and say ‘Rabbi, I heard somebody out in the street talking about the Law and the Prophets and the Writings/Psalms, what is he talking about?’

‘Well he is talking about the Scriptures. You see all these scrolls, there is the scroll of Isaiah, see and I’ve got them all up there.’

‘Oh okay, so does everyone know about them?’

'Yes my son, everybody knows. Every Jewish boy for a thousand years knew that.’

‘Is this the only place they can find these, here in the Temple?’

‘Oh no, all the villages and towns that have a Synagogues, they all have them. Right next to Peter house in Capernaum, they have them up there too.’

‘Oh okay.’

You know I wanted to bring a vellum scroll, a sheep skin scroll. So I checked eBay to see if I could get one. Was I in for a shock. They wear out, so they buy new ones. Now all Synagogues have these vellum scrolls, well they might have paper, but the real orthodox, they had real vellum, you know the skins. So I checked eBay and the cheapest one I could find was $9000 and they only had 3 or 4. They went from 9 to 50,000 dollars. This is for modern scrolls. These might have been made back in the 50’s or 60’s, for $50,000.

So I said, well they’re not going to see those scrolls, I guess. I’ll bring my old Germany Bible, that’s an original.

So everybody knew what these were, except maybe the Gentiles. Luke is a Gentile, writing to the Gentiles and that’s 'us' people. Now we know whatever constitutes the Laws, the Prophets and the Writings to the ancient Jews, that’s the Old Testament. So by the time of Christ, the Old Testament had to be completed, right?

EZRA FINALIZED THE CANONIZATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT:

All other periods of canonization are of little important compared to that of Ezra who made the final decision on all books. Approximately 444 BC Ezra publicly reads The Law in Jerusalem (Nehemiah 8 & 9), and Nehemiah is renamed Governor of Judah and began re-establishing proper worship (Nehemiah 5:14).

Ezra edited some books to make them more understandable. Example: Deut. 34:5-12 was added by Ezra (Moses did not record his own death). Ezra edited numerous books to bring them up to date. He wrote the book of Ezra, Book of Nehemiah was previously known as II Ezra, and he wrote I & II Chronicles. He wrote THE LAST BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT!

There was no new revelation for 450 years, from the time of Ezra back in about 444. So for 450 years that Book is finished, whatever The Laws and The Prophets are, it’s finished. So whatever they had in the Synagogues and in the Temple, those are ‘The Books.’ You don’t need the Catholic church to tell you which Books belong to the Old Testament. Trust me they did not have the Apocryphal in there.

Listen, in the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted by the different writers about 260 or so. Exact scripture are quoted from the Old Testament in the New Testament, Matt., Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and James, they all quoted from the Old Testament.

Kat · « **Reply #1 on:** November 12, 2007, 11:25:09 AM »

   audio 1/page 2

Side note about Ray's Bible ---- King James, Nelson Bible

If you are looking to get a new Bible, I would recommend the one I’ve got here. It’s cheap, I only paid 29 bucks for this. It’s leather, red letter edition, so it has the words of Christ in red, it has headings on all the different things, like ‘The Triumph Entry Into Jerusalem.’ It has a heading, so you don’t need to read twenty verses to find it, because there it is. Here it says, ‘The Cleansing Of The Temple,’ in Luke’s account, then it tells you where to find the same thing in Matthew account - 21 and you find it in Mark - 11. It has that right above it and that’s really handy.

It has this center reference column. There it gives you hundreds and hundreds of scriptures, where it will talk about cleansing the Temple. It has a little a, b or c in the verse, then you look over to the margin for the a, b, or c and it will say, see Jer. 6:4. You go to Jer. and you will read something about God cleansing the Temple. This way you can do a whole Bible study just using the center references. But when you buy this book you get it free. That’s the work of theologians over 2 thousand years. For 2 thousand years theologians would say, ‘wait I read something like that in Jer. or Isaiah.’ So they would go back and start reading maybe 6 chapters to find it again and they would put a little notation in their Bible, see Isaiah 6:64. Well he spent 5 hours to find that. You have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds at your fingertips and you don’t need to spend 2 minutes looking for them. These are marvelous aids.

This Book I have also has a small concordance in the back and one version has maps. There are lots of other things that make it so handy. It’s something like 1200 pages of fine paper, it’s gold leafed and leather. It’s got all these little extra things. In Revelation if you want to find the church of Laodicea it has them all numbered. It has big headings that is so easy and quick to find. It’s great. It has this little margin, I can put all the notes I want in just this little margin here, so it’s big enough. This is good, the Bible I use to use cost right at $200 and to me I would sooner have this one.

King James Bible: Nelson #1755 or #4505BG, Leather, Center Column Reference, Words of Jesus in Red, Concordance (preferably with maps).
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INCREASE OF KNOWLEDGE

Believe me this is no small part of where God said, go your way Daniel; “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” (Dan. 12:4). This is the increase of knowledge. All of these different translations is the increase of knowledge. The internet is the increase of knowledge.

I mean if I had to go to the public library to research what you are holding, 36 pages of notes, it could have taken a year or two. Even so it is sometimes hard to find things. The best thing I could find on the internet about this and I know most of it, but it was a short synopsis of the writers and the Books and I found that on a website that sells books. They had the best historical documentation on the chronological order of the English versions that I could find on the whole internet. So not wanting to reinvent the wheel, I just copied it. But of course I gave them credit, you’ll see I’ve got their website there. But these are marvelous tools.

We are going to look at a couple of Scripture to see there is no question in the minds of the Jews as to what is meant by ‘the Scriptures.’ In Luke 24, here is 2 men on the road to Emmaus, Christ meets up with them and He later makes His identity known.

But we notice in verse 27, “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” Did they have to say, excuse me Lord, what are you talking about ‘the Prophets’? What is that? The ‘Law of Moses’ what are You talking about? Is that a book or what? They knew exactly what ‘Moses’ and ‘the Prophets’ were. They knew! Everybody knew.

It doesn’t mention ‘the Psalms’ here and this is a point we want to learn. That ‘the Psalms’ were also Prophets/prophecies. It doesn’t need to repeat them, because David was a Prophet as well. Any time they were directed towards the scripture, there is no explanation needed.

Acts 17:2 And according to Paul's custom, he went in to them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures…

I don’t suppose he took his own Scriptures, I mean they had them right there in the Synagogues. So they knew what the Scriptures were.

Act 17:11 Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether these things were so.

So they knew what the Scripture were, they had them everywhere. Jesus Christ said these are references to the Word of God - the Law of Moses - the Prophets - the Writings/Psalms. We don’t need to go back to Moses, Ezra or Nehemiah to know what constitutes the Old Testament Scripture, Jesus Christ Himself told us. This was common knowledge everywhere.

When Titus came into Jerusalem in 70AD and burned the Temple and he took everything out, that’s true. He took all the Books, the gold, the furniture, he took it all. But that didn’t end God’s Word. He didn’t go to every Synagogue in Judea and steal their Scrolls. So they had them and they meticulously copied them. I mean when they did a page, they went back and counted the letters, they were very careful about it. If there was one mistake they didn’t scratch it out or use correct-o. No they threw it away and started over, that was a lesson, you don’t make a mistake.

   EYE-WITNESSES OF HIS DEAD

Notice that Jesus said concerning His resurrection: “And ye are WITNESSES of these things.” Many eye-witnesses constitute authentic history. Is that important? Yes! That is mighty important. Witnesses are the major, single most important factor to determine whether or not a historical event is true or not. Did anybody see it? Were there witnesses? We have a multitude of witnesses.

Now what does this tell us? If we can establish… well we already established that Christ said, this is what the Scriptures are. But how do we know we can trust Him?

I get emails all the time, ‘Ray are you still believing in this fable Babylonian bull about Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God?’

I get some that are just irate. After about 3 emails, they will just say, ‘to hell with you, Ray, go worship your pagan Jesus for all I care.’ I’m serious, it’s just like that, just nasty, angry, irate that I would worship Jesus Christ. How could I do such a stupid thing, you know.

I had one ready for that guy who sent me that one. He had sent this list, where he shows all these pagan gods. They all had a son that was born on Dec. 25, who was crucified and raised the third day, and had 12 disciples you know...? So I started off with the first one on the list... Buddha. I got pages and pages of material from the internet. First of all… Buddha who? There were 28 Buddhas! We’ll stick with the main Buddha. He said he was just like Christ, born on Dec. 25. Oh really? They can’t even agree on which century he was born in. They don’t know within hundreds of years when he was born. But this guy knows he was born Dec. 25 and had 12 disciples. Oh really? And where do we read about those? Nowhere! He said Buddha was crucified and raised the third day...?

ZITE QUEST

There is this thing going around now called Zite Quest. It goes through all this showing how Christianity (I mean true Christianity, not some version going up and down the street, that is pretty pagan) he said true Christianity is just total paganism. But I’m good at reading between the lines and I hold people to what they say.

They talk about the ‘Age of Aquarius’ in this one place and I said, let me check that out. When is the Age of Aquarius? Well nobody seems to know for sure within 30 to 100 years. But they claim to know within a day. What is there authority? They have no authority, they lie. It’s just lie after lie after lie. But if it sounds like it’s a researched paper… it’s being spread all over YouTube. I’ve got, I don’t know how many people send it to me already. It’s being sent everywhere.

It (Zite Quest) says: It’s so simple to prove that Christianity is a farce and that there was no Jesus Christ. He was just a figment of some parable or something. But I have a way of examining those things and then I write them back. A lot of times they will say, ‘yea but go over to the last 10 pages.’ I say no I want to deal with the first 300. If you lie on the first page and the second and the third, forth, fifth, sixth, and the tenth through the twentieth, then I don’t give a darn what you have to say on page 300. I just don’t care. I’ve already proven to my satisfaction that you are a lying hypocrite and I’m finished. Some get angry and say, ‘you owe it to yourself, go over and look at this.’ Pleading and begging. NO! You’ve lied to me 10 or 20 times and I’m through.

This one guy wrote back and said, ‘Ray listen to me, seriously Ray, I’m begging you.’ What part of the word ‘no’ don’t you understand?

I’ll show you why this is so important, because if Jesus Christ was the Son of God... if Jesus Christ died and was resurrected from the dead... if that is a historical fact. THEN YOU CAN BELIEVE ANYTHING THE MAN SAYS! Anything and everything, you see. Now let’s zero in on that a little bit. Paul says;

I Cor. 15:5 and that He was seen of Cephas, then by the Twelve.
v. 6 Then He was seen of five hundred brethren at once,
v. 7 Afterward He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.
v. 8 And last of all He was seen by me also,

So Paul saw Him. This is the Man they killed! HE WAS DEAD! Paul said, I SAW HIM. Peter saw Him - the Twelve saw Him - 500 at one time saw Him. Paul said most of those people were still alive and you can go and ask them. Now he’s just talking about 500 people he knows of specifically.

Listen, my friend, the late Dr. Earnest Martin pointed this out. That at Passover season that Josephus tells us the city of Jerusalem could swell to a population of over 2 million people. Because they came from the whole empire to keep the Feast. When was Christ killed? At Passover! There was something like 2 million people there. He was crucified up on a hill, overlooking the city. Don’t you suppose they knew that they crucified this Man, who claimed to be the Messiah? They were there on a religious convention and there is a Man hanging on a cross, who claims to be their Messiah and they didn’t know about it? They knew about it! It would not have been tolerated had the story been fabricated. That Man came back to life and a lot of them knew about it.

Fifty days later many of the same crowds were in Jerusalem for Pentecost. Now these timid Apostles, that were running away from their own shadow at Passover... remember they all forsake Him. But now they are boldly standing in the market places proclaiming that Jesus Christ has RAISED FROM THE DEAD! There were many witnesses to it. It could not be denied. Now this is only one proof of whether or not some things is of historical fact. Are there eye witnesses? Yes, many eye witnesses.

Josephus, one of the most renowned Jewish historians that ever lived, he lived in the first century AD and he said as a matter of fact, Jesus Christ did raise from the dead. By the end of the century the whole Roman empire heard of this amazing event, and within two more centuries the entire Roman Empire was believers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ! The Apostles did not hood-wink the entire Roman Empire. Jesus really was THE SON OF GOD!

The events surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection were recorded within that same generation.

Now it was Dr. Martin that taught me that no one questioned whether Alexander the Great lived or whether he did 99% of the exploits that are attributed to him. But guess what? There was no written history of Alexander the Great for FOUR HUNDRED years after his death! Yet who doubts at all whether the man lived and conquered the whole civilized world, which was later turned into the Roman Empire.

So why should we doubt history that were written just 35 years after the event? Christ was killed probably around the year 31, because He was born about 3 or 4 BC according to the calendar and they don’t have that right. Therefore He didn’t die at 33½ AD, 30 years + 3½ years. It’s more like 31 AD.

So 22 of the 27 books of the New Testament were already completed by 66 AD. That is 35 years after His resurrection and we have 22 books all talking about Jesus Christ and that is not 400 hundred years later, that’s in the same generation. I mean Paul had written that Book and challenged people. When he was writing his letters he said, I know most of those 500 that saw Him at one time and you can still talk to them, because many are still around.
Consider one thing. He both understood Judaic theology and the classic works of the Gentiles. He was an intellectual both among the Jews and the Gentiles. He would have been the last person on earth to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Paul persecuted TO DEATH those who followed the teachings of Jesus.

I get emails that say, ‘If you believe in the Bible, how come we don’t have any historical evidence on Abraham? How come we don’t have any history on David?’ Excuse me! Is the Bible ‘one’ Book written by one person at one time only?

For this one I worked a few hours. There is archeological evidence of King David in what we call secular history books. Of course we didn’t know that Paul’s letters were not secular, until they canonized them and then they became Holy Scripture. But this guy wrote back and thanked me for working a half a day on it. Then he said, ‘I didn’t want to know about David.’ The first one who he mentioned, was David. He says, ‘I didn’t want to know about him, I want to know about Abraham.’

Abraham is mentioned 230 times in 26 different historical books and documents over a period of 15 centuries! David is mentioned 968 times in 28 different historical books and documents written over a period of 11 centuries! Now understand, this isn’t a Book (Bible) that somebody wrote in 600 BC. This Book is composed of lots of people, Esther - Job - Ruth - Isaiah - Samuel - the Judges - the Gospels according to different ones, Matthews - Mark - Luke - John - Jude - Peter - James. These are all different people at different times. I mean some of them were close together, but some of them were hundreds of years apart.

He says, where do you find a mention of Abraham? In 26 different history books! If these books are not history books, what are they? I mean they were written back thousands of years ago, that’s history, by different people at different times, by notable people, kings - governors - high priests, you know real officials. Not some ding-bat living on the back 40 growing cucumbers. These were responsible, educated and wealthy people. These are history books.

He says, ‘where did it ever mention Abraham and David.’ What?
Listen, don’t let these people put you down. Educate yourself a little bit, so you can be like Peter said;

1Peter 3:15 …and be ready always to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason of the hope in you…

I don’t take no guff. I try to be kind at first, but then as they get my dander up a little bit, then I get a little bit harder and a little bit harder. But I’m going to nail them. They are not going to slip one by me, no one has yet and many have tried. I’m not saying that makes me great, I’m just saying if you know the Word of God, you know the Truth. You don’t need to be embarrassed about what you believe.

Another thing is Paul was maybe the greatest single champion for Jesus Christ, of any man that ever lived and he was no dummy. This guy studied under Rabbi Gamaliel, one of the greatest teachers of all times in the Jewish ways. Paul was from Tarsus the center for Stoic learning. You don’t bamboozle somebody like Paul. Especially because he is out persecuting the church and then he turns around and he defends it. What would change a well educated man like that? What would change him? For Paul to have his mind totally changed, required proof beyond question or contradiction. PAUL DIED FOR HIS BELIEF THAT JESUS WAS THE SON OF GOD, that He both died and was resurrected.

[Where it was appropriate I put in additions from the conference notes that were not on the audio. Everything in the transcript is always kept as close to Ray‘s own words as possible]

Kat · « **Reply #2 on:** November 17, 2007, 04:35:50 PM »

   Audio 2/page 1

   CANONIZATION OF OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES

Moses was the first to canonize Scripture:
Moses is attributed to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, this is called the Torah - The Pentateuch - The Law - The Book of Moses - The Law of Moses… it’s got those 5 Books.

Christ designated these 3 areas of Scripture, The Law - The Prophets - The Psalms, concerning the Law in Exodus 24. The ‘Law’ was given at Mount Sinai.

Exo 24:12 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Come up to Me on the mountain and be there; and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments [ordinances, precepts, instructions - not just the 10 commandments] which I [God] have written, that you may teach them."

So this is the origin of what we call the Law - The Pentateuch. Moses commissioned the priests to preserve the scrolls - called “The Standard Scroll.” God prophesied that Israel would be ruled by kings;

Deu 17:18 And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
v. 19 and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them;

And at the end of the wilderness journey.

Deu 31:24-26 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of LORD, saying, take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of LORD your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.

Jesus attributes the canonization of ‘The Law’ to Moses.

John 7:19 Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law?

So Jesus Christ for sure said, that this is the first part of the Old Testament - the Law. He said, “didn’t Moses give you the Law.” We read in Exodus how it was given to Moses. So this is the first of what we call our canon, our bonafide Scripture.

All 5 books of the Law were written within the 40 years in the wilderness journey. Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus within the first year, (Exodus of course, He gave the 10 commandments).

Leviticus is all the regulations regarding the priests and the Tabernacles, the building of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle services. All the different burnt offerings, the meat offerings, the thank offerings, the peace offerings, sin offerings, the trespass offerings and so on. Those 3 books were written relatively early.

Numbers was a kind of ledger throughout the whole 40 years. Deuteronomy the fifth and last book was written the last 30 days of the wonderings, just before they were to entering Canaan the promise land.

So they had 3 up front and one that covered the whole span and one that came right at the end.

Deu 1:3 “And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke unto the children of Israel…” (and chapter 34).

Now chapter 34 was not written by Moses, because Moses did not record his own death. So that was a editorializing of Ezra, when he was gathering these books together.

You notice that Deuteronomy is Deu - duo, like dual or two and dual means a repeating of the law. For example you have the unclean meats in Leviticus and you have them again in Deuteronomy. Why? Deuteronomy deals with different “clean and unclean animals” in the desert and in Canaan. Because for 40 years we are dealing with the animals in the desert, now they are going into Palestine, into Canaan, all different animals. They need to know which ones are clean, when you get into the new land. That’s why this whole Law was repeated again for a different environment that they were going to be moving into.

But what about the book of Genesis? Did God write Genesis for Moses as well? Did Moses sit out there in the desert and up on Sinai and God would say, in the beginning and Moses would start writing and say, how long Lord? In the beginning, then Moses would start writing - in the beginning, then God would say, God created the heavens and the earth, and Moses would write - God created the heavens and the earth, then God would say, the earth was void and Moses would write - the earth..… Is that what happened? It could have been, I mean it could have, I’m not pooh-poohing it. It could have happened that way, but I just don’t believe it did. I think we have evidence to show it didn’t.

There are many really supernatural miraculous things done in the Bible. But not everything was done that way.

      NEXT YEAR’S CONFERENCE

I am going to talk about Genesis the first chapter. If I can get it done in a year, I want to talk about the creation days.
How long were the creation days?
When did the dinosaurs live?
How old is the earth and how do we know?
Does science contradict the Scripture?

This is going to be an amazing study. This is going to blow you away, because most of you have not heard anything that I’m going to teach. Some of you have not heard anything for sure, but all of you will learn something that you did not already know. I don’t know of anybody else that knows this right now, except me and I’m thankful to God for it.

But I’m telling you I’ve had my eyes opened to a few things here this past year and it’s not what everybody thinks. It’s not like the scientist think, that is those that are still under the delusion of Darwinism, the species from a common origin and all that. It’s not like the preachers preach. So what is it all about? Well I’m beginning to understand it and it’s just amazing. This is absolutely amazing!

I’m going to cover 2 points here and a couple of hints too.
If you say, ‘okay Ray, so you’re going to show me that we’ve got historical, scriptural and logical reasons to believe that the books we have in the Bible are books that God inspired and He wanted us to have and so forth? That these are indeed the Holy Books of the Bible? But are they really from some supernatural source? I mean maybe Moses did write the Law and Isaiah did write the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Solomon wrote the Psalms, maybe they did. They are wonderful writings and there are cute little proverbs and clichés and whatever. It’s all nice stuff, it’s all good, but this hardly tells me that some great Creator God of the universe wrote this.’

I just want to show you two things, very simple things. But there is just no way to understand it, except that this is come from a divine source.

So we have the theologians poking fun at the scientist. They say, ‘it is so stupid that they think that the earth is billions of years old. Don’t they know that God made it in 6 days.‘

All these theologians look at all this stratification of the earth that took millions of years to form and say, ‘it was Noah’s flood. Just open your Bible, it’s Noah flood, it laid down all the stratas, it’s so simple.’ No paleface, it’s not that simple.

The theologians with this simple little fairytale, Jeannie in a bottle theory, is not true. The scientist thinking that all this came about without some sort of superior, intelligent, powerful, almighty, wise source, is also not true. But there is an element of truth in both. Theologians accept that there is a God. That He did create the heavens and the earth.

Evolutionist and/or most scientist will try to tell you how it came about without intelligence. But much of there research is true. I mean when they go out and say they found this earth’s strata and based on different isotope measurements of different elements that have radiation, these things are shooting off radiation at different rates and it can be measured. They then say this strata is 800 million years old. 8oo million? It can’t even be 8000 years according to theologians. Well is all that scientific jargon gobbledygook or do they know a little bit about what they are talking about?

I mean it is scientist that invented computers, automobiles, rocket ships and pacemakers. It is scientist that do this not theologians. Most theologians do not invent lasers, scientist do. So don’t think that all scientist are stupid or something.

You know when we say, ‘you don’t need to be a rocket scientist,’ why do we say that? Why do we use that terminology? Because to be a rocket scientist you’ve got to have more formulas and more knowledge about physics and quantum math, engineering, general science, specific science and specialized science, than you can shake a stick at. These men are absolute geniuses.

You take a rocket ship that weights 100 million lbs. and you lift it up at 3 mph, perfectly straight and it doesn’t waver, they use to. Remember those early films, they start going up and then off to the side and boom. Now they make huge rockets, as big around as this room and they just lift up at 2 -3 mph, then they go faster, straight as an arrow, how do they do that? Well there is a little science involved and it takes more than a child’s really big gyroscope, remember those? It’s a little more to it than that.

Many scientist are just geniuses. If you have a PHD in applied physics from MIT, then you are in a small category of people, you have got to know something.

But I’m going to show you 2 things that the Bible says that science has only discovered in recent years. Moses didn’t figure this stuff out. He wasn’t out experimenting on the farm, to figure this stuff out, by no means.

   THE BIG BANG OR A GOD AWESOME BLAST

Psalms 18:15 Then the channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered, at Thy rebuke, O Lord, at THE BLAST of the breath of Your nostrils.

This is figurative language of course, but lets pay attention to the words anyway. He is likening a real powerful force as being what? A BLAST from the nostrils of God. A BLAST! You see the same thing in II Samuel.

2 Samuel 22:16 Then the channels of the sea appeared, The foundations of the world were laid bare, at the rebuking of the Lord, at THE BLAST of the breath of His nostrils.

Exo 15:8 And with THE BLAST of Your nostrils the waters were gathered together; the floods stood upright like a heap; the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.

How? By the BLAST of God’s breath/nostrils. So God says He uses a “BLAST” to do big things. So I’m going to be a little silly here, but making a point as well. I was thinking the other day, what is the difference if science says there was a ‘Big Bang’ and I say there was a God awesome blast. What’s the difference? Can you see the similarity? Scientist all know now that it started with a big bang, I say could that be like a God awesome blast? Let’s look at this blast.

Where did they come up with the Big Bang? The universe is expanding. When did they learn that? They really first began to understand that back in about 1960. I mean I was already full-grown, I was out of high school. That’s when they really started to understand this, not a hundred years ago, not 2 or 3 hundred years ago, not in the days of Copernicus (16th century Polish Astronomer), not in the days of Galileo (17th century Italian physicist and astronomer). A couple of decades ago they learned this. So where did they come up with the Big Bang though? If the universe is expanding, if the stars and galaxies are moving out…

      STARS - GALAXIES - THE UNIVERSE

What is the difference between a star, a galaxy and the universe?

A star is one single body, like the sun. Our sun is a star.

A cluster of stars in a given area with a lot of void around it is a galaxy. Most galaxies have about 100 billion stars. We belong to the Milky Way galaxy. It is so big that it take light starting at one end, going at 600 million mph (that is the speed of light -186,000 miles a second), that is like going around the earth 8 times in a second. So you could travel in a spaceship going 186,000 miles a second and it would take you 100,000 years to reach the end of our galaxy. Yet if you back up in space, our galaxy looks like one star. You got to get really close and you see it’s billions of stars and they are hundreds of millions of miles apart. But if you back up in space then you will reach a point where our whole galaxy, which is a 1000,000 light years across, looks like one star. You back up a little more and you can’t even see it.

Then out there, there is other galaxies, that looks like a star from our Milky Way, but it’s not a star, it‘s another galaxy, billions of miles away. Like Andromeda, that’s one of the closest galaxies.

So you have one body like the sun, that is a star. A whole group of stars clustered, is a galaxy. All the galaxies combined is the universe.

So they discovered that the stars and galaxies are flying apart, at terrific speed. They learned that through the dipolar theory. When sound or light is approaching you, the frequency is higher. If you are moving away from it, the frequency is lower. What they found is that these distant stars have a lower frequency and so they are moving away. So if the stars are all moving away from each other, then so many years before that, they were here (hands stretched apart). Then so many thousands of years before that, they were here ( hands together). And so many millions of years before that, they were there (hands closer together). Common sense says if they are going out like this (hand stretching out) at one time they were back here (hands together). That’s the Big Bang! It started at a common origin, that’s all it’s saying. It sounds like a science fantasy, ‘the Big Bang.’ No, it’s just a clever way by using a statement to show a scientific theory, that if everything is going apart, the further you go back the closer it was together. It’s only natural that it started at one place and that’s why it’s moving apart from where it started. That’s the Big Bang.

Now notice this in Psalms.

Psalms 104:2 Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment, Who STRETCH OUT the heavens like a curtain.

What? You read that and you say that’s kind of poetic talk of King David in the Psalms. But it isn’t just King David though.

Isa 40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
v. 22 It is He who sits upon (it should be above) the circle of the earth…

How did they know the earth was a circle? Some of the most intelligent scientist in all of Great Brittan, just a couple hundred years ago, they thought it was flat. How come the Bible knew it was a circle? That’s not my point though. Continuing in verse 22.

v. 22 …And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers, Who STRETCHES OUT the heavens like a curtain, And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in (or under).

It’s like a great tent, under this canopy, this celestial tent. But it says “stretches” it’s in the indefinite, like the Greek aorist tense. Much of King James has it properly, some times it doesn’t though, in key scripture lot of times it doesn’t.

John 3:16 “For God so LOVED the world…” NO, that’s not what it says in the Greek. He didn’t ‘loved’ the world once and now He doesn’t. It’s in the aorist tense. “For God thus LOVES” He loved them, He loves all along, He loves now, He will love in the future. It’s indefinite, it’s the past - present - future tense. “God so loves the world…” You see that’s how it should be translated. Any scholar knows that this is indefinite.

The Concordant version translates it “who is stretching out…” Now that really puts it in the present, Young’s has the same.

Isa 40:22 “…Who is (present tense - now is) stretching out as a thin gauze the heavens…” (CLV)

How could they say that? How would any one know that the heavens are being stretched out? Any logical person, being a Godly man or atheist, if he was to consider that somebody did make the heavens, they would say, ‘well up there is a star and somebody made it.’ Where did He make it? ‘Well right there where it is.’ There are stars on the other side of the earth, looking the other way. Up there is the moon. Where did He make the moon, over in Palestine or down in Africa? ‘Well there, that’s where it is, so that’s where He made it.’ Here’s the sun, well where did He make the sun? ‘Right there, where it is, that’s where He made the sun.’ Anybody would see that. That’s the only logical conclusion that your brain could come to. Where ever it is, if there is a God, that’s where He made it.

But that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says, “He is (present tense) stretching out… the heavens.” How could they know that? The best scientist in the world didn’t know that until just a couple years ago. This is amazing stuff. This is mind boggling stuff.

The writers knew that the heavens are moving out. You can’t see that, it takes the most sophisticated knowledge and instruments that science could come up with in thousands of years to finally measure that they are moving. Yet Isaiah and King David they knew it thousands of years ago. It’s unbelievable, it’s just unbelievable. Now this is very specific and it’s very scientific.

Kat · « **Reply #3 on:** November 17, 2007, 04:37:29 PM »

   audio 2/page 2

   FAITH - THINGS THAT ARE INVISIBLE

Now we will go to the New Testament. How do we know the New Testament is true? I’ll just give you one point. I have a lot of reasons why I believe in the scriptures, but I want to give you something rock solid scientific, okay.

Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance…

No it’s not. If it was the “substance” it wouldn’t be faith. Faith is either an assumption or a conviction that something is, that you can’t prove that it is. At least you can’t prove everything about it, maybe some aspect, but not all. Some of it must be accepted merely because it is being stated and you have confidence in the one whose doing the stating. That’s what faith is. So a better translation would be; “Now faith is a CONVICTION…” not the substance.

v. 1 …of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

No! My margin has conviction for "evidence." Theologians with 6 doctorate degrees will quote that, just like this, as that’s the way it is. But my center margin says it’s wrong. Logic should tell you it’s wrong.

It says “evidence”…. excuse me when you go in a court of law, when they present evidence... why do they present evidence in a court of law? Because they’re not going to accept anybody on faith, that’s why. They want the evidence, because when you have evidence, when you’ve got the smoking gun - the finger prints - no alibi - probable causer - I witnesses - security camera, that’s evidence. You don’t need faith. You convict the guy on evidence, you don’t need faith.

Faith is a conviction of these things that we hope for. Like Paul says, if you have them you don’t have to hope. These are the things we are still reaching for.

Heb 11:2 For by the elders obtained a good report.
v. 3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen hath not been made out of things which appear.

Now I have a Concordant Bible because I think it is one of the best there is. The Concordant Emphatic Diaglott and the Rotherham. But if there is one verse that the Concordant people absolutely butchered this one here, it is pathetic. If you buy a Concordant Bible just scratch out verse 3, it’s over the top nonsense.

But look at this, so that “by faith” …of course they didn’t have scientific instruments, this statement can only be made as a statement of faith. Verse 3 “By faith we understand that… things which are seen were not made out of things which appear.” Or my margin says, “that are visible.”

Here is my ring, it is something seen. The things that are visible “are made,” they are not made from things that are seen or they are made from things that are INVISIBLE, you can say it either way. What? This (ring) is something seen, the things which are seen, were not made of anything that’s visible. Now we are going back about 2000 years that they said that. Excuse me?

Now my ring happens to have 2 elements, gold, that’s all that gold is, it’s one element and diamonds - pure carbon. Now I look at that ring and I see diamonds and I see gold. I can look at it real close and I still see diamonds and gold. You say, ‘yea but these old people were smart, they knew that if you broke it apart you would get down to where you wouldn’t be able to see it any more. That’s what they meant.’ Now it doesn’t say that these things would be so small you couldn’t see them, that said they’re not visible. They are invisible - not visible.

But let’s just go along with the game. We’ll take this ring and we’ll pound this thing and beat it down and we’ll grind it and crush it, until it’s just little tiny pieces. Excuse me, I still see gold and diamonds, it’s just in these little pieces. Well let’s grind it finer, we’ll grind it and grind until it so fine, finer than face powder, you women wear. Well it’s very fine, it’s very small, but there’s still powder. At what point could somebody 2000 years ago grind up a piece of metal and say it no longer exist, there is nothing there? At what point could he do that? At no point could he do that. You could do it with a rock or anything and I don’t care how fine you smash it and grind it, until you get it finer than face powder. You still got powder and you can see the powder and it you blow on it you can see a whole little puff of powder, that’s visible.

This scripture says the things that are made that you can see, are made from things that are not visible, they can not be seen! Now when did they discover that? Seriously when did they discover that one? Recent times they discovered that. How could somebody 2000 years ago say that everything is made out of stuff that’s invisible? How could they say it? Except that they had supernatural inspiration from a higher source of intelligent. There is no other way. You give me a physical example of how they could do that, and say I’ll show you how everything is made out of stuff that’s invisible, show me.

Even if you burn up a piece of wood… smoke and hot air is something. You know you can’t see the hot air, but when you look at an object through the hot air it’s all wavy. So something is there and the smoke you can see for sure. So even if you burn it up you still got something that is visible. It says it’s not visible.

Now most people probably never think to look at things like this, but it’s there. These are proofs, these are absolute rock solid scientific proofs, that these people knew what they were talking about. The greatest scientific minds in the world have only discovered this in the last few years. That ought to give us some kind assurance and faith and confidence that this is a book to be in awe of. If it knows stuff like that what else does it know? Well you can read it. There’s a lot of stuff in there, a lot of stuff.

   BIBLE-TRUTHS.COM

I think we don’t take it really seriously, not a lot of people that are coming through our site. But there’s not as many, we don’t have as many people coming any more. We’re averaging 900 people a day to the forum, that’s a lot of people, 900 a day. But last year we were averaging 2 or 3 thousand a day. Of course the reason is, not that people don’t have an interest to come, but because they don’t know we are there. Because we don’t have any money to advertise… some money but not very much and not too many people want to give. I figure that out of the people that give and how many people come to the site, about 1 out of every 70,000 of those that come to onto our site will make a contribution. So it’s not too many.

Our income is running, right now, about 55% - 60% of what it was about a year ago. I know a lot of people can’t afford to give and I certainly won’t ask. You know you don’t hear me talk about giving much. But I don’t discourage giving.

Some have ask if they can contribute to the conference, well yes you can. We have had a few people, good friends up in Nashville, that picked up the tab here and it’s a lot. This room for 2 days is about $700, then there is the coffee and you have to pay for the stand and the microphone, they charge you for everything. So if anybody wants to contribute we’ll take contributions and pay back some to those that dug pretty deep. It takes a couple of hundred dollars to print up the notes we hand out. So all these conferences cost at least $1000 over all, when you figure up every last thing.

But I think that more people could give if it were a priority. Most people on a daily bases don’t miss a dollar, you can’t buy a cup of coffee for a dollar, not coffee, tax and tip. So is it worth a cup of coffee out of your budget on a daily bases, to help others see this? I assume everybody in here came through Bible Truths, because someone spotted it in the internet through some of our advertizing or maybe a friend told you, I don’t know.

But if you look up the word ‘hell’ in Google you will find it’s 16 million web sites with the word hell in it. Now they are not all about the Biblical hell, but there are 16 million sites that use the word hell. We are number one. We are the first one on the top of the first page. Bible-truths.com, there is no hell and you can prove it. But it cost money.

When Dennis and I started this, going on 8 years ago now, we would buy words like ‘hell’ for a nickel, that was just 7-8 years ago. Then it went to a dime, then 15 cents, 20 cents. If we are to be number one with tithing, now we have to pay 26 or 27 cents. So I don’t think we are number one any more. We settle in on number 2 or 3 or so, but we are on the front page.

Thankfully our tithing paper is so popular in the world now that Google puts on the front page without advertising. They do that, they want the best and most known, they want whatever people are reading a lot of, they want it right up front. So if you have a paper that’s so good that millions of people are reading it, then they’ll advertise it for you. But that’s not the case mostly, because we use words like parable, Satan, Revelation and the beast and all these different words. We have about 50 words we buy. We buy John Hagee, those ministers names and sometimes they get upset and say, ‘your article is not about John Hagee.’ Yes this one is, we have to fight with them a little bit.

Dr. Kenney passed on. The man had 6 doctorates, PHD, DDE, Doctor of Divinity, Doctor of Sacred Letters, Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Philosophy. But had not a clue as to what the gospel was. One of the most educated theologians on the earth and did not have a clue as to what the gospel was all about. Thought God had predestinated most of humanity to torture them for all eternity. He believed that, he was a total Calvinist. John Knox was one of Calvin's right hand man, Kennedy’s theological Seminary was ‘Knox Theological Seminary.’ So he was a Calvinist all the way… to believe in such evil heresy.

But I don’t lose sleep over the fact that our income is only half of what it was last year. But I wish it was more, I wish there were more people coming to these truths. 900 people is a lot, 2 or 3 thousand is better, 10,000 a day is better yet and 100,000 we start making a dent, 1 million a day and the whole world would sit up and take note who we are. Look in II Tim., we are talking about Scripture. What is Scripture?

2 Tim 3:16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

How many have heard that Scripture before? Everybody close your Bible. Does anybody know what the next verse says? I’ll read it.

2 Tim 3:17 that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

There is the rest of the statement. That has to do with all Scripture, to furnish you the man of God unto all good works. What good works? If I say write down the good works that you are doing to help the rest of the world see and know what you see and know about these truths of God, what good works are you doing to that end? Would you be a little embarrassed? Seriously would you be embarrassed?

Listen I am so thankful for what we do have coming in, you know anything is better than nothing. 70% of our income this pass year came from 7 people. That’s a little sad isn’t it. We are going close to 3 million people that have come to Bible-truths.com and I get letters by the hundreds and thousands that say,’ you have changed my life, my wife and I are not the same people anymore.’ I get hundreds and thousands of such letters, ‘our lives are changed,’ and 7 people support 70% of our work. The other 30% is only contributed to 28 other people. I know some of you can not afford it, and believe me… do not be taking food off the table or anything, because you feel guilty, you know what your situation is.

But if you think, maybe I should contribute a little bit, don’t worry about it being $100 contribution. What is good is if you can give a regular contribution, $20 a month or something. That adds up in a year or 2 and in 3 years that gets to be some real money. I think most people who have a job in America could probably afford $20 a month, for something that is really important.

The thing is, is this important to you? It’s important to me, it’s my life.
Some of you talk about it to other people and that’s worth more than just giving a contribution. If you are actually telling them and showing them. We have people who ought to be on the payroll. There are other ways that people help out and we appreciate that.

   THE COST TO ADVERTISE

Anybody in the world, if they know there is a site called Bible-truths.com, can type it in and boom there it is. But most people have never heard of it. So how are they going to hear about it?

What you can do on one of these major search engines, Yahoo and Google and all these different ones, is you can buy certain words. Like I said they are getting more expensive, because they are getting more and more greedy. You can’t believe how greedy they are… these kids that started Google. They make more than General motors. They make much more profit than General Motors, which is the largest Corporation in the world. Well I guess Wal-Mart is bigger now, but you know what I’m saying. They are so greedy, that if you have a word that is used a lot you have to pay a lot. But if you have a word that isn’t used a lot you have to pay a lot, because it isn’t used. What? It’s like a double edged sword, it’s pointed on both ends.

But you can buy a word, like let’s say ‘hell,’ we buy the word hell. Depending on how much we are willing to pay, we can be up front on the search page and sometimes they put these things up for bid. So we can be number one with tithing, but we’ve got to pay about .28 now, for every person that hits it. We get hundreds and hundreds of hits on tithing in a day. So say at .25, if we get 400 hits on tithing a day, that’s $100 a day, for one word. We buy 50 words, but they are not all popular. We have the word parable, for example, well people won’t look up parable nearly as much as they look up tithing, hell, heaven or some of these other words, like Jesus Christ, God, gospel, or Bible. You can put anything you want in there and buy it, if you are willing to pay for it.

Normally when a page comes up, you will have 10 items on a page. At the top of the page they have a little shadow box and there will be maybe 4 items there and it says sponsored. That means those people paid to have there article come up. A lot of times they’re merchants, because they are selling something. But we are not selling nothing. We are paying people to come to our site, when we have nothing to sell. It’s like we have a store and we pay people to come in, but we don’t charge for nothing. Some people think that is bad business. So that’s how it works.

Dennis has to keep an eye on it, because if we have $800 in reserve… but for 3 or 4 days we are getting hundreds of hit’s a day on tithing or hell, that is going to eat that money up, in a week or 5 days it’s all going to be gone. So that we don’t run a deficit, he’ll put a hold or in other words we’ll say we will only pay, on this particular word up to $150. When we reach $150, it cuts off. After that somebody can go to Google and look for ‘parable’ and our site won’t come up, because we used up our $150. But I would like it so that we never use up the money, so everybody that wants to look up hell, heaven, parable, trinity or gospel or whatever these words we buy are, everybody can get to come to our site. Now we having to cut back though.

About five years ago we had pay-pal on our site, a lot of sites use pay-pal. I don’t know what we took in, $50 a month or whatever, always a little, $50 here, $100 there, every month. I got to thinking about that one day and I said, Denny I know we don’t ask for money, but if you put it (pay-pal) up there it’s the same thing. It’s the same as asking, so I said take it off. He said, you know we do get some contributions, I said I know. We are not even going to appear that we are asking for money. If people want to contribute they are going to have to ask us, that they want to contribute. We’ll take your money, but you got to beg (laughter). You got to beg or we want take it. If anyone sends us tithe money, says ‘here’s my tithe for June’ we send it right back. We will not take tithe money. So I said, take it off, he said we’ll probably lose some money, I said I don’t care if we lose it, I don’t want it up there any more. So he said okay, you’re the boss and he took it off. If I’m lying I’m dying, within a week we start getting more contributions without that (pay-pal) up there, then we ever had with it up. They started picking up more and more and more. So Denny is learning to be a believer when I tell him something.

So we were taking in up to 3 or 4 thousand a month, not too long after that. Before that it was just nickels and dimes. But we’re not still up at 3 or 4 thousand now, it’s just a little more than half that maybe. You see how God works, we weren’t asking for money, we weren’t begging for money, we weren’t teaching tithing. Weren’t saying sow your seed here and you will grow a bumper crop of gold bullion or something. No, we even took down the pay-pal and we started getting at least some workable income. So now somebody has to write and say, ‘Ray is there any way I can contribute to your site.’ I say well if you put it that way, there are 2 ways. 1) I’ll sent you Harry’s address in Pensacola Florida and you can send a check to him. Or 2) I can give you a hidden link. It’s not on our site, I have to give it to you. So I’ll just send it back in an email and then you punch it in and it will come up. Then you can use pay-pal on that. But we don’t show it, you have to ask.

So that’s the way we operate, God provides, by putting it in peoples’ minds. Like the scripture says, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God is profitable.” But the next part of that verse, “To prepare you the man (or woman) of God for good works.” Well what good works are you doing? Some of you give your time and some of you can’t and I understand that… but if you can just send me an email and I’ll send you the hidden link and it will pop up for you.

Okay, we talked about those 2 scientific points, that are really quite marvelous. The Scripture talks about the heavens being "stretched out." There was no reason for them to ever suggest such a thing. Because you can't visually... there is nothing stretched out. But it's in the the present, the proper translation is now stretching. "...is now stretching out the heavens." Now. That's a scientific fact no one knew even 50 years ago.

Kat · « **Reply #4 on:** November 20, 2007, 10:46:44 PM »

Audio 3

   MOSES
   [The first To Canonize Scripture]

Moses was the first one to set aside books and say this is the Word of God. He had records It isn’t that God told him everything up there on the mountain, he did have records. But what about the book of Genesis? Did God write Genesis for Moses as well? There already apparently existed histories and genealogies of creation, Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Jacob’s children.

Gen 2:4 These are the generations [Heb. - toldah: (plural only) descent, family; figuratively - history: birth, generations) of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made earth and heaven.

“These are the generations…” now that carries a greater connotation, than this is the sequence of these things in the first chapter here. Concordant translates it, “genealogical annals.” While Rotherham has “geneses.” But it means more than just Adam begot Seth and so on. It can signify not only the family descent, but also their history. So he had these genealogical annals.

In chapter 5 notice carefully that the history and genealogical descent of Adam and Eve was taken from a pre-existent “book.”

Gen 5:1 This is the book [Heb.- writing, register, scroll, BOOK] of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

Moses had a book, he didn’t write it, he had it. Where did he get it? Well undoubtedly Adam had it, and God gave Adam material. God taught Adam a language, Adam knew how to read and write, he had a language and vocabulary. How though, do we get this from Adam to Moses? Well it’s not as difficult as you might think. Now if these were the earliest records or books that some race processed, don’t you think they were kind of valuable!

When the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren of Adam said, ‘Grandpa Adam who was your daddy?’ He would say, ‘well I didn’t really have a daddy.’ ‘What do you mean you didn’t have a daddy?’ Adam, ‘well God made me.’ ‘God made you?’ ‘Yes in the garden.’ Well how did Adam even know that? God must have given him some records and he must have kept records. Adam kept records, because Adam had so many children. Jewish tradition says he had 70 children. Adam and Eve had 70 children.

But we have, “This is the BOOK of the generations of Adam.” It’s in a book, okay. So they obviously had books and they had records, because who could memorize all these people. You know it said, he was so many years old and begot… after so many years he had this one… in another 20 years he had that one… lived 60 years and had that one… he lived for so many years and he died… and this one died… How could any one memorize all that? It was in a book! He had a book, it was all written down.

Now Adam did not canonize any Bible. Moses was the first. How did Moses get these books? Well it’s not as hard as you may think. Methuselah born in 3254 BC, knew his great, great, great, great grandfather Adam (who died in 3011) for 243 years before he died. This is interesting stuff. These dates are estimates of course, Noah (born 2885) was 600 years old when the flood came and Methuselah died in the year of the flood. So Noah had already known Methuselah 600 years. If Methuselah got these books from Adam, whom he knew for 243 years, then he could have easily passed these on to Noah. Whom he had known for 600 years and then Noah would bring them through the flood. It’s no other way books are going to survive a flood, they had to be brought on the ark.

After the flood Noah and his family settled in Mesopotamia (Iraq). Do you realize that Abraham personally knew Noah? Abraham was born in 1995, and as Noah did not die until 1935, Abraham knew his ancestral father Noah for 60 years. Because they both lived in Mesopotamia. Abraham and his family settled in Mesopotamia by the Tigris - Euphrates river valley.

In later generations Nimrod built the tower of Babel, that’s near Iraq, actually not to far from Bagdad. God called Abraham out of the land of Ur in Mesopotamia, then it became known as Babylon, now modern day Iraq. So Abraham living down in Mesopotamia and he knew Noah. You know he would talk about before the flood with Noah. Noah would said, ‘you know I knew Methuselah.’ Abraham would say, ‘oh yea.’ ‘I knew him for a long time and you know Methuselah knew Adam.’ Can you imagine the conversations they had. It’s like talking to a friend that says, ‘I knew George Washington.’ You would say, ‘that was 200 and some years ago!’ But back in the days of Noah they lived to be nearly 1000 years old.

So these books and documents only had to change hands 3 times to arrive at Abraham, this side of the flood. From Adam to get to Abraham, 3 times. Now of course Abraham is the grandfather of Moses, actually he was the father of Isaac, whose the father of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, one of the tribes of the Israelites, Levi. Moses was a Levite, his brother Aaron was a Levite and all priests trace there line to Aaron, Moses’ brother. Jacob (Abraham’s grandson, born 1835) knew his grandfather Abraham for 15 years.

So when Abraham, who undoubtedly had gotten the records from Noah, would have passed them on to his grandchildren, Isaac and maybe passed them directly to Jacob. Jacob went down into Egypt. But Jacob and his family did not start out in Egypt as slaves, but as guest of Joseph and the Pharaoh, they were down there 400 years. They were welcome because Joseph their son was second in power.

Dr. Martin says Joseph was in fact a Pharaoh in Egypt, that he did become Pharaoh and he was Cheops III or something, that seems to early to me. Apparently Job, we’re all familiar with the book of Job. He was apparently one of the Pharaoh of Egypt.

So it only had to change hands 3 times as the genealogical annals of the creation of the earth, the families of Adam, he had it all. So if they took this down to Egypt, this was prized stuff. Somewhere with the Israelites for 400 years during their stay in Egypt, these books were preserved! I guarantee they took good care of them.
Maybe they passed it on to Joseph and said you keep this because you are living in the palace, so you keep this protected and so on. They wouldn’t have prevented them from keeping that material when they left. Remember they spoiled Egypt. They stole all there gold and silver, for sure they let them have their records.

Moses took the children of Israel out of Egypt. So then Moses got the books, he got the genealogical annals of the creation and the descendants of Adam and so on. Then Moses goes up the mountain and God gives him the rest of the Law, to fill out the whole 5 books.

At the end of the wilderness journey.

Deu 31:24 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished,
v.25 that Moses commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying,
v. 26 Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.

Jesus attributes the canonization of “The Law” to Moses.

John 7:19 Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you doeth the law?

God prophesied that Israel would be ruled by kings.

Deu 17:18 And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book, out of that which is before the priests the Levites:
v. 19 and it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life; that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them;

   DAVID AND SOLOMON
   [The Second To Canonize Scripture]

The next people who either write and/or set aside books to canonize Scripture was David and Solomon.

So David and Solomon do come to play here. Now David wanted to build the Temple, but God wouldn’t let him, because he had too many problems. So then he said his son Solomon would build the Temple.

But we know David was obviously a musically inclined person. We know he played an instrument. He liked music and wrote poetry, the Psalms are poetry. There are 3 poetic books. David wrote the first 72 Psalms and then it says, “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.” (Psalms 72:20). But there are other Psalms attributed to him besides those first 72.

Now it’s interesting that Psalms 42, 44-49 we have “Korah,” and “Asaph,” mentioned. In I Chronicles 16:7; 25:2, Asaph was a singer and both were Levites who actually would sing in the Temple.

Psa 105:1 Oh give thanks unto the Lord, call upon His name; Make known among the peoples His doings.
v. 2 Sing unto Him, sing praises unto Him; Talk ye of all His marvelous works.

Now it doesn’t say who this Psalms belongs to, but if you go to first Chronicles 16:7 you’ll find it’s the exact same as this Psalms (verses 1-15) and it was sung by Asaph. So a couple of things we learn here, David was using his own Psalms as part of the religious services of the Tabernacles. David divided the priests into 24 courses, each responsible for the Temple for two weeks. He also divided the Levites and singers into 24 courses each (I Chronicles 9:22 and chapter 25). Israel did not have a year of 52 weeks, but rather 12 months of 29+ days based on the moon.This sophisticated arrangement of worship required that the Psalms and books used had to be “officially” recognized by all as inspired and ordained of God. So Asaph and Korah were singers and also wrote some psalms.

I Chronicles 25:2 “of the sons of Asaph: Zaccur, and Joseph, and Nethaniah, and Asharelah, the sons of Asaph, under the hand of Asaph, who prophesied according to the order of the KING.”

What king? David. Asaph was to sing some of these psalms, David ordered him to sing them. So these psalms of David are now officially being used in the Tabernacle services. Because at this time they had not yet started to build the big Temple.

The book of Psalms has been divided into 5 booksThe first 3 were attributed to David and then some of the scattered other ones and some of them belonged to other writers. The third book of Psalms (for Asaph, 73 - 83; II Chron. 29:30). “The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ENDED.” (Psalms 72:20) Although there are other psalms by David (for “Korah” Psalms 42, 44 - 49 and for “Asaph” Psalms 50 - both were Levites who sang in the Temple, I Chron. 16:7; 25:2), at that time that was the end of them.

We learn that these psalms are prophecies. That when Asaph sang he was prophesying.

Psa 50:1 A Psalm of Asaph….
v. 3 Our God cometh, and doth not keep silence…

That’s a prophecy. So you will remember one place we read in the New Testament where the two men go into Emmaus.

Luke 24:27 And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself (being the Messiah).

Well many of the Scripture that pertain to Jesus Christ being the Messiah were found in the Psalms. Well guess what? They are prophecy! So we have a whole circle here of ideas, that all go together, because psalms can be prophecy. He showed me all the Scriptures of Christ being the Messiah, according to the Prophets, surely He showed him some of the Psalms. In fact most of the important places where we read about Christ is the Messiah, is in the Psalms. Then of course in a few places, Isaiah 53 and a few others places. But mostly in the Psalms. The Psalms are prophesies, they are considered prophets.

So Luke says any Scripture that pertaining to Christ, are written by prophets. That has to be Psalms, so Psalms are prophecy. When Asaph sang the 50th Psalms it’s called a prophecy.

II Tim. 3:16 “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God…”

ALL Scripture, okay. One of the definitions of prophecy or prophesying is inspired teaching, singing and writing, it’s prophesying. If it is inspired, it’s prophesying. Prophesying does not mean solely predicting the future. Any inspired teaching, singing or writing is prophesying.

Therefore when we read in II Peter 1:19 “We also have a more sure Word of prophecy…” The Word that was given to Peter, James, John, Jude and Paul was prophecy. If it was inspired, it was prophecy. So in the writing of I and II Peter he says “we,” I think he’s talking mostly here about himself and John, maybe Paul.

2 Peter 1:19 And WE have a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto you do well that you take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the Day-star arise in your hearts:
v. 20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private (should be “it’s own”) interpretation.

Notice in verse 20, “any” but some people would say, ‘well that’s just talking about prophecy, when you have prophecy, you have to have another one to interpret it.’ No, that means ANY scripture. If it’s inspired of God, it’s a spirit of prophecy, even if it’s a song that you sing. If it’s inspired of God it’s PROPHECY. You got that, that’s an important point, because you need to remember as you study the Scripture from now on out.

Solomon wrote the Proverbs. Some of them says “Lemuel.”

Pro 31:1 The words of king Lemuel; the oracle which his mother taught him.

It says that Lemuel, some think it was some other king. But a lot of authorities thought that Lemuel is Solomon, it’s just another name for Solomon. Lemuel means the king that forsook God or something like that. Of course that’s what Solomon did. He forsook God, turned and went after all his wives and all that. David and Solomon reigned 40 years each, from 1004 to 926. So Solomon turns to other gods and other religions and is pretty corrupt by the end of his reign.

We read in Ecclesiastes concerning Solomon’s prophecies.

Ecc 12:9 And moreover, because the Preacher (that always refers to Solomon, as a preacher) was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he pondered, and sought out, and set IN ORDER many proverbs.

This setting “in order” has to do with making them official within the kingdom. These are official books to be read and they were read. So Solomon puts his approval on them. Ezra later recognizes all these writings of David and Solomon as official Scripture and puts his approval on them. They were reading them. So you have Josiah later putting his tetra gram on them, signifying he approved this book as Scripture. So with all those things showing the Psalms and the Proverbs now, so they are all added to The Scroll.

Kat · « **Reply #5 on:** November 20, 2007, 10:49:01 PM »

KING HEZEKIAH AND ISAIAH
[The Third To Canonize]

This is the third time we have a setting aside of the Scriptures.

Hezekiah was one of the best and most righteous kings who ever live. However his father Ahaz was wicked and replaced true worship with that of the Assyrians and totally corrupted the Temple and it‘s worship (II Chron. 28: 21-25). His son Manasseh was even worse (II Chron. 33:9) but repented before his death. Hezekiah’s grandson Amon was worst of all, verse 21-23. After Amon’s servants murdered him, his son Josiah reigned and followed the righteousness of David and Hezekiah (IIChron. 34:2).

Generally the reason Scripture were set aside, protected, approved, made public notice of, was when Israel went through bad times, wars, Calamities or whatever and had departed from God. Some king or righteous priest would try to bring the people back. Then he would reintroduce the Books. The Books, the Laws - The Prophesies. These were periods when these Books became established and re-established, over and over until we come down to the time of Ezra.

It was Ezra who wrote I and II Chronicles (originally one book) 500 years after David and Solomon. He wrote Ezra and maybe Nehemiah. Some scholars think Ezra wrote all of those - I and II Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, but be that as it may. Ezra recorded what happened way back then and how the different books came to be recognized as the official canon of Scripture. He was the last one to put his approval on what’s Hebrew Scripture.

When Christ said it’s the Law - the Prophets - the Writings/Psalms, we know that it was complete. Christ approved of it and whatever they added at the Synagogues at that time, that was the whole Canon.

There was no book of Baruch, Bel and the Dragon, First and Second Maccabees or any of these other books that you find in the Catholic Bible today. Make no mistake about it though, the Apocrypha books are not Catholic, if anything they are Protestant. Long before they ever printed an English Bible, the Apocrypha books are in there. Every translation of the Bible that existed, almost until 1900’s or 1885, all had the Apocrypha, all Bibles had 80 books. Finally somebody printed a English Bible and took out the Apocrypha.

When Hezekiah came to power he immediately re-instituted right religion and worship in Jerusalem (II Chron. 39:3-4; 31:2). How great was Hezekiah?

2 Kings 18:5 He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among them that were before him.
v. 6 For he clave to the Lord; he departed not from following him, but kept his commandments, which Jehovah commanded Moses.

You see little bits and pieces scattered here and there. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to see what they were doing and how they were putting things together.
Proverbs 25, Hezekiah canonized a whole section of Scripture (chapters 20 - 30), having his stamp of approval.

Pro 25:1 These also are proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah king of Judah copied out.

So we only had 25 that were attributed to Solomon, back when David and Solomon were putting together the Scripture. But Hezekiah saw it and said, well there is some more good stuff here and he copied out more Scripture and put his approval on it. Now we see we’ve got more Scripture being added.

And then apparently we have some more psalms that were added. Hezekiah wrote psalms of his own that were used (canonized - officially accepted) and sung in the House of God (Isa. 38: 9; 20). Let me just say we don’t know which Psalms Hezekiah wrote, but possibly some of the un-named “degree Psalms” or other un-named Psalms. It just happens to be 15 Psalms of degree, and we all know about Hezekiah’s life, what is the significance of 15 years?

II Kings 20:6 And I will add unto thy days fifteen years; and I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria;

Maybe they were 15 Psalms of appreciation. So that could be an indicator that not only did he canonize what books they had at the time, but may have added some as well. And Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and Micah all prophesied at the time of Hezekiah.

ISAIAH…. undoubtedly wrote a lot of things that are Scripture. He was really one of the most remarkable men in all the Bible. Scholars that study what historians and Jewish folklore had to say about him, and apparently he’s a genius of a man. He was extremely well educated, very humanitarian type person, loved humanity and all of those things.

We know that Isaiah wrote the book of Isaiah, but no one knows of anybody better to contribute I and II Kings I and II Samuel to have written, but Isaiah. In the proper sequence of the Old Testament order, I and II Kings and I and II Samuel comes just before Isaiah. That is the chronological order.

You understand the order in the King James is all screwed up, both the Old and the New Testament. We have the last book as being Malachi, right? What really is the last book of the Old Testament? II Chronicles is the last book. II Chronicles was written by Ezra. He is also the last one to canonize the Old Testament Scripture.

II Chron. 32:32 Now the rest of the acts of Hezekiah, and his good deeds, behold, they are written in the vision of Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz, in the book [Heb. ’on or upon the history’] of the kings of Judah and Israel.

“The book,” what book was that? Notice it is the book of “the kings of Judah and Israel.” Well it’s kind of a trick question, we don’t know it as “the book,” we know it as four books, I and II Kings, I and II Samuel, four books. But that was always known as “ the book of the kingdoms,” that was one book. That was always one book in God’s order, the books of the Kingdoms and that’s why I put that in here from II Chron. 32:32. First of all it says, “…the vision of Isaiah the prophet” is written in “the book of the kings of Judah and Israel.” So first of all we know that “the book” is I and II Kings and I and II Samuel, and it’s a vision according to Isaiah. So Isaiah wrote it, the 4 books were one book, The Book Of The Kingdoms. It also seems probable that Samuel wrote Joshua and Judges as one book.

JOSIAH AND JEREMIAH
[The Fourth To Canonize Scripture]

Apparently Josiah excelled Hezekiah and David in devotion to God and the Law (II Kings 23:25) and was an even grander king. So you have the same problem, you had king Ahaz, this evil king, then you’ve got a good king Josiah, then you got Manasseh, this evil king. They break down the Godly establishment of religious worship and they set up these high places in the woods. Some of the stuff I talked about in the Lake of Fire paper I wrote ‘Tophet and Melech in Hinnom.’

Josiah once more began to purge Judah of all her paganism (II Chron. 34:3-5). He had to “rediscover” the Law (34: 14, 19). He is the one that found the Law. It had become so corrupt, Josiah was running around and in the Temple he was looking around and says, what’s this? It was, the Law of Moses, and he said we’ve got to keep this thing, we got to do this. Josiah was prophesied to come by Isaiah in The Book of the Kingdoms:

I Kings 13:2 And he cried against the altar by the word of Jehovah, and said, O altar, altar, thus says the Lord: Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he sacrifice the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall they burn upon thee.

God promised peace to Judah as long as Josiah lived (II chron. 34: 27-28). Now Judah knew that war would come it would be horrible (II Chron. 35: 24-25). But first Josiah put his kingly approval on all the books of the Law and prophets found in the Temple: (II Chron. 35: 1-4).

II Chron. 35:4 And prepare yourselves after your fathers' houses by your courses, according to the writing of David king of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon his son.

King Josiah officially recognized and teaches that all should follow ALL THE BOOKS and practices of Temple worship codified and canonized before him.

So when King Josiah died it was one of the biggest loses in all of Israel. They loved that man. God promised for as long as Josiah was alive there would be peace in the land. So they knew two things was going to happen. Not only did they lose a great man and leader of God, but they knew all hell was going to break lose, because God’s promise was off.

Jeremiah like all Judah lamented after the death of Josiah, both for the loss of this great king and also knowing that now God would bring the promised judgment upon them. The Book of Lamentations was being written at this time, kind of a memorial.

II Chron. 35:25 And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and singing women spoke of Josiah in their lamentations unto this day [this was a hundred years later that Ezra is writing this]; and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.

Jeremiah’s prophecies and some of the minor prophets were also recognized at this time.

DANIEL…. is not considered someone who actually was involved in canonizing the Scripture. It is interesting that Daniel was a Jew, as were Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego, all were in Babylon captivity.

After their captivity, the extremely wise, knowledgeable and talented Daniel appears to have been in a high position (Daniel 1:4). Since he was so smart and so righteous and was a really good man. So the king took a shining to him, especially after he interpreted his dreams. It says he was in the king’s palace. Now in the king’s palace is also the king’s library. There in the king’s palace, Daniel was in fact a teacher, possibly like a head librarian.

Dan 1:3 And the king spoke unto Ashpenaz the master of his eunuchs, that he should bring in certain of the children of Israel, even of the seed royal and of the nobles;
v. 4 youths in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skilful in all wisdom, and endued with knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability TO STAND IN THE KING’S PALACE; and that he should teach them the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. (Also Dan. 9:2)

So Daniel, who is a prisoner in Babylon, has got all the books, the Law of Moses. He talks about the prophesies of Jeremiah, I mean he mentions them, because he’s got them all. These are precious books and since he was in the king’s palace, they would allow him to have access to these books. You see, he was in the perfect position to preserve these books, as was Joseph with the ancient annals of Jacob while in Egypt.

EZRA
[Finalized The Canonization Of The Old Testament]

Ezra and Nehemiah lived in the time of the captivity. Israel was the northern tribe and were conquered by Assyria in 722 BC. In 695 (some say 685) the southern nation Judah, headquartered in Jerusalem go into captivity under the Babylonians. They of course had some favor with the king, because the whole book of Daniel deals with Babylon and a lot with King Nebuchadnezzar and the nations.

On the chart of the proper order of Old Testament books, you will wonder why Daniel is down at the very end with the post exile books. Why isn’t he in with the prophets? Wasn’t Daniel a prophet? Yes he was. But he was unlike most of the other prophets in that he was writing from captivity, in a Gentile nation and mostly about the Gentile nations.

He talked about the coming kingdom of God and the Gentiles. For that reason and other things, he was not put in with the prophets, but in with the post exile books, which is kind of an honor you know. He’s right up there with the greatest, Ezra and Nehemiah - who wrote Ezra, Nehemiah and I and II Chronicles.

Ezra edited some books to make them more understandable. Example, Deut. 34: 5-12 was added by Ezra. Moses did not record his own death. All other periods of canonization are of little importance compared to that of Ezra, who made the final decision on all books.

So again these canonizing periods of establishment of what is the Scripture, always seems to happen when there was bad times. They would be, ‘well we’ve got to bring this together again, we can’t lose this stuff.’ That’s how it was always done, you’ll see that. That’s what happened with the New Testament too. They didn’t canonize any books the first 50 years or so after Christ was crucified. Why? They didn’t need to. Then there became a need, when there was a need, they would say , ‘we got to put this together and let everybody know what is the Scriptures, because there is bad times coming.’

So Ezra writes all about setting up worship again, rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and all of that. He’s gathering the books and re-establishing proper worship in the house of God. I and II Chronicles really have a lot to do with the authority and so on and the setting of God’s house in order and to canonize what is the Scripture, what are the books to be used in relation to that and so on.

Here is something interesting, we read in Nehemiah 8:9, this is about 444 BC or so. Ezra publicly read the Law to all in Jerusalem, publicly. This is canonizing. This is saying these are the books, these are the important Scriptures and so on.

Some books all through this period were never really officially canonized, namely what we call the Megalott - the 5 festivals scrolls - Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. But they were so continuously used all the time and read in certain festivals of the year. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind about those books, they were always known, and they were included in the end. There is no period where anybody actually put there stamp of approval on those, what we call the Festival Books or the Megalott. But certainly one of the ways we found that something is canonized was by the sheer fact of repetitive using it in religious services.

Now you might wonder why it is that these kings let people go back? Well it said directly in the Scripture that God just put it on the heart of Cyrus to let the people go back (Ezra 1). I think 40,000 people had gone back at first. Then they sent back priests and Levites, the more official people, and then Ezra and Nehemiah.

Now Nehemiah was the cup bearer of the king of Persia. Why would Nehemiah, a cup bearer for the king, be coming to Jerusalem to become a Governor? What is the connection there? Ezra was a Jew or maybe a Levite. But why is Nehemiah coming from Persia, where he is cup bearer to the king, now he is going to be the Governor of Judea? What interest do the Persians have with the Jews in Judea.

Here is where you got to start learning the Chronology of the Bible and all of this fits together.
Did you know Isaiah lived back in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah? I mean it doesn’t seem like it, because look how we read the books. The arrangement of the books screws up our minds.
So what interest could there be with the Jews in Jerusalem, in Persia? Excuse me, remember Queen Esther! Queen Esther isn’t she the one that saved the Jewish nation, pretty much. Yea I think she could bend the kings ear a little bit. But it was about that time that she was in power and she would certainly be wondering what was happening to my people down there in Jerusalem.

But Ezra edited numerous books to bring them up to date. He wrote the Book of Ezra, the Book of Nehemiah was previously known as II Ezra and he wrote I and II Chronicles. He wrote THE LAST BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT!

Kat · « **Reply #6 on:** November 24, 2007, 11:39:35 AM »

PROPER ORDER & DATES FOR OLD TESTAMENT BOOKS

Name of books: Date written     By     Location

The Law [5 Books]

GENESIS     1274 BC Moses     Wilderness
EXODUS     1274     Moses     Wilderness
LEVITICUS     1274     Moses     Wilderness
NUMBERS     1274-1234 Moses     Wilderness
DEUTERONOMY     1234     Moses     Wilderness

The Former Prophets [2 Books]     [Acts 3:34]

JOSHUA/JUDGES 1047-1007 Samuel     Canaan

BOOK OF KINGDOMS 739-681 Isaiah Judah
(I & II SAMUEL
and I & II KINGS)

The Latter Prophets (Major) [3 Books]

ISAIAH     739--     Isaiah     Judah
JEREMIAH     626-586     Jeremiah     Judah
EZEKIAL     591-571     Ezekiel     Babylon

The Latter Prophets (Minor) [All 1 Book]

HOSEA     790       Hosea     Israel (North)
JOEL     790     Joel     Judah
AMOS     790     Amos     Israel
OBADIAH     785       Obadiah     Judah
JONAH     785     Jonah-3rd person Nineveh (?)
MICAH     750     Micah     Jerusalem
NAHUM     650     Nahum Nineveh (?)
HABAKKUK     630     Habakkuk     Judah
ZEPHANIAH     630     Zephaniah     Judah
HAGGAI     520       Haggai     Judah
ZECHARIAH     520     Zechariah     Judah
MALACHI     430     Malachi     Judah

The Psalms (the Poetic books/the Writings/Statesmen) [3 Books]

PSALMS     1004-964     David     Jerusalem
PROVERBS     964-926     Solomon     Jerusalem
JOB     2000-500 (?)     Job     Egypt/Judah

The Megilloth/The Festival Scroll [5 Books]

SONGS OF SONGS     964-926     Solomon     Jerusalem
RUTH     1375-1050     Samuel (?)     Bethlehem
LAMENTATIONS     586     Jeremiah      Jerusalem
ECCLEIASTES     964-926     Solomon     Jerusalem
ESTHER     486-465     Ezra (?)     Jerusalem

Post Exile Books [3 Books]

DANIEL     605-535     Daniel     Babylon
EZRA-NEHEMIAH     444     Ezra     Jerusalem
CHRONICLES     444     Ezra     Jerusalem

Kat · « **Reply #7 on:** November 24, 2007, 11:48:16 AM »

Audio 4

Proper Order Of Old Testament Books
The headings were good. Because these headings are how the Jews have always understood the design of their Holy Scriptures.

The Law:
There are 5 Books in the Law. This is very important that we get this part. There are 5 books, Genesis - Exodus - Leviticus - Numbers - Deuteronomy. They were all written somewhere around 1300 BC apparently. They were all written by Moses, in the wilderness.

The Former Prophets (Major):
These are 2 books. Joshua/Judges and The Book of the Kingdoms. In the King James that is 6 books. But it’s only 2 books. Joshua and Judges is one book, written by Samuel, in Canaan.
The book of the Kingdoms, we believe was written by Isaiah in Judea. That is the Former Prophets, then we have the Latter Prophets.

The Latter Prophets (Major):
You have 3 major; Isaiah - written about 739 in Judea, Jeremiah - written about 626-586 by Jeremiah in Judea, and Ezekiel - written about 591-571 by Ezekiel in Babylon. Those are the three latter prophets called major prophets, but we also have….

The Latter Prophets (Minor):
They are only called minor because the books are usually somewhat shorter. But you do have Zechariah and a couple that are fairly lengthy too. You can see the dates of those on the chart. You have Hosea - Joel - Amos - Obadiah - Jonah - Micah - Nahum - Habakkuk - Zephaniah - Haggai - Zechariah - Malachi, written from 790-430 BC. Jonah possibly written in Nineveh, also Nahum. Hosea written in northern Israel and most of the rest in Judah.

The Psalms:
They are also called the Writings, sometimes called the Statesmen books, because they are written by statesmen. Either high priests, governors, kings and so on. They follow the prophets because they are lesser in authority. A prophet of God had more authority then say a king. But understand that in it’s broadest sense a king who wrote Scripture or preached or whatever, was also considered a prophet. So these books are also called Poetic books. The reason for that is they are written as a poem. The Psalms, most of them were to be accompanied by music. Just like most songs have some kind of a poetic rhyme to the verses, these apparently did too. Of course you lose a lot when you come over to English or some other language.

Sometimes I’m a little critical about the King James, where there is really a poor translation. But I have never insinuated that over all the King James is a poor translation. It is not! Well you say, ‘Ray you say it’s not even a translation, it’s a revision of the Bishop’s Bible.’ Well that’s not so bad. The Bishop Bible was a good translation. One reason the king wanted a new translation, he didn’t like all the many marginal commentary that was in there. He said no commentary at all, except what little bit is absolutely necessary to explain a word or something like that. But no doctrinal type things. He wanted the king to be exalted.

But it is an amazing thing what Tyndale was able to accomplish in his translation, because he uses all the words. I mean it’s seldom they have to leave a word out or put too many extra words in. But sometimes they do, because like I’ve said so many times, it’s impossible to translate one language into another word for word. It’s just not possible. People think that it is possible…. people that don’t know anything about languages. It is no such thing as you take a language like Russian or German and then each Germany word you give it a English word and then you can read it. It would be gobbledy gook.

So some of the modern versions, like the New King James, they took out all the ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ and all of that sort of thing. They tried to modernize it. Some of the versions they put more emphases on translating phrases, rather than specific word for word. But it’s not just the science to translating, it’s an art.

I’m going to show you something and you are going to see it very quickly I think. With the exception of one word, these two translations are virtually synonymous - word for word. But wait till you hear the differences. We need to be thankful we have the King James. Although when I want to be critical, I’ll consult other Books, many times the King James is right though. It’s right okay, but it’s not as precise as Rotherham Emphatic Diaglott or the Concordant Literal Bible.

But let me do this just for fun, so you can see what I’m saying. So you will maybe have a greater appreciation of the King James, even though it may not be the most technically accurate translation. I going to read the 23 Psalms from the Concordant Literal version and it is a very accurate translation.

Psalms 23
Concordant Literal
A Davidic Psalm

Yahweh is my Shepherd;
Nothing shall I lack.
In verdant oases, He is making me recline;
Beside restful waters, He is conducting me."
He is restoring my soul;
He is guiding me in the routes of righteousness, on account of His Name."
Even though I should walk in the ravine of blackest shadow,
I shall not fear evil, For You are with me;
Your club and Your staff, they are comforting me."
You are arranging a table before me in front of my foes;
You have sleeked my head with oil;
My cup is satiated.
Yea, goodness and benignity, they shall pursue me all the days of my life,
And I will dwell in the House of Yahweh
for the length of my days."

That is fairly accurate word for word.
But now listen to the King James, same accuracy except for one word, the last word.

Psalms 23
A Psalm of David.

The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadth me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness
For His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You art with me;
Thou rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thy anointest my head with oil;
My cup runeth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
All the days of my life;
And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
Forever.

That is so poetic. He uses all the words, just listen to Tyndale; “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” It’s King James but it’s Tyndale. But listen in verse 4, Concordant says, “Even though I should walk in the ravine of blackest shadow…” And verse 5, “My cup is satiated.” Now that is a little bit more accurate, the satiated is just a little closer, but listen how it sounds, you know….. And then Tyndale “My cup runneth over.” The “ever” there means, to the end of my days. It’s not the word ‘alam’ that is usually translated forever, ever, evermore, eternity. It’s two words there used for the word ‘ever,’ it means to the end of my days.

But look at the difference in the way they reads. This is the way that the whole King James is, it reads this way. You can just pick out Scriptures almost any place and they have this beautiful poetic ring. How Tyndale did that is almost amazing. Because he didn’t add or take away words. But he used some different words and he changed the order slightly, which is permissible. The end result is like, wow! What a difference!

So we have - the Psalms, which is Psalms, Proverbs and Job... Job is a poem, I don’t know if you know that. The 42 chapters of Job is a poem.

Now Job does not appear to be a Jew or a Israelite. It seems that he was a Pharaoh in Egypt. But to pin down when he lived, I got 2000 BC all the way to 500.

I personally think that he lived at about the time of Abraham, which would have been 1800 or 1900 BC. I based that pretty much on the fact that 500 or 600 years later people were living to be 120 - 110 - 80 - 75 years old. 200 or 300 years earlier they were living to be 250 - 300 - 400 years old. Job lived to be about 200, so he lived to about the age that people were living to at the time of Abraham. I would probably put him about 1800 - 1900 BC. He apparently was one of the Pharaoh of Egypt, don’t know which one.

The Megilloth:
Also known as the Festival Scrolls. There are 5 of these. Theologians have drawn all kinds of analogies and correlations and parallels and all of that, with all of these books. You can draw parallels between Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy and then the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th books of Psalms, and Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. They each have 5 and they all have similar themes.

The Festival Scroll were read at specific Festivals and Holy Days in Israel. They correlate in many ways with the book of Psalms and the 5 books of Moses - The Law and so on. For example in the Song of Songs this was read at Passover. Traditionally this was always read at Passover and it pictures God preparing a bride. In Genesis we have God preparing a bride for Adam…. He’s preparing mankind.

But now in Song of Songs God is preparing a bride for Himself and the setting is the spring of the year, the spring harvest and so on. So this was always read at Passover.

Ruth, is again the first harvest of the fields. This was read at Pentecost. Pentecost is the first harvest - the first fruits. We are a kind of first fruits.

Lamentations is read on the Trumpets. Trumpets are a sign of war. Lamentation is about disaster and destruction. If you were to bring it to us today, it’s our destruction. In other words He calls out His first fruits, we have to be destroyed before we can come into the kingdom, at Tabernacles.

All these different ways you can see how these books were used. So it isn’t that they just had all these books, they all had a purpose. These ones were read at these times and these were read here, because this symbolizes this. There was a pattern to it.

They had the different courses of singers. There was 15 steps that lead up to the leveling off, at the Temple. There was those 15 steps, then they had the 15 Psalms of degrees. One day one and one day the next, because there was a system and a pattern to all of it. I think a lot of it has been lost. Although the Jews try to figure out a lot of the stuff that they did. Then we have the final books of the Bible.

Post Exile:
These are the books that are all written after the captivity and after they came back to rebuild Judea. These are Daniel, Ezra/Nehemiah and Chronicles.

We talked about why Daniel’s found here, rather than in the Prophets.

We have Ezra and Nehemiah which are one book and I and II Chronicles which is another book. We believe they were all four written by Ezra, who was the final one to put his approval on these books, as being the official Scriptures of the Jewish people. The Synagogues Scripture, these books later became known as…. because they were in the Temple they were known as the Temple Scrolls. Everybody knew what those books were and what order they were suppose to be in and when they were to be read and why they were read.

You know they had all that and now we are losing a lot of that. So we got Bibles now and these books are all mixed up and we don’t know….. you know we end the Old Testament with Malachi. Malachi is not the last book. II Chronicles should be the last book of the Old Testament in the Bible.

Kat · « **Reply #8 on:** November 24, 2007, 11:50:24 AM »

Proper Numbering Of Old Testament Equals 22 Books

So the original proper numbering of the books of the Old Testament should be 22. The Jews always had 22 books in all their synagogues, so where did the King James and most others get 39?

But you can see where we get that, you combine Joshua and Judges into one book. I and II Kings and I and II Samuel is the Book of the Kingdoms. Ezra and Nehemiah is one book. The 12 minor prophets always one book. They didn’t add any new books, they merely numbered them differently.

The book of Jubilees written 150 BC, says God made 22 things in 6 days. There are 22 generations from Adam to Jacob/Israel, etc. Famous Jewish historian Flavius Josephus claims there were 22 books in the Old Testament Canon. The early Greeks, Syrians, Armenians and Catholics all agreed that there should be 22 original books in the Canon.

This is from an outline from Dr. Martin. There are 22 authorities, theologians, Rabbis, etc., stating that there were 22 books in the Old Testament Canon.
1. Melito - 170 AD
2. Origen - 210
3. Hilary of Poitiers - 360
4. Athanasius - 365
5. Cyril of Jerusalem - 386
6. Gregory of Naziansus - 390
7. Ephphanius - 400
8. The Laodicean Council - 400
9. Ruffinus - 240
10. Jerome - 410
11. Synopsis of Sacred Scripture - 500
12. Isidore of Seville - 600
13. Leontius - 610
14. John Damascenus - 730
15. Nicephorus - 800’s
16. Jwesudad, Bishop of Hadad - 852
17. Hrabanus - 800’s
18. Moses of Chorene - 1000
19. Peter of Cluny - 1150
20. John of Salisbury - 1180
21. Victoris - 1100’s
22. Richardus de Victore - 1200’s

So when we number them properly we have 22 books. But there is no way you can stick the books The Wisdom of Solomon, Beruk, The Three Children or Bel and the Dragon, you can’t fit them in there. They do not fit.

Total: The Law 5 + The Prophets 13 + The Psalms (Poetic books) 4 = 22 books.
That makes sense to do it that way. We’ve not just doing it that way to make it come out to 22.
I showed you the Scripture, where it’s talking about this is recorded. Isaiah recorded this in the book of the Kings of Israel and Judea (II Chronicles). That was considered one book. If you say, ‘where are the recordings of the Kings?’ It’s in 1st Kings, 2nd Kings, 1st Samuel, 2nd Samuel, but he said in a book, one book.

22 Is A Number Of Completeness

The number 22 completes the Hebrew alphabet. All that can be said can be said using these 22 letters. You can write every book there is with 22 letters. So the idea being everything that God had to say to us in the Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures could be said in those 22 letters and it’s done in 22 books. God always has a purpose for numbers and things like that.

There is one other thing that is interesting about 22. Numerous sections of Scripture are written in complete 22 letter acrostics. An acrostic is when a book, poem or a psalms or whatever is written to where the first stanza or first sentence or section of Scripture begins with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet - aleph. The second sentence or section begins with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet - beth. All the way down the Hebrew alphabet to the 22nd letter, then that’s the end of the piece. Now the idea behind that is whatever it’s talking about is complete. That shows complete perfection.

Now there is some examples of broken acrostics. That is where it goes so far and then it breaks off. That shows that whatever that’s talking about is not complete. There is more to be done, there is more to come.

It’s kind of like missing the amen at the end of the book of Acts and III John. How come there is no amen? There is an amen in I John, an amen at the end of II John. Why is there no amen at the end of Acts and why is there no amen at the end of III John? Well some of it probably has to do with canonization, believe it or not.

An example of a complete acrostic is the Psalms 119, showing the completeness and perfection of God Law. Now your Bibles might not show it, I like this Bible I have because it has a lot of these little goodies, it even tells you it’s an acrostic. Here in the Psalms 119:1 it starts off - Aleph, that’s the first Hebrew letter, “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD.” Then it goes down the first set of the stanzas. Then it came to the next set at verse 9 - Beth.

Then it goes to the next set Gimel, then to Daleth, He, Van, Zain, Cheth, Teth, Jod, Caph, Lamed, Mem, Nun, Samech, Ain, Pe, Tzaddi, Koph, Resh, Schin, Tau.
Psalms 119 is a complete acrostic.

Psalms 111 and 112 are also complete acrostics showing god’s complete and permanent redemption of His people.

Proverbs 31:10-31 is a complete acrostic describing a complete and perfect woman.

With books, God’s Hebrew Old Testament revelation is complete. For further revelation, God will choose a different language - Greek.

Ezra Had Access To Lots Of Books

So Ezra did a Lot of writing, if he wrote Ezra, Nehemiah, I Chronicles and II Chronicles, they are all about 30 chapters each. That’s a lot of writing and he did some editing. The 34th chapter of Deuteronomy is obviously an editorial of Ezra’s, because he’s explaining to people in the future…. how did Moses die? Moses wrote those books, but he certainly didn’t record his own death. So there is some editorializing going on.

Moses did some editorializing too. Back in the book of Genesis, you’ll read about some town or whatever and people will say, ‘this is crazy, this Bible is all contradictory nonsense.’ Because here it talks about Hebron or some town and they’ll say, ‘that town didn’t even exist back then.’ That’s right, it didn’t. ‘So why is it in there?’ Because Moses lived many centuries later and he’s letting everybody know where that was, it’s this town over here. Well it’s got a different name now and they would have never known what it was. So even Moses did some editorializing, because he knew that some of these things had changed now.

Here just to show that they were not totally void of history and knowledge. The “book of the Chronicles” named by Ezra 37 times in I and II Kings, Nehemiah and Esther. The “book of the Acts of Solomon” is mentioned twice ( I King, II Chronicles). Where is that book? Well we don’t know, we don’t have it. That was one that they put aside. But it existed, because it was mentioned. The “book of Jasher” is mentioned in Joshua and II Samuel.

1 Chron. 29:29 And 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,

2 Chron. 9:29 And the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah of Shiloh, and in the visions of Iddo the seer…

2 Chron. 12:15 ...the book of Shemaiah the prophet…
The “book of Jahu” is mentioned in II Kings 10:343 and II Chron. 20:34.
The “book of the records of thy Fathers” in Ezra 4:15.
The “book of the records of the chronicles” in Esther 6:1.
The “book of Enoch” there is no such reference in the Bible.

But there is that book, it talks about 300 foot men and stuff like that. So I don’t have to much confidence in the book of Enoch. There are lots of Holy books and they read kind of like The Prophets and stuff. But they are not, they are forgery.

One big reason, besides the fact that Ezra was trying to re-establish a Godly practice of religion and Tabernacle service and so on, after coming out of Babylon and captivity. There was another reason why he wanted to canonize which books were and which books were not Scripture. That is, the Samaritans had set up their religion up north and they rejected everything, but the Pentateuch. They did not subscribe to the prophets, but they did the law, the Pentateuch. They had the same Pentateuch that they had down in Jerusalem.

So to make a distinction, Ezra apparently copied all of the new editions with the square block type Hebrew lettering. Which was different from what they had passed down. So that now everybody would know, anybody that knew Ezra and he was somebody.

He and Nehemiah were in charge of Judah, the religion at least, the Temple and everything. So to make that distinction, he used the square Hebrew form of the alphabet. So everybody would know, because if they see something they would say maybe it is or maybe it isn’t a book that should be in there. But now they would know one thing, if it was what Ezra gave them. So anybody that knew Ezra was a man of God and all those at that time Hezekiah, Josiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel and Isaiah these were prominent people, so whatever they said was Scripture, was accepted.

Because from here on, about 450 BC, we had no Scriptural history for 4 ½ centuries. We go from II Chronicles to Matthew and there is no history. Now some of the books that are Apocryphal books may be accurate history, it‘s just that they are not necessarily to be Scripture.

By long tradition, a ritual Torah scroll shall contain only the Hebrew consonantal text - nothing may be added, nothing taking away. However, perhaps because they were intended for personal study rather than ritual use, the Masoretic codexes provide extensive additional material, called masorah, to show correct pronunciation and cantillation, protect against scribal errors and annotate possible variants. The manuscripts thus include vowel points, pronunciation marks and stress accents in the text, short annotations in the side margins and longer more extensive notes in the upper and lower marhins and collected at the end of each book.

Kat · « **Reply #9 on:** November 24, 2007, 11:53:59 AM »

Masorah/Masoretic codex

This is the text used by the Jews today and this is the text that most Bible translators used for the Old Testament. You can see at the top, down the sides and at the bottom they’ve got little notations and stuff. Some criticize that, they say this is just and old scribbled up codex. Hey scribbling is good. There is nothing that people like better than to find Einstein’s scribbling you know. The truth of the matter is, some of these things are wonderful, because from those marginal notes we learn a lot of things that we wouldn’t have known, by just reading the Scripture. So rather than messing up the manuscript and making it all messy, it’s really a lot of good information there. We should be glad they found some that are messed up with all these extra writings.

These pictures were not in the notes, but everything below was added from 'Turning the Pages' website - http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/sacredtexts/index.html

'Codex' is a grand word for a book in the form that we know it today. In Latin 'codex', or 'caudex', once meant tree trunk. Thin wooden writing tablets were used in ancient Roman times as informal notebooks. When, during the second century, religious texts began to be written down in books rather than on rolls, the name 'codex' was transferred to them. The pages that formed the earliest books were made from the reeds of the papyrus plant, others were on prepared animal skin.

The Lisbon Bible is the most accomplished dated codex (that is, a manuscript in book form rather than a scroll) of the Portuguese school of medieval Hebrew illumination, completed in 1482.

The fourth book of the Torah. The Hebrew title Be-Midbar means "In the wilderness" from its opening verse: "And the Lord spoke unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai..." Numbers 1:1 (Lisbon Bible).

This codex is an early form of the masoretic text, compiled by Aaron Ben Asher, a 10th-century scholar from Tiberias, Palestine. The exhibited page contains the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), an Early Codex of the Torah, Palestine or Middle East, probably ninth century. This thousand-year-old document is one of the oldest surviving examples of a Hebrew Bible codex - a manuscript written in book form rather than a scroll - and includes information from early scholars on how to pronounce and read out the sacred text.

The Codex Sinaiticus is a treasure beyond price. Produced in the middle of the fourth century, the Codex is one of the two earliest Christian Bibles. Within its beautifully handwritten Greek text are the earliest surviving copy of the complete New Testament and the earliest and best copies of some of the Jewish scriptures.

All the texts written down in the Codex are in Greek. They include the translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. The Greek text is written using a form of capital or upper case letters known as Biblical majuscule and without word division. The pages of the Codex are of prepared animal skin called parchment. Shown here is the end of Mark, ending with verse 8 of chapter 16.

St Jerome's Latin Vulgate (from the Latin vulgata, meaning 'common' or 'popular') was commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382. Based on translations then in use, it employs the everyday written Latin style of the fourth century, in contrast to the more formal, elegant Latin of Cicero. Jerome's Vulgate became the standard version of the Bible in the West for over a thousand years.

Kat · « **Reply #10 on:** November 27, 2007, 09:09:20 PM »

CANONIZATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES

Now we are starting the canonization of the New Testament Scriptures. Christ prophesied that He would use His disciples to fill the canon.

Isaiah 8:16 Bind up the testimony, seal the Law among My disciples.

But that’s a prophecy for when Messiah comes. So there is a statement that He will bind up the testimony of God, and seal the Law among My disciples. So just keep that in mind as a starting point in the Old Testament, for how God is going to bring about this Scripture of the New Testament.

So we have got 22 books with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet in the Old Testament. Now that God has a new revelation, He is going to use a new language. At least as far as we know the language was Greek But some insist Matthew was written in Hebrew, we don’t know that for a fact. I don’t think we can prove that.

But just like Ezra and Nehemiah closed out the Old Testament canon, we are going to see that Peter and John close out the New Testament.

Now the Catholic church knew that the canon was complete long before they came on the scene with their Ecumenical Councils. II Peter makes it clear that Peter knew what was Scripture, and John finalized everything. Just as Ezra penned the last book (II Chronicles) of the Old Testament, John penned the Last book of the New Testament (Revelation).

Many things were known to be true and of God, long before they were officially and publicly canonized or written down in books by God’s high servants.

Gen 26:5 “because Abraham obeyed My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My Laws.”

Before the Law of Moses, it wasn’t that they didn’t know it was wrong to murder or commit adultery, they did. I mean even the pagans knew that.

When Abraham came into the presents of Abimelech, he told his wife to tell them she was his sister (Gen. 20). I mean he was going to let the king have her, because he was afraid. She was so pretty, he thought that the king would want her and if he said no to the king….. let’s face it, Abraham was a coward. He did that twice. Isaac did the same thing. They’re all cowards, then maybe I would have been a coward too, I don’t know.

In Genesis 26:5 it says “My Laws.” Laws, plural. So did God have statutes - principles - ordinances - commandments and laws back in the time of Abraham? Yes He did. But there was no book. It nowhere talks about a book of the law. But they knew what the law was, at least the basic laws. They knew that it was wrong to steal, to lie, to commit adultery and murder and so on. They knew that!

DISCIPLES KNEW THEY WERE CANONIZING SCRIPTURE

We are going to see that they knew that they were canonizing the Scripture. They could tell by what God was showing them that this was going to be Scripture someday. We have already talked about how all the writers of the Bible are called Prophets.

Luke 24:27 And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

He expounds that beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, Moses was a Prophet. All writers of the Bible are called Prophets. David was a Prophet. Remember that many prophecies of Messiah are in the Psalms, written by David.

Rom 1:2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,

Act 26:27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe.

Act 28:23 …to whom he expounded, testifying the kingdom of God, and persuading them the things concerning Jesus, both out of the Law of Moses and out of the Prophets, from morning until evening.

Peter knew he was writing Scripture.

II Peter 1:19 WE HAVE also a more sure Word of prophecy, whereunto you do well to take heed, as to a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the Daystar arises in your hearts,

“We have.” You have to pay real close attention to words. You will just read many hundreds of Scriptures in the Bible and it won’t say anything to you. Because you don’t pay attention to the words. How many times have I said on Bible-truths in the last 5 years, you’ve got to pay attention to the words, all the words. The words are so important, you’ve got to pay attention to these words.

So Peter says “we.” We who? Well it could maybe mean we apostles, all of us or maybe he’s just talking about him and John or maybe he, John and Paul. Because they were the only ones that seem to maybe be in proximity at this time. “We have also…” also means in addition too. In addition to what? “A more sure Word of prophecy.” Also there are other prophets, but we have a prophecy, God gave it to us. WE have a prophecy, you see. He says look we have a Word of prophecy from God, you best pay heed, this is the Word of God that you are hearing.

II Peter 3:16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of THESE THINGS in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest (twist), as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, unto their own destruction.

See, when you read the Bible, don’t just read verses and then say, ‘okay I read the verse.’ But what does it mean? “Speaking of these things,” What things? Everything that Peter just finished telling them in the last 4 or 5 verses of the book. All these things that I’m telling you. He said Paul talks about “all these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest twist, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures,”
So Paul is writing that these were right up there with the other Scripture. These are also Scripture. So Paul knew that he was writing Scripture, he says…

Rom 16:25 Now to Him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept secret since the world began,
v. 26 but NOW is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known unto all nations for the obedience of faith:

Was that manifest back during Isaiah’s prophecy? No. Back during David’s Psalms? No. “Now” he says.

II Cor. 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me,

Paul makes no bones about it, he says, I was given a lot of revelations from God. Well these revelations weren’t given to him just for his pride and vanity. So he knew all this stuff and this was going to be written down as Scripture, not everything, but a lot.
Paul may have written hundreds of letters, he probably wrote letters all the time. But they were not all destined to be in the canon or the Scripture.

Eph 3:3-7 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.

So in other ages, in the Old Testament this stuff was not known. They did not know what Paul was telling them. This is new revelation from God, “as it has now been revealed by the Spirit.” So there are apostles and prophets at the time of Paul. He was an Apostle and anybody who speaks, sings or writes inspired writing from God is a prophet.

Col 1:25 whereof I was made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which was given to me for you, TO FULFILL THE WORD OF GOD,

This is not saying, that I Paul am fulfilling some Scripture that talks about me being an Apostle? No. There is no Old Testament Scripture that prophesied about Paul being an Apostle. None. He’s not fulfilling some prophecy about himself.
He’s filling up his writing - his prophesying - his inspired writing - his teachings of the mystery of Christ, his version of the gospel given to him. This is going to fill up the Word of God, complete it, see.
We have to be careful that we don’t put interpretations on words that isn’t there. To fill it means to fill it full, to fill it up full, the Word of God.

Col 1:26 the mystery which hath been hid for ages and generations: but now hath it been manifested to His saints,

How? Through Paul’s writings, and Peters, James, Jude and John.

I Cor. 14:37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.

These things are straight from the Lord. Straight from God. All this stuff that Paul is writing, is Scripture.

I Cor. 2:12 Now we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God.
v. 13 Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Spirit teaches; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

So whether you are speaking it, singing it, writing it or whatever, if it is inspired, it’s Scripture. Because “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,” II Tim 3:16.

II John 1:10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring THIS DOCTRINE, do not receive him into your house, nor speak a greeting to him.

What doctrine? “This” one, the one that John has been giving. My doctrine, this doctrine, the doctrine that we apostles are teaching. If they bring something else, don’t accept it, this is the doctrine. So whatever John taught was the doctrine of God, this is the Scripture, this is the Truth.

Remember how Christ told the Apostles at the last Passover that the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter, the Parakletos will come and guide you into all Truth. Was that just for them? They were going to be given a spiritual high? ‘Boy look at all the truth we know.’ No, they wrote it down, they taught it. They wrote it and it became Scripture, “this doctrine.”

Notice this we read in Revelation written by John.

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him (that means Jesus Christ) to show unto His servants, even the things which must shortly (quickly) come to pass: and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John;

Whose going to record this for us? John. This revelation of the book of Revelation, this is Scripture. So John also had the Truth, “if they bring not THIS (the one the Apostles were teaching and recording) DOCTRINE….” (II John 1:10).

Rev 1:2 who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw.
v. 3 Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.

He bore record of that, we have the record, that is the final book of our Scriptures - Revelation.

It was not necessary to canonize the scriptures, because everybody was circulating these letters and shortly after many of Paul’s letters were written. Then they wrote the gospel accounts, Matthew and Mark. Luke probably wrote his account of the gospel at the bequest of Paul and he also wrote the book of Acts.

We went through many of the Scripture talking about the Gentiles. Luke was a Gentile, so these books were to show the Gentiles what are the Scriptures. What books are we talking about, the Scriptures? The Law - the Prophets - the Writings. It was the book they had in the synagogues and they were everywhere.

Here is something important we need to cover. A couple of reasons why they didn’t see a necessity to formalize these books and then why later they did. Everything was rocking along okay. There was Jerusalem and the Temple. Even the apostles went up to the Temple to pray sometimes, even after Jesus was crucified. What did they have at the Temple? They had the Temple scrolls, all 22 books that Ezra had canonized, 450 years earlier. They were all there. There was no mystery about what was the Scriptures.

It’s only Luke that’s clarifying, for the Gentiles that were being converted. They might say, ‘What are these Holy books you’re talking about?’ Luke would say, ‘well these are the Temple Scripture, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, they are in the Temple and in all the synagogues.’ ‘Oh okay, now we know what you’re talking about.’

But there was no necessity to canonize Scripture. They thought Christ was coming back pretty soon. I mean we could see that they really did believe that.

Kat · « **Reply #11 on:** November 27, 2007, 09:11:23 PM »

DISCIPLES THOUGHT JESUS WOULD COME IN THEIR LIFETIME

I Thess. 4:15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep.

Paul said, “we who are alive and remain.” Now you could say he’s just saying “we,” whoever the we are at that time of His coming. But no, it sounds like he’s saying, we right now here. Those of us that are alive until His coming, we won’t actually go to sleep we’ll just be changed. You know, he’ll come and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we will rise to meet the Lord in the air.

I Cor. 15:51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep…

Paul thought Christ would come before he would go to sleep(die).

v. 53 …but we shall all be changed,
v. 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

James 5:7 Be patient therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord.

Like He is coming soon, just be patient and hang in there.

Joel 2:28 And it shall be afterward, I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh. And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams; your young men shall see visions.
v. 29 And also I will pour out My Spirit on the slaves and on the slave women in those days.
v. 30 And I will show wonders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
v. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the coming of the great and awesome day of Jehovah.

Acts 2:15 For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.
v. 16 but this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel:
v. 17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams:

Peter thought, well this is the last days. Now he was right, he was inspired to write that because God did start pouring out His Spirit on Pentecost... so that was the last days. How long do the last days last? Until they are over. It’s been a pretty long time. But he didn’t finish the prophecy, he quoted Joel, but he didn’t finish all of Joel. Because it doesn’t all fit then. But the portion that he did quote, it does fit then.

You say, ‘but didn’t it mention heavenly signs.’ He said, you know these people aren’t drunk. These people are like the people that prophesied in Joel, where it says they shall dream dreams and see visions, all of that. The sun shall not give it’s light and the moon shall turn to blood.

Acts 2:20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the day of the Lord come, That great and notable day.

Did that happen on Pentecost? Yes it did! How so? How did the sun not give it’s light? How did the moon instead of reflecting light, turn to blood?

Light is symbolic of God’s Truth. Jesus Christ is the light. The brightest physical symbol of light, brightness, this is our sun. So light comes from the strongest source. God - Jesus Christ is that light.

John the Baptist said, “that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light,” (John 3:19). But He was that light. The Son gives light, that’s direct revelation from God.

Now the moon is the reflected light. That should come through the church and through the ministry. They get it from the Son. The moon (church) reflects it’s light from the sun (Christ), it doesn’t have it’s own light (Truth). If the sun went out, the moon would go out, because the moon has no light, it’s reflected light. So as the ministry gets light, they give it to the congregation, they feed the sheep.

But what did He say would happen, starting on Pentecost? The sun/Son isn’t going to give it’s light anymore. God is not going to give direct light to the people anymore. The light that should be coming, that was already given to the moon, to be reflected, now it’s not going to give it’s light. It’s going to be turned to blood. What is this talking about?

Their revelation from God was going to cease. Apostasy is going to set in. The church is going to go a muck and instead of teaching the light from God and passing it on, they are going to turn to blood. How so?

Well on that very day they stoned Stephen (Acts 7). Instead of giving light to the world as a secondary light, they turned to blood. They turned murderers.

Tomorrow we are going to go through and see how many men, who wanted to present God’s Word to everyday people like us, they had to pay with their lives. Well who would do such a dastardly thing? The moon! The secondary light of God’s Truth - the church - the Popes - the Bishops. If you even had…. you didn’t have to teach it or even read it, if you were found with a copy of Tyndale’s Bible, you were put to death. I mean it was pretty bad.

Tyndale was burned at the stake. Russ was burned at the stake, lots of people were burned at the stake. They kind of took the Catholics out of England for a while. Then bloody Mary came back and she wanted to bring back the Catholic church. Then she started burning people at the stake. She said, ‘I’m not doing anything to these people, that God isn’t going to do to them for all eternity. I’m not doing anything wrong.’ She didn’t see anything wrong with burning people at the stake. It’s unbelievable.

Calvin didn’t see anything wrong with burning people at the stake either. That man is so adored by so many. I mean considered the greatest theologian. He was, I mean absolutely the scum of the earth.

Martin Luther although he did a lot of good things, you just read what his attitude was towards the peasants. ‘Kill them all and make it dirty, make it fast.’ No mercy.

So it did start then. They went from teaching God’s Truth, they turned their hands to blood. They killed Stephen, a real saintly man, they killed him and gnawed on him with their teeth. They just despised that man. You don’t know what hatred is. Like I’ve said so many times, hell hath no fury like a Christian who’s just been told the Truth.

Now even Christ made some statements that could have sounded like His coming and setting up His kingdom was right around the corner.

Matt. 3:2 and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!"

Well it was at hand, for them. How was it at hand for them? Well you can only live so long. Same thing as in Revelation, it says things are going to come about shortly. Shortly? It’s 2000 years later and they haven’t come about yet. That’s not shortly. The word ‘shortly’ has to do with quickness or swiftness. These things must come about quickly. How is it they come about quickly? I mean there is 22 chapters of stuff going on all around the world. How is this all done quickly?

This is the testimony of Jesus Christ, who is, was and will be. I remember when I first saw that, it was about 6-7 years ago. I called a friend and I said, it says in Revelation that Jesus Christ which is and which was and is to come. I said, that’s in the book of Revelation. He said, ‘yea, I had heard that.’ I said did you know it was in there 10 times. He said, ‘I didn’t know that.’ I said it is, 10 times. I am alpha and omega (Rev. 1:8; 1:11; 21:6; 22:13), The beginning and the end (Rev. 21:6; 22:13), first and the last (Rev. 1:17), who lives and was dead, and I am alive for evermore (Rev. 1:18), who is, was and is to come (Rev. 1:4; 1:8; 4:08), 10 times it’s in there. Don’t you think that is trying to tell us something.

I’ll give you a little insight into Revelation. This book is the testimony of Jesus Christ, which is the Spirit of prophecy.

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show unto His servants, even the things which must shortly(quickly) come to pass: and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John;
v. 2 who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, even of all things that he saw.
v. 3 Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.
v. 4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Rev 1:08 I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

He just keeps repeating this over and over. That He existed, He was killed, resurrected and He now is and He will come. Everything in this book is and was and will come, see. To every generation who reads this, He’s coming to you. He came in the pass, He is coming now, He’ll come in the future. How does this happen quickly?

It happens to you when you are born and have grown up big enough to read these pages and God opens up your mind. Then you have just so long to change your life, get rid of the beast, get rid of the carnality in you. That’s got to be done quickly, because at best we live, you know… well some of us live longer, but you live to maybe 80. If I live to be 130, my life would just now be half over with. Think about it.

So Jesus Christ is, was and will be in every generation, that was and is now and will be. This is a work in progress. This is about US.

Why would we have a book (Revelation) that we print and print and waste paper for thousands of years, about something that’s going to come in never never land? Why do we want that? Who cares? They say, ‘oh that’s for that last generation, they need to know it.’

Listen when they are closing the lid, it’s your last generation, you know. I don’t care if you were born in the 300’s or 800’s or 1600’s or 1900’s, that’s all you get, that short period of time. So these thing have to be done quickly.

Matt. 16:28 Truly I say to you, There are some standing here who shall not taste of death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.

Well if I had heard that, I’d think well He said “some”, hey it could be me.
Did Christ come in His kingdom, that some of them actually saw, back then? Well maybe He did. Remember Christ said, My words are Spirit.

Mat 16:27 For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward each one according to his works.
v. 28 Truly I say to you, There are some standing here who shall not taste of death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. (no new paragraph here)
17:1 And after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them up into a high mountain apart.
v. 2 And He was transfigured before them. And His face shone as the sun, and His clothing was white as the light.

That is how He is going to come in His kingdom, glorified, they saw it. Some standing here will not die until they see Me in My glory, like I’m going to be in My kingdom. Six days later it happened, up on the mountain. But the others that didn’t go up on the mountain could have been saying, ‘I’m going to be around when Christ comes to set up His kingdom.’

Mat 24:34 Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all these things be fulfilled.

Of course everybody thinks “this generation” is the generation that He was talking to then, shall not pass until these prophesies be fulfilled. That’s not what He’s saying. Although you can see why they might have thought the way they thought. “Verily I say unto you, This generation.” What generation? Back up to verse 27.

Matt 24:27 For as the lightning cometh forth from the east, and is seen even unto the west; so shall be the coming of the Son of man.
v. 28 Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles (should be vultures, eagles don’t gather around dead animals) be gathered together.
v. 29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:
v. 30 and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
v. 31 And he shall send forth his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

Did that happen yet? No. Well when it does, THAT generation will not pass until all be fulfilled. “When you see ALL these things.” Well some have come about, but not all, war - rumors of wars - false christs. Yes all that, but “ALL these things” have not come to pass. But when they do, when all of them start to come to pass, all this stuff, then that generation. But you still won’t know when, you just know it’s going to be that generation. But when did it start? Eight year ago or just last year, was it this or that event? Of course it is an interesting thought.

Mat 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

You know many theologians and Christian writers have written books about when Christ is going to return and they’ve got Daniel all charted out and Revelation. They’ve got the 70 weeks and ½ week and the abomination of desolation, the 4 beasts, the kingdom and the 10 toes, they got it all worked out. If you don’t believe me, just go to a Bible book store, they have 137 versions of how it’s all worked out. Beginning with when Christ was first supposed to come 1844, I guess. Then the Jehovah Witnesses had Him coming in 1914 and then some other year or was it He did come in 1914, but in spirit and nobody saw Him?? “Every eye shall see Him,” and nobody saw Him?

But is Jesus Christ telling us, that He - the Son of God has no idea when He’s going to return? Well we read these Scriptures and we say, ‘I think I know when.’ But HE has no idea? Seriously do you think Jesus Christ doesn’t knows when?

Kat · « **Reply #12 on:** November 27, 2007, 09:12:26 PM »

BUT…. JESUS NEVER SAID WHEN HE WOULD RETURN

Mark 13:32 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

So do you think that Jesus Christ doesn’t know when He will come back? Well that verse says so, right. But now we’ve got to ask ourselves, how little does Jesus know about His Father, His plan and prophecy? Apparently not very much. He doesn’t even know when He going to come back. Well I have a different take on that.

I just can’t believe Christ doesn’t know when He’s suppose to come. I don’t believe that. But I also believe that this Scripture is true. I know it sounds like a contradiction and it’s only an apparent contradiction, until you put something together. I did put something together.

Why didn’t Jesus know when He was in the flesh, when He would come back to rule the world? Why didn’t He know? His Father didn't tell Him... so only the Father knows? I don’t know, the angels in heaven don’t know. Only the Father knows... but now I’m saying that Jesus Christ knows. Well if He didn’t know it then, He must have learned it later on someplace. Well I believe He did.

Rev 1:1 A Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God GAVE to Him to show to His servants things which must shortly (quickly) come to pass. And He signified it by sending His angel to His servant John,
Rev 1:2 who bore record of the Word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all the things that he saw.
Rev 1:3 Blessed is the one who reads and hears the Words of this prophecy, and the ones keeping the things written in it, for the time is at hand.
Rev 1:4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia. Grace to you and peace from Him which is and which was and which is to come; and from the seven spirits which are before His throne;
Rev 1:5 even from Jesus Christ the faithful Witness, the First-born from the dead and the Prince of the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
Rev 1:6 and made us kings and priests to God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for the eons of the eons. Amen.
Rev 1:7 Behold, He comes with the clouds, and every eye will see Him.

This is a revelation of Christ coming, but it’s a revelation of how it comes to us. But He’s coming back to the world. So now this is a two edged sword.

All these intricate prophesies and then you get back when Babylon is burnt and destroyed. We know our Babylon is destroyed, but the real Babylon out there is going to be destroyed, Mystery Babylon the Great the mother of harlots and whores, it is going to be destroyed and so on.

This is His testimony and He doesn’t know when these things are going to happen? He knows. There is no doubt in my mind, He knows. Because His Father has now shown Him. Remember He said in the book of John. I have many things to shows you, but you can’t receive them yet. Not YET. Now who wrote that? Is that in Matthew? No. Mark? No. Luke? No. Where do we find that? In John. John is the only one that records that Christ said, that I have many things to show you. Why would John write that in his gospel? Remember the other gospels were written in the 60’s or so. But John apparently didn’t write until later, at least the late 60’s or some say all the way into the 90’s.

Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic gospels. That’s because they all kind of have a chronological story flow of Christ and His ministry and His parables. John’s is different. That’s why he’s not included with the other three. Matthew, Mark and Luke are the synoptic gospels, John has his own gospel.

John is tying up the loose ends that are not covered in the other gospels. I mean we’ve got 5 pages on just what Christ said at the last supper in John. You go to Matthew or Mark and you’ve got maybe 5 sentences. See there is a lot of things being said and one is “I have many things to show you.”

John 16:12 I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

Many things! John wrote that. Because John is the one that God showed “many things” that have to come to pass. John remembered that, the other apostles and writers they didn’t include that. They didn’t see that being fulfilled, Mark and Matthew didn’t see themselves fulfilling that. John did. By the time John is writing his letters and his gospel, he’s putting together these things. You don’t read this anywhere except John’s account.

John 21:19 This He spoke, signifying by what death he would glorify God…

There are some that would suggest that almost this whole chapter 21, might not even be in the Scriptures. But let’s look at it, because it is in here in our Bibles. [Tischendorf does not have it in his list of spurious passages]

v. 20 Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved (John) following, who also had leaned on His breast at the supper, and said, "Lord, who is the one who betrays You?"

John leaned against Christ, I mean they were close, they were bosom buddies.

v. 21 Peter, seeing him, said to Jesus, "But Lord, what about this man?"

You see He had already said to Peter, “signifying by what death he would glorify God.” I don’t think Peter was to happy about that. He knew that it was inevitable, but was not to happy to hear about it. He said to Peter…

John 21:18 …but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish.

You are not going to want to go where God’s going to make you go. So Peter says, well what about John? What’s going to happen to your bosom buddy John here?

John 21:22 Jesus said to him, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you? You follow Me."

A little bit of a put down there.

John 21:23 Then this saying went out among the brethren that this disciple would not die.

But He didn’t say to him, that he would not die, but "IF I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you?”

v. 24 This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.

Now John was speaking of himself in the 3rd person in verse 20, “the disciple which Jesus loved.” He didn’t say, that was me. He’s got enough humility to say it in the 3rd person “the disciple.” Well he was that disciple. But you don’t find this in any of the other gospels. Why did he write that? Because when he wrote it he knew that God was using him for more revelation. That’s why Jesus said, what is it to you if I have John live longer - tarry longer in life, what’s that to you if I have other plans for you.

John looking back at what was said many years before, now writes it down, because he sees the application of it. He sees the application that "the Spirit will lead you into all Truth." He sees the application in his own life, “I have many things to say unto you, but you can not receive yet,” not now. But later he did.

So Jesus never said when He would return. It’s just that from some of the things He did say, they assumed that He said that He was coming right away. But then we have other Scripture;

Mat 24:42 Therefore watch; for you do not know what hour your Lord comes.

Matt 25:13 Therefore watch, for you do not know either the day or the hour in which the Son of Man comes.

Mark 13:35 Watch therefore: for you do not know when the master of the house is coming...

Acts 1:7 And He said to them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power.

Rev 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him,

This was the last time, before He was taken up into heaven, out of sight. The Father knows, but in Rev 1:1 God gave that revelation to Jesus Christ and this whole book of Revelation is that testimony of Jesus Christ and has everything to do with His coming in us and coming back to the world to use us to convert all the nations.

Rev 5:10 And You made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign over the earth.

We will be kings and priests and we will reign with Him and it says on the earth for 1000 years.

Rev 20:4 …And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

But it is not a 1000 years, that’s a symbol for something. I think I know what that something is now. I know when the 1000 years ends. But that is another subject for another time.

APOSTLES LEARNED “THE LAST DAYS…” WERE YET FUTURE

The longer they went, the apostles reached a place where they realized that the last days, before the setting up of the kingdom of God, that it was a yet future time. The nearer Paul came to the end of his ministry, he knew that it was a future time. He warned of a yet future time.

II Tim. 3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:

I Peter 1:5 Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
v. 6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
v. 7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:
v. 8 Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:
v. 9 Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.
v. 10 Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:
v. 11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified before hand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.
v. 12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.
v.13 Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

II Peter 3:3 knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts,

All of these Scripture show that they knew that the coming of Christ was going to be yet future. Paul was ready to be killed knowing that Jesus Christ would not come first. Then we reach a place where Paul says;

II Tim. 4:6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.
v. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.
v. 8 Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that Day; and not to me only, but also to all those who love His appearing.

But it wasn’t going to happen then.

Kat · « **Reply #13 on:** December 02, 2007, 11:51:20 PM »

Audio 6

Apostasy In The Church

So the Apostles began to realize that they were not going to see Christ set up His kingdom. They knew it was going to be down the road sometimes.

Now they were also given inspiration and prophesies and revelations that there was going to be an apostasy. That there was going to be a falling away from the Truth and it was happening then.

Paul uses the term, the last days and the latter days. It’s referring, in a prophetic sense, to down the road there shall be perilous times. But he was not talking about ‘the end of time,’ he was just talking beyond his time. In other words the last days/latter days he knew it was going to be beyond his time. But he didn’t know how far; 50 years, 100 years or 1000.
But he probably wanted to see all of it, but his demise was coming pretty fast. Also he also realized that it was happening then. Not the full impact, but it was beginning to happen.

People write me all the time and want to know, ‘do you think the Pope is the antichrist or do you think that Saddam Hussein was the antichrist (not any more).’ Everybody wants to know who the antichrist is. I say there is no such thing as ‘the antichrist’ in the Bible. If you show me the words ‘the antichrist’ in the Bible, I’ll give you $100. There is no such thing as ‘the’ antichrist or ‘the’ great tribulation. It’s not in there. These are theological inventions, they are not Scripture. There is not the antichrist, there are many antichrist.
By the time John wrote 1st, 2nd and 3rd John, he said there were many antichrists and they are already here. Many antichrists.

I John 2:18 Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come,

There is not one boggy man coming and he’s going to sit upon a big throne over in Jerusalem, in a temple and he’s going to say ‘I’m god, I created the heaven and the earth.’ All this will be on national TV, and they will say, ‘he’s god.’ Well how do you know that? ‘Because he said so.’ Is he going to call fire down out of heaven? Then we would know for sure it’s god. They would say, ‘he may look like a man, but he’s god.’ Oh come on, it will never happen. All this junk that they are looking for, it will never happen.

Oh there is somebody that sits on the throne, in the temple of God, claiming to be God. But it’s you and me, not some boggy man. WE are the temple of God, who sits on the throne of our temple. It should be Jesus Christ, but before it is Jesus Christ, it’s us. We sit there, we are the little gods. We are the ones that think we have free moral agency - free will and all such other unscriptural nonsense.

FREE WILL - FREE MORAL AGENCY UNSCRITURAL NONSENSE

We have a will, we do not have a ‘free’ will. We make choices, we don’t make free choices. Every choice you have ever made had a cause and whatever caused it, brought it about. Once something is brought about, it can never have been changed, it never can have been different. There is no choice that you ever made, that you could have not made.

People say, ‘oh if I had it to do over I would never do that again.’ Yes you would. Only if you knew what you know now, would you do it differently. But you don’t know now what you will know tomorrow. So whatever you do today, you make a choice on it based on whatever information you have today.

Today you might decide to go to the greyhound race track out here and bet on a dog. Well he loses and another one comes in first. So if you could go back tomorrow and rerun today’s race, sure you will bet on the one you know came in first. We know that, but you can’t do that. God doesn’t allow for that. We can’t go back and relive our life with a different set of chooses and so on.

You were destined to make every choice you made. What do you think, God didn’t know what you would do? He knows what all the nations will do, in all these prophesies and how everything is going to be, exactly. But He doesn’t know what you are going to do? Because you have free moral agency? You can do something that He would never dream that you were going to do? Unbelievable!

God knows all! He knows the beginning from the end. He counts things that are not, as though they are. Because He knows what they are going to be…. everything. Contrary to popular religion. They thinks God is kind of stupid and some say, ‘well He could know everything, but He chooses not to.’ Where do they come up with this stuff? That’s like saying, ‘God could be smart, but He chooses to be stupid.’ What? People don’t realize how they blasphemes God, with every other word out of their mouth.

Acts 20:29 For I know this, that after my departure grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock.
v. 30 Also men shall arise from your own selves, speaking perverse things in order to draw disciples away after them.
v. 31 Therefore watch and remember that for the space of three years I did not cease to warn everyone night and day with tears.

He was telling them that that’s the way it’s going to be. He was saying, when I leave it’s going to fall apart. Paul knew it, James knew it, John knew it and Jude especially. That little short book of Jude, right before Revelations. He warns about heresy, he knew what it was all about. They all knew what it was all about and it started then.

Paul said, “This you know, that all those in Asia have turned away from me,” (II Tim. 1:15). All of them, everybody in Asia forsook him, and even in Roman. But he said, the Lord stood by me.

It was just like Christ’s disciples, they all forsook Him. Peter said, "Even if I have to die with You, I will not deny You!" (Mat 26:35). Peter Peter Peter….. “Truly I say to you that this night, before the cock crows, you shall deny Me three times.” (Mat 26:34). All the others said likewise. They went out and the soldiers came and they said, ‘we’re out of here.’ They all forsook Him.

Free will, are you crazy. God can knock the free will out of you so fast that your head would spin. You really need to read my ‘Myth of Free Will Exposed’ it’s 120 pages of Scripture Scripture Scripture, Old Testament and New Testament, dozens of Scripture.

The king of Syria said, I’m going to go out and conquer me nations, not a few but a lot. God says you’re nothing but a club in My hand. I’m using you like a club in My hand and you’re to stupid to know it. You think you got free will? Not so. Does the king of Syria think that? He’s not thinking he’s a club in God’s hand, he’s thinks by my own strength and my power and free will I’m doing this. God laughs him to scorn.
All theologians in the world say, God was wrong and the Syrian king was right, because he did have free will.

The Apostles, did they have free will? They said, ‘we will,’ and an hour later..… gone. Peter cursed, ‘I never knew the man,’ and then the cock crowed.…. whoops what did the Lord say.

It’s the hardest single thing that almost any human being will ever come to totally acknowledge. You have no free will and you have no free moral agency. All your decisions are made for you by; time, chance, circumstances, heredity, environment and the condition of your bank account; the condition of your stomach; the temperature outside; what somebody said to you; some smell that you get or some visual thing that excites you. You make all your own decisions based on what caused them.

We will talk that way sometimes, but then we will turn right around and deny it.
Somebody does something stupid and you say, ‘whatever caused you to do such a stupid thing?’ Or ‘What caused you to say something like that?’ That’s right something caused them. That’s the truth. Then we turn around and say, ‘nothing caused me, it was my own free will.’

Where does the free will begin? Where does this never land begin? Well out of the blue? How can you do something that has no cause?
The first edict of the universe is, for every effect there is a cause. Things don’t happen without a cause. Rocks don’t fall off a mountain without a cause.
Now some scientist are saying, there are some things that are totally random and they don’t have a cause.

Now they have the double slit experiment:

You have a slit in a board or table and you shot a particle beam through there and it will make a pattern on a screen on the other side of it. Whatever light comes through the slit, will make a pattern. But then if you open another slit to the side, which has absolutely nothing to do with the other slit. Then you put the particle beam through the same (first) slit and you don’t angle it or anything. When you open the new slit the pattern (on the first one) changes. They don’t know why. There is not a scientist on earth that can tell you why that’s so. So they concluded that this pattern changes without a direct cause. I don’t believe that for a second.

First of all I want to know how far apart are the slits? What happens when you make it closer? What if you put it a mile away? Oh, oh we are already seeing some differences are we? Well maybe there is some relationship, you just don’t know what it is. I mean would this be the first time in science that they run up against something, that they saw something and they didn’t know how it worked? Come on.

Some scientist say this is where we have proof now that you really do have this thing called free will. It’s foolish nonsense. There is no effect without a cause.

You’re making a decision, is an effect. Something caused it.
Sometimes somebody will pick what they undervalue. Remember when they had this nice juicy hamburger and a old shriveled up one and they said, ‘which one would you pick?’ Then some guy says, ‘I’ll take that one’ (the old shriveled up one). Why would he do that? Because he wanted to be a smart aleck. That was more fun and satisfying then to pick the one that he would really want to eat. But it was more pleasing to be a smart aleck and say, I‘ll take the old shriveled up thing. But it was his vanity that caused him and made him choose what he undervalued.

You go through the buffet line and you want to pick up a dessert. They have apple and cherry pie, which should you have? Whose going to make that chose for you? You say, ‘well I’ll make my own chose.’ Of course you make your own choice, but something caused it. So you look at the apple and you look at the cherry, now something is going to make you chose one over the other. You look at the cherry, it looks good, you look at the apple and it looks good. But then you think, I had apple pie the last 2 or 3 times, so I think I’ll have the cherry. But I think the apple looks better. So you don’t know which and maybe the lady in line says, ‘trust me, take the cherry.’ I say, ‘why is that?’ ‘Because I had a piece and it is out of this world.’ ‘Oh okay.’
Did you make a free will chose? Were you not influenced by any other power? Of course you were, she influenced you. So you make your own chose, but something caused it.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what the cause is or not. Air planes crash and they don’t know what caused it to crash. Does that mean it didn’t crash? Come on, they just haven’t found the cause yet.

It doesn’t matter if you say forced or inspired. Those words have 2 connotations, but the end results are the same.
If God inspires me to teach a lesson here today or forces me to do it, either way I’m going to give a lesson. So you can’t play with words.

You say, ‘so God forces us to sin?’ They think well I’ll use terminology like that, I’ll back Ray into a corner. ‘God forces us and makes us sin?’ No. You sin voluntarily. ‘Oh, see we all have free will.’ No I didn’t say you sin freely, I said you sin voluntarily. You volunteer to sin.

Here is an opportunity to look at a picture of a pretty girl, high heels, short skirt, so here’s an opportunity to lust. If I’m going to lust, did someone make you do that? No, you volunteered. Did something cause you to do that? You bet, your image of that skirt even shorter. That caused you, made you stare and consider and lust, you see.

You can’t come up with a scenario that I haven’t thought about. Trust me you can’t. I’ve thought about this for thousands of hours. I know where of I speak.
Even if you can’t see or can’t hear, you still have your imagination, your thinking, day dreams or whatever. It’s still based on things in your memory or in your consciousness, there is something bringing it about.
You can’t have something just happen, when nothing caused it to happen. A thought, an action, a word or a deed is something that happens. It must have a cause and if it has a cause, that cause makes it come about and therefore it was never free to not happen.

Now I know this is a little deep for some of you. But once you get it, it’s relatively simple. I’ll tell you one thing, it is a wonderful humbling experience and this is one reason people fight it, because they know where it’s going to lead. If they acknowledge it and say, ‘I kind of see what you’re saying.’ If they fully acknowledge it, then they are going to have to give up the throne. The man of sin, the man or woman of perdition sitting on the throne of your heart is going to have to go, when you acknowledge that only Jesus Christ belongs there. That’s a humbling experience. You’re finish now, as a human being with all your aspirations and all your vanity and whatever. I don’t mean grooming yourself or things like that is wrong, I’m just saying if it’s for vanity, self aggrandizement, praise or worship. If that’s what you are seeking, when you fully comprehend that only God is in control of everything. When you comprehend that, you will be humbled. You will begin to acknowledge God in your life in all things.

I mean I have to guard against causes. Because they bring about unwanted effects. So if I see the pretty girl in the mini skirt with the high heels on, that is a cause. That can bring about a wrong effect. Now I can’t get rid of the cause, but I can take it out of eye sight, right. Then I can look at something else and start thinking about something else. It might be a struggle, but I can do it. I say I can do it, if God is so inspired me to. If God is not inspiring me to, my wife is going to say, ‘what are you looking at.’ But that is a tough one.

This was not in my notes, but it’s an important thing. Some of you probably have not come to understand that you do not have free will, free moral agency or any of this nonsense that the theologians talk about. You have an illusion of free will. It seems like you have free will, of course it does, it part of the deception of human nature and the beast within. Do you think animals have free will? They act on instinct.

Kat · « **Reply #14 on:** December 02, 2007, 11:52:01 PM »

I wrote Dr. Price about 4 typed pages and took him to task. He wrote back and sent me a booklet ‘Is Everything In The Bible True?’ He says everything in the Bible is Scripture, but it’s not true. He says when Job said the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, that’s not true. He says, the Lord giveth and Satan takes away. Unbelievable, But I laid it out to him. He said, ‘well we all have different personalities and how we teach.’ Yea, some teach the truth and some teach a pack of lies.

Job 2:7 So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and struck Job with painful boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
v. 8 And he took for himself a potsherd with which to scrape himself while he sat in the midst of the ashes.
v. 9 Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!"
v. 10 But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. SHALL WE INDEED RECEIVE GOOD AT THE HAND OF GOD, AND SHALL WE NOT RECEIVE EVIL?…"

Dr. Price says, ‘that’s right, we shall receive good, but not evil.’ Job said are we to receive good and not evil at the hand of God? We receive good and evil at the hand of God. But he (Dr. Price) said that’s a lie. End of verse 10, “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Is Job lying? Is he sinning when he said the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away? No. Is Fred Price a liar? You bet he is.

Job 42:7 And so it was, after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, FOR YOU HAVE NOT SPOKEN OF ME WHAT IS RIGHT, as My servant Job has.

Now one of Job’s friends was okay, but the others God was angry with.
So God Himself acknowledged not only that he sinned not by saying that, but that what Job had said was right. The only thing where Job wasn’t right was when God talked to him directly and said alright smart guy, where were you when I laid the corner stone of the earth (Job 38:6).
Some historians (Dr. Haye was where I first heard about it) believe that God is saying this, “Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4), because Job was a Pharaoh in Egypt. He maybe was Khufu, who built the great pyramid, the greatest one of them all. So God is saying to him, you think you are pretty smart, you built a little stone pyramid over here and you think you are hot stuff. Well, where were you when I laid the corner stone of the earth. Job was like, ‘oh yeah, there’s my pyramid and then there is the EARTH.’

Job 40:4 “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth.”

So God took him down a few notches. But what his friends kept saying to him was, ‘Job you sinned, just admit it, you’re a carnal slob and you sinned before God. He’s cursing you, just admit it.’ But Job said, ‘no I didn’t, I love God.’ So they go into all this philosophy and Job says, ‘yeah you guys know it all, when you die wisdom will die with you,’ (Job 12:2).

CANONIZATION OF ALL SCRIPTURES WAS CRITICAL

Because there was apostasy coming in the church. There is crime and corruption entering in; false prophets, antichrists, strong delusions. It says men shall be lovers of themselves, disobedient, proud, vain, booster, lovers of pleasure (II Tim. 3) and all of these things are coming into the church. So they need to be sure that everybody knows what is the Truth. Now they are going to set aside the books for the final canonization, as what are the Scriptures.

Now look a little bit at what we can gleam, there are all kinds of outside information, tradition and some history. There are traditions of the Jews that I could bring in here, but I wanted to stick pretty much just to the Scriptures. So we can see from the Scripture how and why God brought everything together.

Something really interesting to me, is the doctrine of 2 administrations; one for the Jews and one for the Gentiles. Two different gospels and all that nonsense. The Concordant Publishing teach that, a total farce. You can read my paper ‘Exposing The Secret Rapture,’ a 100 pages that just blows all that away.

II Peter was written to show the apostasy that had set in and would grow worse. That the WORDS OF THE PROPHETS AND THE WORDS OF THE APOSTLES must be heeded and preserved.

II Peter 3:2 that you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior,

But Peter says, Paul writes to you, isn’t that what he says in II Peter 3:15?
But I thought Peter was suppose to go to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles. Now it says in Gal. 2, that I (Paul) was to the uncircumcised and Peter to the circumcised.

Gal 2:7 …when they saw that the gospel for the uncircumcised had been committed to me, as the gospel for the circumcised was to Peter.

But look at this.

II Peter 3:14 Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for these things, give diligence that ye may be found in peace, without spot and blameless in his sight.
v. 15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you;

Who did Paul write all his epistles to? The Gentiles. Paul is now in prison in Roman and Peter is writing to the Gentiles. What is going on here? Apparently Paul wanted him to, because Paul can’t get these letters out being in Roman, like he use to.

II Peter 3:16 as also in ALL his epistles, speaking in them of these things;

What did Peter know about “all his (Paul’s) epistles”? Because Peter had them. He had them all. How did he get them?

II Tim. 4:11 Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with you; for he is useful to me for ministering.
v. 12 But Tychicus I sent to Ephesus.
v. 13 The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, bring when thou come, and the books, ESPECIALLY THE PARCHMENTS.

These are Paul’s letters. These are not the books, but the vellums, these are his epistles. Why would he want all his epistles? Didn’t he know what he said? Well he knows his time is near the end and Paul knows what he has written is Scripture. We read many Scripture showing that he knew that he was writing ‘Bible verses’ if you will.
Now Paul wants Mark to come and bring those letters, because he’s going to go through them. In fact he’s going to edit some of them.

Eph 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus through the will of God, to the saints that are at Ephesus,

It doesn’t just say to the saints of God, but “that are in Ephesus,” That was editorialized, because his first letters apparently do not contain that. But then he edited it, so that they would know where this letter went.
Of course Ephesus was really the head quarters for the Asian church.
Remember there are 7 churches on a mail route; Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. But the head church was always in Ephesus.

So he says, bring the parchments ‘especially’ I want those, these were Paul’s epistles. Now Mark returned to Peter in Babylon. Remember Peter wrote from Babylon.

II Peter 5:13 The church is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son.

So Paul said sent Mark and be sure to bring the vellums and he must have brought them. Paul then edits them and says these are the ones. He started with the most important one of all for basic information, the book of Romans. It sets the doctrinal standards, but it’s mostly milk as far as doctrine goes. This leads up to his last epistles written from prison, Ephesians, Philippians and Colossians. These are the most spiritually strong Scripture in the whole bible.

Now Mark is back in Babylon with Peter and then when we go to II Peter, guess what? Peter has all of Paul’s epistles. There was a reason why Mark got them and took them to Paul. Then Paul sent them with Mark and he gave them to Peter. Now Peter has got them all, at least all the ones that Paul wanted to be sent to him. So Peter is definitely in charge of the Scriptures and here he talks about his epistles and the OTHER Scriptures. So he knows what the other Scriptures are.

So obviously the Apostles had all the Scriptures. They had the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the writings, they had it all. It (Old Testament) was in the synagogues and the Temple until 70 AD, but they also had them.

General epistles James, Peter, John and Jude should come before Paul's epistles. They were first to teach, first in authority (Acts 15) and first in teaching the milk of God's Word, followed by Paul's strong meat of God's Word.

SEVEN CANONIZATION PERIODS

1. Moses
2. David and Solomon
3. Isaiah and Hezekiah
4. Jeremiah and Josiah
5. Ezra and Nehemiah
6. Peter
7. John

So the canonization fell to Peter and John.

We read of John, He instructs him in Revelation 1:1 “What you see, write in a book…” So somehow that book (Revelation) had to join up with all the other books, as did I, II and III John and the Gospel of John. So John wrote 5 books; I John, II John, III John, The Gospel of John and Revelation.

I said there was 22 books written by 66 AD and by the end of John’s ministry, he added 5 more.

22 +5 = 27 + 22 OT books, all total 49.

7 x 7 = 49 = total completion.

That’s how many books there are suppose to be, that’s how many we have. So we’ve got the complete Bible.

There are some verses that are screwed up. We are going to go over some of those. But we have the complete Bible. In proper numbering it’s 7 x 7, count the number in the King James, how many are there? 66, whose number is that (man, Rev 13:18). The proper numbers are, 22 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament 7 x 7 = 49. That’s how many it should be, we do have the whole Bible. There are either quotations, statements or they alluded to (in the New Testament) that pertain to over a thousand Old Testament Scriptures. Not one quote, from the Apocryphal books that are in the King James or the Catholic Bible or all Bibles before 1885.

Then Catholics played games with it for a while. They saw that 66 was kind of ominous, but the Protestants came up with 66 and the Catholics said, boy that doesn‘t sound right. So at one point they added 14, so it was 80. Most had 80 and even the later additions all had 80.
But the Apostles had it right, it was 27. They knew how many the Old Testament had, they could just go to the local Rabbi and ask him, it was 22. 27 and 22 is 49, that is 7 x 7.

But the Catholics thought, well we can’t let anybody get away with that. Because they had 80 or 66. So they added 11 Apocryphal books, 11 + 66 = 77.

Foolish foolish theologians, playing games like that with the Word of God. Isn’t it just ridiculous, like kids out on the play ground you know, trying to get all the marbles.
The Catholic Church did not canonize the Scriptures, nor did the Protestant Church canonize the Scriptures. They were already canonized by God's servants hundreds of years earlier!

You have to believe the Scriptures, these Words are Spirit.

John 6:63 It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life.

His Words are Spirit and are not literal.
You are not suppose to literally cut off your hand if you steal a candy bar. You are suppose to cut off that part of the heart that makes you lust for something you didn’t pay for. You are not literally suppose to cut your hand off, that’s figurative symbolic language.

The people that tell me, ‘the Bible is literal literal literal Ray.’ I say do you still have your hands and feet? Do you still have both your eyes? You are telling me, that the Bible is literal? Are you crazy? Have you never sinned? Well when did you literally cut off your hands and feet?

I had one guy tell me that it is literal, even though you don’t cut off your hands and feet, it’s still literal. What? You don’t even know what the word literal means, look it up in the dictionary.

These things are spiritual and gehenna fire is spiritual fire. God is a consuming fire, (Heb. 12:29). God is! God doesn’t use blow torches and cigarette lighters to burn people. God’s Spirit is a consuming fire, it consumes what’s bad. It doesn’t torture for all eternity, it’s a consuming fire. It consumes the bad and the evil and when it’s consumed, it’s gone.

That is why it uses the analogy of gold and silver. Because you burn the hell out of it and what you have when you’re done? Pure gold, tried in the fire. He says I beg you buy from Me gold tried in the fire (Rev. 3:18).

Read these Scriptures and it will all make sense. But all this hocus pocus that’s going around in the name of Christianity…. but I was there too, so you can’t throw rocks at them. I was just as dumb and deceived as they are and most of you were too.

By the time you start thinking you’re something special…. you know God didn’t have to reveal any of this stuff. We could be signing up to be one of those boomers. You know, ‘strap that dynamite to me, I’ll carry it into the market place.’ Those people don’t know any better. One day they will be so embarrassed that they could be so stupid. To think, they were going to blow up children with shrapnel and nails, blowing their eyes out. That would make Allah happy? What?

But you listen to Kenney, John Hagee, Benny Henn and all these other gnat wits, spiritual gnat wits. They would have you believe that torturing people in hell for all eternity makes God happy. Do we think that would make Him sad? Well do you think God would want to be sad and miserable for all eternity? No, God says He is going to do all His pleasure.

Isa. 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, 'My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure';

Well according to them, then torturing people must be His good pleasure. What kind of God is that?
You should see the email I get. ‘Ray you better repent, you are going to see that hell is more real than you want it to be.’ I don’t think so.

The God who created the face on my 4 cats, will not burn anybody in hell for all eternity. There is no redeeming value in sheer torture for no purpose. No end and no redeeming value. It is the most evil sin that has ever been conceived by man or demon, that God almighty would torture His creatures for all eternity in fire.
Hold your finger over a match for 3 seconds and tell me that God is going to burn people’s whole bodies for all eternity. It’s insane. Christian doctrines are not just wrong, they are evil and they are insane. Thank God that there is no such god. This is deceitful nonsense of the Devil.

Kat · « **Reply #15 on:** December 08, 2007, 01:06:16 PM »

Audio 7

GOD IS SPIRIT - GOD IS CLOSE

A lot of people (I can tell by the way they talk to me) have formal ways of doing things. They get up at a certain hour, they pray for a certain amount of time, they may read their Bible for 30 minuets. They have all this regiment and they go to church and then sometimes on Wed., they go to worship services. They have this very structured type of religion. I guess it is better than having no religion at all.
But I just can’t see what that really does for people. If their minds thinks in those terms - pigeons holes, prayer time, Bible study time, call a friend, give $50 to the missions or food bank. I mean do they say, ‘okay I’ve got it all down, I’m good until tomorrow morning and then I’ll pray again for 30 minuets.’

I pray all day long. When I see people in trouble, I pray. When I see a problem or I see a tragedy, I pray. When my thinking is not clear and I’m just not getting anywhere or when my wife is complaining because she’s hurting, I just pray all day long.
You don’t have to get down on your knees in the right position and fold your hands. You just pray instantly, constantly.
I think if you don’t do that you can’t have a feeling that God is right there. It’s like you got to get down and look up or something. God is everywhere.

Acts 17:26 And He has made all nations of men of one blood to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
v. 27 that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us:

You have to understand He is talking to the Ephesians here, they are not into all of their philosophies and all these things. So he’s kind of talking on their level, but using a little of their psychology and so on, if you will.

“He is not far from each one of us.” How far? Not far - Close. I can put my hand close to my face, it’s not far. In the back of this room, you are far from me, relatively speaking. Now you could be considered close, because we are all in the same room and somebody in Kansas City would be far from me. But this (my hand in front of my face) is close and this (move my hand away from my face) is far. God is close. Well how close?

Acts 17:28 for in Him we live, and move, and have our being (some versions say exist, in Him we exist); as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring (children, as of course parents are always close to their little children, because they have to watch after them).
v. 29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of man.
v. 30 The times of ignorance therefore God winked at; but now he commands men that they should all everywhere repent:

Now we have the judgment verse.

Acts 17:31 because as He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness…

But the point I want to make here is God is close. Don’t think that you are praying to God in outer space, you don’t. God is not in outer space. You do not need to lift your voice, if He reads your thoughts, you don’t even need to lip the sounds. He reads you, He understands, He feels you, when you really come to understand there is a God and He is everywhere.

God is not a Spirit. God is Spirit. Not ‘a’ Spirit. So if He was a Spirit, then maybe He would be over there as opposed to over here. But He’s not a Spirit. Remember that little song - He’s in the tree tops, so tall. He’s in the sparrow, so small. Well it is true.

God is not a man. They say, ‘well the Bible says He’s a man, He’s got arms and legs. It says the hand of God, the eyes of God.’ But God is not a man, He speaks in those terms, that’s so we understand what it is He’s trying to get across. But God is not a man and He’s not a Spirit. He’s Spirit !

John 1:18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

John 5:37 And the Father that sent Me, He hath borne witness of Me. Ye have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His shape.

Why is that? Because God is invisible. Spirit is invisible, God is invisible. No one has ever seen Him or heard Him, because He’s not a man or a Spirit. He is spirit. When we are made in the image of God, we are not made in the physical shape of God. You have got to learn to think beyond words.

You say, ‘but Ray it says image and I looked that up in Strong’s Concordance and it means like a statue.’
Of course that’s what it means. Jesus Christ said you should cut off your hands too. This is your hand and a knife is something you use to cut it off. He said to do that. But that is not what He meant.
You say, ‘well then why did He say it?’ He said it so that those to whom it was given would understand exactly what He meant and those that think everything is literal, physical and statues, would not understand it. God isn’t like if you pour plaster over Him, it would look like a man and you would say, ‘Oh there He is.’ You think you can’t see Him as Spirit, but (with the plaster on) alright now you can see Him?

You can’t see spirit and you can’t hear spirit. Spirit is not over here as opposed to over there. Neither is it up there, as opposed to down here. ‘Ray your mixing me all up now, I know the Bible says, raise your eyes up on high and God dwells on high.’ With high we are talking lofty, as opposed to being low and demeaning. Not high up, meaning in elevation in feet.
I mean if God is up there to us and to the Chinese He is up there, well we got two different God’s, in two different locations, right. There is no up, as in outer space and nowhere does it say that God dwells in outer space. Nowhere does it say that heaven is on a rock someplace out in interstellar space. There’s a big rock called heaven? It’s got big rock candy mountains and chocolate streams and other such nonsense?

We don’t know much about God. Christ said I’ve come to declare Him, Concordant renders that unfold Him, because Christ has a closer relationship to the Father than we do. We have access to Him, but we don’t have the same relationship that Jesus Christ had and has, we don’t.

So it’s true when people get into trouble they cry out to God, but that is emotion. But you can just whisper and He’ll hear you just as well. He can hear a whisper, I know some think He can’t, but He can. He is stronger, bigger and more powerful than you might think. God is able to do amazing things.

THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY APPEAR TO BE

This universe is part of God. He did not make it out of nothing, we read that yesterday. He made it out of things that do not appear, invisible things, not invisible nothings, invisible THINGS.

You have got to come to my next conference, because I’m going to really cover some deep stuff. I’ll give you a hint. There are things that scientist know and have revealed to us and they are actually true, they are factual. We have heard them, but we don’t think about them. Most people don’t think about many things. They think about their children, their clothing, their house or what they are going to eat for dinner. They think about a TV show that’s coming up that they want to watch or what Alabama is doing and did they beat LSU and what is Britney doing with her kids now. They think about some health problem they have and maybe two or three more things. That‘s what they think about. You don’t think about life and death or God and the universe. People don’t think that way. I’m not saying if you live and die, your going to hell, if you don’t think about these things.

God said knowledge would be increased and the wise would begin to understand things that were never known before. I think we are getting there. Things are not what they appear in religion, in Christianity or in society. I see though it.

When President Bush gets up to the podium and he starts to talk, some people say, ‘this is our President we must listen carefully.’ I see through him like a window pane. There is nothing that man can say that I don’t see right through it. The rest of them too. I can see the motive behind the motive, I can read it like a book. I don’t get the same impression that other people do. You will never see me waving a ‘vote for Edwards’ plaque and yelling like a clown. Why? Because I know what it’s all about.

You think things are what they appear to be, they are not. This podium seems solid, it’s not, it’s all space. Suppose as big as this stage is (6’ x 6’) and that high, there is a big block of solid polished stainless steel. It would weight a lot, very heavy. Do you know that 99.999...% of that block of steel is space. It’s an illusion and for all practicality, it isn’t even there. If you took the space out of it, then it would be so tiny that you couldn’t see it. Why? Because it would be to tiny to see.

You have no idea how small atoms are and yet they are not the smallest things. Atoms are made of things, protons, nucleolus and electrons. If you blew up a nucleolus to the size of a baseball and go down to Hank Aaron Stadium and go out into the infield and hold up that baseball. Let’s say that baseball represents the nucleolus of one atom and we’ll use the element iron. So this baseball represents one atom of this iron of this block and you blew that up to the size of a baseball. Do you know where the electron would be that goes around it? Well picture Denny in his sail boat out in the Gulf of Mexico, holding up another baseball. That’s where it would be. Pretty amazing.

Now if you are flying over in a 747, you couldn’t see Denny’s sail boat, let alone Denny or the baseball he’s holding up, could you. You might see Hank Aaron’s Stadium and you think you see somebody standing in the infield. But you wouldn’t see the baseball he’s holding up. So for all practicality if your looking down at Hank Aaron Stadium or the Gulf of Mexico, you can’t see the atom or the nucleolus and then you got these miles and miles of space in between. Well that’s what solid iron is. A baseball here at Hank Aaron Stadium and another one in the Gulf of Mexico. That’s what solid iron is, space.

Why can’t you take a sharp pointed nail and drive it through a block of iron? Why? We’re not even talking about the different atoms, we’re talking about one. So say one atom that you are holding up in Hank Aaron Stadium and the next atom of iron would be out in the Gulf of Mexico and you’ve got miles of space in there. So why can’t you?

There are a couple of problems involved. First you’ve got the baseball/atom in Hank Aaron Stadium and the one in the Gulf of Mexico, that is the next atom of iron. Then you have another one up there so many miles and another down there so many miles and they just keep going and that’s solid iron. But why can’t you drive a nail through the middle here? Well because the surface of the point of the nail would be about 40 or 100 square miles. You couldn’t get it through because the point is hitting all these baseball/atoms, that’s one problem. The point is hundreds of times bigger than those spaced out atoms.

The other problem is there is a force between those atoms, you can’t pick one of these atoms off there, they are held together by force. What kind of force? I haven’t a clue. The scientist haven’t a clue. It’s not gravity. Gravity doesn’t hold iron together. One block of iron is attracted to another block of iron a little bit by gravity. But the block of iron doesn’t hold together by gravity. What holds it together? I don’t know.

Why is it if I take two pieces of iron and push them together, why don’t they join? If you can’t pull this piece of iron apart, how come you can’t take two and put them together and they stay? Now it’s one piece of iron, it doesn’t need glue to hold together. So if you take two, why can’t you just touch them and they stick? Why don’t the atoms from this one go mixing with the atom of the other and mix up and then they are bound into one piece? Why?

By the way there is no iron in the stars. But there is iron on the earth. How come there is iron on earth and there is no iron in the stars? There is iron in our sun apparently, but not in the stars. Well isn’t our sun a star? Yes, but it’s a new one, it came from a dead star. A star has to die before it can make iron. Stars don’t have heavy metals, they come about with a super nova, when a star dies. It’s got to cool down.

SCIENCE AND THE MYSTERIES OF GOD

There are so many magical things out there in science. It all goes down to these little things that you can’t see that we call atoms. But then the atom is made of other things. They are made of quarks and things. Then they’ve got alpha and beta quarks. So it just keeps going on and on.

Well it says that God created everything, out of that which does not appear. Yet when we look, the closer we go… Only now can science do that, it couldn’t do that 100 or 200 years ago, now they can. It’s made out of stuff that once you take the atom apart it’s no longer solid material. Now it’s energy and has no specific shape and it starts to loose it’s weight. How much does a light ray weight?

Well there is another problem. Light is a beam, a particle beam and light is a wave. But it can’t be both, it’s got to be either a beam or a wave. Light is both. Scientist can’t figure it out, how can it be both? It just is, light is both. But it can’t be both, but it is. I mean there is a lot of mysteries out here.

The point is, God is behind it and God made it. He didn’t just make it though, it seems apparent now that He put wisdom into the material itself. Scientist are starting to see that the material itself contains it’s own wisdom. I didn’t say a brain. It doesn’t exactly have a brain, it has built in wisdom. It knows what to do under certain circumstances. You say, ‘no it just reacts to laws.’ No, that’s what scientist always thought. They are seeing now that it’s way too complicated. What matter does or is capable of accomplishing when it is heated or cooled and interchanges and all that, is way beyond a law. It has it’s own wisdom built in.

It’s like the DNA molecule that tells a fetus what color eyes and hair and male or female. All that information was built into the DNA. The DNA molecule is the most crammed packed piece of intelligent information in the universe. No where in science or in the heavens or stars or mountains or rocks or volcanoes or anywhere is there so much knowledge and information crammed together, as in a DNA molecule. It is so incredible, scientist look at it and it almost scares them. They don’t know what they are seeing, it’s like something out of a science fiction movie. It’s just unbelievable. They thought it was rather simplistic, each one of those simplistic little motions are made up of a million computers. It’s like where does it end?

KNOWLEDGE WILL BE INCREASED

Well it ends with God, because it started with God. But I want to expand our minds a little bit. For whatever reason I think God is teaching this generation some things that were not known in the past. The Apostle Paul and Elisha and Moses didn’t know these things. Why do we know them? I don’t know. I don’t know why we have all of this knowledge, but it must be going to serve a purpose, some how, some way.

But you know scientist are seeing it, but they don’t all see a connection with God. That’s where we come in and we see a connection with God. You got to get this magic Jennie in a lantern out of your head, this is God. God doesn’t sit like Abraham Lincoln up on a throne, on a rock in outer space. God is all that there is, a billion times over. That’s God, all wisdom, knowledge, design, intelligence, beauty and all of that is God. Without God there is nothing in the universe, even the evil. We read about in Isaiah 4:45, God created it.

When the sun goes down or actually when the earth turns away from the sun, it gets dark. God says He created the darkness. But you say, ‘no everything just naturally is dark and when He created light and it lightens up the dark. The dark was always there.’ No it wasn’t, God created darkness. You say, ‘well Ray you are loosing me now.’ Things are not what they appear to be.

I just want to expand your thinking a little bit. So that you don’t need to convince God with an emotional argument, that He should do something for you. Like you can wear Him down, if you just keep on or whatever. Now there is a certain amount that comes into play, to be persistent and all of that. But it has nothing to do with convincing God, that now it’s time for Him to do something, it has nothing to do with that. It all has to do with you. It all has to do with your growth and your maturity, it has nothing to do with God. God is already doing quite well, thank you.

God doesn’t need anything that you have to offer. But He will gain something from you, by what He has to offer you. It will come back to Him. That is a Scriptural principle. What God sends out comes back to Him, but not void. It produces something that He likes and wants and desires.

So on the one hand God is not this human person with all the emotional hang ups. Yet on the other hand, does God have emotion? Well I know theologians say absolutely not, because then you make Him into a man. Well what does emotions have to do with a man? Man has emotions, but who put them there? Is love just hard cold facts? It’s doing the right thing for people, at the right time with the right attitude. Is there no emotions involved in love? Does God have no emotions? Well then, where do emotions come from and why do we have them?

Now we get back to this thing of spiritual attributions, which come from God’s Holy Spirit. In Galatians 5 God lists 9 fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, faith… But then we have things like patience. If patience is a fruit of the Spirit of God, does God have patience? Well I guess He would have to. But patience is having a good attitude and having hope and confidence, towards something that you don’t have or can’t have. You have to wait on it. What can’t God have? What does He have to wait on or did He ever have to wait on anything? How did God develop patience? Well I found a couple of Scriptures that will blow you away. Either that or you just won’t understand it, I guess. But I’m telling you I found some Scriptures. Because I’ve wondered a long time if God gives us patience, does God have patience? But patience by it’s very nature is something you have to exercise, when you desire something that you can’t have. What can’t God have? You say, ‘well He can have anything He wants.’ But could He always? You say, ‘well God lives in eternity, there is no always, there is only the eternal now.’ Now we are getting into Christian theology though, and I don’t see that anymore.

I don’t see eternity as being a point of stagnation. As it neither goes forward nor backwards, it’s just frozen like a rose in a block of glass you know like you see. It’s stiff and frozen, that’s eternity? It doesn’t move ever again? I don’t see it. The eons come to an end. These mapped out, charted out periods of time that certain things have to happen. Well I don’t see in the Scriptures where time comes to an end.

Kat · « **Reply #16 on:** December 08, 2007, 01:08:27 PM »

   NEXT CONFERENCE - GENESIS

So did God exist through time? Everything you suggest opens up a whole new avenue, of how do you even think about these things. One thing I want to go into is Genesis. Where are the dinosaurs? These big old things from here to the end of the parking lot and 6 stories high and weighting 100 tons. Where are they in Genesis? I mean if thousands of them lived for millions of years… of course people think they only lived for a couple hundred years, right before the floor or whatever. But where are they? He talks about grasshoppers and little creeping things. Where are the dinosaurs? Well I think they are in here. I can even tell you which verse, Genesis 1:21.

It’s going to take me about a year to get ready for this conference, it might take me two years. There is a lot to learn. I mean here I am and I though I’m going to study Matthew and Mark and now I’m reading books on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. It’s interesting though, if it weren’t I couldn’t do it.
I do some Bible studies on books that are not all that interesting to me and it really is tedious work. Sometimes they are not so interesting to me, but most things are interesting to me.

I don’t know, it’s just like God shows me things. Like when I started looking and I wanted to know about the land and the mountains. It doesn’t say God made any mountains back there in Genesis you know. He made the dry land and He made the sea, then He made trees and all the animals. But it doesn’t say anything about mountains or valleys in the first two chapters of Genesis. You have to go up to Noah’s flood until you find the word mountain. So when God created the heavens and the earth, did He make mountains? When He made the earth did He put mountains on the earth? If God didn’t make mountains, where did they come from? In the flood the waters covered them, it didn’t created them. The earth made mountains! God made the heavens and the earth and the earth makes it’s own mountains. God didn’t make mountains, He made the earth that makes mountains. How long does it take to make mountains? Billions of years. So is the earth 6000 years old? No.

Now that was a really fascinating study. My wife is working on a degree and she has a geography book. I started reading and I learned a lot from that book. But on TV they have this series about how the earth and the continents were made. The earth makes mountains, it then wears them down, then they go under the ground and into the volcanoes and then they come back up again. It’s kind of like when you make dough, it rises and then you punch it down and it rises a second time.
Granite for example, where did granite come from? Granite is a mountain that went through a volcano twice. How long did that take? Billions of years. They know about this and I studied it and I can see it. You got your igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks.

But we talk about some of these things and we relate it to the Bible. We see how God made the universe and the earth and humanity and maybe a little bit of where it’s going. We are not going to die and go to heaven and sing gospel music on some rock in outer space. Trust me, we’re not. That is strictly fairy tale nonsense.

God has got a master plan. The more I think about it… When we are born, fully born into the family of God, it's like when a child is actually born. We know what it’s like when a child is begotten, ecause after a few weeks or a month, the mother realizes something is going on. She say, 'I think I’m pregnant.’ Then there is a certain period it grows, for 9 months and the baby is born. But when the baby is born, is it mature?
So I’ve been looking at that the last few years. I don’t believe when we are born into the family of God we will be just like God. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe we are going to take that quantum leap in one flash, at the last trump. Boom and we will be patting out Father on the back and saying, ‘good to see ya Dad.’ I don’t think it’s going to be like that at all. I think then (when we are born into the family of God) we’re on the outside of the womb, so to speak. We’ll be on the outside of the spiritual womb and it’s going to be a whole new world.
I think about as much as a fetus sees in the mother’s womb, that’s what we see right now. When we are born, we are going to come out of this and we are going to see a whole lot more. Then we are going to start to grown up. But that’s just what I think. Hey I might be a heretic.

   THE CHRONOLOGY OF TRANSLATIONS AND MODERN VERSIONS

We’re going to get into the chronology from this section I took from Greatsite.com, who sells books.

The history of the Bible is a little different then a lot of people think or the way it’s even presented. I looked at a lot of material before I would ever print this section here from Greatsite. Because there are so many contradictions out there, it’s just so many and not just contradictions, but out and out lies.

I mean how many of you heard that this King James Bible was translated directly from the Textus Receptus, how many have heard that? It’s not true. Do you know what this Bible really represents? It’s not a translation at all. This is a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. What is the Bishop’s Bible? That’s a revision of the Great Bible. Well what is the Great Bible? Well it’s a revision of the Geneva Bible. What is the Geneva Bible? It came out of the Coverdale Bible and where did the Coverdale come from. It’s a revision of the William Tyndale Bible and where did that Bible come from? Well it came from William Tyndale.

The first English Bible was translated in Germany. How many knew that? So how many translations of the Bible are there? About one, that’s all. Tyndale went to Germany to translate the English Bible. Did he have any help? Yes, Martin Luther, he’s a German. Did he have any documents? Yes, Martin Luther had a Erasmus collection of Greek manuscripts, that later became known as Textus Receptus. Martin Luther translated his Germany version from those Texts and the Vulgate. When in doubt, look at somebody that’s already done it, you will learn things.

Jerome translated the Vulgate in 382 BC.I mean he was no fool, this man’s a genius and he did a good work, I mean considering what he had. But that was not a translation, it was a renovation of all the bad Latin versions that were scattered around. The versions were so bad, so corrupt, so chocked full of errors and just not scholarly works at all. Jerome said that we need a decent copy of the Scriptures in Latin and so he did it.

Now we have such things as the Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. They didn’t have any of that stuff. The oldest manuscripts that they had back when Coverdale and Luther and all these guys had, was from the 10th century. They had nothing older. So really in the last 100 years a lot of stuff has been found.

The Sinaiticus and that stuff was all found in the 1800’s, not back in the 13th, 14th or 15th century. So we have the benefit of all this stuff now and we can look at it and it has been studied so much.
I mean you can’t even phantom how many tens of thousands of people, scholars and theologians have poured over these manuscripts and compared them and tried to figure out where they come from and who wrote it and what was their motive and is it pure.

Then you have these manuscripts like the Sinaiticus, which is the oldest complete New Testament in Greek. It’s the entire Greek New Testament from Matthew to Revelation. Before 350 AD there is not a manuscript on the face of the earth that contains the Old and New Testament, none, not one. But there is lots of fragments.

   DISCOVERING AND PRESERVING THE PASS

It’s amazing, they’ll have this fragment about 1 inch big that archeologists will find someplace and it will have maybe 8 words from the book of Zephaniah. They will study those words and find it in another more recent one and see how it compares, in the shapes of the pen strokes and all this technical stuff. Then they can date it, see. They will notice the shape of some of the letters and then they will compare that through history. They will look at those from 300, 400, 500, no, now they go to 200, 100 BC, yes. Here’s a tomb of some famous person and they know it was 70 BC and it has the same letters. Now 100 years later these letters are changing, so this fragment is at least 100 BC. You see how they put this together, it takes years and years and years.

Have you ever wondered how they date stuff? They got the old dynasty and the new dynasty and you got Muhutmos II and all these different kings and he lived in this year. Did you ever wonder, how do they know that? How did they know that was 1874 BC? Did they find that on a calendar some place?’

Well it’s an amazing study, how they do that. You know back in the 1800 or 1900’s they had all the kings lists of Egypt. They had kings and which ruled after each other. They were different king lists in Syrian and Babylon, all these kings lists. But they didn’t know where any of them connected. You know should this list be up there or down here. Then they started getting them in relationship with each other. Okay these kings lived with this set of kings, because he married this kings sister, because we just saw it on a tomb. So they start getting the lists coordinated, but they still don’t know where all the lists go.

Then one thing that was a major key was found. It was some piece of absolute historical documentation on some event in history, that fall on an eclipse. Now they could go back in planetariums and pin point the day of that eclipse. Then the whole thing fell into place. They now know the date of that eclipse and that event. So that tied to this event, that tied to this other event and this event down in China and over in Russia and it all started coming together. Because of one event, an eclipse. Absolutely amazing stuff how this happens.

God says people will be running to and fro and knowledge shall be increased (Daniel 12:4). Now they are putting this stuff together. You might think there is a lot of history being lost, it’s really not. History was lost for many centuries, now it’s being found and when we find it we preserve it. We put it under glass and humidity controlled, we are preserving stuff now.

So it is kind of an exciting time to live, because I think there is some real things around the corner and some people are afraid of it. Some people are kind of afraid of science. But I’m telling you I’m just becoming more and more convinced, you know, bring it on, because it fits.

You say, ‘well we thought that God created the heavens and the earth 6000 years ago. Now you are telling us it’s more like 6 billion. My faith is crumbling.’ No, I’m going to build some of that faith back up. You are going to see this first chapter of Genesis falls right in line with what scientist are now seeing. It does not fall in line with what theologians have said for 2000 years. It does not. But it does fall in line with true science, it absolutely does.
What about the dinosaurs? It doesn’t tell us much. But how much must you know if it’s truth and God shows it to you. Do you see what I’m saying?

Did you ever notice how in the Scriptures, when something was revealed to the Apostles, just some little thing opened up their understanding. Christ mentioned a word or a prophecy and then they understood. Why? That’s the way God does things. I don’t have all these mysteries solved yet.

I know it takes hundreds and hundreds of years for a acorn to turn into a giant oak tree. Why does it take so long? I think part of it has to do with this earth thing I was telling you about. God takes hundreds of years to grow a tree. The Bristlecone pine trees in California, do you know that some are almost 5000 years old? A 5000 year old tree. It was alive long before Moses came across the Red Sea, it was full grown by then. Thousands of years old.

Why does God take billions of years to build mountains? I mean He could do it quickly, but He doesn’t. That’s the whole point, He doesn’t. You say, ‘well I wish He did. It would make more sense if God would do the magic trick, like I always thought. Boom, there’s the stars, boom the earth, boom the mountains and hills.’ What is greater is how He did do it.

It’s one thing for 100 construction men to go out and they build a big building or something. It’s another thing to level off a piece of land and carry out all the materials and have the building build itself. Imagine that. Just say, ‘okay go.’ Anybody can get a group of men and build a building. But put the materials out there and I’m going to tell the building to build itself. That’s what God does. He says, ‘watch this, I create what’s necessary. I give the raw materials, but watch this.The earth is going to create itself, over billions of years.’ Why does He do that? I only have some glimpses into it.

But like this table, things are not what they appear. God is bigger than we ever thought. He’s just so much bigger, so much wiser, so much everything. That’s why it says what it says here.

I Cor. 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
v. 13 These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches…

Well why not? Why not teach us these things in the words of man’s wisdom? What’s wrong with that? That’s not the way it’s done.
Paul knew about man’s wisdom, he knew about words, he knew about meanings, he could write a full sentence. He could carry through a thought, like the philosophers or poets and all of that. But notice.

v. 13 …not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things (things should not be in there) with spiritual.
v. 14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
v. 15 But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one.
v. 16 For "who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Well we should have the mind of Christ, we are suppose to have the mind of Christ. But this is a quantum leap from…
Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Now I lay me down to sleep.
If I shall die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

What will happen when you die and go to heaven. What do you do there? They say, ‘well we sing and eat candy on big rock candy mountains.’ It’s just fairy tale nonsense. Church is fairy tale nonsense. On Sunday you go down here to Dauphin Way, a huge church and maybe some of you would listen and say, ‘I thought that was okay.’ It’s nonsense, it’s total childish, unscriptural, foolish, nonsense.

One day I’m just going to write out what some of these say and then analyze the words and you will see what utter garbage it is. Just total foolish, silly nonsense. I mean they talk this flowery stuff and they all got this lingo down, it nonsense, it’s meaningless nonsense. It’s all totally unscriptural, all of it.

Kat · « **Reply #17 on:** December 12, 2007, 10:23:45 PM »

Audio 8

   WHERE DID MAN COME FROM ?

All the sand on the seashore use to be mountains at one time. Now how long do you suppose it took to grind all the sand on the seashores? A long time. This earth is very old. It’s just hard to understand though, even from an evolutionary point of view, modern man has only been here 50,00 or 100,000 years. Now that’s a little longer than theologians would say Genesis was. They would put it maybe 6000 years, or some would say 8000 to 10,000 years. Alright say 10 times that, 100,000. That’s nothing. What is 100,000 years in 4½ billion? 100,000 is nothing. If it’s the hours on a clock, it’s like one second before midnight that man appears.
That is what is so amazing, he did, just appear and everybody knows it. This idea that you can link man way back, is nonsense and most real scientist know it’s nonsense. Modern man just showed up. 50,000 or 100,000 years ago there was no modern homo-sapiens men. It was just boom, there they were. Where did they come from?
They figured the dinosaurs lived from 165 million years ago to 50 million years. 115 million years dinosaurs existed! Mankind a couple of thousand years. Where did he come from? Boom, here’s modern man. Where was he before? He’s not there! All these other animals we have now and then you go back to the lizards and the dinosaurs, but there is no man there. Well we’ll talk about that next year.


   ENGLISH BIBLE HISTORY

Excerpts (in italic) are taken from Greatsite.com, where Ray printed the ‘English Bible History’ page in the notes and referenced it frequently. Here is a link to the page.
http://greatsite.com/timeline-english-bible-history/index.html

The 1000 years of the Dark and Middle Ages was a period where the only Scripture available was Latin. Except for the Hebrew and Greek and not many people on the planet earth could read Hebrew or Greek.

It’s interesting that Jerome supposedly translated the Vulgate in 382 AD and Wycliffe translated the first English Bible in 1382. Exactly, I mean exactly 1000 years. Isn’t that interesting. How did that every come about, exactly 1000 years to the year.

Wycliffe, you’ve got to give the man credit. He’s the first man to venture out and make a English Bible and it was frowned upon.
The Pope was so infuriated by his teachings and his translation of the Bible into English, that 44 years after Wycliffe had died, he ordered the bones to be dug-up, crushed, and scattered in the river!
I mean just out of sheer hatred. This is the Pope, a descendant of Peter supposedly. I don’t think so.
It is amazing that Wycliffe’s Bibles are hand written. Now he didn’t write them all. I’m sure he wrote the first one and then there were scribes that looked at that one and they made copies. If you have seen the hand printed page of a Wycliffe Bible it is so beautiful and so flawless, it look just like print. It actually looks like it was printed on a printing press, that’s how good it is and it’s all done by hand. Absolutely mind boggling. But they didn’t have television and all that stuff to distract them. They just sat there is the noonday sun and whatever.

There were several editions of Wycliffe’s Bible. I think they all made corrections in it. These men were scholars and students of the Scriptures. They would say, I’ve got to change that verse. Then every 5 or 10 years or whatever, they would come out with a new edition. Because they were being slowly produced, they weren’t easy, even when printing press came out. They could just change a few lines of type and it’s a new edition, because they made some corrections and some improvements and so on. So the first one from Wycliffe was in 1384 and 26 years later they had the 1410 edition. Greatsite.com has one for sale, you can buy a Wycliffe hand written 1410 Bible. It’s two million seven hundred and fifty thousand ($2,750,000). That’s probably a good bargain, I don’t know. This was the first Bible translated into the English language, but it was translated from the Latin Vulgate. But we can’t pooh pooh the Vulgate completely.

The Vulgate was a pretty good translation over all. Jerome’s original Vulgate did not have all these errors of ‘for ever and ever,’ this never never land nonsense. They had these Latin words eternous - eternium, but it did not mean eternity like the word does today. It meant an age. In fact, Alexander Thompson, a Scottish theologian from not too long ago, about 50 - 60 years ago that he died. But he traced eternity back to the Latin eternous and eternium and right back to the Greek aion. The word eternity comes from the Greek word aion - age. It absolutely does and it never meant endless time.

Justinian in about 558 AD started reasoning and you know what the Bible says about human reasoning. He said, ‘if the saved Saints never die, then the wicked never die either. So when it says that we are going to receive eonian life, then the wicked must receive eonian judgment. So since we know that eonian life never ends, judgment must never end.’

Now the Scriptures does not say that. But he knew that the word eonian didn’t mean endless, so he tacked a word onto it, ‘endless’ eonian. So there you go, he solved the problem. Now the Saints receive endless eonian life and the wicked received endless eonian punishment. By the very fact that he had to interject a word that wasn’t there, proves conclusively that eonian never meant endless. You don’t put the word endless in front of the word endless. You don’t have endless endless life, you see. But he came up with his endless eonian. Why? Because eonian doesn’t mean endless and he wanted it to be endless, so he put endless onto it, endless eoian - endless ages. It’s heresy! It is not in the Scriptures, it heresy.

Jerome used the word eternium and eternous, but it never meant endless. I mean it was in the 6th century before somebody started talking about endless eonian, which is just a fabrication.

Okay so here we have the first English Bible. One of Wycliffe’s followers, John Hus , promoted Wycliffe’s ideas. I mean Wycliffe knew that the church was not following the Scriptures, because they had learned Hebrew and Greek. That is an interesting story, how they learned it, too.
There was a lot of scholars in the Byzantine Empire and there was a period where they had to run for their lives. Some of them fled into northwestern Europe and they brought the knowledge of ancient languages with them. But it wasn’t until 1350 or so, before Oxford University or maybe it was Cambridge, but I think Oxford was first to offer a course in Greek. You know how everybody says ‘it’s Greek to me.’ Well then people started learning Greek.

But for all practicality even Latin was not known in Europe that well. The only people that could read a Bible were theologians and scholars. The farmers and the shoemakers couldn’t read it, they didn’t know Latin. Well the church people wanted it that way, they were in total control and in charge of these people. Not only their physical lives for the here and now, but their eternal destiny. Everybody thought it was in the hands of the theologians.

Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1450’s. I’m sure they made a few experimental runs, but the first major thing that they published on the printing press was the Gutenberg Bible. So it was the first thing that came off the first printing press in the world.
What amazes me is, I think there was around 185 copies made and 48 of them are still around. Some of them have pages missing, like my old German Bible. But somewhere between 3 to 10 copies are considered to be in perfect condition, with no missing pages, cover still attached. That’s amazing, it’s been 562 years, that’s a long time to have a book around and it still be in perfect condition.

This line in the notes is interesting;
The Latin had become so corrupt that it no longer even preserved the message of the Gospel… yet the Church still threatened to kill anyone who read the scripture in any language other than Latin… though Latin was not an original language of the scriptures. So they were not allowed to read it in Greek, just Latin.

Erasmus is a key person in how all our modern and English Bibles came about, because he compiled these Greek manuscripts. I think he had like six different Greek manuscripts. Where they get this term ‘Textus Rectus’ is he made a compilation of the six manuscripts. These were Byzantine texts, I mean they were Greek, but came out of the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine was the eastern empire after Rome fall, Turkey and Constantinople (Istanbul same city). That was the center of the Byzantine Empire. Where as Rome, northern Africa, Alexandria and those places were the seat of learning and libraries for the western part of the Empire.

So Erasmus was a Swiss scholar. They say he was a very brilliant man, just an absolute genius. He had some how, maybe it was through trade or something, but he learned about six Byzantine Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. So he compiled a work where he put the best representation of the Greek on one side of the page and Latin on the other side;
a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. The Latin part was his own rendering of the text from the more accurate and reliable Greek. This milestone was the first non-Latin Vulgate text of the scripture to be produced in a millennium….

Remember that Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus in 382, to make a descent revision of all these Latin Scriptures that were then in use and had been corrupted. It employed the everyday written Latin style of the fourth century, in contrast to the more formal, elegant Latin of Cicero and came up with a pretty good Vulgate. Now the Vulgate went through it’s own revolution, it’s not like we had the Vulgate for a 1000 years, no. We had the original Vulgate from 382 and 482 and 582 and then in 682 they started making revisions of that. That is where these words start evolving and they start interjecting other words and other meanings and so on.

Wycliffe’s first English translation in 1382, a thousand years from the original Vulgate. It’s sometimes called the English Vulgate, because his translation is from the Vulgate, only in English.

In the early 1400’s the Germans were translating German Bibles from the Vulgate. I mean the Vulgate was the source of everything. Then we come up to 1516 and Erasmus puts together from the six Greek manuscripts and apparently they were not all complete, but between them all he got a complete manuscript. Then he did the parallel thing with the Greek and the Latin.
Latin really was the scholarly language in Europe no matter where you lived. If you were a scholar, a teacher or educator and lived in Switzerland, you spoke Latin or if you lived in Germany, you spoke Latin or if you lived in England, you spoke Latin.

There were 50 men that were selected (4 didn’t show up) by King James to revise the Bishop’s Bible into the King James version. So they were working on the English Bible, talking in Latin. They had 10 companies, groups or committees that they called them companies. One would work on the Pentateuch, one on the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Joshua and Judges, one on the Megilloth, one on a couple of the major prophets and on down to Revelation. Then they would periodically get together and see how they were all doing and see if they were learning something that would benefit each other. All the discussions were always in Latin. It was kind of ironic wasn’t it. They are living in a English speaking world, translating a new English Bible and are all speaking Latin. This shows how powerful that language was and how prominently it had to do with the translating the Scriptures.

Martin Luther, 60 years before the King James came out, he is putting together a German Bible. But he’s not going to translate this one from the Latin, he used the recent Greek edition of Erasmus, the parallel of the Greek and the Latin. He puts that into German. So this is the first Bible in the European language that’s translated from the original language, Martin Luther’s Bible.

William Tyndale is who we have next. Now this is the real King James Bible and all translations. It is Tyndale that put this unique rhythmic and poetic flow to what we call the King James Bible. It doesn’t have to come out quite that way, you can translate it using all the words and proper euphuism. As I read the 23rd Psalms from the Concordant and it was very awkward… “Your club and Your staff, they are comforting me.” “My cup is satiated.” Instead of “My cup runneth over.” It’s just very awkward, you know choppy, it’s kind of guttural words. The King James just flows. But it’s not the King James, it’s Tyndale, it’s all Tyndale.

Tyndale went to Germany because they wouldn’t allow anybody to print English Bibles in England. They were death against that. So he worked with Martin Luther, because it was only maybe two years earlier that Luther had come out with his and now Tyndale wants to do it and they said fine we’ll just work together. They used the same thing, Erasmus’ compilation of a half dozen Byzantine Greek texts with the Latin next to it. That’s what they used to produce it, rather quickly, because Luther had just worked for years on his and Tyndale knew Greek. So I can see how on almost every verse, Luther saying this, that or the other thing and they would just instantly see it. He didn’t have to do a second independent study. So within one year he had it translated from the Greek and the Latin, they could compare them both because they know both languages. But at least they had the original Greek manuscripts now to produce his Bible. Martin Luther produced the first complete Bible in 1522. The King James is almost a century later in 1611.

In 1525-1526 the Tyndale New Testament became the first printed edition of the scripture in the English language. Luther had done the New Testament and then the Old. Tyndale, then did the New Testament and he started to work on the Old Testament and didn‘t finish it.

The King of England was death on Tyndale’s version. He would have merchants buy up all the versions and then they would burn them, just burn them up. But Tyndale kept getting money for them, so he had money to keep printing more and more and eventually he won out.
But you couldn’t even get caught with one of these Bibles, now alone preaching from it. That’s the iron fist that the religion had on them. So they tries to discredit it and said it was really a corrupt version and had thousands of errors in it and so on. Which was really pretty ridiculous, because not to many years later the same kings and same country and same scholars that criticized this, are now using it as the primary version to make the King James Bible.
There is only two known copies left of Tyndale’s 1525 first edition.

Kat · « **Reply #18 on:** December 12, 2007, 10:24:29 PM »

This excerpt from Greatsite tells why the church was so frantic about people getting the Bible in their own language.
Having God's Word available to the public in the language of the common man, English, would have meant disaster to the church. No longer would they control access to the scriptures. If people were able to read the Bible in their own tongue, the church's income and power would crumble. They could not possibly continue to get away with selling indulgences (the forgiveness of sins) or selling the release of loved ones from a church-manufactured "Purgatory". People would begin to challenge the church's authority if the church were exposed as frauds and thieves. The contradictions between what God's Word said, and what the priests taught, would open the public's eyes and the truth would set them free from the grip of fear that the institutional church held. Salvation through faith, not works or donations, would be understood. The need for priests would vanish through the priesthood of all believers. The veneration of church-canonized Saints and Mary would be called into question. The availability of the scriptures in English was the biggest threat imaginable to the wicked church. Neither side would give up without a fight.
A clergyman hopelessly entrenched in Roman Catholic dogma once taunted Tyndale with the statement, “We are better to be without God’s laws than the Pope’s”. Tyndale was infuriated by such Roman Catholic heresies, and he replied, “I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life ere many years, I will cause the boy that drives the plow to know more of the scriptures than you!”

Well they feared that because the church had this iron fist, iron hand rule over the people. They were selling indulgences and all kinds of things like that, collecting tithes and they taught Purgatory. But if you paid the church so much it would get you out of Purgatory, you could buy your way out.

Now Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales,’ you ought to read it, because he talks like I do. He talks about these different priests in the church and how they were just blatantly corrupt. These priests just admit it and say, ‘hey this is a living.’ That’s what they would do, they would sell trinkets and religious junk to people and make a living doing so. They freely admitted that they had wench, like a sailor had a girl at every port, well they had a wench in every town. These priests freely admitted it and you would say, ‘well that’s just Chaucer, he had a axe to grind or whatever.’ But no, this is a poetic book and it is very long and I think it’s history. I mean it was just that corrupt. You should read the Canterbury Tales, but of course you can’t read the original, that was written back in 1300’s or 1400’s.
Have you ever seen English from the 1300 or 1400’s? It looks like Germany and it sounds like German. If I were to read you old English you would think I was speaking German to Dutch. I can catch some words, because I know a little German. It is interesting to me that Dutch sounds just like German, but my wife can not understand Dutch. She says it might sound the same, but it’s not the same. Oh she knows what they are talking about, because bread is baard and in German it is Brot. Some words are pretty similar, but others are totally different.

In the next section we will get into the gothic version. There was a European version of the Bible back in the 300’s, not the 1300’s the 300’s, yes there was. We will talk about that when we come to the chronological dates.

Myles Coverdale was a man likewise who was a early reformer and a friend of Tyndale. Tyndale started to do the old Testament. He had finished the New Testament and printed it and then he wanted to do the whole Bible, so he started on the Old Testament. But he didn’t finish the Old Testament, they killed him. But Coverdale finished it. So there is a little bit of Coverdale in Tyndale’s complete Bible.

John Rogers went on to print the second complete English Bible in 1537. It was, however, the first English Bible translated from the original Biblical languages of Hebrew & Greek. A considerable part of this Bible was the translation of Tyndale, whose writings had been condemned by the English authorities. The complete Bible was put out under the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew in 1537. John Rogers used the assumed name “Thomas Matthew” to avoid persecution and prosecution by the authorities who continued to forbid under penalty of death, the printing of the scriptures in the English language. It is a composite made up of Tyndale's Pentateuch and New Testament (1534-1535 edition) and Coverdale's Bible and some of Roger's own translation of the text. Rogers also contributed the Song of Manasses in the Apocrypha which he found in a French Bible printed in 1535. It remains known most commonly as the Matthew-Tyndale Bible.

Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1539, hired Myles Coverdale at the bequest of King Henry VIII to publish the "Great Bible." It became the first English Bible authorized for public use, as it was distributed to every church, chained to the pulpit, and a reader was even provided so that the illiterate could hear the Word of God in plain English. It would seem that William Tyndale's last wish had been granted... just three years after his martyrdom. Cranmer's Bible, published by Coverdale, was known as the Great Bible.

See how they all overlap. We have Martin Luther, and working with him was Tyndale. Then finishing Tyndale’s was Coverdale, then Tyndale’s Bible, then John Rogers.
Then you got Cranmer who hired Coverdale to make an official copy for the king. It became the first English Bible authorized for public use. In other words they pretty much knew, there is no keeping the English Bible out of the peoples hands, they were going to get them. I mean they had the presses over there in Germany, so if they could not print them there in England, they would print them over there and keep pumping them out. So there thing was, let’s bring out our own version and at least they will be reading our version, rather than somebody else’s.

It is amazing to me, how you’ve got the original scholarship behind the King James Bible. I’m not saying this because I’m German and my wife is German. I was born in America and my people have been here for a long time, but she just came over on the boat. But it’s true, Martin Luther worked with Tyndale and he must have had a lot of influence with Tyndale. Because they knocked out that New Testament in one year.

So you have Luther, then Tyndale and Coverdale finishes Tyndale‘s, then Coverdale does the Great Bible. But it’s all Coverdale that is coming forward and we come all the way up to the King James Bible. The authorities admit it is 80% Coverdale. This is not a new version, this is a revision. I heard that years ago and I had no idea what they were talking about. I heard someone say, ‘the King James is a revision of a revision of a revision of a revision.’ I said what are you talking about? I said, no they translated that out of the original Hebrew. No they didn’t. They did not. They did have Erasmus’ Greek Scripture. They sure did, but they only consulted it. When they consulted the other translation they said, ‘boy you can’t improve upon this Tyndale.’ That was as good as it gets and especially the rhythm and rhyme and the meter how it flowed.

Then we have the Great Bible and that was the first English authorized Bible. But Coverdale was a protégé of Tyndale’s and he’s the one that did that.

Queen Mary, she use to like to burn people at the stake, she was a real witch.
The religion in England went back and forth. The powers that be would either promote Catholicism or this reformation that was beginning. But understand, the Anglican church or what they called the English Anglican church was never really Protestant. They even brought out their versions, as a counter against what they consider, this Protestant Bible.

I guess the first real Protestant Bible would be the Geneva Bible that Calvin instituted. But Catholicism was kind of stamped out there, for a while. But when Queen Mary came back, she brought it back in. She started burning a lot of people at the stake and she was criticized for it. She said, (this is what she was reported to have said) ‘I’m only doing to these heretics what God is going to do to them for all eternity, I’m just doing it now.’ That’s how she justified burning them at the stake.

John Foxe wrote the famous ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.’ In the 1550's, the Church at Geneva, Switzerland, was very sympathetic to the reformer refugees and was one of only a few safe havens for a desperate people. Many of them met in Geneva, led by Myles Coverdale and John Foxe. as well as Thomas Sampson and William Whittingham. There, with the protection of the great theologian John Calvin and John Knox, the great Reformer of the Scottish Church, the Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible that would educate their families while they continued in exile.

John Calvin, everybody considers him one of the greatest theologians of all times. I think he is one of the most evil heretics that ever lived. The Church of Geneva determined to produce a Bible by John Knox and Calvin and we have the Geneva Bible. One thing interesting about the Geneva Bible and it really was a step forward, is they were the first to number the Scriptures. I mean how in the world could you find your way before.
Do you notice how when it says Christ went into the synagogue and He found the place;

Luke 4:17 And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. And He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

You had to find the place. He had to find the place by what it said before and after what he was looking for. Now we just say John 3:16; go to John, then you go to chapter 3, then down to verse 16, it’s boom boom boom, it’s great. So that was an improvement for sure.

But notice this in the notes;
Between 1560 and 1644 at least 144 editions of this Bible were published. Examination of the 1611 King James Bible shows clearly that its translators were influenced much more by the Geneva Bible, than by any other source. The Geneva Bible itself retains over 90% of William Tyndale's.
So no matter what they were translating, nobody could improve upon Tyndale. The guy was apparently totally honest, understood Greek and Latin and made a concerted effort to make a very accurate translation. But not only did he make a accurate translation, he did it in a magical rhythmic meter, that you have in the King James. You don’t have that in other Bibles, unless they are copies of the King James. But it was not the King James, let’s give credit where credit is due, this is William Tyndale’s work.

Then you got the Catholics into it. Remember they are the ones that said, you can’t make a copy of the Scripture in anything but Latin, are you will die the death. But everybody’s got these English translations and they said, ‘well we might as well get in on it too. Because if all the people are going to read English and if we don’t have an English Bible, well guess what they are going to read? They are going to read these Protestant’s English Bibles. So we better make an English Bible.’ So they made a English Bible, the Douay Rheims Bible.
Because it was translated at the Roman Catholic College in the city of Rheims, it was known as the Rheims New Testament (also spelled Rhemes). The Douay Old Testament was translated by the Church of Rome in 1609 at the College in the city of Douay (also spelled Doway & Douai). The combined product is commonly referred to as the "Doway/Rheims" Version.
I have a copy, it’s a Rheims Douay Catholic Bible.

Kat · « **Reply #19 on:** December 21, 2007, 10:46:21 AM »

Audio 9

   King James

King James, actually Prince James IIII of Scotland was King James.
The Geneva Bible that was pretty popular at this time. But the Geneva Bible, I believe was the one that had all the commentary, which is great. I love all that stuff. But a lot of it was not to flattering to the king. He wanted a Bible that would elevate kingship, so the one thing he did not want in a revision was all the marginal notes and commentary. If you see some of these old Bibles that were printed, you had other whole sections of writings and marginal notes. I think over the years some of those marginal notes got put into the Scriptures and we will cover a few of those later.

But the king never called for a translation, a new translation. The Geneva Bible was doing fine… so he wanted a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. But he also wanted, if possible, to make it better. So they could look at Coverdale and Tyndale and even the Douay Rheims Catholic Bible, they could compare those and the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible. They looked at all of those. Also there was Erasmus’ Byzantine manuscripts, with the parallel Latin. So they had all of that, they had a lot of stuff at their disposal.
But the bottom line is, it’s a revision of the Bishop’s Bible. Which is connected to the Geneva Bible, the Great Bible, the Coverdale Bible and the Tyndale Bible. It’s all the same Bible with just certain additions and so on. So by the time we come to the King James, it’s still 75-80% or more the Tyndale Bible. If you were to get a Tyndale Bible, and you would read Scripture after Scripture and you would say, ‘this is The King James.’ No, it’s Tyndale, same thing though.

It’s interesting, that the King James Bible was not immediately popular. It was competing with all of these Bibles. The Geneva Bible I think was kind of the reformers choice. But the most popular was the Bishop’s Bible. Of course in Germany it would have been Luther’s Bible. So they were in competition for a while and so for the first probably 50-60 years or so the King James didn’t catch on that much.
By the time they came to America, it was not the King James that the Puritans or the pilgrims brought with them. It was the Geneva Bible.

Protestants today are largely unaware of their own history, and unaware of the Geneva Bible (which is textually 95% the same as the King James Version, but 50 years older than the King James Version, and not influenced by the Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament that the King James translators admittedly took into consideration). [From Greatsite.com - English Bible History.]

The Geneva Bible was 95% King James. But really the King James was a revision of the Bishop’s Bible and so it had to be 95% of that one too and that one was 80-90% of the Tyndale Bible. So it’s Tyndale all the way. The man responsible for all these early editions, 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, 1800s and all these Bibles go back to Tyndale.

Now we have John Eilot. It’s interesting that the first Bible printed in America was for the Algonquin Indians. I’ve never seen one, I don’t even know what it looks like. I don’t think it was a very big Bible, because you would just have to simplify it something fierce. First he had to take the Algonquin Indian language and figure out how, using the English language and then getting the phonetic sounds using the alphabet that the Indians would speak. I don’t even know a Algonquin word. They had to teach the Indians the words that they spoke, looked like certain letters, that made certain sounds. But they learned, Indians are smart.

Clearly the Word of God was something these people needed if they were to stop worshiping creation and false gods, and learn to worship the true Creator… but God’s Word could not realistically be translated effectively into their primitive pictorial drawings. So Eliot found a wonderful solution: he would give the native Americans the gift of God’s Word and also give them the gift of true literacy. He agreed to learn their spoken language, and they agreed to learn the Western world’s phonetic alphabet (how to pronounce words made up of character symbols like A, B, C, D, E, etc.) Eliot then translated the Bible into their native Algonquin tongue, phonetically using our alphabet! This way, the natives did not really even need to learn how to speak English, and they could still have a Bible that they could READ. In fact, they could go on to use their newly learned alphabet to write other books of their own, if they so desired, and build their culture as the other nations of the world had done. What a wonderful gift! [From Greatsite.com - English Bible History.]

But the first European language Bible printed, was one like I have and there was three printings, 1743, 1756 and 1776, I don’t know which one mine is. So the first Bible printed in a intelligible language, was Martin Luther’s German Bible in 1743. It was 43 more years before there was an English Bible printed in England and that was the King James. Not the original one they brought over, but it was the King James.

Noah Webster, who gives us the Webster’s dictionary and he didn’t really make a translation, all he did was take the King James and put it into a little more modern English. But it never caught on. Most people don’t even know there’s a Webster’s Bible.

Then we come up to the next major Bible revision, a British Bible, The English Revised Version in 1885, made in Britain. Then a few years later in 1901 you had the American version of that, The American Standard Version.

Another point that a lot of people don’t know or wouldn’t know and I even make reference to it wrongly too. I talk about our King James Bible being in archaic (old) King James English. No it’s not. It is not King James English. This Bible was revised in 1879 or there about and every King James Bible printed in the English language since then is 1879 English. The only way you get King James English is to get a facsimile of the 1611 Bible. Now that was the true King James English. But it is different and it takes a little while to get use to reading it. Because they had no letter J, it wasn’t Jesus, it was Esus. And a U was a V. So it takes a little getting your mind coordinated to even read it.

So this is a revision of the King James English, it’s not a revision of the King James Bible. But only the more awkward English words that have changed meaning and spelling. Of course a lot of these 1879 English words have changed even now, because that is 125 years ago and things have changed a lot since than. You have words that have changed meaning, some mean the exact opposite. A carriage was something that you carried on a wagon, now the carriage is the wagon. Things like that have changed over time.

Then we have the New International Version and the New King James Version and the English Standard Version. These are all in the last 25-30 years. Well the New International Version is pretty popular, but the New King James Version never caught on. If somebody is going to use the King James, they don’t want a new one, they would use the New International Version.

For a lot of years people used the Revised Standard Version and now they have a New Revised Standard Version. Then there was the American Standard Version and now there is the New American Standard Version. Actually the ASV is the Scripture of choice apparently for theological seminaries, except for your King James only people. For scholarly works and doctrinal dissertations, they wouldn’t quote from a King James, they would use the New American Standard Version.

I had a NASV with a bright red cover, a big thick 1400 pages. Quite frankly it is pretty helpful and I’ll tell you why, it’s got thousands and thousands of foot notes, 10, 20 or 30 on a page. I mean they are not going to teach me anything new about doctrine per se, but you learn a lot of historical, traditional and cultural things. You will also learn about words or phrases that are not in most older manuscripts, they’ll have it and it’s helpful. I use it quite a lot as a reference book.

   Ray’s Three Main Reference Bibles

My three main references and that’s other than my King James, are the Emphatic Dioglott, a little blue book that the Jehovah Witness publish. But I think you can buy it on Amazon books. The Emphatic Dioglott is only the New Testament. Concordant, you ought to be able to get on Google or Amazon too. But you can get it at Concordant.org. and I hate to send people there though. Because they are seeing all the other stuff and start reading and pretty soon they get into this 2 administrations - 2 gospels - 2 resurrections - 2 everything nonsense and I don’t want people lead astray. So sometimes I’ll send them to Amazon and they’ll come back and say, I can’t find it. Then I will say here’s where you can get one, but don’t get tangled up in their doctrine.

The Concordant doesn’t have the old Testament yet. But they are working on it as we speak. They do have it, but they don’t have it in one volume. So they either will put it in one volume or maybe they will put the whole Bible, Old and New into one volume. Because right now you have to buy all of them separately, at least a dozen or more of the Old Testament books. They are $6-$7 a piece, so they are over a $100 if you buy the New Testament and all the Old Testament books.

This one you can buy at any Bible book store, Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible. That‘s nearly as good, in some ways it’s better than Concordant and some ways it’s not. But it’s very equal. Same way with the Emphatic Dioglott, in some places it‘s better than Concordant and in some places not quite.
If you say, ‘well how can you make such a judgment?’ By studying. When you study the word aion or something, as often and as long as I did, you learn a few things. You can pretty much tell if somebody is either prejudice or lacking knowledge, when they say something.
But I would say if you don’t have an Concordant, at least get a Rotherham’s Emphasized Bible, they are not very expensive. But it at least will not have all this ever and ever, eternal and all that, it will have the right words. All of those words are right. In other words, I would say 99.99% of the Scripture are translated properly.
Maybe in some places Concordant has it a little better and some places not as good. But at least it’s on target, I mean there are few places where they are flat out wrong. But in the Concordant, Heb. 11:3, we were talking about that, “the things were made from things that do not appear.” I mean they just totally butchered that, you can just take the Concordant there and x it out, just put a big X over it, because it’s pathetic. It’s just gobbledygook. But mostly it’s pretty good.

But notice this little chronological order, this is neat.

Consider the following textual comparison of the earliest English translations of John 3:16:

1st Ed. King James (1611): "For God so loued the world, that he gaue his only begotten Sonne: that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life."
Rheims (1582): "For so God loued the vvorld, that he gaue his only-begotten sonne: that euery one that beleeueth in him, perish not, but may haue life euerlasting"
Geneva (1560): "For God so loueth the world, that he hath geuen his only begotten Sonne: that none that beleue in him, should peryshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
Great Bible (1539): "For God so loued the worlde, that he gaue his only begotten sonne, that whosoeuer beleueth in him, shulde not perisshe, but haue euerlasting lyfe."
Tyndale (1534): "For God so loveth the worlde, that he hath geven his only sonne, that none that beleve in him, shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe."
Wycliff (1380): "for god loued so the world; that he gaf his oon bigetun sone, that eche man that bileueth in him perisch not: but haue euerlastynge liif,"
Anglo-Saxon Proto-English Manuscripts (995 AD): “God lufode middan-eard swa, dat he seade his an-cennedan sunu, dat nan ne forweorde de on hine gely ac habbe dat ece lif."

Tyndale didn’t do to good on that one, but actually it makes all the same mistakes, as the King James, right, 75-85%. So he does not have that right. But you know overall it is a good translation, it‘s just a few words. So if you correct aionios and maybe the word hell, then you have a new Bible. That’s all you need to do, now it involves many Scriptures, about 78 Scriptures. But just correct the translation of that word and this Bible is pretty descent for sure.

Although there are other problems with it, but you understand they did not have nearly the amount of scholarship or codices when they did this, that we do today. I mean the Sinaiticus, the Alexandrinus and all these really old manuscripts, they did not exist back then. Well they did exist but nobody knew where they were.

Then you have Wycliffe, he has “euerlastynge liif,” and look how he spells life - liif, anyway.

Because that came from the Vulgate, sure they will say everlasting life.
But notice the last one, the Anglo-Saxon, “habbe dat ece lif." Where is everlasting? “ece” does not mean everlasting. Actually you won’t find ‘ece’ in most dictionaries, my big 2600 page Unabridged Webster’s has the word ‘eke.’ It’s the same word eke - ece and it means - to add to, to prolong, to last. But not EVER-lasting, not eternal, but lasting. We still use the word. Where do we use the word eke in modern language? Well if you say to somebody, ‘how are you doing?’ They might say, ‘I’m just barely eking out a living.’

   Timeline of Bible Translation History

1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.

500 BC: Completion of All Original Hebrew Manuscripts which make up The 39 Books of the Old Testament.

200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39 Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.

1ST Century AD: Completion of All Original Greek Manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New Testament.

Comment: Now the first real translation that we can follow back in any language, that has been reproduced like the Greek manuscripts, would be the Vulgate in 382AD. But we are back 200 years before that and possibly the oldest translation from the Greek known, is the Peshito/Peshitta. It was translated from Greek into Syriac as early as 160-180 AD. Some refer to it as the Aramaic, but it’s Syriac. They don’t have a copy that goes back that far, but they have a historian quoting from the Peshito in Syriac in 1660 AD or somewhere in that area. So if he is quoting from it, it must have existed, see what I’m saying. But the earliest copy that they have is maybe around the 5th century or so. Pershito means - simple or easy to understand. So it’s a very precise, almost word for word translation.
This is a English translation of the Peshito, it’s called the ’Queen of the Versions’ and ‘The Syriac Vulgate.’ The reason they call it the Syriac Vulgate is because it apparently was a renovation of all these poorly done scriptures that were floating around.
Some say this was translated at Antioch. Remember in the Scripture the followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians at Antioch. So it would make sense that they would want to have a translation of Scripture in their native tongue.

315 AD: Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the canon of scripture.

Comment: But it isn’t that he said, ’okay these are the books.’ Those were the books that he got. These were passed on for 200 years from after Peter and John. So they knew there were 27 books.

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