> Transcripts of Ray's Audio's and More Teachings
HOW WE GOT THE BIBLE . . . . . . . . . . Mobile Conference 2007
Kat:
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:
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:
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:
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:
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.
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