Transcript

Welcome to the minor prophets. Before I pray, I want to talk about if there are major and minor prophets. This is specifically titled Post Exilic Prophets. Anybody know what that is? Yeah, you know who they are? Who are the Post Exilic? Anybody know? Actually, I'll show you, but the Bible is laid out that the last three prophets and the last three of the writing, history books are the post exilic. They're actually written in order. Pre-exilic, 9. Post exilic, 3. You don't even have to worry about that, just the last three. Of the historical books, it's Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther that are post exilic. And Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi are post exilic, like the others. They were post exilic.

But we're in the minor prophets, and this is what we're going to study right here. First of all, the most important thing is why we should even study the minor prophets. And whether or not what we read matters, and all this is in your notes, because they're part of the Bible. And actually, the minor prophets are part of the Bible that Jesus carried with Him and talks from. Exactly the words that are in your Bible are the same words He had, because Jesus carried a translation. Jesus did not primarily study the original Hebrew. He didn't teach from the original Hebrew. He studied a translation to look at.

Then the next hour, do we have two hours, we're locked in here for two hours. That would be great. We're going to look at the structure and history of where the minor prophets stood in the whole Bible, and how we got it. Then tomorrow we're going to go through every one of the 12, and I'm going to share with you the key verses in every book. And I hope that you'll have a Bible that you can mark, and underline, and note down because when we get done, every verse that is vital to know, we'll have marked. And I'll explain why they're vital.

Then tomorrow we'll also see the plan of God for the Orthodox Church. We should see the line of prophecy. Very interesting, in America, most churches never talk about the line of prophecy. I've been a pastor for 40 years. Rarely does any church have anything about the line of prophecy. And we'll talk about what they're missing, God's plan. And then we'll go through each of the line of prophets in little pairs.

Here's what they're about, and this is what I'm afraid that you'll learn. And you have to learn this is part of your test. Those of you that, how many of you are Filipino? Don't you have to memorize in school? That's how school is in the Philippines, a lot of memorizing. In the public schools, it's a lot of memorizing. So, we're going to be like a Filipino school for that meeting. You must learn that bit and that's a third of your grade. So, it's very easy to just learn them.

Hosea, the whole book, all 14 chapters, all are declaring God as Lord. And he uses a picture of an unfaithful wife. And you all know the story there.

Joel is something that most people remember. God is wrathful. That attribute of God is how He is. Most people think of God as love. But God is also wrathful. And He is a God of wrath. And He says, don't be deceived by every soul you'll greet.

Amos, in His wrath and faithfulness, He's just. He's the only completely just person there is. All of us are swayed by things, but God is absolutely just. On computers, if you justify a page, it makes it all fit. There's a button. If you have a word processor, to justify, it makes it all even. God is the one who justifies.

Obadiah is another attribute of God. He's jealous. Now, in English, jealousy is not positive, it's almost always negative. But God is perfectly jealous. It says in the book of James, that God yearns over us with jealousy. In fact, it's like we're engaged unto Him, but we aren't paying attention to it. Are any of you engaged? Are any of you married? Are any of you in love? Do any of you want to get married? How many of you want to get married someday? Okay, I'll give you a little lesson, with my wife. If I wanted to marry Bonnie, and every girl that walked by looked like this, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, and she saw that, what do you think she would think of me? At first you would be what? Jealous. And then I would be out the door. Because, when you love someone, the Bible says, Jesus said, that if your eye is single, your whole body is full of light. An eye single means you only look at one. The one who is above, not at everyone.

And I was told that is one of the things that the Church must do. The girls that find the good fellas to marry, it's not the one that watches every girl that goes by. In America, they call it girl watching, it's a sport. They just sit, and they'll sit in the mall and watch every girl that goes by. And they get in a habit to even preaching to these people. And God says, no, I'm jealous, and I want you to pay attention to is this, to Me.

God is merciful. So merciful that He let the worst people of the day get saved. The Assyrians were the worst people of the day. And we'll talk about that. You know what the Assyrians used to do? Then, in battle, the furthest you would get from the city is how far an arrow could go. And they all knew how far an arrow could shoot, even if you shot it up in the air. And they would park so that no arrow could reach them. And then they would take one prisoner and stake them to the ground. And skin, take their skin off while they're alive. They would slowly cut all their skin off the body of a prisoner. And of course, what did the person on the ground do? Scream, yell, cry. Scream, cry, beg. And they were just skinning them alive in front of the city. When they had no one wanting to do another, they cut their heads off, and they made piles of heads. One at a time. What would that do to the men in the city? They wanted to surrender and not fight. They said, if you give up, we won't do that to you again.

That's how the Assyrians by terror conquered. They would skin alive and cut the head off and pile it up until the people inside the city gave up. You're inside the city, the army is all the way around you, you can't get out. And one by one, everybody that tried to escape, they'd skin them alive and pile it up until they destroyed the city. And finally, the people of the city would open the gate and say, we give up.

And they were the worst people of the day. They were filthy. They were like Islamic terrorists, like ISIS. Only the whole nation was like that. And God sent Jonah to them, and they all repented in God's Spirit in that week. The Jews didn't like them at all. Jonah didn't like them. It would be like whoever your worst enemy is God asked you to go to them. So, Jonah is about God's mercy.

Micah, the omniscient. The God who sees everything. Nahum, God is amazingly patient. And what's interesting is, Jonah and Nahum are both about the same people, the Assyrians. And God was patient. Nahum said, all the Assyrians are going to be wiped out. But Jonah was sent with the courage of faith, and they repented, and God spared them. But finally, the patience God of Nahum came. Finally, after the year 612 BC, Nineveh was destroyed.

Habakkuk, God wants our faith. That's got the famous verse in it that the just shall live by faith, Habakkuk 2:4.

Zephaniah. It says over, and over, and over, and over and over. One of the most beautiful verses. God is in your midst. God is in your midst. That means God is with you. God is in your midst. That's what we're looking for. God is with you. He's in the dorm. Did you know He is in your dorms? You guys live down in that dorm. Where is it? Is it right over there? Is that where you guys live? Did you know that God lives in your dorm? That's the ladies dorm. Where do the boys go? Okay, so... the ladies dorm. He lives in the ladies dorm. Yeah, that's right. Did you know that? Do you guys act like that? Like He lives in your dorm? Do you act like He's in your house? The whole book of Zephaniah is how you are supposed to live if God is in your midst. If God is in your house? If God is in your car, if you have a car? If God is in your dorm? Does that change how you live?

We have a home in Colorado, and my son put up this Google Nest, it's called. It moves things from our phone. Like right now, I can look at our house. You want to see my house? Let me show you my house. Right here. Oh, the Wi Fi is a little choppy. But the kids didn't know it was there, and our kids were at home. And if you push one button, from the Philippines, I can say, Hi Jeremiah. He was walking to the house, and he jumped. He knew my voice, and he didn't know I was watching him. And, I can see, it's only the front door of our house, I can see if anybody's there. But when he walked by, I could see him from here.

It's night there, right now you're looking in our house. And you can talk but nobody's there, but the spider. There's a spider and I can see him on the camera, moving. And then, there's our house, and this is the front door of the building. But my son put this camera up, and as soon as we talked to the kids for the first time, he said, oh, are you watching us all the time? I said, no, we're not watching all the time. I don't watch it all the time. But all the time they wonder if we're watching them. And so, whenever they walk past it at home they wave. Are you watching? Are you watching? Did you know we act differently if you knew that doctor, or professor... what do you call your professor? Doctor, or Professor? If you knew that he was sitting on the end of your bunk watching you guys in your dorm, would you act any differently? Would you talk differently? Would you say things differently? Would you make different sounds and attitudes and actions? Is he sitting there? Does he live in the dorm too? No. Do you understand? Zechariah says, God is in your dormitory. Are you acting, like God planned. It's a very, very good book, he said that to Israel.

Haggai, is worse. You know what Haggai is about? They were supposed to build the house of God, the temple, what was everybody doing in Israel? Building their own house. You know what the book of Haggai says? Why are you building a house for yourself while the Lord does not have a house? What? Does God need a house? No, He owns everything. He made everything. He controls everything. Does He need a house? No. What does He want? He wants first place. He wants to be more important than our cell phone, than our house, than our job, our career. That whole book is a confrontation of the children of Israel, that God was not most important.

You know what? If we think about it, most of us think and do things attached to whatever's most important to us. We don't usually think that, what's most important to God, that's what I want to do first. That's what I want to do most. That's what the whole book of Haggai is about. God wants to replace it.

Zechariah is about why Iran, you know Iran the country, the shah of Iran, right? Yeah. The Middle East, the Iranians, They're everyone's funding group. What is the town that is besieged in the Philippines? Do you know who's paying them? The Iranians. You know that they pay Islamic terrorists to terrorize. They actually pay every family that will blow up their son or daughter as a suicide bomber. They pay the family $20,000. That's a lot of money for the terrorists. In the Philippines, how much do people make a year? If they work at McDonald's, what would they get paid? What is a month for a man? Okay, $6 a day is $180 a month, which is $2,500 a year. So, they would pay you eight years pay to blow up your daughter or son. Strap a bomb on him, walk in, blow up, we'll give you the money. That's what Iran does all over the world. Every time you hear about the Palestinians, Palestinians in Israel, Iran pays them to blow up against Israel. All the ones in Afghanistan. Iran uses their money from oil to pay people to blow up whoever they are fighting. Isn't that amazing?

Why are the Iranians doing that? Because, did you know it says in the Bible that what? Iran is in the Bible. It says Iran is going to spend all they have to try and destroy Israel. It actually says that in the Bible. 3,000 years ago, it said that. As God said, I picked Jerusalem. Do we have a world map In here? God says, I came to this country, which is Israel. You can't even see it, it's just got an arrow pointing at it right there. And there's Iran. And God said, that country is going to be invaded by all people from here, and all people from here, and all people from here, and people from here. They're all in common. Because God picked Jerusalem, and the devil, Satan, is to make all the nations on Earth march against it.

Why? There's nothing there. Haven't you been there? There's nothing there. It's a pile of rocks. There's really hardly anything that's there. It's so little. One of your islands is bigger than all of Israel. It even tells what's going to happen step by step, in the end. So, it's a great book.

And finally, Malachi ends the Old Testament. With God saying, I don't want you to kill all your animals and burn them up on all those sacrifices. I don't want you dumping all your oil out on the temple. I want you to love Me. All of the sacrifices and all of the ceremonies of Israel were just for them to show God that they loved Him. So that's what we're going to learn.

I think the minor prophets... now, these are the post exilic. So, the title of your class is, or in the curriculum is, post exilic. We're going to really cover that. But you can't understand that unless you have a whole set. It's like a whole group that goes together and that's what we're going to do.

Okay. Now, I'm going to pray, and I even wrote down my prayer. It's in your notes. My prayer for every one of you is that God, and only He can do this, would stir inside of you, a theme in the Bible, the love for Jesus Christ. Look at this, that can only be satisfied by understanding Him in His Word. Remember I was saying that, if I was dating Bonnie, that I wouldn't be looking, watching, and wooing all the girls in the bar. I guess they don't woo the girls anymore. Boys don't flirt with the girls, do they?

Are you from the Philippines or Korea? South Korea. Do you, do South Koreans flirt with girls? They do. They do? Do Filipinos? Do Filipino boys always look for pretty girls and wish they had them? Yes. Yes, okay. So, you know what I'm talking about. We went to your mall. It's called the Mall of Asia or something. It was just all packs of boys following around packs of girls. They're just wandering around the mall. Do you know what the Bible says? God wants us to have a deep and abiding love that can only be satisfied by hearing His voice and seeing Him in the Bible. It's not, I read my quiet time diary, check it out, that I did it, I read it, I wrote it, I did it. He said, no, I want you to come because you want to spend time with me.

Have you ever seen a couple on a date where a boy spends his whole time on the phone? He's texting and they're sitting at dinner and the boy is texting, watching videos, and YouTube. You think that she likes that? No. If you're on a date, you're supposed to show interest in the other person. Now that, with somebody, especially if he's texting a girl, she'd probably throw the phone down. The Bible says, you know how much you love the Lord, not by whether or not you read your Bible privately, but whether in your quite time you become satisfied because you spent time with Him. And the only place He meets with us is through His word. That's how He talks. That's like answering the phone. It's like our Bibles are sitting there and we are reading, and Jesus is calling. And you go, okay, I've got to get that over with. I'm done.

See, that is important. And that's what they were doing here. They did everything that the Bible said. They offered every sacrifice. They only ate meat, not pork, they only ate clean foods. They went to the temple three times a year. You are second, or third, or fourth, or whatever year it goes... You are second and third year students, and you know all this because you've got a lot of classes, you've learned a lot of it, but pretty soon you can just go through the motions. And that's what happens. And you just do all that, not because you're in love with the world but because of habit. And the Lord says, No, I want you to have a daily meal and eat with Me. And after you eat with Me, you are so filled with joy, and peace and are satisfied. After you have the meal you want, a cup of coffee, whatever you like, or a glass of water when it's hot, and you go... Ahh! That's what we do in America. If you're hot and you drink your cold water, you go Ahh.

So, let's pray, and then we'll get started. Because we've got to get going. Dear Father, I pray that you would inspire each of us to stir our hearts, so that every day we hunger and thirst after You, and we only get satisfied with that hunger and thirst when we spend time with You in Your word. Open our eyes to behold wonderful things today, in Jesus' name, amen.

Real quickly, I want to my wonderful wife. There she is. That's Bonnie, she is sitting right there. I was saved in the age of six. My parents led me to the Lord. I was a terrible, wicked thief, and liar, and sinner. Basically, what happened to me is my parents were poor and we would go to the store and everything in the store they couldn't afford. And they finally bought me a toy and it was an American West. Cowboys wore guns like this, and you'd pull them out and shoot them like you were a cowboy. They were toy guns, toys. And they bought me the toy gun, but they couldn't afford the little paper that went pop, pop. They were called caps. They make it sound like the gun is shooting. They go inside and just bang, bang, bang. And I thought, I'm the only kid that has guns that don't work. But they said it was too expensive, but they had them at the store.

And so, one day when my mother was going through the store, I reached out and that box of caps I put into my pocket. I stole it. I didn't pay for them. And I was six years old. And I didn't even know not to do this. I went home, I put them in the gun, and I ran out to the yard. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Bang, bang, bang. Bang. And my mother opened the door and walked up and said, Johnny! And I realized right then, now she knows I took them. So I ran in the back door of the house, it wasn't just the caps, but all of the things I'd stolen, and all of it was in my pocket. And I threw it in the toilet and flushed the toilet. It's the only little, little thing.

And I'm standing there in the bathroom, by the toilet, where my mother walked in. And she said, where did you get those caps? And I said, What? Where? She said, where did you get them? And just then, those caps were made of paper, and they were very light. And when they flushed, they didn't really go down. And all of a sudden, whoop, they popped up and were floating on top of the water in the toilet. Where did you get those? I said... I was just lying. I said, I don't know what that is. I don't know where they came from. See, one sin leads to another. First, I wanted those things, and then I figured out how to get them, and then I got them. I stole them, and then I hid them, and then I lied about it, and then I hid them again, and then I lied about them again. And so my mom, the first time I didn't get spanked. She didn't do anything, she just walked up to me, and the Lord convicted me. And my mother every night said the same thing at the end of the Bible story. She always said, she would read the Bible at the table and then we'd pray. And she'd say, I'm going to Heaven, and your dad is going to Heaven, and your sisters are going to Heaven, and she always would stop and look at me and say, you're not.

Every night she said that, and never bothered me until that night. And I began to be convicted in my heart that I was a sinner so vile and ill repute. So, my mom led me to the Lord when I was age 6. Three years later I went forward in a conference, a missionary conference, and surrendered. I told the Lord that I would serve Him and be a missionary all of my days. Then I went to school. I went to Michigan State, Bob Jones, The Masters, and Dallas. I was in school for 37 years. I was in school every year for 37 years, I finished them in 1999, right before you all were born.

 In my first year in school, in Bible school, the Bible teacher taught the Bible like I'd never heard. And I went up to him and I said, how did you learn to teach the Bible that well? And he said, until you read the Bible through at least once, for every year you are older, you'll never be able to teach the Bible well. When I was in Bible school, do you know how many times I read the whole Bible? I was 19 years old, and how many times did I read it? And I only read it once because someone paid me $100. They did, they said, if you read the Bible, we'll give you $100 and send you to camp. And that's when there was camp, it was $100. So, I only had read it to be paid. And I was in Bible school just like you, preparing to teach the Bible the rest of my life, and I only read it once.

He asked me, how old are you, I was only 19. He said, how many times have you read the Bible? I said, once. He said, then you've got a lot of work to do this time. And I started thinking, Do you know how long it takes to read the whole Bible? 72 hours. Now that, the fact is, if you are a 6th grader, and you read it out loud, if you take the Bible and hold it and read it out loud, as a 6th grader, how old is that? 10 or 12? You guys are older than 10 or 12. I think you read faster than that. That's a lot of things to read. The whole Bible.

Now, don't answer. How many times have you read the Bible? How many YouTube videos have you watched? How many basketball games have you watched? How many video games have you watched? How many hours have you spent? I don't even know if you guys have Facebook or something like that, and all the other things. Think about it. Every one of us have 168 hours a week. And that's 672 hours a month. And so, what I found is, to read the whole Bible, I only had to read 2 hours and 12 minutes a day. And I found when I was 19 years old, that I wasted far more than 2 hours a day. And I made a schedule, and I got rid of all the waste. And I never miss anything in the Bible that's important. And I started reading the Bible once every month. I read it once every month that year, until I was 20. And when I was 20 years old, I was on my 13th time through the Bible. And when I was 21, I was on my 25th time. And when I was 22, I was on my 37th time through the Bible. And by the time I got head far enough that I knew I wouldn't get behind it, I slowed down and started reading the Bible through about every three months or every four months. Three or four times a year. And I'm way past 100 times reading through the Bible.

I've been a pastor in the Church for 40 years, have been married to Bonnie for 34 years. We just had our anniversary.

And we have eight children. There they are. They are wonderful children. This son is at University of California, Los Angeles. This is not my daughter, it's my wife. This son is in medical school. This daughter is a hospital administrator. This son works at a rescue mission. This daughter is a junior in college, going to be a neurologist. He's a graphic artist. She's a missionary, started a Christian school. My son works in social media. He actually works for Facebook. And his wife.

This is where we served. I was born in Michigan. I went to school in South Carolina. I graduated in Georgia. Then I graduated in Los Angeles. Then I pastored in Rhode Island, and then I passed it in Oklahoma. Went to school at Dallas Seminary and pastored in Michigan. And now, Bonnie and I, are full time missionaries. We minister in Sub Saharan Africa. Oh, Africa is not on your map, but the part that's not on your map, we minister. I'm faculty at a seminary in the Middle East. I teach Arabic pastors, church planters. We work in East Asia, in China, and training a lot of those that work in Central Asia. We also work with the refugees in Europe. And those are where we spend our time.

Why do we study the Bible? And the reason we study the Bible is, God gives us the most complete answers to the most important questions. Now, open your Bibles to Acts 17 and I want to show you something that will affect the rest of your life by knowing. Acts 17. Now, Acts 17 has Paul drowning for how to share the Gospel. And basically, what Paul did is he went to people and gave them answers to the questions that all of us share.

Basically, almost everybody wonders where they came from, that's how I got here. They wonder why I'm here. You know in Japan, I heard they might build a railroad nearby the school. They're going to fix that railroad that's near here and make it all Japanese and fancy. Did you know in Tokyo there's a park in Japan where every day they find three young people taken in suicide. Three a day? Did you know there's a whole group of Japanese that walk through the park and go, are you going to try and hang yourself? You shouldn't hang yourself. You shouldn't. They're trying to talk them out of committing suicide. They're full time volunteers trying to keep the young people not killing themselves.

Why do young people kill themselves in Japan, or anywhere else? Because they don't have any purpose. They don't know why they are here. They say, I'm never going to get ahead. I'm never going to get out of this. I live in the slums, or I live in poverty, or I don't have what all the rich people have. I don't even know why I'm here, so I give up.

Destiny. People want to know where they're going. They want to know. When you're little, so when my kids were little, every time we got in the car, they always said, where are we going? And in about 30 seconds, when are we going to be there? Those are the questions of life. How did I get here? Why am I here? Where am I going?

Now, look at what the Bible answers those questions with. How did you get here? You have a what? A Creator. Why are you here? He bought you. You have a Redeemer. Where are you going? Either you're going to go with your Redeemer forever, or you're going to suffer judgment.

Now look at Acts 17 because I want you to see exactly what Paul said. Now, you guys, how many of you do not understand English? You all can read that, right? So, I'm going to call on you to read out loud. If you can read Acts 17, verse 24. Acts 17, verse 24, God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of Heaven and Earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. What's the first thing Paul addresses the pagans with? Where did you come from? You have a Creator. He introduces them to the Creator. That's important, because you know that it's hard to share the Gospel if people don't even know who you're talking about. And you have to start somewhere. And Paul, with his pagan audience, said, God made everything.

Now, I need, can you read? Oh, where is it? How about verse 27? Verse 27, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. And then verse 30. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. So, verse 27, They should seek the Lord and he's commanding them, verse 30 to repent. Who is that talking? The one that died on the cross. This is the Redeemer. The Creator came to Earth. He's the Redeemer.

Now, Catherine, could you read verse 31? Please. Verse 31, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead. Whoa! The Creator became the Redeemer and came down, and died, and rose from the dead. And if you don't receive Him, you're going to face Him as the Judge. That's the Gospel Paul presented on Mars Hill in Ephesus.

Now basically, that also is the framework of the Bible. Genesis 1 and 2 introduce us to the Creator. Genesis 3 to Revelation 5 talk about His work of redemption. Revelation 6 to 22 is all about the judgment that's coming. And that amazing framework is what we have in the Bible.

Okay. Real quickly, why do we even have a Bible Institute? You notice there's a small letter word before Bible Institute. [Word of Life Bible Institute.] It's because we need to trust the God of the Bible. My question to you, you're a second or third year student is, do you really trust the Bible? Do you really understand what you have in front of you? That this actually is God talking to you.

People, in the future when you talk to them and tell them what the Bible says, they'll go, Oh, the Bible has what? Errors, mistakes. How do you know that you can trust the Bible?

And basically, as we go through the minor prophets, I am assuming that already in your two or three years, you've already gone through Bibliology. That you understand the doctrines of the Bible came. Therefore, you would accept history as God presents it. Basically, God gives us the framework of history, telling us why pink and green are going to march, Russia and Iran are going to march as it says in Ezekiel 38, on Israel. And that was written 2,600 years ago. And we can trust the history that God gives us in the Bible. Basically, those events are there.

Why do we trust the Bible? Number one, the Bible is all that God wants us to know about everything we need to know. It's not everything possible to know. It's everything God wants us to know. Are you interested in what most people are interested in? What isn't in the Bible? If I talk about aliens, everybody's all about aliens, UFOs, flying saucers, and all that. People don't know about that. Did you know that actually is in the Bible. But most people are interested in the peripheral stuff.

We used to have an American author, and his name was Mark Twain, and he said, it's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand. And most people don't obey what's clearly in the Bible. They're interested in the parts that are hard to understand. Start with what is clear. If God hasn't revealed it in His Word, either it is a secret (Deuteronomy 29:29) or it is unimportant to us now. Again, most people have questions about either what's secret that God doesn't want us to know, or what He doesn't say is important for us to know.

Why do we study the Bible? Here's the bottom line of why we have this class. God's word sanctifies us, John 17:17. Did you know, going through any class in the Bible Institute should cause sanctification.

Now, let me ask you a question. What does sanctification mean, third and second year students? Set apart. Why should we set apart? Your answer is right, but why? Why should we be set apart from God? Sanctification. It does mean, actually hagiazo. Actually, hagiazo actually is a word for holy. I'll write it in English here. Actually, it means holy. Sanctification is hagiasmos, which means holy. Why though? Most people in America, when I say holy, they think of some old woman that doesn't do anything wrong. Doesn't have any fun. Just old. Doesn't smile. They think that is holiness. Holiness basically, is usefulness to God.

Why does He want to sanctify us? Because He wants to use us. How does He use us? He fills us, with what? What does He fill us with? His Spirit. How are you most useful to God? How am I most useful to God? The fuller I am of God's Spirit. I noticed you have a lot of these tricycle things. Did you know if you let the air out of the tires, those things don't work very well? If you let the air out of their tires, they would have trouble driving around. They would spend most of their energy resisting. They work best when they're filled. You and I are useful to God when we're filled with the Spirit, but He only will fill a holy vessel. And a holy vessel is one that's surrendered, given, consecrated to Him. Why we study the Bible is that God sets us apart, sanctifies us through His Word.

There's seven reasons why I believe the Bible is true. Number one, Jesus believed it. That settles it. By the way, did you know that? Jesus held a Bible, the Old Testament that you have right now, exactly matches word for word what Jesus had. Exactly. We know the Bible data. Jesus taught from the Septuagint. The Septuagint was a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. We still have copies. Jesus used that. You have a Bible that Jesus affirmed every word in it, every chapter, every book, every story, every doctrine, every person. Jesus called it scripture.

So, if someone asks me, why I know Bible is true... in fact someone did ask me. I was pastoring in Oklahoma, on that map that I showed here. And I was moving into the church, it was a really nice church. And I was putting my books on the Shelf. I had just gotten them. I was taking them out of the box and putting them on the shelf. And the secretary walked in the door, and she said, excuse me, pastor. You have a phone call. I said, Oh. Who is it? She said... Now the city I was in was a city with a million people, and it was 11 o'clock in the morning. And she said, it's John Erwin and he wants you. He's on the air, on the radio. And everybody in Tulsa from 11 AM to 1 PM listened to John Erwin as they drove to lunch. He was the most popular radio talker. And in their cars, they were all listening on their radios. And he said he wanted to welcome the new pastor to town. Marianne was standing in my office with my books, and she said, so pick up the phone and you're on the radio. I said, Oh, great. So, I pushed up side my desk, and my Bible's sitting there, and I picked up the phone and said, Hello?

And he said, Hello, this is John Erwin and we're on the air live. And he says, I have the pastors of all the local churches. The United Presbyterian Church, and the United Methodist Church, and the Catholic Church, whatever. And we're having a little discussion on the radio. And he said, we wanted to ask you one question for one moment. And he said, why do you think the Bible is true? And he said, the other pastors have said that Adam and Eve aren't real people. And that David they're not sure is a real person. And Abraham they're not sure is a real person. And that Jonah did not get swallowed by a whale. And that the Hebrew children did not go through the fiery furnace. And he said, how do you know the Bible is true?

And now he tahas talked through half of my minute. He said, you only have one minute. I'm here to hear it. And he talks through half of it. And I said, oh, I'd love to answer that question. I said, I believe the Bible is true because Jesus believed the Bible is true. And I caught him off guard. And all of a sudden, he comes on the radio and says, well friends, we're going to come back right after the break because, he said, no one has ever answered my question before. And he says, we're going to hear what Jesus said. He said to me, did Jesus really believe that? I didn't know. He asked the other pastors on the phone, did you know that Jesus believed that? Will come back after the break. And I talked to him for about a half hour on the radio, and all the people in the hall started listening. And he never had been explained that the reason I know the whole Bible is true is Jesus said it is true. And that's why I believe the Bible.

Hey, go have a nice break, and I'll see you later.