Can We Trust the Bible?

00:00 - Announcer (Announcement) Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. 00:09 - Jack Hibbs (Host) Hey you guys. We're going to dive into 10 reasons why you should believe in the Bible and why you should start thinking about it right now. So stay tuned. 00:21 - Announcer (Announcement) You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's Word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. 00:49 - Jack Hibbs (Host) Well, hey, everybody listen, glad to have you with this podcast right here with us and you're probably going to see this a lot right now for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the very fashionable, well-designed cover to the new book that I am not only excited about because I believe in it. I wrote this book but I'm supposed to promote it because I'm under contract to do that very thing, and so it's with the wonderful people at Harvest House Publishers, and they have been remarkable. In fact, they've been so remarkable I do believe we've signed at least two additional new book contracts with them and there's going to be a study guide that's going to be coming out for this as well. That's in the works right now, but living in the days of deception, and it's nearly 300 pages and I'm very excited about it. God blessed it. It's about a year and a half to do, but it's got great topics and very, very, very so. 02:00 Grateful to give a shout out to a former director of the CIA and, of course, the 70th Secretary of State in US history. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was kind enough to read the book and write the forward to the book and a little back behind the scenes, stuff. We were going to send him a part of the book, because you kind of don't expect these guys of their caliber to read the whole book, and he said, no, I have to read the whole book. And I thought that's exactly who he is Mike Pompeo, a man of incredible integrity. He had to read the whole book, and so we're grateful. But look forward everywhere, if you would wherever, as they say these days, wherever fine books are sold, and that means Hobby Lobby, that means Amazon, that means Walmart, that means Christian books as well. And it's coming out, by the way, an audiobook. Audiblecom will be coming out as well, and producer is showing me a pre-order. 03:13 You can pre-order at Amazon right now. And if you do that, by the way, it's really. I've learned so much doing this, because if you pre-order at Amazon, I don't know why Amazon is the God or the king of all this stuff. But forget about New York Times bestselling books. That New York Times. That's out the door. Nobody cares anymore. It's Amazon. 03:36 Yes, I know Amazon is a demonic nut job company, but everybody who I'm speaking to right now buys everything from Amazon, and if you doubt it, just go look at your front porch. There's going to be some piece of junk you ordered on your porch from Amazon. Look, we are the children of Amazon. It appears in this world of ours. I personally don't like it. I actually don't do it. Lisa does it for me so. 04:07 But you can order the book on Amazon and here's the fun thing about it the computer brain thing at Amazon records the book sales and then it pushes it into categories and it's all done automatically, electronically, and bumps it up, bumps it up on charts on Amazon, and then companies decide hey, when a book breaks this particular threshold, buy it and carry it in our stores. They don't care that a Christian wrote the book, all they care about is making money. We don't care about them making money, we care about getting the truth out. So if you want to help join me in getting out how to discover and to discern what deception is living in these days of deception the word days DAZ, like you've been smacked upside the head. You got stars spinning around your head, your eyes are all blurry. Well, this book is written to help you with that. 05:00 Listen, today we're going to run through something that is pretty cool and that is something that I'm indebted to, to a dear, dear brother, a man that I love dearly, and if you have been able to visit some of our church teaching locations as often as I can, I tried to have with us a local Southern California guy. Charlie Campbell is go to for me, love him, Charlie Campbell. Charlie Campbell, he speaks. He's the college professor that your kids need, but he's brilliant. He's the college professor that your kid needs, but he's earned it. He's the college professor that your kid needs to be influenced by. He can do it. Charlie's awesome, and so I'm going to be hitting on these 10 points, but go to his website, alwaysbereadycom. What a great website, right? Always bereadycom. Love you, charlie, keep it up. You're doing an amazing job. Charlie Campbell, great, great, great guy, number one in this topic of Christianity, the Bible, faith. How is it, jack? 06:17 You've often said that there are religions in the world, but Christianity is not one of them, but every. But if I look it up in the Webster's dictionary, christianity is considered a religion. That's Webster's problem. That's a mistake. If you truly analyze and apply critical thinking and critical analysis to the claims of Islam, for example, you come to the conclusion that it is a religion. The same rules apply to atheism. You come to the conclusion that atheism is in fact a religious system. It's a religious belief system. Religion and Judaism. Now, it doesn't need to be this way. If the Jews would wake up and follow the scriptures, but as it is now, with the Jews following traditions over the very word of God, the Old Testament and new, that though Judaism is in fact a religion. These are all Jehovah Witnesses. Mormonism, baha'i, confucius, shintoism is a big deal, of course, mainly in Japan, but it's a big deal. Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, christianity is the only thing, when properly studied and when applying critical thinking to it, is actually not a religion. 07:46 Allow me to be blunt and a little bit lovingly sarcastic. Christianity, partly understood, is quite an insult to the morality of man. Christianity is as C S Lewis said. The great C S Lewis said that the reason why he became a Christian is because, when he studied all the religions of the world, christianity was that belief system that was just queer enough. Because, he said, there is no way that man would have thought this up on his own. Why? Because it doesn't make man look good. In almost every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, you've got man stumbling over himself, being the buffoon that he is and needing redemption. So how do we know? Why should we even pay any attention to the Bible? Let me give you these 10 considerations that I am plagiarizing from Charlie Campbell. I'm going to give you a little bit. He'll give you a lot of it at his website, alwaysbereadycom. Okay, so number one fulfillment. This is pretty cool stuff. 09:04 Why does the Bible stand alone in Bible prophecy? The Bible stands alone so dramatically in Bible prophecy that scholars speculate, those who are a degree to doctorate or experts in eschatology, that is, the words of future events, eschatology, the science or the study of words of future events. The Bible, they argue, is somewhere between 27% to 30%. Eschatological, meaning that it is Bible prophecy and that it is either enjoyed fulfillment or it will enjoy fulfillment. And so you have Bible prophecy. And what's so amazing about that is take the minimal number, take 27%, if 27% of your Bible. So if 27% of your Bible is prophetic, you're looking at this much of your Bible that is Bible prophecy. That means over a quarter of your Bible is of prophetic nature, speaking about future events. Now some of those events have come to pass. We know that for a fact. I'm not going to be labor. You can look at them in detail. By the way, it will take you a very long time, and to that I will commend to you the Prophecy Knowledge Handbook by Dr John Wolfrid, the Prophecy Knowledge Handbook by Dr by Professor John Wolfrid, and so but fulfillment of Bible prophecy. 10:50 All of the prophecies in the Bible that were prophesied that have been fulfilled have been fulfilled exactly as they were prophesied. In other words, they are literal. No matter what your opinion is, it's irrelevant. The prophecies that have been stated have been fulfilled literally, and those that remain, we must assume, based upon consistency or constancy, that those also will be fulfilled literally. And I'll give you just two examples. Number one is that the Messiah of the world would be born in Judah, in the land of Judah, in the nation of Israel and in a little village called Bethlehem. That had to happen. Guess what it happened. Another Bible prophecy says that the temple in Jerusalem, the epicenter of all Jewish worship and sacrifice, would not only someday be torn down, that the house of God would be destroyed Jesus said that in Matthew, chapter 23 and 24, but that not one stone would be left upon another, every single massive stone. I've seen those stones with my eyes. Maybe you've been to Israel and you've seen those stones. I mean, some of the stones are literally the size of an 18-wheeler boxcar in the back of a truck or a train Massive, massive. The Bible says not one stone is going to be left upon another. That actually happened, so do keep that in mind. Number two we not only go from the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Quran can't boast that, the Book of Mormon cannot boast that, the Tibetan Book of the Dead cannot boast that, nor the books can boast that, the Jehovah Witnesses cannot boast that. Only the Bible can boast that. Fulfilled prophecy leads us to number two, which is a blast. 12:49 Twenty-two times I've taken people, many, many, many people, to Israel on our tours of Israel, and every one of our locations, every single one. Why are they chosen as our locations? Because in every spot I teach the Bible there. Why there? Because it is an archaeological site. How do we know? Because they dug up coinage, pottery inscriptions, scrolls or even like Magdala, magdala, mary Magdala, mary of Magdala, where a flood came rushing down through the valley that descends from Cana down to the northern Galilee not too long ago and washed away tons of debris and unearthed the very first century village of Magdala and archaeological discovery. 13:52 Masada is there, megiddo say what's Megiddo? You've heard of the valley of Armageddon, the valley of Megiddo. That is an actual archaeological dig and I could take you, we could fly right now from LA, 15-hour flight and then about an hour and 20-minute drive to Tel Megiddo, and we will stand on the rocks and the stables of Solomon's chariot and horse stables that are there, the valley of Megiddo. You can look from there and then we can just go to the left and go up the mountain to Mount Carmel. And not only that, we can go to Mount Carmel where the Bible tells us there that there was a spring that ran with water in the days of Elijah. And what do we find? There's a spring of water that runs there, exactly as the Bible said thousands of years ago Archaeological fact and discovery. 14:53 The beautiful thing about the Bible is you can and, by the way, I do believe this is still true, don't quote me, but when I was younger, the number one book of archaeological I don't want to say archaeological authenticity, but it was archaeological the Smithsonian Institute would read the Bible and then they would get in an airplane and go to the Middle East and dig around and see if it was true and lo and behold, bingo, there it is. There is the wall of Nibbikinezzar in Babylon, for example, right outside of Baghdad. That kind of stuff, bible. 100% archaeological evidence is overwhelming. No other book in the world can boast that, but the Bible nobody else. 15:43 Number three is its internal consistencies. The internal consistencies of the Bible are amazing because the Bible is 66 individual books. Now listen, my Muslim friends will tell me that's ridiculous. That's why I don't believe in the Bible. Why? Because it's 66 different books. So there's got to be all kinds of mistakes with that, whether it's not. Oh well, you guys say there's 40 different authors. That's correct. Oh, there's got to be inconsistencies, whether it's not. In fact, it's written over about 1500 to 1800 years span, okay, and what you're talking about is authorship within a decade. Within a decade to 15, two decades from the very living and life of Jesus, written by eyewitness accounts. You don't have that about the Koran. Muhammad is dead for, at least I think, 200 years before the Koran ever surfaces, my friends. So don't lay that on me, that's not going to work. 16:52 The Bible is the most authenticated book in the world, and it's not only because it says it is, but its consistencies are so wonderfully perfect. Where you've got, for example, jeremiah agreeing with Amos, agreeing with Ezekiel, agreeing with the book of Revelation, agreeing with Jesus in John's Gospel, agreeing with Moses in Genesis 3. How do you do that when some of these authors never even lived in the same era, some of them not even on the same continent? But there is this remarkable, incredibly awesome unity of the Scriptures. Why, how do we know this? How could somebody do this? Somebody did not do this. 17:45 The Bible tells us that the Scriptures were breathed by God, the Holy Spirit, through man. The Scriptures were given man didn't make it up. God used man to write it, but God inspired the man who wrote it. Now, think about the miraculous working power of that. How does Peter write his first and second epistle without messing it up? Poor Peter, I love the guy. He messed up everything he did, but he didn't mess up his book, because the Bible tells us that the Spirit of God was the one that authored the book, and you can read more about that in Paul's writings to Timothy. 18:24 Number four is extra biblical writings. What do we have about extra biblical writings, meaning? What other things outside the Bible confirm the Bible's existence? Great question, easy answer and for the best answer ever. If you're really serious about this and you've got some coin to throw down, you can fly to London. Highly recommended. 18:47 You should go to London and take three days. You need three days to go through the British Museum of History and there either walk it yourself or go to the era or the epochs of biblical timeline and you will be blown away. Man, this is fun to say you will be standing there in the British Museum and you're looking at Senechrib's scroll, nebja Kenezer's cylindrical scroll, speaking to you as they rolled it into the wet sand in Babylonian. You will find documentation there of somebody by the name and title of Queen Esther. By the way, those of you who might live in the area of Oxford University, england, if you go right across the street from the famous cafe that forgot the name of the cafe the cafe that's across the street from the Ashmalion, the Ashmalion Museum Walk in there, turn left, get down to the end of the hallway, turn right and right there on the corner is a writing down to the knee level. There's documentation there from Queen Esther right out of the Bible, authentic. 20:17 These are not knockoffs, and so you can look at things like that where there are the writings of historians like Flavius Josephus, you can look at the writings of the church fathers, so you can read those guys 100 AD, 135 AD, 185, 212 AD, 300 AD. You can read them. There's tons. What about the Roman? What about now? I know a lot of people I'm going to. 20:52 I'll drop something that's very controversial. A lot of people don't like it. A lot of people freak out about it because it makes a particular denomination look bad, but no one's been able to disprove it. But not only this book. If you don't like this book, then pick some other books. But just the annals the annals of Rome at the Vatican, their volume of writing, extra biblical writing that's there on display either in the Vatican or in the vaults, are absolutely awesome. One is called the Arco volume, arco A-R-K-O and it isa collection of writings between Herod Caesar and it was an investigation that was launched by Rome regarding this huge, scandalous deal that happened about this carpenter who was crucified. What in the world is going on, caesar Pilot? I want an answer. What happened? And you can go ahead and look and read at the Arco volume that was discovered in Constantinople. Now it's been Islamized so it's called Istanbul, but it used to be called Constantinople. But there's many other books on top of that, so do keep that in mind. 22:17 Number five is Science and Discovery. Well, we'll mention Discovery a couple of times, because I love it. The book is a book of Discovery, but science or science is in discovery. It is, and it's things like scientists and researchers such as Sir Isaac Newton who read claims in the Bible only to discover those claims were exactly true. Newton said so himself, he wrote about it, by the way. Side note, sir Isaac Newton is the only guy that I know of in science that wrote a commentary on the book of Daniel. Pretty remarkable. 22:59 Some guy by the name of Sir Robert Anderson picked up where Newton left off, and Sir Robert Anderson was an inspector at Scotland Yard, england, and some people have speculated. I don't know if this is true or not, but some people have speculated that the character Indiana Jones is actually built really upon Sir Robert Anderson. I don't know if that's true or not, does it matter? But Sir Robert Anderson was a brilliant man. He wrote the book. Every Christian should own this book and every non-Christian should own this book. Everybody in the world should own this book outside the Bible, and that is the book the Coming Prince by Sir Robert Anderson. The Coming Prince, it's all about not only the advent of the Christ that would come, but the anti-Christ that's coming. Amazing work. I believe he was knighted for that, sir Robert Anderson. 23:52 But sciences, it was Christopher Columbus, among other mariners, by the way who believe that at certain times of the seasons the globe had currents that would flow at certain times of the year, based upon not only weather, seasons but wind. And we also know that the ancient Polynesians figured out the same thing. When you look at the Marys or Marys I don't know how you guys say it down in New Zealand way, the Kiwi way, but they were seafaring, you're talking about the deep Polynesians that came up from. And eventually you look at that region deep Southern Pacific, that eventually migrated Northern, northwesternly to the Hawaiian islands, and all of them studied the fact that the waters and seasons had currents. Well, solomon in the book of Proverbs, thousands of years earlier, said oh, psst, by the way, there's currents in the ocean. You'd be smart to learn about those and put your dinghy on there and you can go to Hawaii. Not bad advice. 25:17 Manuscript evidence this is kind of fun stuff. Look, I'm going from the top of my head here, so I might be a little off, but not far the most documented book in the world outside the Bible, the most documented book outside of the Bible in this entire world is Homer's Iliad, and I believe there's something. I'll be generous. I think there's 633 manuscripts available. I think Not more than that, 633. 25:54 Most, if you want to say, what can we know for sure? We can know for sure that Homer wrote the Iliad. By the way, we don't know so sure about Shakespeare. Shakespeare is a pretty famous dude, but you know what? We're not sure what he wrote, because a lot of people wrote in his name and there's a lot of things that were lost and filled in and things that were filled in that weren't lost. A lot of stuff made up. We don't know. We just know some stuff. Do you know that the most reliable, researched, scrutinized, documented book in the universe is over 13,000 manuscript copies? And that is the Bible, and you don't have to get sidelined by. Well, was that New King James or Old King James? Was it the NIV or the ESV? We're talking about original languages Hebrew, greek, aramaic. Remarkable, think about that. 27:03 By the way, go ahead for further study and look at the Dead Sea Scrolls. There's a reason why, in Jerusalem, you go to the museum of the book and why you have the Bible there, and why what they found in 1947 is so important to display to the entire world. Listen, this is crazy. I was on a plane one time with a bunch of people. We're actually coming back. We're coming from Israel to Toronto, canada, toronto to Los Angeles. And on our Air Canada flight, the pilot announced ladies and gentlemen, you might be happy to know, as we leave Israel today, that we have a very large portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the cargo bay of this aircraft that will be on display in North America. And we like, oh, we're crazy, because we're flying with the Bible. And that was pretty cool. 27:56 The Dead Sea Scrolls you ought to know about those things, man, because when they were discovered, they didn't deviate one iota from the Old King James manuscripts. Think of that, what you have today in the Old King James and what that ancient writing of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that in the manuscript translation into English, it's spot on. Wow, that was number six. Number seven is just very quickly. Number seven is a good point. Charlie Campbell will really develop this well, and that is what I just call. 28:31 It is the defaming of man. The Bible defames man. If man wrote the book, man would make himself the hero. If man wrote the book, he'd make himself look good. Man didn't write this book for his own intent. In fact, the Bible defames man. It's the Bible that says all men are losers. All men need salvation. All men are lost. All men, by default, are going to hell. All men need to be forgiven. And that's an amazing thing, because we all know down deep inside that we do need forgiveness, and that's exactly what the Bible says. 29:08 Number eight is this the fact that the apostles and the disciples from the first century, most all of them, suffered death by persecution. Don't you think, if they were all playing a joke, that somebody would say when they begin to cut your eyeballs out or burn you at the stake? I was just kidding, we just made it up, not a one. Wow, you know what? A couple of months ago I was standing again in Oxford, england, and on that old cobblestone street in Oxford there's a black cross, there's a black X it's only about this big and there's a plaque on the wall and it says this marks the spot where the church. Reformers stood up against the Anglican church and demanded that the people have the Bible themselves, and the church burned them to death right there. And it's because you and I have a Bible today, because of people like that that said listen, can't lie against the truth. Even it cost me my life. Persecution. Think about that Number nine. 30:24 The Bible applied makes for great nations. God says in the Bible numerous times if you just follow me, I'll make you a great nation, he said Jack. That's regarding Israel. Well, everybody, at this time of this podcast, you need to pick one, because there's a bunch of people griping and moaning and belly aching about Israel's not for real. Israel doesn't count. It's not a real nation. It needs to be annihilated. It should go away. 30:49 And the church is Israel, the church is Israel. That is so pathetically lame and unscriptural. The church is not Israel, israel's not the church. The two are totally separate. The only thing that we have in common is that we believe in the God of Abraham, isaac and Jacob and that listen, we must be saved by faith alone. Now, israel's waking up to this right now. 31:14 But bottom line is this Remember this Jesus told Nicodemus the Jew you must be born again, nick, to enter the kingdom of heaven, or else you're not going to go. And that's true for you and I. The Jews need to wake up to their salvation that's in front of them. To be saved, you and I, as Gentiles, we are grafted into the tree of what's been promised to them. They're not automatically saved because they're Jews. They have to be born again, just like you and I do. 31:46 But when the Bible is applied, it makes for a great nation. John Adams wrote. Our founding father wrote that if anyone were to, if any nation on earth took the words of the Bible and applied them as their form of government, they would be a great nation. That is so true. In fact, look how messed up America is. America's in the toilet. Let's come on. Let's be honest. Let's just stop with the games. Everybody's driving around in their Lamborghinis and their Ferraris. Nobody owns those cars. Everybody's broke. It's a joke. Oh, my house is worth 10 million bucks. It might be worth 10 million bucks, but you can't buy it. You can't buy it back from you, can't buy it from the bank. You don't have the money. Oh, we're a free nation? Really? I don't think so. We have no borders. We're being invaded by the tens of thousands every week here, just 100 miles south of where I'm talking to you from. We're not a great nation anymore. You want to know why? 32:49 Alexa de Tocqueville said why the Frenchman came after the Revolutionary War and the French government sent him and said go find out why America's so great. These guys are brand new and they're kicking everybody's tail. They produce more, they got factories, their apples are bigger, their corn is more productive. What's with those guys? So Alexa de Tocqueville and his agent came to America, went around, he took notes. He can read it, he wrote a book on it and he's writing and writing and he goes I can't figure it out. And he says I couldn't figure it out until I stepped into the churches in America and I got the answer. As long as America is good, it will be great. But if America is no longer good, it will cease being great. We're no longer good. That's why we're no longer great. Make America great again. Sorry, everybody, I think that ship sailed. I hope there's a recovery among the church. The nation, in my opinion, is over. The only hope is that the church is revived, and that's that's think of the Bible. Wherever the Bible is applied, there's a great nation. 34:10 Lisa and I were on vacation. I got to move on. I got to end. Lisa and I were on vacation many years ago. We've heard all this talk like you have Cayman Islands, the Cayman Islands. So we thought, well, we have a time share, let's go see and visit the Cayman Islands. So we went and we were going through customs to get into the country and there's a flag hanging there and the customs agent has a patch on his shoulder and I'm looking at it and it says about the Cayman Islands. It says he has founded it upon the seas, psalm 24, verse two. And I said to the border agent I said there's a Bible verse on your patch on your shoulder. And he goes I love it. He goes, absolutely I go. What's that all about? He goes we're a Bible Island man. And I thought it was. That was us. We are a Bible Island man. I thought how cool is that? So proud of it? He was Try that in America today, in US Customs, you get arrested by US Customs. 35:23 Finally, number 10 is Jesus said what he said and he did what he said. Jesus, stop and study the words of Jesus. Go to Matthew, mark, luke and John. Read the red letters of Jesus to get excited, find out the claims that he claimed and see if he didn't follow through. Jesus Christ is the reason why you should follow him. Not the Catholic Church, not Calvary Chapel, not First Baptist of Kalamazoo and not the assembly of God and not the Lutheran whatever's. Nope, jesus Him. Hey, listen, totally out of time, went way over, way, way over. As always, subscribe please. If you like what you're hearing, subscribe. It really helps us. If you subscribe, keep your money, but give us your subscription. How's that? It's free? Subscribe. We don't want your money, we want your vote. Okay, and then, like always, it's. We believe always that it's. It's time for us to live out what we believe in. It's time for real life.