Good morning on one of the most beautiful seasons of the year, Balloon Fiesta. It's just great to wake up to cool temperatures and see those things cruising around. It's cool

II Timothy chapter 3 this morning, we continues where we left off last week. Every Saturday I pray for the entertainment industry because it's one of the big pillars in our culture of communication. It was interesting that in the last couple of weeks, I was asked to go down to Puerto Rico in between Sundays, fly there and back, fly there and back, to take part in a film that's being done down there. And I went the first week to sort of supervise the script on a theological level. And then the second week to do a small part in this movie. But what was interesting is working with some of these actors, producers and directors. And the script is all laid out and contracts are signed and actors to say the parts that they have already read but we had a couple interesting run-ins with some actors not wanting to read the lines, read the script. "I don't agree with this, I don't want to say this. I don't want to ask the question." And as I was watching one of these actors go back and forth with the producer I thought, "Boy that's exactly what a lot of people do when it comes to God's script. He has given us his word, his revelation, the script for his love, his plan, how to have a relationship with him. And we come along and want to rewrite the script, reinterpret the script, reinvent it, come up with our own role, our own past. But God is the producer. I men he created the world, I guess he can do whatever he wants and say whatever he wants.

We've been looking last week and this week at the script of God's love. In fact, that's what it's called the scripture or the graphe, the graph, the handwritten revelation of God and his word. But we have come to a place in our culture where the Bible doesn't hold the esteem that it once did. You know, you know or at least you've heard that at one time this book was mandatory in public schools. That's what was taught was the Bible. That was a long time ago I realize. But now the Bible is simply a thing you put your hand on in a courtroom and swear to tell the whole truth. That's where it's gone.

Sometime back on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Howard Stern was the guest and he had just written his book and you know he makes some pretty shocking boasts. He said, "You know, Jay, my book is the fastest selling book in all of the history of literature." Of course it was a lie which is not unbecoming of Howard Stern. Then Stern held up a Bible and he said, "The Gideon Society is now going to start putting my book in hotel rooms instead of the Bible." In a rare display of courage, Jay Leno grabbed the Bible out of his hands and rebuked him for blaspheming God's word. (applause) I don't know that that speaks to Jay Leno as much as his ratings would be in trouble perhaps.

Why should we believe the Bible? Why is it trustworthy? Is it rational? After such a long time, here we are now in the third millennium, entering into it since Christ, we're still holding on to this old book. Some of us even carry it around during the day. Some of us have even memorized certain parts of it and we even quote it to people. How rational is that? Now these are questions that I know you are asked if you live at all in the real world. Unless you bury your head in the sand all day long, the secular world challenges your belief and I wonder how well-equipped you are to answer them. It would really behove you to learn some of the answers to the challenges.

There was a Russian dictionary that defined the Bible by saying, "It is a collection of fantastic legends without scientific support. It is full of dark hints, historical mistakes, and contradictions. And It serves as a factor for gaining power and subjugating unknowing nations." Now that's quite a challenge. Now how would we answer that? Well some of us would put our head in the sand, close our eyes and, "I just hope it goes away. Take the bad people away." Others of us may be very stubbornly religious and about the best we could do is something like, "Well I have my belief and you have yours, so there." Oooo, now that's profound. Or we could actually do a little investigation and come up with and articulate a good defense. Come up with the answers.

Last week we began looking at the Bible. This is a series after all on the foundations of our faith. And we begin with the Bible because in the rest of the series we always will point to it. And so we looked at its designation last week. It is called scripture, the handwriting of God through human instruments. We discovered that all scripture is given by inspiration of God meaning all of the Old Testament, all of the New Testament. We discussed how the canon of books, the list of books came into our Bible. Then we looked at its inspiration. Unlike any other book it is inspired by God and we discovered that doesn't mean natural inspiration on the level of a Michelangelo or a Picasso painting. It doesn't refer to concept inspiration where God just gave concepts, but he actually gave the words through the instruments of human beings.

Now today we want to sort of continue that thought to the authentication. How do we know, what do we say to people who challenge the Bible and they say, "Now wait a minute, you have your book but there's lots of books out there. There's lots of religions out there. They all have their own scripture, their own book, why is yours b etter than theirs?

Several years ago I came into the office one evening and somebody told me that Jesus was in my office. I said, "What is thais, a joke?" And they said, "No, this guy says he's Jesus Christ and he wants to see you." I thought, "Well great, I've always wanted to meet Jesus face to face. This will be cool." So I walk in my office, the guy stood up, "Hi, I'm Jesus," straight-faced. "Oh you are." "Yes I am the second coming." Hmm. So I said, "Where were you born?" "Pennsylvania." So, you know, immediately a red flag goes up. I read the book. Bethlehem, right? Not Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I said, "So you're Jesus." "Yep, I'm the second coming of Christ." So I'm thinking, "Well, you know I don't know why he's in Albuquerque but okay." So, I said, "Now how do I know that?" He said, "Because of the third testament." I go, "What? I've heard of the Old and the New Testament, you're telling me there's a third?" "Oh yes, it's the third testament." So I said, "Okay, who authored that book?" He goes, "I did." So I thought, "Okay, the easiest thing in the world is to authenticate your own writing." "this is inspired because I said so." Now that's what the Bible is often accused of being, self-authenticating. The bible says, "'Thus sayeth the Lord.' 'The word of the Lord came unto.'" So people ask, "that's what the Bible says about itself. How do you authenticate its claims?" The Bible is suthenticated first of all internally. Let's start from that point, internally. In other words, this sin't just one book, there are sixty-six separate books written by forty authors over a fifteen hundred year period, with three different languages, three different continents; and yet with such diversity, there is a unity of message. Different styles of writings, different kinds of people. Politicians helped write the Bible which automatically to some is suspect. King David, King Solomon, Daniel was a prime minister. Shepherds helped write the Bible. Now shepherds weren't college grads. These are guys out in the fields. David was a shepherd before he became a king. The prophet Amos from Tecoah was a shepherd or a sheepherder, Amos 1:1 tell us. So we would think, "Shepherds wrote the Bible?" I mean, maybe they would misspell words or not finish sentences. Or their documents would smell like sheep. How reliable is that? Converted religious leaders added to the script. Paul the apostle, once a Jewish Pharisee now a converted born-again Christian. We would think, "Boy, he would use his platform with an angle, he's going to try to ditz his past religion," which he didn't do. Fishermen helped write the Bible. "Oh now we're really getting down there man. Fishermen? From the Sea of Galilee? What's the thing going to read like a Field and Stream magazine or something? It's the most unlikely group to author the most revered book in human history, the best-selling book in human history, that claims to reveal the mind of God. And by the way, it wasn't forty guys at the same time who knew each other and got together in a room, shook hands and said, "Now let's strategize how we're going to craft a unified text. They come from different periods of time. Daniel wrote in a Babylonian palace around 540 BC. Jeremiah in a dungeon, 600 BC. Joshua wrote while he was fighting battles in 1390 BC. Moses wrote in 14-something BC in the wilderness. Paul wrote from a dungeon, a prison in Rome in the '60s AD. Different time periods, different settings, different authors. At times of joy, during times of depression. Some of it was historical narrative, some of it was poetry, some of it was proverbs, songs, prophecy. And here's the question: What kind of a God would author a book of such diversity? Here's the answer I believe: A God who wanted to communicate to all people of all times. The fact that he used rich, poor, highly educated, highly uneducation, the very linear technical thinker, the artistic; means that God wants to communicate to everyone. So whether you are artistic or technical, have a long attention span or short; are very educated or you didn't get a GED, there's something in this book that will speak to your heart. That's one of the fascinating things about the Bible is that it's shallow enough that a babe can enjoy it, deep enough a theologian could drown in it and never reach the depth of its profoundness. Then, the Bible with all of these different backgrounds and people and languages speak about the most controversial subjects in the world, like the origin and destiny of man, evil in the world. You might want to try this as an experiment. Or tell your agnostic friends who say, "The Bible really isn't trustworthy." Say, "Okay, tell you what, get ten people from your neighborhood, let alone across the world, your neighborhood, same background, same education, same culture, same language and write an essay paper on the meaning lof life and see if you all agree." They won't agree. Or take twenty-five medical books written in the last thousand yeas and treat a patients with the information therein. That means you're going to get texts from the headhunters of Africa, Native American medicine, modern medicine and you're going to treat somebody's disease based on the contents of those pages. You will create a Frankenstein if you try to do that. There is no cohesion or agreement over that period of time and culture.

So the Bible is unique on an internal basis, that you have such diversity yet such unity on the subjects that are written about. Compare that with any other Bible, any other text, any other sacred literature. For instance, the Book of Mormon first published in 1825, by the year of 1898 has already gone under two thousand thirty-eight corrections. And by 1959, the Book of Mormon had within it over 3000 changes in grammar and doctrine. So my question would be; if God is the author, why did he make so many mistakes? That's where you'll find the difference between other literature and the Bible.

Number two, it is authenticated historically. It has survived against all odds, against several factors that would threaten to destroy it. Like weather, why didn't weather destroy it? I mean if you look at the writings of the Babylonian empire, all written on clay tablets, weather has destroyed them. We have fragments here and there because the material was vulnerable. The Bible was placed on something that would last, papyrus, vellum. Before paper was invented, that material that we can still find from hundreds of years before Christ by the Dead Sea. Nations threatened to destroy the Bible. You probably know about the Roman Empire's persecution against the early church. How that from the second to the fourth century there was such an all-out desire to destroy Christianity from the Roman Empire, that seven million graves in nine hundred miles of catacombs still visible in Rome today attest to that horrible time of persecution. Caesar Nero started it. In 64AD he decided to take Christians alive, tie them on poles, pour hot pitch over them and use them as living torches until they burned to death in his garden to light up his parties. Then blamed the Christians for the fires in Rome and that fomented a series of persecutions against the church so that by the year 303 AD Diocletian the Roman emperor said that anybody caught with a copy of the Bible would be killed. Scriptures were burned and churches were destroyed. But the Bible survived. I've always smiled when I read the account of Voltaire who in the 1700s, this French atheist said, "I predict within twenty-five years there will be no Bibles on the earth and Christianity will have disappeared." I smile because within forty years of that prediction his home was used by the Bible Society to distribute the Bible through Europe. I love God's sense of humor. The Bible wasn't destroyed by weather. The Bible wasn't destroyed by persecution. And the Bible wasn't destroyed by time. You know, just two to three thousand years of time, most documents don't survive that. One scholar said that if you took all of the other works of antinquity penned in the AD 50s and 60s you could fit them all between two bookends spaced one foot apart. All of other literature, you have about that much of it, penned in the 50s and 60s. But if you look at the New Testament, you find something interesting: an abundance of manuscripts exist, five thousand seven hundred and fifty. If you take all the other fragments of the New Testament, you have about 24,000 plus fragments and documents, scrolls, from that time. What's interesting is that the earliest copy we have of the Bible was penned thirty years after irs original, that's the gospel of John. The gospel of John dates to AD 120, thirty years after John originally penned it. And I'm bringing that up because you know everybody wants to knock the Bible. "The Bible is invalid, how can you trust that old book penned by people. But nobody ditzes the other ancient documents. The writings of Plato, Asristotle, Homer, with much less credible evidence. You know that the earliest copy we have of the complete work of The Odyssey by Homer was sritten two thousand two hundred years after its original. I think thirty years, five thousand manuscripts. Two thousand two hundred years. Copies of works by Plato and Aristotle number about five or seven or ten written about a thousand or fifteen hundred years after its original. But nobody ditzes those documents but they do the Bible. The question would be then: How do we know the Bible is an accurate representation of the original? I mean after all you did mention copies, Skip, so somebody copied these documents. So all we have today aren't the originals but copies of the originals. How do we know they didn't get distracted? How do we know they didn't all have ADD when they copied these things, had the radio on or something else is going on and they wrote the wrong words down? That only betrays an ignorance of the level of integrity of the ancient scribes. A couple thousand years ago in the Jewish religion, if you wanted to become a scribe, you know how you read about them in the New Testament, "the scribes and the Pharisees," to become a scribe was a demanding and lofty profession. It took an entire lifetime of commitment. Training began at age fourteen, did not end til age forty. And once you completed your training, there you were in the scriptorian, you were going to copy the master scroll onto this copy. The material had to be carefully prepared, the ink had to be specially mixed and selected. Thirty-seven letters per line were required, every line was inspected and then reconfirmed, every letter, the space between the letters, the number of letters, the number of lines per page all checked and rechecked. And the middle letter of the page was checked against the middle letter of the master scroll. If they didn't match up in any of these criteria, the copy of the entire scroll was burned. And the scribe would start from scratch, hand copying it. All you have to do is take the oldest manuscript we have before the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and compare them with the Dead Sea Scroll documents which represents hundreds of years in a time gap and look at the copies and you find that there is no difference, an incredible consistency of accuracy.

So the Bible is authenticated internally, historically. Third archeologically. I don't know what you know about the archeology of the Bible but I've discovered that anybody who ever tried to attack the Bible on archeological grounds all failed and some were even converted to Christianity. I read t he story of Sir William Ramsey, a British archeologist skeptic who said that Luke was a fraud and didn't write the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts was inaccurate. He spent thirty years of his life trying to disprove that, even traveling to Greece and Asia Minor to dig. So he dug, looking at the names of the places that Luke wrote about and discovered not only was Luke accurate but he shocked the academic world when Sir William Ramsey said, "Luke is one of the most accurate and best historians of all time." And then shortly after he gave his life to Christ and converted to Christianity.

Over in Jerusalem there's a pool, it's a hole in the ground is what it is now, called t he Pool of Bethesda. John chapter 5 says this pool had five porches and there was the moving of the water and the people would lay sick people in it waiting for that angel to stir up the waters, that was the tradition. The only problem was is it was only mentioned in the Bible. It wasn't mentioned in Roman literature, there was no record of it. And so scientists, skeptics, archeologists said, "It's a fraud. There is no Pool of Bethesda. Ah-hah." They started digging around and they found the Pool of Bethesda exactly as John described it, having five porches. "Okay, well we've got another one. That Pontius Pilate guy, he never existed. There's no record, except in the Bible nad you can't trust the Bible because there's only 5,750 manuscripts, more than any other but we can't trust that. We don't find it in Roman literature. There is no Pontius Pilate. So they started digging around the ancient town of Caesarea by the Sea and they found this tablet, it's in the museum, go over to Israel sometime when it's safe --er, I don't know if it's ever safe but next time it's a little safer than it is this week, and look at that inscription. It says, "In the years in the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate the procurator of Judea. And the skeptics went, "Oh. Well there's some others you know. The Bible mentions the Hittite civilization forty different times. We have no ancient records of the Hittites except in the Bible." And they started digging around the Middle East. And one esteemed archeologist found all sorts of evidence and scrolls of the Hittite civilizations. And they said, "Oh." And this happened so many times they don't say it any more. The noted Dr. J. L. Kinneman said, "Of the hundreds of thousands of artifacts found by archeologists, not one has ever been discovered that contradicts or denis one word, one phrase, one clause, one sentence of the Bible. Rather they always confirm and verify the facts of the biblical record.

Here's a cool story I just discovered. In the 1950s there was an Israeli businessman by the name of Exciel Fetterman who was reading his Bible, he was reading Genesis. And he was reading the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. He started thinking about what he was reading. He read how in Genesis it says, "And lo the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." He started poring over that. That smoke going up like the smoke of a furnace. He thought, "Well if there's smoke from the fire, if there's a fire that existed and it's burning, that must mean there's underground gas. If there's underground gas it must meant there's oil." In 1953, based on that passage, the first oil derrick was put down in Sodom and Gomorrah in Israel. Then the Bible can be authenticated prophetically. And this is what the Bible uses to authenticate itself. This is what God point to. When God gives out his calling card so to speak he says, "Hey check what I can do, out. I can predict things in advance before they happen and no other gods can pull that off." In Isaiah 41 God charges the other gods by saying, "Can your idols make such claims as these? Let them try to tell us what happened long ago or what the future holds. If you are gods then tell us what will occur in the days ahead."

It's funny to me to watch all of the press that people like Miss Cleo have gotten or Jean Dixon who made so many false prophecies. "She's a prophetess." Everybody wants to know the future. God says, "I can handle that. I'll tell you what, I'll tell you about things before they happen in such detail so that when they happen, because I have told you about them in advance, you'll know that I am the true God. No other ancient book can do this. The Koran can't do it. The Bagavaheeta of the hindus can't do that, the Icanishads, none of these documents can come c lose. How impressive is prophecy? Pretty impressive. I'll give you an example. Isaiah chapter 44, you may want to just jot that down and look at it sometime on your own. In that one chapter alone, several predictions were made. Number one, the fall of the city of Jerusalem. Number two, the destruction of the Jewish temple. By the way, when that was penned, Jerusalem was a strong city, there were no enemies impending, the Temple was a landmark, geographical landmark. I'm sure people looked at that and said, "I don't get it. What do you mean it's going to be destroyed and the temple will be flattened?" Something else in Isaiah 44, it predicts that a guy by the name of Cyrus would give an edict to rebuild the temple. Do you know what's amazing about that? That prophecy was going 160 years before Cyrus was ever born. Before his mom and dad thought, "What a cute baby, what should we call him?" God said, "Cyrus." A hundred and sixty years before he was born it was penned. Do you know what the odds of Isaiah 44, those elements, collectively being fulfilled are? One in 10 to the 14th power. Let's say I stood before you this morning and I said, "I can predict the winning lottery number." You'd say, "Oh really try it." I'd say, "Okay." So I'd give you a bunch of numbers and it comes to pass. The odds of me doing that are one in ten million, one in ten to the seventh power. If I did it two times in a row, now imagine that, you'd be really impressed if I could say, "Now I did that. That was cool. I'm going to do it again." If I could do it two successful times, every number, the odds would be be one in ten to the 14th power or roughly the odds of Isaiah 44, those elements being fulfilled. This is such an amazing thing that Dr. Peter Stoner, chair of Mathematics and Westmont College wrote a book about this called Science Speaks, I've recommended it before, analyzed forty-eight predictions written about the Messiah 250 years before he was born. And he said using his mathematical probabilities, "We find the chance that any one man in history could fulfill all forty-eight prophecies to be one in ten to the 157th power. I want you to realize how staggering this is. Let's say you could take and I've given you this illustration before as well, but now memorize it. If you could take the entire state of Texas and fill it two feet thick filled with silver dollars. If you preselect one silver dollar, place it somewhere in the sovereign nation of Texas (laughter) have a guy blindfolded walked through the entire state of Texas and find the right silver dollar that you've picked. The odds of him doing that would be one in 10 to the 17th power. If you took the United States of America and filled it two feet thick of silver dollars, premarked one, had a blindfolded man find the one you preselected, his odds would be one in ten to the 18th power. Take the continent of Africa and Asia, two feet thick with silver dollars, preselect one, have somebody blindfolded find it, one in ten to the 19th power. According to Stoner, the odds of one man fulfilling 48 prophecies that would be completely out of his control, like where he was to be born, what lineage he would be from, what house he would be from, etcetera, the odds would be 10 to the 157th power. In other words, in a hundred billion years there is not enough time for those chance factors to come to fruition in one person without God's help.

Finally, the Bible is authenticated Messianically. And for Christians, this is where the argument should end, really. "Why should I believe the Bible? Because Jesus said so. Now if you claim to be a Christian, if you claim to follow Jesus, I contend you can't take him very seriously if you don't take the Bible seriously. Do you know why? Because the Savior you and I say we follow quoted the Old Testament sixty-four times, right around there. And each time he pointed out, or he rested upon, that it was the word of God that he referred to. In John chapter 10, Jesus said, "To whom the word of God came and the scriptures cannot be broken." Did you hear that? According to Jesus Christ, the Bible, the scripture isn't just a literature class in college. Jesus said it can't be broken, can't be troken because it's God-breathed, it's inspired.

Now if you can't believe Jesus on this issue, why can you believe him on any other issu? "Well I believe the part about believing in him and you'll be saved. I just don't believe all the other stuff he said." Who gave you the right to choose? Jesus in Matthew 19 affirmed that God created man from nothing and placed him in the Garden of Eden. In Matthew 24 Jesus affirmed there was a literal flood that covered the entire earth as a judgment upon the earth. He spoke of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a fact. He spoke about manna coming down from heaven as a fact. In Luke chapter 11 he even affirmed Jonah being swallowed by a great fish. If you don't think Jesus is right on those issues, you've got bigger problems because either a) he was ignorant. Just well-meaning but ignorant to the fact that those really weren't true. "Everybody now knows they weren't true." Or, he did know they weren't true and he was simply accommodating the ignorance of these Palestinian people which makes him a liar. And I don't want to follow a liar. So you can't take Christ seriously until you take the Bible seriously as being inspired by God. So the Bible is suthenticated for those reasons.

Now because all of that's true, we have the application now. Look at our text. Verse 16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and because of that it is profitable." You might want to add the word sufficient. The original Greek word could mean that as well. Sufficient. For doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work. Can you name any other book in history that can come close to that? If it is indeed and it is, the God-breathed written revelation that is inerrant, then it makes sense that it would be profitable for correction, reproof, instruction in righteousness, equipping us. A medical book can't do that for you. I mean it's good, you learn a lot, you get a degree and help people. But it'll give you information not transformation. A law book can't do that. The writings of Oprah can't do that or Dr. Phil can't do that, or Depokchokra can't do that. But the Bible can.

Martin Luther said of the Bible, "The Bible is alive, it speaks to me. It has feet, it runs after me. It has hands, it lays hold of me.

Look back at verse 15, "From childhood you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation." That's the first application. If you read the Koran, if you read The Book of Mormon, if you read the Akonishads or any other sacred book you won't be saved. Only the Bible makes you wise for salvation because the Bible points to the central hero which is who? Jesus. That's what Jesus said. He said to the Pharisees, "You search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life. But these are they which testify of me." He said on the Sermon on the Mount, "I didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill the law." In other words, "I'm the theme of the whole book. It'll make you wise to salvation." And second, as we read here, it will make you well-equipped. It'll instruct you, it'll rebuke you. Listen to the NLT, the New Living translation, "It's useful to teach us what is true, to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do right." You know this is why a lot of people don't like to hear Bible study or Bible teachings or a sermon based on the Bible, because they read it and they go, "Ooo that's getting a little personal. God's messing with me now." The bible often will comfort the afflicted but I've found often the Bible will also afflict the comfortable. Sometimes we get a little two comfortable, a little too religiously comfortable. But God's word can penetrate and pierce, Hebrews 4:12 tells us and get to that spot. Have you ever had that happen? Have you ever had God after you're reading a poertion of scripture really grab your heart because of that?

There's a factory that shut down because it's machine busted. And the mechanics couldn't fix the machine to get things back into production. So they called in an expert from the outside who started studying the machine, took oout a little hammer, hit it at a certain area and the machine started working, miraculously. So he gave a bill for a thousand dollars to the owner. The owner said, "A thousand dollars! This is highway robbery. I want an itemized bill." The man said, "Okay, here's the itemized bill. One dollar for hitting with the hammer. Nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars for knowing precisely where."

I'll tell you honestly I've read the Bible through a number of times. And I'll open it up and lo and behold the Holy Spirit will take something and take his little hammer and go, "Ooo, ouch!" Correction, feproof, rebuke, instruction in righteousness. That is if you allow him to. You know there is a huge tune-out factor among churchgoers. Our minds can immediately read a text or hear something and we go, "Heard it before." Oh, so it's changed your life then for good, right? Because that's where the value of Bible st udy comes in. Not it's authentication, not it's history, not it's archeology, not it's great ability to stand the test of time as much as it's ability to change a life. Has the message of the Bible changed your life? If not, you are mildly religious. You are inoculated with religion and you are immune from the real t hing. So the truth comes in it's greates power when the application comes.

I want to close with this. There was an agnostic American professor who visited the Fiji Islands. He went into a tribe that had been affected by missionaries. He looked around and he said to the chief, "You are a great leader and a wise man but I am very sorry that you've been duped by American Western missionaries who brought you the Bible and started this church And everybody know now oh chief, that the Bible was just written by men. And that this threadbare story of a guy from heaven dying on a cross is just nonsense. And I'm sorry that you weren't smart enough to pick up on it. The old chief smiled and he pointed t o a rock. And he said, 'You see that rock? On that rock we used to smash the heads of our victims." The professor was very quiet. And he said, "Next to it is a furnace, can you see that, professor?" In that furnace once we smashed our victims heads, we would roast them to eat them. Were it not for that gospel that those God-loving missionaries brought into our culture and changed us from cannibals into Christians, you'd be supper by now." And that professor was very quiet. And I'm sure very grateful that the threadbare gospel message changed a culture from cannibals into Christians at that moment.

Heavenly Father, we are grateful that the Spirit of God through weak sometimes uneducated, sometimes highly educated, sometimes artistic, sometimes technical, sometimes written by politicians, sometimes by shepherds. Has preserved the word, the truth, throughout generations, so that it is as relevant today in principles that it brings forth as it was back then. Lord I pray that not only would we believe that but that we would be able to tell that to people. In Jesus' name.