Last Sunday we tried to talk about the
question, is there a God?
And you probably remember the conclusion we came
to that the existence of a God of
some kind is the most plausible and the
most satisfactory explanation of the existence of our
world, the existence of ourselves.
the order and design of the universe, and
the presence in us of conscience and a
sense of moral obligation to live better than
we're doing.
In other words, really, we came to the
same conclusion.
You remember as that great giant of our
own age, Einstein, who said, my religion consists
of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details
we are able to perceive with our frail
and feeble minds.
That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of
a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in
the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
And we felt, yes, Einstein's right.
If you let your mind work in an
ordinary cause and effect kind of logical way,
the way it normally operates in everyday life,
then you'll conclude that there is a supreme
being of some kind.
And actually, most of us, I think, agree
with that, loved ones.
I think most people in the world really
deep down feel the same way as, of
all people, even Mousy Tung, you remember, in
his conversation with Henry Kissinger.
Most people feel, even like Mao, that there
is somewhere a supreme being to whom we
will have to give account after this life
is over.
Where we differ is what that supreme being
is like.
That's where we have trouble.
Most of us believe there is a supreme
being of some kind, but in a way,
you must agree that's not the big issue.
Because if that supreme being is a cruel
tyrant, then that will greatly affect the way
we live in this life.
If that supreme being is a kindly father,
that will affect greatly the way we live
in this life.
So the big issue is, not so much
even is there a God, it's very hard
to explain the universe apart from that.
But the real question is, what is he
like?
What is the supreme being like?
I'd ask you to look with me at
some of the information that our forefathers, down
through the centuries, have passed onto us about
their experiences of the supreme being.
Here's one that was written 900 BC.
It's one of the most ancient books we
have.
And here is part of what this person
says about the supreme being.
Zeus now addressed the immortals.
What a lamentable thing it is that men
should blame the gods and regard us as
the source of their troubles, when it is
their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse
than any which destiny allots them.
So that person obviously said 900 BC, God,
Zeus, talks to some other gods and says,
why do men blame us for all the
misfortunes that they suffer?
And he laments that fact.
Do you know what your reaction is?
You say, but wait a minute, that may
be one of the oldest Greek books that
we have available.
It may have been written in 900 BC,
but this is the Odyssey by Homer.
And Homer was not describing anything real when
he wrote this Odyssey.
It's in fact a novel about the wanderings
of Odysseus after the sack of Troy.
And Homer certainly has taken a basic history,
but he has then added to it myths
and imaginary stories of all kinds.
And certainly by reading Homer's Odyssey, you can
find out what he and his contemporaries thought
the Supreme Being was like.
You can tell what his people and his
friends thought, but you can't say that he
was describing facts.
All he was doing was giving his idea
of what the Supreme Being might be like
through the words of Odysseus.
In other words, it's foolishness, you know, to
take what is a novel and treat it
as if it is actual fact.
And of course, all we have here in
books like Homer's Odyssey are the author's own
imaginary ideas of what God is like.
Well, let's go, loved ones, to another man
then, who is not a novelist by any
means.
Buddha is the recognized leader of millions of
people in the world today.
Buddha, you remember, in 500 BC, had certain
experiences.
And those experiences are trusted by millions of
people today as being authoritative accounts of what
the creator of the world is like.
And here, in fact, is the record of
his first revelation in 500 BC.
When the great seer had comprehended that where
there is no ignorance whatever, there also the
karma formations are stopped, then he had achieved
a correct knowledge of all there is to
be known.
And he stood out in the world as
a Buddha.
He passed through the eight stages of transit
insight and quickly reached their highest point.
From the summit of the world downwards, he
could detect no self anywhere.
Like the fire, when its fuel was burned
up, he became tranquil.
He had reached perfection.
And he thought to himself, this is the
authentic way on which in the past so
many great seers, who also knew all higher
and all lower things, have traveled on to
ultimate and real truth.
And now I have obtained it.
Now, you can see what Buddha thought about
the supreme being behind the universe.
Or can you?
Well, you can't.
Because he doesn't even mention him.
Because Buddha actually hardly even believed that there
was a supreme being.
And most of his sermons are concerned not
at all with the possibility or the existence
of a supreme being, but they're concerned with
a method of transcendental meditation by which one
can psychically and psychologically escape from some of
the disadvantages of this present world.
In fact, loved ones, Buddha is not concerned
with the supreme being.
And his writings do not tell us anything
about the supreme being.
And Buddha's own method of salvation did not
concern the supreme being at all.
There is a further problem.
The Buddhists do not have the same attitude
to history as we have.
And so it's very hard to find out
what Buddha originally said in 500 BC, because
for the next 1500 years, all kinds of
people added to his words and added their
own meditations.
Until in the Tibetan version of the Buddhist
scriptures, you have 325 different volumes.
And so it's almost impossible to distinguish between
what Buddha said and what all his followers
over the next hundreds of years thought.
Well, let's go to a book that does
not have that problem.
There is a book that was formed and
settled as far as its extent is concerned
shortly after the man received the revelations.
And that's the Quran.
Muhammad lived about 600 AD, you remember, about
600 years after Jesus.
And here's the record of Muhammad's first revelation.
According to Muslim tradition, one night in Ramadan,
about the year 610, as he was asleep
or in a trance, the angel Gabriel came
to Muhammad and said, recite.
He replied, what shall I recite?
The order was repeated three times until the
angel himself said, recite in the name of
your Lord, the creator who created man from
clots of blood.
Recite, your Lord is the most bounteous one
who by the pen has taught mankind things
they do not know.
When he awoke these words, we are told
seemed to be inscribed upon his heart.
And actually, if you read the Quran, you
read that Muhammad says the creator of the
world is merciful and forgiving, but he is
also stern and righteous in his judgment.
And that he demands faith in his servant
Muhammad.
But where did Muhammad get that information?
Well, partly from what he knew of Christianity,
because it had been in the world for
600 years by that time.
Partly from what he knew of Judaism.
And you remember he refers often to Abraham
and to the early Jewish fathers, because it
had been in the world for three or
four thousand years before Muhammad.
But otherwise, from his own personal, subjective, mystical
experiences.
That's where he gets his information.
In other words, when Muhammad says the creator
of the universe, I'll tell you what he's
like.
He's like this and this and this.
Apart from Christianity and Judaism, the only other
source Muhammad has for those revelations is his
own personal, subjective, mystical experience, which actually no
one can contradict, because no one was inside
his mind but himself.
But equally well, no one can confirm.
Now, do you see that that's the place
we're left when we begin to look for
information on the creator of our universe?
You really come to a place where you're
stymied, you know.
Because all you face is Homer, the Buddhist
scriptures, the Koran, the Mormon scriptures, all kinds
of writings by men who are speaking only
from their own personal, subjective experience.
In other words, it's like asking a person,
what is the creator of the world like?
And he says, well, I think he's like
this.
Well, you can't get hold of any hard
evidence on him, you know.
You can't get anybody who says, well, he
did this and this and this and this,
and here it is, now you observe for
yourself.
Somehow, we can't get any information on the
actions and words of our creator so that
we can tell what he's like ourselves.
All we do is, we face opinions of
other men and women.
The tragedy is, of course, they're no different
from ourselves.
Muhammad was no different from the rest of
us.
He died like an ordinary man.
He himself didn't claim to perform any miracles
at all, didn't claim to be in any
unique way related to the creator of the
universe.
The same with Buddha, the same with all
the others, Zoroaster, Confucius.
We're facing only men's own personal opinions and
ideas of what the creator of the universe
is like.
Until you come to this book.
I cannot express sufficiently to you how absolutely
unlike all the other books this book is.
The other books are subjective accounts of men's
mystical visions.
This book is a book of facts about
the activities of our creator over thousands and
thousands of years.
That's the difference.
I don't know if you really see it,
you know, because if you haven't studied closely
ancient books, you'll have a feeling, well, this
is one like the others.
No, this is a history book.
Muhammad's Quran is the activities of himself during
his lifetime and then of his own mystical
visions.
This book is almost a year by year,
century by century commentary on the actual actions
and words of the creator of the universe.
Which, of course, is really the only way
for one to know a person.
I can tell you, do you know Jimmy
Carter is like this and this and this?
And you can say, well, that's your opinion.
If I knew him as you knew him,
maybe I'd feel the same way, but I
don't.
Until you see the man's actions or hear
his words for yourself, then you can tell.
This is a record of those actions and
words.
In other words, loved ones, you turn, if
you would like, to Genesis 6, verse 13.
That's the kind of information you get.
Genesis 6, verse 13.
You don't get an account of some man's
vision or some man's opinion.
You get an actual action.
Genesis 6, verse 13.
And when you look at it, what an
action, you know.
And God said to Noah, I have determined
to make an end of all flesh, for
the earth is filled with violence through them.
Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
And so there's God saying, in verse 17,
you see, for behold, I will bring a
flood of waters upon the earth to destroy
all flesh, in which is the breath of
life from under heaven.
Everything that is on the earth shall die.
So it's not some little thing like, see
the stone in front of you, I'll make
it fall.
Well, who can ever check up on that?
But these are events like, I'll destroy the
whole earth with a flood.
And we, of course, keep tripping over the
confirmation that that flood took place.
Because our whole fossil record, which you know
is living creatures and plants that seem to
be frozen in the very middle of life,
that's how the whole evolutionary table is built
up.
That very fact of fossils reinforces that whole
truth.
That at one time in our world, there
was a cataclysmic catastrophe that suddenly caught an
animal in the midst of swallowing some grass.
And we actually can see the animal at
that point.
It's the kind of thing that would happen
in a flood, in something that came suddenly.
Everywhere we go in our universe, we see
the sedimentary rocks.
We see the layers of rocks that were
affected by a great flood.
So, the amazing thing about this book is,
it tells us things that our Creator did
that actually we can confirm by a study
of the world itself.
It talks about Him leading a whole people
out of Egypt, through a wilderness for 40
years, and then into Canaan.
We see by checking up on the Egyptian
records, yes, they were there.
They were slaves in Egypt.
We see that nothing but miracles could keep
a people alive for 40 years in that
wilderness.
Then we see that that people actually lives
in that land today.
And that that people practices the same laws
that were given to them 3,000 years
ago.
In other words, this God says to Moses
in 1440, Thou shalt not covet.
Then Saul loses the throne and the kingdom
because he coveted spoils in a war.
Then in the first century of our era,
Ananias and Sapphira are struck dead because they
coveted the things that they had given to
Jesus' church.
So, what you find with this book is,
it's an account over thousands and thousands of
years of the Creator acting consistently in different
situations in ways that we can confirm by
studying other contemporary histories.
It's things like this man Jesus who said,
I'm going to be executed, then I'm going
to go and be with my Father, and
then after three days I'll come back.
Now, that's not the kind of thing you
say if you want to bluff people because
it's too easy to show that He did
not come back except that all history says
He did come back.
And He lived for 30 or 40 days
here on this earth confirming that what He
said about His Father is actually true.
So, loved ones, when you come to this
book, you come to facts, historical facts that
you can check up on and you can
confirm and you can look at your Creator
for yourself and say, I said that to
Adam.
I said that to Moses.
I said that to Abraham.
I said that to Isaiah.
Yeah, I see.
He keeps coming through the same way.
Yes, He is that kind of God.
Not only He says, but He does.
When He describes through Isaiah in 800 B
.C. that His Son will be crucified and
that they will part His garment among them.
Then you come 900 years later and Jesus
actually is crucified and the soldiers do actually
gamble for His one garment.
And so, even where you have visions in
this book, you have them proven out.
The prophecy comes true.
Now, loved ones, it's just a different kind
of book.
It's a book of facts, not a book
of personal subjective visions.
You may say, well, yeah, but...
I mean, the facts that are in this
book, how do you know that they're the
facts that actually occurred?
And that is a problem.
You can see that.
Because these facts occurred thousands of years ago.
I mean, you can see there was lots
of time for all kinds of people to
write up imaginary accounts of these facts, to
make up their own stories of the facts.
To mutilate the facts, to pervert them.
Maybe they could take an ordinary man like
Moses and they could make him seem to
be a great leader.
And you can see how easy it is
to do that when you consider that the
original accounts of the facts were written on
manuscript material that was very destructible.
And so the manuscripts were destroyed every maybe
50, 60 years and they had to be
recopied.
So you can see that it's difficult to
tell whether somebody made a mistake in the
copying or whether somebody changed it when they
copied it.
And it's the same, of course, with all
ancient history.
It's really a great problem.
Most of them know Plato's Republic.
Plato wrote his Republic in 400 B.C.
But would you believe that the first manuscript
we have of Plato's Republic is 900 A
.D.? So there were 1,300 years elapsed
there before we have a manuscript of Plato's
Republic.
Now obviously there were many manuscripts before then,
but the only one that exists today in
our world, all the rest have been destroyed,
the only one that exists is 900 A
.D. And it's the same with most of
the ancient history, you know.
You go to Caesar's Gallic Wars or you
go to Homer, Homer's poetry.
We believe Homer's poetry, which was written in
900 B.C. And the first manuscript, and
the only manuscript we have earlier than 1
,000 A.D. is one at 900 A
.D. So it's about 1,800 years or
2,000 years after Homer wrote the poetry
that we have a manuscript of it.
And do you know how many manuscripts we
have of Homer's poetry altogether?
Two.
Two manuscripts.
And yet, of course, we don't question Homer's
poetry.
But you can see why even the history
department of our own university regard anything up
to 200 years after the event as eyewitness
accounts.
You can see that.
Because ancient history is lamentable, really, in its
documentary support.
And yet, of course, we don't question it.
So if you want to look, loved ones,
there is a picture of some of the
typical examples in our own literature today.
You can see that Caesar's Gallic Wars, 55
B.C. And there are only nine manuscripts.
And the first one is 900 years later
than Caesar wrote his Gallic Wars.
Then you see Livy's History, written in 20
B.C. And we have only 20 manuscripts
of it.
And the first one is 400 years after
Livy wrote the history.
Then Tacitus' History was written in 100 A
.D. We have only two manuscripts.
And the first one is 1,000 years
after Tacitus wrote the history.
Thucydides' History was written in 430 B.C.
And there are only eight manuscripts.
And the first one is 1,300 years
later.
Plato's Republic, four manuscripts 1,300 years after
he wrote the book.
Homer's Odyssey, written in 900 B.C., only
two manuscripts.
And the oldest one written 2,000 years
later.
Loved ones, what about the Bible?
Well, it's just unbelievable.
There it is.
The New Testament was written from 40 to
100 A.D. We have 4,000 manuscripts
of it.
4,000 different manuscripts.
And the unbelievable thing is the earliest one
was written 25 years after John's Gospel was
completed.
But do you see?
4,000 different manuscripts.
In other words, if somebody wanted to change
the history of the New Testament, he had
to have a very large family who could
travel into all kinds of hidden, concealed caves
in the deserts because these manuscripts are found
in all kinds of places right from the
earliest days.
And he had to have all his poor
sons laboriously change the history so that it
all agreed.
The difficulty is when he died, he had
to ensure that all his sons had children
and grandchildren because these manuscripts continued to be
found in all kinds of different places.
Written in different styles of writing at different
ages from the year about 100 A.D.
or 125 A.D. to about the year
1,000 A.D. There are 4,000
different manuscripts.
Ones like the Alexandrinus and the Sinaiticus.
By the way, I'd appreciate, loved ones, if
somebody will drop the screen and we'll all
promise not to scream if you'll drop it
to 45 degrees.
The Alexandrinus and the Sinaiticus are in the
British Museum.
The Alexandrinus is a complete manuscript of the
whole Bible and is 350 A.D. in
age according to the Carbon 14 method which
works within hundreds of years but not when
you're talking about millions of years.
And, of course, the style of the writing
also is used to date them.
And the Sinaiticus, just opposite to it in
the corridor, is 450 A.D. Nothing corresponds
in other ancient history to this kind of
documentation.
And the unbelievable thing is, of course, the
manuscript that you can find in the museum
in Manchester and it is just on its
own completely.
It's a scrap of John's Gospel which is
exactly the same as the account of John
18 verses 31 through 33 in the bigger
manuscripts.
And it is dated by Carbon 14 and
by style of writing at about 130-140
A.D. That is only about 30 or
40 years after John wrote the Gospel.
And, of course, you can see the importance
of that.
That here you have an actual piece of
writing that some people looked at who were
actually contemporaries of the people who wrote the
Bible.
That's the kind of manuscript evidence you have.
I think some of us may say, well,
yes, that's impressive, but was the original record
true?
Well, you can see that one of the
important ways of checking out if it is
true is if you had people who were
living while these people wrote the record.
In other words, today is about 15 years,
I think, after Kennedy's assassination.
I think if one of you decided we'll
write a history of Kennedy's assassination showing how
LBJ actually killed Kennedy, then there are millions
of us here who would say, no, no,
it didn't happen that way.
Some of us saw it, some of us
were there, some of us know people who
were there.
No, we know that isn't true.
And the book would immediately be looked upon
as a fraud.
Do you see that's the same situation you
had in the first century?
The records of Jesus' life were being circulated
from 40 to 100 A.D. During that
time there were hundreds of people alive who
had actually seen these events themselves.
All they had to do was say, no,
Mark wrote all that, it isn't true.
It isn't true.
In fact, you have the opposite situation.
You have people like Papias, who was born
in about 60 A.D., and he writes
and tells us of his conversations with the
old white-haired John.
And he tells what he discovered in those
days.
He said, the elder John used to say,
Mark, having become Peter's interpreter, wrote accurately all
that he remembered.
And another man called Polycarp, who was born
in 69 A.D., he knew John personally
also, and yet lived well into the second
century.
And he said, Polycarp would describe his intercourse
with John and with the rest of those
who had seen the Lord, and how he
would relate their words.
And whatsoever things he had heard from them
about the Lord, and about his miracles, and
about his teaching, Polycarp, as having received them
from eyewitnesses of the life of the Word,
would relate it all together in accordance with
the Scriptures.
In other words, when John says, listen, we
were eyewitnesses of these things, that's why you
can trust us, you don't even have to
just take his words, you can look up
other history books of men that knew John,
and that indicate that he lived in the
first century, and that he observed the things
that he observed.
Of course, loved ones, the interesting thing is,
you don't even have to trust just the
New Testament itself.
You can go to people like Tacitus.
He was the foremost historian of Imperial Rome,
and here's what he says.
The author of the name Christians was Christ,
who in the reign of Tiberius suffered punishment
under his procurator, Pontius Pilate.
Another man called Tertullian, who doesn't appear in
the Bible at all, was involved with the
government in their archives, and he said this,
Tiberius accordingly, in whose days the Christian name
made its entry into the world, having himself
received intelligence from Palestine of events which had
clearly shown the truth of Christ's divinity, brought
the matter before the Senate, with his own
decision in favor of Christ.
The Senate, because it had not given the
approval itself, rejected his approval.
Caesar held his opinion, threatening wrath against all
the accusers of the Christians.
A man like Josephus, who was a Jew,
and therefore really committed against Jesus, from the
point of view of Christianity, writes, There was
about this time Jesus a wise man, if
it be lawful to call him a man,
for he was a doer of wonderful works.
A teacher of such men as received the
truth with pleasure.
He drew over to him both many of
the Jews and many of the Gentiles.
He was the Christ.
And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the
principal men amongst us, had condemned him to
the cross, those that loved him at the
first did not forsake him, for he appeared
to them alive again on the third day.
And so, all that is written by the
men who knew Jesus himself in this book,
is confirmed by hundreds of other histories that
were written at the same time.
And maybe the greatest reason for believing them
is, did they grow rich?
Did they grow prosperous and famous and live
to a good old age, because of what
they told about this man Jesus?
No.
If they had been content just to say
he was a good teacher, that's what would
have happened.
But they insisted on saying that he was
the son of God.
And that's the thing that brought them on
to the crucifixion hills and into the lion
arenas.
And loved ones, maybe the greatest argument for
believing what these men said really happened, is
that they suffered for what they talked about.
They suffered.
They did not gain from it.
They suffered for it.
Now, men will die for a thing that
they think may be true.
But nobody will die for what they know
is a lie.
And many of us, you know, in high
school days used to say, well, maybe they
imagined it, maybe they made the story up.
Yes, but you won't die for something you
make up.
You'll only die for what you know is
true.
In other words, if you just allow your
mind to work logically, it's very, very difficult
to get away from the fact that this
is the most reliable history book of ancient
times that we possess.
And that when you read this book, you
are reading actual historical records of what our
Creator has done over four thousand years of
our existence.
And that's why, loved ones, we believe that
there is a God because we can see
how He has dealt with us, human beings,
over a period of four thousand years.
And we believe that He is the Father
of Jesus Christ.
You yourself have to decide, of course.
You have to decide if in the face
of this kind of evidence, you can still
reject the idea of a God.
I think it's very difficult.
But you see, the evidence is now in
your hands, and you must decide.
What I'd like to talk about next Sunday
is whether we can actually tell any more
about this God and whether we have actually
seen Him alive in our world.
Dear God, we are overwhelmed by the completeness
of the evidence that You have left for
us.
Lord, it's very difficult to call black white.
It's very difficult to reject all of ancient
history in order to disprove biblical history.
Lord, we thank You.
All we can do is bow before You
and say that our logical mind can only
accept that You are real, and that You
exist, and therefore that You can actually see
us at this moment.
Lord, we intend to live acknowledging You and
beginning to get to know You and respect
You.
And now the grace of our Lord Jesus
and the love of God and the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with each one
of us now and evermore.
Amen.