Part of the chapter that I want to focus on there in Second Timothy Chapter Three is where the Bible reads in verse fourteen, "But continue thou in the things which thou has learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them, and that from a child thou has known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Now a couple of weeks ago I preached a sermon about where did we get the Bible? Where did the Bible come from? We have in our hands an English King James version of the Bible and thousands of years later we ask the question, "Where do we get this amazing book that is the cornerstone of everything that we believe? It's the source of our faith in Jesus Christ." This is going to be a continuation of that sermon, but the title of this sermon is, "The preservation of the Old Testament." The preservation of the Old Testament.
In the first sermon I covered where the Bible came from in the sense of who wrote the Bible, but now I want to talk about the preservation of the Bible from the time that it was written until now, when we have it in our hands this morning, and specifically I want to talk about the Old Testament. Now if you would, flip back to Isaiah chapter number 59, but let me point out to you what we just read.
Paul says to Timothy, "Continue thou in the things which thou has learned and has been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them." He just finished talking about all the deceivers and false profits and liars that would creep in and bring in all kinds of heresy and false teaching, but he's saying, "But you need to continue in the things that you've learned, continue in the things that you've been assured of, knowing of whom thou has learned them and that from a child thou has known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation though faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God."
What he's telling Timothy is "Stick with what you've been taught. You've had the Word of God from the time you were a child. Don't let deception and lies get your off of the true word of God. Stay with that true word, that scripture that you've known and grown up with that got you saved."
Now, in Isaiah chapter 59, the Bible reads in verse 21, "As for me, this is my covenant with them, sayeth the Lord. My spirit that is upon thee and my words which I put in thy mouth shall not depart out of thy mouth nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, sayeth the Lord from henceforth and forever."
Now this is one of many promises in the Old Testament where God promises that his word will be preserved. He's saying the Word of God that was placed in Isaiah's mouth would not depart out of his mouth or his seed or his seed's seed, and it said from henceforth and forever the words of the book of Isaiah would be known and preached and believed in this world, and God has fulfilled that promise because here we have today the book of Isaiah.
Now if you would go to Psalm chapter 12. As you go to Psalm 12, I'll read for you some scriptures from the New Testament. Jesus said in Matthew 5:18, "For verily I say unto you, till heaven and Earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." He did not say that the general gist of what was said in the law would be preserved. He didn't say that the thoughts or ideas would be preserved. He said, "Every jot and every tittle of the law would be preserved."
Now the jot is basically the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet is what that's referring to, and the tittle is referring to little tiny markings that distinguish letters that look almost exactly the same. If you've ever opened up a Hebrew Bible, you'll notice that a lot of the letters look almost the same. In fact, you don't even have to open up a Hebrew Bible. You can open up a King James Bible to Psalm 119. Don't do it right now, but if you go to Psalm 119 it lists the whole Hebrew alphabet in the King James Bible, Alef, Beit, Gimel, Dalet, and it shows what the symbol looks like, and if you spend some time looking at them, you'll notice that some of them look very similar to each other and you could easily mistake one for the other, and the tittle would be that which would differentiate one from the other.
God says, "Not one jot or one tittle will pass from the law until all be fulfilled." That's a pretty strong statement on the preservation of the Bible. The same thing is found in Luke 16 verse 17, "And it is easier for heaven and Earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail," and what it means to fail means to be missing. It's easier for heaven and Earth to pass ... Now let me ask you, how easy is it for heaven and Earth to pass away and be gone? Okay, that's how hard it would be. In fact, it'd be harder for God's word to not be preserved unto us today.
If you believe the Bible today, you have to believe that God's word has been preserved to us today. What we have today is not something that's roughly kind of in the ballpark of what was in the original law of Moses or in the original books of the prophets like Isaiah. No. What we have today is exactly what was originally written according to the Bible. It says the exact same thing today as when it was given by Moses, as when it was given by Isaiah. That's what the Bible teaches.
The Bible says in Psalm 12, verse 6, "The words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of Earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, oh Lord. Thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever." Go, if you would, to Deuteronomy chapter eight. Deuteronomy chapter eight, while you're turning there I'll read for you from Matthew four where the Bible reads, "But he answered and said it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." How could Jesus make the statement that man lives by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God if many words were missing and if the words hadn't been preserved exactly as they were originally given to Moses? That wouldn't make any sense.
Not only that, but in Acts chapter 15 when James and others in the early church are discussing matters of doctrine, he says in verse 21, "For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day." So according to that scripture, at the time of Christ every synagogue had a copy of the law of Moses and it was read out loud in the synagogue every Sabbath day. So there was no secret as to what it said. It wasn't like you could change a few copies and nobody would know it. Look, every city is reading the same book and it's being read out loud every single Sabbath day in every city. Jesus went to his hometown and went into the Sabbath day, went into the synagogue and read aloud from the book of Isaiah has his custom was, the Bible tells us.
Look at Deuteronomy eight, verse three. "And he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy father's know that he might make thee know that man did not live by bread alone." I'm sorry. "By bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live."
Flip over to Deuteronomy chapter 30, chapter 30 in the same book and we'll start reading at verse 11. "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off." What's he saying there? The Word of God was not inaccessible. It wasn't something that they didn't have access to. He said in verse 12, "It's not in heaven that thou should say, 'Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it unto us that we may hear it and do it?'" But many people say, "Well, it's pure ..." I've literally heard people say this exact thing. "Well, the Word of God is perfect in heaven." They say, "Forever, oh Lord, thy word is settled in heaven."
Well, in heaven it's perfect, but on Earth it's been corrupted and what we have is a copy of a copy and a lot of things are missing and so forth. No, he said, "We don't have to go to heaven to bring it down and look at it. Neither is it beyond the sea that thou should say, 'Who shall go over the sea for us and bring it unto us that we may hear it and do it?' but the word is very nigh unto thee in thy mouth and in thy heart that though mayest do it." God's explaining to them that the word was right there for them to live by, every word of it. They didn't have to go into heaven to get it. They didn't have to cross the sea to get it. It was in their mouth. It's in their heart. It's being read out loud to them. The have copies of it being written down by the Levites and so forth.
Now, flip over to Romans 10, because Romans 10 quotes this scripture from Deuteronomy chapter 30. This is all just the foundation of the sermon and then I'm going to get into the attacks on the Old Testament today and the attacks on the preservation of God's word and show you why if you want to read the real Old Testament, you need to be reading a King James Bible and that these modern versions of the Bible, they don't just corrupt the New Testament, they also corrupt the Old Testament.
Now, we often emphasize the New Testament corruption just because there's so much of it to go around. There's enough to talk about with what the NIV and the New American Standard and the ESV and all these other false Bibles, how they corrupt and mess with the New Testament, and we focus on that because obviously the New Testament is more critical to New Testament doctrine and so forth, but honestly, the Old Testament is also corrupt in these modern versions. It's not just the New Testament that they've corrupted. They've corrupted the old as well, and I'm going to explain to you those attacks on the Old Testament.
This is really interesting when you look at this quote of Deuteronomy 30 in Romans 10. This is a great scripture, by the way, that shows that Jesus is the Word. Now, a lot of people, they struggle with this, where the Bible said in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made." It says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." That only begotten of the Father was the Word made flesh, and the Bible says, "The Word became flesh. The Word was with God. The Word was God," but here's what a lot of people will say.
They'll say, "Well, when it says 'Word' there, it doesn't really mean the Word of the God. Word of God is just kind of a name. It's just kind of a name that's given to Jesus." Well, why would you give somebody the name 'Word?' That doesn't even make ... Why would you name them 'Word?' The Word of God is referring to the Bible. The Word of God is referring to that which comes out of God's mouth, what he speaks. The Word. I mean, just the basic definition.
When any Christian would say, "The Word of God," everybody would know they were talking about the Bible, but all of a sudden when we get to John one, all bets are off. Why? Because people are listening to Theologians and scholars who've been influenced by the so-called Church Fathers, of Alexandria Egypt who came up with this weird philosophy about, "Well, the Greek word for 'word' is 'logos,' and it's not the same as what we think of us 'word,' and blah, blah ..." and they try to mix in all this pagan Greek philosophy or whatever to try to interpret the Bible. Why don't we just let the Bible interpret itself today?
I want you to look down at your Bible and tell me that Jesus is not the Word without what I'm about to show you. See, Jesus is the Word made flesh, and I'm not talking about the physical book when I say 'the Word.' I'm talking about the words in the book. Jesus said, "The words that I say unto you, they are spirit and they are life." When Jesus comes back on a white horse in Revelation 19, he has a name written on his thigh, "The Word of God," but look what the Bible says. Now, before we look at Romans 10, when we were in Deuteronomy 30, was there any question that we were talking about the written scripture as the Word of God?
He said, "Look, the commandment. This commandment that you're hearing today, it's not far off. It's not up in heaven. It's not across an ocean somewhere. It's nigh thee, in thy mouth an in thy heart." That's where the Word of God is, the scripture, the written commandment, the law of Moses. Look what it says here in Romans 10 verse 4. "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth, for Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law that the man which doeth those things shall live by them, but the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise. 'Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven.'"
Now look at the parenthesis here, and this is written by the apostle, Paul and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. That is to bring Christ down from above, "or who shall descend into the deep that is to bring up Christ again from the dead? But what sayeth that the Word is nigh thee. Even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is the Word of faith which we preach that if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in thine heart that God has raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
Here we clearly see Christ and the Word being equated. Do you see that? Because it says, "Bringing Christ down from above or digging up Christ out of the Earth or bringing Christ back from the dead." That's the word. Then it says in Romans 10:17, "So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." So there's no question that Jesus Christ is the Word made flesh. The Bible is clear on that, but the reason I want to point this out to you in Romans 10, how it quotes Deuteronomy 30, is that we don't need to dig up the Word of God today.
You don't need a shovel to find God's word. You don't need a pick. You don't need plane ticket across the ocean to the so-called Holy Land to go find God's Word. The Word is nigh thee. It's in your mouth. In fact, it's in your lap right now. It's in your hand. Hold up a King James Bible. That's where the Word of God ... That's how far you have to go to find the Word of God.
You say, "Well, that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about back then." Yeah, but he said it would be preserved for every generation. "Yeah, but he said it'd be preserved from henceforth forever." So when Paul is talking about this, he's talking thousands of years later, or not quite thousands but many, many centuries later he's speaking and saying, "Hey, the Word is still nigh unto us. We still have the Word of God today," and of course it's been preserved even until now, but people think that we have to dig up a more accurate copy. They think we need something older, closer to the original, right? If we could dig into the Earth and through archaeology discover God's Word ... Why? Because they're denying the preservation of God's Word.
See, this is a spiritual subject. This isn't a matter for unbelieving scholars who have been blinded by the God of this world known as the devil. This is a matter for those who believe because you have to go into it believing that the Bible is the Word of God. Otherwise, let's eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow we die. Why do we even care what the Bible says if we don't believe it's the Word of God? I'm speaking today to a group of people that believe and know this to be the Word of God.
If you believe that it's the Word of God, you have to believe it's preserved because he promised it over and over again, so it's ridiculous for someone to say, "Well, I believe the Bible is God's Word, but it's been corrupted so I need to go dig up an older one." No, God has preserved it to us today. Now, when you look at the new versions, the NIV, the ESV, the Living Bible ... What is the other really big one that I'm leaving out? What is it? Yeah, the New Living Translation is another big one. When you look at these Bibles you'll notice that they have dramatic differences in the Old Testament and not just in the New Testament, and you have to ask yourself, "Why is that?"
Now, not only that, but even today there are people who claim to be King James Bible believing Christians or Textus Receptus believing Christians and yet they would say, "Well, when you go to the Dead Sea Scrolls we find some new light and actually there are some things in the Old Testament that we need to change now that we've discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls." Now who has ever heard about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Put up your hand.
Pretty much every hand in the building. Now, these Dead Sea Scrolls were just coincidentally dug up in 1947, right as the nation of Israel was being founded. It just happened to be that nobody found them until then and just supposedly some shepherd boy threw a rock in a cave and happened to find it just randomly, it just happened to be in the year of 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls are being used ... For example, Bibles International was a group that had been angry about our film, "New World Order Bible Versions," and they claimed to be translating from the traditional Bible text, but they said, "Well, in the Old Testament, though, we deviate from the King James a little bit because of what was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls."
I've had people tell me over and over again, "Well, the King James translators, they got a lot of thing wrong in the Old Testament because they didn't have the Dead Sea Scrolls. They didn't have the manuscripts available to hem that we have available to us today, so you have to understand that they didn't get it right because of that reason."
Well, let me just explain to you what the Dead Sea Scrolls are because most people have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but they don't really know the details of what that even means, and so people today are constantly lying about what the Dead Sea Scrolls are because nobody bothers to read up on it and they go, "Oh, okay ..." They just, "Oh, well, yeah, let's get the NIV then because it reflects these modern discoveries."
Let me just start out by saying this. I don't care what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. Why would the Word of God be buried for two thousand years and then all of a sudden we have to dig up an accurate copy? God has just left us without the true Word of God for thousands of years and for all these centuries, not just the King James Bible but all the other Bibles that were translated around the 1500s, the 1600s with the printing presses being cranking in Europe for the first time. "Everybody's had the wrong Bible all this time because we dug up something new." That right there defies the preservation of God's Word.
Let me just explain to you what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. There is a series of caves that are by the Dead Sea, and there are 11 of them that had old, ancient documents found in them, manuscripts that are from around 200 BC to shortly after the time of Christ, but honestly, 99 percent of what was found in the caves is from around 100 to 200 BC, okay? There's like one document that was from around the time of Christ and it had nothing to do with Jesus Christ. The vast majority of these documents are from 100, 200 BC.
Basically, when you go through all of these documents and add them up, they represent 930 different scrolls that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Right next to these caves where the scrolls are found, there's a little settlement or a little town there that's known as Qumran that was buried in the earth that was excavated by archaeologists, and so it's been shown that the people who lived in this settlement in Qumran, these are their scrolls in the caves right next to where they live and so on and so forth. The scrolls explain their way of life and so forth.
You see, out of these 930 scrolls that were found at the Dead Sea starting in 1947, about 230 of them are books of the Bible. You have a lot of copies of Isaiah, you have a lot of copies of Deuteronomy, a lot of copies of the Pslams, and every book of the Old Testament is represented except the Book of Esther. Out of these 230 scrolls, you have at least partial every book of the Old Testament. Then the other 700 scrolls are not the Bible. It's just other books and writings of these people who lived there.
Let met tell you a little bit about the people who put these scrolls together, who owned these scrolls, who lived in Qumran. Basically, this is usually known as the Qumran Sect. When we say the word 'sect,' usually we would call it, 'cult.' Okay? The reason they're called the Qumran Sect is because this is a very strange group of people who had gone out to live in the middle of the desert in a commune where they weren't owning any of their own money or their own private property. If they wanted to join this commune, they had to turn in all their money to the leadership. They had a cult leader that they called The Teacher of Righteousness, and they had all kinds of strange beliefs and doctrines that are found in these scrolls.
Many scholar believe that they were totally celibate, that it was all dudes living there. Other scholars say, "No, they were married," but even the scholars who say they were married have demonstrated that they had a very weird view toward women in the scrolls, like a very negative view, like basically that having a physical relationship with your wife is a bad thing. It's just kind of only a necessary evil just to procreate, which is obviously a bizarre, warped doctrine.
You say, "How many people lived in this commune, this weird cult out in the middle of the desert where it might have been a bunch of dudes or maybe there were some women there that were looked down upon as necessarily evil?" It's been estimated that about 150 to 200 people at a time lived there, but it was over the course of a few hundred years. Like I said, 200 BC until it was actually 8066 when people stopped living there. Over the course oa few hundred years at any given time there were about 200 people living there.
Now think about this for a minute. There are millions of Jews in the world at that time. There are millions of Jews living in other parts of Judea, living in Jerusalem, living in other parts of the world. This is just 200 people, and not only that, these 200 people have all kinds of weird, strange beliefs. Here are some of their beliefs. First of all, they believed in a hardcore predestination, hardcore what we would today call a Calvinist view that just everything that happens is God's will and that bad people are bad because God made them that way and there's nothing that they can do to change that, and good people are good because God made ... and there's nothing they can do to change. It's all foreordained. Every single thing that happened is God's will. That was one of the beliefs of this group.
Now only that, but these people ... and if you would, flip over to Mark chapter seven. Not only that, but these people were basically just obsessed with minutia of God's law in the sense that they couldn't see the forest for the trees. They were just like where Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees and other Jews for having all these extra man-made rules and washings and things, where they just have page after page in these scrolls, page after page after page where they're just arguing minutia.
For example, you know how the Bible tells you over and over again, "If you do something that makes yourself unclean that you're supposed to bathe and wash your flesh in water and then you're still considered unclean until the even," until the end of that day. Why? Obviously just to make sure that you're actually clean before you're declared clean, but they add just pages and pages arguing about, "Well, do you have to wash right at even? Do you have to wash the moment the sun is going down or is it okay to wash earlier in the day and just be unclean until even?" Just going on and on about it.
Another huge argument, they write a letter, this sect, this cult, they write a letter to the priests at Jerusalem where they list everything that's wrong with the temple. "This is why we can't do sacrifice at the temple. This is why ..." and keep in mind, did Jesus go to the temple? Did his mom go to the temple? Did his stepfather, not his real father, but obviously who raised him, Joseph, did they go to the temple? Did Jesus send people to the temple and say, "Oh, go offer the gift that Moses commanded?" No, no, no. These people had nothing to do with the temple because they said, "Oh, the temple is just completely impure. Everybody in the world's wrong. Only us 200 people out in the middle of the desert. We're right and everybody else is wrong."
They wrote this big list of grievances to send to the high priest in Jerusalem of, "This is what's wrong with the temple," and these are some of the gross errors that they pointed out, why they could have nothing to do with the temple, why they have to go live out in the desert. They said this, "When you're pouring the oil from one vessel into another lower vessel ..." Let's say I have some oil here and I have another and I pour it in, right? Well, they said this, "What if you're pouring from a clean vessel into an unclean vessel?" Okay? Well, that doesn't make the bottom vessel clean, does it? If it starts out unclean and then you pour something clean into it, it's all dirty, right? Any idiot know that.
Here's what they said. They said that the uncleaness travels upstream, so that if you take something clean or like, let's say, wine. You take some clean wine and you pour it into the dirty wine, the dirtiness travels upstream and make this be dirty. That's why we can't worship in Jerusalem. Just stupid stuff like that.
Here's another thing that they didn't agree with, and this is a little bit crass, but I'm just giving you the facts here. Another thing that they said was that it was unlawful, according to the Bible, to use the bathroom on the Sabbath day. Can't do it. I mean, no elimination on the Sabbath day. This is one of their core teachings. See, these people are missing the weightier matters of the law. Love, mercy and judgement. They're the type that wanted to tithe on the [inaudible 27:56] and then miss out on the big picture.
Look what Jesus said in Mark chapter seven, verse one. "Then came together unto him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem, and when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defile," that is to say with unwashed hands, "they found fault, for the Pharisees," watch this, "and all the Jews ..." So was it just the Pharisees? "... and all the Jews, except they washed their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the market except they wash, they eat not, and many other things there be which they have received a hold as the washing of cups and pots, brazen vessels and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, 'Why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders but eat bread with unwashen hands?'"
"He answered and said unto them, 'Well hath the Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites. As it is written, these people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. How be it in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men? For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of man. As the washing of pots and cups and many other such like things ye do,' and he said to them, 'Full well you reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition.'"
This is a perfect picture of these people living in Qumran because they're missing out on what God told them to do, of actually going and offering these sacrificed at Jerusalem and going to the temple and going through all that. This is Old Testament, mind you, 200 BC, 100 BC, because they're too worried about whether that pot that was at the top of the equation was still clean after pouring it into a dirty vessel. I mean, just that kind of stupid, minutia and splitting of hairs.
These people made the Pharisees look lenient on these cleanliness laws. They're writing to the Pharisees saying, "You guys are too watered down. Everything's unclean. The whole temple is unclean. You guys are getting it all wrong." These people were a very strange group of people. Weird beliefs, and it's only 150, 200 people. Okay, let's talk about the scrolls themselves, but first of all, does this sound like the group of people that you would trust to give you the definitive, "What the Old Testament really said, what it really said back then"?
"I mean, I know this is the traditional Old Testament text that's been passed down that everybody's been reading and believing and preaching, but we dug up what it really said back then." From some weird group. Not only that, but there's evidence of them tampering with scripture at this group. The most famous Dead Sea Scroll is known as the Isaiah Scroll. Who's ever heard of that?
Here's what you don't know about the Isaiah Scroll, is that in the cave where the Isaiah Scroll was found, which is known as Cave One, there were actually two Isaiah Scrolls found. One of them was pristine, relatively pristine and in really good condition, and this is the famous Isaiah Scroll, the whole book of Isaiah preserved unto us and so forth, and people talk a lot about that. That one is known as 1Q Isaiah A. That's the scholarly designation for it, but there's also a 1Q Isaiah B that was found in the same cave. Here's what has been found.
1Q Isaiah B matches up with what we have today. Masoretic traditional Hebrew Old Testament that our King James is translated from, whereas scroll A was written by the people at the sect themselves, and this is evidenced by the fact that the language had been updated to their style of language at that time. See, the book of Isaiah had been written centuries before. They had updated the language to their time period and made changes, so you literally have right next to each other in the same cave the right one that was in worse shape, so it doesn't get as much publicity because it was more beat up and had more fragments from it and everything, and then you have this other nicer, newer one that's the one that they've changed.
Now, you can tell that they've changed it because of the fact that they had their own style of Hebrew that they used in this Qumran Sect. Now, religions have done this throughout history where they develop their own way of speaking. For example, the Quakers are a good example of this, where the Quakers would use thee and thou forms and they would talk differently than everyone else around them basically as a style to kind of set them apart, where they want to dress funny and talk funny just to kind of distance themselves from normal people.
These people have their own style of Hebrew, and in this style of Hebrew, they made it sound old, but they violated grammar to do so. It's sort of like when people try to talk like the King James, but they don't really understand the King James language, so they're like, "Well, I thinketh ..." They don't understand that in the King James, 'thinketh,' would be 'he thinketh' or 'she thinketh.' Thou thinkest, not thou thinketh. It's 'thou thinks.' They don't understand the difference between a first person, second person, third person. You know what I mean? So they just kind of throw in a lot of thee's and thou's just to sound ...
That's what these people do in their scrolls, where they try to make it sound all holy and old fashioned. They have their distinct language style. You have right next to each other these two Isaiah's that don't match. Does this sound like a trustworthy place? To correct the Bible that we've all ... Millions, millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people have? "No, it's wrong. Let's go with the one we dug up from Qumran."
Now when I explain this to my brother, Clint, here's what he said. He said it's sort of like if you dug up a Mormon church and you found a King James and then you found a Book of Mormon and then you found a Joseph Smith translation of the Bible and it said, "Oh, well this is the real Bible," or I'm going to trust them for their King James. The Book of Mormon, 75 percent of the Book of Mormon is plagiarized from the King James. Hello.
I'll take it a step further because at least the Mormons have what? Ten million members. This is 200 people. This would be more like if you went up to northern Arizona to the fundamental LDS where they follow Warren Jeffs, the cult up there, and it would be like if you trusted them to tell you where the real Bible is. I mean, would any of you drive up to northern Arizona where the polygamists, FLDS cult is, Warren Jeffs, I think, is now in prison, the cult leader, but I think he's still the leader from prison. Would you drive up there and trust all those people that are marrying all the 11, 12 and 13-year-olds to have 18 wives and 20 wives, all these creepy weird, FLDS ... Are you going to go to them and say, "Would you show us the true Word of God?"
Even that's not even a good enough example because at least there's about 10 thousand of them. We're talking about 200 weirdos, and that's who you're trusting to just throw the historical, traditional Bible in the trash, but doesn't it just sound so scholarly though? The Dead Sea Scrolls. I mean, the Dead Seas Scrolls. Brother, have you taken the Dead Sea Scrolls into account? See, nobody know what they really are when you actually look at the evidence.
Here's other books, by the way, that they have. Not only did they have these 230 Bible manuscripts. They had 700 other books. Well, here's some of the other things they had. They had a book called the Genesis Apocryphon, which is basically just a rewriting of the book of Genesis. Just rewriting it in their own words. Completely different wording, but presenting it as scripture. Not only that, they had another book called "The book of Jubilees," which is a similar book. Then they had a book called "The Temple Scroll," which is basically Deuteronomy with a bunch of changes made, and instead of God speaking to Moses, it's just God speaking directly.
It's claiming to be scripture and it's just a reworking, rewriting. They have tons of books like this, just twisting scripture. Sort of like the Book of Mormon where they take scripture and just kind of change it and rework it and so forth. Not only that, but they had a giant copper scroll that's basically a buried treasure map to 26 tons of gold.
Not only that, they had a book on horoscope information where you could tell what your kids will look like depending on what time of year you conceive them. These people are real winners. Then, of course, they add the Book of Enoch into the bargain, the so-called Book of Enoch, which they say, "Oh, we have an original Hebrew Book of Enoch found with the Dead Sea Scrolls." That's a lie. It's in Aramaic. Not in Hebrew. Totally different language. Related to Hebrew, but not the same language.
I've got to hurry up. I'm out of time. Here's what blew me away as I was studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. You know what a lot of the scholars were saying? "Well, we believe," they said, "that an earthquake may reveal more scrolls." The right earthquake is going to reveal more scroll. Here's the thing. These people are willing to change their Bible tomorrow. Look, if they dug up some new scroll at the Dead Sea tomorrow, James White would change everything. We have them in New World Order Bibles and say, "All research on textual criticism before the Egyptian papyri is irrelevant." He said, "Westcott and Hort got it wrong because they were working before the papyri. Everything's changed now."
Look, what if they dug up something tomorrow? They'll change everything. Are you willing to just change the Bible? No, it's been preserved. It's been passed down to every generation. The thing that's so weird about this where they're ready to just change, think about it. The devil had all this junk in that cave. He knew it was there, and he pulls it out at the right time. When the devil wants to pull it out. When he's ramping up for the end times, he's getting the false Jewish state together. "All right. Let's get out those stupid scrolls from 2000 years ago from that weird cult so we can change the Bible."
Now you say, "Well Pastor Anderson, I've always heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls confirming the Word of God." Yeah, confirming the Word of God to the faithless. To people who had no faith, basically it showed that there was some kind of Old Testament manuscript that went back 2000 years, but did we ever doubt that? No. That's just for the faithless. They say, "Well, it was pretty close to what we have today." Well, close but no cigar because you need to have every word. I don't care about the archaeological discovery because it's junk, because it's from a weird cult and it should be completely rejected out of hand as being totally irrelevant to what we have today and the traditional received, passed down Bible.
I got to hurry up. I'm almost out of time and I want to talk about another major source of corruption, because there are really two sources of corruption for the modern Bible versions, and I like to call them Sodom and Egypt. These are the two. The Dead Sea Scrolls basically where Sodom was. Then the rest of it is coming from Egypt. Now we all know about the New Testament, especially if you've seen New World Order Bible versions or if you've studied the subject at all of King James Onlyism. You know that the false, corrupt manuscripts are coming from Alexandria, Egypt. What a lot of people don't realize is that there's a false Alexandria, Egypt Old Testament as well that corrupts modern Bibles like the NIV.
Now my whole life I always wondered whenever I'd be looking in the NIV, at the bottom of the page, sometimes there will be a footnote that says, "Well, in the Hebrew, it says this." I always scratch my head, thinking to myself, "I thought the whole Testament was written in Hebrew. I thought you guys are translating from the Hebrew. So why do you translate it one way and then say, 'Well, the Hebrew says something different'?" I'm thinking, "I thought you were translating from the Hebrew." Has anybody ever thought about that or wondered about that?
Here's the thing. It's because the NIV is not totally translated from the Hebrew. This is the big fraud that nobody talks about, the fact that the King James Bible is translated out of the original tongues. The Old Testament is translated from the Hebrew. The New Testament is translated from the Greek. In fact, when King James authorized this version, that was one of the rules, his 11 rules for the translator. He said, "You must translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew and the New Testament from the Greek," but did you know that the modern versions, they don't translate the whole thing from the Hebrew? They'll deviate from the Hebrew to go with what's called "The Greek Septuagint," which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament, and because they have no faith in the Hebrew Old Testament that we've been passed down, they say, "Well, we got to go with the older more reliable, and it's the Septuagint."
The translate from Greek. They translate the Old Testament from Greek, not the whole thing, of course, but in certain places. They deviate from what the Hebrew says and go with what the Greek says. Then they put a little note at the bottom that says, "Oh, by the way, here's what the Hebrew says that we skipped." Does everybody understand what I'm saying?
You say, "Well, what is the Septuagint? What is this corrupt document?" The Septuagint is the biggest lie and the biggest fraud, and I'm going to expose it to you right now, because they claim that the Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew that came about at about 200 BC, and they say that this thing was translated in 200 BC and that the apostles quoted from it and that's how we know it's the Word of God, because the apostles quoted from it. Who's heard this before? Yeah, lots of people, but in reality this is not true whatsoever. In fact, there's not evidence of the Old Testament being translated into Greek in 200 BC. What there is evidence of is only the first five books being translated.
Isn't it funny that when they want to show you where Paul quoted from in the Old Testament, guess what? It's Psalms. It's Jeremiah. Guess when we have manuscripts of those? Three or four hundred years after Christ. Let me give you the names. Let me see if these names sound familiar to you. The names of the old Septuagint manuscripts that the new versions are going to. Here's the name of one of them, Snaiticus. Here's the name of another one, Vaticanus. Vatican? Hmm. Vaticanus? Here's another one, Alexandrines. Those are the three big manuscripts of the Septuagint from three or four hundred years after Christ. That's supposedly telling us what the Greek translation said 200 years before Christ that Jesus supposedly quoted from.
People lie about this. What it really comes down to is that the "Septuagint," quote, unquote, that we know today has nothing to do with what was translated in 200 BC. That's the truth. Now this book right here I have in my hand is the Septuagint, claiming to be the Septuagint, and the reason it's called Septuagint is because supposedly it was translated by 72 Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt. Of course, all the historical evidence only points to the fact that they only translated the first five books, Genesis through Deuteronomy. All the evidence from before Christ, that's what it shows.
Then you have a guy that comes along a couple hundred years after Christ and his name is Origin. This guy, Origin was such a weirdo that he cut off his own stones. I'll call it what the Bible calls it, his stones. We would call it something else in our modern vernacular. This guy cut off his own stones and thought he was spiritual for cutting them off. This is who we're trusting to give us the Septuagint, because this guy gave us the earliest Septuagint. A couple hundred years after Christ, a guy cuts off his own stones and puts out a book called, "The Hexapla," which is like a parallel Bible showing different versions, and one of the columns he labeled, "Septuagint," and it's a corrupt Greek translation that he doctored and altered and changed.
He claims, "Oh, this is the Septuagint from 400 years ago," but there's no evidence of that. Here's what people have said for years. People have rejected the Septuagint for years as being corrupt. That's why the King James translators didn't use it. They used the Hebrew scriptures, but then the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and then everything changed.
Now here's the thing about this. People will lie to you and say, "Well, this proves that the Septuagint goes back before the time of Christ because it's found in the Dead Sea Scrolls," so it wasn't originated by Origin, but here's what they found at the Dead Sea Scrolls, only scraps of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Now, look, how does that prove that what Origin put out which included the Apocrypha and all the rest of the Old Testament books, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah ... How does that prove anything?
We know historically that the first five books were translated into Greek a few hundred years before Christ, and even scholars who look at this book right here will tell you that this was not all translated by one person. It's translated different in different parts. It's clearly from different time periods, but no, no, no. We're supposed to believe, this is what they want us to believe, that this book that I have in my hand was just this whole book was translated 200 years before Christ and the disciples quoted from it.
I read all kinds of articles where people said, "Well, you know, people who take the Bible literally have a real big problem now that the Dead Sea Scrolls have discovered the Septuagint, proving that the apostles quoted the Septuagint," and then they show you that the apostles quoted it in Jeremiah and Psalms, but what did they find at the Dead Sea? Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Just scraps, little scraps of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. What does that prove about Jeremiah? What does that prove about Psalms? It proves nothing.
In reality, the reason why some of the quotes in the New Testament match up with this book, the corrupt fraud, the Septuagint, is because this is written hundreds of years after the New Testament. Here's what they did. They changed things in this book to match the New Testament, to give this credibility so that people would look at this and say, "Woah, this reads just like the New Testament. This must be what the New Testament was quoting from." You've got the cart before the horse, my friend.
Origin, the pervert, Origin, the Alexandrian False Teacher, False Prophet, his heresies would be a whole sermon. He produced this piece of junk and he twisted scripture in places, and the in other places he conformed it to the New Testament to give it credibility, to make it seem legit, but you will never find, and I know I might be going a little deep this morning, but you will never find, you're not going to find this Greek Septuagint that the apostles are just clearly quoting from before the time of Christ. It's hundreds of years later that this thing comes into existence, and again, I'm not denying that the first five books of the Bible were translated into Greek, but here's the thing, that's not what this book is. This book is hundreds of years later after a guy with no stones messed with it. That's what's going on.
Here's the thing about it. This book can be prove to be corrupt in just a few moments. You just start reading it at the beginning, and here's just a real quick, easy way that everybody's going to understand, just to show you this book is corrupt. Who has ever read through Genesis five where he goes through how old everybody was when they had their kids up to Noah and then you kind of did the math? Whoever got out a piece of paper and pen and did the math and added up how long it was from the creation to the flood? How long was it? Yeah, 1,6056 years, right? One thousand six hundred and fifty-six years.
It's pretty easy math. We've all done it. You figure that out. Well, here's the thing about that. If you do a little bit of digging in that chapter and kind of draw it out on a piece of paper, there's a guy named Methuselah, and Methuselah was the oldest man who ever lived because he lived to be 969 years old. If you do the math, you'll notice that Methuselah dies the exact year of the flood, the exact year. People have wondered, "Did he die in the flood? Did he drown at that age or maybe God was waiting for him to die and then he's going to bring flood?" Those are two different views. They both make sense, right?
Maybe God's waiting for this guy to die, then he brings the flood, or maybe the guy drowned. He lived to be 969 and then he drowned, but anyway, when you read it in the Septuagint and you do the same math, you find that instead of 1,6058 years, it's 2,2056 years, so they've added, they've padded the numbers to make it 600 more years, probably because they're in Egypt and the Egyptians had their own mythology, so they're probably trying to match the Egypt calendar of how far back things went, so they doctor the numbers.
Here's the amazing thing. If you do the math in the Septuagint, this book that I'm holding in my hand right here, this fake so-called origin Septuagint, you'll find that Methuselah dies 14 years after the flood. This old man could tread water. According to this book, the flood is for a year and he's on some driftwood or whatever. He's 900 years old, or else is he a stowaway on the arc? What's going on?
They messed with the numbers, obviously on purpose. You're not going to make a mistake like that. They get all the numbers wrong, they change them on purpose. That's not translating. When you're translating you don't change numbers. "But this translation has Methuselah live an additional 14 years after the flood." That should just show you right here this thing is a piece of junk and you're only a few pages into the thing. Not only that, you go to first Samuel 17, the famous story about David and Goliath, and verses 12 through 31 are gone, 12 through 31. I heard it said that Job, I didn't do the counting on this one, the Book of Job has 400 verses removed in the Septuagint, 400 verses removed.
I looked up a lot of verses in this thing, and you couldn't even hardly recognize them in some places. This is a really corrupt book, but when you get an NIV ... Listen to me. I'm closing the sermon. When you go down to the store and you buy an NIV, they are changing things in the Old Testament to follow this book, the Septuagint. This fraud that there's no evidence of being before Christ. Oh, there's evidence that there was a Greek translation of five books before Christ and maybe more books, maybe there were Greek translations of lots of books. It wouldn't surprise me if there were Greek translations of all the books of the Old Testament, but you know what? Not in this format. Not in this corruption that is being put upon us today as the so called Septuagint.
When you go down and get a New American Standard, an ESV, it is taking changes from this and then putting a little footnote, "Here's what the Hebrew says." Well, you know what? Let's just put a big footnote on the whole King James Old Testament, "This is what the Hebrew says." In the New Testament it's what the Greek says. Look, "Continue thou in the things that you've learned and what you've been assured of," and that's what I'm doing today, is just assuring you today that the King James Bible is the Word of God. It is the same as what it was thousands of years ago. It's in English, but it says the same thing.
We don't need to go dig up some messed up Septuagint or messed up Dead Sea Scrolls and go to the Hebrew that was buried in the Earth. No, we need to go with that which was passed down. That which has been preserved to every generation, and the King James Bible is the Word of God. You don't need to learn Hebrew to understand this. You don't need to learn Greek. You don't need to travel over the sea. You don't need to dig down into the Earth. You don't need to climb up into heaven. It's near you. It's near us. It's in our mouth. It's in our heart. It's what we preach. It is the Word of God. It is the mind of Christ, and isn't it great to have it at our fingertips. Isn't it good to know that it's accurate? That it's reliable?
I don't care what some bozo in the media comes out and says, "Oh, well the Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the Bible has been changed." I read an article from the stupid Huffington Post because they have a whole religion section. Huffington Post religion section. Some Jewish scholar, Doctor So and So. He said, "Well, if you go back to the original Hebrew," he said, "The tenth commandment is not 'Thou shalt not covet.' It's actually, 'Don't take.'" Don't take your neighbor's wife. Don't take your neighbor's ... I think we already have that commandment. It's called, "Thou shalt not steal," idiot.
It's like, "Don't steal," and "Don't take?" No, "it's don't covet," but you know what? You're greedy, so you don't like that 'covet' commandment. Greedy people so they want to say, "Oh, it's 'don't take it.' It's okay to desire it." No, no, no. He said, "Don't desire your neighbor's wife. Don't desire your neighbor's house. Don't desire."
In the same article he said, "It turns out that the word Jubilee is a mistranslation because it has nothing to do wit Jubilation. It has to do with [inaudible 55:35]." It's like, "Hey moron, we got our word 'jubilee' from the Bible. That word originated with the Bible. These people are just fools. I'm thinking, "How can this guy put all these letters after his name of all his doctorates and put this stuff out there and it's printed in a major publication?"
"Oh, this guy really knows what he's talking about. This guy's an expert and he's showing all the mistakes in the modern Bibles." Look, don't listen to this junk. I listen to it for you and I'm here to tell you it's a bunch of junk. Look, when I was six years old, nobody rolled out an ancient scroll for me when I got saved, from a cult with 200 people in it that only use the bathroom six days a week. Nobody showed me that. You know what I was shown as a six-year-old boy? This book right here. The King James Bible, the Word of God. This is where the power is. This is where the Gospel is. This is where the truth is, and you know what? The devil hates this book, so he's got all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, and he will outright just lie to you and say, "Oh, well this proves it. This proves that Paul was quoting Jeremiah from the Septuagint," because we found a piece of Deuteronomy.
It's all lies, my friend. These are outright lies, but they're just banking on the fact that you're not going to look it up and they just want to place these seeds of doubt in your mind to doubt the Word of God. Hey, have faith in God and doubt not. Don't be of little faith. We believe the Word of God because it's power. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for a reliable Bible, Lord. We thank you that we know where it came from. Lord, we know who wrote it and we know that it's been preserved unto us, Lord, and help us not to be gullible and fall for these frauds and scams where people try to prove to us that somehow our Old Testament is not reliable, Lord, but Lord, just because we know this, it doesn't mean that we read it, Lord. So please help every single person here today to read the Old Testament and the New Testament and study to show themselves approved, Lord. If we have this great treasure of the Word of God, help us not to take it for granted. If it's nigh unto us, Lord, help us to reach out and take it and read it and love it. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
