EVIDENCE UNCOVERED: The Lying Scribes, Apocrypha, Mystery Texts & Dead Sea Scrolls

We are seeing a people returning to seeing the full Bible as authoritative for them today. A people dedicating themselves to holiness and obedience to God's law. Yet we are also starting to see a departure from the full Bible in the full Bible movement. And young people especially are confused because they are not taught why they can trust in the Bible. The Holy Bible has now been turned into the fluid Bible where each individual considers themselves possessing the authority to decide what the Word of God is for themselves. Add this and take away that. But can we trust the Bible in this teaching we will address? What do we do with the apocrypha such as Enoch and Jubilees? Were the apocrypha originally in the Bible and later removed? Did the lying scribes tamper with the Bible? Did the Catholic Church decide on the books of the Bible? What about different canons that exist among different denominations? And where does losing trust in the biblical text lead people? Above all, we will see what Jesus has to say about the books contained in the Bible. Hi guys, My name is P.D. van der Westhausen and welcome to this teaching. Let's get right into it. First we need to ask, how should we approach the Bible? Our motive while reading the Scriptures is of utmost importance. Do we read it to understand His Word better or to disprove His Word? For if the Bible is indeed from God, that means that the author is alive and that you need him to understand his words. So if you desire a fish, he will not give you a snake. But if you're coming to argue, rebel and disprove God's power, you harden your heart against him. And you will not be given any gift of understanding His Word. It is impossible to understand or have faith without the Holy Spirit's power working in you. So if you look for answers, and if you truly knock, you will find. But if you don't seek answers, the Word of God will seem foolish to you, for you're not reading it in communion with the Holy Spirit, with the love and fear of God. The Pharisees in the first century disagreed with the identity of Christ. And the reason for that was that they rejected the Scriptures, the Torah and the prophets that spoke of the Messiah. Yeshua didn't debate with them, but he simply told them the sign of his resurrection. And so today, God is not here to debate with you. He is God and you are not. He has given His Word. And if you truly seek him in it with pure motives, you will find the Scriptures open to you and you will find the Messiah. But how was the Bible formed? Has it Been corrupted. Why can we trust it? We explored how the Bible was formed in our previous video, how the Bible was formed with Lex Meyer. But in case you didn't watch it, I'll give you a two minute quick recap. What process was followed when deciding what letters or documents to include in the Bible? We have to understand that the biblical authors being prophets, apostles, psalmists, they wrote independent letters, later formally combined into what we call the the biblical canon. They are categorized as 66 books within the Bible today. That's why Bible in fact just means the books. But how were these books chosen? And did the Catholic Church decide on the books in the Bible? The story goes that in 325 A.D. at the council of Nicaea, the Roman Catholic Church called for a popular vote from the church leaders set up by Constantine. And it was this vote that decided which books would be making it into the Bible. This idea was popularized by the 2003 bestseller the Da Vinci Code. And this idea got really popular in our culture. And many today think that Constantine or Nicaea established the Bible. But the sad part about all of this is that this can be so easily disproven by a few simple Google searches. We have open records at exactly what happened at the Council of Nicaea. And you can go and read the notes and you'll quickly see that Nicaea had nothing to do with the establishment of the biblical canon. It didn't decide which books are to be included. Rather, it was a meeting about what to do about Arianism. So if Nicaea wasn't where they decided, how were the books chosen? New Testament scholar F.F. bruce in the New Testament Documents, page 22 writes the one thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list. On the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and general apostolic authority, direct or indirect. So if you went to the average believer in the early church and you ask them, so how did you choose which books to consider as scripture? They'll look at you strange and say, well, we are not choosing anything as much as recognizing these were the books handed down to us by the apostles. There was no vote. There was only the words of those who walked with Yeshua, who he appointed to testify and witness and to lead the early Church. But is the word that we have uncorrupted? What about the allegation that the Scriptures have been tampered with by the lying scribes? Jeremiah 8. 8 states the proof text for this. How can you say we are wise and the law of the Lord is with us? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie. These words by Jeremiah were written roughly 600 years before Christ. And if what he said has occurred by the time of the first century, Jesus would have addressed it. And he did. He spoke often about the scribes and the Pharisees and how their interpretations of the law became man made laws that they considered to be as law on the same level as the Torah itself. Jesus addressed this often as in Matthew 23:2. The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses seat. So do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on the people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. Jesus is telling them to obey the law of God delivered by Moses, but to not imitate the lives of the scribes. These lies that the scribes tried to communicate to the people are still evident in orthodox Judaism today, where thousands of man made traditions and laws are added on top of those law of God. For example, the thousands of laws on how to keep the Sabbath that has come in as traditions, the Sabbath being holy and of God was made into a lie in the minds of men. In both Christianity and Judaism it has been made into a lie. And this is simply proven by how it is viewed and the questions that arise. Questions like, well, do you use electricity on the Sabbath? Do you use an elevator on the Sabbath? Jesus always took issue with these man made teachings of the scribes and never took issue with the law, the prophets or the writings. He would not be telling his followers to obey the Torah if it had been corrupted by the lying pen of the scribes. By this he authenticates the Torah as it is in the first century and we can trust that it had been handed down without any corruption. But has the Bible of today since the first century been corrupted? So what's interesting about this is that we have access to thousands upon thousands, thousands of ancient Greek manuscripts. But yet when the King James Version was compiled, the King James translators relied on later manuscripts because they didn't have access to the ancient manuscripts that we have since discovered. Today they used the Masoretic text and the text as receptors. And the Textus Receptus for example, is from the 15th century. Yet the early manuscripts that we've discovered only in the last 200 years, such as for example, the P1 manuscript, which was discovered and dates back to 250 A.D. which is an ancient fragment of the Gospel of Matthew. When we look at that, we see that the King James version lines up shockingly well with it. We realize that discovering more manuscripts as in the last 200 years, wouldn't complicate things by contradicting translations such as the King James, which relied on later manuscripts, but rather it reinforced the authenticity of because of the alignment. Another example are the Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts dated from about the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. and as they were discovered in 1946, they also confirmed the accuracy of our Bibles, that they have been indeed faithfully copied for over 2,000 years. So we see that the ancient writings as it appeared in the first century had been authenticated by Jesus and had been faithfully preserved unto this day. But what was the collection of books, the biblical canon that Jesus held to and what was the established canon in the first century? Whilst there wasn't a canon in the same way that we think of it like a compilation of books contained in the Bible, they did have books that they considered as being divinely inspired by God. The famous ancient historian Flavius Josephus, in his writing against Apion at the end of the first century, wrote the for we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only 22 books which contain the records of all of the pastimes which are justly believed to be divine. And of them, five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. The prophets who were after Moses wrote down what was done in their times in 13 books. And the remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for the conduct of human life. Josephus makes a point that stands today, that people write books and we disagree with one another and debate over all these things. But there are certain books, he says, that are considered divine, that is not to be argued over in terms of whether they are true. The Law, the prophets and the writings, or the Psalms, as he distinguished, is distinguished from the other books. Josephus mentions 22 books, and these 22 books immediately may make you think, well, we don't have 22 books, we have more books, 39 in the old Testament. And yet the reason for this is simply because of a difference in how they are counted. We know that the minor prophets today are separated in our Bibles, but in the first century they were combined into one book of the minor prophets. In fact, even looking at a Hebrew Bible today as used by the Jewish people, you will see that they have the same writings that are in your Old Testament. But you will find that they are simply combined and counted differently as how they are categorized. So according to the historian Josephus, we have the same writings in our Old Testament as they had considered divine back then. But if the writings established to be divine by Josephus in the first century were actually not complete, but actually lacked certain books, this would have been a primary issue that Jesus would have corrected. Instead, he confirms it in Luke 24:44. We see. He says, then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms and must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. In the book of Luke, the Torah, the prophets and the Psalms are categorized by Christ as the Scriptures. And the reason that he could speak with such confidence to his audience about these divine writings is because these were well established to his audience and as divine as Josephus also confirmed for us. We also see in many other places throughout the New Testament that Jesus speaks of it in this way. He says in Matthew 5:17, do not think I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I've not come to abolish, but to fulfill them. All of the people knew what the law and the prophets included. Paul confirms this in 2 Timothy 3:15, where he says, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with this sacred, sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Terms such as the sacred writings can be used by Paul and confidently used because he knows that it is well understood by his audience. Now that we see how the New Testament authors speak over the Torah, the prophets and the writings, what about the New Testament itself? We see that the New Testament authors had at least some degree of recognition that their writings were to be considered as scripture. In 2 Peter 3:16, Peter writes about Paul's writings and he says, there are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures. Paul's writings are placed in the same category as the other Scriptures by Peter. And so in the same way, when we now look at the other gospels such as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we see that going towards the early church fathers and their writings, they also regarded these as Scripture. And when they refer to them, they never had dispute or uncertainty regarding that fact. When Theophilus, Eugenius, Clement, Origen or Irenaeus wrote of these, they said Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They didn't say Matthew, Mark, Thomas and John, or Matthew, Mark and the Gospel of Judas and John, or the Gospel of Philip, Matthew, Mark, Luke. They consistently pointed to the four gospels that we all consider as the Gospel. And this was important for them to do because there were other mystery texts and gospels that were floating around in their day. We see Irenaeus, for example, in his book titled Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 11. He writes to warn about the corruption of false teachers that were picking and choosing the Gospels. See if you can spot the same happening today. Such then are the first principles of the Gospel. That there is one God, the maker of the universe, he who was also announced by the prophets and who by Moses set forth the dispensation of the law. The principles which proclaim the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and ignore any other God or father except Him. So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels rest that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them. And starting from these documents, each one of them endeavors to establish his own peculiar doctrine. For the Ebionites who use Matthew's Gospel only are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with regards to the Lord. But Marcion mutilating that according to Luke, is proven to be a blasphemer of the only existing God from those passages which he still retains. Those again who separate Jesus from Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassable, but that it was Jesus who suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark. If they read it with a love of truth, they may have the errors rectified. He concludes with it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. The pillar and ground of the church is the Gospel and the Spirit of life. And it is fitting that she should have four pillars. Irenaeus calls the gospels that we have today Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as the four pillars. But he says that false teachers supported their doctrines by picking and choosing which gospels were relevant. The picking and choosing to form a biblical canon according to our desires is a symptom of a false teacher. False religions all over the world create their own canons in order to establish the their religion. The four Gospels are all necessary to provide us with a complete picture of who Jesus is and what he taught. They each focus on different aspects on the life and teachings of Christ. And doing away with any one of them corrupts the overall message. But today, similarly, people do away with or simply deprioritize certain books of the Torah or prophets or New Testament in order to mold the character of God into their own likeness instead of letting the Scriptures transform them into the likeness of God. We cannot pick and choose based off our preference. We must submit to God's word. So let's talk about false gospels. For these false teachers not only desired to discredit the apostolic scriptures to suit their own doctrines, but as can be expected, they also wrote their own Gospels. While the body of Christ recognized Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, when other writings and other gospels came in, they needed to differentiate. For example, when the Gospel of Thomas came in, each time it is mentioned by the church fathers, it is condemned as non authoritative writings like the Gospel of Thomas and other mystery texts, as these are a form of ancient plagiarism. See, in the ancient world, one way that people tried to get others to read what they were writing was to plagiarize the names of famous authors. This is also known as Pseudepigrapha. For example, groups like the Gnostics attached their own theology to the lips of Jesus by throwing it into a book and calling that book the Gospel of Thomas, for example. Then the people reading it may think, oh, it must be Thomas, the one who was close to Jesus who wrote this. No, they only put his name on it so that people may read it. In order to recognize whether a particular New Testament ladder was to be considered for inspired Scripture, a few criteria was considered. Number one, direct connection to Jesus. Is there a connection through an apostle who was directly connected to Jesus or someone who knew the apostles? Number two, accepted by the early apostolic community. Did the early church recognize these as apostolic? And number three, Orthodoxy. Does it represent the right teaching without contradicting the rest of Scripture? For example, in Biblical Christianity, we know a primary teaching that we hold to is that salvation comes from the finished work of Christ, not of our own works, so that no one may boast. But Gnosticism teaches that the divinity inside of each of us is unlocked by a secret knowledge that leads to eternal life. This may sound familiar to you if you've ever heard of the modern New Age movement's teachings, which also seeks to hijack Christ and call it Christ consciousness, putting the name of Jesus on their doctrines in order to justify it, turning Jesus into some New Age guru of sorts. This is really no different from the false gospels of old. It is the false Gospel of today and it is rife on TikTok and other social media platforms. But we can look at its content and recognize the contradictions to the Scriptures. If we know the Scriptures, when we look at these ancient mystery texts, these false Gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Philip, we can simply see that they are false by reading them. For example, in the Gospel of Thomas, we see in saying 114, Simon Peter said to them, let Mary Ham go out from among us, for women are not worthy of life. Jesus said, look, I will lead her that I may make her male in order that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who makes herself male will enter into the kingdom of heaven. If you have an elementary understanding of the Scriptures, I do not even need to explain to you why this is a false Gospel and a false doctrine that contradicts the teachings of Jesus. So that's it for mystery texts and false Gospels and the Gnostic and New Age teachings. But what about the apocrypha? The apocrypha are writings that today are considered outside of the biblical canon. And the formal definition is writings or statements of dubious authenticity. Because oftentimes these writings have scholars uncertain of whether the author that it claims wrote it was actually the author who wrote it. Some of them are also falling under Pseudepigrapha. But people have many questions about the apocrypha. Like, weren't the apocrypha originally in the Bible, like in the King James? What about the different canons that exist among different denominations, like the Catholic versus the Protestant canons? And are all apocrypha writings of heresy or falsehood, like the false Gospels we addressed earlier? Number one, not all apocrypha are created equally. An apocrypha is not necessarily heresy or false by definition. In fact, some early Church fathers read and contemplated writings outside of Scripture itself, just as we consider historical or other writings today. But the apocrypha is considered outside the canon today, not being considered inspired Scripture? There are different canons. What is considered apocrypha to the Reformers and what is considered apocrypha to the Catholics are different things. For example, the Catholics and the Orthodox Church considers the Books of Maccabees as Scripture, whilst the Reformers and the Jewish people consider it as a valuable historical text. So what about this difference that we see and the different Catholic canon? As we discussed earlier, while the Council of Nicaea was not about establishing the biblical canon, the Council of Trent, on the other hand, was a response to the Reformation's work regarding the canon. It was a type of Counter Reformation council that was set up to affirm certain apocrypha as what they call deuteracanonical, following the decisions of the Reformers to not include these writings. The Reformers did not include these deuteracanonical or apocryphal writings because the first century populace did not consider them among the divine books of the Torah, but prophets and writings also known as the Tanakh. As Josephus noted and as we read Dietrich canonical means that their canonization was not as widely agreed upon in the early Church as other books. Some examples of Dietrich canonical books are Judith Tobit and the books of the Maccabees. Jerome, a reformer in his work Preface to Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of songs in NPNF 2, Volume 6 writes the as the Church reads Judith Tobit and the books of the Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it also read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church. Perhaps surprisingly, many medieval Roman Catholic theologians did the same. For example, Nicholas of Lara, Cardinal Cajetan, Cardinal Ximenus. Only at the Council of Trent did the apocrypha become fully authoritative, even within Roman Catholicism. Before then these writings were debated as whether they should be considered as inspired Scripture by the Church. They were also debated by the Church Fathers and debated by the body of Christ. In large men have always had opinions. But I want to submit to you that the ultimate problem as we've mentioned still remains that the Old Testament books of the Torah prophets and writings were strongly considered to be divine by the Jewish people. And this did not include the apocrypha according to historians such as Josephus. And this is a well established fact. If the first century divine scriptures of the time were actually incomplete because they lacked the apocrypha, this would have been a big problem. And the lack of intervention from Jesus at this problem poses the greatest problem itself for classifying them as divine. Simply put, if the apocrypha was to be divine, Jesus would have told us. The fact is that at the time of the Council of Trent in the 1500s when the deuteracanonical texts were officially and formally included by the Catholic Church to be in the canon, the apocryphal writings were hotly debated, whilst the 66 books as we have in our Bibles today, were not being debated in the Church at all, but were common among all people. And I want to submit that this is a miracle that we should all acknowledge that God in His sovereign power have given peace to the entire body of Christ about the inspired nature of the 66 books in the established catechism canon today. Whether you are Catholic, Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, or Protestant, we all agree on these 66 books. And perhaps where there is no confusion. But peace instead is where we should settle a matter, especially when it comes to the most important matter of what do we consider as inspired Scripture? The Holy Spirit brings peace. But now let's discuss more specifically books that have become more popular recently. Enoch 1 and Jubilees Enoch 1 and Jubilees are apocryphal writings that are closely related in content. They both comment on the supernatural world and explore topics like the origin of the nephilim and and Genesis 6. After the last Old Testament prophet, Malachi, there was a time of silence, if you will, where there was no prophet of God. And yet in that period between Malachi and the New Testament writers, the Jewish people still continued to write, to think to, to contemplate. And writings such as Enoch1 and Jubilees is a compilation of Jewish ideas from that time. They filled the gap of silence between Malachi and Matthew. People in the first century were certainly familiar with these writings, and they certainly have value. Scholars widely consider them Pseudepigrapha because the authorship is questioned at times, regardless of what the scholars think. Is it Scripture? And wasn't Enoch in the King James Version before and then later taken out regarding the King James apocrypha? The original King James Version included the apocrypha in a separate section of the rest of the biblical canon, and it was not considered as inspired scripture. However, they included it to add value to the reader, for of course these writings were still considered to have value. Doesn't the Bible quote Enoch? As another question people often ask, Enoch is mentioned in the Book of Jude to make a point, but that does not endorse it as scripture. It is common for biblical authors to quote writings that are not scripture in order to make a point to the audience. This is especially relevant when the audience would be familiar with that writing. For example, we see that Paul quotes Menander of Ephesus, a pagan, in 1 Corinthians 15:33, where he says, do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. Ellingworth states in a handbook on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians that the words bad company ruins good morals are found in a play by Menander, a 3rd to 4th century BC pagan, but may well have become a common saying by Paul's time. Also consider that Acts 17:28 quotes Aratus another pagan. The fact that the Scriptures quote these sayings are in order to better connect with and communicate with the audience who are familiar with these famous sayings. It is not an endorsement of paganism in these cases. Now, Enoch is not paganism, of course not. But yet to argue that because Enoch was quoted that authenticates Enoch as inspired Scripture does not track. Enoch would have been quoted. I mean, it would have been weird for Enoch to not have been quoted in the Scriptures because Enoch was such a famous collection of writings and ideas that were going around in the time. We should also know that Enoch was not included in the Greek Septuagint. The Greek Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures and Enoch was not considered an established divine writing by the Jewish people among the rest of the Tanakh. Therefore, most early Christians did not consider Enoch Scripture. But early Christians were familiar with its contents and some even appreciated its commentary, especially on the fallen angels of Genesis 6. And some church fathers write about this. There is a back and forth. Some are more leaning towards Enoch being scriptural than others. But at the end of the day that dispute continued and continued and continued until today. Most modern Christians do not consider Enoch inspired Scripture. Not the Protestants, not the Catholics, not the Orthodox nor the Jewish people consider Enoch as inspired. This does not mean that there is no value to the Book of Enoch. I am going to say that again and again. Stay tuned as we will later discuss why we can indeed be edified by its writings. But why is Enoch and Jubilees in the canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church? We must understand that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church does not see the biblical canon the same way that we do in the West. They are pretty non discretionary about books and they canonized a lot of things. They have over 81 books in their canon and surely we would not consider all of those as inspired scripture and to the level that we consider inspired scripture. R.W. cowley in the Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church today writes the the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's concept of canonicity is regarded more loosely than it is amongst most other churches. And Leslie Baynes in Enoch and Jubilees and the Canon of the othean Orthodox Church, Volume 1 writes the one can say that Enoch and Jubilees are in the canon. Although we need to be careful in our use of the term canon. The concept of canon is not as rigid as in the West. You have various lists and no one seems to be worried or to be preoccupied to have something definitive or normative. David Wilbur also writes regarding the multiple canons in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition and how not all of them include jubilees. Notably, in 1983, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Holy Synod in Abbas Ababa published a book titled A Short Faith and Order of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In this section titled Holy Books of the Old Testament, Neither Jubilees nor 1 Enoch are listed. For more on this topic, I highly recommend David Wilbur's article on the Book of Jubilees is Not Inspired Scripture as for Jubilees, there is very good reason to not consider it Scripture, for it contradicts Biblical scripture. In Jubilees 50:23, it's written, Any man who fasts and makes war on the Sabbath day, a man who does any of these things on the Sabbath day is to die. Of course we know that our Messiah fasted on the Sabbath day, and considering what Jubilees says should happen to someone who fasts on the Sabbath, that would mean that our Messiah has sinned and would need to die for that sin. According to the author of Jubilees, Scripture itself never says that fasting on the Sabbath is sinful. Moses fasted on the Sabbath when he went to be with the Lord on the mountain, and Yeshua fasted on the Sabbath when he was in the wilderness with the Lord. Regardless of where you stand on the apocrypha, the apocrypha and ditricanonical books are still disputed today. The Bible itself, as we have it, is what God has declared to us as truth and he has given the body of Christ peace. Regarding these writings, some of the apocrypha can have historical value and when they line up with Scripture, even have spiritual value, but they should not be considered inspired scripture. This doesn't mean that they can't teach you something. I want to remind you that the purpose of the canon is that it is to be a collection of writings that we can definitively say are the inspired scripture, the words of God, what Paul calls the sacred writings in 2 Timothy 3:15 that which we can stake eternity upon, that which we can entrust our souls with as being the truth that reveals our God's salvation, character, and will. But there remains, despite all of this, beauty in writings even that aren't inspired scripture. A writing does not need to be inspired scripture to be read. A writing does not need to be inspired scripture to be valuable to you. And a writing does need to be inspired scripture to bless you. I know that some of you may tell me, pd, how can this apocryphal writing that I have read not be inspired scripture, for it has blessed me beyond measure. I want to remind you that you can well read a writing and be edified by it. Just like you can read any book by your favorite Bible teacher or pastor and recommend it to other people. Give it away. Be blessed by it, because those words brought renewed passion towards the Scripture or the life of Christ for you. And the authors of those books may have well been inspired by the Holy Spirit when their writings align with the established Scriptures. But we wouldn't call their writings inspired Scripture or a sacred writing, because inspired Scripture is to be absolutely truth. As Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching. For we proof for correction and training in righteousness that the man of God may be completely equipped for every good work. Scripture gives us sound judgment by which we can judge all other things by and correct all other things too. Writings outside of Scripture, they just don't hold that authority. If we make a mistake and declare uninspired Scripture as inspired Scripture, we risk learning a human teaching that contradicts the rest of Scripture. We risk teaching that which is not of God as his words, misrepresenting him and correcting others with that which is not of God in the first place. For this reason, let that which God has preserved for us as Scripture be Scripture, and let everything else be weighed to Scripture. As we have now established, there is strong evidence that God has preserved his words. But we still need faith in God's ability and will to preserve and document his words throughout time. The Scriptures have gone out to the world and the Bible has prophesied that this will happen. God has stated that this will be Romans 11:16. But they have not all obeyed the Gospel. For Isaiah says Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us. And so faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have. For their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. You are now sitting at the end of the world and you have heard God's words. I do not believe that God is hiding his salvation from us or hiding his revelation from us. It is in plain sight within the book that sits in the drawers of almost every hotel room, at least where it has not yet been outlawed. And so I conclude with this, the root issue of all of this, the lying scribes that Jeremiah spoke about are still around today. They are coming in the form of scholars trying to tell us that we should forget about trusting this or that book in our Bibles. They are sowing distrust in God's words. So that we may rather follow their human worldly ideology and human teachings. Another core issue is that people struggle at times to trust God, and when they don't trust God, they won't trust in his ability to preserve his words, nor in his ability to portray Himself as and his character accurately across generations. When we find ourselves no longer trusting the Bible, we will find ourselves leaving the faith slowly but surely. And yet, if we stay, we will stay, but with compromises. When we come across information in the Bible describing a God that we don't particularly like or that we don't understand understand, we are tempted to abolish, rewrite or redefine God into our own image. A pick and choose mindset is applied where we will start forming our own biblical canon, just as the Gnostics did, throwing out parts or all of scripture completely while elevating their favored texts to support their doctrine. And I leave you with the fruit of the Bible is evident. The Holy Spirit has done the work and the evidence and fruit of the Bible itself is indisputable. Millions of lives have been changed by the Gospel. Alcoholics, drug addicts, gang members, prostitutes and the worst of society have repented and became life giving vessels for God because of the message and power of God communicated by the Word of God. So this is the will you believe in Yeshua? Will you believe in his will and ability to preserve his words for you? Thank you for joining me for this teaching. It took a lot of time, energy and study, but I hope that it was a blessing to you. I want to say a special thank you to our partners who have made this teaching and every other video possible. If this was a blessing to you, consider liking the video. And if you want to see what's next, subscribe to this channel. Many blessings to you and Shalom. Sam.