Search the Scriptures Daily Program #3501a:
Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael; thank you for tuning in. Coming up in the next hour, in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their exploration of the gospel of John and “Were the miracles of Jesus just misinterpretation?” In Religion in the News, “Are Christianity, and Yoga compatible?” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question, “What does the Bible say about UFOs?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry The Berean Call offers many teaching materials including books, tracts, audio and video tapes and copies of our weekly broadcast on tape or compact disc. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter which we offer free of charge. We will let you know how to order later in the program. Now, this week’s cover article: We resume our discussions based on Dave Hunt’s book from Harvest House, with the 13 th installment of In Defense of the Faith and along with Dave Hunt, here’s T.A. McMahon:
Tom:
Thanks Gary . You are listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to him. For the last few weeks we’ve been using Dave Hunt’s book In Defense of the Faith as a source of topics and as the title indicates the topics deal with the content of faith found in biblical Christianity. The subject for today’s program is the reliability of the Bible and our first question is: The Judeo-Christian Bible is not the only book which claims to be inspired of God. There are the Qur’an the Hindu Vedas, the Book of Mormon, and others which claim to have come from God. Doesn’t the very fact that Christianity teaches that the other books are not true cast serious doubt upon the Bible as well? If so many others could be wrong, why not one more? After all, an atheist only doubts one more book than the Christian doubts.
Dave:
Well that’s a good way of putting it I guess.
Tom:
Yes, but it doesn’t quite make sense though.
Dave:
No, well just because all the rest of them are wrong doesn’t mean the Bible would be wrong. Something has to be right. And if all the rest of them are wrong that’s all the more odds that the Bible, the only one left that hasn’t been proved wrong (in fact, it has been proved right).
Tom:
Dave you give lots of analogies here. I mean you have a race, lots of runners, only one person wins the race. It doesn’t mean nobody wins the race and if the Bible which is true, and it’s a tough thing for people to deal with, but the Bible claims to be the sole revelation of God and everything else is a counterfeit.
Dave:
Now that makes sense Tom, and you would think that if the Bible really is God’s Word not only is it going to make its own claims, but it is going to point out the errors that are out there. That’s a criticism that I often get. Why can’t you just be positive? Well, you can’t just talk about what is right except in the context of what is wrong. Because the lie tries to mimic the truth and sometimes the lie comes very close. For example, some people (we’ve talked a lot about this in the past), some people say well just as long as you believe in a higher power, or you believe in some god. Well the Bible goes to great lengths to tell you there is only one God. The one true God, and it tells us who he is; it tells us about him; it tells us his character; his purpose and plan for man; it tells us what went wrong with man’s relationship with him and how that can be made right. This God is not a silly putty God that you can just manipulate and mold into any form that you please. God obviously has his own ideas. He is supreme. He is sovereign and somehow people don’t like that.
Tom:
Yes, and he’s the only one that knows. What else do we have? We have everybody else’s opinions.
Dave:
Right and we’re not interested in opinions. Not on this subject. So the Bible makes it very clear that all other writings that claim to be inspired of God are not inspired of God. Now the Bible talks about false prophets. It gives you seven characteristics of false prophets which we’ve probably talked about in the past, but one of them is that what they foretell doesn’t come to pass. And again these are things we have dealt with but, it bears repeating. The Bible is filled with prophecies, not cheap psychic predictions. These are history making events that the world has seen, has witnessed their fulfillment and they were foretold in writing thousands of years before they happened. Some of them centuries before they happened; others thousands of years.
Tom:
Dave, why don’t you just give them one example. Whether somebody has read the Bible or not, or is familiar with the New Testament or familiar with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, at least they have seen movies; I mean at least they have some idea of what the scenario was.
Dave:
They gave them the wrong scenario mostly in those movies, but anyway.
Tom:
Yes, but at least they know some elements with regard to it. The amazing thing with regard to prophecy is that you can put together the scenario from the Old Testament in such detail that if you begin to—as I said—for someone who doesn’t know the Bible that well, but knows the story of Christ dying on the cross and so on, you can put together that entire scenario with incredible detail from a thousand years before it took place all the way down to 500 years before it took place.
Dave:
Including the crucifixion which was unknown and I mean, okay in detail and Israel of course. You know when you read the Bible, you go back to Genesis, and you read about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whose name became Israel . You read about Israel , you read about this land and then you get the prophecies that God would throw them out of this land. He would scatter them, because of their sin he would throw them out, he would scatter them all over this world, in the last days he would bring them back, he would make Jerusalem a “cup of trembling” and you look at the news today and you see what is happening over there. See this is not fiction. You read the Bhagavad Gita—this is fiction. You couldn’t even correlate it with history. The same thing with the Qur’an. Now the Qur’an does not claim to give you much history. This is supposedly a revelation through the angel Gabriel to Mohammad and so forth, but you have stories in there that are like the Arabian Nights fairy tales. You have the Battle of the Ants against Solomon. I mean [it’s] incredible. You have Solomon is up against a bunch of ants. Then you’ve got birds that help him out and well it’s just fiction. It isn’t true. Now we have parables in the Bible, but they’re very clearly parables. But we have history. Israel exists today exactly as the Bible foretold. So we have many prophetic evidences, but we have many other evidences as well, but the Bible—look, if the whole world is dying of a disease, it’s incurable except for one pill that I’ve invented, let’s say. Shouldn’t I try to convince everyone in the world to take that pill? And if there are false pills out there, that look like, the same color maybe, the same size and shape, shouldn’t I warn the world that those will not cure this disease? And shouldn’t I not only offer a pill, which is the only one that will cure the disease, but should I not at the same time say, this is the only one? There are other misrepresentations; there are others that claim to be, Tom, it makes sense. So the Bible is going to warn you that there are false gods, that there are misrepresentations, that there is a false gospel, even a false Christ, that unless we have the doctrine clear, unless we believe in Jesus Christ for who he is, unless we believe in the true God—in fact, Jesus said John:17:3And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent., “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” So this question, I mean there are a lot of other books out there. Why couldn’t they be just as right, or if they are all wrong, why must the Bible be right? Why couldn’t it be wrong? It’s a good question to raise. Maybe there’s nothing that’s right. Maybe we don’t know anything. Maybe they are all false including the Bible. That’s what this program is about “search the scriptures daily” and let’s check the Bible out and that is what we are doing.
Tom:
Dave within this question they mention lots of other sacred books. But that raises the question of it seems in the heart of man there is a hunger, a hunger for God, and a hunger for finding out things about God. Now just that alone—man seeking after God—that couldn’t come about by some evolutionary process or idea. There must be a reality with regard to seeking after God, don’t you think?
Dave:
You would have to say that oh, apparently the people who sought after God—this is something that came up in the genes somehow by accident and those that sought after God were more likely to survive than those who didn’t and therefore their descendants got this in their genes. Seeking after God does not come in the genes. It has nothing to do with the physical world. It has to do with man’s soul and man’s spirit and there is indeed a vacuum in man. There’s a hunger in man. It’s like a haunting memory of a Paradise from which we were expelled; a relationship that we once had. So the very fact is as you say that all men are seeking God. Now on the other hand, most people don’t really want the true God. They desire some higher power or whatever they want to call it. But the God of the Bible, we’ve talked about this in the past, and one of the most important verses in the scriptures, an important promise, “You will seek for me and find me if you seek for me with all your heart.” So anyone in any culture, anytime in history, anywhere who really wants to know the true God, he promises he will reveal himself to them. Now how he’s going to do that would depend upon their circumstances and so forth. He revealed himself to Abraham and Jesus said of Abraham, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad.” Abraham had an understanding. So yes there is this hunger, and this vacuum as Pascal said, the God-shaped vacuum in every heart. In fact (if I can remember it) another quote from Pascal that you never hear, Pascal said, I consider only two men rational, “The man who loves God with all his heart because he has found him, or the man who seeks God with all his heart, because he has yet found him not.” That should be the real passion and purpose. The problem is we want a God that won’t tell us what to do but whom we can use. Star Wars Force, Darth Vader did pretty well playing the dark side of the Force and what do you know the guy ends up as one of the Trinity after he dies, so what’s the point? What does it matter whether it’s the dark or the light side? You just get power out of it to use it for your own ends. This is what most people want. This is what the New Age is all about, taking control of my life and so forth, but if you really want to know the God that created you, the God whose name is Yahweh, I AM that I AM, the self-existent one from all eternity so that you can get to know him and allow him to guide your life, he will reveal himself to you. And of course, we have the Bible which is God’s very revelation to man.
Tom:
Dave was it Lenin that referred to religion as the “opiate of the masses?”
Dave:
Yes.
Tom:
You make an interesting point in this chapter by saying well that’s a proof that there must be a God, if there is this hunger, if there is this opiate that draws people, even though they’re going to go awry because self-deception, self-delusion, self interest is going to draw them to a God that they want to make up, but still it really underscores that there must be a God.
Dave:
It was probably months and months ago, I imagine we must have mentioned it on this program, but that was the thing that bugged Lenin. “Le-neen” he thought he was a scientific materialist. Nothing exists except matter. So anything that you know, I mean you know it through your five senses, through sound, or smell, or touch, or whatever. And that’s how we learn about this physical universe. But then he rocked back on his heels and said whoa, wait a minute. Where does this idea of God come from? What was the physical stimulus in the physical universe out there somewhere that caused man to get this reaction in his brain? God—there isn’t any. You’ve never seen anything, you’ve never smelled or touched or heard anything. In fact people say if I could just hear God’s audible voice—there is nothing in the physical universe that could cause that reaction in your brain, in your mind. That bugged Lenin to his dying day. Where did that come from? Well he said, that’s an insidious lie and instilled by those preachers. You know that’s the opiate of the masses. But wait a minute, where did the preachers get this idea? So yes, the very fact that we have this God-consciousness you could say a consciousness of the fact that somewhere God must exist and therefore man seeks after him, mostly in perverted ways to use him for his own ends. But nevertheless that is an evidence—a powerful evidence.
Tom:
And only man has it.
Dave:
Right.
Tom:
You can look throughout the animal kingdom. We’ve mentioned this before; we don’t find them setting up churches, the gorillas, or chimpanzees, whatever or even lower animals. It’s something that we are made in God’s image. There is this seeking after him, a consciousness that you can’t deny.
Dave:
And yet those lower creatures, they have in distinction to man, they have instincts that put us in a different category. We can’t even begin—the salmon that goes back after several years out in the ocean wandering around and goes back to the very stream that it came from, or the eels from the Gulf of Mexico and they are born up in the fjords of Norway and then their parents leave them and a couple of years later whenever, they make their way back to where their parents are, the place of their origin. Or the arctic tern, a what, 5000 mile flight and ends up at that tiny little island? It took man a long time to learn how to do that with his instruments. Or the sparrow in England —it goes across the Sahara Desert down to South Africa , down to the Cape every year and makes its way back. Or how do they learn to build a nest? I look at a spider. When did it learn to spin a web? Or, I was out near our pond last night, well feeding my trout, my babies, and here are the bats zooming through the air. I mean that’s one of the reasons I have to feed the trout, because those bats are up there grabbing those insects before they can even land on the water. Well when did the bat develop this high scream that we can’t even hear that bounces off of insects and directs him to them like radar and so forth. Come on! They didn’t develop this; it didn’t come about by evolution. God gave it to them, but he didn’t give us those qualities, but he gave us something much higher. He made man in his image and there is a hunger in the human heart and if we will seek God, he will reveal himself to us. But Tom, I don’t know where we got on this question you asked because we were talking about the Bible. The Bible—
Tom:
It’s all related Dave.
Dave:
The Bible is God’s Word and it does ring true. When you read the Bible, it rings true in your conscience.
Tom:
Well I have another question right along that line. And again, these questions aren’t questions that people wrote in. These are questions that you’ve had to deal with throughout your life in ministry and you put them together in this book called In Defense of the Faith. Now this question: I was taught in seminary and have read the same charge in a number of scholarly books that the New Testament is not reliable because it was written centuries after the time of Christ by men who weren’t even alive in Christ’s day. The Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars with impressive credentials, makes this claim today. Is there any evidence to the contrary? There’s a truckload, Dave. There’s an 18-wheeler, there’s a—we don’t have time for this, but in the next five minutes that’s what we have to deal with.
Dave:
There’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. First of all Tom, who are The Jesus Seminar? Who are these scholars?
Tom:
Yes, what credentials?
Dave:
I’ve mentioned it before; I’ve debated the co-founder of the Jesus Seminar, Robert Funk and the first thing I said to him (this was on a secular radio program was “Bob you were born 1900 years too late. Who are you to sit around and vote with your colored beads on what Jesus did or didn’t do, or what he said or didn’t say? You weren’t there. We have an eyewitness record and we can prove it. Now just logically, if this is not an eyewitness record—Peter claims to be an eyewitness, he says we were eyewitnesses to these things. Luke, let me just look at Luke 1: here.
Tom:
Well while you are looking that up, 1 John:1:1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, our hands have handled of the Word of life. This is the beloved John.
Dave:
Now look, he’s lying if that’s not true.
Tom:
Yes.
Dave:
If this is some pseudo-John—
Tom:
And so is Peter…
Dave:
Right, and all the rest of them. If this is some pseudo-John or Peter, or Paul—Paul is telling us of his conversion. I mean these are contemporaries of Christ. Paul was a contemporary, but he was not a Christian at that time, he became a Christian. Now you’ve got a fraud on your hands if this was written centuries later by people who were claiming to be these people, but really weren’t. Now listen to the honesty of this man Luke. “For as much as many have taken in hand to set forth an order of declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us. These things happened in the tiny land of Israel . If you went to (I’ll hold my finger there, real fast, I know we are running out of time), if I went to Acts 26 for example—
Tom:
While you are finding it, 2 Peter:1:16For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty., “For we have not following cunningly devised fables when we made known unto you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
Dave:
Now if this was written by somebody a century later, and he’s claiming to be writing for Peter who was an eyewitness, it’s a fraud. It’s as simple as that. If this is a fraud, throw the thing out. Why do you study it in seminaries, why do you study so hard?
Tom:
Yes, seminarians and this Jesus Seminar, you know certainly the Jesus Seminar, that’s what they are saying without saying it.
Dave:
And a lot of others. I mean many seminaries out there. Here Paul [in] Acts:26:26For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this thing was not done in a corner., he is standing before King Agrippa and he’s talking about Jesus and what he did, his resurrection and so forth. Listen to what he said, “For the King knoweth of these things before who I also speak freely, for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him for this thing was not done in a corner.” This is not some secret society; these are events, historic events that happened. But listen, let me go back to Luke here for a moment, even as—well a lot of people were writing about this. They were putting down their accounts of this. They were talking about it. (Luke:1:2-4 [2] Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word;
[3] It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus,
[4] That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.
)“Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order , most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.” So here’s a man who says, look I was there. I’ve interviewed these people that saw events that I didn’t see and furthermore he is inspired of the Holy Spirit to put it down.
Tom:
First and foremost.
Dave:
Yes, now we have a record that we can examine and I guess our time is gone Tom, but we need to come back next week and let’s examine this and put it under the microscope and see whether it holds up. You remember Simon Greenly, the cofounder of the Graduate School of Law at Harvard, a very interesting man and he examined the evidence. He was an agnostic. He examined the evidence and he came to the conclusion that this is absolutely true, it will hold up in any court. There is no way you can deny it and then he wrote a book, The Testimony of the Evangelists . I have a copy of that old book back there in which he challenged the fellow members of the bar, his fellow lawyers and he said the claims of this book are not only true, but Christianity says everything else is false. You cannot ignore that. You are going to have to face this and check it out.
