Thank you, so much, friends, for coming - those who are here. I want to welcome those who are watching to the Foundations of Faith program. You know, Jesus tells us that there's a storm coming. He said, 'The wise man builds on the rock and when the storm comes, the house stands. The foolish man builds on the sand and when the storm comes, his house falls.' And it says, 'How great is the fall of it.' And I assume that's because it's a great storm that's coming. Some of you have seen this picture that has gone viral; it's of a house that's in Gilchrist, Texas, where the owners actually survived a hurricane - it was Warren and Pam Adams. In Hurricane Rita, 2005, their house was destroyed, and so, they hired a good contractor and architect. They liked the area by the ocean there, they said, 'Let's rebuild. We have insurance.' But they said, 'Let's rebuild a house that can withstand a hurricane.' And they dug deep and they put their concrete pillars down deep and they built 22-feet above sea level. Well, then, a few years later, Hurricane Ike came by, in 2008, scoured every house around them, but their house stood because it was founded well and they went down into the rock.
You know, I have a feeling that's going to be something like it will be in the future. There's a storm coming and we need to be building on the rock. Interesting quote from the book Evangelism, "Are church members building on the rock? The storm is coming - the storm that will try every man's faith of what sort it is. Believers must now, be firmly rooted in Christ or else they'll be led astray by some phase of error. Let your faith be substantiated by the word of God." >>Amen. >>Well, here we are, we've just crossed over the threshold of the 500-year anniversary of that great Reformation. And, as recently as this week, some very popular Protestant televangelists and speakers have said, 'The Protestant Reformation is over.' And that's really stunned, I think, a lot of people who understand what the Reformation was all about, because the things that Martin Luther protested against have not changed. The Catholic church is still issuing indulgences. People are still praying to idols. Some Christians believe you go right to heaven or hell when you die, before the judgement day and the resurrection. They disregard the fourth commandment. There's just a long list of areas where professed Christians have fallen and we need reformation today.
>>Amen.
>>Now the great Reformation was based upon five major principles - you've heard this before - sola scriptura, which means 'the Bible alone,' sola gracia, 'grace alone,' solo Christo, 'Christ alone,' sola fide, 'faith alone,' and soli deo Gloria, 'to the glory of God alone.' These are the fundamental foundational principles of the Reformation and we're going to be talking about these and more this week. Now, I probably should let you know that the Reformation isn't over. >>That's right. >>That there's a whole lot of reformation that needs to happen. Part of the three angels' message - the second angel's message in Revelation 14 - says, "Babylon is fallen; come out of her my people." God has people that love Him, they know something about Him, but they're caught up in a lot of confusion - spiritual confusion. There's all kinds of doctrines of devils and misunderstandings out there. And people are looking for the truth.
Now see if this makes sense to you. The way I understand it, when Jesus comes back there's two groups that both claim to worship the same god. One will have the beast's mark and they'll worship the beast. The other will have the seal of God and they will worship God. Events are going to happen in the world, just before the second coming, that is going to shake and polarize everybody into one of these two groups. People are going to rally around the beast and the other group is going to rally around Christ and His word. There is going to be a revival among genuine Christians and a call to return to the faith that was once delivered to the saints.
Do you think, when Jesus comes back, He's coming for people that are all fragmented and broken and confused about what the truth is? Or is there going to be a revival and a real reformation that'll bring people back?
>>Amen.
>>Quote for you - Great Controversy - do you know that book?
>>Amen.
>>148, "The Reformation did not, as many supposed, end with Luther. It is to be continued to the close of this world's history." From that time to this new light has been continually shining upon the scriptures and new truths have been constantly unfolding and this movement is a result of people who got back to the word and studied those truths that had been forgotten.
>>Amen.
>>And, you know the reason we're passionate about this - we see this happening all the time at Amazing Facts, and it's really simple, we just preach the word and people are flabbergasted. They say, 'I've never heard this before.' I just got a message from a brother in Alabama by the name of Daniel. He says, 'We've been watching the Amazing Facts programs and I have been a Christian in the Bible Belt all of my life and I've never heard these things before. I have learned the truth about death, I've learned the truth about the Sabbath, I've learned the truth about Godly living.' And he said, 'When I go visit my daughter in San Jose, I want to find out when you're in because I want to come up and meet you.' We get these letters all the time from people who've been raised in kind of quasi-Christian churches, but they don't read the Bible anymore. And, you know, there's some folks in our church that don't read the Bible anymore. We think we're going to be saved by osmosis, by sort of going to a church - but doesn't the Lord tell us that many will come to Him saying, 'Lord, Lord' and He'll say, 'I don't know you.'
>>Yes.
>>And that would include some of our own people. Now, during this series, I want to tell you what we're up to. This is a special revival program. We're going to be talking about a number of the pillars of the faith and the three angels' message that are neglected by Christianity. If you're a good Adventist pastor, a revivalist, or an evangelist, you know about these - they're the ten S's - because they all start with the letter S. Some of it's been creatively done: scripture, sin, Satan, salvation, Sabbath, state of the dead, sanctuary, Spirit of Prophecy, strength (that's the health message), second coming. You want to make sure and be here next Sabbath for the second coming. And, some of you know that, at the end of each one of these programs, starting tomorrow night we're inviting Bible questions. We're going to have a few minutes of live Facebook Bible questions on any of these subjects because we want to make the truth plain.
>>Amen.
>>Tonight our message is about the Bible and we've titled it The Truth About The Truth. So, what is truth? Some of you remember when Jesus was being tried for His faith He was brought in - Pilate wanted a private interview - and, in John 18:37 Christ says, "...For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice." And it's still amazing to me that Pilate would be standing in the presence of Christ and say, 'What is truth?' What is truth? That means a person could be standing in front of the incarnation of truth and not know what truth was.
>>Amen.
>>And you say, 'Lord, could that be me?' He said, 'What is truth?' But then he went out. He asked a sad, sarcastic, rhetorical question - it's kind of like the devil in the garden saying to Eve, 'Hath God said?' You know, can anyone really know? There's so much confusion out there about religion, can we really know? Is there any absolute truth? And I want to tell you, yes there is absolute truth. But the philosophy has been circulating, in our culture, that everybody can kind of manufacture their own truth and whatever's true for you is true. Whatever's true for me is true. And everybody sort of has their own truth and you can just identify yourself any way you want and suddenly it becomes true. You know what I'm talking about?
>>Amen.
>>But the fact is, you don't want to get on a plane with someone who just decided to identify himself as an airline pilot and he never flew a plane before. And you don't want to have brain surgery by a guy who woke up and said, 'I had a good night's sleep. I think I'm going to do brain surgery and I believe and so it must be true.' There are certain absolutes and Jesus is the absolute truth.
>>Amen.
>>So what is truth? Well, first of all, Jesus says, 'I am the truth.' He tells us 'I am the way, the truth, and the life.' And, again, you can read in John 17:17, He says to 'Sanctify them by Your truth.' You know why we're talking about this subject? There is a sanctifying influence in the word of God. He said, 'Sanctify them by Your truth.' This is what Jesus said, 'Thy word' - He's speaking about the word of God - 'is truth.' Now, just to make it clear, the Bible is technically not truth, except as it is the truth about the truth.
>>Amen.
>>Because who is the primary truth?
>>Jesus.
>>The reason the Bible is the truth is Jesus is the Word. But Jesus is the essence of truth, right? And so, when a preacher tells you the truth from the Bible, about Jesus, what you've got is a preacher telling you the truth from the truth about the truth.
>>Amen. (Laughter)
>>But Jesus is the truth.
>>Amen.
>>Christ also said, 'You search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they that testify of' - who?
>>Me.
>>This talks about Jesus. Jesus is the one who saves, Jesus is the truth, and so, if we want to be set free, where do we find the answers?
>>In the Word.
>>What is your relationship to the Bible? And, if I - if I could emphasize a single point tonight, and have it really stick, it would be this: radar jamming - radar jamming - do you know, when one country takes their military and they invade another country, they don't want the other country's radar to detect where they are, and so, they send out a bunch of false signals and static, as loud as they can, to confuse the radar so they just don't know what's going on. The devil has been jamming the radar of Christians with outside messages so we are missing the message of God. There has never been a time, in the history of humanity, when the people of God have been more bombarded by false signals than today. How many messages did you get today? I used to live in a cave and I bet I get a lot of messages - I mean I was a hermit but I get message after message. And, when I land - I'm on an airplane - you need to turn off your phone when you're flying - and I land and, as soon as I turn on my phone, it goes 'Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep - people start looking at me because all the texts and the messages start to pile up. Well those are legitimate work messages.
But what about the messages that bombard us - just as you drive down the road and the ones you self-inflict, depending on what you're listening to on the radio or what you're watching on TV or the videos or the dumb YouTubes and things that people fill their minds - and we think just going to church and owning a Bible is going to mean we have everlasting life. The deceptions in the last days are going to be so convincing and so powerful that, if it were possible, the very elect would be deceived. How are we going to prevent from being deceived? It's only going to be through familiarity with the word of God. We are going to need to know how to turn to the Bible and say, 'Thus saith the Lord.'
>>Amen.
>>Because the devil - the devil reads the Bible and he's going to misquote a lot of things. Now, I'd like to take you to, what I think is, a wonderful story in the Bible, and you find this a couple of different places. First of all, it's going to be in 2 Chronicles 34:14. You also find a parallel story in 2 Kings 28:8. It took place about 624 B.C. It happens during the time of a young king by the name of Josiah. He is the grandson of Mannasseh. Mannasseh was a very, very wicked king and, somehow, Ammnon, his father, had a good son and Josiah grew up with just a pure heart. Matter of fact, you know, the Bible identifies Josiah as even being better than Solomon and David and Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah. It says, "There was no king before him, there was no king after him that sought the Lord with all of his heart." There's no record of his unfaithfulness. And, when he came into being king, the temple had been neglected through the time of Manasseh - they put idols in there and he wanted to effect a revival. He said to the priests, 'Let's get back to work. Let's start cleaning up the house of God. Let's bring the people back to worship Jehovah.' In the process of cleaning out the House of God - you can read where it says here, "Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan, the scribe, 'I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord." Now, the very fact that he said that, it would make you think, 'Well, were you surprised to find the Bible in the house of the Lord? Shouldn't we find the word of God in the house of God?
>>Amen.
>>Could it be that God's people could have reached a point in their history where they could go to the house of God and be shocked to hear the word of God? And here the priest is going, 'Voila! What is this?' He's unrolling the scroll and he gets to the end, it's signed, Moses. He had found, evidently, an original copy of the Book of Deuteronomy that Moses wrote out and put in a pocket by the ark and it had somehow become separated from the ark and it was in some antechamber and, before he threw it out - any of you ever have a problem throwing out books? We just - we collect books. I say, 'Karen, can you go through the books? Let's get rid of them.' Problem is she doesn't know if it's a good book so she has to read the whole thing before we throw it out. (Raucous laughter) That's really hard to do, so I said, 'Well, I'll take care of it.' But I had the same problem. (Laughter) And so, he said, 'Well, throw these things out.' And he's going, 'It's the Book of Deuteronomy.' And he reads it and he brings it to the king. And this is the point I want you to get - he comes to the king and he says, 'We've found the Book of the Law in the house of the Lord.' And they read it to the king and, as they're reading it to the king, he hears these things and he tears his clothes and he cries and he realizes how far from the word of God the people of God have wandered. And so then he says, 'Gather all the people together.' Everybody in the kingdom, they could - and the Bible says the king went up to the house of the Lord with all the priests and all the people great and small and he read in their hearing the words from the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the house of the Lord.'
The word 'Deuteronomy' means a repeating of the law. Now, he thought the word of God's only going to do them some good if they hear it. You're not saved by owning it. When we hear His words, that's where the power is. The Word has a sanctifying influence - that's what we just read Jesus said. I remember this last week, in preparation for preaching on the Reformation, as I did last Sabbath, I listened to most of the book Great Controversy as I was driving again - I had a long drive - and I remember reading where Martin Luther was in a monastery and he finally found a whole copy of the Bible and he was thunderstruck because he had never seen a whole copy of the Bible and here he was a priest - he was a monk. And he said, 'Wow, this is - I had no idea all these other books were part of the Bible!' And what brought about the Reformation? He found the Book of the Lord.
>>Amen.
>>There it was, covered with dust in some cloister somewhere. What do you think's going to bring the final reformation? A final renewal of the reformation is going to take place in response to the people of God rediscovering the word of God in the context of prayer to God. And, if we start to pray, as they prayed, and if we search the scriptures again, you're going see the same new life. So, as you read in this story, after they find the Book of God, he reads to the people from the Book of God - they find it while cleansing the temple - he believes it, he repents, he confesses, he goes to church, he shares it with the people, and then the king took a stand and then they renewed the covenant and a reformation took place. It says they started to keep forgotten holy days. They had neglected the Passover, and so, they had a Passover in the days Josiah unlike any they had had since the days of Samuel the prophet. And it all happened when they rediscovered the book.
Could it be, that after 160 years or so, that our church may have lost the Book of the Lord? We say, 'What do we believe?' Well, yeah, you know, we kind of have some of the basics, but we've forgotten the fundamentals. You know, we're going to read some of the Bible tonight. I've been to churches before - I've been to all different churches - different denominations - I've actually seen pastors go through gymnastics with their Bible, where they wave their Bible and they throw their Bible and they hit their Bible and pound their Bible, and they never open it and read it. (Laughter) Have you seen that? Or have you seen where, you know, they open and read like half a verse and the guy talks about politics for 45 minutes. I like to kind of use the question/answer method. Jesus used to ask questions - 'Who do men say that I am?' 'What were you arguing about on the road?' And I'd like to begin with some questions about the word of God. First of all, is the Bible really from God, or is it just a collection of human fables? What does the Bible say about that? 2 Timothy 3:16 - you know this one?
>>Yes.
>>Say it with me, "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," - aren't the kids in that picture good looking? The one in the middle is my youngest son - that was about ten years ago. Another one, 2 Peter 1:21, "...holy men of God spoke as they were moved by" - what? >>The Holy Spirit.
>>"The Holy Spirit." This is not just black ink on white paper, this is inspired. He said, 'The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.' There's something living about it. The Bible says, 'The word of God is quick and powerful, it is living' - That's what that means - 'and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.' The Bible makes a lot of predictions. Do the Bible prophecies really come true? Now, the reason I include this question is some people say, 'Why should I believe the Bible?' Well, I think the Bible is different from any other book in that it has a power to foretell the future. Do you know how remarkable that is? To have 100% accuracy in its prophecies? And that means the only one who could do that is God, because you and I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, do we? But to predict something that's going to happen in a thousand years or five-hundred years, you have to be all-powerful to do that, and the Bible is filled with prophecies like this. Isaiah 42, verses 8 and 9, God says, "I am the Lord...Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them."
God knows the future - He knows your future. You have a choice about your future, He just knows what you're going to choose. That kind of messes with your head, doesn't it? Again, Isaiah 46:9 and 10, "...I am God...declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done," - and, you know, whenever I go out and I share about the word of God, we like to talk about that great prophecy in Daniel chapter 2 where, here, the prophet outlines the history of the world's kingdoms - the ones that, in particular, would have an impact on the proclamation of the Word, and it's in that great image there. And He said - we all know this - Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, the divisions of the Roman Empire, and then, ultimately, the stone coming, and you look through the panorama of history and all of it happened right on schedule. How could God know that except the Bible is supernatural. And there are hundreds of prophecies in the Bible that you could point to that have come true. We're really excited at Amazing Facts we're doing a DVD called 40 Prophecies that Prove the Bible is True - to help just build faith in the Bible so then you can give them Bible studies.
>>Amen.
>>Number 3 - Is the Bible accurate when it speaks about areas of science and health? People say, 'Oh, it's an ancient book and they just - they were uneducated back then and you can't trust the Bible now that we're sophisticated and we understand science and, you know, as long as you cook your pork well you can eat it - everything is okay.' (Laughter) And we think we know more than God. The Bible is a hundred percent true. You know, I love to share the story about back in the 1800s, do you know that 80-percent more women who had their babies born in the hospital died, than the ones who had them at home. And the doctors were mystified why this was happening. And a lot of people went to the doctor for a simple procedure in the primitive hospitals back then and the doctor would say, 'Well, the surgery was a success, but the patient died.' And it's because the doctors back then used to go from one patient to the next, they didn't have the masks, they didn't have the little hoods, they didn't have the rubber gloves - they went with, like, a butcher's apron. They didn't wash their hands - they didn't wash their instruments as they went from doing autopsies to doing living surgery.
And so, so many people died from infection and blood poisoning, and along came a very religious doctor - young doctor named Joseph Lister - and he read in the Bible what the Bible said about washing when you come into contact with a dead body and sanitation and he said, 'We need to start washing.' And he opened a clinic where they began to implement these very stringent measures of cleaning and sanitation and they noticed that a lot more people were surviving in his hospitals. First they mocked him - they said he was crazy. The nurses complained about all the extra measures - and he insisted - but, before it was all over, he was knighted because he discovered that germs - Louis Pasteur also came around the same time - germs were spreading and just killing all these people. They said that if Joseph Lister had come a few years earlier, there would have been one-third fewer deaths in the Civil War, because most of them were due to infection because they didn't understand the basics of sanitation that he got from the Bible.
>>Amen.
>>The Bible also gives us some other interesting scientific facts. You can read, for instance in Job 26:7, it says, "...He hangs the earth on nothing." You might not think that's a very profound statement, but that was written during a time when all the different religions said, 'Well, the world has to rest on something. It's on the back of a turtle or it's on the back of Atlas' shoulders.' God said, 'No, it hangs on nothing.' And, again, the Bible says, 'He sits above the circle of the earth.' - in Isaiah 40, verse 22 - well, they thought the earth was flat or it was square, and God said, 'No, it's round.' And it talks about the wind having weight and it's just principles in the Bible are clearly scientific - they're true - it's accurate. What about Bible history? How do we know it's not just fabrication - a collection of fables? This is what I used to believe. Well, look at John 19:35. This might sound like the Bible's kind of answering itself, but John says, "And he who has seen" - he's writing about himself - what he saw happened - "has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe." John, in Revelation, he says, 'I, John, am telling you' - you know, we believe in the mouth of two or three witnesses, something is declared true. How many gospels are there?
>>Four.
>>Four. Do you know, we have more information about Jesus than we do about Alexander the Great? But I never hear anybody questioning whether Alexander the Great really lived. We have more historical information about Jesus than we do about Julius Caesar, but I never hear any agnostic or atheist questioning the existence of Julius Caesar. But we've got the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul, James - and these people are first-hand witnesses - they saw Jesus. Luke, who interviewed a lot of people that saw Jesus, he writes, you know, Luke, and Acts is a letter of his testimony to Theophilus. And so, you know, I've got one little extra-biblical quote here from Josephus, who was a Jew - contemporary - of the Apostle John, and he's writing in the Jewish history. By the way, you find this Antiquities of the Jews book 18 and chapter 3, section 1 through 5, "Now, about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works and a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and the Gentiles. He was the Christ." - he says this as, kind of, matter of fact - "He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principle men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold. These and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him and the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day." That's an extra-biblical contemporary historical account of Jesus and it's shocking that here you've got one of the most respected, if not the most respected Jewish historian, Josephus - Flavius Josephus - and he's saying, 'This was the Christ.' Some have even surmised, 'You know, he must have been a disciple of John the Baptist or something because he sure sounds like he believed that Jesus was the one.'
And then, of course, you've got the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know, 1947, there was a dispute about whether it was one or two Bedouin shepherd boys were out looking for some lost goats - one of them threw a rock up in a cave and heard a clatter that he knew was not normal. On investigation, he found the cave full of these ancient scrolls. He started cutting them up and selling pieces of them to dealers in Bethlehem and they eventually tracked back where they got this and found they were 2,000-year-old copies of sacred writings - part or whole of the Old Testament, with the exception of the book of Esther. I've been to the Shrine of the Book Museum in Israel where they've got one of the most carefully guarded museums I've ever been to - three and a half feet of reinforced concrete on the roof and it's to guard the word of God.
>>Amen.
>>I've been in there and you see the entire Book of Isaiah. And I had a very educated guide with me - I still remember his name was Massi - and I said - I just pointed to a spot and he - for him, it's like you and I reading ancient King James, but he said, 'Oh, we studied it, I can read it.' I said, 'Well, read that.' And he looked at it for a minute and then he had to read and translate to me, and he was telling me the story of Sennacherib when the Rabshakeh was taunting Hezekiah and, as he's reading it, I got these chills and I thought, 2,000 years and it hasn't changed.
>>Amen.
>>God has miraculously preserved His Word and archaeologists from that part of the world say the most trusted document they have for the ancient kings is the Bible. And the word of God is something you can believe historically. What other evidence is there for the inspiration of God's Word? That would be our fifth question. It says, "And beginning at Moses" - and this is Luke 24:27 - "He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself." How many of the Scriptures talk about Jesus?
>>All.
>>All the Scriptures - from Moses to Malachi - Jesus rose from the dead and He preached a sermon to the disciples where He showed, through all of that, that He was the Messiah. Now, for me, some of the strongest evidence that the Bible is true, are the prophecies about Jesus' first coming. Before you even get to the New Testament - see, I come from a Jewish background, and so, it was absolutely mind-boggling for me how much of Jesus I found in the Old Testament. I ended up writing a book about it because I'm so in love with the subject that Christ is everywhere. He is the sum total - the whole book, Jesus doesn't appear just in the New Testament, He starts in Genesis.
>>Amen.
>>And I see Jesus in the life of Joseph. I see Him in Moses stretching out his hands. I see Him in David weeping on the Mount of Olives. I see Him in Abraham, climbing the mountain to sacrifice his son. I see Jesus all over. I have Jesus sightings all the time when I'm reading the Bible. (Laughter) And you see the prophecies - just consider the prophecies about His first coming. The time of His birth is foretold, the place of His birth, that He be born of a virgin mother, the type of ministry that He would have, the events of His betrayal - and the specifics - the manner of His execution, His resurrection, His ascension - read Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" - and in that psalm it says 'they pierced My hands and My feet.' The psalm that Jesus quotes from the cross, later in that psalm, tells about His crucifixion so that the people there would catch it that day. It's a supernatural book.
>>Amen.
>>And yet, we neglect it. What will our answer be to God? People have died to preserve the Bible and make it available to you and me. You know, there's two conflicting proverbs. One proverb says 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder' - you heard that? That when you don't have something, you finally have it, you just - you love it. And the other proverb is 'Familiarity breeds contempt.' One way the devil gets Christians to ignore the Bible today, just baptize them in Bibles and they'll stop reading it. They'll think by just having it everywhere, that's a substitute for having it in their heart. Does it say, 'Thy Word I have hid under my pillow that I may not sin against you'? (Laughter) It's not 'Thy Word I've hidden in my nightstand' or 'I've got it in my car glove box.' Thy Word I've hidden where?
>>In my heart.
>>You've got to read it to get it there. What do I gain by accepting the Bible as God's inspired Word? I don't have time to talk about all the things you'd gain. You'll be wiser. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. You can read Psalm 119, verse 100, it says, "I understand more than the ancients, because I keep your precepts." There's a blessing in Revelation pronounced on those who hear, read, and keep the things. It's not just hearing the Word. Psalm 119, verse 98 tells us, "...Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies;" - it'll raise your IQ if you read the Bible. Nothing is better - and you can - you can remember the Bible.
I remember, we had a young man came to our church in Sacramento, a few years ago, I was amazed. His father said, 'He's memorized the whole Book of Revelation. He's working on the Book of Daniel. Would you like to have him do a demonstration? At first I tried him out and he really did - he had memorized the whole book. So we brought him up front. He was like 12, 13 years old. And I tried to encourage the members, I said, 'we need to hide God's Word in our heart. He's got the whole Book of Revelation. I think Jesus had memorized the whole book of Deuteronomy. Every time Jesus was tempted by the devil, He said, 'It is written. It is written.' - and He quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy. What should I do if I have trouble believing the Bible? 'Sometimes I have doubts; there's things I don't understand.' If you want to have better faith in the Bible, just wait until suddenly you have a spiritual experience and you feel goosebumps and the hair go up on the back of your neck.
>>Amen.
>>What do you do? Faith. Read in Romans 10:17, "Faith" - you want more faith? - "Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God." As you read the Bible it inspires you with faith. When I started reading the Bible, I had no intention to believe it, but as I read, something happened to my faith, and my faith was shifted from the things of the world to the things of God. Someone once came up with an interesting acronym. The Bible - B-i-b-l-e stands for 'basic instructions before leaving earth'. (Laughter) Isn't that good?
>>Yeah.
>>This is the manual. If you want to know where you are and where you're going, you need the word of God.
>>Amen.
>>You know, how many of you depend on your phone, now, for a GPS to get around? I remember, as a young evangelist, going out and making visits and I had to use a map - and it took us forever to find somebody - especially when I lived on the reservation in New Mexico and you'd go, you know, E-19 - see a little road, and then you see a little footnote, it says, 'a big cactus here, make sure and go around that.' (Laughter) It was really difficult to get around. And now, you just type things in and you know where you are. In order for those things to work, they have to receive signals from satellites that are up in the sky. If you get one satellite, you still really can't tell where you are. You get three satellites and you can triangulate. And, when I'm flying, and the GPS on the plane, if you get like 7 or 10 satellites, you have your altitude, you can really get an accurate fix on your location. So, if you want to know what the truth is, it's not one Scripture, it's here a little, there a little, comparing Scripture with Scripture and you need at least the mouth of two or three witnesses to establish that, and we have that in the word of God. Our foundational faith is built upon a mountain of evidence that corresponds. We have a lot of Scripture for what we believe. Can the words of the Bible help me day to day in my fight with temptation? In my desire to be like Christ? It's the most important thing.
>>Amen.
>>People say, 'I'm struggling in my Christianity.' And I say, 'Are you reading your Bible?' 'Well, you know, I'm really busy.' (Laughter) I say, 'You think there could be a connection?' You know, you go see the doctor, he might say, 'Well how's your appetite?' 'I haven't got much appetite.' 'Well, you might be sick.' You lose your appetite. And if a Christian doesn't have an appetite for the word of God - if a child of God doesn't have an appetite for the word of God that tells about the son of God, then something's wrong with the relationship.
>>Amen.
>>If you want to see a reformation, we need a revival in reading the Bible. You'll have a revival of holiness when we have the weapon to fight temptation.
>>Amen.
>>Again, Psalm 119:11, "Thy word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin..." - and I think I also gave you the verse there talking about the word of God is a sword - it's a weapon. You read this in Hebrews chapter 4. 'The word of God is quick and powerful.' You read in Ephesians chapter 6, 'Taking the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.' You read in Revelation, Jesus is coming and he - what does he have? A sword coming out of His mouth. That's, obviously, a symbol, but what is that sword? What's the power of Christ? How did God bring the world into existence? God said. Here you've got a book where God says.
>>Amen.
>>Will you neglect that and be innocent in the judgment? I'd say, 'Well, I had no idea what He wanted.' He'd say, 'Well, it was in the book.' Sorry, am I coming on too strong? Or maybe we need to be reading our Bibles. 'Oh, but there's so many other messages out there, Pastor Doug.' You can lose your appetite for good food by eating bad food.
>>Right.
>>And I think that's something that's been happening among God's people is, by the time we get done with the devil's junk food, we have no appetite for the main course from God. That affects church attendance. We get so hyper-stimulated with the entertainment of the world, we come to church and we wonder why the pastor can't entertain us. Because, by comparison, pastors can't compete. Some are trying, which is unfortunate, because the word of God ought to stand on its own merit.
>>Amen!
>>You know, I heard an amazing fact that the University of Haifa has managed to condense the entire Hebrew Bible so that you can fit it on the head of a pin. I know, it's mind-boggling - this is a couple years ago - an amazing fact. They actually created each letter by bombarding a golden plate with atoms and they - don't ask me how they did it - I read it online, it must be true. (Raucous laughter) Someone Google it - no, there's an article on it. And here, I'll show you something else that's equally amazing, back in 1921 there was a prisoner named A. Schilling, he was a counterfeiter - a forger - he was imprisoned in Sing Sing Prison - good old-fashioned Sing Sing - and when he died they came in his cell - he had passed away from old age - and they were collecting his personal effects, they noticed in his top pocket that he had seven straight pins, six silver, one gold. And one of the guards was curious about that and he knew he was an engraver - he was a forger - and he always saw him working under this magnifying glass, so he took the pins and he looked at them under the magnifying glass and he was astonished when he saw something on the head of one of them. And they got this very powerful magnifying glass, they looked at the head of one of the pins and A. Schilling had inscribed the entire Lord's Prayer on the head of the gold pin - and there's a picture of it - I think it's 264 characters and however many words there in the Lord's Prayer. God doesn't want His word inscribed on a pin, in a pocket, by our heart, He wants it in our heart.
>>Amen!
>>He wants to write His words in our heart and in our minds. We need to fortify our minds with His truth. Matter of fact, there's a statement from the book Great Controversy, "Only those who fortify their minds with the truth of God's word will stand through the final conflict.
>>Amen.
>>Does the Bible have power to affect my life, personally?
>>Amen.
>>Absolutely. 'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things are passed away. All things are made new.' The Bible makes you into a new creation. You can also read in Psalm 119:105 - if you're wondering about God's direction for your life, it says, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path." God's word will guide you. It's the lamp - the light - that leads us to His kingdom. And, if you want to get through these last days, it's not just a lamp, it's the rock upon which we build. We need to fill our minds with the word of God everyday - whether I feel like it or not, because you may not always feel like it. I carve out time to feed myself on the word of God. Not just what I do for, like, sermon preparation, but this morning I wake up - I use my computer - and I'm always reading through the Bible - every day, except Sabbath - six days a week, for years now, I'm always reading through the Bible. And, you know what? I barely make it just like you. And, if it wasn't for the fact that I have a devotional life, with all of the radar jamming that the devil's got that's mixing up the signals going to God's people - and you're going to hear confused signals coming from all different places, even in Christ's day, among God's people, there was confusion. Even among the apostles there was confusion. You need to know what you believe and why you believe it.
>>Amen.
>>You know, I remember that amazing event back in 2010, when those 33 Chilean miners got trapped three miles down in the mountain, by road, over half a mile, directly. And first - the cave in - they didn't know if anyone was alive. They started just, kind of, in desperation they thought, 'Well, we'll put down a few pilot holes and see if we can find some pockets and maybe there'll be some sign of life or we'll hear something.' And then, after two or three pilot holes - six-inch holes - they pulled up the drill and there was a note on it and it said, 'Thirty-three of us are still alive.' And then all of a sudden the world got ahold of that story and they thought, 'How do we save these men from what could be, easily, a hopeless situation?' And they got the drilling experts from around the world that all came together and said - had to bring this gear out into the middle of the - what is that - Acadma - Anaconda - something desert there in Chile - I'm saying it wrong - Ataconda - no - anyway, in the desert, way out in the middle of nowhere in Chile - up in the mountains there was a copper goldmine and they finally got some experts to coordinate - they had people - everyone from - submarine psychologist's - everybody chipped in to try and help these men sustain life in the dark.
And they finally got a hold big enough where they could start squishing supplies - emergency, life-saving supplies down to them - food and water and some basic sanitation things - and they would send up notes and they'd say, 'Please send this.' And a couple of them sent up a note and said, 'Please send some beer.' (Laughter) And they sent down a note and they said, 'No.' (Laughter) That's the last thing you need when you're in a life-threatening delicate situation, is to lose your wits. Someone else sent up a message, they said, 'We need spiritual help.' They sent down 33 New Testaments and two full Bibles, because they knew, from experience, that the Bible has a way of saving people's lives. Do you know a Bible is in the life raft on the airplanes you fly?
>>Amen.
>>Yeah, my dad was in the airline business. Went to this summer camp one day and all the kids were playing on this rubber raft that my dad donated. They pulled the lever and all these CO2 cartridges exploded this big life raft and all the kids were out there playing and one of them said,' Pastor Doug, there's a bump in the middle of the raft.' And I went and said, 'Well, let me get that out. We don't want you to get hurt.' And I - I opened up the bump and it was the survival gear. And I took it to shore and I'm just curious, so I'm pulling it apart and I thought, 'What do they put on these planes in the life rafts to help you survive if you get - crash-land in the ocean?' Oh, they had a patch kit for the rafts because the ladies jump off the plane with high heels. (Laughter) I guess, and they had like fishing gear. They had water distilling. They had first aid. They had vitamins. And I couldn't believe it when I felt the square package and I pulled it out, they had a Bible. Somewhere they discovered that the Bible helps people stay alive in emergencies.
>>Amen.
>>Friends, there's a storm coming and we need the word of God.
>>Amen.
>>How can this new heart and this new spirit happen? Do you want to have that experience, friends?
>>Yes.
>>It says in 2 Corinthians 10, verse 5, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" Friends, heaven and earth is going to pass away, but God says, 'My word will not pass away. Can you say 'Amen'?
>>Amen.
>>And I'm telling you, from personal experience, over 40 years ago I was living up in the mountains in a cave, running around like a maniac, using drugs, naked, eating out of garbage cans, and stealing. I was a big zero and I finally picked up and started reading a Bible somebody left in my cave and it completely transformed my life.
>>Amen.
>>And so, you'll never convince me that the word of God does not have supernatural power. If I should start neglecting the word of God, I'd lose the power. If you want to see a renewal and a revival and a reformation among God's people, we need to read our Bibles. Can you say 'amen' to that, friends?
>>Amen!
>>How many of you would like to say, before we close this presentation, 'By God's grace, I want to spend time in His word. I believe His word is spirit and life. I want to hide His word in my heart and have a renewal - if you want to have a revival, it's not that far away. Open the book and read His word. Can I pray for you for that purpose, friends?
>>Yes.
>>Father in heaven, Lord, tonight as we come together for this special series, we long to have revival in our hearts. And Lord, I pray that you will be with each of the people who are here - those who are watching - that we might take advantage of the wonderful gift that you have given us in Your word - a gift that has come to us at incredible sacrifice. I pray, Lord, if there's anything in our lives that's creating background noise, so that we're neglecting our relationship with You, You'll help us to identify that and help us to have a revival and a renewal in our experience - help us to put away the things that are distracting us from listening to the voice of Jesus. And I pray that we might all experience a revival and a new birth. Bless your people, Lord, bless your church. We know Jesus is coming soon and we want to be ready. We thank You and we pray all of this in Jesus' name, amen.
>>Amen. (Music)