Two Factors That Prove The Reliability Of The Bible As A Manual In Knowing God And Growing Spiritually. || Apostle Joshua Selman

Apostle Joshua Selman: Two factors that prove the reliability of the Bible as a manual in knowing God and growing spiritually.

The first reason why we trust the Bible as a compendium of the written truths, the word of God, is that 40 different men writing 66 books in about three languages over a period of 1,600 years and then having their thoughts and their writings unified in one book with a progressive revelation of God, Jesus Christ and salvation cannot be a coincidence.
The fact that you can bring a compendium of 66 books written by 40 different authors, many of them who never saw themselves over a span of 1,600 years, meaning there was no possibility.

Is like someone hearing me now and saying somebody who lived in 1891 said something and he can connect it to what I’m saying.
There was no possibility because if you understand the growth of civilization after 500 or 1,000 years, there will be a change in the way people believe, the lingual franca would have changed, their perceptions would have changed, advancement would have made some things obsolete.
So, the fact that you can have 66 books written by 40 authors, many of them completely unconnected in three different languages. The Bible is largely written in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic with a bit of Latin. These people were not from the same culture and then, the shocking part is the progressive revelation of God, the progressive revelation of Jesus Christ, the progressive revelation of the salvation plan of God

Some of the prophets, when they spoke, they didn’t understand what they were saying, it was what they said plus what another Prophet said plus what another Prophet said plus what the Psalmist said, that now makes sense to us. They had pieces of what they were saying and they did not even comprehend the depth of what they were saying, they were inspired by the spirit to speak. It is now us who can see the whole picture and see that what Jeremiah said made sense with what Isaiah said.

You’ll be learning from scripture, in fact it is the second reason why we consider the word of God accurate a manual for our growth because the prophecies that were said there, many of them, a major majority of them have come to pass as exact as the Bible says would come to pass.

Now the Fulfillment of prophecies.

Matthew 3:3

Now, when Isaiah was prophesying this, he really did not know what he was saying. But when they began to kill children, when Jesus was born he saw a picture of the lamentation of the women Rachel crying, weeping in Ramah would not be comforted. There was no Rachel there, when he was there but he prophesied and now, when it was fulfilled in the days of Jesus, they now referred to his prophecy as written. Do you understand that?

Matthew 2:17-18 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

How many people spoke about this now? You see that Isaiah spoke about it, Jeremiah is speaking. He’s even giving flesh to what Isaiah saw that there was lamentation and weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are dead or they are not and yet these prophets did not meet themselves.

Matthew 4:14-15 to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: “Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles–

Who is that light? Jesus.
When the prophet was speaking, he saw(I’m not sure there was any land like Naphtali and Zebulun at that time. Most of those people were not cities, they were people, human beings).
Like today, If you say “Israel”, it’s a place but in the days of Abraham and the days afterwards, Israel was a person.
So, how do you give this kind of accurate prophecies that in the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. He said the people that sat in darkness have seen a great light and to them which sat in the region and the shadow of death a light has sprung up.

 That prophecy was talking about Jesus. But do you know, if it was not referenced here, if you were asked to guess, you will fail woefully because there was no possibility. Whoever knew that what was happening to Jonah was a prophetic adumbration of what will happen to Jesus. Until Jesus made reference to it, we only knew what happened to Jonah as punishment.
Jonah was being punished for disobedience and when Jesus appears, he said no, it’s not punishment, it’s a sign. It’s called the sign of Jonah, that the same way Jonah was in the belly of the fish, so the son of man will be buried down the earth.

Acts 3:18 But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer.

Do you know what he’s saying? That the prophet saw the suffering of Christ, they didn’t even know what they were saying. Remember, like Isaiah prophesied it, that he was battered, he was disfigured beyond recognition.
There were many types and shadows, the Psalmist himself through worship, he entered into the prophetic and he saw the coronation of Jesus, “the Lord said to my Lord, sit down at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool”.
Question? Before Jesus came, do you know that the prophets did not even know that God was trion in nature? Because, there was no possibility of interacting with Jesus.
They only knew God and then for others who had the spirit that came from God and many of them did not really understand the dynamics.

The second reason why we trust the Bible, is because the prophecies that have been written here have come to pass. Prophecies like “it shall come to pass, I shall pour out my spirit upon all flesh”. The prophesies started with Joel the Prophet and then Isaiah also said “with stammering lips and another tongue, will they praise me”.  Now, you see that fulfilled in Acts 2:1 when the day of Pentecost was fully come.
When Peter began to preach his message, he said “we are not drunk, this is 9.00 a.m in the morning. Peter said “no no no no, don’t be silly to think we are drunk, this is 9:00 a.m. in the morning.. He said “but this is the fulfillment of that prophecy that Joel said”, “that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, your sons and daughters shall prophesy”.

The fulfillment of that prophecy was what Peter said “for this promise is unto you, to your children, to your children’s children”.
Now, do you know the importance of this? Your devotional and your study life will become richer because you will not only study because parents forced you while you were growing. You now see that the word of God is infallible enough to communicate the thoughts of God, that the next time you open your Bible, you are not just reading a book that was printed by white taker house or Bible society of Nigeria but that, beyond the frail pages that there is an inspiration behind it that can reveal God to you, an inspiration behind it that can reveal Jesus. This is the secret of consistency in studying the word.
If you do not trust the infallibility of the word of God, something will eventually happen to your word study life. It will become a burdensome ritual because you don’t trust what is there and because your heart is not aligned, it’s going to be difficult for the Holy Spirit to breathe through the words.

 I like the fact that the word “inspiration” means “God breathe”.
When the Bible says that the words were inspired of God, I want to explain that for
you. All scripture was given by the breath of God. The word inspired means, made to document the way God wanted it, not necessarily that the information that was written was all consistent with God’s will but that God forced that, that information should be documented. In the Bible, it was not only God that spoke. In the Bible, donkeys spoke. In the Bible satan spoke. In the Bible demon spoke through a man (the mad man in Gadar). In the Bible depraved men who did not honor God spoke. Nebuchadnezzar and all kinds of people in the Bible, patriarch spoke. In the Bible children spoke. In the Bible the Angels spoke.

So, when the Bible says all scripture is inspired by God, he’s not saying, talking about the correctness or the word compliancy of the statement, he’s saying whether it was satan that spoke, it was God that was the reason why that information was documented in the Bible that there is a purpose through it.

The Bible can now say the things that are written, both accurate and inaccurate, even the limitations of the prophets was inspired to be written, so we can know the difference between them and Jesus.
Everything that was written here was not a mistake, this is the reason why your study of scripture cannot end just at a doctrinal layer ,. If God allowed it to be written there, wisdom can be drawn from it.

There are some parts of scripture you don’t want to read, you just want to run away out of that place and wonder why they were written, is because you are reading it from a carnal mind. If you read it from the lens of the spirit, you will see that there is a message there.

Why are you writing in the Bible that Solomon married 700 wives and 300 concubines, how does that information profit somebody who is passionately following Jesus? How do you read that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, how does that profit me? Go straight to the point, he disobeyed, was punished and he’s back now. Why give me all that details? Because all scripture were inspired. That means, those who wrote it were not necessarily those who knew where they were writing.
Some wrote it out of their eyewitness accounts but some wrote it prophetically, not knowing the full import  of what they were writing. 

You see this Bible, for as long as this becomes just the writings with black ink and sometimes red ink, you will never grow spiritually. By this teaching, I’m giving you a change of orientation. You don’t worship the Bible but you have an orientation that beyond the frail pages, that because the breath of God is upon it. When you are approaching scripture, you are not approaching a novel, in fact the Bible is not a Christian novel, a Christian novel is profitable. Books written by other men of God are profitable, because it came by inspiration too but don’t forget, every other inspiration to write any other book that ignores the fundamental inspiration here, must be discarded.

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