Hartland Summer Conference 2018: Prepared for the Final Crisis

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Subodh Pandit

Ancient Words

The person at the podium is Bonnie Rogers.

So just a short question, Bonnie, what was happening a few months ago in your mind and in your emotions?

And how did your daughter help you and what happened?

Well, actually, it started about 4 years ago.

An experience happened 4 years ago that almost caused me to lose my faith entirely, something I thought would never ever happen.

And I went through some extreme depression, despondency, the devil even used spiritualism, am I not talking loud enough?

Oh, the devil even used spiritualism, superstitious, something I had dabbled in years ago before I was ever a Seventh-day Adventist Christian.

And many, I was coming to many wrong conclusions about innumerable things and the depression got so great that I was even having trouble functioning from day to day.

My family was greatly concerned about me and didn't know what to do.

But My daughter's on staff here at Heartland and she had remembered that Dr.

Pandit had come here and given us some DVDs that she was quite impressed with and so she shared those with me and through that and creation the thin cord of faith that I had started to increase.

And I'm so thankful, so thankful to the Lord that I can stand here before you and that I'm alive.

And this is just the short version of a longer testimony that if any of you would like to hear, I can share with you later.

And I just want to say 1 thing, Don't ever, ever lay your Bible aside.

Stay connected to your Bible and to Jesus Christ, your Lord and Savior.

And we will all say amen, praise the Lord.

But the people outside there don't say that.

They will say, why do you believe in the Bible?

So we usually start giving a religious answer.

But out there, like I said yesterday, the language is different.

So let's look at a little different language that might be able to use.

First of all, the Bible, well, it's a piece of literature.

So Let's classify literature of the ancient days.

Ancient literature is classified into 4, basically folk tale, legend, myth, and historical.

Out of these 4, which is the most reliable and credible?

There's no attempt to state a real true story.

The main intent is to be interesting and bring out a lesson of morals.

So everybody knows that a folk tale doesn't have to be real.

Number 2, a legend, it's probably based on a true story, but changes keep coming in, exaggerations, embellishments, and make this ordinary story into a real superhuman 1.

Legends are not made in the same generation as the event.

We use the word legend very loosely, like we say he's a basketball legend or a football legend.

A legend is somebody who, after a few generations, they say, well, he could kick the ball 50, 100 yards.

And then later on, oh, he could kick it right off the stadium.

And later on, maybe he could kick it to the moon, because look at all the stuff that we see on the moon.

Started off OK, but it changes over time.

This medallion, which was an example of how many years it takes, dates back certainly to the second century BC.

If we put the Buddha's nirvana or death during the fifth century BC, now that's 300 years, then the artist who carved the medallion must have lived at a time when the memory of the blessed 1, that is Buddha, was still very fresh in the minds of the people.

In other words, 300 years, still very fresh.

In other words, what we are saying is that a legend takes a long time to form.

The written literature was compiled by faithful, devoted followers centuries after the event.

Though these records are separated from 1 another by a few hundred years.

They are in fundamental agreement and we have every reason to accept them as reliable accounts.

It is so far back in history that it's generally accepted as somebody's imagination.

It's probably not true and it usually involves the supernatural as gods and goddesses, and all supernatural activities.

This is a myth, and the time period from where we get the myth is usually many centuries and even millennia or thousands of years.

Historical, here the attempt by the author to state a real true story.

There are no significant additions or deletions and no core changes.

But the question is, does it affect the story or are there peripheral changes?

And the closer it was written to the event, the greater the credibility.

Now you see on the screen some letters and dashes.

Whenever there's an unusual event, people make it into a story.

And they pass it on from generation to generation.

And then some people say, well, that's called the OT, oral tradition, pass it on.

And then after a few generations, we might forget some details.

So somebody decides to write down the story.

So the OT, which is the oral tradition, becomes now the written tradition, WT.

And we do not have today any original manuscript of any of these writings.

So what we have is the earliest manuscript, earliest copy.

Those dashes that you have between those letters there are the gaps.

What's the gap between the event and the time it became a well-established oral tradition.

What's the gap between the oral tradition and the time it was written, so it becomes a written tradition?

And what's the gap between the written tradition and the earliest manuscript we have?

So 1 question, if the gaps are wide, how credible is the writing, up or down?

And the gaps are really small, then the credibility goes up.

So that's the classification of ancient literature.

Let us look at these 5 great world religious literatures and see how they fare.

The 5 great world religions, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity.

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