In this We Believe series sermon Pastor Clark explores the mysterious rappings of the Fox Sisters, and the birth of modern Spiritualism. Does the Bible have anything to say about communicating with the dead? Could there be a serious deception that God wants to protect us from? Learn the answers to these questions and more in the sermon Voices from Beyond the Grave.

In this We Believe series sermon Pastor Clark explores the mysterious rappings of the Fox Sisters, and the birth of modern Spiritualism. Does the Bible have anything to say about communicating with the dead? Could there be a serious deception that God wants to protect us from? Learn the answers to these questions and more in the sermon Voices from Beyond the Grave.

Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.

Dalton SDA Church

We Believe

Chester Clark

Secrets of Ancient Scrolls, Part 1

Without the Bible, where would we be as Christians?

We wouldn't have the evidence of a Savior who loves us, a Savior who gave Himself for us.

We wouldn't have the understanding of the way He lived and the way He wants us to live.

We wouldn't even have the promise of His return.

We wouldn't be able to look forward to that day when we can spend eternity with Him.

The Scriptures are important to us as Christians, amen?

And today we're going to be talking about the secrets of ancient scrolls.

In the next few minutes we're going to be talking about some of the ways that God answered the critics of the Scriptures.

Because you know the Bible has always had critics, hasn't it?

It seems as though the brightest minds, the most educated institutions have been pointing their attacks at the Scriptures for centuries and yet the Bible still stands.

And today we're gonna be looking at why the Bible still stands, looking at some of the evidence for how the Bible was preserved and how we can find it trustworthy.

I want to invite you to bow your heads with me for an additional word of prayer as we begin.

Father in heaven, thank you for giving us Jesus.

Thank you for being a seeker after our hearts.

Thank you for calling us today, for bringing us today, for preserving our lives today, to hear that voice, our conscience, your Spirit speaking to our hearts.

Today as we open your Word, as we consider history, as we consider the Bible, we want to pray that you would speak to us, that you would help us to leave here with greater confidence and greater assurance.

And not only the word that we hold in our hands, but the Jesus that that word describes to us.

We thank you for this, in Jesus' name, Amen.

About the end of the 18th century, Sir Edward Gibbon wrote his masterful work on the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

Now this is a landmark work in Roman history, but particularly of interest to us for our subject this morning, Gibbon made some rather sweeping statements about the veracity of the Scriptures.

This was a growing trend in the educational elite and the academic world in Gibbon's time.

Edward Gibbon wrote in the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire that early Christian leaders had not quite been satisfied with the story of Jesus and so they had gone to make their own adjustments.

In fact, he said they had with rash and sacrilegious hands conveniently tampered with the original manuscripts.

This was an opening of a door that would continue throughout the next hundred years or so as 1 after another, educated men, scholars began to doubt and question whether the Scriptures were authentic, whether they could be trusted.

Bauer, Ferdinand Christian Bauer of Tübingen, declared nearly all of the books of the New Testament to be unauthentic.

This would have been about the middle of the 1800s.

By unauthentic, Bauer meant that The books could not have been written at the time which Christians believed them to have been written, nor could they have been written by the authors which the Bible claimed had written the books.

In all of the books of the New Testament, this professor at Tübingen wrote that only Paul's letters to the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Galatians appeared to be authentic.

Somebody decided to make up something nice, pass it along as scripture, and it became accepted and as part of the culture or the lore of Christianity.

Wilhelm Christian von Mannen in Holland joined the radical criticism school of thought and he went even further saying that none of the New Testament books — none, not 1 — none of the New Testament books, according to Mannon, von Mannon, were written in the first century or by anyone who had any first-hand knowledge or experience in the things and the life of Christ.

None of the books were written in the first century or by anyone who had a firsthand knowledge of the things they contained.

At Cambridge University, Richard Porson was similarly challenging the New Testament.

He was drawing doubt as to whether these books could possibly have been written by the people they claimed to have been written by or at the time that it was claimed that they had been written.

Now, around this same time, discoveries were being made that would press the New Testament's critics onto their heels, and we're gonna be looking at that here this morning.

We're gonna be looking at how discoveries actually open the door to a new understanding of the New Testament particularly and its authenticity or veracity.

And I'm just going to, I'm going to see if we can't, well maybe we're okay.

A New Testament, well a German professor by the name of Konstantin Tischendorf was listening to all this that was being said about the New Testament and about its unreliability.

Even though he was educated at the University of Leipzig, which was another university that was largely involved in this higher critical thought, Tischendorf dreamed of finding evidence that would support the authenticity of the Bible.

He had studied the scriptures, he had studied the writings of Paul, and he saw the common threads, he saw their unity, he saw how even though they had been written by different authors, there was a unity of thought and of purpose, there was a harmony between the various parts of the New Testament, and he believed the New Testament to be authentic.

But where could evidence be found to prove its accuracy and legitimacy?

And so Constantin Tischendorf began what would be a life work.

His magnum opus, what he wanted to accomplish in life was simply to draw attention to evidence that suggested that these critics of the Bible were wrong.

These critics of the Bible were attacking something that they didn't know what they were attacking.

And so at that time, the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament were apparently from the 4th and 5th centuries.

Now this would be about 300 years, a third of a millennium after the events they wrote about, right?

Jesus walked here on Earth between, well, you know, sometime around 0 AD, I guess, or 1 AD is when we would expect His birth to be.

That's at least 1 of the reasons the date was set, but the time period of his ministry was somewhere around 31 AD, 27 AD to 31 AD, 30 and so forth, so the early first century was the time period of the story of Christ.

We believe as Christians, and the Christians in Tischendorf's day believed as well, that the bulk of the New Testament would have been written in the latter half of the first century.

So between about 50 AD and 100 AD, the New Testament would have been written.

The critics were saying no it's impossible these manuscripts, the oldest manuscript you can find is from the 4th century, 300 years later.

It's impossible these would have been written.

And so there's 4 manuscripts, 4 manuscripts that Tischendorf began to study.

And he began studying these 4 manuscripts from the fourth and fifth centuries.

The first was the Codex of Alexandrinus, And this was owned by the British Museum.

Also, there was the Codex Claremontanus, which was owned by the Library of Paris.

And so Tischendorf went to London, to the British Museum.

He went to Paris, to the Library of Paris.

He studied these manuscripts, but they were both incomplete.

Neither of them had the entire New Testament, even though they were from the fourth or fifth century.

There was another manuscript that Tischendorf knew about.

This was the Codex Vaticanus, and the Vaticanus scrolls were kept in the Vatican, of course, that's why it was named this.

And the Vatican did not allow the Codex Vaticanus to be studied by any Protestant scholar, which Tischendorf was.

And so this was a significant barrier to Tischendorf's being able to examine it, probably 1 of the more complete of the manuscripts.

In the end, Tischendorf was extremely persistent, and finally, the caretakers at the Vatican allowed Tischendorf to spend 6 hours, 6 hours, with the Codex Vaticanus.

And he was able to compare what he had learned from the Alexandrinus and the Claremontinus.

And the fourth manuscript was the Codex Ephraimi.

And this was a very challenging work, because the Codex Ephraim was actually a part of scripture, part of the New Testament, that had been erased probably several centuries after it was written.

So imagine, written on parchment or vellum, and then erasing it, maybe with mechanical means, maybe with some chemical means, but then over it were the writings, the philosophies of an Orthodox, a Syrian Orthodox theologian by the name of Ephraim.

So, imagine trying to figure out what was written underneath the writings of Ephraim.

And Tischendorf began studying these manuscripts and pouring over them very, very carefully, painstakingly examining and comparing, and he produced what he thought was a little bit more accurate Greek New Testament, a little more accurate than Erasmus had been 300 years earlier or so, and even the German Karl Lachmann had produced only a decade or 2 before, but he realized he hadn't really found much new evidence.

He hadn't really discovered much that would convince the critics that the New Testament was reliable, that it was authentic.

Significant portions of the New Testament were simply missing from all of these 4 major documents.

Could there be older documents to be found?

Could there be evidence, manuscripts yet to be discovered?

If there was, if there were to be these evidences or manuscripts, Tischendorf was determined that he would discover them, that he would find them.

His search for New Testament certainty led Tischendorf to some of the oldest monasteries of the world.

He wrote, but that in some recess of the Greek or Coptic, Syrian or Armenian monasteries there might be some precious manuscript slumbering for ages in dust and darkness." Can you sort of see what Tischendorf was imagining?

In his mind's eye he knew there just has to be something out there.

Of course he didn't know that it existed, It was all a figment of his imagination at this point, but it was bugging him, it was driving him.

There might be some manuscript, some precious manuscript slumbering for ages in dust and darkness.

Well, in 1838 he read about the celebrated American archaeologist, Dr.

Edward Robinson, who reported that in St.

Catherine's Monastery, there was an extensive collection of the most ancient manuscripts imaginable.

And so In 1844, early 1844, Tischendorf set off to Egypt, determined to examine these manuscripts.

It was in March of 1844 that Tischendorf arrived in Cairo.

He was met there by some monks from the St.

Catherine's Monastery is a very interesting place.

It's right at the foot of Mount Sinai, the traditional place where we believe, or the churches believe, that Mount Sinai was located.

Secrets of Ancient Scrolls, Part 2

Our Father in heaven, today we are just so grateful for your Word.

We're thankful that we can come here again today to consider its meaning for our lives and how we can trust it as well as how we can understand it and use it and apply it.

I pray that you would help us as we do so, that you'll send your Spirit to guide us.

We thank you for this promise, we claim it in Jesus' name.

Well, this morning we were talking about the secrets of ancient scrolls, and we talked about how Tischendorf's discoveries put the critics of the Bible on their heels.

They really had not expected a complete New Testament to have been discovered up to the, or back to the time of the early fourth century.

But you know, it didn't take too long because critics will be critics and doubters will be doubters, right?

And there's always enough room to doubt, isn't there?

I don't think God ever removes all occasion or opportunity for doubt.

There is what we call faith, isn't there?

And so there's always an opportunity for us to exercise faith.

And it's very true that even if we can prove and unearth and find and study, there's still some room to doubt.

So the doubters doubted, and the skeptics were still skeptical.

And they pointed out that there were still over 200 years between the apostles and the earliest texts.

Now 200 years doesn't seem like a lot of time when you're looking back over 2, 000 years.

But 200 years is a lot of time, isn't it?

I mean, when you think about it, for hand copies to be made and survive and be passed from 1 person to the next, 200 years is an awful lot of time for there to be corruptions and meddling and changes to be made in the text.

And so, 1 of the challenges to those who believed in the veracity of the Bible that the critics made, find even the merest fragment, that was 1 of the terms used, the merest fragment of the scriptures earlier than the early fourth century.

Find a mere fragment and this would be a challenge that the archeologists and other Bible-believing scholars were facing.

Now, as we mentioned this morning, the Codex Sinaticus and similar era of manuscripts were written on vellum, which is a pretty durable material and much more durable than parchment or papyrus, which is essentially what the Greco-Roman world would have written manuscripts on.

Parchment or papyrus is essentially just pounded, you know, plant material and dry, dehydrated, into thin sheets, and it's not very durable.

And so the critics of the Bible were confident that they would never be able, or never have to face the challenge of such manuscripts.

Now, the story takes a familiar as well as an unexpected turn.

Enter 2 ladies, 2 women who had a tremendous impact on the history of the Bible were 2 twin sisters.

They were both Smith was their maiden name, they were twin sisters, and they had been briefly married to Mr.

Gibson, so they had different last names, but they were orientalists at Cambridge University.

They were expert scholars in the Middle Eastern world.

And where do you think they would go if they wanted to find the most ancient manuscripts imaginable?

And so they made the trip, these 2 women, and you remember this is in the mid 1800s, late 1800s.

For 2 single women to be off traveling in the Arab world was quite a feat.

It was quite an unusual circumstance, but they're off in the Bedouins and traveling across Egypt, making their way to Mount Sinai and St.

And here in 1891, they discovered a partially erased copy of the Gospels in Syriac, something that Tischendorf had never come across, but it was there nonetheless, a Syriac New Testament, or at least Gospels, part of the Gospels, which it was generally accepted, not just by these sisters, but the scholarly world admitted this had to have been written before the year 200.

Now with this copy, and that wasn't a complete copy, but still it proved that what Constantine had and the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus had in 331 AD had been in existence 130 years earlier.

And it proved that it was in circulation.

Now there's other things that you have to consider when you think about these old manuscripts.

1 of the things you have to consider is we know the New Testament wasn't written in Syriac, right?

And so you have to afford some time for manuscripts to travel from the place where it's written to a place where it is interpreted, or if it's interpreted for it to travel, or translated to travel to another part of the world.

So here you have, you can assume that it was before 200 that John had to have been written, right?

The Gospel of John had to have been written earlier for it to have been translated before 200 into Syriac and made its way to the St.

Ezra Abbott would make the next discovery, and about the same time, in fact.

Now, this was in Armenian language, and It had been known for several decades already.

Abbott was simply studying a manuscript that was already known to exist.

But what he discovered was that he could date it from a period early than 170.

This is a commentary about the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Abbott showed that, it indicated that those 4 Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were held in, quote, undisputed preeminence over all other narratives on the life of Christ.

So, in a commentary written about the Gospels in 170 AD, Now again, figure how long it takes.

These Gospels have to be written, then they have to be disseminated until they come to some sort of notoriety before a commentary is written about them, right?

We don't write a commentary about the letters we receive from a friend.

We only write commentaries about material which is being widely consumed.

And so for a commentary to have been written before 170 AD saying that by 170 AD, these books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, were held in undisputed preeminence over other narratives on the life of Christ tells us a lot.

It tells us that just as we suspected earlier, the New Testament canon had been closed much earlier than the mid-late 4th century, like the critics would say.

The believers had a pretty clear understanding of which books they believed to be inspired and which books were not.

170 AD, this commentary was written earlier than 170 AD.

You can see sort of the timeline going back.

It's putting pressure onto these critics of the Bible who said, you know, fourth century, you can't find anything earlier.

Well, we're already in the mid to late second century.

Probably the most exciting fragment or manuscript, it's not really a manuscript, you can't call it a manuscript, but it's evidence nonetheless.

You know, I think God must have a sense of humor.

I think sometimes, sometimes, you know, the Bible says all things work together for good to them that love the Lord.

And I think he also says that my word will not return to me void but will accomplish that which it was sent forth." Imagine how precious a leaf of scripture was when it was hand copied, made by hand.

Imagine how valuable this would have been, right?

Well, this discovery was not made in a monastery somewhere.

It was not a sheaf of manuscripts, long forgotten, growing dust.

This discovery was made while they were unwrapping an Egyptian mummy.

Somebody had used the Bible as wrapping for the mummy.

Now I say God has a sense of humor because The mummy, because of all the details and so forth of the find and discovery, a mummy can be easier to pretty accurately date.

You know, there are records included with them.

Somebody had their Bible taken from them forcefully.

Maybe there was some monastery plundered or some believer's house or 1 of the bishop or elders of 1 of the churches had some manuscripts and maybe the man was killed.

All we know is that someone decided they would use a portion of Scripture as, like we would use newspaper today.

And we think, oh, what a terrible degradation or what a disrespect of the Bible.

This disrespect of the Bible, this loss of whatever Christian that lost his manuscripts becomes our gain today, doesn't it?

Truly God's Word does not return into him, or It does not return void.

It will accomplish that which it has been sent forth.

And this mummy was wrapped in, first of all, they found a portion of a manuscript written in Hebrew.

And what part of the Bible would that you expect be from?

The Old Testament, it was actually Deuteronomy.

So it was a part of the Torah and it was dated to go back 2 centuries before Christ.

The manuscript would have been written 2 centuries before Christ.

We Believe - Who is God? Part 1

Father in heaven, today we're grateful that you've given us this chance to spend time in your presence.

Thank you for these young people and for their music of praise.

Thank you for the familiar hymns, the words that come back to us, and they just inspire us of your majesty and your glory.

And 1 day, Lord, we want to sing your praises with the band and the orchestra of heaven.

Today, we just wanna pray that as we open your word, as we study, that your Spirit would guide us, that you would be our teacher.

Well, the only reason we're having this discussion here today, who is God, is because there's some question.

There's some disagreement or misunderstanding.

In fact, there's something that we call character assassination.

Have you ever heard of character assassination?

Character assassination is defined as a deliberate and sustained process that aims to destroy the credibility and reputation of a person, institution, social group, or nation.

Character assassination, unlike regular assassination where the person's literal life is taken, character assassination attempts to remove much of a person's life or livelihood by destroying their name or reputation.

In fact, there's a number of historical instances of character assassination that we could point to.

We could probably find some examples in current politics, but since I tried to stay away from politics, I thought we'd go back, oh, maybe 200 years or so.

And is that safe enough for us to look at politics 200 years ago?

Okay, John, Thomas Jefferson hired a woman named James Callender to write about his opponent, James Madison, or John Adams.

And he wrote that John Adams is a repulsive pedant, a gross hypocrite, and a hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In fact, what Callender was trying to do was dehumanize John Adams, right?

The Democrats called the Whig candidate, this is 1844, they called the Whig candidate Henry Clay on his supposed baggage train of gambling, dueling, womanizing, and by the eternal, swearing.

Another politically aligned newspaper told voters that Lincoln should not be elected president because he only changed his socks once every 10 days.

Now whether it was true or not, this is what we call character assassination, right?

Moving on to the 1870s, opponents of General Rutherford B.

Hayes spread around a rumor that he had shot his own mother in a fit of rage.

Congressman Davy Crockett in 1836 accused candidate Martin Van Buren of secretly, mind you, wearing woman's clothing.

He is laced up in corsets, such as women in town wear, and if possible, tighter than the best of them.

I suppose, Yeah, well, we won't comment anymore on that.

And this is 1 of my favorite, it's not a good word to use, but most fascinating.

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Series

We Believe

Voices from Beyond the Grave

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Parts

Secrets of Ancient Scrolls, Part 1

44m

Secrets of Ancient Scrolls, Part 2

1h

We Believe - Who is God? Part 1

52m

We Believe - Who is God? Part 2

1h

We Believe - The Burden Bearer, Part 1

53m

We Believe - The Burden Bearer, Part 2

35m

We Believe – One Body

45m

We Believe – Church Organization

54m

We Believe – Buried Alive!

47m

We Believe – The Gift (Part 1)

53m

We Believe – The Gift (Part 2)

49m

Voices from Beyond the Grave

47m

Sound Doctrine