Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bible answer Man Broadcast with Christian Research
Institute President Hank Canagraph. Our mission at CRII is not
only to equip you with sound biblical teaching and spiritual discernment,
but to help you become a winsome and fruitful witness
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dot org. The following program was pre recorded and now
here's Hank Canagraph.
Speaker 2: Thank very much, Randy. We start broadcast today with a
Facebook question from Michael who asks for a summary of
specific archaeological evidence that supports the Gospel. And I actually
did this in my book Has God Spoken? And I
use the acronym spade as in the archaeologist's spade. The
ass represents steels and stones in demonstrating that what was
once concealed in the soil corresponds to that which is
revealed in the scriptures. The mer Nepta and Dan Steele's
come immediately to mind, of course, so do the Moabite
and Pilot stones. The Mernepta steel presents as formidable a
challenge to exodus deniers as the Dan steel does to
those pontificating that the biblical account of King David is
no more factual than tails of King Arthur. In light
of the Moabite stone, it's also difficult to contend that
biblical kings such as Omri and Meshia, and places such
as Nebo and Moab are the stuff of myth. Likewise,
the Pilot stone demonstrates in spades that Pilot was the
Roman authority in Judea at the time Christ was crucified.
The P in the acronym spade stands for pools and fools.
In fact, until quite recently, skeptics viewed the existence of
the pools depicted in John's Gospel to be little more
than a religious conceit, a predilection on the part of
Christians to believe what they think is true is true
solely because they think it's true. All of that changed
June two, thousand and four. That's pretty recent history. Workers
in the Old City of Jerusalem unearthed the place that
Jesus cured the man born blind. Likewise, you can rest
your arms in the guardrail overlooking the excavated ruins of
the Pool of Bethesda, where Jesus cared for the physical
and spiritual needs of a man who suffered the revages
of sin for thirty eight years, and you can stand
amazed that what was once secreted in soil accurately reflects
that which is sealed in scripture. The a reminds us
of Assyrian archaeology, which is significant as well. From six
hundred years before Christ until eighteen hundred years after Him,
Assyria and its chief city, Nineveh, lay entombed in the
dust bin of history. The stones cried out again in
eighteen forty five Henry Austin Layard began digging along the
Tigers River and he unearthed Nineveh Diamond of Assyria. Among
the stunning archaeological gems discovered there were Senecrib's prison, Shalmaneser's
Black Obelisk, and the Palace of Sargon, previously known only
by a single reference in the Biblical text. So together
they provide weighty testimony to the reliability of the Biblical record.
And then there's the D in spade representing Dead Sea scrolls.
You'll remember, perhaps because this was big news. It was
all over the news in fact nineteen forty seven and
the sound of splintered pottery, which led to what archaeologist
doctor William Albright recognized as one of the greatest archaeological
discoveries of modern times. Incredibly, we now have access to
virtually and entire first century Old Testament library at the
click of a twenty first century mouse. The Dead Sea
Scrolls provide significant insight into the text of the Old Testament,
and they add considerable clarity to the text of the
New Testament as well. Finally, the e and spade represents
Epic of Gilgamesh. Until the late nineteenth century, the masses
presumed the great Primordial deluge to be relegated to the
text of scripture. All that began to change in eighteen
fifty three when Rosom discovered the Palace of Esherbanipal, and there,
among the treasures of Assyria's last king, he uncovered clay
tablets that provide independent confirmation of a vast flood in
ancient Mesopotamia, the flood was complete with a Noli like
figure and an arc. And while the epic views the
waters of the flood through the opaque lens of paganism,
it lends significant credence to an actual event. It is
likewise a reminder that the reality of a great deluge
is impregnated on the collective consciousness of virtually every major
civilization from the Sumerian epoch to the present age. Again,
that information is presented in memorable format in my book
Has God Spoken, And in each chapter summary there is
a snapshot which presents the information to you in memorable fashion.
And then at the end of the parts you have
memorable snapshots so that you can again internalize the information.
Why because I want you to use the information to
make a difference while there is yet time. The Book
Has God Spoken available through the Christian Research Institute in
a safe, secure fashion at equip dot org. First up
today is Derek listening on the web in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hi, Derek,
I'm doing well. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I had listened to Joyce Maris over the television and
she says she has faith just because she has faith
in God. Are we supposed to, are Christians supposed to
have faith in evidence instead of just faith because you
have faith in God.
Speaker 2: Well, we're supposed to have faith in God. In fact,
the true biblical faith is faith in God. The problem
with faith teachers like Joyce Meyer is not that they're
saying you ought to have faith in God. They're telling
you that you have to have faith in faith because,
in her view, words are containers for power. They carry
creative or destructive power, positive or negative power. And so
we need to be speaking right things over our lives
and about our futures if we expect to have good
things happen. And all of that means simply this, You
yourself are responsible for the things that happen to you.
If you speak negative words, negative things will happen to you,
even if you speak them inadvertently. If you say something
like that tickled me to death, you might be speaking
death into your life. So positive or negative words create
your reality. So that's not a biblical view of faith. Rather,
it is an occultic view of faith that is dressed
up in Christian terminology.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you're saying what she said is there is
not a biblical view.
Speaker 2: No, it's not a biblical view, because again, in her view,
you have to have faith in faith, whereas inn a
biblical view, faith is a channel of living trust between
a human being and their God, and faith is only
as good as the object in whom it is placed.
So if it's faith in your own faith, it's credulity.
If it's faith in God, obviously it's credible.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you.
Speaker 2: You got it. Thank you so much for your call.
Let's go back to the phone lines. We'll talk next
to Stephen in Oklahoma. Stephen, I think I had.
Speaker 4: A question of reference to creation, the seventh Day.
Speaker 3: Does it end?
Speaker 2: Well? The seventh day is unending according to the Biblical text,
and the un ending nature of the seventh Day constitutes
a major exegetical problem for a twenty four hour interpretation,
because logically and literarily, the seventh day cannot simultaneously be
unending and temporal.
Speaker 5: Okay, So I just noticed that at the end of
the seventh day that it's written different than the other
sixth Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is. That's exactly the point.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sixth days are meant to impress on your
mind the fact that God created all things. The seventh
day is meant to impress on your mind that it
is in Christ that we have our sabbath rest, if
you take the whole panoply of scripture and see the
ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ, in whom the writer of
Hebrews says, we have our sabbath rest.
Speaker 5: Okay, that sounds good.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. You got it. We'll be right back
at a moment with more of your questions.
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with more from Hank Annigraph.
Speaker 6: Hank Hannagraph has dedicated his life to defending truth because
truth matters. However, his life and ministry were radically transformed
by another three word phrase, Life matters more. Truth matters
because Christianity is rooted in history and evidence. Life matters
more because it.
Speaker 7: Is the experience of union with God. The goal of
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Speaker 1: Has God spoken? Are the words of Scripture merely human
in origin? Or are they in fact the very words
of God himself? Three years in the making, and based
on two decades of research and reflection, Hank Henigraph's monumental
book Has God Spoken answers what is surely the most
important question facing our world. In Has God Spoken? Memorable
proofs of the Bible's divine inspiration, Hank counters the contentions
of the Bible attackers and clearly shows that belief in
the Holy Scriptures is not a guess or wishful thinking.
It is the only logical conclusion after an honest examination
of overwhelming evidence. Ordered Has God Spoken from the Christian
Research Institute by calling eighty eight seven thousand CURI or
go online to equip dot org. Equip dot org. The
Soviet Red Army won the Battle of Stalingrad. It appeared
at first the Nazi war machine would secure the victory,
but the Soviets battled back from near certain defeat with
extraordinary courage and resoluteness to turn the tide of the
battle and ultimately the war. The lesson is that both
men and material people and provisions played a critical role.
Willingness to fight and munitions in the arsenal were pivotal.
Our contemporary battle for truth against anti Christian secularists raises
the stakes above the significance of Stalingrad. CRI likewise needs
military partners willing to stand for truth, along with the
financial means to accomplish the mission. Stand with us during
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thousand CROI and make a gift to support CRI's life
changing outreaches or visit equip dot org. And now here's Hank,
can I graft?
Speaker 2: Thank you about Brandy, and I want to go back
to the phone lines. We'll talk next to Barry listening
in Saint Louis, Missouri. Hi Berry, Good evening, Hank, good evening.
Speaker 4: Just a quick question for you. And this is not
any great theological question, but my wife and I teach
middle schoolers at our church. Yeah, and a question has
come up in just some studying and reading that we've
done dealing with actually the creation account and Genesis. Right
in the very beginning we read where God created light,
separated the light from the darkness, so on and so forth,
and that was the first day. And then just a
little bit later on we read I believe in verse
sixteen where it talks about he created the sun and
the moon stars, and that was the fourth day. I
guess my question is, essentially, and what was brought up
by some of the kids, is what was the light
that was created in the first day? Seeing as how
you know, as humans light being from the sun, what
would be the best way to I guess respond to that?
And how would I back that up?
Speaker 2: Sure? Yeah, well, I want to take seriously the biblical text.
There are a lot of people that read this passage
and they simply don't want to take the text literally.
If you take the text seriously, the text is telling
you very clearly that on day one there was light
and there was darkness, right, I mean, that's part of
the passage itself. And he separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.
And there was evening and there was morning the first day. Now,
that sounds like a solar day to me, doesn't it?
To you? It does. So if you take that text
at face value, you have a solar day on day one,
You have a solar day on day two, all the
way through day six. Obviously, day seven is an unending day,
and therefore we wouldn't say that's a solar day, and
there's nothing in the text that would lead us to
the notion that that is a solar day. So if
you take the text at face value, the text is
communicating solar days. Now, the problem is there are people
in a Young Earth camp that want to take this
and they don't want to take it literally, so they
say the light came from somewhere else, it's not light
that comes from a solar day. And again I don't
like that way of reading the text because I want
to read the text literally. I want to take the
text as literature inspired infallible literature. There are Old Earth
creationists that go to the same passage and they say, no,
these are long day ages, And so you have geological
time that's sandwiched in the biblical text here, such that
you've got a problem just from a scientific standpoint, and remember,
we don't want to commit either scriptural heresy or scientific
heresy as they do then is they put geological ages
into the first three days. But the problem with that
is how do plants survive without direct sunlight for geological ages?
That doesn't make much sense either. So I think we're
best off taking the text in the sense in which
it's intended, which is to say that the text is
using literal solar days to communicate God's purposes in creation.
I think where we get into trouble is where we
want to make a chronology, where a chronology isn't warranted,
or we try to take the text and rework the
text in some way to make the text other than
what it actually says. This is not a chronology of creation,
but it is a hierarchy of creation, and it's wonderfully
placed such that we can remember it both with the
days of creation themselves and in triads. For example, day
one and day four you have light and luminaries. On
day two and day five you have the place for
fish and fowl, and fish and foul on day three
and day six you have the dry land, and that
dry land becomes the habitation for man and animals. So
it's a wonderful mnemonic. It's a wonderful way of imprinting
on your minds. And remember Moses was writing to an
oral culture, but imprinting on your minds God's literal creative prowess,
the fact that God created all things. And I always
want to caution people because people either don't want to
take the text literally, and that again means to read
the text as literature, and sometimes they read unintended meanings
into the text. For example, if you go to Job
and Job talks about God tipping over the water pots
of heaven, they want to come up with some kind
of a container theory. No, the water pots of heaven
are used as a metaphor, and if we take that
in a way other than a metaphor, we miss the meaning.
I mean, this is true in common parlance as well.
I wish I would have written it down. I actually
thought of doing this while I was watching the US
Open and they were using superlatives like the whole world
is now at Rory's feet, And if you took that
in a wooden literal sense, you would miss the intent
of what the announcer was meaning to communicate. And I
think the same thing is true with scripture. Again. We
want to remember this because if we don't read the
text in the sense in which it's intended, we're gonna
have God with feet, because in Genesis, God walks in
the cool of the day with Adam and Eve. We
certainly don't want to do that and then destroy the
biblical orthodox meaning of the nature God important to read
the Bible literally. We will talk next to Margie. She's
listening in New Jersey. Hi Margie, Hello, Hanks.
Speaker 5: I have a question about the genealogy of Jesus. I
know it's through its foster father Joseph, but in Matthew
and in Luke. When Alista genealogies, some of the names
don't seem to correspond, like the Joseph's father was Jacob
or something, and then the other one it says it
was Eli, and some of the names are off. I
was wondering if you know, if you know the reason
for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a reason for the reason. And that's what's
going on in scripture. This is one of the big
things that we have to learn to do. A lot
of people will go to Genesis and they will say
that we can figure out some kind of a chronology
on the basis of Genesis, and therefore we can come
up with a timeframe. And that has led to all
kinds of perversions. That's based on a misunderstanding of chronologies,
and that ultimately points to a misunderstanding of genealogies. What's
going on in Genesis And I'll get to the Matthew
in Luke situation just a second. But what's going on
in Genesis is Moses is giving an oral culture a
way of being able to remember the main characters in
the plot, so to speak, with the ten fingers of
your hand, and that includes primeval history as well as
the patriarchs. So you can remember five and five with
the two hands. I won't go through that right now,
but I've done that before in the biblanche Man broadcast
in seminars and teachings around the country and teach people.
You can remember this kind of stuff. But when you
get to Matthew, Matthew is doing a similar thing. He's
not giving you all of the genealogies in sequence, but rather,
as a former tax collector, he is skillfully organizing the
genealogy of Jesus into three groups of fourteen happens to
be the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew letters in King
David's name. So what is he doing. He's simultaneously highlighting
the most significant names in the lineage of Jesus Christ
and artistically emphasizing our Lord's identity as Messiah who would
forever sit upon the throne of David. Now Lucas doing
something completely different, So he's got a different purpose in
mind with the genealogy. He's writing to a primarily gentile
instead of Jewish audience, and therefore he's extending his genealogy
past Abraham to the first atom, and in that way
he highlights that Christ, the second atom, is savior of humanity.
And so it's important to recognize the purposes in the
genealogies because the different emphasis in the genealogies are explanatory
in terms of the dissimilarities between them. So Matthew is
tracing his genealogy through David's son Solomon. Luke is tracing
his genealogy through David's son Nathan. And it might be
that Matthew's purpose is to provide the legal lineage from
Solomon through Joseph, while Luke's purpose is to provide the
natural lineage from Nathan through Mary. Now look, it could
also be that Matthew and Luke are both tracing Joseph's genealogy.
Matthew the legal line, Luke the natural line, and the
legal line diverges from the natural line in that Leveright
law stipulated if a man died without an heir, his
genealogy could legally continue through his brother. But here's the
takeaway point. This is how it all cash is out.
The fact that there are a number of ways to
resolve dissimilarities rules out the notion that they're contradictory, which
is what a lot of people want to say about
the genealogy. And again, I think this is such an
important case study in terms of how to read the Bible.
For all this worth, you not only have the beginning
of the Gospels, but the beginning of Genesis in view.
And if you miss it in terms of the art
and science of Biblical interpretation at the beginning, you may
well miss it all the way through. Well you can
hear the music or out of time for this edition
of the Bible. Answer Man broadcast is always it as
a delight to be able to answer your question. But
remember why, I want to use the answer as a
springboard or an opportunity to share the truth and the
life and the love and the grace that only Jesus
Christ can bring to the human heart. So answers are
not an end in themselves, they are a means to
one in what does that end? It is the Gospel? Why,
because only the Gospel can transform lives for time and
for the eternity. Look forward to seeing you right back
here with more of the Bible Inswerment Broadcast.
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Speaker 6: For decades, Hank Hannograph has shared the truth of the
historic Christian faith by answering questions over the radio, defending
the faith through the written word, and preaching from pulpits
around the globe. Today, he is ready to share his
life in Christ, as detailed in his most profoundly personal
piece of penmanship. To date, Truth matters, life matters more.
Hank feels closer to Christ than ever before and wants
you to learn from his experiences as recounted in Truth Matters,
Life Matters More, so that you can join him on
life's greatest journey, the journey toward union with God in Christ.
To receive your copy of Truth Matters, Life Matters More,
the unexpected beauty of an authentic Christian life, call eight
eight eight seven thousand CRI and make a gift to
support the Christian Research Institute's life changing outreaches eight eight
eight seven thousand CRI or visit us at equipped dot org.