Open—Sam Ludvicek
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This very book that we're just in.
Our brother made an application of verse.
3 Contrasting faith with.
Unbelief.
But if you don't get this last part of verse 3.
This exhortation. Without it, none of the rest of this means anything.
Unto you, and exhort you that you should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the Saints.
Read it again.
To write unto you, and exhort you, that you should earnestly contend for that body of Truth.
Which was once delivered under the Saints.
I have been shouting from the mountaintop that the main battle, the hottest part of the battle against Christians in the West, is to undermine this book.
To do everything to get you to lack confidence that this thing is a real sword and that you can use it. I see the attacks against young people. It's even migrating into their grandparents. There's a lady I had a talk with who's older than I am. Her grandson has been coming home with stuff from the Internet, casting doubt on whether the word of God can be trusted, and she's begin to doubt it.
And she's been saved since a child raised amongst the gathered Saints. But in her discussions trying to be a help to her grandson, it's actually affected her fate.
Because she's begun to doubt that she can trust the words that are in this book.
And that's that's the main effort that the enemy's using in the West.
Do you know that the Chinese government has made a translation of the Bible?
And Jesus is a bad guy in it.
Why are they doing that? I don't know how that fits into the enemy's plans.
But it's certainly part of undermining that you can trust this book.
There's another word here in verse four that I want to mention. Lasciviousness is a synonym for licentiousness and I like that word license because turning the grace of God into license, permission, license to do things. So there's two things going on. You get undermined that what the word of God actually says. Things get dismissed as being cultural only and don't really apply today. So it's being used like that.
Well, if you don't know that body of truth that was once delivered to the Saints, if you're not really familiar with it, if you're not grounded in it, how are you going to stand when something comes against you?
Do many people even know that God promises to preserve His word?
Well, this dear old sister didn't even know that we had a nice conversation about it, and one of the things that her grandson had brought up, which was half truth.
Now I'm going to tell that story.
He went on the Internet and found out that that story about the Lord Jesus writing in the dirt.
With the woman caught in adultery.
Part of that story he read on the Internet was added to the Bible in the 4th century.
And that there is no Greek manuscript in existence that has that whole story before the 4th century. Well, that's half true.
And I told her that it's half two. There is no Greek manuscript that has all of that story in it that we have in our possession or anybody has in their possession that has that full story. But guess what?
Early church fathers writing about that story told the whole story, and they had a Greek manuscript sitting on their table that they wrote from when they commented on that scripture. So it existed just because we don't happen somebody didn't find one. I said that's evidence, and it's evidence that could be used in a court of law in a criminal case to show that even though they can't find the actual original copy of that.
There are multiple people who commented at it and quoted the whole story. That's evidence for it.
And as I talk with this dear sister, I said, you know this has come up before and my conversations with people this very exact same. And I said so I happen to know the answer to this. There are multiple sources that say that whole story belongs there way before, as early as I think the 2nd century, maybe been the end of the 1St century, but certainly then other translations that were made between 1:20 and 1:50 AD.
00:05:02
The Bible was translated into the Syriac language and something that's called the Old Latin or the Italia.
The Old Latin was the Latin that the the Christians of the Dark Ages often had in their possession up in the mountains as they hidden, ran from the persecutors who came after them. But those translations, because people also add to it, the Catholic Church took the Bible, changed it and did all this stuff, and we can't know anything about it. Well, the Roman Catholic Church didn't have those Bibles in their hands. They went amongst the Arab Christians, those kinds of things.
I said God has preserved his word, He's never allowed anybody to take it all away, and even these corrupt translations that exist like the Jehovah's Witnesses.
It's remarkable to me. I would not want that.
To be my daily reading at all. But if you're talking with one of those folks, God has not even allowed them to take everything out of there. That's the truth.
And you can actually sit down and take their own Bible and show them some things and have a conversation. Because if you don't have a sword that you believe you can use and it will cut, why would you take out a rubber sword? You won't. So dear Saints and young people that are being undermined and told and taught and influenced to not trust this book, that's the main attack of Satan in the West right now. And then behind that is to get them to doubt things that have been held.
As fundamental truths.
By many evangelicals for many years and to just throw it aside. So how can you get?
Two people who claim to be devout followers of Christ who say they're in a married gay relationship and it God is blessing it and it's OK. Unless you don't believe this anymore or you have a Bible that's been translated into a way that waters it all down.
So the enemy's attack, the main attack is against and part of that body of truth, that body of faith is that God has inspired and preserved his word and he has brought it to us and we can trust it. And you can do a little research if you need to, to prove some of those things out and and show that some of these things that are being said on the Internet and other places and books being written, people like Burt Ernham who.
Claim to be a fundamental devout Christian, went to the best schools and now writes books against Christianity and and is used by the Muslims by the way to show that Christianity is wrong or not trustworthy. But those things are either half truths or just out and out lies. But if you don't know what the Bible says.
About itself. And if you don't know the fundamentals of the faith that solid truths that were delivered us, how do you have a defense against it?
And we have this Bible study. I mentioned Marengo. There's people there from all kinds of backgrounds. There's one old lady there. She went to a Methodist Church and she came to our Bible study and she said we have a lesbian pastor.
Wow. Wow. How did that happen in the Methodist Church? That used to be fairly fundamental years ago. Well, they gave up contending for this. They gave up contending.
We need to earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered on to the Saints.