Michigan Camp Meeting 2023: The Boldness of the Cross

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

From Mormonism to Adventism

Cody Francis

A Pivotal Year

My Journey Out of Mormonism

A Counterfeit Movement

The Confusion of Mormonism

Reaching Mormons

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

Father in heaven, we're just grateful that you've given us this opportunity to be here at camp meeting.

We thank you that we can come and study together, sharpen our knowledge and our experience.

We pray that you will be with us now as we read and think about if Mormonism, if it agrees with the Bible or not.

And so we thank you in Jesus name we pray, amen.

All right, so when we look at this, I want to just look at, first of all, to begin with, we believe the Bible, but what is the evidence for the Bible?

You know, I grew up in the Mormon movement, and as I shared with you, my great, great, great, great grandfather had come into the Mormon movement, and so for me, I believed Joseph Smith's writings, I believed the Mormon movement, not really because it was something I had studied in a conclusion I had come to on my own, but because it was a part of my family heritage.

And as being a part of my family heritage.

I just accepted it But I kept I became very convicted.

I believed in it very much But yet it wasn't something I found and studied for myself Of course with the Bible it can be the same way couldn't it?

It could just be something that we have a nominal faith in because our parents did, and so we do too, or because it's a part of our culture.

And so we can have that same belief in the Bible.

It can be a very firm belief, but there needs to be more than just it's our tradition, it's our heritage, it's our family, or something like that.

And so if someone were to ask you, what would you share with them why you believe the Bible?

You know, there's evidence, and prophecy is 1 of the greatest evidences that we have.

I want to just look at a few things here to help us to try to put the stage here and I want to say what is the evidence that we have for belief in the Bible and then I want to ask what is the evidence that we have or that they would have for belief in the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's writings.

So I would say that there's several areas, several things that we would look at when we try to investigate the evidence for the Bible.

And 1 of those things I would look at is not, it's not that this is conclusive, but it's something that we take into consideration, and that is the internal evidence of the Bible.

It's unique in the fact that it's a book that was written over a period of about 1, 500 years.

Not very many books are written over a period of 1, 500 years, right?

And so there's a long time period from when Genesis is written to in Revelation, although those are probably not the very first and very last, but you get the idea.

The Bible was written by 40 different authors, from political leaders to herdsmen, from generals to poets, from fishermen to prime ministers, from tax collectors to physicians.

Now that's a lot of diversity in there, isn't it?

So 1, 500 years, around 40 different authors from about as many varied backgrounds as you can imagine.

And there's lots of different moods that we find in the Bible as well.

So you see exaltation, you see joy, and then you see sadness and despair.

You have the gamut of human emotions found in the Bible.

And I believe there's a reason for that because we can go through a gamut of emotions and we can identify with these various different aspects.

It was actually written on 3 different continents, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

It was written in 3 different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, primarily Hebrew and Greek.

And there's lots of different literary styles in the Bible as well, from poetry and prophecy, romance and allegory, parable and biography personal correspondence and didactic treaties law and song and we could go on so there's a lot of Diversity in the Bible When we look at all of those aspects, we come to the conclusion that it's a very, very unique book, right?

But in the midst of this diversity and in the midst of this uniqueness, we find striking internal consistency as well.

And the fact that we have many different authors that are all giving a similar message.

When we look at the Bible, There's 1 main unfolding story.

There's 1 main theme of God's love and how we can return to the broken or restore that broken relationship that we had with God.

And so it's a love story from beginning to end.

There's internal consistency, and there's internal evidence of the uniqueness and the consistency within it.

But that's not the only thing, that's 1 thing.

It makes it very interesting, it makes it very unique as far as any other books.

But there's also what we would refer to as manuscript evidence as well.

What do we mean when we say manuscript evidence?

Well when we look at manuscript evidence, and I need to go forward I was going to look at all 5 of these, these are the 5 areas we're going to look at and then we'll unpack them here.

When we look at the manuscript evidence, What we're talking about is the number of Manuscripts that we have for the Bible and so particularly the New Testament Although with the Dead Sea Scrolls, we have a number of Old Testament ones as well Just to give you an example here, there are around, not quite, but around 25, 000 extant manuscripts with the Bible.

And there are over 5, 000 Greek manuscripts in the Bible, or not in the Bible, but of the Bible.

Now, just take those Greek manuscripts of 5, 000 plus.

There's 2 ways that you would identify the historicity, not saying whether a work is true or false, but the historicity of an ancient work.

You would compare how much evidence do we have from manuscript copies and how close are those manuscripts to when it was originally written.

You look at those 2 things because the greater number of manuscripts that there are shows that you have more available resources to compare with and see if it's all saying the same thing.

And of course the closer it is to the point of authorship is there's less time for there to be additions and subtractions and things like this that take place.

Now, remember what I said, over 5, 000 documents, right?

Now, the second most historical, or the historicity of the second most document of history is It's 1 of the ancient works Homer's Iliad We have 643 documents 643 manuscripts there now.

I want you to compare Homer's Iliad 643 versus the New Testament 5000 plus Greek manuscripts.

There's a major difference in manuscript evidence alone.

And not only is it a major difference in manuscript evidence alone, but it is also the time that has elapsed from when the New Testament was written to when we begin to have fragments and then full manuscripts is exceedingly small in terms of ancient documents.

So we have begin to have fragments of the New Testament about 50 years after it was written.

And by 150 to 200 years we have almost the entire New Testament.

Now once again compare that to Homer's Iliad which is the most historically authenticated or the most manuscript evidence for this document.

And by the way, if you look at others, you go down significantly after that.

And so you have 400 years has transpired from when Homer's Iliad was written to when we have the first document from that.

Why do we compare that to show the amount of evidence that we have for the New Testament documents in particular.

There is a strong evidence and you can go.

You can see them in museums, the documents.

You can see many of them as online documents now.

Couple of these, here is the John Ryland's papyrus.

It only has a couple verses from the Gospel of John, but it's dated to within 100 to 150 AD, probably 25 to maximum 60 or 70 years after the Gospel of John was written.

And so that is currently the closest document that we have to when the New Testament was written.

It's not very much, but you can see and you can make it out when you look at it.

We have other documents like the Chester Beatty Papyri and that give us much of the New Testament with about 100 and 125 years from there.

And then we look at the Old Testament, we see the Dead Sea Scrolls was the magnificent archaeological discovery of the 20th century that took our documentation of the Old Testament a thousand years back.

Because it doesn't prove that the Bible is divine, but it does show that it's a very historically attested book.

And we can see these documents, we can read them, we can look at them, and there's nothing hidden about it.

Now another aspect that we would look at when we look at the evidence of the Bible, there's internal evidence and there's manuscript evidence, but there is also archaeological evidence as well.

So do we know, do we have archaeological evidence for everything?

Does the archaeology, does it prove the Bible?

No, but it does collaborate the people, the stories, and the events many times that are described in the Bible.

And so it is something that can help us to see that the Bible is historically accurate.

And there's a number of different things.

These would be like signet rings, nebandia cylinder, I mean there's just on and on and on we could go where there's people from the Bible that are mentioned, events from the Bible that are mentioned.

This one's kind of neat, the Hezekiah bullah, that would be, the bullahs are the, where the signet ring was impressed into, so it would be like the seal.

And so, these are the, what is, and we found many, I mean, we haven't, but they have found it.

Series

From Mormonism to Adventism

The Confusion of Mormonism

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

02 The Rocks Cry Out Since 1798

1h

How to Introduce Ellen White to New Believers

02 The Testimony of Jesus

53m

Black Magic or Resurrection Power

02 Spiritualism and Witchcraft in the Old Testament

1h 1m

Eyes of the Church

53m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

24 The Sanctuary and the Testimony of Jesus

1h 2m

The Three Angels' Message

07 The Fourth Angel’s Message

1h

From Mormonism to Adventism

My Journey Out of Mormonism

59m

Presenting Persuasive Appeals During Keys to Revelation

05 Presenting Christ Centered Appeals with Confidence

1h 1m

Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

06 Toleration, Liberty, and Personal Freedom

1h 1m

Righteousness By Faith: The Rest of the Story

05 Righteousness by Faith and the Heavenly Sanctuary, Part 2

1h 6m

Ellen White Under Fire

1h 3m

The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

56m

Sound Doctrine