Can the Bible Stand the Test? - Life of Paul Part 65

Well, good morning. Good morning. How's everybody? Good to see you. I see all you folks down in overflow.

Thanks for being here today. Hey, how about taking a Bible? Let's open it to Acts chapter 19.

We're going to be continuing in our study of the great man of God, the apostle Paul. And you know what? This summer I was actually watching E. True Hollywood story.

And what's funny about that? And I was watching the life of Madeline Murray O'Hare. Now, I think all of us know who she is. This was the lady who filed the court case that was responsible for prayer being discontinued and declared unconstitutional in the American public school system.

1963 was the year. And her son, John, along with her, founded the American Atheist Association. And she and John, I learned from the program, were both murdered a number of years ago. But before John was killed as the president of the American Atheist, he said this, and I quote, He said, There was no such person in the history of the world as Jesus Christ. There was no historical living, breathing human being by that name ever. The Bible is a fictional, nonhistorical book. It's a myth that's good for business, end of quote.

Now, I think it's safe to say that today he's probably changed his mind, but don't know. But anyway, the point. Yeah, the point in all of all of this, the point of all of this is that there are a lot of people in our world who have serious reservations about Jesus Christ. And the reason for that is because they have serious reservations about the Bible, which is our only source of information about Jesus Christ. They wonder, is the Bible really a historically reliable, trustworthy document? And this is what we're going to talk about today because it grows out of our passage in the life of the Apostle Paul. We're going to ask the question, can the Bible stand the test when it comes to the issue of historical reliability?

So that's our plan. A little bit of background before we dig in. Remember here in Acts chapter 19 that the Apostle Paul is in Ephesus on his third missionary journey. Ephesus was such a strategic city that Paul decided to spend almost three years here.

Let's show you a map. And of course, here's Ephesus where you see the star and all that's in green that you see is the Roman province of Asia. And the Bible says that as the result of Paul's ministry for three years there, verse 10, all the Jews and Gentiles who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.

So that's where we've been so far. Let's go on now verse 21 and see what happens next. Now after these things, Paul purposed in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. He decided to pass through Macedonia and Achaia on the way there. And then he said, after I've been to Jerusalem, I must visit Rome also. Paul's two and a half year stay here in Ephesus is coming to a close. And the Christian faith has already been well established in Greece. I mean, he did that on his second journey. Now it's been well established here in Asia Minor on his third journey. And the Apostle Paul said, now I think I'm going to go to Rome and not just to Rome, but I'm going to go on to Spain. Romans 15, the letter he wrote the Church of Rome from here in Ephesus. He said, but now that my work in these regions in Ephesus is finished, I intend to go to Spain.

And I hope to see you in passing and to be helped on my way there by you. You remember the old Star Trek series to explore strange new worlds, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Well, that was kind of the Apostle Paul's attitude when he came to the message of Christ. He wanted to boldly go where no man had gone before. He wanted to take the message of Christ to virgin territory, where to places that people had never been and never preached. And Spain was one of these. It was wild. It was uncivilized. It was the western end of the Roman Empire.

Let's show you a map and you'll see where Spain is. And Paul said, I want to go here because this is new ground for Jesus Christ and I want to be the first one there to preach. He said, Romans 15 to verse 20, it has always been my ambition to preach the message of Jesus Christ where Christ was not already known that I might not build on someone else's foundation. However, before Paul went to Spain and Rome, he says here, verse 21, that he purposed in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. What this means is he prayed and prayed about it and he really felt the Holy Spirit was giving him the purpose and the direction to go to Jerusalem.

He mentions this in the next chapter, chapter 20. He says, and now compelled by the Holy Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem. Here in Acts chapter 19, Luke doesn't tell us why Paul was so excited about going to Jerusalem.

But if we compare scripture with scripture, we can figure it out. So let's look at some other passages in the New Testament and we can figure it out. Romans 15, Paul writes, but now I'm going to Jerusalem in order to serve the believers there. For the churches of Macedonia and Dicaiah have been pleased to collect an offering for the poor believers of Jerusalem. So after I have completed this task of taking the offering there and made sure that they in Jerusalem have received this give, I will go to Spain and I will visit you in Rome on the way. Remember, we've told you before that the believing community in Jerusalem at this time was very poor. That was because the other Jewish people in Jerusalem boycotted their businesses as a way of punishing them for believing in Jesus. And so Paul felt that the Gentile churches that he had started around the world, that they had a responsibility to help and stand by their Jewish brothers there in Jerusalem.

And so he says of chapter 15 verse 27, for if the Gentiles have shared in the Jewish people's spiritual blessings, he means the Messiah, the Word of God, he said then they, the Gentiles, are obligated to share their material blessings with their Jewish brothers. And so what Paul was going to do, let's show you a map, is he says I'm coming back to Macedonia, everything you see in orange on the screen. I'm going to go back to Philippi, to Thessalonica, to Berea, all these churches that I started.

And then I'm going to go to Achaia, everything you see in blue on the map. The main church there was the church of Corinth. And I'm going to collect an offering and then I'm going to take it to Jerusalem for these poor believers.

So let's summarize, we'll talk more about this offering later. But what was Paul's plan as he got ready now to leave Ephesus? Well, number one, he planned to go back to all the churches in Greece that he'd started. Number two, he planned to collect from them this offering for the poor believers at Jerusalem. Number three, he planned to take this gift to Jerusalem personally and deliver it to the church. Number four, he planned then to leave Jerusalem and head off for Spain. And number five, he planned on the way to stop by Rome and visit the church there for a while. That was Paul's plan in his mind as he's getting ready to leave Ephesus. Okay, verse 22. So Paul sent two of his helpers ahead of him into Macedonia, that is to start making preparations for this offering. Timothy and Erastus, while he stayed at Ephesus a little while longer. Verse 23, and about this time there arose a great disturbance about the way, the Christian faith. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver images of Diana, was bringing in no little income.

Stop there for a second. Remember that the temple of Diana was located in Ephesus. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. People came from all over the world to worship here, to worship this goddess. And today they've actually uncovered the temple.

Here's what exists today. It's true. That's it.

Nothing else there. But it was the wonderful temple of Diana that you saw. And it's clear from the passage here that there were silversmiths and other artisans there, making little talisman, maybe making little silver rabbit's foots, feet, feet, rabbit's feet. Making little charms of Diana that they would sell, and it was a very lucrative business. We actually, in 1956, archaeologists actually found one of these little silver amulets.

Here's a picture of one, the goddess Diana, little silver thing, and this is what they were selling. And Demetrius says, we're making a bunch of money doing this. Well, verse 25, and Demetrius called the rest of the craftsmen together and said, Men, you know that we receive good income from this business, and you know how this fellow Paul has persuaded and turned away large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says, Paul says, that man-made gods are no gods at all. Isn't it wonderful? Demetrius figured out the message.

He got it. There is danger, Demetrius says, not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana will be regarded as worthless. And when they heard this, they were filled with rage and began shouting, Great is Diana of the Ephesians! And soon the whole city was in an uproar, and they seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions, and dragged them into the theater. You know, only 30% of Ephesus has actually been dug up today, but interestingly, they have dug up this theater.

And let me show you a picture of it. You're standing at the top of the theater and looking, and the road that you see running with all the columns is part of the Appian Way running all the way from Rome into here in Asia Minor. And right at the end of that little road, I'll point to it, is where the Mediterranean Sea used to come.

It's all silted in now, but the Mediterranean Sea used to run right to the end of that long road. And so people would get off their boats, walk up the road, and they'd be right here at the temple, and then they'd turn right and go into the city. This temple seated 25,000 people, 10% of the whole city, and this is where they dragged Gaius, and this is where they dragged Aristarchus, here in Acts chapter 19. This theater is an unbelievable archaeological site, and really, celebrities have come from all over the world to see this. I have a picture of one right here, and I'm just kind of playing with you a little bit, but you can see behind me the size of this theater.

It's enormous. Well, this is where they took Paul's friends, verse 30. And Paul wanted to go and appear in the crowd, before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him go. They said, Paul, it is way too dangerous for you to go down there. And then Luke, in verse 31, makes a most interesting comment.

Here's where we're going to stop for today. Verse 31, and even some of the Asiarchs, some translations will say here, even some of the local officials, but the word literally is Asiarchs. Even some of the Asiarchs, who were friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater. Now, this word, the word Asiarchs, is the word I really want us to focus on today, because up until the late 1800s, the use of this word Asiarchs here in Acts 19 was pointed to by liberal critics as proof positive that the book of Acts was fraudulent and that it was historically unreliable. Here was a title, Asiarchs for Local Rulers in Ephesus, that never appeared anywhere else in the entire Roman Empire, and they said, see there, Luke just made up some word and this whole book is fraudulent. Then in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered something very important. They discovered that because of the strategic importance of this province, the province of Asia, the Roman government had allowed them to preserve this ancient title for their local rulers. Essentially, the Roman government had grandfathered in this ancient title, and so here's the point. For 1800 years, the Bible was right and all the critical scholars were wrong.

This really was the term that was used here, and the word Asiarchs here in Acts 19, instead of proving that the Bible is historically unreliable, what it actually proves is that the Bible is historically accurate to a fault. Now that's as far as we want to go in the passage for right now because we want to ask a question, and you all know what our question is, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Okay, ready? Here we go, all together.

One, two, three. So what? Right.

Ceylon, so what? You say, you know, Asiarchs, schmaziarchs, what do I care about Asiarchs? It makes no difference to me whatsoever. No, I don't think that's true because it makes a huge difference when it comes to the issue of the integrity of the Bible. You know, the integrity of the Bible has been attacked from a number of different fronts. It's been attacked from the scientific front and saying, you know, the Bible's account of creation is absolutely impossible.

We're not going to talk about that today, but I covered that in a series of messages I did called In the Beginning. You need to pick those up in the bookstore if you have doubts. And then the Bible's integrity has been attacked on the theological front, and I'm not going to cover that today because I've covered that already in a series of messages called Spiritual Boot Camp.

You can pick those up in the bookstore. What I want to talk to you about today is another front on which the Bible has been assaulted and attacked, and that is the front of historical accuracy. Is the Bible a historically accurate document?

And here's the issue. If when the Bible's talking about historical events, it's not reliable, then how do we know it's reliable when it talks about the events of Jesus Christ? If it is reliable when it talks about historical events, we can make the presumption that if the writers got the history right, then they got the things about Jesus right.

So there's an awful lot riding on this. Now, a key player in this whole discussion is a fellow named Sir William Ramsay. Sir William Ramsay was actually born in 1851 in Scotland.

He received his PhD in Greek culture and archaeology from Oxford University, and in 1885 he began teaching at Oxford, Greek art, Greek archaeology, and New Testament. Ramsay had been trained as a liberal scholar when it came to the Bible. Ramsay believed that the Bible was unreliable as a historical document. He believed that it was fraudulent as a historical document. He believed the book of Acts in particular was written by somebody other than Luke centuries after Paul lived if indeed there even was anybody named Paul that ever lived, and that it couldn't be counted on to be accurate about any of the events from the first century, and this is what he taught in his classes.

Well, there was a problem. The problem is he had a lot of students who believed the Bible, and he had a lot of students who kept telling him that he needed to give his life to Jesus Christ, and he got irritated with all these students bugging him about giving his life to Christ, and so here's what he decided to do. He decided to take a sabbatical from Oxford and to go to Asia Minor and to take the book of Acts, to take the Bible, and use the book of Acts as his roadmap to actually follow the exact itinerary city to city to city that the book of Acts said Paul followed and to do archaeology in each of those cities.

Remember, the guy's trained. He has a PhD in archaeology, and he said what I'm going to do is I'm going to go there, and I'm going to find so many examples of where the Bible is wrong, and I'm going to bring them back and publish them so these people will leave me alone once and for all about Jesus Christ, and that was his goal, and that's what he went and did. He spent over a year marching around Asia Minor following the book of Acts, and at the end of that year, guess what happened? He became so convinced that the Bible was right, he became so convinced that the Bible was accurate that he did three things. Number one, he gave his life to Jesus Christ. Number two, he came back to England and publicly recanted all the liberal teaching he'd been doing about the Bible, and number three, in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, he became the most outspoken and erudite defender from a scholarly point of view of the Bible anywhere in the world. As a matter of fact, Sir William Ramsay was the man who discovered the truth about Asiarchs that we just learned in Ephesus.

He's the one that figured out that's really what they were called in that town. Listen to what he said, and I quote. He said, I began with the fixed idea that the book of Acts was essentially a second century fraudulent composition.

You understand what he's saying here? I went over there convinced it was a fraud. I didn't go with any presumption it was true. He said, I never relied on its statements as trustworthy for first century conditions, but I gradually came to regard it as an authority for the topography, historical conditions, and society of Asia Minor in the time of Paul. Luke is a historian of the first rank, end of quote. Folks, what really convinced Ramsay more than any other single thing was the fact that Luke correctly used titles for local rulers everywhere he mentioned the local rulers. In other words, in every case in the book of Acts, every location where Paul went, Luke gets the title of the local rulers exactly right, and that was no small feat in the Roman Empire.

Let me show you. In Acts chapter 13, Luke got Sergius Paulus right, calling him the proconsul of Cyprus. Cyprus was not a senatorial province. It should therefore have not had a proconsul, but because there were some relatives of the emperor that lived on Cyprus, they gave it a proconsul anyway as a way of being nice to the island.

Luke got that right. Acts chapter 18, he got Gallio right as the proconsul of Achaea. In Acts chapter 28, he got the chief official on the island of Malta where Paul was shipwrecked right. He called him the protoss in Greek, the first man of the island, which was the unique title that was used for the ruler of this island. In Acts chapter 16, he got the local ruler of Philippi right, calling them praetors, and it's interesting that Cicero, the Roman poet, mentions to us that the technical title for rulers of colony cities, and Philippi was a colony city, was duamvirs, but then Cicero says, and I quote, although they are called duamvirs in other colony cities, the rulers at Philippi like to be called praetors, end of quote. So not only did Luke know that, he knew the nickname of these people that they like to go by.

Very interesting that he knew that. Hey, in Acts chapter 17, Luke calls the chief magistrates of the town of Thessalonica polytarchs. Now, this title never appears even to this day in any Greek document, in any Roman document of any kind, and this was pointed to as proof positive, the exalted proof that the Bible was absolutely wrong.

Luke's just making up names as he goes along. But then, in 1835, archaeologists working in the city of Thessalonica found a stone, and on that stone was an inscription that mentions polytarchs as being the local rulers, and since then, we've found 64 other stones mentioning polytarchs from the town of Thessalonica. It still doesn't appear in any Roman document. It still doesn't appear in any Greek document, but we have 65 inscriptions confirming this is what the rulers in that town were called. Luke got it right. No one five centuries later could have gotten it right, because it never appears in any writing.

How did Luke get it right if he wasn't there when the Bible says he was there? We've already talked about Asiarchs in Acts chapter 19, but let me give you one more example, last one. Here in Acts 19, verse 38, Luke refers to the proconsuls, plural, of Ephesus.

They say, aha, aha, aha, aha. See? So you said the local rulers were Asiarchs, and now here you are six verses later, eight verses later, saying they're polytarchs in the Bible. You see there, the Bible contradicts itself in ten verses.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Yes, you're right. The local rulers of Ephesus were called Asiarchs, but we know from archaeology now that the Roman government also insisted on sending its own representative to rule over the whole province, and as a senatorial province, the ruler was a proconsul. You say, but Lon, he said proconsuls. There was only one proconsul per province, right?

That's correct. So see there, you say the Bible's wrong. Luke says there was more than one. We know there's only one. Aha, aha, aha. Wait a minute.

Not yet. 54 AD, remember Paul was in Ephesus, 53 to 56 AD. We know in 54 AD, Nero, you know Emperor Nero, the guy that played the fiddle? You know what I'm talking about?

Okay. His mother got mad at the proconsul in Ephesus. The proconsul's name was Julius Solanus, and she sent two assassins to kill him, which they did, 54 AD. We also know from Roman records that Nero took his time in appointing a successor. So for two years, from 54 to 56, these two assassins were appointed by Nero's mother as interim proconsuls in the province of Asia. And therefore, in 55, when Luke is writing this, there are two proconsuls in Asia right then. These two interim guys, they were only there two years, but they were there the two years the apostle Paul was there.

Luke got it exactly right. Exactly right. You know, there's an old Sherlock Holmes story about how this fraudulent ship captain was trying to get some friends of Holmes to give him some money. He was trying to swindle them. And so Holmes went and met with these ladies he was trying to swindle and with this captain, fraudulent captain, for dinner. And as they were leaving, he says, Ladies, he says, whatever this man wants from you, I would recommend that you give him nothing.

He's a fraud and a liar. As they were walking home, according to the story, Watson is walking with Sherlock, and Watson turns to Sherlock Holmes and said, How could you possibly have figured that out in such a short time just having dinner with the man? Here's what Holmes said, and I quote. He said, My dear Watson, no genuine seaman would ever speak of his ship tossing to the right and the left as this man did.

He would have said to the port and the starboard, nor would he have talked about the front and the back of the boat, but rather the bow and the stern. Sherlock says when we are being offered falsehood, simple little facts such as the right words in the right places reveal the truth. End of quote.

Well, friends, listen, the opposite is true. When we have all the right words in all the right places, as Sherlock Holmes says, there is a presumption, not a falsehood there, but a presumption of truth. And what we've seen here is that Luke got all the right words in all the right places for all of these rulers. In fact, the truth is it's taken modern scholarship 1,800 years to catch up with the Bible. The Bible's been right the whole time. Ramsey said, and I quote, One of Luke's most impressive claims to historicity, to historical accuracy, is that he always gets titles right.

How a writer handles titles quickly betrays him if he is trying to construct a forgery instead of having been there as an eyewitness. Ramsey continues, The officials with whom Paul and his companions were brought into contact are those whom our historical records now tell us would have been there. Every official in Acts is found precisely where he ought to be.

Proconsuls in senatorial provinces, Asiarchs in Ephesus, Praetors in Philippi, Polytarchs in Thessalonica, etc. Ramsey concludes, The only reasonable conclusions are, one, that the book of Acts must have been written by an eyewitness of the events, and two, that the writer was a stickler for accuracy. You know, when we take tours to Israel, there's a little mantra that I make people say. And it goes like this. The more they dig out of the ground, the more the Bible proves to be true. Now that's a direct quote from me.

I said that. Okay, the more they dig out of the ground, the more the Bible proves to be true. And folks, this world system would love to shake your confidence in the Bible as the word of God. You're going to run into professors in high school and college who are going to come up with every high sounding reason why the Bible can't possibly be correct and it's not possibly reliable. You're going to have friends at work or relatives who are going to try to convince you and undermine your confidence in the Bible.

But you listen to me. They may come up with all kinds of high sounding logic, but I'm here to tell you the Bible has stood the test. It's stood every test that it's ever been subjected to. It stood our test this morning when it came to looking at every local ruler that it mentions.

And the important point for this morning is this. Not just that the Bible is right in what it says about Asiarchs and Polytarchs and Praters and proconsuls. The important point as Sherlock Holmes said is that by getting all of these titles right, the only logical conclusion is that the Bible is also correct in what it says about far more important issues, far weightier items like Jesus Christ, what He did for us on the cross and how to get eternal life. Friends, if you're here and you've never given your life to Jesus Christ and one of the things that has been hanging you up is you're just not sure as to whether or not the Bible can really be trusted, I'm here to tell you be hung up no more because the Bible will stand the test.

And for those of us here who have already put our trust in the Lord Jesus, I hope you'll walk out of here and say, you know what, I'm walking out with a greater confidence in the Bible than I walked in here with because you know what, if he gets all these little titles right, anybody who was that precise and cared that much about details like that, well, man, he's got to have gotten the stuff about Jesus Christ right because that's the more important stuff. You know, when I was growing up, we didn't sing this song that we're about to sing because we didn't sing this song in the synagogue. We didn't do this song. But a lot of you sang this song growing up and you've sung it with your children and maybe with your grandchildren and it goes like this.

stood firm. Yeah, alright. Now you know that's a lot more than a kid's song. That's a formula for life that God's trying to give us. And it's a formula that works. Friends, when we build our house on the rock of the Word of God, hey the storms can come and the rains can come and the floods can come and it doesn't really matter because when all the dust clears in eternity, you're going to still be standing on the rock and your house is going to be fine. And so let me challenge you here today. You don't need to have any concerns about the Bible. It stands the test. It is a historically reliable document in a way that is challenging for modern scholarship to even explain. And if it can be trusted to tell us the truth about history, it can be trusted to tell us the truth about the Lord Jesus.

Build your house on the rock, you'll never be sorry you did. Let's pray together. Lord, thanks for talking to us today about the Word of God and the fact that it is the rock to build our lives on. And thanks for helping us look even at something as little and trivial as the title of local rulers in the book of Acts and showing us that in every case the Bible gets it right. Even in some cases that modern scholarship has never gotten it right, the Bible gets it right. And use that to encourage our faith today and deepen our confidence in the Word of God. May we build our house on the rock, the Word of God, so that Lord when all the dust clears in eternity, we'll still be standing because the house that's built on the rock stands firm. Send us out into our world with that kind of confidence in the Word of God, I pray. And I ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.