The Book That Conquered Time-How The Bible Came To Be

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show hosts. Thank you for choosing W

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FOURCY Radio. Well, thank you
for joining us. This is Bill Martinez

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and we are live. We're going
to be talking with Rob Suggs, the

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author and editor who has written and
collaborated with New York Times bestselling authors and

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over sixty books. His latest book, The Book That Conquered Time. How

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the Bible Came to Be. He
notes in his book that the story of

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the Bible is sometimes dramatic, it's
always fascinating and ultimately faith building. Our

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discussion and closed the differences and similarities
between the Jewish Holy Books and the Christian

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Bible, How the New Testament writings
were copied and collected, and the church

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leaders who succeeded the Apostles and what
they wrote this is just to get things

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started. Why not? Rob Soggs, Welcome to the show. Good to

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have you with us, sir,
Great to be with you today, Bill,

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Rob, You've had quite the journey, I mean as an author and

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working with the New York Times best
selling authors sixty books. What a career.

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Huh. Well, I've been very
fortunate. It was really not until

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I was about forty years old that
God made it clear to me that he

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wanted me to be a writer full
time. And since then I've just had

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the opportunity to work with a lot
of really really great people and helped them

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get their books in the best wording
possible. Well, so what were you

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doing before forty Well, I was
the editor for a little while with mac

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magazine called Stand Firm, which is
a daily devotional for men. I was

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a minister for a few years to
single adults, and then early in my

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career I worked in a family business. Well, excellent talking about telling men

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to stand firm. Boy, if
this was ever a time that men should

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stand firm, it is now right, absolutely, yeah. I see what's

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happening, you know, throughout our
country what's happening, the attacks on our

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families and our kids. We have
to woar you up. I mean,

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there's just no alternative. I mean, the fact of the matter is,

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and I'm sure you know through your
experience you would agree that we're in a

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war right now. But most of
the men in America do not understand it,

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and they're wondering why they're getting their
heads handed to them all the time.

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It's because you're not participating. You're
being beat up and you need to

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war, you up and be prepared
because the time is now, isn't it?

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It absolutely is. So often the
issue is the men themselves stepping back.

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In my opinion, you go to
church and you see a lot of

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women. You don't see the men. The men are are watching their football

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and they're they're doing what they enjoy
doing, and they need to understand their

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responsibilities. Rob would you say,
you know, I've spoken to a lot

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of men on this issue, and
you're exactly right. It's the church has

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become quite quite effeminate, and it's
very uh, very I guess relatable to

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the women, but not so the
men. Is it a problem, you

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know, in terms of how the
church is relating to the genders these days,

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it's it's a it's a cycle that
is a vicious cycle, and that

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let's just say you're your pastor and
your staff. They look at in the

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congregation and they see who's there,
and they try to create programming and preaching

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and Bible studies that appeal to the
people they have and the more they do

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that, the more it becomes,
you know, female centered, and which

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is great for women obviously, but
we need to be intentional about it attracting

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men, you know, finding ways, and it's not always easy to do

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that. In my church, we
have a women's fellowship once a month.

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If you try to have a men's
fellowship, the men would say, I'm

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staying home to see the game,
tell them to see my favorite TV show.

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I'm not going to that. So
the women tend to respond and that

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helps create the situation BLUs their arts. But we need to be more intentional

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in drawing men well. And the
fact is is that we know churches that

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are vibrant, where kids are more
involved, and especially where young children hold

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on to their faith. It starts
with the father, doesn't it. It

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really does. My primary two stories
in terms of how I got so connected

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and committed to the Bible. Both
have to do with my dad, and

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one of them, even before he
was going to church himself, has to

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do with him reading me my Bibles, my Sunday Morning Bible lesson when I

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was four years old, and for
him to read me that story was so

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exciting to me. And then later
on when I was about twelve, seeing

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him teach a lesson to teenagers for
the first time I could still teach you

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that lesson, it made that big
an impression on me. So when the

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man steps forward and takes responsibility for
that, it does make a difference in

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children's lives. Well, the data
and you know, if you follow the

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data, it's empirical. I mean
it shows quite clearly when fathers are involved,

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you know what the response happens as
opposed to if it's just the mom's

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getting involved. I mean there's a
huge difference. I think the last time

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I was looking at with George Barne, I think he told me it was

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like something like seventy five percent response
when the men are leading. If the

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women are leading, it's less than
twenty percent. Yeah, for so many

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reasons for that. You know,
the man with his commanding voice and is

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you know, is when my children
were little, I had just written a

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children's Bible and illustrated it and I
would use it every night with my kids,

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and I would and sometimes I wouldn't
use it. I would just sit

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down and they would say, tell
us a Jesus story, and I would

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just pick one out, you know, from my own knowledge, which of

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course means that we men need to
know what we're talking about. We need

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to be able to tell those Jesus
stories. But every night, the last

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thing they got for they went to
bed was a story about from the Bible.

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How cool is that? We need
to we just need to be doing

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that, Rob, How did you
come to fall in love with God's word?

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Well? I mentioned a little bit
about the story from when I was

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four years old. What was remarkable
about it was I don't remember many things

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from that age, but this story, something about it hit me very deeply

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and stuck with me. Dad sat
me on the sofa because I'm sure my

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mom said, I'm trying to dress
his older brother, so please read him

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his lesson. And I'm sitting there
in my little bow tie, you know,

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and I'm probably with the Gospel Jubilee
on the TV in the background,

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and Dad reads me the story of
Samuel in the Temple with Eli, and

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he keeps getting up and saying,
did you call me Eli? And Eli

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says no, go back to sleep, and it is God calling him.

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Well, it happens three times,
as in all good stories that children's love.

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Something happens three times, like Goldilocks. But I'd heard Goldielocks and three

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Bears. I'd heard all those stories
that are in fairy tales, and I

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never had the desire to tell the
story myself. Yet when Dad told me

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this story. Immediately when he finished, I leaped up and said, now

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let me tell you the story,
and I just repeated what he told me.

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There's something about the Bible that is
different than any other book that just

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compels us to retell what we've heard
exactly. That was the very first time

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I remember, and then going through
there were other times too. I told

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you there was another time hearing my
dad and how proud I was of him

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teaching it. But the Bible stories
just sunk into me. So it begins

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with children with those stories. Right. You know, if we tried to

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give them Paul or something, it
may not go as well. But we

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tell them these wonderful stories. Daniel
and the lions didn't know one the aren't.

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David and Goliath and the children just
love those stories. For two thousand

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years they have so with me.
That's what it was. It was being

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drawn to the story of the Bible. Well again, it demonstrates God's faithfulness.

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He says that his word goes out
and does not return void. It

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finds its mate. And you think
about that. The word of God goes

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out and it's scattered like seed,
and it goes out into the hearts of

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young people. It could be older
people, but in this case we're talking

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about kids, and it lands on
their gentle hearts and it just you know,

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finds fertile ground and does beautiful things
and it finds its mate to where

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you think, wow, this is
something special that will remain with me.

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And I think that most people of
faith have had moments like that Rob where

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you know something, the word of
God came to us in such a way

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that you knew that it was an
appointed time and a pointed word, and

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it was going to be with you
for the rest of your life. It's

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so true, and that's one of
the great messages of this book is the

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supernaturalness of the Bible coming down through
two thousand years. And the book is

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told almost like a novel. It's
not a scholarly type, you know,

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something you would study in seminary.
This is book for common people, right,

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And I think every page you'll enjoy
reading is filled with stories. But

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it's about the fact, that's how
amazing it is that this book, after

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thousands of years, still is so
powerful. I mean, I always mention

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the fact that I teach a weekly
class. Every time I teach a story,

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it could be The Prodigal Son,
and I might have taught it fifty

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times before, and there's something new
in it every time. I know.

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Any other book off the shelf it
wouldn't be that way. But with the

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Bible, it renews itself in your
heart with what you're going through in your

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life at that time, and it
just has that power. It's a living

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thing exactly. That's what I was
going to say, is that the Bible

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tells us it is living, and
it is amazing because it's so dynamic.

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It adapts to the current condition and
things. And you and I we've read

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the Bible, and I know I'll
come across braggo where did that come from.

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I've read this passage. I can't
even tell you how many hundreds of

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times I didn't see it, but
at that point in time, I needed

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to see that, right, It's
absolutely true. It's just it's a remarkable

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thing. As time goes on,
rather than getting tired of the Bible or

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thinking I've read this before, it
just becomes more and more and more attractive

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to me, where I'd rather reread
what's in there and see something living that

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affects my life than read anything else. Well, it's amazing because even Rob

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Sugg's in this current post Christian time, this modernistic time in which we live

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in the Bible, as you say, this book is conquered time, it

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still continues to be the number one
selling book in the land. Yes it

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is. We discussed that in the
book. I think that's one thing that

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really jumped out at me. I
did a lot of research for this book,

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and one of the things I checked
into was how many copies it sells

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in any given a week or month. A best selling book sells something like

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ten thousand copies in the month or
something like that. I mean, the

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big best seller sell more than that. But whatever the number is, I've

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forgotten the exact number. The Bible
sells ten times more copies than whatever the

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best selling book was. So we
think that, you know, these other

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books are what people are reading,
and they are, but the Bible just

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keeps selling and selling and selling and
selling. And it's not new. I

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mean, it's been around all this
time that people just keep buying Bibles,

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exactly buying them. Now, whether
they're reading those Bibles as much as they

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should or just putting them on the
shelf or displaying them in church, we

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don't know. But people are buying
the Bibles, and at least the word

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is out there. Well, I
know that you would agree with me that

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we would encourage anybody, you know, to open up that Bible. You

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know, as Jesus himself said,
he didn't live off of the food of

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man, but every word that proceeded, you know, from the mouth of

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God. And that is so profound. You got to think that, you

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know, this is our spiritshment,
This is so important. I just don't

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know how people can go by,
uh, you know, go a day

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without you know, reading the word
of God. I agree, And it

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was so important to Jesus that if
you read the Gospels carefully, you begin

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to realize how much he must have
immersed himself in the word of God during

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a time when they didn't have bibles. We think of it. I was

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going to say, you got to
go and you got to open up a

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scroll. You have to go into
the synagogue. You didn't have one in

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your home. You had to hear
it quoted to you by your parents,

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and you had to hear it in
the synagogue. And yet somehow Jesus was

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so deeply immersed in God's word that
almost every time he opens his mouth,

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he's quoting the Old Testament scriptures.
Many much of the time we don't even

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realize that's what he's doing because we
don't know the Old Testament as well as

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he did. But you know,
people think that he came to do something

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new, and he did, But
he did that without ever turning his back

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on the Old Testament teachings, which
where his whole life was. When the

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devil tempted him in the wilderness three
times, Jesus not only responded with scripture.

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Each time, he responded all from
one chapter in Deuteronomy. Right,

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So maybe that's the one chapter he
was he was studying that week or something

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right right. He answered every single
temptation with a verse from Deuteronomy, and

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it's an example of the way God
embeds the word in our hearts. Well,

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you know, you think about the
Old Testament. You think, you

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know, during Jesus' time here you
had all these scholars, the Pharisees and

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the Sadducees, those that have been
studying the Word of God for all these

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years. And can you imagine how
many questions they had. I mean,

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look at the Ten Commandments opened up
volumes of books and additional laws and rules.

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You know, some of that turned
into the ten volumes. But Jesus

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came to bring it to full circle
and to be you know, like that

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that answer and the question that ponscious
pilot had, you know, what is

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truth? I mean, here he's
standing right in front of truth. And

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I believe the way he the way
he responded Rob. This is just me.

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Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed to me that

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that that statement that he made was
one like with some anguish. He had

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some anguish in his heart about what
is truth? I mean it's like,

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well, you know, why am
I here? What am I about?

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All those basic questions, and here
Jesus comes to give us all the answers

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and to bring that to full circle. And some of the interesting conversations that

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he had with whether it was Nicodemus
or other Pharisees or the religious folk at

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the time, I think was quite
quite revealing and provocative because it was an

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opportunity for them to kind of bring
it to full circle, get some clarity.

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But unfortunately their ideology wouldn't allow them
to embrace the truth. You know,

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we tend to take faith and make
it more complicated because we wanted to

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be easy and tangible. And this
is what the scholars had done in Jesus's

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time. They'd spent a couple of
centuries making the law from Moses as complicated

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as they could. So you had
to check whether you could lift your coffee

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cup on the Sabbath and rob.
You know what those people they actually they're

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living again and they're now legislators in
our government. Oh yeah, yeah,

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the law just tangling it up.
And so when the Pharisees tried to trap

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Jesus, this was our lesson this
past Sunday yesterday. They tried to trap

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Jesus, and they said, you
know, what is the greatest of the

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commandments. The purpose of the question
was to make him stumble. Whatever he

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answered, then they could point to
some other commandment they can get in trouble.

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But what he did was he cut
all of those centuries of complicating the

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law down to two commandments, Love
the Lord thy God, and love that

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neighbor. And he did it without
violating the scriptures. Because that's the summary

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of the ten Commandments. It's just
a beauty in that all this complication they

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brought. And he said, I
can tell you in about ten words,

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and if you do that, you'll
be fulfilling the law of God in every

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way. And that admonishment, that
admonishment command has been echoing through the millennia

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ever since. Rob that if we
would just hearken unto the words of our

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Savior. Wow, yeah, life
would be a lot easier. I would

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think. It's so simple, and
yet we just can't do it. We

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can't seem to do it without trying
to add something to what Jesus said to

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to, you know, to twist
it somehow, and it's just it's it's

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tragic, and yet it's so hopeful
that we can open up these pages of

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this amazing book that is conquered time. And we can still see after thousands

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of years what Jesus wants us to
hear, just as the disciples heard it.

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Well, Rob Suggs is with us
his book, the Book that conquered

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Time. How the Bible came to
be? Rob, how did the Bible

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come to be? Well, you'll
have to read the book. Actually,

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no, I won't give you that
answer. It's yeah, give me a

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nine word answer like Jesus gave.
Well, as you know, it's a

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library of sixty six books. That
fascinates me that it always has that you

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have these sixty six books written sometimes
by people whose names we don't even have,

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over hundreds and hundreds of years,
thousands of years, sixteen hundred years

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or yeah, and yet it all
holds together as one story, one unified

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story, without arguing with itself,
with holding together. And so it comes

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together through the history of humanity,
learning to speak and then learning to tell

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stories, and then learning to write
them down, and then putting them on

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stones, then putting them on parchment, then putting them on paper that we

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you know, so now we have
the Bible on the internet. The book

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goes all the way up from It
starts from stone and ends in all the

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modern technological ways and the translations that
we're doing so that every nation can hear

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the word. Rob we're sixty six
books now, but at one point we

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had more books. Why did we
settle on these sixty six books for the

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Bible? That's a great question,
and working on this book again confirmed to

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me just how we got it right. The sixty six books we have,

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we know what some of the other
books were, both in the Old and

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New Testament. There are Old Testament
books we didn't take, and even more

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New Testament because by the time Jesus
came there were more people writing, obviously,

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so as the gospel grew in popularity, people wrote other stories of Jesus.

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But the ones they wrote they wrote
two hundred and three hundred years later,

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and the ones they wrote don't fit
with the gospel we have at all.

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And the ones we did take have
been confirmed through time to be historic,

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to be accurate, to be trustworthy. So one mistake that people make,

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and if you watch some of these
TV specials on National Geographic and things

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like that, they'll try to tell
you that there was some political conspiracy that

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went on and about three hundred AD
at the Council of Nicea or somewhere,

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and that someone sat down and said, here's the books you're going to use,

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and they censored and they canceled all
these other books. And that's really

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not how it happened at all.
The books we have in the Bible were

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chosen by the early Church, by
the people who followed Jesus who wrote the

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books, and then the people that
came after them, who knew which of

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the books were legitimate. So,
in particularly with the case of the New

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Testament, it's so important that we
know that the books we got were the

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right books. Now, I spent
a good deal of time on that in

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this book, just showing the process
by which the New Testament we have and

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the Old Testament became canon C A
N O N. That means the accepted

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books that became the New Testament.
And by fairly early on, by the

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two hundreds, and we knew what
those books were. It didn't take you

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know, a great deal of time, so you weren't but maybe what two

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or three generations removed from Jesus time, right, So a lot of them,

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So you had initially with these books, I mean, these were eyewitness

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accounts. Yeah, they were,
they were. And that's one of the

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most exciting things is that the scholarship
right now continues. And if you read

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some of the books coming out,
for example, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses,

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I recommend it's a big, thick
book and it's a little hard to read,

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but he's he studies the eyewitness testimony
that's in the gospels and shows evidence

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that we never even come up with
yet. That for example, the Gospel

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of Mark, which is the very
first one written bust scholars believe, is

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basically the account of Peter Peter given
to Mark, and the Aramaic original language

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comes through, you know, because
the Jesus spoke Arabic and the disciples did,

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which is a form of Hebrew,
and then it was written in Greek,

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the gospels were, but the Aramaic
comes through, and that shows the

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original teachings of Jesus, the original
precise words of Jesus coming through into the

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gospels. So one hundred years ago
or so, it was assumed by many

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scholars all these gospels are generations later, they're legends, they're not much like

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what the real Jesus was like.
And the more we find out, the

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more it is confirmed that the New
Testament is the inspired Word of God and

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fully trustworthy. So so this idea
and the argument that, well, you

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know, here we are hundreds of
years later men, you know, and

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with the different iterations, you know, between the King James, the New

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King jameses ESB you know, on
and on, with all these different versions

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of the Bible, what what makes
them applicable? What gives them validity?

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Well, this is what people need
to remember. They think that there are

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different translations. And because people in
the churches are kind of biblically at literate

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today and I'm not trying to insult
anybody, but we haven't done a good

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job teaching them. So I'm putting
that on myself and I'm my generation.

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People don't understand that there's one set
of manuscripts. Now, we don't have

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the original manuscripts, but we have
some very very old manuscripts, and we

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have how old are how old?
There? The oldest we've had is about

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three hundred AD, so the Codex
Synacticus, which is found of all places

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on Mount Sinai at the foot of
Mount Sinai. And then there's another one

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in the Vatican and these are those
are the oldest full Bibles, are almost

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full Bibles. But the rest of
what we have is fragments. But when

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you put all the fragments together,
and all the places from Egypt to the

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Holy Land to other places, and
the oldest fragments together, it's all we

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know exactly what the early early writers
wrote. So that this is it's maybe

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hard to discuss this because it's it's
it's complex, but the reader will be

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to understand as they read this book
why we can trust the New Testament and

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why it's not something people think of
the Bible sometimes as a telephone game,

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you know, or you whisper something, yeah, exactly, and then it

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goes around and everybody whispers and it
gets off. So I have people asked

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me that in Sunday School all the
time. They'll say, well, we

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don't really know doing what they said
because it was copied and then recopied and

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then recopied. No, no,
no, it didn't work. It didn't

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work that way at all. People
were writing down in every juncture, not

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what's bringing ears, right, and
so you know we have the writing.

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Yeah, yeah, you have more
people writing. Although there was a lot,

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there's a lot to be said about
oral tradition, and when it came

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down to reconciling this, yes,
oral tradition was part of the debate,

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and you end up with what was
written because there was continuity and there was

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agreement. I don't think that there
was much conflict with oral tradition versus versus

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that which was written down to you. Rob, No, not at all.

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And not only that, but oral
tradition itself is more trustworthy than people

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think. In the Middle East,
there's a tradition of storytelling, and when

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people tell the stories, they tell
them exactly word for word. They're trained

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in the story, the cadence and
the rhythm of the story. You know,

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the way in church we say the
Lord is my shepherd, I shall

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not want and we get every word
right. That's what they they did in

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the Earth in Jesus's time. The
early Church didn't have the writing, so

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they told these stories of Jesus and
they told them exactly word for word.

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It was easy to remember, too, Rob, right exactly because if I'm

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saying the same words and you're hearing
the same words exactly over and over again,

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it makes it makes almost an indelible
mark on our brains. Doesn't it.

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It does. Think about singing,
think about amazing grace as sweet to

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saund everybody. Your listeners could write
now, recite probably four verses of that

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with me, or at least three, and we'd get every word right.

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And that's because we've sung it so
many times. The music is another thing

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that helps, and I imagine they
used music in the early church. They

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lifted up their voices and sang because
it helped them remember exactly what was the

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words that were sung. So the
oral tradition they had was not sloppy.

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It was not you know, you
show up one week and kind of add

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something to the story of Jesus the
wase people often do today, right,

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But it was very, very precise
because they took very seriously the responsibility of

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getting the story of Jesus correct exactly. Well, it's the book that conquered

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time. How the Bible came to
be. We're talking with Rob Suggs,

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the author and editor. He's written
and collaborated with New York Times bestselling authors

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and over six see books. Rob, what about you know? People questioning

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that certain writings were removed from the
Bible, even though they might be helpful,

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if not essential, for our faith. Well, you know, we

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have some of those books. An
example of that is the Gospel of Thomas.

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And the Gospel of Thomas is interesting, and it may even have an

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authentic word or two from Jesus that
we don't have. We can't prove that,

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but the fact is it's filled with
something called gnosticism, which was an

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early church heresy, right, and
gnosticism tried to make all kinds of claims

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they're not biblical, that the body
is evil and the spirit is good,

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and you know, etc. Things
like that, And so the Gospel of

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Thomas was another one that was written
much later and earlier than some of the

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others. But the point is the
people in the first few generations of the

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church, they recognized that these books
were not that they knew which ones Matthew,

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Mark, Luke, and John.
They knew that those were the ones

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that were connected to the disciples,
and that some of these books were written.

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There's a book written in the Middle
Ages. There's no way anyone in

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the Middle Ages knew about Jesus childhood, but he talks about Jesus making a

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bird out of clay as a little
boy and then going poof, and the

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bird flies comes to life and flies
away. Well, that's a neat little

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story. It's just that no one
from the lifetime of Jesus ever told that

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story exactly. I think some of
the Old Testament ones are interestingly enough.

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There's one called Bell and the Dragon. Did you know dragons were in any

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of their Old Testament materials? We
don't have Bell in the Dragon and Hebrew

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Bible has it. It's a story
of Daniel. There were stories of Daniel.

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He was a very popular character,
much as oh Johnny Appleseed or Paul

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Bunyan in the United States. Daniel
was real, but people loved telling stories

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about him because he was He was
a hero. So there's all these other

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folk tales about Daniel and you know, fighting at dragon and doing all these

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other things, and we don't have
those, we don't use those. And

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some of these writings are actually pretty
good. There's there are things we have

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00:30:33.319 --> 00:30:38.799
access to, and you can look
it up that our early fathers books that

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the early Fathers used, they're just
not inspired scripture, particularly the New Testament

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ones. They have good teaching in
them, but they're just not inspired scripture.

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Well, and I think that some
of this too is kind of like

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you know the you know from the
Latin falso and no falso in Omnibush.

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If you find some if you're reading
a document and there's discrepancy, you know,

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in the document, then you have
a tendency to you know, discount

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the rest of it. And I'm
sure in some cases, in some of

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these writings, you had things that
were just not true that that just could

401
00:31:17.519 --> 00:31:21.519
not be proved. Right, that's
exactly right. And they the main thing

402
00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:27.240
is they weren't based on the eyewitness
testimony. So but you know, it's

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just so amazing to me. There's
a place in the Gospel of John.

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It's the portico around around the fountain
where the men sat for thirty eight years

405
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and couldn't be healed in Jesus leading
to them and said do you want to

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be well? Well, one hundred
years ago, the conventional wisdom was that

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place didn't exist because all the Jerusalem
scholars said there was no place in Jerusalem

408
00:31:52.279 --> 00:31:56.400
like that. We know what Jerusalem
looked like back then. There was no

409
00:31:56.839 --> 00:32:00.759
place with five cobblemns and a fountain
and all this, well all about it.

410
00:32:00.799 --> 00:32:04.640
Seventy eighty years ago they found it. They got under several layers of

411
00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:08.079
civilization, and there was the place
and it was exactly from the time of

412
00:32:08.200 --> 00:32:13.079
Jesus, and amazing tells us about
Now. John is the fourth Gospel,

413
00:32:13.559 --> 00:32:17.480
and some people believe that it's less
historical because it was written later than the

414
00:32:17.519 --> 00:32:22.279
others. But it's still at least
as historical, you know, well,

415
00:32:22.319 --> 00:32:25.559
you a way as the others.
Well, for me, I mean the

416
00:32:25.640 --> 00:32:30.720
relationship. I mean, he seemed
to have a different relationship than all the

417
00:32:30.759 --> 00:32:36.519
other apostles. It's been said that
he was Jesus' favorite, and you know,

418
00:32:36.640 --> 00:32:40.599
so that you know, that makes
for me the Gospel of John a

419
00:32:40.599 --> 00:32:45.519
bit special, you know that,
you know, in that context, if

420
00:32:45.519 --> 00:32:49.720
that's fair or yeah, I'd never
tired of teaching the Gospel of John.

421
00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:52.759
Every time I'm asked to teach any
chapter from it, I get excited.

422
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:59.440
I love teaching the Bible. But
there's just something special about John that it

423
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:01.880
is. What is about that?
I know? When I in the mid

424
00:33:01.880 --> 00:33:07.519
eighties, I had the honor to
work on a Billy Graham crusade in Los

425
00:33:07.559 --> 00:33:10.000
Angeles. This was amazing, I
gotta tell you, Rob, it was

426
00:33:10.039 --> 00:33:15.240
such a privilege and ten nights they
were sold out. Every night the last

427
00:33:15.319 --> 00:33:21.319
night especially, they ended up opening
up the ball field. It was at

428
00:33:21.319 --> 00:33:24.640
Angel Stadium, so they put like
four thousand people on the ball field that

429
00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:29.680
we were just packed and turned away
another four or five thousand at the gate.

430
00:33:29.720 --> 00:33:34.319
We just couldn't let it anymore in. And the thing that was consistent

431
00:33:34.480 --> 00:33:38.720
in any of the you know,
people that made a profession of faith on

432
00:33:38.799 --> 00:33:45.279
those nights, we gave them the
Book of John to study. And ever

433
00:33:45.319 --> 00:33:49.240
since, you know, working with
that, I mean, it just endeared

434
00:33:49.240 --> 00:33:53.640
me all the more, you know, to that book. It's just well,

435
00:33:53.920 --> 00:33:59.160
I think the difference is I love
Mark too. I've come to love

436
00:33:59.319 --> 00:34:01.920
the Gospel of more and more because
it's the first. So to me,

437
00:34:01.960 --> 00:34:06.559
it's the first rough draft of history. As they say in journalism, it's

438
00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:10.320
just the one based on Peter and
the other Gospels to some extent use what's

439
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:16.119
in Mark. But Mark is very, very urgent. The most important word

440
00:34:16.159 --> 00:34:23.079
in Mark is the word immediately immediately, and then it's just Mark is in

441
00:34:23.119 --> 00:34:29.320
a hurry to tell you this amazing
good news about Jesus. John is coming

442
00:34:29.360 --> 00:34:31.800
along, and he says, three
gospels have been written. I'm going to

443
00:34:31.840 --> 00:34:36.320
write one now that goes more into
the meaning of it all, and John

444
00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:40.039
says, this gospel is written so
that you might know that Jesus was the

445
00:34:40.079 --> 00:34:45.119
Son of God. And there's just
a greater depth to it. The stories

446
00:34:45.119 --> 00:34:50.039
are a little longer, they have
more detail to them, and it's just

447
00:34:50.079 --> 00:34:53.199
absolutely. I'm a writer myself,
so I appreciate the beauty of the writing,

448
00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:59.440
and I can't imagine that someone in
the first century could write something so

449
00:34:59.559 --> 00:35:02.880
gorgeous. Yeah, exactly, Well, when you've had that kind of time

450
00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:09.559
with the Lord firsthand as he did, and obviously you know, had to

451
00:35:09.559 --> 00:35:13.880
be a storyteller himself. I mean, this was, you know, an

452
00:35:13.920 --> 00:35:16.760
expression of his natural gift. Right. Let me ask let me ask you

453
00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:22.599
another question, and this has to
do with in terms of the modern Bible.

454
00:35:22.039 --> 00:35:27.920
At times, you know, you're
reading the Bible and you get to

455
00:35:28.519 --> 00:35:30.760
I can't remember the exact verse,
but you know, you get to the

456
00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:35.960
twenty sixth verse, and then all
of a sudden, the twenty seventh verse

457
00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:38.039
is missing, and they pick it
up on the twenty eighth. But yet

458
00:35:38.639 --> 00:35:45.119
down below it's annotated that this is
what the twenty seventh verse was. Why

459
00:35:45.159 --> 00:35:49.840
did they do that? That's a
great question. If you have a good

460
00:35:50.119 --> 00:35:54.800
study Bible, it will always give
you the explanation on that. And what

461
00:35:54.840 --> 00:36:00.119
it'll tell you is that traditionally there's
been a verse twenty seven there. You

462
00:36:00.119 --> 00:36:05.119
know, the verses and chapters weren't
put in until you know about the fifteen

463
00:36:05.159 --> 00:36:07.960
hundred something like that. I have
the date in the book, but I'm

464
00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:14.239
not sure exactly, but there has
always been a chapter in your example of

465
00:36:14.320 --> 00:36:20.119
verse twenty seven there. But scholarship
has shown that none of the early manuscripts

466
00:36:20.199 --> 00:36:23.800
have that verse twenty seven. It
was added in time. So what they'll

467
00:36:23.800 --> 00:36:29.199
do is, since twenty seven has
been part of our experience and become part

468
00:36:29.199 --> 00:36:34.679
of our heritage, it's included there, but it is not originally possibly part

469
00:36:34.679 --> 00:36:37.519
of what was written as part of
this book. So that's the most honest

470
00:36:37.519 --> 00:36:43.760
thing to do. Two great examples
of that that surprise people when they hear

471
00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:49.239
about it, usually Jesus and the
woman caught an adultery. That's in the

472
00:36:49.239 --> 00:36:53.639
Gospel of John that is not in
the earliest manuscripts. Now it's a fabulous

473
00:36:53.679 --> 00:36:58.639
story, so we included in our
bibles. But again, if you have

474
00:36:58.679 --> 00:37:04.360
a good bibles should be a note
that tells you read this with care because

475
00:37:04.400 --> 00:37:07.800
it's not in the earliest Man,
and I hate that because I love the

476
00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:13.480
story somewhere right exactly, but many
preachers will not preach from that chapter of

477
00:37:13.559 --> 00:37:16.679
John because they're not sure that's the
inspired word of God. The other one

478
00:37:16.719 --> 00:37:22.199
is the ending of Mark, and
there are about two endings to actually three

479
00:37:22.280 --> 00:37:27.920
endings to Mark, and it I
think it ends with verse eighteen something.

480
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:30.760
I think verse eighteen, orse sixteen. Maybe I'm not sure, but the

481
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:37.519
point is it seems to end in
the last verses the women went home troubled

482
00:37:37.599 --> 00:37:40.559
or terrified. And then there's these
endings that you know, that tell that

483
00:37:40.679 --> 00:37:45.480
seemed to be just like what happened
in Matthew. And there's even a strange

484
00:37:45.559 --> 00:37:52.079
verse about drinking poison. And these
endings were definitely not part of the early

485
00:37:52.960 --> 00:37:57.039
inspired Mark. Now, whether he
wrote an ending and it got lost,

486
00:37:57.800 --> 00:38:00.119
or whether he wanted to end it
to give us something to think about,

487
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:05.400
because it's very clear that Mark,
you know, Mark is telling us that

488
00:38:05.480 --> 00:38:08.480
Jesus rose from the dead because an
angel appears and says that and everything.

489
00:38:08.920 --> 00:38:14.320
But it just doesn't have the full
story of the resurrection that the other gospels

490
00:38:14.360 --> 00:38:21.599
have. So what scholars are just
absolutely all agree on is that these endings

491
00:38:21.599 --> 00:38:27.639
of Mark are not part of the
original original Bible, but they're included so

492
00:38:27.719 --> 00:38:30.840
you can see them and read them. So it's more of a contextual thing

493
00:38:30.920 --> 00:38:35.039
than yes, story will say is
what you're saying, right, And it

494
00:38:35.039 --> 00:38:38.079
shows how good our scholarship is,
you know, how honest our scholarship is.

495
00:38:38.239 --> 00:38:43.440
They're not trying to hide anything from
us. I mean over the years.

496
00:38:43.480 --> 00:38:49.519
I mean you think about how many
you know, godly men theologians were

497
00:38:49.920 --> 00:38:53.000
involved. To me, it's like
you're on hallow ground here. You're talking

498
00:38:53.039 --> 00:38:58.039
the books of the Bible, and
you've got a group of men coming together,

499
00:38:59.039 --> 00:39:05.400
you know, asking tough questions going
through line uponline of what should what

500
00:39:05.519 --> 00:39:08.800
should go, what should be taken
out right? That's exactly right. And

501
00:39:08.840 --> 00:39:15.239
think about this. We've had these
committees and really whole armies of scholars and

502
00:39:15.280 --> 00:39:21.920
theologians for a couple thousand years now
studying these words, and the modern ones

503
00:39:21.960 --> 00:39:28.599
have some amazing tools of our ancient
languages and this and that none of them

504
00:39:28.719 --> 00:39:31.880
yet has ever been able to disprove
anything in the Bible, not a one,

505
00:39:31.960 --> 00:39:37.239
and many of them have tried.
You might know the story about Frank

506
00:39:37.320 --> 00:39:42.400
Morrison, the lawyer about a one
hundred years ago that set out to disprove

507
00:39:42.559 --> 00:39:45.239
the resurrection of Jesus. He said, I'm going to just disprove it once

508
00:39:45.239 --> 00:39:50.800
for all the world of failure.
And all he succeeded in doing was converting

509
00:39:50.880 --> 00:39:53.559
himself. And he wrote a book
called Who Moved the Stone? And Who

510
00:39:53.599 --> 00:39:58.400
Moved the Stone is still considered one
of the best books in the Resurrection of

511
00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:01.559
Jesus. It is written by some
who began the book as a non believer.

512
00:40:02.079 --> 00:40:06.280
Right, well, it's kind of
like Josh McDowell right with the resurrection

513
00:40:06.440 --> 00:40:09.760
story, same thing, right,
same story, and a skeptic who was

514
00:40:09.840 --> 00:40:15.719
converted. So the Bible defends itself. We don't really need to even defend

515
00:40:15.760 --> 00:40:20.280
it. It's powerful enough that it
can stand. Yeah, isn't that so

516
00:40:20.400 --> 00:40:25.280
true? And I think that sometimes
Christians somehow think that they need to defend

517
00:40:25.280 --> 00:40:28.960
God. They don't need to defend
God. Yeah, we need to be

518
00:40:29.000 --> 00:40:32.320
thin skinned. And I see people
get on the Internet and with the best

519
00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:37.119
intentions and they get angry and arguments
over the Bible. And you it's hard

520
00:40:37.159 --> 00:40:40.639
to win an internet argument. You
just it didn't ever happen. So the

521
00:40:40.639 --> 00:40:45.159
Bible, my money used to say, you end up getting caught in a

522
00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:51.039
bucket of gum, exactly right.
Instead, we just need to lovingly challenge

523
00:40:51.079 --> 00:40:53.360
people to read the book. Read
the book, start with the Gospel of

524
00:40:53.400 --> 00:40:58.360
John. Read the book and see
what you think. Well, yeah,

525
00:40:58.800 --> 00:41:00.840
the thing is going to say,
it's all that's interesting right now, it

526
00:41:00.840 --> 00:41:06.320
just seems that there's a lot more
discussion in contrast between the Word of God

527
00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:10.400
the Bible, as you say,
ten times more than any other best selling

528
00:41:10.440 --> 00:41:16.400
book in circulation, and now because
there's more Muslims coming into the country,

529
00:41:17.159 --> 00:41:22.559
there's a discussion between the validity of
the Bible versus the Quran or the Idid.

530
00:41:23.480 --> 00:41:25.760
Yeah, there is. And I'm
not an expert in the Koran,

531
00:41:25.880 --> 00:41:32.440
but I do know that we're seeing
record numbers of Muslims coming to Christian faith

532
00:41:34.320 --> 00:41:37.960
because they're reading I've talked to some
of them and it's remarkable. They're saying,

533
00:41:38.000 --> 00:41:42.000
you know, I grew up with
the Koran and so forth, and

534
00:41:42.719 --> 00:41:45.320
I can't believe what I'm reading in
the Bible. It wasn't what I wasn't

535
00:41:45.320 --> 00:41:52.760
allowed to read in the freedom of
the Gospel, particularly women women, Oh

536
00:41:52.920 --> 00:41:59.320
my goodness. Yes, the Islamic
tradition. Who are dishonored, mistreated,

537
00:42:00.079 --> 00:42:08.360
abused in other cultures. They can't
believe the freedom of women and that the

538
00:42:08.480 --> 00:42:14.519
honoring of women that is in the
Christian Gospel. Yeah, which is ironic

539
00:42:14.519 --> 00:42:20.559
because we're often accused of, you
know, being chauvinus and not giving women

540
00:42:20.599 --> 00:42:24.599
opportunities and all this Jesus, you
know, allowed women to be the first

541
00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:29.400
witness is just resurrection. You imagine
that, Hu, What did that say?

542
00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:35.320
Because in you women couldn't keep a
secret, that's why, Well,

543
00:42:35.639 --> 00:42:39.119
it's really yeah, that might be. It also just shows the truth of

544
00:42:39.159 --> 00:42:44.280
it that it's just straight truth.
Number one, they were the ones courageous

545
00:42:44.400 --> 00:42:49.559
enough to go to the tomb when
the disciples were hiding. Yeah. And

546
00:42:49.679 --> 00:42:53.039
number two, you wouldn't have written
this down if you were making the gospel

547
00:42:53.119 --> 00:42:58.920
up because women were not allowed to
give testimony in court. So if you

548
00:42:58.920 --> 00:43:00.800
had the testimony of a war women, they say, well, that's the

549
00:43:00.840 --> 00:43:05.199
testimony of a woman. We don't
trust that. That's just the way they

550
00:43:05.199 --> 00:43:08.039
were in the Old Testament was not
a woman's world. Back then. They

551
00:43:08.039 --> 00:43:13.599
were not honored, they were not
respected, But no one would have written

552
00:43:14.440 --> 00:43:17.719
the women went to the tomb and
saw Jesus where the witnesses, unless it

553
00:43:17.840 --> 00:43:22.800
just simply happened that way, it's
one of those proofs that the resurrection is

554
00:43:22.880 --> 00:43:29.159
true. And when Jesus was doing
in elevating women right, absolutely, he

555
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:35.159
spent paid attention to them. And
that's another to me, one of those

556
00:43:35.199 --> 00:43:37.519
things that when I read it,
that just says Jesus has to be real,

557
00:43:38.239 --> 00:43:42.719
he has to be real. He
comes along in the ancient world,

558
00:43:43.239 --> 00:43:49.280
and he takes time with women,
sometimes have have leprosy, sometimes have all

559
00:43:49.400 --> 00:43:55.639
kinds of physical problems, sometimes probably
hate themselves because people like Mary Magdalen,

560
00:43:55.920 --> 00:44:00.920
because they've been taught to hate themselves
and honored them. You know, Mary

561
00:44:00.960 --> 00:44:07.639
and Martha, all the women around
him. It's a whole circle of women

562
00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:10.639
them. Half of them were named
Mary, by the way, which is

563
00:44:10.719 --> 00:44:15.440
very confusing now as a writer,
if I'm creating characters and I'm making the

564
00:44:15.559 --> 00:44:17.280
characters up, I'm going to give
all the women different names, right,

565
00:44:17.679 --> 00:44:23.440
Yeah, I would think these Agnes
and Judy and Mary and Bobby Joe.

566
00:44:24.119 --> 00:44:28.360
But in the in the Gospels,
half of them were named Mary. They

567
00:44:28.400 --> 00:44:31.719
could back and trying to figure out
which marry are we talking about here?

568
00:44:31.800 --> 00:44:37.119
Right? Exactly right? And we
can they can be differentiated actually usually when

569
00:44:37.239 --> 00:44:42.199
you just play a game of logic. But yeah, there were a lot

570
00:44:42.239 --> 00:44:47.400
of Mary was one of the most
common names of women in New Testament times.

571
00:44:47.960 --> 00:44:53.400
And I believe Jesus was the third
most common name for men. So

572
00:44:53.480 --> 00:44:58.639
there's a Jesus bribe Us, and
there's Jesus Christ, you know, Jesus

573
00:44:58.639 --> 00:45:01.719
the son Jesus Nazareth at actually,
so you know, we know what that's.

574
00:45:02.440 --> 00:45:07.760
There's a book that talks about a
study that's been done of the most

575
00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:12.000
common names and the New Testament time. And the reason we know that is

576
00:45:12.320 --> 00:45:16.079
we have tax directories and so forth
that we're done directories of the Jerusalem area

577
00:45:16.519 --> 00:45:20.920
and it lists all the names and
they're able to total the names up and

578
00:45:20.960 --> 00:45:24.480
they have top ten names of males
and top ten names of females and they

579
00:45:24.559 --> 00:45:32.199
fit the New Testaments. The most
common names in Jerusalem were also the most

580
00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:37.559
common names of New Testament for many
of them. Yeah, we again shows

581
00:45:37.599 --> 00:45:40.800
you how accurate and valid it is. Rob Sox's is our guest, the

582
00:45:40.840 --> 00:45:45.920
author and editor. The book is
a new book, The Book that conquered

583
00:45:45.960 --> 00:45:50.440
time, how the Bible came to
be rob I got to imagine, you

584
00:45:50.480 --> 00:45:55.159
know, for you, oftentimes God
calls us to teach that which we ourselves

585
00:45:55.239 --> 00:46:00.239
need to learn. Most that this
had to be a time of revelation for

586
00:46:00.360 --> 00:46:07.760
you. Was there a significant moment
of revelation that you experienced in putting this

587
00:46:07.800 --> 00:46:15.559
book together. I don't know that
there was any one moment, but every

588
00:46:15.760 --> 00:46:22.239
chapter had moments within those chapters that
just absolutely there are some amazing stories.

589
00:46:22.320 --> 00:46:27.960
I tell people to read the appendix
first. I have an appendix, a

590
00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:34.159
story in the appendix about the Codex
Sanaticus, the Bible basically that was found

591
00:46:34.519 --> 00:46:38.719
in the foot of Mount Sinai about
one hundred years ago or so actually,

592
00:46:39.480 --> 00:46:44.960
and it's just just a you can
make a movie out of that story,

593
00:46:45.239 --> 00:46:50.159
and there's all the way through.
I was just convinced that the Bible is

594
00:46:50.199 --> 00:46:53.960
a living book. And that's why
I wrote it like a biography. It's

595
00:46:54.000 --> 00:47:01.079
a biography of a book, a
living book that has through time become is

596
00:47:01.119 --> 00:47:05.880
it's kept all of its power.
What else could you say that about that

597
00:47:05.920 --> 00:47:07.519
we've had for thousands of years?
Oh without it, yeah, exactly,

598
00:47:07.599 --> 00:47:14.039
nothing compares. Yeah, without a
doubt, Rob, We've got about about

599
00:47:14.079 --> 00:47:16.519
a minute and a half left,
two minutes if we stretch it, and

600
00:47:16.559 --> 00:47:22.840
that's okay. Let me ask you, can you share one key finding from

601
00:47:22.880 --> 00:47:29.559
your research on the creation of the
Bible? What would that be? All

602
00:47:29.639 --> 00:47:36.400
right? Key finding? The key
finding? What would be related to the

603
00:47:36.440 --> 00:47:40.639
Gospels the accuracy of the Gospels,
because that's what's under fire today is people

604
00:47:42.079 --> 00:47:45.760
want to say the Gospels are legends. Some people say Jesus didn't even exist.

605
00:47:46.679 --> 00:47:52.920
But the ongoing findings of the accuracy
of the Gospels, in which I

606
00:47:52.960 --> 00:47:55.679
go into a little bit, is
the key finding to me in that book.

607
00:47:57.400 --> 00:48:00.800
Now, there's a lot of others, but that's the central The fact

608
00:48:00.840 --> 00:48:05.360
of Jesus is the most important thing
in the Bible. Yeah, it is

609
00:48:05.400 --> 00:48:07.519
amazing that, you know, to
this day. I mean because you know

610
00:48:07.559 --> 00:48:14.039
we're talking about Muslims. Muslims believe
Jesus existed, so there's no controversy on

611
00:48:14.079 --> 00:48:19.360
his existence. It was that what
it comes down to was that was he

612
00:48:19.400 --> 00:48:24.159
fully God or fully man or both? Yeah, that's exactly right. There's

613
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another movement to just say, well, Jesus was a great moral teacher,

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as you know. Well, I'll
accept the concernerment of the mount. But

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I won't accept these other things.
And you can't separate Jesus is not a

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cafeteria. You can't and choose what
you want. Jesus is Jesus, and

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he made some claims that we have
to confront that are beyond just do good

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unto others. You know, we
have to decide whether he's the son of

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God or not. Well, he's
the chief cornerstone that God himself said,

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I mean, who knows the beginning
from the end, the end, from

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the beginning right said exactly what would
happen? And what was the life of

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his son? What was the legacy
of his son going to be? And

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the fact of the matter is is
that we find people, you know,

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tripping over that cornerstone, just as
God said, what happen to them?

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Isn't that something? And even the
Jewish people themselves all through history have been

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persecuted. And what does that say
when that one tiny nation is continuing to

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be under fire and persecuted. It
says that they really are something about them

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that is special to God that the
devil doesn't want the world to see.

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Without a doubt. Well, but
he is faithful and We're so thankful to

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God. I'm so thankful to God
for you, Rob Socks, and and

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for all what you've done for the
body of Christ. And you know,

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00:49:54.079 --> 00:49:59.000
bring this book to be. I
mean, what what an effort and blessing

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00:49:59.519 --> 00:50:02.880
the book that conquered time, how
the Bible came to be. Rob Suggs

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00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:06.239
has been our guest. Rob,
God bless you. Thank you so much

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00:50:06.239 --> 00:50:08.239
for being with us. Thank you
Bill, all right, God bless you.

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00:50:08.320 --> 00:50:12.719
Take care her. Thanks to Rob
Suggs for being with us today,

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00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:15.159
and thank you for sharing a part
of your day with us as well.

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00:50:15.599 --> 00:50:20.239
And you know, to be a
part of this mighty movement to get back

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00:50:20.280 --> 00:50:23.199
to first principles and to return to
God. Go to Bill Martinez show dot

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00:50:23.199 --> 00:50:27.039
com. May God bless you and
keep you. May make His face shine

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00:50:27.079 --> 00:50:29.639
upon you and give you peace.
Thank you so much for being with us.

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Take care. God bless