14. The Other Gospels

Worldwide Mission Fellowship

14. The Other Gospels

The Gospel Volume 1

March 26, 2015 • WWMF Media

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:6-8, ESV)

We have heard about the great story of Gods love for the world which was demonstrated through the death, burial and resurrection of His son Jesus Christ.

However the sad truth is that we live in a world where there are many other Gospels to choose from, each of them deceptive and dangerous... these include the false gospels from world religions, philosophies, cults and even the church... at the turn of the century in the downgrade controversy Charles Spurgeon mentioned the type of twisting of the Gospel he saw in his day

The idea of a progressive gospel seems to have fascinated many. To us that notion is a sort of cross-breed between nonsense and blasphemy. After the gospel has been found effectual in the eternal salvation of untold multitudes, it seems rather late in the day to alter it; and, since it is the revelation of the all-wise and unchanging God, it appears somewhat audacious to attempt its improvement. When we call up before our mind's eye the gentlemen who have set themselves this presumptuous task, we feel half inclined to laugh; the case is so much like the proposal of moles to improve the light of the sun.... Do men really believe that there is a gospel for each century? Or a religion for each fifty years?

We are charged in scripture to defend the faith and expose the schemes of the enemy.Jude Verse 3 states

"Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints." (Jude 3, ESV)

and Paul reminds us in Ephesians to..

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them." (Ephesians 5:11, ESV)

there are so many false Gospels in the world today that it would be impossible to look at all of them so we have summarized them into four categorizes

1. Good People
(Moralist + False Religion)

2. Complicated People
(Twisted Christianity or Cults)

3. Foolish People
(Naturalism + Atheism)

4. Bad People
(Greedy, Rebellious, Gnostic, Hedonistic)

1. What is the Gospel

March 26, 2015 • WWMF Media

What is the gospel? Do we know what the word means? Can we be 100% sure? Is there a source of objective truth to confirm the nature of the gospel? How important is the Gospel today? All these questions can and will be answered definitively in today's presentation so hold onto your seat as we go on the journey of a lifetime to find "The Gospel".

2. Can the Bible be Trusted

March 26, 2015 • WWMF Media

The Bible is the source of objective truth against which we can measure all beliefs, ideas and opinions to test their validity. How can we make such a bold statement. Well we have 5 clear proofs that the Bible IS God's verified Word. 1. Bibliographical or Documentary evidence 2. Scientific evidence 3. Archaeological evidence 4. Fulfilled Prophecy 5. Empirical evidence

3. Bibliographical / Documentary Evidence

March 26, 2015 • WWMF Media

The Old Testament The original Bible manuscripts (called autographs) were written on material such as papyrus, which deteriorated quickly. Consequently, scribes were needed to copy and recopy the Old Testament books letter by letter. These copyists knew they were duplicating God’s Word, so they went to incredible lengths to prevent error from creeping into their work. The whole process of recopying the Bible was controlled by strict religious rituals, and the scribes carefully counted every line, word, syllable, and letter to ensure accuracy. As a result of their diligence, the Old Testament in our Bible today is virtually identical to the autographs. Bible scholars have demonstrated this by comparing ancient copies of the Bible with more recent copies. For example, prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts in 1947, the oldest existing (extant) Old Testament manuscript was the Massoretic Text, dated around a.d. 900. But with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament were found, many of them dating back to around 150 b.c., a thousand years earlier. One of the most important manuscript discoveries was two copies of Isaiah. So far they are the oldest known copies of any complete book of the Bible. What did textual critics discover when they compared the Dead Sea manuscripts of Isaiah with the Isaiah preserved in the Massoretic Text dated a thousand years later? Old Testament scholar Gleason Archer provides the answer: “Even though the two copies of Isaiah discovered in Qumran Cave number one near the Dead Sea in 1947 were a thousand years earlier than the oldest dated manuscript previously known (a.d. 980), they proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95 percent of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling.” From manuscript discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls, Christians have undeniable evidence that today’s Old Testament Scripture, for all practical purposes, is exactly the same as it was when originally inspired by God and recorded in the Bible. The New Testament We do not posses any of the autographs of the New Testament. Like the Old Testament, the New Testament books were originally written on materials that quickly wore out and therefore had to be copied and recopied by hand for centuries before the invention of the printing press. So we need to determine how closely the existing copies represent the autographs. That is, how do we know that the New Testament we have today is close enough to the original writings as to be equally reliable? One of the areas of evidence has to do with the available number of New Testament manuscripts. What we discover is that there are more extant New Testament manuscripts than any other document from antiquity. More than 24,000 partial and complete copies of the New Testament are in existence today. By comparison, the ancient document second in number of available copies is the Iliad, which has only 643 surviving manuscripts. And this number is extremely high compared to other ancient documents. In fact, there are enough quotations from the early church fathers that even if we did not have a single copy of the Bible, scholars could still reconstruct all but 11 verses of the entire New Testament from material written within 150 to 200 years from the time of Christ.