Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

Script:

When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.

1 Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 13 and 14, New Living Translation

VK: Hello. I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Today, we are continuing our study series we’ve called “But what about” because a lot of time you hear questions like “but what about angels and demons” or “what about heaven and hell?” Anyone who has been a Christian for very long knows that the plan of salvation is so simple that children can understand it. But they also know that the Christian faith also contains deep truths. Some of these truths are so deep that we can only understand them with the aid of the Holy Spirit. So, today we want to talk about this in our last episode of “But what about the Holy Spirit.” I’m in the studio today with RD Fierro, author and Founder of Crystal Sea Books. RD, in our last couple of episodes of Anchored by Truth we began our look at the 3rd Person of the Divine Trinity, the Holy Spirit. RD, can you give us a brief overview of some of the things we’ve discussed so far and what you want to talk about as we conclude our look at this Divine Companion to the Father and Son?

RD: I’d be glad to, but before we get started I want to say a word of greeting and thanks to all the Anchored by Truth listeners. Thank you for joining us here today. In our first two episodes on the Holy Spirit we covered some very important points. For instance, we noted in saying that the Holy Spirit is the 3rd Person of the Trinity we are not in any way saying that the Holy Spirit is inferior to either the Father or the Son. Saying the Holy Spirit is the 3rd Person is just a form of description or nomenclature. It’s not a hierarchical designation. Next, the Holy Spirit is a Person, not an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit makes personal choices and takes personal actions. He intercedes for us, teaches us, transforms us, and helps us personally and individually. The Holy Spirit does not correspond to the ideas present in many contemporary science fiction movies. Third, the Holy Spirit inhabits every believer the moment they accept Christ as their Savior. There are no 2nd class citizens when it comes to believers and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not play favorites. The Holy Spirit is as fully present in believers the world sees as humble as He is in the most famous Christians who have ever lived. These are points we noted in our first episode of “but what about the Holy Spirit.”

VK: And in our second episode we took a look at two of the most prominent appearances of the Holy Spirit in scripture: the Holy Spirit’s appearance as a dove at the time Jesus began His public ministry – and the Holy Spirit’s appearance as tongues of fire at Pentecost. The Holy Spirit settled on Jesus in the form of a dove at the time of His baptism. Doves are peace symbols. Noah used a dove to verify that the flood had ended and that the earth was being restored. So, appearing as a dove and settling on Jesus the Holy Spirit showed us that Jesus would make it possible for men to have peace with God. But the Holy Spirit’s appearance as “tongues of fire” at Pentecost showed that this peace and restoration is not universal. Peace with God is available only through Jesus. Jesus told Nicodemus that eternal life is available for anyone who believes in the Son. But Jesus also said judgment has come to those who don’t believe in the one and only Son of God because those people “loved the darkness more than the light.”

RD: Right. Fire is a symbol of both illumination and judgment. The Holy Spirit provides illumination to anyone who accepts Christ. But the Holy Spirit pronounces judgement on those who love darkness rather than light.

VK: So, today we want to build on that foundation we laid in our first two episodes on the Holy Spirit. Where do you want to go today?

RD: Today I really want to focus on one idea. This idea is both simple and profound at the same time. But once people understand it, their understanding of the role scripture plays in God’s revelation will soar.

VK: An idea that is both simple and profound at the same time. This is either intriguing or scary – or maybe a bit of both.

RD: It’s a bit of both – just as the appearance of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire that touched each believer was both comforting and terrifying. The Holy Spirit touched each believer in the room. Acts, chapter 2, verses 3 and 4 say, “Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages, as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.” [emphasis added] Notice, there wasn’t just sort of a giant glowing ball of light or fire that enveloped everyone. The Holy Spirit went to each believer individually.

VK: The Holy Spirit went to each believer individually but He did go to them all. The scripture says “everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit.”

RD: Yes. So, this is a foundational principle of the Christian faith. The Holy Spirit is present in everyone who authentically accepts Christ as their Savior. And the Holy Spirit empowers each person with unique abilities. 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 4 and 5 say, “There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord.” So, every believer receives one or more gifts from the Holy Spirit. But what we do with those gifts is up to us.

VK: That’s why the Apostle Paul told the Philippian believers in Philippians, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13 to “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases Him.” That’s the New Living Translation.

RD: Right. The Holy Spirit empowers every believer but it is up to every believer to decide whether they want to let those gifts languish or use them for the maximum benefit of God’s kingdom. So, that is a great lead in to the main idea that I want to discuss today.

VK: Which is?

RD: The fact that the only reason we know about the Holy Spirit is because of the Bible. But the fact that we do know about the Holy Spirit helps demonstrate that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God.

VK: That sounds like a circular argument. The Bible tells us about the Holy Spirit. But then the fact that we know about the Holy Spirit tells us that the Bible is the word of God.

RD: And phrased that way it would be a circular argument. That’s why we’re going to take some time today to unpack this thought process and show that far from being circular it’s actually quite amazing. First, let’s start with remembering that on Anchored by Truth we offer 4 lines of evidence that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God: reliable history, remarkable unity, fulfilled prophecy, and redeemed destinies.

VK: By reliable history we mean that the historical records the Bible contains have been validated time and time again. For instance, the book of Jonah mentioned the Assyrian city of Nineveh but secular history lost sight of Nineveh for over 2 millennia. Then in the middle of the 19th century it was rediscovered by a British archeologist, Sir Austen Henry Layard. This kind of instance has been repeated time and time again. By remarkable unity, we mean that the Bible displays a remarkable unity for a book that was composed by over 3 dozen human authors who wrote over a span of 1,500 years. We did an entire series called “Genesis to Revelation: 15 Critical Scriptures” to illustrate this. Links to the series are available on our website: crystalseabooks.com.

RD: And fulfilled prophecy gives indisputable evidence of the Bible’s supernatural origin. For example, writing in the latter half of the 8th century the prophet Isaiah gave the exact name of the king who would release the Hebrews from the Babylonian exile 200 years later. We don’t know who will win the next election yet God told the Hebrews the name of their deliverer more than 2 centuries ahead of time.

VK: And the 4th line of evidence is redeemed destinies. That is the Bible has resulted in an untold number of lives that have been positively changed by its transcendent message. All of this demonstrates that the Christian faith is a faith that is grounded in evidence, logic, and reason. Contrary to the refrain that you hear from some people that – “you have faith, but I have reason” – we believe that a proper use of logic, reason, and evidence actually demonstrates that the Christian faith is true. But how does this all fit in with the idea that the Bible’s description of the Holy Spirit helps us know that the Bible is the word of God?

RD: Our 4 lines of evidence help us see that the Bible is a remarkable book. But in certain respects the Bible is like other books. It was written down by human beings using the writing instruments available at the time and on the writing surfaces that were in common use. But from first to last the Bible is distinguished from all books because the human authors were all inspired by God. The Bible is God’s special revelation to mankind.

VK: The Bible makes this claim for itself. 2 Peter, chapter 1, verses 20 and 21 say, “Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.”

RD: Right. So, let’s remember that theologians differentiate between “general revelation” and “special revelation.” General revelation is exactly that. It is general in content and it is available to a general audience. We know from empirical observations of the universe that the universe cannot explain its own existence no matter how many claims are made by various scientists. The 2nd law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe is not eternally old and cannot exist eternally into the future. The universe will run out of energy and even secular scientists recognize this. If the universe were infinitely old it would have already run out of energy. So, we know that the universe has all the attributes of a being an effect not a cause.

VK: And we know from the size of the universe that whatever or whoever caused it must be a being of enormous power and intelligence. There are galaxy sized structures in the universe all the way down to particles so small that they cannot be seen with an electron microscope. But this vast construction of energy-matter-space-time is so ordered that it can be studied and intelligent analyses made of how it will behave. This was actually the impetus for modern science and many of the founders of modern scientific disciplines such as Sir Isaac Newton who invented calculus and Carl Linnaeus the father of modern taxonomy.

RD: Yes. So, we can determine that there was a God-sized Being that caused the universe. And we can know, as you said, that is a Being of immense power, knowledge, and presence. Everyone can know that. It is general knowledge. But we cannot know that that Being is a Trinitarian God comprised of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit just by studying nature. Said slightly differently, we can know that there is a God by looking at nature but we cannot know the nature of that God. In order to know much about the nature of God we needed for God to reveal Himself to us.

VK: And that is exactly what God has done in the Bible. The Bible is God’s special revelation. It is special in the content that it reveals and it is special in the sense that only people who have been empowered by the Holy Spirit can understand the revelations that it contains. We heard that in our opening scripture from 1 Corinthians, chapter 2. That scripture says, “people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.” Again, today our scripture verses are coming from the New Living Translation.

RD: Right. So, the Bible is God’s special revelation – special in content and special in audience. And for the Bible to be an authentically special revelation we would expect for it to contain some information that is not available simply by studying the world around us. Think about this for a second. If human beings could obtain a comprehensive knowledge of God by simply studying nature there would be no real need for a special revelation. General revelation would be sufficient.

VK: I see what you’re saying. Logic tells us that every effect must have a full and sufficient cause. And while science can explain the operation of much of what we see in the universe there is a difference between explaining the operation of a thing and the origin of a thing. The physical universe shows us that the amount of usable energy is constantly being depleted. So, no matter how slow the rate of depletion and how much there is now this process must have begun at some point in the past. The visible universe had a beginning. But what was that beginning? What caused the origin of the universe? We know by studying the universe that it had a cause but that’s all we could know. It’s like seeing a painting. We know that for there to be a painting there must be a painter. But we can only learn so much about the painter if all we have is the painting itself.

RD: Right. Fortunately, in this case the painter chose to give us information about himself. God gave us the Bible to give us information about Himself – and about how he created and what His plans are for His creation. We learn from the Bible about the triune nature of God, the dual nature of Christ, the plan of salvation, the fact there is another race of intelligent, personal beings besides humans, and that God is shepherding the history of the physical creation to an appointed end. All of these things, and more, are part of the special revelation that God has made to His people. We could not learn these things apart from special revelation.

VK: But we can validate that that special revelation is true because God gave us evidence to validate its authenticity. God ensured that where the Bible spoke of history it would be an accurate record. And God gave us a substantial body of prophecy so we could see that the human writers had a supernatural source of inspiration. Some commentators count hundreds of prophecies that were fulfilled in the life of Jesus. Humanly speaking, it would be impossible for a group of conspirators to have ensured that all these prophecies would have been fulfilled in the life of one person even if they had wanted to.

RD: Yes. We can know that Jesus lived because there are secular historians who have recorded some information about Him. But we only learn that Christ’s death on the cross was to atone for sin and reconcile man to God from the Bible. It’s also only from the Bible that we learn that God the Father sent the Holy Spirit to be our Advocate and Comforter after Jesus ascended into heaven. Yet, in that way that only God could have configured it is also the Holy Spirit that illuminates our minds to the truth that is contained in the Bible.

VK: Yet again, this is information that is a part of special revelation. Special revelation tells not only about the existence of the Holy Spirit but also about His role, mission, and function.

RD: Yes. So, now you can start to see that our awareness of the existence of the Holy Spirit is not the starting point from which we acquire our further confidence that the Bible is the inspired word of God.

VK: Our starting point is the four lines of evidence that tell us that the Bible is a book that is unique among all the books of the world. There are many other books that claim, or have claimed to be God’s word, but only the Bible provides evidence that demonstrates that it is. Our starting point for knowing that Bible is God’s special revelation is examining it to see if it is consistent with what we know about the physical creation and human history. When we do that, we find out the Bible is consistent with the knowledge we obtain elsewhere.

RD: Yes. Despite claims to the contrary the scientific evidence points to a universe that is thousands of years old not billions. And the scientific evidence shows that the extreme complexity of life, including the genetic code, tells us that life could not have arisen by chance. Science validates the records contained in Genesis.

VK: And anyone who would like to study this subject more can go to our website and check out our “Truth in Genesis” series or visit the website for Creation Ministries International which is creation.com.

RD: Right. So, we start with the fact that the Bible is a reliable record of the science it contains and a reliable record of the history it contains. As a generally reliable record we can then examine it to see if the prophecies it contains have proven true. And we find out that it does. The prophet Daniel, for example, recorded a list of four empires that would rule Palestine and the Middle East. When Daniel recorded his prophecy the Babylonians were in charge. Daniel predicted the Persians would displace the Babylonians and the Greeks would displace the Persians and that happened exactly as Daniel prophesied. And while Daniel didn’t name Rome he did describe the Roman Empire so precisely that when Rome conquered the Greeks it was easy to see he had been given his information by a supernatural God who knows all of history before it happens.

VK: So, we start with the fact that the Bible is a generally reliable record but we move on to the fact that the Bible demonstrates that it has a supernatural origin. We can then look to see what revelations the Bible contains that we cannot know simply by looking at the created order or history. This includes revelations about the nature of God and the existence of the Holy Spirit. And what you’re saying is that if the Bible did not contain such supplemental revelations we might wonder why not. As you said, if general revelation were sufficient there would be no need for a special revelation. But if God did choose to make a special revelation we would expect to see special information in that revelation – information that we could not derive from any other source.

RD: Which is exactly what we do see. And part of that information is that there are certain truths that we can only know because the Holy Spirit has communicated them to us. So, the observation that our awareness of the Holy Spirit helps confirm the inspiration of scripture is not circular because we don’t start our line of reasoning with that awareness. We start our line of reasoning with our observations of the created order and then see what place the Bible occupies within that order. But what we come to is the wonderful truth in addition to the four lines of evidence that anyone may check, Christians – believers – have an additional form of evidence. This additional form is sometimes referred to as the internal testimony of the Spirit.

VK: That’s pretty neat. It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit wants His children to have a way to resolve all doubts as to whether or not they are truly saved. Just about every Christian will admit that at some point during the Christian journey they are going to have doubts – about God, about their own salvation, possibly even about the Bible. But the Holy Spirit has already given us a way to resolve those doubts.

RD: Yes. Christians can, and should, study the first 4 lines of evidence because 1 Peter 3:15 tells us that we must be prepared to give a reason for the hope that lies within us. That’s our testimony to the world which includes believers and unbelievers. But the Holy Spirit isn’t asking us to simply ground our trust in Him on what is available to everyone else, believing or unbelieving. The Holy Spirit brings an additional level of awareness by imparting truths to us that only He can impart. Our opening scripture says, “people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit.” That’s the negative statement of that fact. The positive statement is that people who are spiritual – those who believe in Jesus and the Holy Spirit – CAN receive these truths. The Holy Spirit is equally present in all believers but the point is He is present. He hasn’t left us to fend for ourselves in this world. He really is our ever-present Advocate, Counselor, and Comforter. We always say on Anchored by Truth that any book that claims to be the word of God must, at a minimum, be consistent with what we know by observing the world, universe, and human history and must also display evidence of supernatural origin. One of the ways the Bible displays evidence of supernatural origin is by giving us information about the supernatural realm which we would otherwise not possess. The existence and activity of the Holy Spirit is a part of the knowledge the Bible communicates which tells us that it really does come to us from an omniscient God who has given us a coherent body of faith.

VK: Well, next time we’ll turn our attention to some additional areas that are often the subject of “what about” questions. We’re going to take a look at what the Bible has to say about heaven and hell. This sounds like a good time for a prayer. Since one of the things we’re commanded to pray for in scripture is for our neighbors and communities today let’s listen to a prayer for friends.

---- PRAYER FOR FRIENDS (JUNE).

We hope you’ll be with us next time and we hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show.

If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!”

(Bible Quote from the New Living Translation)

1 Corinthians, chapter 2, verses 13 and 14, New Living Translation