Speaker Identification
Speaker 1 - Steve Dupuie, host / interviewer
Speaker 2 - Dr. Bob Thiel, host / teacher
Speaker 3 - Program Announcer

Speaker 3 - Program Announcer
This is the Bible News Prophecy program, bringing you news and analysis of world events in the light of Bible prophecy. The following program is brought to you by the Continuing Church of God.

Speaker 1 - Steve Dupuie
Good evening, friends. This is Steve Dupuie for the Bible News Prophecy program with Dr. Bob Thiel, bringing you news and analysis of world events in the light of Bible prophecy.

Dr. Thiel, who gave the world the Bible?

Speaker 2 - Dr. Bob Thiel
God did.

Speaker 1 - Steve Dupuie
What do the Roman Catholics claim?

Speaker 2 - Dr. Bob Thiel
I bought a book by a man named Jimmy Akin titled The Bible Is a Catholic Book. He claims that the Bible cannot exist apart from the Church; that its origins, its formulation, and its careful preservation over the centuries are inseparable from Catholicism. He says Catholics sometimes get intimidated by the Bible, especially from spiritual challenges from Protestants, and then says, "We are the original Bible Christians."

I went to Catholic Bible 101 and asked where the Bible came from. Their answer was that the Church gave the world the Bible, and that the Bible does not exist apart from the Church. They say the New Testament was not finalized in its present form until Pope Damasus I and the Council of Rome in 382 proposed the current canon of Scripture of 73 books.

Then I went to the Roman Catholic EWTN website. There was a question from a man named Bill asking: if the Roman Catholic Church gave the world the Bible, and if it is infallible, then why did Rome reject or question the inspiration of James and Hebrews and later accept them? He asked whether the Catholic Church is really illuminated by the Holy Spirit so men can trust her as God's organization, and why she was wrong about something so simple.

The answer came from a priest named John Eckert. He said that the recognition of the canon of Scripture was not accomplished in an instant, and that the Church was never wrong in such a matter because she never infallibly declared a wrong canon.

The fact is, the Church of Rome admits that it was not sure about a lot of things. The old Catholic Encyclopedia questioned the Epistle to the Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse, or Revelation. They admit they did not know. Why? Because, unlike the Church of God, they did not have the chain of custody.

The New Catholic Encyclopedia specifically claims that they did not infallibly declare the canon until the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Although most Protestants do not accept that particular canon, their scholars tend to agree that the canon of Scripture was not known for a long time.

Yet in Hebrews 13:5, God promises that He will never leave or forsake us. If we did not know what the New Testament was for two or three hundred years, or fifteen hundred years, it would sound as if God had forsaken us. In 2 Timothy 3, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said that he could become complete from the Scriptures. If true Christians did not know what those Scriptures were, that does not make sense.

There are some Protestant scholars who get parts of this right. Dr. Michael Kruger wrote that God's books are still God's books whether anybody is using them or recognizing them. It is correct to conclude that a council of men did not change the books inspired by God. Those that God inspired were always inspired, despite the fact that various Roman Catholics and Protestants were confused about them.

The instant one of the books of the Bible was written, someone had to have possession of it. Did any one person or group of people ever have possession of all the books of the Bible? If so, when did they possess them?

The writers had them from the beginning, and the recipients had them when they received them. But as I will go over later, the disciples and apostles collected them. The last one who died and the last one who wrote the books of the Bible, the Apostle John, had them, and he lived in Asia Minor.

Now, of the 27 books of the New Testament, between 14 and 20 of them were written to people in Asia Minor or from people in Asia Minor. According to historical records, Polycarp was a disciple of John and learned from John and the apostles. According to a document known as the Harris Fragment, the Apostle John passed the canons to Polycarp, which we would have believed would have happened anyway because Polycarp knew him.

So we believe this is evidence that the canon of Scripture was known from the beginning in Asia Minor. A Protestant scholar by the name of James Moffatt wrote that the apostolic canon of Scripture was first formed in Asia Minor. We say yes, and it was the Church of God that was predominant in Asia Minor until the early third century and had the chain of custody.

We have a free booklet available at ccog.org titled Who Gave the World the Bible? On the literature page, there is a chart of the chain of custody. On one side, we show the Church of God chain of custody, and on the other side, the Roman Catholic and Protestant positions.

For most of the original points, we all agree. Let me read some of those original points. God inspired various ones to write the books of the Bible. Paul wrote Timothy to bring Mark and the parchments, that part of the Bible. Peter had Paul's writings for 2 Peter. We all believe that John got Paul's writings from Peter. Peter and Paul were killed. After John was on the Isle of Patmos, he moved back to Ephesus.

One thing we teach that Greco-Roman Catholics and Protestants do not teach is that John fulfilled Isaiah 8:16, which says, "Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples." John was the last of the disciples, the last of the original apostles, and the last one to write a book of the Bible. So he had them all, and we believe he passed what he knew to Polycarp. Others accept that he passed some of it to Polycarp.

Now let us go to additional evidence showing that we had the chain of custody. One of our people in Asia Minor, a man named Matthew of Serapion or a similar name, accepted the Book of Revelation while writing around 120 A.D. Polycarp wrote a letter to the Philippians around 135 A.D. I had this published in a theological journal, where I showed that he quotes or alludes to all 27 books in the New Testament. The Greco-Roman Catholics and Protestants say he alludes to most of them. I say it was all of them.

Polycarp also wrote that the Philippians were well versed in the sacred Scriptures. How could they be well versed if they did not know what the Scriptures were?

Another Church of God leader in Asia Minor, Melito of Sardis, wanted to verify that we had the true Old Testament canon. So he went down and checked it out. That writing is accepted by the Greco-Roman Catholics. But they take books that are not in Church of God Bibles and Protestant Bibles; those are called the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. Melito did not include those, and yet they all call him a saint. He was one of our people.

Also in Asia Minor, we have Polycrates of Ephesus. He told Bishop Victor of Rome that he had gone through every sacred Scripture. How could he go through every sacred Scripture if he did not know what they were?

Close to Asia Minor, there was also a man named Serapion of Antioch, who was one of our people. He said the Scriptures were handed down to him, and that is what we say. They were handed from John to Polycarp, and from Polycarp and others they were passed on. That is how they were handed down to people like Serapion.

Serapion also visited one church where they were using something called the Gospel of Peter, which the Church of God was not using, but some of the Greco-Roman Catholics were. That was around 209 A.D.

Furthermore, there was a church school in Alexandria. According to Origen, in the third century they thought that Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, James, and Jude were contested writings. Around the year 250, the orthodox writer Cyprian of Carthage wrote the first Latin Bible, and he did not include Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, or Jude.

While there was a school in Alexandria, a school in Antioch rose up with one of our people, Lucian. He used the Hebrew Masoretic Text, and he used the Textus Receptus, what we call the traditional text for the New Testament. Again, those are the books and texts we would use.

According to Eusebius, the Greco-Romans in the fourth century still were not sure about Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation. In something called Canon 85 of the Apostolic Constitutions, they included two epistles of Clement as sacred books. Those are not in the New Testament.

In the late fourth century, Jerome wrote that the Nazarene Christians used the Old and New Testament. The pope wanted Jerome to put together the Bible, so Jerome consulted with the Nazarene Christians, our people, to know what the books of the Bible were. Jerome did not want those extra books in the Old Testament, but the pope told him he had to put them in anyway. I have writings from Jerome where he objected, and you can read them in our free ebook at ccog.org.

While our people continued with the original canon, Augustine of Hippo said that Hebrews was still disputed. In 405 A.D., Pope Innocent I left Hebrews out. In 405, Jerome finally completed his Bible. When he succumbed to pressure, he included the Apocrypha. But our people kept working with the Bible, translating the New Testament into different languages, and we had them.

There were edicts against our people in the 12th and 15th centuries, and supporters of Rome took the books from us.

What about the Protestants? In the 16th century, one of their reformers, a man by the name of Zwingli, did not accept the Book of Revelation as Scripture. In 1546, Martin Luther still doubted the inclusion of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation in the Bible. For example, Martin Luther said that you are saved by faith alone, and James says no, you are not. He did not want to use that one.

What about the Roman Catholics? In 1546, they declared the fixed canon as a dogma of their church that could not be changed. That was approximately 1,450 years after the last book of the New Testament was written.

In 1611, the King James Version of the Bible was published with the Apocrypha included as an appendix. In 1672, the Eastern Orthodox finalized their canon at the Synod of Jerusalem. In the 19th century, the Protestants finally dropped the Apocrypha from the appendix of the edited King James Bible.

While all of this was going on, Church of God leaders continued to have the chain of custody, and they cited the same canon as Scripture from the beginning. They received it from John through Polycarp. We have used the Masoretic Text for the Old Testament, while the Greco-Romans used the Septuagint and the Protestants used the Masoretic. We use the Textus Receptus for the New Testament as the best source. Protestants sometimes use it, and sometimes they use something else.

The reality is that the view of agnostic scholars, Greco-Roman Catholics, and Protestants is that nobody knew what the books of the Bible were. But we do not agree. We think the Bible itself points to the fact that the true Church would know what the books of the Bible were, and that we have had the chain of custody throughout. History supports our view.

Even though Jesus said that His Church would be a little flock in Luke 12:32, most scholars ignore that. They think the Greco-Roman Catholics represent Christianity as a whole, so they have taken their view of the councils as fact.

Speaker 1 - Steve Dupuie
I want to circle back to my original question, Dr. Thiel. Who gave the world the Bible?

Speaker 2 - Dr. Bob Thiel
God gave the world the Bible. Jerome, whom Roman Catholics tend to point to, basically got it from us, and we got it from the apostles who were inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Hopefully, the facts of history will help people realize which Church had the chain of custody. They did not know what the books were, and we did.

Speaker 1 - Steve Dupuie
Thank you, Dr. Thiel. For more interviews with Dr. Thiel, in addition to written and audio articles, visit our website at BibleNewsProphecy.net. This is Steve Dupuie for the Bible News Prophecy program.

Speaker 3 - Program Announcer
This Bible News Prophecy program was sponsored by the Continuing Church of God. For more information, including access to our free literature, visit BibleNewsProphecy.net or www.ccog.net. You can also reach us by email. Our address is BibleNewsProphecy@gmail.com.