Written Aforetime

We Would Know Nothing If It Were Not For The Bible

Pr Edi Giudetti

4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

We would know nothing if it were not for the Bible.

Without the Bible we would know nothing about 

• how life began
• about our purpose in this world
• about God
• about where we stand before a holy God
• about judgement and hell
• about eternal life and heaven
• about salvation
• about science, yes about Science. Isaac Newton, one of the giants upon which the world of science now stands was also a Theologian, having written more than two and a half million words on the Bible. ^[1]
• about history
• about reality
• abut truth, right and wrong.
• About life and death
• About the world we live in
• About what the world is going through in this very day
• About how this all ends
• About good and evil
• About the future
• About relationships, husbands, wives, marriage and its purpose.
• About honor and dishonor
• About courage and cowardice
• About diligence and sloth
• About business and integrity
• About wisdom and foolishness
• About virtue.          In all his attempts to explain Virtue, Socrates through Plato dedicated pages upon pages of almost worthless presuppositions and was no closer to knowing about the nature of Virtue than the least educated of us all.
• About discernment and discretion
• About love
• About anger
• About fear and hatred
• About pride and humility
• About disease and illness, yes even about plagues and pestilences
• About bacteria.                   Ignaz Semmelweis, was a Hungarian Physician and known as “The Savior of Women”, he was famous for using three words, “Wash Your Hands”. In this he reduced the mortality of women in childbearing by 99% because he insisted on doctors and nurses washing their hands under running water with Chlorinated Lime solutions, between dealing with patients.     
  • Had he read Leviticus 13 & 14? He wrote of his findings in a book in 1847, and included the use of , but was rejected by the medical profession,
  • Eventually, after a nervous breakdown for his struggle to convince the medical elites of their error, he was committed to a mental asylum and died there at 47 years of age.^[2] His name is remembered in history in two ways;
    • 1 That he was right about bacteria and infection
    • 2 In the metaphor that has come down to us known as The Semmelweis Reflex or Semmelweis Effect, it is that which explains “the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms”^[3]

So the Bible speaks of the hidden things like bacteria, even Atoms in Hebrews 11:3 where the “things which are seen were not made of things which do appear”

• So it speaks and teaches About healing and care
• About natural disasters
• About the seasons, night and day and their purpose
• About planting of crops and their fruitfulness
• About faithfulness and unbelief
• About deception and lies
• About the nature of man
• The nature of God
• Who Christ is and why he came
• About logic and thought
• About reason and beauty
• About treason and loyalty
• About crime and punishment
• About oceanography and geology.                   Matthew Fontaine Maury is known as the Father of Oceanography due to taking the Bible literally “the paths of the seas” of Psalm 8:8, and identified again in Ps 77:19 and Isaiah 43:16.
  • The Monument of him shows him seated with his Bible at his feet. 
    • Sadly that monument was removed in July 2020 because the people no longer desire a reminder of God’s work through men. It took ten minutes for crane crew to hook up and take the statue away to loud cheers.
      • It reminded me of the statement of Queen Amidala in the Star Wars series, “So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause”

• About ethics and morality. (More to say about this)
• About a just war
• About freedom and slavery
• About private property
• About just punishments and penalties.
• About reward
• About sowing and reaping
• About consequence
• About sorrow and loss
• About happiness
• About hope

Without that which was written aforetime, we would know NOTHING.

Without the Bible we would have no solid foundation for our learning, and darkness would remain on the face of the deep.

Perhaps you think that I am making this up. Perhaps you think I exaggerate? Perhaps you think that those things Written aforetime in the Bible, cannot possibly be the ultimate source of all those things, 

“what you are speaking of are the very essence and fabric of life, surely you exaggerate!!!?”

I do not exaggerate, not for one second.

The Bible is all that, and so much more.

• It is the source of our peace
• It is the source of our comfort
• It brings life and sustenance
• It is our daily bread
• It is a light unto our path and a lamp unto our feet
• It is the way in which a man may cleanse his ways (9)
• It is what keeps us from sin (11)
• It teaches (12)
• It is our delight (16)
• It is our counsellor (24)
• It is our alarm, our warning call.
• It is the illuminator of our conscience (Rom 7:7)
• It is our song (54)
• It is the revealer of that which is hidden
• It exalts the humble and brings peace to the contrite
• It heals the broken hearted and restores the separated soul
• It is the restorer of ALL relationships 
• It is the foundation of Law and justice
• It strengthens the weary 
• It condemns the guilty
• Its testimonies bring understanding
• It is more to be desired that Gold, and is sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.

How can we know that this is all so?

How can we know that whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Two reasons;

1. Because it was written by him that cannot lie.
2. Because its present loss leaves the world in darkness.

My hope through this message is that you would gain a greater appreciation for the Bible and why it is the single most IMPORTANT RESOURCE you need for your learning. Those two reasons are enough ample evidence, and I aim to demonstrate that to you this morning.

Because it was written by him that cannot lie.

4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

God Has Spoken It

“God is not a man that he should lie” said Balaam to Balak in Numbers 23:17.

 It seems even the godless know the nature of God.

 They know that there is no purpose or reason that the omnipotent, and omniscient creator of heaven and earth, to lie, nor is it in his nature to do so.

“ I the LORD have spoken it: it shall come to pass, and I will do it; I will not go back” (Ezek 24:14)

All that God has given in the Bible is there for our learning, it is written for our benefit, it was “written aforetime”, it was written for YOU, because God is good and ALL PEOPLE know this to be true.

Signature of God within us

All people know that God cannot lie, because all people know that God is good, it is as if God has placed his signature in our very being, it is as if God has given to us something of himself that we may know him even if we deny him.

It is as if we are made in the image of God!!!

Even in our denial of God we know him, we know that he is good, there is no person alive today that believes God is evil, even the atheists know that God is good.

In fact it is affirmed the single most employed statement that they use to reject his existence, and we all know that that is….

“If God exists why is there so much evil in the world?”

The very statement presumes that God is GOOD. 

That if there needs to be a God who created all things, he must be Good, but because we see so much evil in the world, and God would never allow evil, their conclusion therefore is that God must not exist.

The very existence of God for them, naturally presumes benevolence, it presumes he must be GOOD, it PRESUMES HE CANNOT LIE! 

Do you not think that fascinating?

Never to you hear of an atheist look at the evil in the world and presumes therefore that God must be evil, no. You would think that would then be their logical conclusion, but that NEVER COMES UP, on the contrary, they see evil and conclude NO GOD TO EXIST.

Telling you with absolute confidence that for God to exist he MUST BE GOOD. And a good God cannot lie.

IF HE HAS SPOKEN IT, IT MUST BE TRUE!

These things also are not knew, the writings themselves are ancient.

4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

Peter brings to our understanding how these things came to pass.

Turn to 2 Peter 1:21

For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

God spoke through holy men and they wrote what he had said exactly as he had said it.

Before the ten commandments God instructed Moses saying;

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book” (Exodus 17:14)

God made his promises to Israel to be written

“And the LORD said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel.” (Exodus 34:27)

But God had instructed that his words would be retained by the people commanding in Deuteronomy 6:6-9

And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

The value of those words of God were to live by as a blessed people and never to be forgotten.

AND WHEN THE PEOPLE DID FORGET, HE SENT THEM PROPHETS          

These were they who came to warn them that they have gone out of the way of God and trouble looms.

Isaiah was commanded by God to write to the people of God who did not desire to hear the word of the Lord and this was written against them;

8 Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: 9 That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD: 10 Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits: (Isa 30:8-10).

Yes rather than truth they desired lies to be given them, much like today. People have now long rejected the truth and so today we are literally filled with deception no matter where we turn.

But warnings were written to us from God also;

Men such as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel was told all that was to come concerning the very days we are today living in and in the last chapter of his book he is told by God to close it up and seal it until the time of the end;

 ⁴ But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. (Dan 12:4)

What God had given to men he gave to them in plain language, both to teach, to encourage and also to warn.

Habakkuk 2:2 gives that form of clarity;

And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

Beloved let me confirm to you with certainty that most of the Bible is very easy to understand, especially those things that are a warning to us. It is not what people don’t understand that bothers them, it is what they do understand they don’t like.

Nothing has changed.

The word of God was given by him that cannot lie, God had spoken those words and committed it to men to write, he did so aforetime and it was written for our learning.

God Has Kept It

But to what end could God have given us these writings if he would not keep it?

If God had not kept his words, how can Paul write; 4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

This is a logical impossibility. 

If we are to learn from that which was written aforetime, it stands to reason that we must possess it. We can learn NOTHING FROM THAT WHICH WE DO NOT HAVE.

AND IF WE DO NOT HAVE IT, WHAT WAS THE POINT IN WRITING IT????

Beloved, the logic of this is not difficult to ascertain. It stands to reason that nothing comes from nothing, we cannot learn from that which has no instruction. If the claim I made at the beginning of this sermon is true, then it can only remain true if the Bible is perfectly preserved for us.

But we waist our time trying to prove the Bible is preserved through archeology or through history, or through research and study; it stands also to reason that if God said he would preserve his words, then they simply must be preserved….unless of course…he lied?

Having just established that God cannot Lie, then we only need to show that he made a promise to preserve his words for future generations.

In that last portion we had seen that the writings of Daniel were “shut up and sealed” until when? Until the time of the end!

It is clear that the writings of Daniel have be retained from when they were penned to this day and we have always been able to read them, the phrase “Shut up and sealed” could not refer to the words, but to the understanding of those words. Indeed, the Book of Daniel today has been opened and its understanding made plain.

But are logical conclusions the extent of our preservation presumption, or are there more specific claims?

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. (Isaiah 40:8)

For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. 90 Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. (Psalm 119:89-90)

⁵ Your fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do they live for ever? 6 But my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants the prophets, did they not take hold of your fathers? and they returned and said, Like as the LORD of hosts thought to do unto us, according to our ways, and according to our doings, so hath he dealt with us. (Zech 1:5-6)

Jesus said that the Scriptures cannot be broken in John 10:35

Paul wrote that the great advantage of the Jews was  “Because that unto them were committed the oracles of God” (Rom 3:1-3).

Peter reaffirms that which was written by Isaiah some 700 years earlier writing, and equates it to the assurance of the new birth, turn there with me;

1 Peter 1:21

23 Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. 

24 For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: 25 But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

Does this give you confidence that God has preserved his words?

“Ahh but pastor, the text says “word” not words, what that is really speaking about is the general message, this preservation you are talking about doesn’t extend to the actually words”

If I had a dollar for every time I heard this argument while in the modern Laodicean Churches!

The reality is very simple, if you change the words you change the message.

These changes occur in three ways;

• Omission
• Addition
• Alteration

The vast majority of the changes are Omission and Alteration.

Omission: ESV

Let’s first consider a couple of examples of Omission, and I am going to only pick on the ESV as the example of all modern versions for this sermon, two reasons;

1. Because I don’t have time to go through the others.
2. Because it’s become one of the more popular versions these days.

Matthew 5:22, the words “Without a cause” is removed from the sermon on the mount.

            “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment”

The ESV removes “without a cause”, it removes those key words and in doing so CHANGES THE MEANING!

Now, anyone who is angry with someone is in danger of judgment

It actually does worse, because it condemns Jesus himself who clearly got angry

Matt 9:13, the words “To repentance” is left out;

But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

What did he call the sinners for?

The message is changed because the words are removed, the doctrine of salvation is altered by this text. Sinners are to repent of sin, realize they are sinners, not ignore it, they are to see their sin as that which will damn them.

No they cant do anything about their sin until they turn to Christ, but they certainly MUST have a change of mind respecting it that will respond to his call.

for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

The entire verse is removed from Matthew 18:11; For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost

The very purpose of the coming of Christ is deleted from the ESV and people think it doesn’t matter. “No message or doctrine is affected” Its not the words, it’s the message that matters”.

Beloved, you change the words you change the message, and the MESSAGE WAS WRITTEN FOR OUR LEARNING.

      In Mark 10:24 a key phrase is removed from the ESV, see if you can spot it.

The Bible says in the second part of that verse;

“Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!”

The ESV says;

Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God!

 “Its not the words, it’s the message that matters”.

Beloved, you change the words you change the message, and the MESSAGE WAS WRITTEN FOR OUR LEARNING.

ALTERATIONS: ESV

Galatians 5:19 changes the word “Fornication”, which has one meaning only and that is “Sex outside of marriage”, with sexual immorality, which is what ever you want it to be these days.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

                 ESV:    Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality,

I do not believe I need to go on. 

            Jesus said “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away”

Matt 24:35, Mrk 13:31 & Lk 21:33.

If the WORDS are not preserved, neither is the message.

If the WORDS have passed away, we can learn nothing from its author.

Who’s job was it to preserved Gods word? His. Turn to the last passage for this point.

Psalm 12:6-7:

The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

The words that were written aforetime have been kept, preserved, they are in tact and we have them even in our own language, God has not lost a single word in translation. If he has, then Psalm 12 is in error, so too the words of Christ, so too the words of Peter which were Translated from the Hebrew of Isaiah into Greek!

Because its present loss leaves the world in darkness.

Pastors Have Replaced The Light

The Roman Empire lasted for some five hundred years until the fifth century AD. It is if interest that it was during the reign of Theodosius, a descendent of Constantine who, in the early forth century write the Edict of Toleration, suffering Christians to be without persecution, Theodosius was the one who made Christianity the State Religion, The Roman Empire then very soon fell in both the East and the West.

What replaced it was called the Holy Roman Empire, who ruled from then until the Bible was translated into the language of the people a thousand years later. It was the period known today as “The Dark Ages”.

Light came into the world when the people of the world had the Bible and learned to read it. Everything changed, everything had a Renaissance, a Rebirth;

• Art
• Science
• Literature
• Architecture
• Music
• Theatre

In fact, the creativity of man seemed to know no bounds when the word of God brought salvation to many and purpose to all.

The great men who’s names are still brought to mind today;

• Leonardo Da Vinci
• Raphael
• Michelangelo,
• Donatello
• Botticelli
• Dante
• Erasmus
• Petrarch

But within that rise of the great western civilization, to which we still are the beneficiaries, was the seed of its downfall that began to germinate two centuries later during a period known as the Enlightenment.

The Pastors of the world BEGIN TO REPLACE the Light, and the pastors of Churches begin to PERMIT IT.

It was here that began man to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Many things were incredible during this time.

Isaac Newton was born and with him a giant leap forward in Science. What Newton was to Science, Rene Descartes was to Philosophy, and what are we to add with respect to the incredible development of Classical Music in that day.

• Bach
• Beethoven
• Mozzart

But with the Germans also came German Rationalism and the creation of doubt in the Bible.

You see, it was this peak of man’s self-exaltation that gave man the notion that he could justify questioning God.

NEW PASTORS AROSE TO TEACH THE WORLD THAT WHICH GOD HAD NOT WRITTEN AFORETIME, and the Pastors of Churches begin to permit it.

Soren Kierkegaard led the charge toward our postmodern relativism today claiming that man essentially creates his own meaning. He is known as the father of Existentialism.

A journal entry of 1835 he wrote “The thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.…What is truth but to live for an idea?”^[4]

The influence of Kierkegaard in the west, which many years after his death, together with Johann Eichhorn who started the effort to Criticize the Bible and coined the Phrase “Higher Criticism”, cast a dimness over the enlightenment.

If the Seed of darkness germinated during the enlightenment, the wind blew it around all of Europe and then the world by the late 19^th century.

• Karl Marx
• George Friedrich Hegel
• Friedrich Nietzshe
• Charles Darwin
• Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Antony Hort

Together these “PASTORS”, and others like them, pulled down the shutters, closed the doors and did all they could to seal the gaps lest any light should enter back in. 

And the Pastors of many Churches permitted it.

“light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19)

The Bible now being recreated to fit the Image of man, truth curtailed and reinvented, and man now begins to grope in the darkness looking for a firm foundation to stand.

“… judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.” (Isa 59:14)

The 20^th Century that those men, and others like them, ushered in was the most bloody century of human history, and why?

Jeremiah gave answer as the Lord spoke to him in Jer 14:14;

The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart.

They thought their scheme good, one that would lead to prosperity and harmony, but they turned the hearts of the world to look to themselves and not to the Lord who is the source of these things.

The first revision of the English Bible was printed in 1881 in England called the “Revised Version”, it held Copy write for ten years before appearing in the United States in 1891 as the American Standard Version, which was essentially the same.

Suddenly “whatsoever was written aforetime” was no longer suitable for our learning. 

This single, insignificant snowflake of heresy, once accepted, started an avalanche of Bible versions that has all but taken away whatsoever things were written aforetime.

In 1832, almost fifty years before the snowflake fell, an article in the Banner of the Church newspaper said;

“If alterations of the received version once commence, where will they end?…The reception of the ‘authorized version of the Bible,’ by the whole Christian community wherever the English language is spoken, is a blessing the value of which cannot be estimated, and the loss of which would be one of the heaviest curses which could befall the Church of Christ…If one substitution may be made, another may be; and the Bible, by this impious transmutation, become, after a few successive changes, the book of man, and not the Book of God…”^[5]

 Today, with that which was originally written for our learning, Finally removed from the hearts of the world and from most of the churches, from where will we gain the patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.?

Where will the world find it?

The Pastors of the world have replaced the Light, and the pastors of Churches PERMITTED IT….. UNTIL THEY ACCELERATED IT.

People Have Rejected Light

Nothing occurs in a vacuum. 

We cannot attribute this demise of light in the world ONLY to selected men. If it were not for the acceptance of the people none of these writings would ever have become popular.

Paul wrote of it almost two thousand years ago saying;

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim 4:3-4)

There is a simple verse in the Old Testament book of Jonah, turn there with me. Jonah 2:8

Turn to the middle of you bibles and turn right, after the Psalms, after the major prophets of Isaiah, Ezekiel, go past Daniel. Slow down as you hit Amos because Obadiah is just one page long.

Jonah is the next book

“They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy”

Jonah 2:8

This describes well the days we are living in today.

The world is suffering because Darkness has been permitted to envelope it and people have no hope. The world at large has rejected God and the truth of his words, and having done so the world has been handed over to deception.

 In a post I recently responded to, I wrote “Never has God been so globally rejected and the Bible so denied; now tyrants are our rulers and lies are our daily bread!”

Incredibly however, just as we looked at a brief history of the dark ages and just as we enter the new dark age, there have always been people in whose habitation was LIGHT.

I recall the Bible referring to the plagues of Egypt when darkness, thick darkness covered the land as one of the ten plagues God had poured out on the Egyptians.

Turn there with me, Exodus 10:21-23

21 And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. 22 And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days: 23 They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days: but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings

In just the same way, The Dark Ages of the Holy Roman Empire there were also a people who had the LIGHT OF THE WORD OF GOD, THEY HAD whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, AND THEY HAD THE patience and comfort of the scriptures AND THEY HAD hope.

In Italy they lived in the region of Lombardy, in Northern Italy. Many in the Valleys of Piedmont. They were the Waldensians, the Albigensians, they were called derogatory names such as AnaBaptists, which is where we Baptist derive our name.

The had the words of God and this line of believers ran along side the history of Roman Catholicism but were NEVER joined to them. 

They exist today and have the word of God in their laps.

They have, whatsoever things were written aforetime 

And what is its purpose? They were written for our learning, 

And to what end? that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.

The world needs hope in these days.

You have it if you have the Word of God.

If you are born again, Jesus said you are the light of the world.

Then SHINE!!!

FOR THE SAKE OF THIS WORLD….SHINE!

^[1] https://isaac-newton.org

^[2] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ignaz-Semmelweis

^[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis_reflex

^[4] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Soren-Kierkegaard

^[5] Faust, Joey. The Word: God Will Keep It! The 400 Year History of the King James Bible Only Movement . Fundamental Publishing. Kindle Edition.