2011 Latin American Bible Conference     April 20, 2011        Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  Genesis 12:1-3   God Speaks to Us through the Whole of HistoryProbably some of you understand to some extent the history recorded in the Bible, while some of you do not. Of course, historical knowledge is not necessary for a person to realize the truth in the words of the Bible and be born again. Once you realize through the Bible what kind of person you are and what kind of sinner you are, and then you hear about Jesus and accept in your heart the fact that your sins have already been taken away, that is salvation. It is not because you determine to believe that faith comes to you; it is one hundred percent a gift from God that is planted in your heart. Whether or not you have had this experience, however, if you study the history which appears in the Bible with a little more interest, you will find that the words of the Bible come to you a little more easily. We need to know where we now stand within this long journey of history and when the events in the Bible took place. We have considered Matthew chapter 1 verse 1 where it says, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” Abraham lived about 2,000 years before the time of Jesus Christ. We do not know exactly, but many scholars say that Abraham lived between 1,800 and 2,000 years before Jesus, and history also bares this out. Then, David lived 900 to 1,000 years after Abraham. So he lived about one thousand years before Jesus. Moses lived during the years between Abraham and David; about 400 to 450 years before David. It is a great help for us to know when these important figures in the Bible lived. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were recorded by Moses. Since Moses lived about 1,500 years before Jesus, that means he lived 3,400 to 3,500 years ago. It was at that time that the Bible began to be recorded in this world. The Bible contains 66 books altogether, 27 of which form the New Testament which was recorded after the crucifixion of Jesus. The Old Testament was recorded in various places by the hand of a number of different people over the period of about 1,500 years following the recording of the five books of Moses. Over the course of more than 1,500 years, many prophets and apostles recorded the words of the Old and New Testaments. Yet, as you read through the Bible from beginning to end, it becomes apparent that all of these books, which were written at different times by different people are somehow intertwined by one thread. There is no other book like this in the world. There have been books written by great authors, and others written by a group of authors working together, but no other book in this world stretches across such an extensive period of time, bound together by one common theme. Of all the people who appear in the Bible, it is Adam who lived the longest time ago. He was the first man. Adam had two sons, Cain and Abel. Then Abel died and a son was born to Adam whom he named Seth. At this point, Adam’s genealogy is introduced and it continues to Noah. At the time of Noah, there was a great flood, and after that the world was populated through Noah’s three sons. Then the Bible presents us with the genealogy of Shem, who was one of Noah’s three sons. There are actually genealogies of all three sons, but that of Shem is more detailed than the others. Abraham was born as a descendant of Shem. Abraham had a son named Isaac, and Isaac had a son called Jacob, who in turn had twelve sons. These twelve sons are the forefathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph, the eleventh of these twelve sons, was hated by his brothers who sold him into slavery so he was taken down to Egypt. After that, all of Jacob’s family moved down to Egypt and lived there for around 400 years; 430 years to be precise. Then a leader appeared from within this nation, and that was Moses. As I said earlier, Moses lived about 1,400 to 1,450 years before the birth of Jesus. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and headed for the land of Canaan. They spent forty years wandering in the wilderness before they entered that land, and it was Moses’ successor, Joshua, who led the Israelites into the land of Canaan. For about four hundred years after that, the history of Israel continued to unfold without a king. Moses and Joshua were not kings. The people who ruled Israel at that time were called judges. These were people like Gideon, Jephthah and Samson. The last judge was Samuel. During the time of Samuel, the Israelites asked for a king and Samuel established a man by the name of Saul as king over them. This happened about 3,000 years ago, which was about 1,000 years before Jesus.Then, after King Saul was deposed, David came to the throne. After David came Solomon, and after Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king. At this point, an important incident occurred amongst the Israelites. God divided Israel into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. After this, history unfolded with a series of kings in each of the northern and southern kingdoms. We read about this in the books of First and Second Kings and First and Second Chronicles.The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrian Empire about 720 years before the birth of Jesus. Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. Then, 130 to 150 years later, around 580 BC, the Babylonian Empire dominated that area and destroyed the kingdom of Judah.A great many prophets arose and were active just before Babylon destroyed Judah. These were prophets such as Isaiah, Micah and Nahum. When Babylon destroyed Judah, they took many of the people of Judah away as captives to Babylon, and there were prophets who were active at that time as well. Daniel and Ezekiel are representative of these prophets. After the people of Judah had spent seventy years in Babylon, they returned to their homeland. There were also prophets who arose after the return from Babylon. There were people such as Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. After the Babylonian Empire which destroyed Israel, the Medo-Persian Empire rose to power. Around the time of the fall of the Babylonian Empire and the rise of the Medo-Persian Empire, the Israelites returned to Jerusalem. When the power of the Medes and the Persians declined, a new power arose in the Mediterranean region. This was the Greek Empire under the rule of Alexander the Great. When we read the book of Daniel, we can see that these events had already been prophesied several hundred years in advance.After the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire rose to power. While the Israelites were under Greek and Roman rule they had no kings or prophets, and God no longer provided them directly with His word. About four hundred years passed in this manner, and then Jesus was born while the Israelites were under Roman rule. Then after Jesus was crucified, the New Testament was completed. From that time until now, the age of the Church has unfolded. It is a great asset for us to have biblical history in our minds. In the Bible we are not presented with a series of stories that tell about a god who had compassion on people and helped them whenever he felt like it. Neither is the Bible just the good words of a certain person that have been recorded. The Bible was recorded over a long, 1,500-year period of history by many prophets and apostles who had lived in Israel, this one nation that was chosen by God. This entire history has been given to us as a pledge even for the faith that God has planted in each of our hearts. Such is the tremendous scale and level on which God works, so great that it is far beyond anything we can think of or imagine.   Abraham Was Obedient to the Word of GodNow, let’s go back four thousand years from now, and then another 350 years before that. By that time, many people had been born and were scattered across the earth. They would have heard about the great flood that had occurred during the time of one of their ancestors, and that before the flood people had lived to be between 900 and 1,000 years old (see Genesis chapter 5) and there had been some mighty men (see Genesis 6:4). It seems that these accounts, along with many others, were passed on to others by word of mouth. After the flood, God told Noah to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. He also allowed man to include animals in his diet (see Genesis 9:1-4). These few important matters were established after the great flood. But then, people began to gather together in a place called Babel, which sounds similar to Babylon. God commanded man to fill the earth, but the people said, “Let us build a tower whose top is in the heavens lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth,” and they began to build a tower (see Genesis 11:1-4).If you think about this, it is all very interesting. For the people at that time, “the skies” meant nothing more than the sky they could see over their heads. Today, we have even sent huge telescopes into space from which we can photograph our solar system and the Milky Way, the galaxy in which our earth is located. It is estimated that there are over 100 million stars in the Milky Way. If just the one galaxy in which the earth is located contains this many stars, how many stars will there be in the universe, considering that over 100 million galaxies have been discovered to date? One hundred million times 100 million. This is the incredible number of stars that are visible to the human eye, and it was God who created this amazing universe. It is said that most of the elements scattered throughout the universe are similar to the elements found on this earth on which we walk and live, and yet the only planet that has been discovered that is able to support life is the planet earth. It is to this planet earth that the Son of God once came. There is a hymn that includes the line, “It goes beyond the highest star, and reaches to the lowest hell” (The love of God is greater far by F. M. Lehman). Would people living more than four thousand years ago in a world without airplanes or telescopes have known anything about this vast universe? They just built a tower as they saw fit. They were building themselves up in their ignorance. The image of these people is an image of all of us in our day and age as we build up a store of our own righteousness, not knowing the righteousness of God. When God confused their language, however, and scattered them over the face of all the earth, they ceased building the tower (see Genesis 11:5-9). This is similar to the way we are when we find God in the words of the Bible and, comparing ourselves with Him, we discover that we are lowly sinners. After that, the Bible turns to Abraham, whose family lived in Ur of the Chaldeans. The people of the Chaldeans were the ancestors of the people of the Babylonian Empire which later arose. Abraham’s father, Terah, worshiped idols. The Bible says that he served other gods (see Joshua 24:2). But his family was led by a certain p

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