“No other ancient book is questioned or maligned like the Bible,” writes Richard M. Fales, Ph.D., in the book 100 Reasons to Believe the Bible is Supernatural in Origin. “Critics looking for the flyspeck in the masterpiece allege that there was a long span between the time the events in the New Testament occurred and when they were recorded. They claim another gap exists archaeologically between the earliest copies made and the autographs of the New Testament. In reality, the alleged spaces and so-called gaps exist only in the minds of the critics.”

Jordan frequently reminds those listening to him (live, TV, radio or internet) that so-called “church history” is an extremely unreliable way to evaluate things. The Word of God was not put together in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries by church councils.

What forever shocks people is Jordan’s firm insistence that the Bible was completely assimilated and collated together, copied and distributed, before 70 AD!

“Everybody says John, for example, wrote in 90-95 AD but that’s baloney,” Jordan explains. “The only reason they say that is church tradition and the tradition . . . it’s like the Septuagint (manuscripts). Everybody believes there was a Septuagint 200 years before Christ that was compiled in Alexandria by the 70 Jews.

“Well, it would have had to have been 72 to get six out of 12 tribes but there are only 70 so you call it the Septuagint. Two of them must have died. All that is tradition with no validation. There’s NO historical evidence any of that took place.

“There’s a letter a guy wrote that everybody says is a forgery. There’s nobody that I’ve ever read about that says the letter that gives the history of Ptolemy doing the Septuagint is authentic but they just believe the story. That’s weird but that’s the way church history does.”

*****

A key verse indicating the early date is II Peter 3. Peter testifies, “Even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
[16] As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
[17] Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before . . . “

Jordan says, “When I see this verse I say, ‘Okay, now there goes all the tradition about the late date of John or Revelation. If Peter could refer to Paul’s epistles that those Hebrew saints had and were reading—they didn’t have the originals! And he says, ‘As in all his epistles.’ They got copies of them. Well, somebody’s putting them together.

“There’s a supernatural gift given to the churches back there. One of the functions of a prophet in the New Testament was to identify God’s Word. One of the functions of a prophet is to determine, ‘This book is Scripture; that book isn’t.’

“Paul wrote at least three letters to the Corinthians. I Corinthians 5:9 says that before I Corinthians he’d already written them an epistle. Familiar with that verse? He says, ‘I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators.’ So I Corinthians is really II Corinthians, right? Well, no.

“Well, how come they knew that one wasn’t Scripture and this one was? They got somebody who was supernaturally empowered by God, a prophet, to identify this book as Scripture and that one not.

“So we send an epistle to a church and they’ve got someone in their group who has the gift of a prophet. In II Thessalonians 2, the second book Paul wrote (period), somebody’s forging letters in his name and sending them out.

He writes, ‘Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,
[2] That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.’

“Somebody’s trying to corrupt God’s Word by writing letters saying it came from Paul, sending it out teaching a false doctrine. But they had somebody in that assembly who could identify that.

“Now, if we begin to collect together the Scripture and I had a copy of it and I’m studying it, what would you want to do? Well, if you had a copy and you were studying it, you know what I’d want? I’d want my copy too! I like to study the Bible. I’d like to have it.

“So, it began to be copied, distributed and finally when it’s all written . . . In I Timothy 5, Paul quotes the book of Deuteronomy. Then he quotes Luke 10. And he calls them both Scripture. A church council in the 4^th century didn’t decide the book of Luke was canonical. Paul knew it was already! So you don’t have to wait until then. Now, they did that because they tried to claim authority, but Rome’s always done that and they’re late to the show.

*****

If you look at John 5, I can demonstrate to you in Scripture that John did not write late. The way church history does it is they say he wrote the Book of Revelation around 90 AD and then later he wrote the book of John. But when you read the book of John, you see how in John 5 he says what he says?

John writes, “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.’

“If he wrote that after 70 AD he would have to have said there WAS a Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem had been destroyed by 70 AD! When I read that verse I say, ‘Okay, now there goes all the tradition about the late date of John or Revelation.”