(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hello everybody, it's me it's tall23 back in our video. Today I'm going to be talking about the Apocrypha, the Apocrypha scam as I call it. Because one thing that I see that really annoys me and which should really annoy any Bible believing saved Christian, anybody who believes the Word of God, one thing that annoys me is the attention that's paid to the Apocryphal and pseudodepigraphical books of the Bible by unsaved people. Now those would be the false writings, the things which are not included in the Bible because of their false authorship, their false claims, and so on. And yes when I say unsaved people I mean unsaved people. I don't think that anybody who thinks that some of these books should be canonical is saved because, well I'll go into that later, John 847 just is the verse I'm going to quote for him, but many of those who focus on the Apocryphal text will not be able to even tell you what salvation means or how to receive it. They don't want to look at the actual Word of God, they don't want to read the Word of God, they just want to go into these other books which teach false doctrine, even a lot of times false doctrine about salvation. So I decided to make a video about this because I've seen on YouTube especially probably at least 50 or more videos that have been recommended to me because I watch a lot of videos about the Bible, things like that. Some by popular channels claiming that certain books of the Bible were banned or that they're lost books of the Bible. It calls them lost books or banned books of the Bible and sometimes I've even seen claims that books like the Book of Enoch were removed from the Bible. For example there's one video and I took a screenshot of some of the searches I made on YouTube. There's this one video, it's called This is Why the Book of Enoch Was Removed from Scriptures and it's by a channel called Think About It. This channel has 200,000 subscribers and this video has 1.8 million views. So 1.8 million people or around 1.8 million people because I guess some people could watch it more than once have been deceived or at least, well I don't really know how many people agree with it or not, but a lot of people have watched this video and have gotten this idea in their mind that the Book of Enoch has some truth to it. It's not just it's not just this guy either. In the search engine and the search on YouTube I looked at Banned Book of the Bible and there's this 1.7 million view video, banned books from the Bible, the stories that were deleted from the Bible, banned books of the Bible 2, then there's this playlist, the lost books of the Bible and the first thing it says, the first one there is a book of Jasher and there's a one with 210,000 views. It says 75 books removed from the original Bible, okay. So you can kind of see their claims here but what I'm going to show you in this video and explain this video is that these books were not banned from the Bible. They were not removed from the Bible and they're not lost books of the Bible, okay. They can't be lost. The Bible says, Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away but my word shall not pass away and in the book of Psalms God promised that he would preserve his word. So if something has been laying in the ground or laying in a pot, okay, or hidden away in some library somewhere for 15 or 1600 years and nobody's read it, nobody's seen it, it's not the Word of God because God promised he would preserve his word. God promised that his words would not pass away, okay. If it's some little fragment of a text that's not incomplete, it's not the Word of God, okay. The Word of God has been preserved. This has been read continuously. The words on this page, although in different languages, the words in this book have been read continuously for 1900 years by Christians, okay. They were never in the Bible to begin with, the Apocrypha, and this includes both the Old Testament and the New Testament Apocrypha. I'm not going to be talking about the Deuterocanonical books today, so the six extra books in the Catholic Bible or the extra books of Ezra or the Prayer of Manasseh in the Orthodox Church because, well, I mean there are at least a lot of Christians who accept those as canonical and I don't believe that they're canonical. I don't believe that they are truthful but I'm going to talk about the ones that are universally rejected by Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox and other Christians. They all universally reject these books as inspired scripture and they have for thousands of years but now there's this new movement within the last few decades where people want to take the Gnostic Gospels and take a bunch of other books by the Essenes and other sects and cults and here and heretical groups from the from the early period of Christianity which the actual Christians rejected. They want to take these books and say that they have truth in them or that they have secret teachings or something like that. And the books include the book of Enoch, which I've already mentioned, the book of Jubilees, the book of Jasher, and there are a few others of the Old Testament which are not really that well known but of the New Testament there's the Gospel of Thomas, that's a big one, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Apocalypse of Peter, there's a whole bunch of different books of Acts, the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Andrew, and so on. There's the Epistle of Barnabas and a whole lot more so there's probably more New Testament apocrypha than there is Old Testament apocrypha. And there are these cults out there such as the Hebrew Israelites, okay, not all the Hebrew Israelites but there are some of them. I've seen some videos made by Hebrew Israelites where they say that the book of Enoch holds some truth to it. There are these cults out there, the continuous claim that these scores of books were removed from the Bible that like for example this one video down here, 75 books removed from the original Bible, okay. It's not just saying one or two or three books it's saying 75 were removed from the original Bible. That would make it over a hundred, a hundred and forty books in the canon, okay, but that's, okay, that's not the case though, okay. These books weren't removed from the Bible, they were never in the Bible. For example, the book of Enoch, which is one of the biggest ones, one of the most well known. The book of Enoch, okay I'm gonna make this clear, has only ever been historically recognized as legitimate by one Christian group only and that is the Orthodox Tewahedo group, which is from Ethiopia, the Orthodox or the Oriental Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. They're the only Christian group which has ever recognized the book of Enoch as having truth to it. There's never been any other sect or denomination or group or place anywhere, okay, never any Christian in Europe or in the Middle East or in Judea or in Egypt or anywhere else, okay. It's only in Ethiopia and part of the reason of that is because it's been preserved in Ge'ez. But other than that, no apostle, no disciple, no early Christian ever believed that there are truth in these books and we know that first of all from the fact that Jesus never quoted from the book of Enoch, Paul never quoted from the book of Enoch, James never quoted from the book of Enoch, John never quoted from the book of Enoch, and despite what some may tell you, Jude never quoted from the book of Enoch either, okay. Watch my video on the book of Jude from a few months ago, I think it was back in August or September that I uploaded it, there's more information about it there, but in short I'm just gonna say the quotation Jude made was not from the book of Enoch, they say that's from 1st Enoch 1.9, it was not from the book of Enoch, at least that section was a later fraud which incorporated Jude's quotation, okay. The manuscript evidence shows or that area where it came from was from long after the book of Jude was written, okay. There's no evidence that that part of the book of Enoch predated Jude at all, okay. So go into that video and watch that and I explained that in more detail. Okay, no so-called Church Father either recognized Enoch or even Jubilees or Jasher as canonical either, okay. I'm not completely sure about the book of Jasher but I'm pretty sure that the book of Jasher was from like the seventh, it's like a 17th century forgery, okay, like there's no evidence that existed before the 17th century or the 16th century and yet people still again claim that it's the same book of Jasher that the book of Joshua was talking about. But going back to the book of Enoch, the earliest manuscripts of the book of Enoch, which are from about 200 BCE, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, okay. They were only considered as true by the Essenes and that was a Jewish sect, a small Jewish ascetic sect which had nothing to do with Christianity, predated Christianity and lived in the area of Qumran where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. And even the Hebrew Bible, okay, the Hebrew Old Testament, the Tanakh, okay, it doesn't have the book, it's never had the book, okay. You can't find it in the Masoretic Texts or the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Jesus never quoted from it, as I said before. They never appear in Christian Bibles from anywhere else but Ethiopia and no Christian canon list has ever listed Enoch as part of the canon. That's just a fact, okay. It wasn't removed, it was never even there. And going further than that, the book of Enoch like all these false books and I'll give another example later in the Gospel of Thomas. They teach false doctrines contrary to the Bible, okay. You can't say it's part of the Bible when it contradicts the Bible. The Bible is the perfect Word of God, it does not contradict anywhere. It teaches one message, it teaches one gospel, preaches one Jesus, one God. The things in here make sense, it's the Word of God, but the book of Enoch contradicts what this says. For example, in 1st Enoch chapter 40 verse 9 it says that the angel found it well is set over repentance for those to receive eternal life. But the Bible tells us that it's Jesus Christ who is set over repentance for eternal life. That there's no other name given among men or under heaven given among men or which you must be saved by Jesus Christ, okay. That is the name that we are to know for salvation. He is the person we are to call upon. We are to believe in Jesus, has nothing to do with this angel found it well, okay. And also one of these central themes of the book of Enoch also is the idea that the sons of God are angels and that they mated with women and produced giants and this is the, according to the book of Enoch, the origin of evil and the fallen angels taught man all this evil stuff and they performed this wicked action with man but it's completely foreign to scripture, okay. The Bible says in 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verse 39 to 40 that all flesh is not the same flesh but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial but the glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another, okay. So it's foreign to scripture to say that angels can produce children with mankind. The Bible teaches that everything produces after its own kind, okay. The glory of the celestial is one and that of the terrestrial is another, meaning that what's of the stars, what's spiritual, what's of heaven, that's different than what's of the earth and what is of flesh, okay. Man is of flesh. Man cannot produce children with angels, okay. In Matthew 22 Jesus taught that the angels are not given in marriage, that they do not produce anything and that when we are in heaven, okay, that after we are raised from the dead, as it teaches in 1st Corinthians 15, our bodies shall be changed, okay. Our old man will already have died in the grave but when they're resurrected we'll be given a new body, a celestial body, which can inherit the kingdom of God and we will not be given to marriage in heaven. Why? Because celestial bodies have no purpose of marriage, okay. Marriage will have no purpose in the future and yet that's what the Book of Enoch teaches. It teaches that angels and women made it with each other and produced giants, okay. And that's even more foolish to say that there existed giants who were 450 feet tall, it says 300 cubits, which is about 450 feet, that there are angels that, or not angels, giants that were 300 cubits tall. But then those who try to defend the Book of Enoch, they might say, well what about Genesis 6? Because according to them, and this is also where some other people get false doctrines from, according to them Genesis 6 teaches this doctrine, okay. But to that I say, what about Genesis 6? Okay, it does say that there are giants in those days but never says that these giants are 300 cubits tall because there's no evidence that 300 cubit tall giants have ever existed. Yet you think somebody would find a boner or skeleton of something like that somewhere around the earth but that they've never been found, okay. Nor does it say in Genesis 6 that giants were the offspring of angels with women. The Bible constantly teaches that the term sons of God, as it says, let me just read the passage real quick. Genesis 6. Okay, it says, There were giants in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came unto the daughters of men. So the sons of God came unto the daughters of men, okay. And they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which are of old, men of renown. Now if you go back up to verse 2 it says that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were fair, and took them wise of all which they choose. Now the book of Enoch interprets this as, and so do people who teach this false doctrine of some people who claim that God wiped out the earth with the flood because of this unholy offspring or something like that. I already show that it's impossible for an angel to produce a child with woman but they teach that the sons of God mentioned here are angels. But the Bible constantly teaches that the term sons of God refers to men who are saved, those who trust in God. Because in Genesis 4 26 it says and to Seth to him also there was born a son and he called him his name Enos. Then began men to call upon the name of Yehovah. So they began to call upon the name of Yehovah in Genesis 4. Why did that happen and what was the purpose of that? Well the new testament teaches in Romans 10 that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's in verse 13. And the Bible also tells us in Galatians 3 26 John 1 12 and Romans 8 14 that those who are saved, okay, those who are born again are sons of God. They're children of God. That's what the Bible teaches. So it's just calling or just telling us that the sons of God, those who were saved, those who had called upon the name of the Lord as they began to do at Genesis 4, and the daughters of men, those who were unsaved, those whose spirits have not been reborn, mingled together, has nothing to do with angels. Okay, that's adding something into the text. It's your own interpretation. Now there's a lot more on the book of Enoch. I don't want to go too far into that because I have some other stuff to talk about. But I'll leave a link to a few articles refuting the book of Enoch in the description of this video. So now regarding the New Testament, okay, going on to that, the canon of the New Testament has been affirmed and fixed since the time of the second century, okay. For example, Justin Martyr, who was a Christian apologist who lived in the early to mid second century, he quoted from Acts 1 Peter and most of the writings, most of the epistles of Paul, as well as the four Gospels, but he never makes reference to the Gnostic Gospel or any other writings, okay. Only the books which are currently in the New Testament. Tatian, who was, I believe, a disciple of Justin Martyr also, he wrote around 150 or 160. He recognized four Gospels only as authentic and even created the Diatessaron, which was a harmony of the four Gospels, okay. So he didn't recognize any other Gospel than the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as did Arrhenius of Leon, who wrote about 180, and he wrote the famous work Against Heresies, which refutes Gnosticism, okay. Irenaeus himself was a student of Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of John the Apostle. So, Arrhenius quoted from 21 books of the New Testament, including most of Paul's writings, the four Gospels, the Book of Acts, 1st and 2nd John, 1st Peter, and Revelation. Around the same time, or possibly a little bit after that, it was the Muratorian fragment, or the Muratorian canon, as it's called. It was written sometime from the late 2nd century to the early 4th century, and it only differs from the New Testament, in that it adds the Apocalypse of Peter, but it even makes reference to the fact that most people rejected it. So it had the Apocalypse of Peter in there, but it even said that most people in the churches don't read this, they don't acknowledge it as canonical, okay. It was just adding it in there just because it might be true, or it might have canonical status, okay. And by the end of the 4th century, the canon we have today with the 27 books of the New Testament, what solidified as the Christians, came to agreement over the authenticity of these certain writings by Paul, or by John, or by Peter, or by James, based on the evidence they had within the text themselves that they were inspired by God, and within history of who wrote them. So, you know, Papias of Hierapolis, who was from, who lived around, who was only one generation after the time of the Apostles, he wrote around 110 and 120. His book, The Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, tells the origin of the Gospels, and he recognizes four Gospels. He tells us where the four Gospels came from, what language they were originally written from, or originally written in, and how we have the modern Bible today. So, again, by the end of the 4th century, it was pretty obvious to all the Christians that these books alone, and no other book, is part of the New Testament. That these books alone are inspired by God. That there's no other one. There are no Gospel of Thomas, or Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of James, or whatever, okay. And let me tell you, it's just not, it's not just on the basis of the fact that these were universally rejected by saved Christians, that I'm teaching against these books, and I'm saying that it's ridiculous to say they're removed from the Bible. It's also on the fact that these works teach false doctrine. If they teach false doctrine, they're not from God, okay. And that's why it's accepted by so many unsaved people, too. As the Bible says in John 847, He that is of God, heareth God's words, ye therefore hear them not, because you're not of God. And then, of course, in Matthew 24, Jesus said that many false prophets shall arise, and that they're going to be so convincing, that if it were possible, they should deceive the very elect, but if it were possible, okay, so the elect are not deceived by the false prophets, by the false teachings, but the unsaved, the un-elect, the people who are not of God, they don't hear God's words, they hear the words of the Book of Enoch, and the Gospel of Thomas, and other false books. They're deceived, they're deceived by these false prophets, these false writers who have crept into the church, because they can't distinguish between the Gnostic heresy and the actual words of God. For example, the Gospel of Thomas. Now, the Gospel of Thomas is one of the biggest ones. It's gained a lot of fascination by heretics lately, and most of these videos with the the ban from the Bible probably talk about the Gospel of Thomas. It's generally agreed that the Gospel of Thomas was written sometime in the mid-second century, so that would make it beyond the time of the Apostles, which would include Thomas, okay, beyond the time of Thomas. Thomas probably died, nobody really knows exactly when he died, but probably died around the year 80 or 90, okay, at least several decades before the Gospel of Thomas was written. So, and this has shown the fact that the Gospel of Thomas was written in the second century, this is shown by the lack of reference to it by anybody before then, okay, by any other early Christian writer, by its reliance on the New Testament writings itself, and its heretical Gnostic nature. So, I've already made videos on Gnosticism before, but I'm going to say Gnosticism is not Christianity. Don't ever read a Gnostic book if your intention is not to refute it, okay, if you think that the Gnostic Gospels have some truth to them, you are wrong. They contradict the Bible, they are full, filled with just nonsensical heresy, okay, and I suggest, first of all, that you read the Bible, before you go and look for new books of the Bible, you read the actual Bible first, okay, so read what the Bible says, read the Torah, read the prophets, read the Gospels, read all the epistles of Paul and the book of Revelation and all the other epistles, read the entire Bible from cover to cover first, before delving into other texts, and then, of course, or even before this possibly, get saved, okay, hear the Gospel, okay, the way that the Bible says, by faith in Jesus Christ, by putting your trust in the Lord Jesus, okay, and then another thing I would suggest that you do is to read this book right here, Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyon, who I mentioned earlier, he wrote this book around 180 AD, and it's very long, as you can see, because he goes into detail about the teachings that were handed down to him by the Apostles, but also the writings of the New Testament, writings of the Old Testament, showing that, and also by using just simple logic to show that Gnostic teaching doesn't make any sense, it's false, it's contrary to the Word of God, okay, and if you do this, you'll truly understand why the Gospel of Thomas is garbage, but, I mean, you don't even need to do that in order to understand why the Gospel of Thomas is garbage, because anybody who doesn't, who actually reads it, and doesn't just say, oh, we got to add that to the Bible, with, okay, well, how about you take a look at it, how about you take a look at the Gospel of Thomas, and see everything that it says, and see how ridiculous it is, because some things just don't make any sense, some things are just completely ridiculous, and I'll give an example, but let me just go over the Gospel of Thomas. In Sang 114, okay, so it's a list of sayings, and there's 114 sayings, the last saying, it begins when it says, Simon Peter said to them, let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life, and then Jesus responds by saying that he's going to make Mary a man, or something like that, okay, this is, of course, in contradiction of what the Bible says, because the Bible says that men and women are one in Jesus Christ, and that we are spiritually equal, okay, doesn't say that women have less value when it comes to spiritual matters, and then in sayings 39 and 70, the Gospel of Thomas teaches that salvation is by knowledge, okay, or gnosis, that's knowledge, that's the whole teaching of narcissism, okay, but the Bible teaches that salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ, okay, we don't need to know Jesus Christ, we don't need to physically know, or not physically, mentally know him, we don't actually have to know him, and know everything about him, we just need to understand that salvation is by faith, and we need to understand the Gospel, and we put our trust in him, okay, there's no other requirement, there's no, you gotta find all this secret knowledge of the universe in order to escape from the universe, or whatever, in saying 30, it teaches multiple gods, it says something about three deities, even though the Bible clearly teaches that there's only one God, okay, it says in Deuteronomy 32, 39, 1st Corinthians 8, 6, 1st Timothy 2, 5, and so on, that there's only one God, and the heresies and false teachings in the Gospel of Thomas go on and on, so don't fall for the trap and lies that books are removed from the Bible because of their secret teachings, or whatever, or that they're kicked out of the Bible, they're just banned, or they're lost, or whatever, okay, they aren't secret teachings, they're direct contradictions of the Word of God, they were never in the Bible, these books were never in the Bible, no Christian has ever recognized them as true, okay, you just, it's just archaeologists finding them in the ground, and because it has the word Jesus on it, you all of a sudden think that it has any meaning, or that it actually has any truth to it, okay, just because it says Jesus, and it lists the name of apostles and stuff, and it calls itself the Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Peter, or the Gospel of some other apostle, doesn't mean that it was actually written by the apostle, doesn't mean that it actually was written in the first century by Bible believing Christians who trusted in Jesus Christ, it's written by Gnostic heretics, these books were never in the Bible, so thank you everybody for watching, don't fall for this scam, thank you, and goodbye.