WEBVTT 00:00:02.400 --> 00:00:11.482 align:center Today, after 44 years of Bible study, I have to say that it's always nice to come across a problem again. 00:00:12.184 --> 00:00:17.325 align:center You can look forward to the solution in advance. 00:00:18.747 --> 00:00:24.988 align:center I made a very conscious decision in favour of Jesus Christ when I was ten years old. 00:00:25.530 --> 00:00:29.671 align:center But looking back, I have to say: that wasn't all. 00:00:30.898 --> 00:00:40.664 align:center A real realisation of one's own depravity, the sinfulness of one's own nature, 00:00:41.292 --> 00:00:48.037 align:center I only really realised this in my teenage years. 00:00:48.576 --> 00:00:51.538 align:center At the age of 14, someone gave me a present. 00:00:51.578 --> 00:01:06.739 align:center It was the book of the American Jew John Meldow:"The Messiah in Both Testaments." 00:00:59.522 --> 00:01:08.904 align:center Meldow explained: "There are over 300 prophecies in the Old Testament that point to the Messiah and were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 00:01:09.947 --> 00:01:15.308 align:center However, he only deals with a part, a fraction of these prophecies. 00:01:16.161 --> 00:01:23.622 align:center I was looking for a book that would explain all of the 300+ fulfilled prophecies, and I couldn't find one. 00:01:24.325 --> 00:01:34.366 align:center And that inspired me - I was 16 years old at the time - to make a list: firstly, secondly, thirdly, with all the fulfilled prophecies. 00:01:35.551 --> 00:01:42.231 align:center And at that time I also read the whole Bible thoroughly. Really from Genesis to Revelation. 00:01:43.974 --> 00:01:53.434 align:center And every time I found a fulfilled prophecy in the Old Testament, I added it to the list and came up with 299, 300, 301 and so on. 00:01:54.736 --> 00:02:08.437 align:center And topics such as the credibility of the Bible, prophecy and history and so on were always very important topics. 00:02:10.351 --> 00:02:21.292 align:center The subject of difficult biblical passages or apparent inner contradictions has also kept me very busy over the years, since my teenage years. 00:02:22.574 --> 00:02:30.095 align:center And it was a formative experience for me to see how one problem after another could be solved. 00:02:31.777 --> 00:02:41.298 align:center And today, after years of Bible study, I have to say: It's always nice when you come across a problem again. 00:02:42.788 --> 00:02:48.948 align:center You can look forward to the solution in advance. 00:02:50.230 --> 00:02:54.610 align:center So it is important to pay close attention to the Bible text when difficulties arise. 00:02:55.791 --> 00:03:02.952 align:center And if it can't be clarified from the German, then you just have to look at what the basic text says. 00:03:03.393 --> 00:03:09.213 align:center And if you don't know the basic text language, you can ask someone who does. 00:03:10.307 --> 00:03:18.670 align:center Over the years, I have also begun to immerse myself in the biblical languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. 00:03:19.442 --> 00:03:28.784 align:center Then also Akkadian, i.e. Babylonian, simply to get to know the languages and the environment of the Bible better and better. 00:03:29.607 --> 00:03:35.388 align:center It was the fact that I spent a lot of time with the old languages that made it so clear to me: 00:03:36.891 --> 00:03:39.952 align:center Why are the old languages so much more complicated? 00:03:40.888 --> 00:03:45.909 align:center Why do they have so many more forms than modern languages? 00:03:46.532 --> 00:03:52.013 align:center When I learnt Akkadian, I had to learn about a thousand verbal forms for one verb. 00:03:52.076 --> 00:03:53.837 align:center Yes, where does that come from? 00:03:53.877 --> 00:04:02.259 align:center And I realised that all languages lose their abundance of synthetic verbal forms over time. 00:04:03.534 --> 00:04:13.934 align:center But then you have to explain how the language should have developed upwards from a primitive man until it was like Akkadian with a thousand forms! 00:04:14.056 --> 00:04:18.296 align:center Languages are not the work of man. 00:04:18.937 --> 00:04:36.438 align:center The languages must once have been given by the Creator, as the Bible tells us in the account of the denial of languages at Babel. 00:04:37.182 --> 00:04:45.665 align:center When I look back over my life, the passage in Galatians (chapter 1), where the apostle Paul says of himself, has become very important to me, 00:04:46.530 --> 00:04:48.732 align:center that God had set him apart from the womb. 00:04:50.945 --> 00:04:54.267 align:center God's guidance in life therefore does not begin with conversion. 00:04:55.929 --> 00:05:02.074 align:center And so I say to myself that it didn't start at 10 years old, it started at 0 years old. 00:05:02.074 --> 00:05:08.480 align:center Not only is it like a puzzle, but it really is like an artistic piece of embroidery.