Lesson 4: The Doctrine of the Preservation of Scripture

Kootenai Church

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All right, let's begin with prayer Father we are grateful for this morning and for this time that we can enjoy together

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We thank you for your word and for bringing us together by your word and through the power of your word and Causing us to be born again

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We know that your word is instrumental in all of that and you not only call us to yourself

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But you preserve us and you secure us everlastingly all through your word and what you accomplish in it and we thank you for that and we thank you that we can give some

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Consideration to your preservation of your word and how your name hinges upon that and we pray that you would guide our

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Conversation our discussion and our thinking here this morning that it may be honoring and glorifying to you In every way and all that we do we ask it in Christ's name.

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Amen All right. So we are This is going to be the last lesson that I'm going to teach for a little while on this subject and God wrote a book

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We're gonna have a few weeks Jess and Cornell are gonna jump in and then we will be back in lesson five

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Sometime probably in Toward the end of April I would imagine so we have been looking at some of these key doctrines of inerrancy and inspiration and To review we spent a lesson talking about the inspiration of Scripture and what we mean by that and what we don't mean by that And then we looked at what the

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Bible says about itself concerning inspiration and whether or not that is a circular Argument that we use in speaking of the doctrine of inspiration and then this last week

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We looked at our last week We began to look at the doctrines of inerrancy and preservation and we talked about inerrancy and infallibility

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We looked at how those are related to one another and how one contributes to the other how infallibility the inability for Scripture to err

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Is a greater and stronger word a greater and stronger doctrine than inerrancy because I can write something that is inerrant

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But that doesn't mean that I am infallible It just means that I am fallible able to write something that is without error in something

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So when you talk about Scripture being Inerrant we are talking about it fact that it contains no errors

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But then we also use the word infallibility to describe Scripture meaning that it cannot err

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It cannot make an error in any statement Because if we believe that God has spoken and we believe that God cannot lie

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Then inerrancy is the logical conclusion to those two doctrines If you believe that God cannot lie, then if he has spoken something then it must be without error

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In fact, it must be infallible as well So we looked at inerrancy and infallibility last week today.

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We're looking at the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture So, I don't know.

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I'm not sure you have a page number there on your notebook, but we're in lesson for the preservation of Scripture Preservation is first a biblical necessity

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So when we talk about when we talk about the preservation of Scripture, we mean that if God has spoken and he cannot err we say that we say that Inspiration and infallibility and inerrancy

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Apply not to any modern translation that we have and not to any copies of the original documents those cop the original documents which we do not possess, but we apply those doctrines or those descriptions inerrancy infallibility and Inspiration to the original autographs the original documents that were written by the men who penned

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Scripture We say that it is inspired it is inerrant and it is infallible those but we don't have those today

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We have copies of those documents And so then this is where the doctrine of preservation comes in then the question becomes

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Has God preserved what was originally written or has it been corrupted? Has he allowed it to be corrupted over time so that as Bart Ehrman would say today?

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We have no idea what was originally written since we don't have those original documents We have no way of knowing that what we have today is an accurate reflection of what was originally written because we can't take what?

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We have today and compare it to the original does that make sense? Okay, so that now that is a that is a sword that cuts both directions

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Because Bart Ehrman can say that if we don't have the original documents We can't compare what we have today with what was originally written.

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Therefore. We can't know what was originally written The only way that he can make that claim is if he himself knows what was originally written

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Because just as you can't prove that we have an accurate copy And compare it to the original so you cannot prove that it's been corrupted unless you know what the original said, right?

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Because it very well might be that one of the copies that we have today is an exact duplication of what was originally written

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But you can't know that it's not unless you can compare it to what was originally written So the question since we since neither people on either side of that debate

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Nobody on either side of that debate can compare what we have today with what was originally written Because we don't have the original document.

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Then the question becomes do we have reason to believe that God has preserved his word for us? So this is the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture has got preserved his word for us and in the weeks ahead

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Well, not in the immediate weeks because we're taking a break, but you know in the future lessons We're gonna see how it is that God has preserved his word and that's what this study is really all about But today we're just concerned with looking at the preservation of Scripture and why this is an important subject

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So let's begin with the preservation as a biblical necessity letter a the Bible teaches that God preserves his word

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Look at these promises Matthew 5 18 for truly I say to you until heaven and earth pass away Not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.

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Now you might say well that just applies to the law Well, the law is God's Word So in principle that applies to God's Word as well

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Matthew 24 35 heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. That's reiterated in Luke 21 verse 33

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Psalm 119 89 forever. Oh Lord. Your word is settled in heaven Isaiah 40 verse 8 the grass withers the flower fades, but the

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Word of our God stands forever first Peter 1 23 and through 25 for you've been born again not of a seed which is perishable but Imperishable that is through the living and enduring

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Word of God For all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass the grass withers and the flower falls off But the

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Word of the Lord endures forever and this is the Word which was preached to you So notice all those statements about the fact that God's Word will not pass away

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God himself has vouchsafed his own word ensuring that it will be preserved because what

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God has inspired if he has inspired Writings which are inerrant and infallible if those are without error and that they cannot err then by logical necessity

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God will preserve his word because his own name hangs on the fact that he will preserve his word

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What does it say about your view of God if you believe that God can speak something inspire it and It can be inerrant without error.

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In fact infallible and it cannot fail But that God would then allow his word to be corrupted over time as it is transmitted down through the ages

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What does that say about your view of God? That's a pretty small

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God, isn't it? What's that It is inconsistent right a

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God who is able to speak if he desires to speak and he's able to speak and he's able to Speak inherently and if he's able to speak infallibly and he inspires scripture to be written

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But then he doesn't preserve that word for future generations and for his people generations to come that says something of your view of God In fact,

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I believe that your view of scripture and your view of God are inextricably linked That they must go together.

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They always go together That's why I've said before you can show me an orthodox statement of faith that a church has and I can see that their view of God is orthodox and I see that their view of scripture is orthodox

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But then allow me to see once or twice how they handle the Word of God when it's preached or taught in the gathering of the

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Saints and I'll tell you what they really believe about scripture. I'll tell you what they really believe about God Because how they handle scripture their view of scripture says a lot about how they treat scripture

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Well, what does how we view the Word of God says a lot about our view of God himself if we believe that that God's Word can be twisted and distorted or abused or that we think it can be

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Allegorized or we think that it can just become a myth or a legend or something like that and we believe maybe even that God could speak and that it could be filled with error and that he wouldn't preserve that or that God would speak and It would not be filled with error

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But then he would take his hands off and let man abuse and corrupt that all of those ways of looking at God's Word Say something about your view of God So I ran into this one time with Mormons I was visiting with some

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Mormons and Of course the Mormon Church believes that God originally inspired his word because every time that God speaks he speaks by inspiration and It's an inerrant, but then they say that God has not preserved his word over time.

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That was corrupted and that's why there needed to be a regiving of revelation that you find in The Book of Mormon and the

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Pearl of Great Price and the doctrines of covenants because God's Word has been corrupted over time That's the official position of Mormon Church That they had to be those truths had to be restated again and regiven again because so the

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Bible is corrupt But the Book of Mormon is not Well, I shared with these two Mormon missionaries that that says something about your view of God that he would that he would inspire his word

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And that it would be without error, but then he would allow it to be corrupted that he would allow men to corrupt his word

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Because God's Word and God's name are connected And so why would God allow his word to be corrupted and their response is typical to what you hear people who deny the preservation of scripture will say their response was well man has free will and So man has corrupted that over time and God doesn't violate anybody's free will

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So if men willed to corrupt scripture, then Then God's not gonna violate that free will and that's how scripture got corrupted over time

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My response to that yet can No, I think that when it is all accomplished it will still not pass away

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It's not saying that it's not saying that it will eventually pass away after it's all accomplished

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It's saying that until everything is accomplished It's not gonna pass away and if it hasn't passed away until it's all accomplished.

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It's not gonna pass away after that So it is a guarantee of the preservation of scripture future to us

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But also I would say future even beyond the accomplishment of everything that's promised so my response to the

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Mormon missionaries was Imagine at this time, I think Liam was three or four or something like that so I said

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I got a three -year -old in my house imagine that three -year -old picks up a hammer and Decides that he wants to hit everything that's glass in my house and all of my drywall

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Do you think that I as one more powerful and sovereign than he is is going to violate his free will?

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To keep him from destroying that which is precious to me and they said yes We think that you would and I said that's exactly what

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God has done with his word. God has kept Those of us who on earth who would wish to corrupt or distort his word

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God's will eventually overrides the free will of men Cornell were you gonna say something?

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Yeah, it does it does in fact I would say for any of my Armenian friends who would be here if your view of God is that he will never violate human freedom or quasi human sovereignty

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Then you really need to explain to me how it is if your view is that God's sovereignty always takes a backseat to human

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Autonomy, please explain to me how it is that God would preserve his word Since men by the millions have desired to corrupt and distort and destroy it

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How is it that God preserves his word without violating human freedom? So you're in a conundrum then

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Because it's obviously the obvious that men like Voltaire and some of the early or emperors of the Roman Empire They desired to destroy scripture.

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They they had campaigns to wipe out and burn the Christians books They wanted to rid the world of inspired scripture

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Well, that's their will explain to me how it is that God will preserve his word without violating human free will and the

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Armenian Has a real problem doing that I think Until you understand that human will always always bows the knee to divine sovereignty

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And if God has intended to preserve his word, then there is no amount of human free will that can corrupt that All right, so that's the

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Preservation is a biblical necessity. Now. Let's look at preservation as a logical necessity preservation is a logical necessity because if if inspiration and inerrancy are true if God has spoken and If he has made it inerrant and in foul, you know inerrant and infallible

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Then it must be logically true must logically follow that he would preserve that which he has given to us

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So God's power his providence his purposes and his sovereignty Guarantees the preservation of his revelation and it can't be otherwise his power his sovereignty and his purposes

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Guarantee the preservation of his revelation I've got his purpose to speak and God intends for what he has spoken to be preserved then no power in heaven or on earth can keep that from happening and If you think that some power can keep that from happening

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Then you have a pathetically low view of God that is completely unworthy of him So the preservation of Scripture is a logical necessity

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He must preserve the revelation in order to preserve his own integrity his own glory his own purposes and really the honor of his own

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Person it guarantees preservation if God cannot preserve his word for whatever reason then he is a

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God unworthy to be worshipped God's name is at stake because his character is revealed in Scripture So if God has revealed himself in Scripture But then has not preserved that revelation so that we might know who he is

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He has allowed that to be corrupt corrupted Then he has allowed what he has said about himself to be corrupted so that people later on will not know him in an appropriate way

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So his name is really his name is at stake. His character is at stake His salvation is disclosed in Scripture as well, right?

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We read that in first Peter chapter 3 or chapter 1 where it says that we have been caught we have Be in my language, right?

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Sometimes I confuse it with James chapter 1 We've been born again not of seed which is corruptible But by the Word of God I Confused that with James chapter 1 verse 18 where it says that he caused us to be born again to a living hope

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That's first Peter. He caused us James 1 18 you look it up in your spare time, but it's the same idea

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It's it's that God himself purposes and causes our salvation and he does so through his words

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So if God has spoken and he has spoken by inspiration He has given his word and his desire is that his word then would be the instrument in the salvation of his elect

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But then God allows his word to be corrupted by men so that later on we have no idea what it is that he originally said

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Then he has undermined his own salvific purposes in the redemption of his people by allowing his word to be corrupted

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So salvific Lee God would not allow that to happen and also his will is to be known in Scripture How can

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God hold men accountable for violating his will or violating his commands if indeed he allows his word to be corrupted over time?

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So that we're not even sure today if the commands that he gave back Then are the same ones that we have written down in Scripture today

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How can God hold us morally accountable for violating his will or for not obeying his commands if he allows his word to be corrupted?

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So you see his justice his integrity his salvific purposes his name his providence his sovereignty

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His glory his honor the salvation of his people and the redemption of his church and his eternal purposes all of that hinges on the

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Doctrine of preservation. So this is a logical necessity that we're talking about So our conclusion is that man cannot forth the plan and purposes of God God Works through the power his power his sovereignty and his providence to ensure the preservation of his word

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Which is given by inspiration the God revealed in Scripture would never inspire an errant revelation he has inspired an inerrant revelation and if he has spoken and if he has spoken accurately and truthfully and and without error and Infallible unable to err then by logical and biblical necessity

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He must guarantee the preservation of that revelation because his name hinges upon it

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That is the doctrine of preservation have any questions before we deal with a couple of objections Okay, no questions

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This could be a shorter Sunday school lesson. All right So let me give you a couple of objections and you tell me how you would answer each one of these

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Objections that we have listed there in your notebook The first one is that man has a free will we dealt with this a little bit and cannot interfere with or violate that free will

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Therefore man has the power and the opportunity to corrupt or alter his word. The Bible therefore has not been transmitted accurately or faithfully

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We talked a little bit about how you would answer that. I think a good illustration is the three -year -old with the hammer Maybe as we talk about our man's free will and His attempts to destroy

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God's Word and we're talking about God being more More sovereign and more powerful and working in Providence to preserve and to protect his word

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I think that that's a good answer to that any other observations on that Yeah Or the man's power is at least equal to God's power.

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Yeah. Yep Man's freedom is limited and that's something to always keep in mind.

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Yes, we do have Free will in the sense that we make choices freely No one coerces us to make the bad choices that we make we make our choices freely

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But man's free will is not free in the sense that we can freely choose to do that Which God would prohibit us from doing we're not free.

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I'm not free to fly It's not according to my nature to fly I'm not free as an unbeliever to choose righteousness or to do good or to please

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God I'm free to make all kinds of choices to sin But I'm never free to do that which would violate

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God's purposes or contradict God's sovereign will his will will always rule out I can never overthrow or thwart the will of God by my exercise of my choices

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So I think that this is this is a faulty view of human freedom to begin with and of course

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That's not gonna make any sense to the unbeliever But I think that by pointing out that look, you know It doesn't matter how free you think you are

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You're never going to be able to thwart God's purposes if he is determined to preserve his word There's nothing that you can do to prevent or to pervert that Any other observations on that objection before we move on to the second one

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Okay, second objection the Bible has been corrupted This is what you'll hear people say they won't make an argument

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This is actually just a statement or a conclusion. The Bible's been corrupted How would you answer that Thomas Show me where I Think that's a good answer

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If you're going to make the case that the Bible has been corrupted then you ought to be able to look back at some early document and say see here is what it was and Here's the trail of evidence that demonstrates that it has changed over the course of time

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You should be able to document that to show that but they can't show that Any other answer

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No textual scholars here that would point to a manuscript evidence or anything like that that we would look at. I think

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Yeah, that's why you're here the short the short answer to that is that the same God who has spoken has promised to preserve it

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Now there's an assumption that goes into that answer There's actually a presupposition that I'm that I'm laying out in that answer and I want to talk now for a moment about Presuppositions, this is letter eight in your outline bold presuppositions

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We everybody begins with presupposition. Do you guys know what a presupposition is? Okay, it's basically something you supposed to be true at the outset of a conversation

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All right, when I stand up here to teach I am presupposing a number of things. I'm presupposing the truth can be known

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I'm presupposing that you understand English I'm presupposing that the language that I use and the words I use are gonna be understood by you and that what

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I'm trying to communicate you will understand that will have some effect on you have all kinds of presuppositions that I bring to the table and We have to keep in mind and always remember that we have

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Presuppositions that we bring to this issue of God preserving his word and whether scriptures reliable, etc

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We have certain presuppositions that we bring to the table, but so does the critic The critic or the skeptic on the other side of the table

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He has all kinds of presuppositions and sometimes when we are debating or discussing the issue of whether or not the

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Bible is reliable We allow them to skate with their presuppositions and we end up defending our presuppositions

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And sometimes we need to step back and point out that everyone has presuppositions The critic when he makes the claim that the

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Bible has been corrupted He's presupposing that either God is not able to inspire scripture or he's presupposing that God having inspired scripture will not

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Preserve scripture or that scripture has certain errors or that the God revealed in the

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Bible would allow certain errors to come in There's all kinds of presuppositions that the critic brings to the table and we need to be aware of that What would you say about the person who says

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I don't have any presuppositions that I bring to the table. I am unbiased and I approach this without any bias or presuppositions at all

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Thomas Exactly do you guys see that? Is that your presupposition?

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Say the person who says that is presupposing number one that that being unbiased is a good thing

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That's a presupposition That being unbiased is better than being biased. That's a presupposition

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They're also presupposing that it is possible to be unbiased. That's a presupposition

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They're presupposing that they themselves have the ability to be unbiased

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That's a presupposition They are presupposing that they themselves have no presuppositions

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They're presupposing that Your presuppositions are wrong and their presuppositions are right and they're presupposing that you must have no presuppositions in order to have a valid point of view

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All right, they're presupposing all of that now those are the assumptions that the atheist brings to the table that they're objective in that you are not and Sometimes and this is this is horribly unfortunate.

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We allow the skeptic to skate on his presuppositions. We don't even challenge them and it's good sometimes to challenge them and I've had interactions with atheists and people that Unbelievers that I've had dialogues with and I will point this out

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Look, I you you have presuppositions that you're bringing to the table and here they are I'll list them out and we just need to be honest with the fact that we're not dealing with We're not we're not dealing with the difference of evidence.

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We're dealing with the difference of presuppositions And you can see this even in the debate over origins

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Somebody digs up a fossil and the atheists and the evolutionists look at the same fossil and they come to two totally different conclusions

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Why because of two totally different sets of presuppositions, we don't have creationist evidence and evolutionist evidence.

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We have evidence we have observations We look at the same fossils. We look at the same stars. We look at the same world

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We look at the same canyons and dirt layers and all of that. We look at the same natural processes We see all of the same things.

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The difference is the presuppositions that you bring to the evidence The evolutionist looks at the fossil and he is presupposing billions of years long ages death that is part of that struggle an evolutionary process some cataclysmic event of an asteroid or Coronavirus 65 million years ago that wiped out all half the living things, etc

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He's presupposing all kinds of things the creationist looks at this exact same fossil and he's presupposing a young earth

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They got who created it and a worldwide flood. We see the same evidence, but we're just arguing over the difference of presuppositions and and we fail if we don't challenge the presuppositions and make the atheists come face to face with the fact that they're

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Presupposing certain things to be true. The same is true with the preservation of Scripture Somebody says the Bible's been corrupted

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He can't trust scripture or there's errors in it or it's not the same today as it was back then you need to challenge the Presuppositions you're presupposing that that this

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God who existed is would inspire something and then not preserve it What evidence do you have to presuppose or assume that that is true?

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And they might say well you're presupposing that the God who spoke it would preserve it and what's your answer to that? Yes, you're right.

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That is what I'm presupposing and it's not an irrational or illogical or unbiblical or unreasonable presupposition to believe that So the

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God that I do believe in he is a God whom I believe has spoken He's spoken inherently and he will preserve his word.

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That's not an irrational presupposition Yeah, Cornell there.

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They're the Yeah To give you to sum up what

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Cornell just said they look at the dirt layer and they say you see certain fossils in There so we know these fossils are that age. How do you know?

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Well, cuz that's how old the dirt layer is Well, how do you know the dirt layers that old because those fossils are in it and if those fossils were not in it

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The dirt layer wouldn't be that old. Well, how do you know that that those fossils are that old because it's in that dirt layer? How do you know the dirt layers that old because those fossils are in it?

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Yeah, so that's a all of that is a presupposition and we need to challenge those All right.

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So that is it for the doctrine of preservation and I wanted to end with the presuppositions just so that we are honest and and at least familiar with our own presuppositions as we go into our look at the history of how

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God has preserved his word because presuppositions are key they're important and We shouldn't back away from them unless we have unbiblical or wrong presuppositions

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Then we need to abandon those an unbiblical or wrong presupposition would be man's will is able to thwart

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God's will it's an unbiblical or wrong Presupposition that's an unjustified presupposition But the presupposition that God exists and that he has spoken that it is inerrant and that he will preserve it

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Those are not unbiblical or wrong or unjustified presuppositions We bring those to the table just like the people on the other side of the table will bring their

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Presuppositions to the table as they evaluate the evidence as well All right, any questions about any of that?

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We have 15 minutes So we're either done early unless you have any questions about anything else related to what we talked about with inspiration inerrancy infallibility or preservation

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We'll open it wide open Yes, right. That's a good question

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Yeah, he asked is it worth the challenge to argue with somebody if you have somebody who's wanting to argue with you about these Issues, is it even worth whether you have the answers or not worth engaging them on that level?

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I think that that determines on the person and the spirit in which they're coming to you And I think you can determine that really quickly

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Are they just wanting to throw out their objections and and raise hostile arguments against you?

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Are they contentious or is there a really a desire to learn and to interact on it? I think that there comes a point in discussing this issue just was with any apologetics issue where you're casting pearls before swine

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You're just you're engaging and you're engaging in a lost cause and trying to reason or instruct people in the truth

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Peter yeah, that's true. That's another good one, too

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Yeah, the person you're talking about might not necessarily be Open to the open to the discussion, but there might be or open to the truth

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But there might be people listening to the conversation who are open to it and evaluating it in which case

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I think that there can be a secondary benefit to that Yeah, any other questions?

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That it any questions about anything? No, we went out early. All right, you got it.

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We will talk about that later. Yeah preservation. How does it relate to translation? Because when we

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Yeah, so now you're moving from one language to another language and then the question becomes something that's slightly different and that is

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Do we have reason to believe that we have accurately translated that we might look at the manuscripts as they are in?

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Greek and Hebrew and say we have reason to believe that these accurately reflect or accurate representations of the original

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But then then we're taking another step which is in the translation process have we accurately captured the wording of this and or the meaning of that and the translation issue is a little bit different because there are issues that come up in translation which

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There are things said in one language that are difficult to capture word -for -word in another language

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And so you almost have to give a whole a phrase in order to to capture that there's a there's a

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German I'll get we'll talk about this when we get into translation, but there's a German phrase the the morning hours have gold in their mouths and Andrea's walking by she could tell me what tell you what that sounds like in German But the morning hours have gold in their mouths.

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How do you translate that in English? The early bird gets the worm The morning hours have gold in their mouths if you translate that to an

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English audience saying what what does that mean? Like that's the weirdest proverb. I think I've ever heard in my life But we say the early bird gets the worm

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All right, you get up early you you you seize the moment early in the day and there's a benefit to it

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And so you can't translate something like that word -for -word and get the sense of it you would have to translate it try and get the meaning of it and Every translation in English in any language is going to have it's going to try and balance two issues number one try and be as close and accurate to the original wording and And words that are used as possible

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But also to capture the meaning of it because if you translate word -for -word But you don't catch the meaning of the passage.

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You have not heard the Word of God Because the Word is not the series of the Word of God is not the series of words as it is as it exists because If we did just word -for -word straight across into English half of our

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Bible would be unintelligible Because in Greek, I'm not sure if this is in Hebrew, but in Greek a word order can mean nothing

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Or it can be very significant in English. It's always very significant John hit the ball the ball hit

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John the word order there is important to the sentence, right in Greek The word order is not important to the sentence So you could put those words in almost any order that you want and the sentence still means the same thing

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So you can't just have a word translated to word Translation from from one language to another it would be in some cases

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In some cases unintelligible, so you have to translate the meaning of the idea and get the word order correct

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That's why there's a lot of variety in our English translations because sometimes Sometimes the word order is used in English to try and capture the essence of what the original language said so The preservation is related to it, but it's not it's not the exact same doctrine because we're talking about really now men translating from one language into another and trying to capture the sense of that and So then the question becomes if they have they done that well, and there are good translations, and there are bad translation

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Then answer the question oh,

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I see where you're going with that now I Should have looked at Josh giggling back there and realize you're talking about King James only stuff

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What's that? Yeah, and so when we're talking about preservation we are talking about the copies of the original and we're not talking about any one particular

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Translation so that was a much shorter answer to a better question The the preservation of Scripture is not guaranteed in any

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English translation or in any translation English or non in English We're talking about God preserving his word, and then we translate that into our language

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So we're not talking about any one particular translation If we have the sense of the meaning we have the Word of God Whether you use modern

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English to equate that or whether you use the Queen's English to equate that It's a key issue is whether we have understood it or not

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Peter how can we have confidence?

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My response to that would be why would you not trust a translation of that original language now not all translations are equal

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We'll talk about that when you get to translations Not every translation is equal. So if you're reading

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Eugene Eugene Phillips, no Peterson Eugene Peterson if you're reading Eugene Peterson's Translation of Scripture.

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It's not a translation. It's it's not it. It barely would qualify as a bastardized paraphrase It's it's a horrible.

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It's not it's not translation at all There's no reason to think that if you're reading Eugene Peterson's work that you're actually getting the sense or the meaning of Scripture But there are good translations done by good people who understand those original languages

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So the skeptic who to challenge the presuppositions the skeptic who raises that argument they're presupposing that either

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We cannot make an accurate translation from the original languages to the English or that the act of translating itself

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Is has not been faithfully done Those are the presuppositions that they would bring to the table and I would challenge those presuppositions and say

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I have no reason to believe That a translation not been faithfully done or that my English translation of the original

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Scriptures which we can go back and check the translation of them because we know that it's not like it's not like Joseph Smith's golden plates where the

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NASB comes from a guy putting his head under a hood and and looking at tablets in some

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Egyptian dialect that is nobody has been preserved. It's not like that's not situation We have we have documents that we can go back and look at we can read the original languages and there are people who are better at reading the original languages than they are in reading

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English and They can translate those original languages into other languages because they're very good with the original languages

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Yeah, no, I'm not an expert in it either But I trust that I there's some point at which I do trust the men who are experts in that I have no reason

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I have no valid reason to believe that the people who translated either the SV or the NASB are intent on corrupting the scripture and I can look at those

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Translations and I can go back and I can look at the original languages I can use language tools to say yeah, I think they got it right or I think they got it wrong

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I can do that. So no, I'm not I'm not an expert in it, but neither are you an expert in it? So why would you doubt it?

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Justin Well, yeah, Eugene Peterson.

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I don't know if he's tried to mess it up, but he did I don't know if he tried to do or not Justin Yeah, but that's not we're talking about I That would be my thing.

35:40

Yeah, just okay. So Jim Osmond takes his book and rips out the New Testament What does that prove about the original? What does that prove about English translations?

35:45

Nothing? There's nothing about it Yeah, Justin Yeah, that's that's why you should move back here.

36:48

Just as that reason right there Cornell Yep No And this would be like somebody to give you an illustration of the challenge the challenge that you're bringing up Peter This would be like somebody who's walking through a foreign country and they see a language

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They see a sign in French and right below it the same thing in English I doubt if he stops and looks at that sign and says

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I have no reason to believe that they have accurately translated that That this is the way I should go They don't apply that same standard to anything else that they read just because they see that one is written in one language is written

37:39

In translated into another they don't doubt that in any other area of their life to raise that objection with scripture is disingenuous at best

38:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yep Yep.

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Yeah, we got a whole lesson on that. Well, how were they copied? How were the manuscripts copied? Yeah, yeah

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Yeah, yeah, that's right Yep, and we will talk about that.

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We have examples of that in scripture All right So let's wrap it up before I have to start teaching another lesson

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Lord we are thankful that you have preserved your word. We can't trust it we can't know that it is true and a God who is able to give us a revelation of himself is also able to preserve that and we thank you that your word addresses these issues and that you have promised by the power of your own name and for the glory of your own name and For the good of your people to preserve your word for us all the way through time

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We thank you that it cannot be corrupted because your purposes cannot fail and your will cannot be thwarted

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All that you intend and determine for us must and will come to pass and we thank you for that We pray that our time of worship and fellowship together now may be sweet and enjoyable and that you would be glorified through all that We do and sing and say