Migrant Passages in the Synoptics

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The blue book if you're not using the blue book, then it depends on what's translation you have so on so forth and You may recall that we had some military men with us last week and After the study one of them came up to me and said
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I'll be listening on sermon audio next week because I've never heard a really understandable explanation of That particular textual variance, so I sort of felt a certain weight of responsibility to Go into a little more detail in regards to this and I I do know that when
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I travel around as I do a lot of that I do mention that I Will explain these types of things to our
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Sunday school class That you all you are you're all world -famous for being patient for putting up with me and allowing such obscure conversations in Sunday school as textual variance
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But there is some method to my madness as well And that is
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I am firmly convinced And we have a lot of visitors with us this morning or a lot of folks that are not here regularly, so try to try to get a deep seat in the saddle and Just survive here for a moment, and you'll eventually figure it out.
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I think I am thoroughly convinced that the Days when
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Christians could comfortably ignore Issues That are on well could comfortably ignore issues that are uncomfortable to us.
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I have passed for example on When I'm preaching on Sundays, we're dealing with texts that are clearly uncomfortable to deal with we're talking about homosexuality and and the holiness code and and All sorts of topics that to be honest with you would never have been raised talked about or almost whispered about In my grandparents day in church
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But while those are difficult topics because of the nature of them Another area that we simply cannot ignore any longer are the footnotes the bottom of our page
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These are the very texts that are raised as objections in Two weeks two weeks two weeks from today
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In the afternoon, I'll be flying over to California and on Monday. I'll be speaking at the the
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Masters Academy's international symposium on global inerrancy the the the importance of inerrancy to global missions and my task is to talk about what
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Muslims need to know and Hence, I'll be talking about the fact that in doing missions work to the
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Muslim world one of the most important things that must be addressed
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Is our missionaries our people involved in that kind of work need to know why they believe what they believe?
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Where the New Testament came from why we can trust it and that means we need to know
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About these issues and we can't we can't stick our head in the proverbial sand
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On these topics, I'm reminded of a one -star review.
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I read this week Of my book on the Quran on Amazon love
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Amazon book reviews, they're just so scintillating and in fact normally so irrelevant, but it might my book has two one -star reviews, which is the lowest review you can you can give and One was from a
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Muslim shockingly enough that finished saying stop attacking Islam and Then the other one was from a quote -unquote
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Christian they start off his review by saying I've never even cracked the binding this book, and I never will and The whole review was about how we should not poison our minds with anything.
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We should just read the Bible we should know anything about anything else that don't read any other books and And so we shouldn't read a books by James White.
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See that's how it ended so But I'm reminded of that mindset that there are certain people who have that and Unfortunately when it comes to the text of the
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New Testament There are a lot of good people who have that mindset. We don't like the little notes the bottom of the page
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You don't know why they're there We have certainly discussed this in the past. Maybe not in the recent past.
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Maybe I need to redo my New Testament reliability Presentation in the not -too -distant future.
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It's been a number of years. We've got a lot of folks here It's my most popular presentation when I travel around the world and so it should be one that I do more than once here, but The fact the matter is that we have two major Textual traditions represented in the
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English translations in the group today If you have the
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King James or the New King James translation of the Bible, please let me know
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If you have anything else Okay, it's about 60 40
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The King James and the New King James are based upon the same Printed Greek text which is generally known as the textus receptus or the
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TR There is no one TR The TR is a family of printed texts mainly
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Going back to the first seven printed Greek texts
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In the history of the world the five editions of Erasmus between 1516 and 1535
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The 1550 Stephanus text I have I have a 1550 actually I think
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I've brought it in Maybe you all remember a number of years ago. I'll have to bring that back in again sometime to an actual 1550 text
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And a 15 the 1598 text by Theodore Beza Beza is a name you've probably heard before because he was
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Calvin's successor in Geneva and Those were the seven Printed those are not manuscripts.
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Those are printed texts. They were based upon between half a dozen and a dozen
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Greek manuscripts They were primarily based upon a 12th century manuscript so they they don't go all the way back toward the originals shall we say as far as time goes and That that particular
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Greek text became very popular and Is still very popular amongst a number of reformed folks
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Who would say well if it was good enough for the Westminster divines. It was good enough for the 1689 writers it's good enough for me
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And we'll just stick with that Problem is of course that we don't have just half a dozen to a dozen
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Greek manuscripts today we have last I checked around 5771
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Not all of those go from Matthew to Revelation some of the older they are the more fragmentary they are
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People wonder why that is but I always respond to that by saying well let's see how well how good you look in 1800 years and But You know some of them do are the entire
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New Testament but many of the oldest ones are just fragments of portions of The New Testament or even just portions of passages as you get into the very oldest fragments some of you
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How many of you heard about the Egyptian funerary mask story that came out about three weeks ago? one two three four
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It hasn't been published yet, but even CNN picked up on it. Which is why I asked but a number of us have known about this for years, but There has been some fines of some fragments from the
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New Testament At least one of which I'm not sure if all of them are from this But at least one of which is from an
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Egyptian funerary mask you might say now Why wouldn't the world would you find New Testament manuscripts in the Egyptian funerary mask well?
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Less rich people in Egypt would Everyone want a funerary mask and if you're a rich person
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It would be made out of gold a little less rich person would be plated in gold and if you're just a regular old person it would probably made out of paper mache and To make paper mache you you take paper.
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You know normally what we would use would be like newspaper And that's important in the creating of the of the paper mache well
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They have found some Funerary masks and as they're looking inside of them. They realized you could still read the papyri that had been used to make them and they found a method of separating out the various pieces without dissolving the lettering on The actual pieces of papyri and lo and behold there are fragments of the
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New Testament here Which would make sense I mean if you're if you're still a pagan
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So as I mean because that's a Egyptian funerary right would be a pagan funerary, right? You're not going to have any interest in in the
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Christian scriptures And it says mainly the poorer people have those kinds of things and you wouldn't care what you use to make your funerary mascot of and so lo and behold
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Some are saying this hasn't been proven yet, but some are saying that They have found fragments
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Specifically of the gospel of Mark and It's it's interesting to note that up until this find the most widely documented of the
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New Testament books of the Gospels I'm sorry the most widely documented the Gospels in the early papyri was
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John and Mark with the least Even though the current scholarly theory is that Mark was the earliest written though I'm not one of the big fans of that particular theory
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In fact the the earliest the one that most scholars agree is the earliest
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Manuscript papyri fragment that we have is from John chapter 18 and so interestingly enough this fragment that has been found is from Mark and What is interesting about this kind of a find is that if you can separate out other pieces of the of the papyri and find
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Out what they came from some of them might be dated they might be receipts they might be things that refer to such -and -such a date and What that does is that doesn't tell you when the mask was made?
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But it tells you it couldn't have been any earlier than this particular Date that was used in that material so you can you can get a lot better Idea of exactly the dating of something like this in that kind of a context again hasn't been published yet We're going on these little tidbits.
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They're being released slowly. It really hasn't been handled. I think overly well, but that's what's that's what's going on According to them then they are saying that the these fragments are from Marker from the first century now for most of us that doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot
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Other than to remind you that on average for books written in this time period around the time of Christ books we call from antiquity
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That the average if you're talking about Plato if you're talking about Historical works like Pliny or Suetonius or Tacitus some of the
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Greek historians Homer If you're talking about books like that the average time between when it was written and The first copy we have either in part or in whole is between five and nine hundred years
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That's the average for for everything else on average It's half a millennium at the earliest before we have a manuscript copy of one of these books
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So if we have if we actually now have a fragment of mark from the first century
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Not only would this put marks writing it would push marks writing. I think you'd have a hard time arguing
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Any later than the 40s? But that would mean that we'd be within 50
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Years or ten times earlier Than the earliest of any other work of antiquity, which is just it's mind -boggling
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Though most people don't realize how mind -boggling that actually is Which is why there's gonna be a lot of pushback and there's gonna be a lot of Arguments and there's gonna be a lot of books written over the next number of years and and just always remember something you will only hear the anti -faith conclusions in CNN and Even Fox News and everything else
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They'll never tell you About the response from the other side you'll only hear one side media.
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Just just just write that down. It's a fact So it's gonna take a while, and I'm certainly interested in seeing what the result of all this is going to be
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But that's that's what we're looking at so Anyway that aside aside
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The Modern Greek text Known as the Nestle all in 28th edition or the
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UBS 5th edition Anybody have any of those so I know we have some Greek students in here anybody carrying their
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Greek New Testament with them today. That's Nobody Most of them.
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I think are probably over teaching someplace. I know that Warren normally has his and and Casey and stuff like that, but anyway
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Those Greek New Testaments are based upon all of those manuscripts plus the
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Latin Vulgate there were early translations into you know the Old Latin and Syriac and Boheric and and so on and so forth and so Takes into consideration a very wide variety of information
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All that to give you a background to Migrant passages there are
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Two substantial blocks of text in the
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New Testament That appear in more than one place in Ancient manuscripts of the
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New Testament, what do I mean by that well one of them? You probably already know about I've talked to you about it before It is as Dan Wallace describes it his favorite story.
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That's not actually in the Bible It's official name is the pericope adultery
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That is the story of the woman caught in adultery John 753 through 811 remember just a couple weeks ago as we read through the gospel of John may even been last week
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I made comment on the fact that since we're reading the New King James from the pulpit that we read
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John 753 through 811 and that in reality
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The first Greek manuscript that contains that is from the 5th century
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And it is the most notoriously unreliable of the ancient manuscripts It's called
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Codex Bezet Cantabrigiensis And it's sort of the living
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Bible of the ancient world and What is significant extremely significant about that story
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Is that not only does it appear in some manuscripts elsewhere in John In other words, it doesn't follow 752
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There are some other places where it's it pops up someplace else in the gospel of John, but most importantly to me
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There are two families of manuscripts one is called family one is called family 13 for our manuscripts and That particular story is not even found in John in those manuscripts
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It's found in Luke in two different places So there's at least four different spots that that particular story has found a place in New Testament manuscripts well that to me is
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Almost an open and shut case in regards to This particular text there is no other explanation that I can possibly think of as To why this story would appear in different places?
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Other than it was an extremely popular story and if movies about Jesus or any indication today
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It is a very popular story Mel Gibson managed to sneak it into the passion of the
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Christ movie when it really didn't have any place there anyways So it had to become a flashback, but it still ended up in there someplace
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So it's an extremely popular story like like Dan Wallace says it's his favorite story. That's not in the
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Bible and so It it seems to have been a a story that a lot of people knew about It was passed along orally but it was always looking for a place to land and It eventually did
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In later manuscripts, but the earliest Manuscripts we have of the
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Gospels of John or Luke all of them prior to the 5th century do not contain this particular text and so it is a a clear later edition and When I have been asked as I have been asked many many times in various contexts
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If you were preaching through the Gospel of John Would you preach John?
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753 through 811 as scripture that's normally combined with would you preach mark 16 9 through 20 as?
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Scripture because those are the two largest textual variants in the New Testament. It was the only two large blocks of text
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That are variants in the New Testament. It's the longer ending of mark And I say longer ending because there's about four or five different endings of mark when you look at the manuscript evidence but Would you would you preach these texts as scripture and my very consistent answer has always been no
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I would not I Would explain why? Probably have a Bible study on the subject like we're sort of doing right now and have done so in the past I know when
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I've done my Test of reliability presentation the bat in the past we've talked about John's 753 through 811
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It's not the first time for a lot of you. I'm sure George could look up Somewhere in his encyclopedic notes the last time that we mentioned something about this
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But I I would not because I Can't could not defend it
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And of course for me. I have a rather interesting standard. I could not defend its originality Even if I believed in it in meaningful debate against a equally well -prepared
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Debater just couldn't do it the evidence is too strong against it Well interestingly enough when
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I talk about migrant passages the only other migrant passage I know of that has the same kind of Character to it is the one that we encountered last
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Sunday morning, and that we're looking at now specifically Luke chapter 22 verses 43 through 44
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You will see it Well, we didn't pass out the blue things, but those of you who have it.
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It's on page 297 at the bottom And it says and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him and being in an agony he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down upon the ground and so these two
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Verses are in why I'd be interested. Let me just do a quick survey if you have the
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New King James there is a text note and It says something along the lines of NU text omits these verses correct
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New King James first yes Okay, is there are there brackets around it, or how is that indicated?
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There's not brackets Just a footnote at the bottom, but there's no brackets around the text, okay?
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Yes, sir, and you means Nessie Island United Bible Society, so it's the modern
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Greek text New American standard any modern translation uses the same the same text platform
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The Nessie Island text and the United Bible site text are two different printed editions But as far as the actual text contained in them
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They're identical punctuation is different how it's laid out is different, but the actual wording is identical
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Just how they punctuate it paragraph Yes, yes it is
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Right right So if you have NASV double brackets no brackets at all just a footnote
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But no, but no no double brackets around it does anybody have brackets ESV anybody yes, he doesn't interesting okay
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Always good to look at the footnotes Let me just give you some of the data here real quickly and then
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Explain the migrant passage comment on the on the board when scholars look at a
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Variant in the text and if any of you have seen my New Testament reliability presentation
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For example I was in Norway a few weeks ago I did it for four nights in a row had all the time to tell all my stories and stuff
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It was it was enjoyable to do It's on it's on YouTube at various sundry places I did it
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Trinity Law School a few years ago, and they put up a nice version of it but I Explained there that when there is about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 what are called meaningful and Viable New Testament textual variants now what you'll hear from most folks is that there are four hundred thousand variants, and that's true
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But 99 % of them are completely meaningless Couldn't even be explained to someone outside of the
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Greek language Almost all of them are movable news the scribes scribes couldn't understand movable news and there are thousands and thousands and thousands of Places where whether they included the movable new or not didn't they did or didn't and for those of you
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Who don't know what a movable new is it's the same thing in English if you say a apple or an apple you're supposed to say an apple but It doesn't change the meaning whether you say a apple or an apple and Greek has the same thing called a movable new
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Anyway, there are about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 meaningful. That is they would impact the translation and Viable which means they could represent the original variants in the
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New Testament some of which are very simple to resolve some are more complex and When you look at one of these when scholars look at one of these variants
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Most of down if you've got the blue book when you look down at the bottom of page all those little almost all the well
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Those notes down there are either cross references translational references or some of them are textual references to where They're giving you in English what they what the variant would be between different manuscripts when we look at them
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We recognize that there are different families of manuscripts families of manuscripts the basic three families are
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The Alexandrian the Western and the Byzantine the Byzantines by far the largest
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Because manuscripts only continue to be produced in the Byzantine area after the expansion of Islam so starting about the 9th century and So the vast majority of manuscripts come from the area around Byzantium and hence they have a
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Byzantine flavor or character to them But when we look at them, we want to see what did the earliest manuscripts say?
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because obviously the closer you can get the original the better a 50th generation copy just simply doesn't have as much weight as to Representing the original as a third generation copy does a copy of a copy of a copy is better than a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Now that doesn't necessarily mean the oldest are always the best because We know for example two manuscripts 1739 1881
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Which are clearly 10th century copies of a second or third century text so There the age isn't so much the issue as what it was a copy of and so the number of Generations is the issue when it comes to the weight that a manuscript
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Has when it comes these things but you want to look at those that issue But you also want to sit to look at well, is this just one family?
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There's only one family Lack this verse or contain this verse and the other families don't
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So when you find a variant That has early early attestation the earliest manuscripts
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And it's found in all the families Wow, that's that's heavy -duty.
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That's heavy -duty argument in favor of that particular reading. I'll give you an example another
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Interesting statement we're going to be getting to soon that has theological relevance is Jesus's statement father forgive them for they know not what they do
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That is a textual variant now. Let me ask you other than the people who've already heard me talk about this
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But yeah, I'll include you because maybe you forgot me talking about this How many of you knew that was textual variant before I mentioned to you right now?
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Don't feel bad. I graduated in seminary without knowing that So and obviously
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I've always had a deep interest in textual Variants father forgiveness. They know what they do is not found in early manuscripts and all the way across the spectrum all the families of manuscripts have manuscripts that do not contain that phrase and So that's a real important illustration because man have
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I seen some huge Theological edifices built upon that particular phrase without ever acknowledging that Some of the earliest manuscripts and a wide variety of manuscripts do not contain that that phraseology even though You look at you look it up.
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There will be a note down at the bottom of the page. We just skip them When we come to this one when we come to Luke chapter 22
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This is omitted in two in the in two of the well, I put this way
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It's definitely omitted by p75 and a p75 is Just without a doubt
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The most Carefully made early
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Gospels Manuscript that we possess the author was very careful as a copyist and It does not contain verses 23 and 44 in Luke chapter 22
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There's another papyri manuscript knows p69 Unfortunately this part of that page is missing but but What scholars are able to do is they're able to go?
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Okay. He was writing You know on this part of the page He averaged this number of letters per line
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Because remember back then they wrote in what's called magiscule text or unseal text all capital letters
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No spaces between words almost no punctuation So you can pretty much go okay?
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He's writing 54 letters per line on average on this page and the bottom the page is missing and you go to the top of the next
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Page and you go okay All right, let's let's figure out. How many letters would normally go in that space and You could not have put verses 43 and 44 into that space on p69
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So it'll be cited, but it's cited with a little letters vid Videmos it seems we're not certain because it's not there, but we've got pretty good good reason for saying no p69 didn't have this either because it's
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Two two verses and there was enough room for that to fit given You know you have to he would have had to stuck extra lines in or or something along those lines
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So the earliest gospel manuscript we have of this text, which is p75 and possibly p69 does not contain it in Sinaiticus it's crossed out by the by the very first corrector, and we know that very first corrector
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Was working on the manuscript immediately after the first author so before the manuscript left the scriptorium.
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It was crossed out Um Alexandrinus does not have it and Alexandrinus is
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Byzantine in the in the in the New Testament All the early Byzantine manuscripts do not contain this particular text either
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But here's where this comes in Family 13 Doesn't have it in Luke But family 13 does have it after Matthew 26 39 so This story which seems to have been an oral tradition
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In family 13 isn't in Luke, but it is in Matthew after Matthew 26 39 now
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That doesn't mean if someone moved it that it was in their copy of Luke. They moved to Matthew or something instead
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It was undoubtedly a very popular story and After narrating
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Jesus prayer in Matthew 26 39 the scribe familiar with this story continues that story on and includes the angel and the
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The great sweat which by the way the proper way of reading that the Greek there is not he was sweating blood
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He was sweating drops as if blood so it was it was
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Tremendous agony that he was in Not not that it was unfortunately, our
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Mormon friends think that he was actually sweating blood and that's why they believe
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That the atonement was actually accomplished in the Garden of Gethsemane and only finished on the cross
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That's that was due to Joseph Smith's ignorance of What was actually being said?
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but anyway So in family 13 this is actually found In in Matthew 26 39 and there are a number of early translations of the
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New Testament that likewise do not contain verses 43 and 44 now it is early there's no question that it was a
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It was known to certain early writers as far as the story goes but Just as the woman taken adultery was a story known to writers before it appears in any manuscript of the
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New Testament This is in the same boat as as that and as such
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Should always be noted But again if you were to ask me well, could you could you base any
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Dogma on these words I would say no you cannot no you cannot You just simply don't have the basis for doing that I'm not sure what dogma you'd want to base on anyways, but it is interesting to me
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That this text is used by my Muslim friends against the deity of Christ Why would it be used against the deity of Christ well because God doesn't need to be strengthened by angels and Not only that my
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Muslim friends have a complete and utter Lack of understanding of what's going on in the
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Garden of Gethsemane They see Jesus Afraid of death and In fact one of the reasons that my my
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Muslim friends would say That the entirety of the New Testament is unreliable is Because Jesus was a mighty prophet of God and a mighty prophet of God Would not do what
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Jesus did He would not cry out from the cross Eloy Eloy Lama suboxonee
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He would not sweat as it were Profusely in the garden and have to have an angel come and strengthen him
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Because as a prophet of God he would have supreme confidence in God and Therefore would not undergo these kinds of things and since Jesus was a prophet of God then
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Luke and Matthew and Mark and John cannot be accurate representations of what actually happened
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Because they contradict the Muslim understanding of what a prophet would do in that context. I Can't tell you how many times
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I've had to deal with this When I a couple years ago when I did that quick trip over to a
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Dublin To do those two debates at Trinity College and University College Yeah, you know
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University College Dublin. Yeah In both debates during the question -answer time a
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Muslim raised Jesus's statement. Eloy Eloy Lama suboxonee. My god. My god. Why have you forsaken me as Objections against what
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I was saying. I love when they do that because now I have a minimum two minutes Maybe three minutes of free time
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To preach the gospel to Muslims. That's great. It's wonderful And I'm just ready to roll with I hope you are too.
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I hope you know what was going on when Jesus said that he was quoting Psalm 22 and You need why do you think
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I read Psalm 22 before the Lord's Supper so often probably will this evening especially after today Because it's a messianic
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Psalm and has it in it ends with the vindication of the servant and Jesus was was not saying that God the
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Father had abandoned him his very next words are in the second person father into your hands I commit my spirit At the very point of his highest obedience
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Jesus isn't saying oh, I've been I know it's I know it preaches real nice But it's not biblical
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It sounds great But believe me if that were a biblical concept the writer of the Hebrews would have picked up on that never did
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Here at his greatest point of obedience what the son does is he he begins one of the songs that the people of Israel should have known and Just as all
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I'd have to say is something along the lines of amazing grace how sweet the sound or for us
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We have you know how sweet and awful is the place doesn't like that which only Reformed Baptists would get and orthodox
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Presbyterians I don't have to finish the whole song to communicate that I want you to think about what this song says
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Well, that's what Jesus is doing a Psalm 22. He is the servant He is fulfilling this and he will be justified.
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He will be vindicated Just as it happens in Psalm 22 And so I get to preach to the
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Muslims at that point But the same time I get to explain to them the fact that the reason
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Jesus is in such agony in The prayer in the
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Garden of Gethsemane is not fear of death It's not fear of death
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Jesus does know what's coming and Jesus makes it very plain that He is going to do the will of the
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Father and that he gives his life freely. He gives his life voluntarily So what is it?
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Why why pray that this cup passed from him? It's not death. I Understand why the
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Muslims don't get it because they don't understand what happened on the cross and sadly They rarely talk with Christians who understand what happened on the cross
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Eve but if we just had a proper theological understanding of the great transaction of 2nd
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Corinthians chapter 5 He made him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him
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That's why The sweat that's why the agony he who knew no sin was made to be sin
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He who had perfect communion with the Father as the sinless Son of God Would bear the brunt of the wrath of God against sin and behalf of his people
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It's not physical death. It's not the beating It's not the the the horror of crucifixion itself
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It's what was going to happen because of that in his taking the place of his people
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That causes this tremendous agony on his part, that's the only explanation there is and it's the only explanation
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New Testament gives to us But the Muslim doesn't understand that the
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Muslim can't understand that and That's why they object to it and unfortunately the mother main reasons that they don't understand otherwise is the vast majority of Christians with whom they've had conversation have a
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Sentimental view of the cross rather than a biblical and theological View of the cross first and foremost sentiment is great and wonderful as long as it's based upon divine truth when it's not
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Frequently gets in the way frequently gets in the way. Yes, sir The reality is every element of Historical evidence we have demonstrates that the
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New Testament was transmitted to us Written by multiple authors at multiple times to multiple audiences
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There was never a single telephone line game to begin with when Paul wrote his epistle to the
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Colossians He said read the letter that's coming from Laodicea you ever read Laodiceans. I guarantee you have
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Colossians 416 It's a book of Ephesians Ephesians was a circular letter meant to be read by all the churches in the
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Lycus River Valley And when that letter would arrive they would make a copy and send the copy on or maybe the original
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But they keep on the point is you have multiple lines of transmission phone line is what's whispered in the ear
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Going through just one line the New Testament was never transmitted in a single line
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What is written on a page is significantly less capable of being twisted than what's whispered in the ear because I may not even understand
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What you said? And since you have multiple lines you'd have to have the same editing going on in each line to change something that's not a possibility and so All the historical evidence demonstrates, and this is one of the main points.
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I make in my new testament reliability presentation is That the multifocality the fact you have multiple authors multiple times multiple audiences
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There was never a time when any of the New Testament text existed in that single phone line game It's just not it's just not how the
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New Testament came to us, so it's a it's a common misunderstanding but it is a misunderstanding I will have to think about bringing my my projector in and Doing the whole thing for you since I've raised these issues, but unfortunately we are completely out of time and have gone a little late, so Let's let's close the time of the word of prayer
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I'm the father we do Thank you for the opportunity and the freedom that we have we thank you that you have Given us such a wealth of information that we might know
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What has happened in the past that we are not dependent upon a particular? Man or group of men to tell us what to believe, but we can examine these things for ourselves
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And yes Lord even at times struggle, but Lord. We thank you for that. We thank you that we can stand firmly upon your truth
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We ask that as we go into worship now you'd open our hearts and our minds make us to understand your truth and to worship