The Laborers' Podcast- How does the Bible apply to me?

Hello, this is the labors podcast. We're so thankful that you have chosen to watch and join with us tonight. Tonight. We're going to talk about and the Bible and how it makes sense to us and how we can apply it to our lives.

We hope you will join us and participate in this conversation. Once again, I want to thank you for watching. This is the labors podcast. I am with my co labors whom I love and I love to speak about God's word with them with you and have a conversation about Jesus and his word and reach out to our communities together is such a wonderful thing God has done for us.

So, uh, how are you guys doing doing? Well, happy to be here. I'm glad to be with you guys as well. Yeah. Tonight. We're going to talk about the Bible and try to make sense of the Bible in our lives, how it applies to us.

We've got the comments open. So we would love to hear from you. If you have any questions about the Bible, giving critiques about what we're saying, we'd love to hear that. We can pray for you, too, if you'd like for us to do that.

Give us a share, a like heart, all those wonderful things just so that we are able to partner together to reach our community without any further ado. I want to jump in because we've got a whole list of things that we want to get to.

And I want to let these guys talk. And I want to learn from them tonight as well. So. The Bible, we're kind of bringing in from from last week, this is part two. So we're first going to talk about some misconceptions.

And I think these things are relevant. Some of them may be a little deep. Some of the things were a little deep last week, but I think they're also relevant for everyone because a lot of people are on TikTok.

A lot of people are on Facebook. And when you get on those social media sites, you've got folks who really seem to know what they're talking about, but they believe a whole lot different than you do or than I do.

And so it's important for us to take these subjects and study them, know what they are and know what we believe. So kind of carrying over from last week, let's start with you, Tyler. What is the difference or what is different from the other holy books and the Bible?

The Bible's Unique Author and Divine Inspiration

What's the difference? Well, I think the primary difference between the Bible and other holy books is the author. That at the end of the day, this is the only book that is attributed to the God who is.

When we actually read some of the Greek phrasing for how they describe God in this, it doesn't just say God like it's any God that literally reads the God. And so there's a different author between here and any holy book, whatever.

However, we wanted to find a holy book. This is the only book that is written by God for the people of God. And it sits in its own category in that sense.

Amen. I'm going to just go through our guide, guys. And if you want to add anything to any of the other questions, you guys feel free to do that. Claude, the Bible was written by man. Can it be trusted?

Yes, it was. It was written by me. And I believe the numbers are something like 40, 40 different authors over the period of 1500 years, all of which are in different geographic locations. And they all coincide in and testify to the truth of the others statements.

So I would say, yes, it was written by man. And yes, it can be trusted.

This question kind of takes us back to one of the questions we talked about in our last program to help us understand why we can trust the Bible because even though it was written by man. And it takes us back to the inspiration question.

Can you help us understand how inspiration allows us to trust the Bible, even though it was written by man? Are you going to Pastor Jonathan?

Either one, if you want to. I'll defer to Pastor Jonathan on that.

Send me the question one more time. I'm sorry. Going back to, I think it will help us because this question kind of takes us back to last week when we talked about inspiration, inspiration of Scripture.

And so the Bible was written by man. God choose to do it that way. And so some people question, well, how can it be trusted if it was written by man? So we kind of need to pull from that question we had last week to help us understand why we can trust it, even though it was written by man.

So just briefly tell us about the inspiration of Scripture and how that helps us to trust the Bible, even though it was written by man.

Sure. So inspiration of Scripture is the idea that it's God breathed, God sent. And I don't think God expects us to take inspiration by blind faith. It's still faith, of course. And so I'll start there.

It requires faith. There's no question it requires faith, but it's not a blind faith. And so there is so many levels of apologetics and so many levels of textual criticism is what we call it. Now, that doesn't mean we're criticizing, but it means we look deeply at the text.

We look for consistency. We look for for inconsistency. We look for all of those kind of things. And so so is the Bible inspired? Well, Claude gave us some pretty cool statistics with over 40 authors over 1500 years.

And it's amazing over that span of time that all of those authors came to the same conclusion of a one true God. Old Testament comes to the conclusion that there is a Messiah that is prophesied. And New Testament records a man named Jesus that fulfilled every single messianic prophecy.

And so so that in and of itself, if you just study the life of Jesus, if you can show me one messianic prophecy that Jesus did not fulfill, then we'll we'll turn our back on Jesus and say he's no longer a Savior and Lord.

So so first of all, it requires faith. And the reason it requires faith and not a blind faith, but it requires a studied faith, is then one has to admit this is absolutely miraculous that men who never knew each other, never met each other, never spoke to each other, all consistently say the same things and record the same things and point to the same person of Jesus Christ.

And and so the New Testament is the prophecy of Jesus. The Old Testament is the is the is the coming of Christ and the fulfillment of those prophecies. And and all of that has to be inspired by a creator, by a God who inspired men to reveal his plan, his will for the redemption of the earth, for the redemption of mankind.

And so so it that of it itself, just the consistency of. Over thousands of years and then and then on top of that, the preservation of these words over thousands of years. And so so that in itself is inspired.

It has to be inspired. And then this is semantics. It's a play on words because a lot of people are always like, well, that's so that inspired me when I read this, you know. Well, I think God still does some inspiring things, but not in the same way that his scripture.

I think I think that's more of illumination. I'm illuminated to something. I'm motivated. I'm I'm exhilarated. But I believe inspiration in this manner of truth only happened during this time frame. That's where the book of Revelation says there's nothing going to be added or taken away from this.

This is the word of God and it's going to stand forever. So so that's it is a unique, miraculous, God inspired work. And that is the only only possible explanation that 40 authors over 1500 years could all point to the same conclusion with the same result, with the same consistency, with the same doctrine, with the same belief system.

It's it's the only way to explain it is that it was inspired by God and God used men, inspired men to write his words. And it goes back to what we said last week. We call it the word of God because it is God's words that he gave to men to pin down on papyrus or paper or whatever was used at that time.

You know, it was God through men inspired, but it's not men's opinions. That becomes very clear. And I think that's the argument when we ask about the dealing with man. It's a man written book. Well, if that's the case, then there would have been so many inconsistencies, so many fallacies, so many opinions, so many inaccurate things.

I mean, we can't even go around this, around this podcast, around this group right here and come up with the same story if we if we had it, you know, like the old gossip.

So anyways, the gossip game. Yeah. Yeah.

And so so God has done a work to inspire men to write truth. And it is reliable and it is profitable, profitable for every element of life we need. So so that's that's the short answer for it. There's so many other things you could go with inspiration.

But but it's not it's not a blind faith. It's it's it's a it's a studied faith. There is a reason that we believe this, that it's been proven through through textual criticism, through all kind of investigative measures, all those kind of things.

So it's proven itself that it has to be inspired by God is the only explanation that we can have for the survival of of all this and the consistency of it.

That's right. That's right. So, Big John, I want to go with you to the next question, unless you want to defer people come at us and go ahead.

I was thinking if you take that that question, Bible written by man, can it be trusted? And I'm just reading the list in front of me. And then the next one says the Bible has contradictions. And the following says, has it changed every time?

I think that in a lot of ways, these three questions are almost answered in the same in the same manner. I mean, if you think about it, the logical conclusion is if a skeptical person was going to say something to the effect of, well, if the Bible is written by man, it can't be trusted.

And no book can. I mean, I just if you know, there's no alternative, is there? You know, who else is writing them? So then you can't trust a single textbook. You can't trust a single periodical. You can't trust anything.

So, you know, there's a certain amount of, you know, what you call it, I don't know what you call real, real life or real world logic or whatever. But and then the Bible that you've got here, it's not really a question as much as a statement.

But but I suppose that is being asked. There is no contradiction in the Bible. I just say that up front, I will say, and I've shared this with my children before, that there are areas of the Bible that at first glance at times may appear to be contradictory to other areas.

I can think about when Jesus crossed Galilee and there was and I'm forgetting which book says there was a man approached him outside the temple who had a legion of demons in him. And I think it's maybe it's Luke that says to approach him.

But in any case, the fact that the the latter gospel message increases the accuracy doesn't make the former less true. And oftentimes it's a it's a misunderstanding of just basic facts and how you interpret facts that make someone look for a contradiction where one doesn't exist.

This is. I mean, this is true in every single account, from everything from a courtroom to trying to troubleshoot machines. All the facts are out there before you and the way that you approach them may make one seem to disagree with the other.

But their order may be important or something like that. But if you read the Bible. For truth, if you read the Bible to be taught and to learn from the Bible, you'll find it has no contradictions and you'll find that when the it appears that there is an area that doesn't agree, it's your failure to understand the scripture in its entirety that makes it look that way and further investigation will prove out that there isn't one.

And I'm going to probably going to defer to somebody with more Greek and Latin expertise on the how the Bible's changed over time. I don't know if this is a reference to different translations in different languages or if this is a reference to the types of books that were in the Bible.

I don't know that I fully understand what the question is being asked, but I'll yield the rest of the time to Brother Rob.

Hey, can I jump in there real quick with one thing right there? Absolutely. Just John, everything you said is dead on, brother. So this is no contradiction of what you said. I want to give us some terminology to help folks that may deal with this, because this is one of the major things that people want to come against when it comes to believing the Bible.

So there is a difference between contradictions and differences. You said that, but John, I'll take another example. You use the one witness versus two. For example, in John, he records one woman come to the tomb.

Matthew 28 records two women. Mark records three women. So which was it, one, two, or three? Is that a contradiction? And actually, it's no. It's actually just a difference. It's a difference of an eyewitness account during the time of eyewitnesses.

And so actually, an FBI investigation, when they do that and they start taking eyewitnesses' accounts, if they interview three eyewitnesses and all three tell the exact same story, like exact verbatim, word for word, with no differences, then the FBI agent's like, okay, something's amiss here.

There's a lie here because not every eyewitness is going to come up with the exact same story. Unless they're in cahoots. That's right. Unless they somehow stirred the water. They got together. They made their story.

And so now, so actually, it's not a contradiction. It's just a difference with eyewitness accounts. It does nothing to diminish the fact that there were women that came to the tomb of Jesus. There's absolutely nothing to diminish that fact.

But in the moment of these eyewitness accounts, in all three, they came up with a different number. Now, is that a contradiction? No, it's just the difference. Okay. And that's okay. That doesn't refute the truth.

It's just the difference in eyewitness accounts. So I just want to make sure we distinguish that. There's a difference between contradiction and differences. And then the second thing I want to say is, and you said it right, and you may not have meant to say it, but I had this other note here that I wanted to pull up that I thought was really, really good.

So what about apparent contradictions? And John used that word apparent. And see, the thing is this, too. We're still learning. We're still learning of things in the Bible. Okay. We're still, things are still being revealed historically as time goes along.

And so there are apparent contradictions with history. But then the more archaeological things that are discovered, the more things that are revealed to affirm the Bible. So I think there has to be room when, like, for example, Daniel chapter five, verse one.

Okay. In Daniel five one, it says Belshazzar is named the king of Babylon. So this is one that's pretty common. Right. But all of history knows that Nabindus, however you say his name, Nabindus, is actually the king during that time.

Okay. All of history records that. So they're like, see, look, the Bible's historically inaccurate. Well, that was true until an archaeological dig in the Persian verse accounts of Nabius. There's an inscription that describes that Nabindus went away on a long journey.

And during his long journey, he left the kingdom in the hands of his son, Belshazzar. And so that wasn't discovered until recent history. Okay. But now it's affirming Daniel chapter five, verse one, where until that manuscript of the king was found.

Everybody's like, look, historical discrepancy right here. This just proves it.

No, it's an apparent. I want to play devil's advocate for a second. So it's an apparent discrepancy. Okay, go ahead. So now I don't know who watches all these things. I have no idea how you'd know. But if I were say I were a skeptic and I would ask you to explain or define the difference between a difference versus a contradiction.

How would you defend that against a skeptic for two reasons? One, say there's a skeptic watching this and I hope there is somewhere. Or two, even more of a hope I've got is that somebody takes the ammunition that we put out here and they use it to talk to people about Christ.

And it might be a tool they put in their box. So how would you if pressed on it? How would you define the difference between or explain to, you know, Johnny on the street how a difference is not a contradiction?

And go.

Cause got his hand up. Hit it, brother. So very simply, I would go to this link that's going to be added to the show notes. And I would simply say this. I would say there's three things. What you and Jonathan both have just said.

Paradox, mystery and contradiction. Paradox is an apparent contradiction, but not a contradiction. That's a paradox that under close scrutiny yields an answer, a resolution. Number two, a mystery. We hear that talk and talked about a lot in the scriptures.

A mystery is something unknown to us now, but it will be resolved or cleared up. So, for example, if you're talking to somebody that ask about this, the mystery, the paradox, the contradiction. For example, the mystery of Christ was not revealed until the New Testament, but it was revealed in time so that we can know and understand that the mystery that was once hidden was now revealed.

It's the truth that was there that just was uncovered. And last of all, contradictions. If someone says there's contradictions, contradiction, number three, is a violation of the law of non-contradiction.

So if you're talking to somebody that's educated and they want to throw out that word contradiction, you can simply memorize this. Contradiction is a violation of the law of non-contradiction for this reason.

It is impossible to resolve either by mortals or by God, either in this world or the next. A contradiction, in other words, can't truly be resolved without an ultimate truth. And the ultimate truth always points us to the scriptures where we can know the difference between a mystery and a paradox.

Amen. Amen.

Well said. And there are a ton. You may be hearing some things that are new to you. You may be hearing some things that you're saying to yourself, I would like to investigate more. There are a lot of answers out there.

There are some really good apologetic ministries out there. We're going to be posting some of those, and I'm glad Claude mentioned it because I want to go to that next. We're going to be posting those links and resources on our resource page.

I know that James White has helped me a lot. For me personally, Answers in Genesis has helped me a lot. And there's a ton of other apologetic ministries that have lots and lots of answers. There are answers out there, so there's no need to worry or fret.

And speaking of the resources, let me take just a minute. Tyler, I want to go to you next after we look at the resources. So the next question is the Bible is full of myths, and they get a lot of those myths from the ancient Near East.

But before we go to that question, let me show you the website. So you want to go to truthandlove .com. And when you go to truthandlove .com, you'll see the Labors podcast up at the top. It has a scroll-down section, the Labors resources.

You can click on that, then scroll down, and I already have some up for tonight's podcast. Resources, just click on the link, and there's already a ton of resources, and there'll be some added that was already mentioned that you can go and check out and do some more studying on your own.

So we hope this resource guide will be helpful for you. Claude, I think you're good. I've got to give you this. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. Thank you for the resources. All right. I think it was you.

I think we can use some videos maybe from YouTube if it's educational for a certain short period of time. Is that okay? Yeah. All right. So this is a funny one, and it's kind of odd that we don't. We've got some Presbyterians.

We've got some Church of God. We've got some Reformed Baptists. We've got Southern Baptists. But we don't have any Lutherans on here. I don't know what that says of us, but maybe we need to find one.

I'm just trying to get Chris Roseboro on here. Yeah.

Yeah, you have some contact with him. But if you go to YouTube, there's a place called Lutheran Satire, and they do some really good stuff. And I just want to play a short clip of this video. Uh-oh. All right, Patrick.

Exactly. That's modalism. Patrick. It speaks to this next question. If I can bring it up, it speaks to this next question. I've not seen this video. It's fantastic. The Bible is full of myths, and they get it from the Bible borrows religious myths from the ancient Near East cultures.

And so Lutheran Satire kind of tackles that in a funny way. So we'll play this short little clip.

Oh, I love this. Thank you for coming out to our service this morning, and I pray that the rest of this Christmas day is wonderful for each and every one of you.

Not so fast, preacher man. Behold, it is I, Horus, Egyptian God of the sun. And while you all believe that you've been celebrating the birth of your Lord Jesus, you've really been celebrating the birth of me.

For you see, thousands of years before your Jesus was born, I, Horus, was born on December 25th. I, Horus, was born of a virgin. I, Horus, was baptized by a man called Onup the Baptizer, was crucified, and was resurrected three days later.

So you see, your Jesus is nothing more than plagiarized poppycock. And I, Horus, have come to feast upon the sorrow of you foolish Christians.

Yeah, none of the stuff you just said is true. Yes, it is. No, there's no reference in Egyptian mythology to Horus being crucified or resurrected three days later. There's no documentation anywhere for the existence of a figure named Onup the Baptizer.

Horus, his mother, was not a virgin woman, but God's basis. And there is no specific date anywhere tied to the birth of Horus. I'm pretty sure there is. Actually, no. All of these claims and many others indicating that early Christians yoinked the mythology of Horus and stuck it on top of Jesus were all completely made up by Harold Massey, a 19th-century cuckoo-banana-bird self-taught Egyptologist who never provided the slightest shred of evidence for any of these claims and who was laughed out of the room by every serious Egyptologist on the planet.

So if you continue to watch that video, he plays on some more claims that biblical Christianity borrowed from other religions. And it's not just Horus. It's other religions. And then this pastor, of course, knocks down those claims.

So, Tyler, when somebody comes at us and says, you know, the Bible's full of myths, they borrow from other religions that were before them, the flood account, you know, you see that flood account in other religions and Christianity just borrows it.

What do you say to those guys?

Well, if there was a flood that covered the entire earth and killed every living thing, I get the feeling it wouldn't be just the Jews that were talking about it. That's true. The fact that every ancient society literally has a flood myth is not a deal breaker.

The Mesopotamians had a flood myth. The Jews had a flood myth. All of these ancient worlds that we talk about in history class had a flood myth. And while they may have some different points, the basic idea is that the ruling deity brought a flood to cleanse the world for whatever reason they may have.

And so the fact that the Bible says there was a flood and that Mesopotamia says there was a flood is not a contradiction. If anything, it just further affirms what the Bible says about there being a flood because Mesopotamia is gone.

I've now met a whole lot of people that are familiar with the Epic of Gilgamesh, but I have come across a lot of people that are familiar with the Book of Genesis. Because of the one who's authored it, the Book of Genesis has persisted.

But the Epic of Gilgamesh is reserved for the lofty intellectuals as an obscure Mesopotamian text.

I don't know about that. I've read that book, and I wouldn't consider myself a lofty intellectual by no means.

You know what I'm trying to say. I get what you're saying. Genesis is what's persisted, and we can likewise go through some of these other ones. We can talk about the conquest of Jericho because Jericho is a real place.

Jericho was a very prominent city in the ancient Near East. They weren't known for their army, but they were known for their development as a city. And there is an entire passage in the Book of Joshua where Joshua literally curses the city of Jericho.

May their walls never be rebuilt. And we have historical evidence that that did happen, and it did not go well. We have that. We have various other ones. One of my personal favorites is when you have Ken Ham who talks about dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden.

And this is something that we've often heard for millions of years. And then we stumbled upon these records from Alexander the Great who was ancient Greece. And he recounts encountering a dinosaur during his conquest in Asia.

He came across this village that was literally worshipping a giant lizard.

Wow, that's awesome.

This is documented. There are cave paintings in some places in America with dinosaurs. And so it's not really as outlandish as we tend to think. And I guess back to the myths of the ancient Near East.

If they're in other myths, that doesn't necessarily mean that they cease to be true. If anything, it continues to affirm that they are true. Because those stories came from somewhere. They have an original source.

I believe that the Word of God is the original source. Amen.

Claude, I think you requested this next question. If you're ready for it, how do we approach studying a passage of Scripture and discovering its original meaning?

All right. So I did. And simply because I found this to be something that years ago that I learned that was practical. Because I'm, like John said, I too am not a lofty intellectual. But something that I learned, and I did want to share in this tonight with us, is because, or when it comes to studying a passage of Scripture and discovering its original meaning, we need practical application, right?

It's not something that, you know, you can't just hold the Bible to your forehead and by osmosis you learn the truth. I had a geography teacher in high school that when you'd fall asleep on your desk, he would wake you up and ask, are you studying by osmosis?

But the Scriptures are meant for us as Christians to study them, and to draw out the meaning of the text, not to read into, but to draw out the meaning. And so when it comes to studying a passage of Scripture and discovering its original meaning, there's really just a few simple things that all Christians can do.

Number one, read the plain sense of the word, what it says. Don't go into it, you know, trying to assume that you know what's being said. Next, it's not just the plain reading of the text, but it is doing the hard work of digging in and seeing what was going on at that time, asking context questions like, who is speaking?

Who is being spoken to? What is being said? Again, that goes to the plain reading of the text. It's these simple things. What's taking place in this time? What were the cultural practices? What was the principal practices?

These are things that we look at. And then in doing that, we're able to better understand and ascertain, if you'd have it, the meaning of what is written. Because the meaning of what is written isn't going, as we've already been through, the Scriptures aren't going to contradict themselves.

There may be paradoxes and there may be mysteries, but there will never be contradictions. And so, again, to this, I told you I was going to be a little slow tonight, but discovering its original meaning, when we do those things, when we ask those context questions, we read the plain sense, we ask these context questions, and we read before and after.

I know people don't want to hear that. This sounds like somebody might say, this sounds like a whole lot of work. Well, yes, studying the Scripture is, in a term that I can understand, is a terrible, awful amount of work.

It is difficult. It is taxing. Tyler, I think it wasn't Solomon that said it in Ecclesiastes 12, of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness of the flesh. I think that's what he said.

And so it truly is, but you'll find that it is so beneficial to your spiritual health when you just look to the text to read for what it's saying, and then it's like one by one the dominoes begin to fall.

And so when you do run upon these paradoxical sections of Scripture, when you run upon these mysterious sections of Scripture, once you begin to look at Scripture just in its context, it's like Jonathan said it earlier, it's illumination.

It's like you walk around with a light bulb above your head all the time. It's awesome.

And I'm going to say something about that illumination and the experience that I have in my life. The illumination is not just intellectual knowledge. The illumination that goes off in your head, that light bulb that goes off in your head, it's so amazing what the Holy Spirit does in your heart when you're illuminated and you see Jesus from that illumination.

Amen. I mean, I'm talking about exhilaration. I'm talking about joy. It's hard to describe, but when that illumination happens and God is showing you Christ in Scripture. Amen. It's amazing. All right, Pastor Jonathan.

In your opinion, what are the most reliable translations, but yet most reasonable?

Amen. Can I add one thing to what Brother Happy Calvin has said? Absolutely. No, what he described, I'm not going to add anything to what he said as far as praxis. I just wanted to say for our viewers, if you hear the word hermeneutics, that's what he just described.

That's right. So don't be freaked out by someone saying, well, your hermeneutic isn't accurate or whatever. That's just a fancy word of saying your way of arriving at the meaning of the text is not accurate.

And that is important. How we approach to discover the meaning of a text, our hermeneutic is very important. And so thank you, Claude, for helping making that simple. You know what I mean? Because a lot of people try to make it so hard.

But I just want our listeners to know some of those theological terms, too.

It's excellent. Thank you very much. I refrain from using hermeneutic because I had it in my head, but I thought, no, I'm just going to make it plain.

No, it's perfect. It's perfect. And so, you know, we were talking about that last week and making sure that it's digestible. But it doesn't mean we don't throw it out there. And there's that tension there.

So thank you very much. It's excellent. So I have grappled with this question for a lot of years and grew up on the King James Bible, then had a little NIV stint for a little while, you know, after a while.

And when it first came out in my life, and again, we're dating ourselves as we're talking. And, you know, but it became popular. It kind of became a pew Bible in a lot of churches, the NIV Bible. And then I came back to the new King James because I grew up on King James, memorized most of it.

And then I went to seminary and seminarians make you carry an NASB all the time everywhere you go. That's required purchase. And so you get this Bible that's like this thick, you know, and so NASB. And so to give a short answer, where I've arrived, when you look at translations of the Bible, you have a word for word attempt at a translation.

That would be that NASB translation. Matter of fact, some of the NASB is not even good English because it is an attempt at a word for word translation. So you have word for word translation. Then you have like a thought for thought translation.

It's trying to capture the truth, but it's thought for thought. And then you've got even further extreme, a paraphrase. And so so I'm going to take a cop out answer to start with. OK, for a new believer, what is the best translation for you?

The one that you will read. OK, the one that you read. Now, there are bad translations. We discovered that last week. But but as far as a conservative translation, that is a word for word translation or a thought for thought translation.

What is the best one for you? The one that you actually pick up and read and study. And what you'll find is, as big John was talking about last week, what you'll find is you'll probably end up having multiple translations laying across your table because you're really trying to discover the truth of that text.

Yeah. Now, me where I have personally arrived in the last 10 to 12 years. I personally prefer the ESB Bible. And the reason the ESB I prefer personally, this is opinion. OK, this is not doctrine. The reason I personally prefer the ESB Bible is because I do feel like it is a rugged word for word translation.

But it has better readability than the NASB Bible. OK. And so so when we planted our church, that's that's the version of the Bible that that we said, hey, we're going to be preaching from this version.

This is not legalism. We're not elevating this version over another version. But we do believe it has a good word for word translation that that has a higher level of readability than the NASB or other word for word translations.

And so so that's the one that we've we've chosen and the one I've been reading and studying from for for the last several years. But but I still I always have multiple translations across. And then and then if I'm preparing a message or even in my own personal study, I still refer back to original languages as best I can, you know, and best as I can understand to understand those those verbiages.