January 31, 2006

from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded

Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the

United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. And good morning. Welcome to The Dividing Line, further evidence of the utter degradation of Western society out fresh today.

Of course, the first thing I heard this morning when you turn on the news was the cowboy love story.

Sorry, that's not what it is, of course, but the story of how you can destroy marriages and lives, but if you use the camera angles just right and the proper music, you can focus people's emotions so that they don't see the devastation of lives all around the central characters.

Got eight Academy Award nods this morning, which proves beyond all shadow of a doubt, especially when you look at all the pictures that were nominated for Best Picture, that Hollywood has no connection whatsoever to the rest of us, to regular old

Americans that are out here. And what an amazing self -congratulatory pat on the back and a fulfillment of Romans Chapter 1, which speaks of the fact that those who know what

God's ordinances are not only encourage others in their sin, but say, come on along, come on, let's all do it together.

Cultural decay is a matter of sin and the heart. What an amazing, amazing story to wake up to this morning, but not overly surprising,

I was queuing up various and sundry clips here and I'm switching from music programs on my computer.

I have finally just absolutely blown a complete fuse and I'm going to be removing the program that I've been using for many years.

I am very much looking forward to the day when I am able to go to the control panel and delete it forever.

When it came on my daughter's computer, her new computer that I got her, it was there and with her great approval,

I really enjoyed one of the first things I did was open up the control panel and deleting it forever in a day from that computer.

But in that process of setting up a new program to take its place,

I ran across, you know, it runs around your entire hard drive, which these days are very, very large hard drives, and grabs everything that's an audio file at all, even if it really isn't something that you'd be interested in listening to while riding or jogging or whatever.

And in the process, it tracked down a little 45 -second clip that I've played in the past many moons ago.

It is a clip from a radio program that took place, as I recall, in either

San Diego or Los Angeles, I think San Diego, Christian radio station,

I think, on the subject of Mormonism. Bill McKeever was the Christian representative and Dr.

Daniel C. Peterson of Brigham Young University was the Mormon participant. And I think this was about four years ago now, if I recall correctly.

And the issue of theosis, the idea of divinization, came up, and if you've read

Is the Mormon My Brother?, you know that there's an entire chapter in there on the subject of what the early church believed in regards to the subject of men becoming gods and so on and so forth.

And so, I don't know, I've played this, we've tried to use it to get

Dr. Peterson to do what he said he'd do here, but the closest we've ever gotten is him having his wife call back and say, no, thank you.

But it's a fascinating little clip. It gives you a real contrast between what people will say and then what they will do.

Since I tracked it down, I thought I'd just start off by reminding us of this little incident from a few years ago on,

I believe, San Diego, LA, Southern California, somewhere, this is what happened.

One thing that was brought up is this idea that the early church fathers believed that men could become gods. You know, Farms has been putting this information out for a long time and it has been responded to on several occasions, probably the most recent was in Richard Ostling's book,

Mormon America, an excellent book on the subject. And he quotes various Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox leaders on this subject and they all agree that the

Mormon position is not at all what the early church fathers believed. James White did an excellent expose of this in his book,

Is the Mormon My Brother? I mean, this has already been responded to and the fact that they keep bringing this up regardless of the fact is just amazing to me.

Well, I would say we keep bringing it up because it's true and I'd be willing to go head to head with any of those people on this issue any day of the week.

The last word there was week. And we've offered for Dr.

Peterson to do that. Evidently, any day of the week does not include Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturday or Sunday, at least whenever we're trying to arrange a debate because as I said, we've attempted any day but today.

That's correct. We have attempted repeatedly, we even sent him this clip, even send him the audio file of this clip so he could hear himself saying it.

Remember, you did say this and all we've been able to get back was a phone call from his wife saying that he was not interested in doing that.

So I ran across that and found that to be rather interesting that that was still still hiding on the old hard drive there.

So anyway, 877 -753 -3341 for those of you who wonder, why haven't you debated some of those folks?

Well, we believe me, we have tried. The folks up in Salt Lake did. We had a series going, but there was very clearly a decision made on the part of the leading

LDS apologists that we are not going to participate in this. We are we are not going to participate in defending our faith in Salt Lake City itself.

Let's do it someplace else, I guess. I don't know. But anyhow, 877 -753 -3341, we're going to continue with some of the other reviews we have been doing and taking your phone calls.

And in fact, the phone lines have already lit up. And let's run up to Colorado and talk to Patrick.

Hi, Patrick. Hey, how are you doing, Dr. White? Doing good. I got a question for you. I'm just finishing up a class on the canon of scripture, and I'm looking at taking another class on the history of the

Bible. I heard you speak on the subject in the Master Series in Christian Thought, Withstand a Reason. And I was wondering, for your professional opinion, the class that I'm looking at taking uses the books of, let's see, the

King James Version debate, A Plea for Realism by D .A. Carson, the Inclusive Language debate,

A Plea for Realism by D .A. Carson, and The Journey from Text to Translations, the Origin and Development of the

Bible by Paul Wagner. And I was wondering, kind of a question on, are these good books to use regarding the history of the

Bible? Is there any points in these that I should keep my ears open for, my eyes open for, to look out for?

And also, do you have any suggestions on books that I should get to supplement these with my study? Well, there's obviously a lot of material on that.

I was under the impression that the Carson book went out of print a long time ago.

I'm a little surprised, unless they just happen to have a big stock of it hanging around.

Basically, my understanding was that when I put my book out on that subject, that since Carson's book had come out in 79, that he had taken it

O .P. out of print because he was more than happy to have somebody else taking all the live ammo, his direction rather than my direction, rather than his direction.

So I was a little surprised that's actually still available. But anyway, fine little book.

It obviously doesn't go into a whole lot of detail because it's only like 120 pages long. But no, obviously there are other perspectives than just D .A.

Carson's. I mean, Carson does a fairly decent job giving both sides of an argument anyway.

And so I don't have a problem there. I am only marginally familiar with the third book you mentioned.

So I really can't give any comment on it. There's lots and lots of excellent stuff.

Unfortunately, a lot of it is focused upon particular aspects, not just overall stuff.

Overall treatments tend to be somewhat basic and surface level. And so issues concerning transmission, that's one issue.

Translations, another issue. And there's lots and lots of stuff being written on that subject right now. Just look at all the stuff that's been generated by the

TNIV debate and and the materials regarding gender inclusivity and boundaries thereof and a lot of others.

All sorts of stuff like that out there depends on the level of the class as to how deeply you want to get into stuff.

You know, I mean, just this morning I posted a blog article that was only,

I don't know, you know, I just realized I probably didn't cut that thing. No, I did cut in half. Never mind.

Also, I started realizing, oh, no, I bet you that thing's taking up the entire front page right now. It's only a few paragraphs long, and yet it took quite some time just to do those few paragraphs because I had to check so much background material.

And, you know, where do you go to get that kind of background material? What are the critical editions of the Greek New Testament?

How can you get hold of them? Where can you track them down? You know, there's all sorts of stuff like that. And in anything that's published today, unfortunately, you really are going to have to be very discerning in finding out where the person's coming from as to their actual view of the nature of Scripture itself.

It is so sadly unusual today to find very many people who have a truly high view of Scripture in regards to what

Scripture really is and its authority. I don't care where you go.

You have to be very, very discerning and you have to listen very carefully and read very carefully as to exactly where someone's coming from and whether what you're reading and your interpretation of it is actually fair.

I mean, it's sometimes we read things into stuff that we shouldn't be reading into. So, you know, are you taking it from the same person who taught the last class?

I'd be interested in what books were used for the canon class. We used Bruce Metzger's The Text of the

New Testament and F .F. Bruce's The Canon of Scripture for the last class

I just did. Yeah, I think I would recommend to you if you get a chance to do so, you know, those books are very good for providing what

I would call a backwards look at the canon, that is looking back at it through history from one perspective.

But I've been very disappointed in the vast majority of books on the subject of the canon because they don't,

I think, do justice to the theological aspect, which since we're talking about,

I mean, you can't discuss the canon without being theological. And yet the vast majority of them are very much historical. It's like, well, this is how the early church looked at it.

Well, the early church, first of all, wasn't a unanimous body of people and they used all sorts of different standards and where'd they get those standards?

And I think that just leads to all sorts of confusion in regards to the canon. Personally, you end up,

I think, either having to embrace some kind of authority for tradition and where does that come from and how does that relate to the ultimate authority of scripture?

And there's all sorts of issues that come up along those lines. I address the issue of the canon in scripture alone, and I try to do so first and foremost from a theological perspective in recognizing the purpose of scripture.

Why does God give scripture? Does scripture even say why God gives scripture?

And if in point of fact it does, then how do we then understand the issue of a process being involved in the recognition of scripture?

And is there a difference between the canon as an artifact of inspiration and the canon as something that you then have to have recognized functionally within the church?

And what effort would God put forward, for example, to make sure that people would be able to know what is scripture and what is not scripture and so on and so forth?

So there's all sorts of issues, I think, that go along that direction. And on an apologetic level,

I think it's very, very important to see that. In fact, I'm going to be speaking on that subject at London Seminary in just a couple of, well actually about two weeks, on the issue of the canon because it's pretty rare to have that kind of presentation made on it.

So yeah, there's all sorts of more in -depth materials that you can obtain.

A lot of them are becoming available electronically if you're really into that kind of thing. You don't want to have shelves full of books.

Libronics and the Libronics library system is coming up with all sorts of stuff like that. But still, last night, to check, for example,

Bart Ehrman's claim that there were multiple manuscripts with a particular variant of John 2028,

I used one computer program, everything else was plain old, get out the books and dig through them and know what you're looking at type of a situation.

And those aren't the most popular books, but they're the ones that really help you out. I had, and this one's a really expensive one,

I had to track down the Ahlin's listing of all the New Testament manuscripts. It's only in German, but still very usable, though German is a good thing to know as well.

And, you know, actually, you'd be amazed at the amount of information you would get just reading and coming to understand and doing a little practice with the preface to both the

UBS fourth and Nessie Ahlin 27th editions of the Greek New Testament. Just reading that, reading

Metzger's introduction to the to the manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, he has a real big, almost tabletop size book that has pictures of the various manuscripts and getting an idea, for example, of the difference between the

Aleph and A and B and the Codex Vesicatabrigensis and why it's so weird and all that kind of stuff can really, really help you out, especially when you start getting in transmissional issues concerning textual variants and things like that.

So all of that is is available. It's out there. It's not the most popular stuff.

You're not going to find it rivaling the prayer of Jabez on the CBA bestsellers list, but it's far better to have on the on the bookshelf these days than anything else.

And so do you have a favorable, favorable opinion on D .A. Carson then?

And yeah, I mean, no one agrees with anybody 100 percent of the time. But, you know, he he's going to give you a lot of he's very careful with his with his facts.

And, you know, in fact, interestingly enough, so is Bart Ehrman. But he's wrong in his conclusions the vast majority of the time.

So one of the great skills that you have to get out of your education is learning to utilize sources written by people that you disagree with.

For example, the the glass glass to Brunner Funk Greek on the other side of the room behind a door.

So I can't see it right now. There's a there's a Greek grammar that Robert Funk edited and translated.

That's Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar. Well, Robert Funk's a fine translator and a fine editor.

You know, I mean, one of the things that scares me is sometimes evangelicals, because they disagree with somebody on something, they won't even won't even look at someone's book because of that.

Well, you have to learn to be discerning. And so, you know, Bart Ehrman is very careful to be accurate in what he states.

It's what he doesn't state that's the problem. And so when you're looking at so much of especially what's written today,

I'm sorry, there's just if it's written today, it's what's missing that you have to fill in with some of the older stuff.

And that's that's where so many people today sort of lose their footing is is in a lack of discernment in having a good, solid foundation.

And so it's very easy to push people off into into odd directions because they don't have a good, solid foundation.

I saw that when I was in when I was in seminary myself, I would see people come in and I thought when they first started attending classes that they had a fairly decent idea of where they were, where they were going and where they were coming from, what they believed.

By the time they graduated, they had a master's of divinity degree in confusion. I mean,

I remember this one particular fellow just sad. He was he was a real nice guy, but he should never have gone to seminary because he was considerably more orthodox and useful when he first started attending classes than by the time he had a master's degree, because by that point, he just threw his hands up in the air.

And it's like, you know, there's so much disagreement, there's so many different perspectives. Who is to really know?

And once you once you lose confidence in the clarity of God's revelation, all you have left is is to start thrashing around looking for various isms and and programs to take up your time because you have really nothing left to say.

You don't have any authority for proclamation. You can't say God has said this. I don't personally know why most liberals are involved in their churches, because it's sort of like religious social clubs don't don't don't really excite me very much.

Don't seem like a place I'd want to be going on a regular basis, put it that way. So, yeah, you got to you got to get that those foundational things taken care of first.

And and when you do so, you can look at D .A. Carson, the guy's brilliant. I don't know how he he has a real knack for seeing what movements are coming before they really hit hit the big time so that, you know, he was pretty early on in the emergent church stuff and pretty early on the new perspective stuff.

And and, you know, sometimes you listen to what he says about something, you know, not sure about the application there.

But normally when it comes to just the factual material, you're going to be able to take the facts. And the key to being a successful student in seminary

Bible college is being able to discern between what is a fact and what is a conclusion drawn from that fact that may not be drawn accurately from the facts that may be ignoring certain aspects that would then change the result of the of the investigation.

So that's, you know, that's why you can use the 10 volume set of Kittles, the

Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, written by a bunch of raving liberal Germans and read three sentences and get two sentences worth of good information out of it.

As long as you recognize the one third of it that is coming from a completely different worldview has nothing to do with the facts.

And it's just misinterpretation of the facts based upon an unbiblical worldview. But the data is still good.

Liberals are good at mining data. Sometimes conservatives aren't. It's a matter of learning how to use that kind of stuff and putting in the into the right the right categories that really, really gets you going.

OK, OK. All right. Appreciate it. All right. Info. All right. Thanks a lot. Bye bye. 877 -753 -3341 is the phone number getting a fair number of phone calls this morning.

And I guess we're going to just do the Bible Answer Man thing here, because whenever Johnny calls, that's what you get is just something out of the blue.

No one knows what Johnny's ever thinking about, do we, Johnny? Not usually. No. And sadly,

I'm not sure that Johnny normally knows what he's thinking. What's up, Johnny? How's it going?

It's going pretty good. Oh, I don't know if you guys found out about this at PRBC, but Pastor Earl Blackburn, his last sermon with us at PRBC last

Sunday. Yeah, yeah. I'm aware of that. Yeah. In fact, we read his letter that he sent out to everybody this past Lord's Day, I guess.

OK, it was it was a very teary eyed night on Sunday and I was because we went to the quarterly over at Riverside and he preached his last sermon at PRBC in the morning and he did the

Sunday school and he preached on the last word of Samuel found in Second Samuel.

I'm sorry, the last words of David in Second Samuel, Chapter 23. And I was listening to a sermon and I enjoyed it.

But he reads from the New King James usually, and I spotted a difference in translation.

I wanted to check into that. I was I looked on the Net Bible, which has like a million footnotes, and I looked at other

American Standard Bible, which is the one I usually use. And I didn't see a footnote of whether or not there was a textual variant there or what the deal is.

But in the New King James, it reads in verse five. It says, although my house is not so with God and Pastor Earl, when he preached on this, he made this as a point of humility.

It was a very pivotal to his sermon. And but I was reading it in the New American Standard Bible.

It actually says truly is not my house. So with God, it's actually a question that it's asking.

I was wondering, do you know what the deal is there? No, I've never looked at it.

But looking at the various translations here, verily, my house is not so with God as ASV for does not my house stand.

So with God, ESV for so shall not mine house be with God.

The Jewish Publication Society, which is normally a decent translation, the Old Testament for is not my house established with God.

New American Standard truly is not my house. So with God, NET, my dynasty is approved by God.

I, I use the NET sometimes in the New Testament, but I do not use its Old Testament. It's it's pretty whacked.

NIV is not my house right with God. New Jerusalem. Yes, my house stands firm with God.

New King James, although my house is not so with God. New Living Translation is not my family.

God has. Is it not my family? God has chosen. That's interesting. Taking house to mean family, of course, and New Revised Standard is not my house like this with God.

So obviously there is a fair, fairly wide variety of understandings of the

Hebrew there. I would have to have my Hebrew text out and look for any variations which are not listed in Bible works.

So I can't tell you. Don't know. I suppose if I had, you know, half an hour to dig through the stuff that I could look for something like that.

But on the fly, there's no way to do so on the air by turning pages and going,

OK, everybody just hold on. We'll play a little music here, you know, type of thing. So I don't know. It seems it seems when

I was talking to my friend, we both started talking about it. We started looking through some translations and such, and it seems that the translations that are that are more modern, you know, post

Dead Sea Scrolls, they tend to have that translation. I'm not sure if I got my names and everything, all the information right.

But to my understanding, the Old Testament that was used by the modern translators is the modern the Masoretic text.

Well, the Masoretic, there's not going to there's almost there's almost no difference whatsoever between the 1525

Blomberg, which is any any Hebrew text is a Masoretic text, basically. OK, so that's that's not going to be an issue there.

There's only like eight differences between the Biblia Hebraica, Stuttgart Tensia and the text was used under the

King James. And it would be the basis of the New King James. So, no, this would this would all be a translational issue as to how to specifically render the text.

It really the differences in modern translations and Old Testament translation are almost always due to allowance for the

Septuagint to have a greater weight in the rendering than it did with the

King James translators. Now, where exactly the New King James comes down on that is is very, very dependent.

OK, since you did that, I'm looking down here at the text and.

Yeah, there's some manuscripts. That's yeah.

OK, there's there's one variant at the beginning of the verse between two different forms that would make a difference as to translation.

So probably if I looked up commentaries on that subject, that would be what they're focusing on.

The Septuagint, the textual variant.

Yeah, there's there's yeah, there's a few that go with that. But that would have to be reflected in the

Septuagint and just glancing the Septuagint here. I don't see that that it is. So I don't know that that's necessarily it.

Part of it is just rendering whether it is not my house with God or is my house not with God.

It's depending on what you're negating and and how that fits fits together. But no, never, never heard a never heard a sermon on the subject, never looked at it and wouldn't wouldn't be able to give any more information on that.

OK, well, I just want to ask you one more thing. Ever since the Bart Ehrman stuff started to come out a little more forward in the press and things like that, have you now considered the possibility of challenging that guy to a debate?

Well, I imagine that's a possibility, but I am booked through the entire year as far as debates are concerned.

So it's not even something that's crossed the mind as far as trying to arrange it. I don't know if he does.

He's doing some little discussion on resurrection here in March or something like that. But, you know, folks, folks throughout debate stuff all the time as if that just happens, you know, just like that.

And you're talking in some situations, you're talking ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars worth of investment.

You're talking many, many, many, many, many, many, many months, hundreds, thousands of hours of man hour material going into it.

And so, you know, people all the time say you need to write a book on this or you need to debate this person. I just I just chuckle because people have no concept of the amount of time and effort that it takes to to do that kind of stuff and to do it right.

So it would have to be in the proper venue. You have to have it properly recorded. You have to have the time ahead of time to do so.

You have to be able to come up with the money to do it right. And so that's that's down the road. And I certainly think that that is something that would be worthwhile.

But exactly what it would be about and the thesis and things like that,

I have no idea. All right. Thank you very much. And God bless. Thanks, John. Bye bye. Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one.

That is an interesting, interesting translational issue does look like there is an age difference.

Verily, my house is not so with God. I'm not sure what that means anyways, to be perfectly honest with you, but that's one that's the rendering of that one.

That's odd. Anyhow, we continue on. And actually, it looks like it's time to take our break.

We'll take a next phone call after that. Maybe get back to some Ahmed Ddot in the second half hour.

Eight, seven, seven, seven, five, three, three, three, four, one. We'll be right back. Do your best and nothing less to be blessed, try to save your soul from death.

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To the dividing line,

I was just looking up some material here. Unfortunately, I hit the button to open up this library and sat here for about three quarters of the commercial period, just waiting for it to open a single program.

I need to kick this computer. Anyways, yeah, this particular translation is,

Truly my house is right with God, for He has given me an everlasting covenant. And yeah, looking at the same thing

I was looking at here. Yep, OK. The translational issue is key low.

This particular commentary says we have taken key low as having a particular force.

Some translators treat the expression as introducing a negative rhetorical question. Is not my house right?

Yea, does not my house. And so that that has some aspect to it there as far as the commentary is concerned, specifically notes.

Looking quickly here. The initial colon of the verse can be understood in more than one way as attested by the versions, both ancient and modern.

We take it as a positive statement with Mettinger, for instance, regards the whole verse as a rhetorical question.

KJV translates that although my house be not so with God, but this seems to be a less satisfactory rendering.

It is just possible the whole verse, they sort of parenthesis since it makes since it seems to separate the royal ideal from its negative counterpart in verses six through seven.

So it is a translational issue. What that generally means is when you're preaching, you want to be aware of the various translations that are being used and especially when it makes a major impact on the rendering of the text itself.

And so you can see where some of the confusion comes from there. Anyways, let's talk with Mike over in the

L .A. area. Hi, Mike. Hey, Dr. White, how are you doing? Doing good. It's your eclectic caller again. Oh, yes, sir.

I want to make two questions and a comment. First comment was I did see the on the cross and debate the light go dim.

You did. Yes. You while you said something like the light still shine in the darkness.

OK, I you know, there was a certain person in channel that that was responsible for that who wanted to know if you could actually see it.

So I appreciate that information. So you can see it. The other question was

Eddie Delcourt asked me to ask you if you still work out. Good grief.

Yes, I would imagine what he means by that is do I still lift weights? Yes, I try to to do that weekly.

But I think what he's referring to is the fact that I'm back on the bike and I'm getting lots and lots of miles and I'm trying, in fact, starting yesterday till a week from today, which is when when we leave a week,

I leave for the UK a week from tomorrow, actually. So a week from today is my last last day of getting much done.

I'm going to try to get 200 miles in starting yesterday through through then, which is a fair distance of riding and a couple of metric centuries in there to to be able to do it.

So, yeah, that's my emphasis right now is on that. And once you once you start riding like that, you become you become an addict again and you start getting really freaked out when you don't get your miles in.

So I could be off the bike for for two weeks in the UK because it's not exactly riding weather in England right now.

Then I'm trying to get a bunch of miles in now so I won't feel completely guilty the whole time over there.

OK, my last question. Yes, sir. I'm also a student at Columbia Evangelical Seminary and someday

I hope to go on to your mentorship so you can start having a headache now. I've been studying the

John 1 1 and Eddie's been trying to help me out with this. And I'm. You got to be careful,

Eddie. He's you know, he's you know, he's got his issues. I was looking at the verb hein.

Hein. Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out, I mean,

I have your books, I have many other books as well. I go into this. I'm just trying to figure out how.

How did you find the meaning? I know Eddie was telling me it's a derivative of me,

I think, I mean, I mean, but I don't I'm looking at a mouthful of books. I'm like, where is this? Well, it's not so much looking up a particular word as it is understanding the meanings that especially exist in the verbal forms of the

Greek language. And that's normally more of a discussion in second year Greek. That would be works like Wallace's second year grammar or or the syntax issues, because that's where you get into the various forms of the words as far as their meaning when they are used in particular contexts.

So, for example, discovering that that ein is the imperfect form of eini, you understand what the imperfect means and the difference between the imperfect form of eini and the aorist, for example, of a genita, both verbs of being.

And then you you look at how that impacts the issue of creation.

If something comes into being at a point of time, the propriety of using the aorist for that over against the imperfect, which refers to ongoing action.

And then in this particular text, the key issue is the relationship of that imperfect form to the term archaic.

What is what is the archaic that is under that is in view here? What is this this beginning? What is the the attempted communication being made here by John in regards to this this logos?

And that's why you look at the three three segments of it in the beginning with the word A and the word is with God B and the word was

God C. And each one of these utilizes that that same verb.

You also notice that John doesn't use that verb of any created thing. He uses the aorist form of of genomi, a genita at that point throughout the prologue down to verse 14, which is where he then switches over and says the word became flesh because the word became flesh a particular point in time.

And so it's it's it's not so much you look around and find a book that says this word means this is more understanding the language and then and then applying it within the context.

You know, we had a Jehovah's Witness fellow who prides himself on his ability to use lexical resources come into our chat channel about two weeks ago.

And one of the things I immediately tried to point out and ask some questions about was these guys will will be able to talk all about every comment that's ever been made about John one one and about the imperfect form of me and all the rest of this stuff.

But take them out of the key Christological passages, take them out of the key apologetics passages into what we might call mundane passages of scripture where someone who's actually teaching the entirety of the word of God regularly would have to be dealing with translation in those contexts in regards to rejoicing always or living a godly life and things like that.

And all of a sudden they're completely clueless. They've never looked at anything regarding these passages.

They can't identify anything in the text because this isn't their little thing.

Well, the problem is obviously in that situation is if you take their their assertions that they make regarding the key

Christological passages and then apply them to those other passages, it ends up turning the other passages into nonsense.

And so as a result, you you see why it's important from my perspective for an apologist to be involved in the regular teaching and preaching the word of God and Toto, not just simply have specific knowledge, those those particular apologetics passages.

And that doesn't mean that there's something wrong in knowing about those things. It's just that especially when it comes to languages, sometimes people will come up with these wild and wacky assertions about what a passage means.

And if if they were actually doing regular translation outside of that context, they would really have to, you know, sort of drop their eyes to the floor when they start making that kind of silly comment, because they would know that if they use that same kind of translational methodology elsewhere, it would turn the entire

New Testament into mush. But unfortunately, that's that's what that's what takes place.

So if you're looking for a singular resource, you're not going to find it.

But if you're if you're looking for the study of syntax, the study, for example, of the imperfect and the various forms of the imperfect, iterative imperfects and and so on and so forth, that's where you're going to get the the the material that then allow you to apply that to an individual passage.

And of course, John 1 is a pretty unique passage in that it's not it's making reference to a unique relationship in a unique context, in a unique time, et cetera, et cetera.

And, you know, that's that's really what you got to be looking at getting is those foundational things, first and foremost.

OK. All righty. Thank you. OK, thanks for coming. God bless. A seven seven seven five three three three four one.

For some reason, Tuesday morning is proving to be a busy morning on the phone lines.

Let's talk to a Michael rather than a Mike. Hi, Michael. Hello. How are you?

I'm doing very well. Good. I have a question about Acts chapter two, verses one through 13.

All right. There's a gentleman in my church that's going to be teaching a series on the charismatic movement and spiritual gifts.

And he was he believes and I don't know what your thoughts are. He he's going to teach that there was really no miracle at Pentecost with the people speaking in unknown languages.

And I was wondering if the people listed in verses nine, 10 and 11, if their languages were limited to Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, or if there really was a miracle where the people did speak in unknown or previously unknown languages.

Oh, well, you know, I've I've heard of that kind of theory before. I don't I don't buy into it for a couple of reasons.

First of all, I think the whole reason for listing all of these various locations, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene and visitors from Rome.

I think the whole reason to make Cretans and Arabians, la la la, is to make the point that this would embrace a very wide variety of languages.

And so when it says we hear them telling in our own tongues, plural, the mighty works of God, this is what amazes them, is that this this message is being made clear to the whole world.

I think the point of Acts two is that the first time the gospel is proclaimed, it is proclaimed in such a way as to make it very, very clear that it is not for Jews only, it is for the entire world.

And in fact, that emphasis just keeps coming up over and over and over and over again, the book of Acts, that it is the gospel message cannot be limited on the basis of genealogy or nationality or anything along those lines.

And I think that's something that is remains important to this day, not that there's anybody trying to say you limit it to Egyptians or to Romans or to Jews or whatever today.

But the idea of saying, well, we have to, in essence, turn people into what we are first before they can then embrace the gospel.

That's where I think we have some problems today, but that's neither here nor there. So, no, I wouldn't I wouldn't buy that.

But but at the same time, I would say that very clearly the miraculous element of it was that these languages were known and that they could communicate.

In other words, I have a hard time with those who then tie this together and say this has something to do with people rambling on in an unknown tongue that accomplishes nothing until someone stands up and gives this alleged interpretation, which is normally nothing more than really basic level repetition of stuff that's already been known.

And it's not at all revelatory or anything like that, which you have in a lot of the charismatic movement today.

So it's not what we see on the channel between 20 and 22 here in Phoenix and the particular broadcasting network.

That's not what's going on here. What's going on here is a miracle. Now, whether the miracle was in the speaking of the individuals or whether it was in the hearing of the individuals,

I don't know. All I know is that they we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.

Now, does that mean each one of the disciples were speaking in a in a different language they did not know?

Or was the was the miraculous translation, quote unquote, taking place in the here?

I don't know. I there's different theories about that. I don't know that you can you can determine that one way or the or the other.

We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. So there is there is that which is taking place.

They're all amazed and perplexed, saying to one other, what does this mean? Well, that that kind of amazement would come either if the apostles were speaking in different tongues or if they were just hearing in different tongues.

I'm not sure they I haven't counted up where there's more than 12 different language groups that are listed there.

Eleven. Judas was gone. But, you know, I don't know. It's interesting.

But others mocking said they're filled with new wine. Were the ones who are mocking not hearing that?

Well, his his perspective is that they were thinking that they were drunk because of what they were saying, the content, not the delivery.

Well, I don't know. I really don't buy that. But I guess what I would what I'm trying to find out, is there any way of knowing what what languages these groups listed were speaking?

Yeah, I don't know. That would be really easy to dig out. I'm not familiar with a encyclopedic listing of the various tongues and dialects that were common in, you know, all of Mesopotamia.

But I mean, that's a huge area right there. You're probably talking six or seven different dialects and tongues there.

I mean, I know someone could make the argument, well, Greek and Greek and Latin had pretty much become, you know, the lingua franca of the day and East, West and so forth.

So that that's all you need to worry about their type of situation, though Latin really wasn't to that level quite yet.

But I just it seems to me that the direct reading of the text indicates there is something miraculous going on.

The very nature of that as to where the miracle is taking place. I don't think this is the concern of Luke to try to mention that, especially if Luke is functioning the way

I think it is functioning. Luke acts as functioning as a documentation on Luke's part of the nature of the

Christian movement. I think it's part of his basically what I call a trial brief.

You'll notice it ends prior to Paul's trial. It goes right up that point and then nothing more.

And I think it's a demonstration on Luke's part of the nature of the Christian message, the fact that it's for all people, that it is not something that Rome needs to be attacking as if it is somehow usurping

Caesar's authority because Christ's kingdom is of a different nature. And this is part and parcel of the proclamation that's made over and over again.

And if that's the case, then it seems to me the best reading of the text. The emphasis on the text is the fact that it is a universal message that is taking place.

We tend to ask questions of the text sometimes that really wasn't intended to answer. And so I understand the people who take that perspective.

It's not necessarily the one I take. But to be honest with you, I spend a lot more of my time on other issues than that particular issue.

I do not claim any high level of expertise in reading on charismatic and anti -charismatic discussions of Acts chapter two.

Just not my not my interest, not my area, a whole lot more heat than light normally comes out of that stuff, to be perfectly honest with you.

And you just got to pick your battles. And so it's I can only give you my my my reading on it, but I can't say and there's this tremendous article over here by such and so talking about this that stuff's probably out there, just not an area that I really invest my time in.

OK, can I ask you a quick question about Bible software? Sure. I know you really promote Bible works. I don't know if you're familiar with Logos or Bible windows or Gramcord.

Well, I got to remember, remember, Logos has become, in essence, Libronics. So Logos sells

Libronics library. And I have I have both Bible works and Libronics on my system.

And I don't have the BiWorks 7 .0. It's not really fully out yet, but I've heard that it's available.

I'll be upgrading to it as soon as I can. But I have the Stuttgart electronic study

Bible in the Libronics format. I've got a lot of Libronics materials. And for quick access of information,

I still find Bible works much faster. And remember, Gramcord is in Bible works. Yeah, it's in BiWorks.

Gramcord's on my palm anymore, for that matter. You can get you can get that on your palm pilot from olivetree .com.

So the only there are I'm not familiar with like there's there's a whole realm of what

I would call less scholarly Bible programs that are probably much more useful to folks who do not have original language needs in their in their

Bible studies. So PC study Bible and things like that. There used to be one.

I've still got an old, old, old version still works amazingly quick verse. I don't know what happened to that. Still very useful if you just want to grab text or compare translations.

But I I don't I haven't kept up on them. And I understand that there is a wonderful Bible program for Mac called

Accordance. But I don't know anything about that because I don't have a Mac. So, in fact, Steve Camp called me yesterday to ask me about downloading

Greek modules for Accordance. And I'm like, I haven't gotten back to him yet to say, dude, wrong computer.

Can't help you there because I don't don't run don't run the Mac. There's someone just mentioned in Channel Esort a free program that's available to there is a lot of stuff out there.

I have just found Bible works to be extremely useful, especially in a situation where I need the original language materials.

I need to do a quick search, for example, of a Greek term in the

New Testament. I need to know every place it was used in the Greek Septuagint. Boom. Less than a second. Just click, click, done.

And that's where Bible works has always had libronics. I've been told by the

Lagos representative who was at a conference I was at in, I think,

December, November, December in Florida, that the next edition of libronics is supposed to be significantly more friendly in its interface.

And allegedly, Bible works seven is more friendly in its interface. I don't know about you, but I just simply get used to a particular interface once I use it long enough.

And if they keep changing stuff, then I got to keep relearning the program all the time. So that's using the complete biblical library.

And I'm kind of disappointed in some areas in the commentary. Right. Well, you see,

Bible works is going to give you much more in the way of grammatical stuff. You can get it in libronics.

I just have not found it as easy to mine the information. It takes a lot more time for me to get the same information out of libronics than I can get out of Bible works much faster.

But libronics offers a much wider variety of materials.

I mean, that was the program. It's funny you mentioned that the program I was trying to bring up during the commercial break to look at a commentary on Second Samuel was libronics.

But I'm running up about a one point seven gigahertz system, two gigs of RAM. And it still took almost the entire commercial break just to load it.

I mean, if you watch the amount of RAM libronics grabs, it's just it's just huge.

And I've had a lot of people, especially if they have less high end systems as far as their processor capacity is concerned, comment on the fact that, man, once you've got libronics running, everything else just just turns into a dog.

And so I've got a good minister friend who had had libronics, was using libronics.

And then he went ahead and got Bible works from us. And he's been very, very pleased because he can keep

Bible works running all the time and his system still works. So, you know, it's a give and take thing.

I've got both of them. And I'm very thankful when I travel to have libronics because I can carry a huge library with me and continue to do writing and research and things like that on my system on the road.

So there's real advantages, you know, to having it. So I'm not not putting it down at all because they're coming out with all sorts of stuff.

Now, this came out of a whole thing of biblical manuscripts that you can look at and check out, you know, variants and stuff like that in it.

They beat Bible works to getting the the textual information, the

Nestle on 27th edition into the text itself. It's it's it's a shame that they did.

So I told the folks at Hermeneutica that does Bible works years ago. I said, I know that I may be weird out here, but you need to get the textual data into Bible works before somebody else does.

Well, they didn't. Somebody else got got to it first. And so I'm sort of stuck between the two programs.

And I use I use both of them. And, you know, that's that's all there is to it. So, you know, you got to look at the two of them and go, what am

I going to be needing it most for? And going from there and if you can have both of them, you know, you're going to be in nirvana.

But they're not they're not cheap. And and Libronics can get the difference, though, is

Libronics can get cheaper. It can get more expensive a whole lot faster than Bible works. Can't let's put it that way, because of all the add on modules that you can be constantly loading in there.

So, you know, one is a Bible program that's trying to be more library like that's

Bible works. The other is a library program that's trying to be more Bible like that's Libronics. They're eventually going to look a whole lot like meat in the middle someplace,

I would imagine. But right now, that's where the emphasis of the two of them really is. OK. All right.

OK, that may have been a whole lot more information than you were actually. No, no, actually, no, because I want the most fastest way to I like doing word studies.

You know, someone says, oh, that what is predestination mean or what is, you know, will mean I like to be able to find out what the actual text.

But always, always keep one thing in mind, even when using like Bible works and like that.

Yes, you can always track down words, but remember something. If Eric Stenson's work on Matthew one twenty five proved anything, words do not exist in isolation from other words.

And sometimes phrases are significant, carry significant meaning and weight to them.

And a lot of the worst preaching I've seen out there is due to the fact that people were using strongs and didn't realize that they were looking at something that's actually a phrase and had a particular meaning in a particular context.

Keep that in mind. That's something always to always to look for. OK. OK. Thanks. Thanks for calling.

God bless. Bye bye. Bye bye. Well, didn't get to a single word of Ahmed Ddot or Bart Ehrman today.

We got the phones going. And that's that's always good because we always get very, very interesting phone calls.

We've got great listeners to the program. Thanks for listening. We're back again Thursday evening here on The Dividing Line.

See you then. God bless. We need to be brought to you by Alpha and Omega Ministries.

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