How We Got the Bible

The Bible today is the object of a great deal of discussion in our nation.

A couple of years ago, then President Reagan had a bill passed in Congress that declared,

I believe it was 1983, to be the year of the Bible. There was a great deal of discussion about the

Bible then. But at the same time, there has never been a period of time in the history of our nation, maybe even the world itself, where there has been more incredibly false information circulating concerning the history, nature, and teaching of the

Bible. Atheists, of course, you would expect, especially the rather militant and radical ones, to be utilizing the newfound methods of information transfer, computers, and laser printers, and all the things that are available to us today, to get their message out that the

Bible is nothing but an ancient book that is full of incredible contradictions, is terribly ugly in its violence and in its immorality, and should be wiped from the remembrance of the

American people. That should not surprise us, but it certainly is going on, and is becoming much more prevalent as time goes by.

And most of us are aware of the fact that in various cultic groups, there is a great deal of falsehood taught about the

Bible, because in a cult group, you are going to have some authority, some person's beliefs being presented as truth from God, and when those beliefs are contradictory to the

Word of God, you've got to do something with the Bible. You've got to get rid of its authority somehow. So whether, for example, in Mormonism, you add other books of Scripture, and then actually teach your people that the

Bible has been mistranslated, and that we don't know what it originally said, and there are missing books and things like this, or whether you go along with the witnesses and have what is in reality a completely higher authority to the

Word of God, that is, the governing body, who can then mistranslate the Word of God into their new world translation and change things, and thereby change the teaching.

We know that this is how it works amongst the cults. But what a lot of Christians are not aware of is how, within our seminaries, all across this land, even those that used to be known as being very conservative, the

Bible is presented as being very little different than any other religious book.

It is a book that came from men, we are taught. It is a book that has the errors and mistakes of men in it, and we must look at it in that way, and must treat it in that way.

We must think of the Bible as being errant in its statements concerning scientific subjects, historical claims, and to have errors in regards to specific places and names of people.

And yet, despite the errors we are told, a religious word speaks through to us, a message gets through to us, and that is the important thing we are told.

Now, many times, Bible -believing Christians who have been raised in churches where this is not the perspective are surprised and even shocked upon encountering someone who has this view of the

Bible. And yet, I would like to tell you that if you believe that the Word of God is

God -breathed, as 2 Timothy 3 .16 says, that it is inerrant, that it is infallible, or any of these other ancient terms, you are in the vast minority, even amongst those who would identify themselves as being part of the

Christian church. Recently, I spoke with a man who is high up in the scholarly field of biblical research and biblical scholarship.

This man is the head of a group called the Jesus Seminars. His name is Dr. Robert Funk.

And here is a man who truly is a scholar of biblical languages and other languages and things like this.

And yet, the idea that the Bible was anything other than just simply a collection of repeatedly edited and changed documents that are not historical, but are mythological in character, the idea that anyone could not believe the

Bible that way was considered to be just archaic and so far behind the times.

No one who is enlightened could possibly believe such foolishness, I was told. And so, if we are going to go out into our world, and we are going to minister to the atheist, or minister to the cultist, or even, yes, minister to those who call themselves

Christians, and yet do not believe that the Word of God is the source of their authority, then we need to do some examination on our own to know why these people believe the ways they do, and to have an answer to give to them.

And so this evening we look at the topic of the Bible. The scripture says, I will bow down toward your holy temple and will praise your name for your love and faithfulness.

For you have exalted above all things your name and your word. Psalm 138.

The Proverbs writer said, Every word of God is flawless. He is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar. Proverbs 30, verses 5 and 6.

The psalmist cried out, Your word, O Yahweh, is eternal. It stands firm in the heavens.

Psalm 119, verse 89. And finally that passage that we know so well,

Isaiah 40, verse 8. The grass withers, the flowers fall, but the word of our

God stands forever. I believe those statements. And I don't believe them with a kind of faith that turns my mind off to the history and text of scripture.

But I believe that the facts concerning the Bible, and where it came from, and how it came to us, and the form that it is in today, line up with the teachings of the

Bible concerning its own nature. So let's look at that. We begin looking somewhat at the nature of the book itself.

We're looking at a book, a single collection of 66 books, written by about 40 different authors over a period of about 1 ,500 years.

Now, on the screen, we are looking at a very broad guess at some of the latest dates for various sections of scripture.

Latest dates. For example, Pentateuch at 1440 BC is approximately the date of the conquest, the exodus and conquest of Canaan.

So I'm obviously assuming mosaic authorship of this material. The material says

Moses wrote it, and I'm assuming that to be true. We'll discuss some of the claims about that later on.

Joshua and Judges follows a period down to around 1000 BC. Psalms and Proverbs cover

David, and periods of time after David, Solomon, go maybe down to 800

BC. And certain of the Psalms may be later than that. There's no question about that.

Certain of the Psalms could be as late as 500 BC. Isaiah's prophecy coming around 700

BC. Jeremiah, probably the latest, about 500.

We know that he is carried away into Egypt in the 580s.

So 500 is actually rather late. It would probably be more like 550, 540, I'd say. Ezekiel around 500 as well.

1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, and then the Minor Prophets ending around 400.

Then you have a period of silence between 400 years before Christ and then the coming of Christ.

Actually, it's over 400 years. You have the Gospels and Acts, I believe, being written prior to the fall of Jerusalem in 70

AD. Depending on a particular piece of manuscript evidence known as 7Q5, a scrap of a

Greek manuscript that was found amongst the Qumran findings, which may be, and I feel it is, but we can't prove beyond question, which may be of the

Gospel of Mark, which if it is, would date that particular manuscript to 50 to 55

AD, which is incredibly early. We may have that earlier date for Mark.

But let's benefit of the doubt, Gospel and the Acts, 70 AD. The Pauline Corpus, that would be the writings of Paul, 64

AD, is one of the best guesses as to when he died, 64 to 68, somewhere around in there.

The general epistles, Hebrews and works like that, 66,

Peter, I'm using sort of Peter as the watchword there because that's about when he died. Then I have a question mark after Revelation because I don't know if Revelation is that late or not.

I like a pre -70 date, but there's a lot to argue for a date around 95. But no matter how you look at it, the

Old Testament is written over a period of about 1 ,100 years and the New Testament only over about 55 years period of time.

So there's obviously a difference there in how long it took to put the two books together.

But here you have a basic breakdown of some of the time periods you're looking at for the writings of the books in our

Bible. Now what about the claim that the Old Testament books were written far later than their claimed authorship could allow?

And what of those scholars who date various New Testament books late in the 2nd century? It is very common, and in fact

I would say at least 80 % of Old Testament scholarship, and I'm taking in the entire spectrum here, in the world today, would deny

Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Now, realize what that means.

The Pentateuch claims to be written by Moses. I mean the Pentateuch itself says these are the words of Moses. But 80 % at least of Old Testament scholarship in the world today would say no, it wasn't written by Moses.

In fact, most of that scholarship would place the final editing and what they would call redaction of that material down around say 500, 600.

A lot of people identify Deuteronomy being written somewhere around the time of Josiah, around 600

B .C. That would be your very common claim. It started with real earnest about 200 years ago.

Before this, it was just utterly unknown. But about 200 years ago, people started toying with this idea and it's now become the prevalent idea, the prevalent teaching.

And the claim of those books to be written actually by Moses is called, well, one of the famous phrases is a pious fraud.

Or as Dr. Gerhard von Rot in his commentary on Deuteronomy in the Westminster commentary series says, a fiction.

It is simply a fiction that Moses wrote these things. Well, what about that? And what about those people who say that 2

Peter is written maybe 150 years A .D.? Or it used to be very common, only 100 years ago, to pick up a book and find where someone would say that John was written as late as 200 or 300 years after Christ.

Of course, archaeology has sort of caused a little bit of havoc with that, as we'll see later, but that certainly was very popular to do.

What about these things? Well, without going into point -by -point refutation,

I would just point out that such claims are based upon preconceived concepts of what the

Bible should be in those scholars' opinions. There is no physical evidence of such later dates, nor for this idea that someone wrote this and used somebody else's name to give it more credence.

Such scholars usually allow a naturalistic philosophy, that is, they approach the Bible as simply being any other religious book.

They don't approach it on the basis that it itself claims for itself. They use a philosophy that is utterly opposed to Christian belief and biblical teaching, and that predominates and therefore determines their conclusions.

When we actually begin to examine the reasons why these claims are made, we find there to be very little or no evidence in support of what these individuals are saying.

Now, with that little bit of a background, let's next move to the next section, which talks about linguistic issues, that is, the languages of the

Bible. I'm going to pass around to those of you here this evening two volumes.

One is called Biblia Hebraica. It is the Old Testament in Hebrew. The other is called

Novum Testamentum Grecki. That is the New Testament in Greek. I just passed them around for your edification.

You get a chance to look at what the script looks like if you're not familiar with it. The Old Testament was written in the

Hebrew language. Now, the Hebrew language is very ancient. It is a very concrete language.

That is, when Hebrew says something, it says something. It's not very flowery.

It's pretty straightforward. It's a verbally oriented language. That is, the language that is based upon verbs primarily.

In fact, your nouns normally come off of a verb. Hence, there's a lot of action involved in it.

Being very ancient, it doesn't have a whole lot of room for a lot of nuances of meaning.

There are 12 chapters in the Old Testament that are written in a very closely related language known as Aramaic.

Same script as the Hebrew language, but a different language, a very closely related language, however.

There are about 12 chapters in the Old Testament written in that language. The New Testament was written in Greek, koine

Greek, koine meaning common. It was simply the common language of the day.

When Alexander the Great conquered the known world, he took with him the Greek culture. The Greek language went with.

Therefore, in that day, most of your people, especially if they're involved in any type of commerce, would have the ability to speak more than one language.

A person in Palestine would probably be able to speak Aramaic or Hebrew. There's a lot of argument over which one it was.

And Greek as well, especially if they're involved in any type of commerce. Your Roman soldier would be able to speak

Latin while in Rome, and also Greek as well. For example, back in the 1930s, we found just a whole stash of papyri not in Alexandria, but in Egypt that had been preserved in the dry climate there.

And a lot of them were letters from Roman soldiers back to their wives back in Italy or Rome, and a lot of them were written in Greek, in the

Greek language. It was simply the common language of the people of the day. And so, the

Koine Greek, the common Greek of the people, was the perfect language in which to write the

New Testament because it would be addressable to everyone. A Galilean fisherman could write a letter to the people at Corinth, if he wished to, and there would be communication.

There would be the ability to communicate because of the language. And so, the New Testament was written in Greek.

Now, what about those who say that we can't read these languages anymore? Believe it or not, there are people who are under the impression,

I have spoken to many of them, that no one knows what these languages said anymore, that we can't read them.

That's just simply untrue. It's just simply untrue. Ask the Greek students amongst us this evening that are taking the

Greek class. You can read Greek. It's just a very painful process of learning how to do it.

You just need to be aware of it. There are people who actually feel that it was a language that no one could read.

Some people believe it was a Holy Spirit language, and it's the only time it ever appeared in the world, and no one else can ever read it.

And how they think we got translations of it, I don't know, but you will encounter viewpoints like that. What about Aramaic originals in the

New Testament? There are those who claim that the New Testament, or sections of the

New Testament, depending on the person to whom you're speaking, were written in Aramaic originally, then translated into Greek.

Now there are some who claim this only for the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and sometimes

John. Some who are really conservative would say just Matthew, because we have some evidence of someone mentioning a

Hebrew version of Matthew. I would not argue forever and a day, or very strenuously, against the possibility of Matthew having produced an

Aramaic or Hebrew copy of his Gospel. The fact is we have none of these.

It would have been utterly illogical to write John. John obviously was not written in Hebrew or Aramaic.

To write to the people at Ephesus in Aramaic would be absolutely silly, because no one there is speaking the language, et cetera, et cetera.

This viewpoint is a very fringe element in scholarship, and in fact you may need to be aware of the fact that there are certain groups that have really altered doctrinal positions on the basis of guesses at what the

Aramaic originally said, assuming that there was an Aramaic original in the first place.

So keep that in mind. There is a small possibility for Matthew, maybe Mark, but it is just that, a very small possibility, and no way of saying that those were the originals or whether there was just maybe two copies made in two different languages.

So, Greek and Hebrew are the languages of the Scripture. Now what about authorship?

Authorship. Many books in the

Bible, you may have noted, or maybe you didn't note, make no claim to specific authorship.

Even some of the prophetic books themselves that claim to be, these are the revelations of such and such a person, do not simply come out and say, and such and such a person is the one who wrote them down.

Then you have other books like, we don't know who the chronicler was, who wrote 1st and 2nd

Chronicles. Was it just one person? Was there a group of people? We simply don't know.

There are other books that do make specific claims concerning authorship.

The Pentateuch, Moses. Certain of the Psalms, David. Obviously in the New Testament it becomes much more clear.

Luke, Acts, Luke. You have Paul and the Pauline Epistles.

Peter and Peter's writing. John and John's writing. But we need to remember that we shouldn't be over -defensive in forcing the issue in saying, well,

Joshua is written by Joshua. Joshua never claims to have been written by Joshua. That doesn't mean it's inaccurate.

That doesn't mean it's not from that time period. It just simply doesn't make, let's not make claims, the Word of God itself doesn't make claims for itself.

I think that's an important thing to remember. Now, we've already mentioned that modern scholarship rejects

Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, moving the date from about 1400 B .C. to about 600

B .C. Even the Pauline authorship of, say, Ephesians and the Pastorals is rejected by a large portion of modern scholars.

Many of your, if you went even into good, solid Christian bookstores and picked up an introduction to the

New Testament today, many of them that you would encounter would present theories that Ephesians was a letter written much later than, say,

Philippians, the others, after Paul's death, simply utilizing his name. And why is this said?

Because the theology presented in it is so advanced it obviously couldn't have come from the early church.

Or what about the Pastorals, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus? Well, this structure of the church did not evolve until much later, we're told, so obviously these letters could not have been written so much later.

Now, if you're thinking with me and you're listening, you hear the basis of those statements. The basis of the statement is a presumed concept of what the early church thought about Christ and believed.

It must have been more basic than Ephesians. We can't really think that these early Christians had this clear a concept of Christ and his work.

They had to think about it. You see what we're getting at now? They couldn't have had the Holy Spirit to teach them, or they couldn't have had

Revelation or anything like that. And Timothy and Titus, well, the church couldn't have existed that way at first.

That had to have evolved over time. You see, the assumption, the background, always is that you don't have anything supernatural going on here.

You've got to explain this in naturalistic terms, and so if we're looking at any just old group of people, we know they start off one way and then eventually evolve into having more structure and higher theology and things like this.

And so, with that thought, these scholars then go back and make these claims.

Is there any physical evidence to support them? No. It is simply a preconceived worldview.

It's a concept that then determines exactly what they say. But I'll tell you something. Unless you're in an extremely conservative seminary or Bible college, if you disagree with that, you might as well try teaching creation science at ASU.

It ain't going to go over too well. Because just as there is a preconceived, and I would say religious commitment to evolutionism among scientists, amongst quote -unquote

New Testament scholars, there is almost just as strong a commitment to these naturalistic theories about how the

Bible came about. So let's keep that in mind. Now, after authorship, we then ask the question, well, who put all this stuff together?

That is, what about the canon of Scripture? The canon of Scripture.

What does canon mean? Canon simply means a rule or a standard.

A rule or a standard. So when we talk about the canon of Scripture, what we are talking about is the listing of the authoritative books.

I mean, these were not the only books written in the world before the 100

A .D. There are obviously a whole lot of other books floating around. So who determined, or how did anyone determine, what books ended up in this collection of books, in the canon list?

That's what the discussion here is. Now, first of all,

I think the primary authority to which we must look here is to the

Lord Jesus Christ. I believe the Lord Jesus will determine for us, if we believe that he is

Lord, if we believe that he is God in human flesh, then we are going to probably take his perspective on the canon as being probably the best.

That might sound rather profound, but it is. Unfortunately, it is something that is missed in the majority of scholarship today.

Jesus looked to the Old Testament Scriptures as the very Word of God, and we'll look at that a little bit later on and discuss the specifics of that.

He accepted the canon that was his at that time there in Palestine, which is the same canon we have today of 39 books of the

Old Testament. We'll see that in a second as well. Now, if that's the case, then let's look back and ask, well, how did the

Old Testament canon come into existence? Well, Josephus tells us that by 200 years before Christ, the

Palestinian canon of 39 books was fixed. No miracles attended that said process, but it was obviously guided by God himself.

In fact, Josephus said in Against Apion, 1 .8, It is true our history hath been written since Artaxerxes, very particularly, but hath not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there hath not been an exact succession of prophets since that time.

And so, Josephus is telling us that there was a period of time that came where the

Jewish forefathers recognized that God was not speaking in the way that he once had.

In fact, in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, we read, Our rabbis taught, since the death of the last prophets,

Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the Holy Spirit of prophetic inspiration departed from Israel, yet they were still able to avail themselves of Bathkol.

Bathkol means a secondary, a divine voice, a secondary rank to prophecy.

God was still with his people, but he was not any longer giving scripture or prophecy. So here, even the

Jewish people themselves say, There is a stop, there is a change. God stopped his revelation at this point.

Now, we don't have any angels coming down with golden indexes saying,

These are the 39 books. We don't have any voices out of the heavens. We don't have any thunderbolts zapping someone who attempts to put book number 40 in.

We don't have any real big meetings of, Let's get everybody together and take a vote. Let's take a poll and publish it in the newspaper.

You don't have any of this happening. And yet, when the Lord Jesus comes, he never has a debate with the people around him, the

Pharisees, the Sadducees that are opposing his work, about what is and what is not scripture. So how did it happen?

God simply led his people. Now, their recognition of a book as scripture did not make it scripture.

I will pound this point. They are simply recognizing the inherent authority that is there because of who wrote the book, ultimately.

I'm going to emphasize that point over and over again. Now, you have these 39 books coming together over a period of approximately 200 years from the writing of the last of them.

Well before that time, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, are viewed as scripture.

Many of the Psalms are already viewed as scripture. They are already together, but they are collected and put together over this period of time by the people of God.

Not in a miraculous, we don't see anything miraculous going on. To the human eye, it looks simply like a process of time.

And yet, it has the stamp of approval of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we will see later on,

Jesus recognizes the work of God in that process.

Now keep that in mind, because if that's how the Old Testament comes into existence, that is, a process over a period of time, not attended with a bunch of miracles and things like that, but God's people simply led by God to recognize

God's words, then maybe that should tell us something about how the

New Testament is going to be formed. In fact, we will discover it is exactly that. What is the process in the

New Testament? Within less than a century, most of the New Testament books were recognized, for example, in the

Muratorian Fragment from the year 186. I believe in the notes that I have provided to you, they include the entire text in translation of the

Muratorian Fragment from the year 186. Now, I'm not going to read all of that, obviously.

But what we see when we look at this is that here we have a list of the books that are authoritative in the year 186 in this particular locale, this particular writer.

Now, there is some question about how it should be translated. At one point, there is the possibility that both of the letters of Peter are referred to, but we just can't tell.

What we do have already at this period of time, and remember, they didn't have fax machines, they didn't have

UPS to deliver copies here, there, and everywhere. We're copying everything by hand right now.

There's going to be a period of time that's going to be taken between a book that is in one particular area becoming popular or another particular area, just simply from the time it takes to copy books and transport them and things like this.

In 186, we have the four Gospels, Acts, the 13 Pauline letters, which began to circulate as one body extremely early.

In fact, I would say that the first elements of this are recognized in 2

Peter. That's how early, in my opinion, that took place. The 13 Pauline letters, Jude, 1 and 2

John, and the Revelation, leaving Hebrews and possibly both letters of Paul, depending on how we translate it, as well as James outside the list.

That is, three books not recognized this early.

That's all. Now, if we think about the entire canon of Scripture, what does that mean?

Well, that means by the end of the 2nd century, at least in this locale, of our

Bible, have you ever noticed, ever taken your Bible and just taken the number of pages that is Old Testament and compared it with the number of pages that is

New Testament? Ever notice something fascinating? Three quarters of your Bible is

Old Testament. How many of us spend three quarters of our time in the Old Testament reading the

Old Testament? Please don't put your hands up. Thank you. Obviously, Old Testament canon, no question.

Gospels and Acts is another 15%. The Pauline Corpus, 7%. 97 % of your entire

Bible is already done and closed.

I mean, there's no argument going on over these things anymore. You're talking about 3 % where there's any argument amongst people right now.

Now, we'll see the relevance of that in just a few moments. Now, the recognition of the authority of the books is passive.

That is, the books have authority because of their authorship, not because they're placed in a canon list.

The church does not give authority to the Word of God. The Word of God has authority because God is the author of the

Word of God in the final sense. He is the source. And the early church fathers, for example, who write concerning this issue, never give us an inkling of an idea that by their recognizing these works of Scripture, they somehow had some authority they were giving to these books.

They never had that idea. And yet today we are told, for example, by Roman Catholics, that the church, the

Roman Catholic Church, canonized the Scripture and gave authority to the

Scripture by recognizing the Scripture in the canon. And that simply is untrue.

That is not what happened. Besides that, the Roman Catholic Church, as we know it today, is nowhere on the scene anywhere near 186.

In fact, you don't have the first person claiming the name of Pope in Rome until 607.

A .D. 607. That's a long ways down the road, folks. So, what were some of the tests utilized by the

New Testament church? Because there are other books that were running around. In the 2nd century, everybody starts writing all sorts of neat and wonderful books.

The Gnostic Gospels, for example, are just wonderful collections of stories about Jesus' youth and things that the real

Scriptures didn't tell us about. Well, somebody decided, well, I want to fill in the gaps.

And so we have stories about how Jesus, when he was a little child, would make clay pigeons and then make them come alive and they'd fly away.

Or when he'd be playing a game with his friends and they'd break the rules, he'd strike them dead. You know, all sorts of weird and wacky things like this appearing in the 2nd century.

The church rejected those. Why? Well, because they didn't pass the tests that were utilized.

For example, apostolic authority. Did an apostle or someone associated with the apostles write this work?

Someone who was close to the Lord Jesus Christ? What about antiquity? That's the main reason the

Gnostic Gospels got zapped right off the bat was because it was recognized that, hey, these were just recently written.

We remember who wrote this one. Remember that guy? Oh yeah, sure. They did not go back to that period of time when the apostles were alive.

Orthodoxy. Is it consistent? Is it consistent with the Old Testament? We have the

Old Testament on the authority of Jesus Christ. Does this contradict God's revelation? Is it orthodox?

Does it teach the correct thing? Inspiration. Does it speak with authority? Does it speak from the

Spirit of God? And acceptance by the churches. That is, is this something that churches have accepted as Scripture for a long period of time?

Or is this some new thing that was only accepted in one little corner of the area? So these were the tests that were utilized, and I am glad that the

New Testament church took seriously the issue of recognizing

God's work in Scripture. Can you imagine where we'd be if they didn't? Now, please, don't second guess me.

I recognize that God was behind this whole thing, and God made sure that this happened.

But we can look at these other books, and they're available. You can find the other books here, there, and everywhere that are still from that time period that people wrote.

And if you read them, you will recognize very quickly the spuriousness of them. They are so utterly different from what we have in our

New Testament. Now, what about the claim that a bunch of men got together one day and voted on what books would and what books would not be in the

Bible? I cannot tell you how many times I've heard that. I've heard it from atheists.

I've heard it from Mormons. I've heard it from agnostics. I've heard it from every perspective you can think of.

Well, what happened is the Council of Nicaea, I remember one atheist on the radio said,

Well, what happened to the Council of Nicaea? Nothing happened to the Council of Nicaea. Not about that, anyways. A bunch of old men got together one day, and they took a vote.

And if you got enough votes, then it got in. And if it didn't, then it didn't. That simply is utterly untrue.

The books of the Bible were recognized over a period of time by God's people. Their recognition did not make them authoritative.

They were authoritative by virtue of their authorship. No one man or group of men determined the canon.

Besides, as we've already seen, 90 % of the entire Bible was already decided upon long before there were any councils or any church hierarchy to get together and make these decisions and enforce any decisions on anybody else.

But, we then ask the question, what about the Apocrypha? What about the

Apocrypha? The Apocrypha is a collection of books that is found in the

Roman Catholic canon in the Old Testament. It varies in number depending upon whose list you're counting, and whether they're counting the additions to, for example,

Daniel as being a separate book from books that were just simply completely separate from any other

Old Testament book. But they are a section of books that you will find in the Roman Catholic canon that are written during the intertestamental period.

That is, between 400 BC and the time of Christ. They are predominantly historical in nature with a good dosage of theology thrown in.

Well, what about the Apocrypha? Well, the Apocrypha books were not recognized as being authoritative by the

Palestinian Jews at any time. None of the New Testament writers quote from these books using the introduction,

It is written, or the Scriptures say. They were accepted in North Africa, Egypt, and in North Africa, primarily due to the influence of the

Septuagint. The Septuagint. What is the Septuagint? The Septuagint, frequently abbreviated

LXX, which means 70, is the Greek translation of the

Old Testament, translated about 250 years before Christ. There was a large contingent of Jews in Egypt.

And the longer you are away from the homeland, the harder it gets to speak the language of the homeland when you are amongst people who speak a different language.

And so, to make the Scriptures available to people who did not read Hebrew, and, we surmise, also to make it available to Hebrews who were no longer reading

Hebrew, the Septuagint translation was made. The Septuagint translation contained not only the 39 books of the

Palestinian canon, but the Septuagint translation also contained the books that we identify as the

Apocrypha. This is outside of Palestine. This is down in Egypt, North Africa.

Now, since the Septuagint became the

Bible of the Christians in North Africa, the

Old Testament, but it was in Greek, since that became their Bible, the one they were most used to, and it had the

Apocrypha in it, that is why there were early Christians who accepted the Apocryphal books as being canonical.

Now, you will notice, for example, that Augustine of Hippo, which is down here in North Africa, accepted the

Apocryphal books as being Scripture. But Jerome, who is the author -translator of the

Latin Vulgate translation, didn't. Why?

Because he traveled, actually, to Bethlehem, to Palestine, and learned

Hebrew from the Jews, and in so doing discovered that the Jews had never accepted these books as being

Scripture. And when he looked into the historical aspects, he said, we shouldn't have either, and did not accept them, and did not want to translate them and put them in the

Vulgate, but was overruled and was told to put them in the

Vulgate and did. They were the last things he translated and put them in right at the end. And so they went into the

Latin Vulgate and sort of into a canonical limbo, you might say.

There wasn't a real firm decree that said these were Scriptural books until many, many years later when something called the

Protestant Reformation takes place. And the Lutherans and the

Reformed are running around and they utterly reject the apocryphal books. They go, hey, the apostles didn't think they were

Scripture. Jesus didn't think they were Scripture. The Jews didn't think they were Scripture. So we don't think they're

Scripture either. And in response to the

Protestant Reformation and the Protestant canon of Scripture, which was the same canon that we found in Palestine, the

Roman Catholic Council of Trent makes a direct decree in regards to the canonicity of the apocryphal books and makes sure that all the good -faith

Roman Catholics know they're Scripture. Those Protestants don't know what they're talking about. Okay?

Now, what about the fact that the Bible mentions other books that are not a part of the canon?

Did you know that? The Bible mentions other books. For example, the book of Jasher is mentioned in Numbers 21 -14,

Joshua 10 -13, and 2 Samuel 1 -18. The annals of Solomon is mentioned in 1

Kings 11 -41. The annals of King David in 1 Chronicles 27 -24.

And if you have ever spoken with LDS individuals, you will hear these things come up.

Well, the Bible's missing books because the Bible even mentions the books that it's missing. What about the book of Jasher?

Okay? Well, how do you handle this? Well, please remember that just mentioning a book does not mean that book is supposed to be in the canon of Scripture.

Each of the books mentioned are historical or political records, primarily. So are the newspapers of the day.

Nothing tells us that these books were seen as Scripture by any of the biblical writers.

Not only this, the Chronicles of the King of Persia mentioned in Esther 2 -23 and 10 -2 are meant to be in the canon of Scripture just simply because the

Bible mentions they existed. Probably not. Probably not. Finally, could the canon be open with more revelation to be added later on?

Now that is primarily a theological question. A theological question to which only

I can give a theological answer. Turn with me to 2 Peter 1 -3.

2 Peter 1 -3. 2

Peter 1 -3. Seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence, this beginning of the book of 2

Peter, speaks of grace and peace being multiplied to us in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our

Lord. This grace and peace is multiplied in the fact that He has, by His divine power, granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness.

Now I ask the question, is there something missing in Scripture that is necessary for life and godliness?

Could Peter say these things if there was a lack or a deficiency that needed to be made up?

But that is not all. Look at Jude 3. Jude 3.

I am reading from the New American Stair this evening, so it's sort of a translation, sort of hits in the middle.

So if you've got the NIV or you've got the King James, the NAS, it could be pretty close in the middle between the two of them. Jude 3.

Beloved while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.

Once for all delivered to the saints. In fact, a literal reading would be the once for all delivered to the saints faith.

Okay? Now what is that faith? What is the content of that faith? Is there something that the

Scriptures don't tell us about that faith? I don't believe so. Hebrews chapter 1.

Just throwing these out for your consideration. Hebrews chapter 1. God after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his

Son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom also he made the world. Now the point of that being that God's way before to speak to his people was through prophets.

But now a final and complete revelation has come in the person of Jesus Christ.

And they say, but wait a minute, you've got Paul's writings and you've got Peter's writings and you've got Hebrew coming after Jesus. Yes, but what is the content of their revelation?

The content of their discussion and their revelation is Jesus Christ. And if there was to be anything more, it would be about Jesus Christ and him only because he's the final revelation.

Nothing other than that. And I then have to ask the question, could there be anything more than what has been revealed?

Why would God wait? This is the church. These are what the

Bible calls the end times. And we saw how swiftly God put together that final revelation over a period of maybe 55 years whereas 1100 years passed in putting the

Old Testament together. Everything that has ever been offered as being a continuation or addition to the canon of Scripture has always failed the tests that the early church utilized.

Everything man has ever come up with to attempt to add to the canon of Scripture has always taught something contradictory to what was already there.

That's always what has happened. Now, with that discussion of the canon of the

Scripture, we must move on to ask yet another question. Okay?

Let's say God was active in leading his church and his people in recognizing his word.

How do I know that what I have today in my

Bible is what existed back then? And that is the subject known as textual criticism.

Now, I know there's an automatic negative response to the word criticism. How dare you think you can criticize the

Bible? Or you can put yourself up as judge over the Bible. But that's not what textual criticism is.

Textual criticism is simply an examination of the text of Scripture in the continuing effort to arrive at the original reading, the original writing that was there.

For example, the Old Testament. Up until the discovery of the

Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest sample of the Old Testament came from approximately 900 years after Christ.

Now you figure out how long that is just for the last of the prophets, Malachi. 1 ,300 years after Malachi was written.

And if you figure for the Pentateuch, you're looking at 2 ,300 years. Two and a half millennia.

Then the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, with the majority of the

Old Testament being attested in those scrolls, going back to 100 years before Christ.

A 1 ,000 year jump back. Golden opportunity, is it not, to examine changes?

I mean, if people are going to tell us that, well, it must have changed a lot over 1 ,000 years, right? Well, here's a golden opportunity to find out whether it did or it didn't.

And if you know the story, for example, the book of Isaiah, the

Isaiah scroll from Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls, exhibits no changes over 1 ,000 years.

Why? Well, primarily due to a group of fact fanatics, known as the

Mazarites. The Mazarites were a group of men who loved

God's Word. They weren't Christian, but they loved the Old Testament.

And they designed an intricate system to guarantee that the text of the

Old Testament would be transmitted without corruption. In fact, what they did is they counted all the letters in the

Old Testament. They would know what letter was supposed to be in the middle of the page.

And if you were copying a manuscript and you got to the middle of the page and that's not the letter you were on, you started all over again.

They knew what column you should end on at the end of a book. It's hard to change a text when you do things like that.

And so from the time of Christ until today, we know that the text of the

Old Testament has remained unchanged. What you see, for example, on the screen right now is a modern

Hebrew text. Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia. This is Isaiah 43, verses 1 -14.

But this is taken almost directly from a Mazaritic text from about the 14th century, which we know is the same text that we have found in the

Dead Sea Scrolls. And so this was taken from the

Hebrew text that was passed around earlier this evening that you looked at. The Mazarites.

We thank them very much. We also, of course, have the text of the

Septuagint as well as a second witness to the Old Testament. But what about the New Testament? The New Testament was first written on a material called papyri.

Papyri is a paper -like substance made from pressing reeds together.

It is great for writing, but it's lousy for lasting for long periods of time.

The only papyri that we have today is primarily from very dry climates.

Papyri would not last long in Pennsylvania, for example, if you've ever been to Pennsylvania. Very humid, very wet.

Papyri doesn't last long there. Papyri would do real well out here, except for the last couple of weeks.

Now, many of our papyri copies date within a generation or two of the originals.

Generation as in copy or two of the originals. We do not have any originals. If we did, you can guarantee there would be a shrine someplace and everybody would be walking on their knees up to the shrine, bowing down, kissing it, and engaging in all sorts of idolatry.

We do not have the originals, but we do, for example, have what you're looking at right now.

P66. P66. Papyri 66. It should be written like that, the 66 being a superscript.

P66, P75, the date from about the year 200. Now, realize what that means.

Realize what that means. The closest ancient works, I believe, is from Homer.

And the earliest copy that we have of Homer is 900 years after the original is written.

Nine centuries. Now, P66 here,

P66 being of the Gospel of John, is say from the year 200.

Now, if we do date John at A .D. 95, what's the time period between what you are looking at right now in which if you turn in this

Greek text that I passed around earlier to John chapter 11 beginning in verse 31 and follow this along with the modern text that you can buy for $15 at your local

Christian bookstore, you would find they say the same thing. And yet this was written 1 ,700 years ago, nearly two millennia ago.

Well, what's the time period then? 105 years. One century. One -ninth the time of the closest ancient document.

One -ninth the period of time. So P66, P75 are written on papyri, and they are extremely important witnesses to the

New Testament text. From the 4th century on, they're written on vellum.

Sheepskin, basically. Animal skin. It didn't have to be sheepskin. It could be donkey or whatever else, but it would be sort of a leather -type product.

Vellum. Now, originally they're written in what's known as maguscule or unseal script.

Please note, for example, all these are capital letters, no spaces between words, and no punctuation.

No spaces, no punctuation, all capital letters. Okay? That's called an unseal text.

Up until about the 8th or 9th century, when we have minuscule texts, that is, and I'll show you a minuscule text in just a moment, large letters and small letters, spaces between words, and the introduction of punctuation.

There are approximately 5 ,000 Greek manuscripts of sections of the

New Testament in existence today. About another 20 ,000 manuscripts in other languages.

Latin, Ethiopic, Boheric translations of the

New Testament. Now, some papyri of John, the Gospel of John, may be first or second generation copies.

For example, you are about to see, if we don't accept the manuscript

I mentioned to you earlier, the little scrap, 7q5, if we don't accept that as the earliest

New Testament manuscript, the one of Mark, this then is. This is P52. It is not a fighter aircraft.

P52, papyri 52. All it is, is a scrap of the

Gospel of John. John 18, verses 31 -34, and on this side, this is the same piece, this is just the back side of it.

This is John 18, verses 31 -34, this is 37 -38. Not even all those.

But this dates probably from the year 125. 125. Now, if we do date

John late, we are talking 30 years. We are talking strong possibility.

Copy first hand from original, or maybe second. Incredibly early.

Incredibly early. Scholars who study works like Homer and other things like that, look at New Testament scholars and go, what are you guys griping about?

I mean, they don't have a small percentage of material to work from that we do.

That we do. In fact, we today, if we just simply invest in something like this and do a little learning, can have access to all this information right in our own little hands.

Let me give you some further examples. There is an entire collection of Paul's writings, just the

Pauline corpus, known as P46. Here it is. This is the end of Romans, Romans chapter 16, verse 23, up here at the top.

And then this reads, Pras Hebraeus, to the Hebrews. Hebrews came right after Romans in P46.

What does that tell you that the writer of P46 thought of the book of Hebrews? Who wrote it? For him,

Paul did. He felt it was Pauline. Now, I could sit here with my

Greek text, my Nestle's Greek text, and follow along with this that was written 1700, almost 1800 years ago.

It will say the exact same thing all along. In fact, see this little word that is written above the line here?

That's another word, hymon. It's been written in at a later time. Somebody added it in.

And my Greek text, in a footnote, tells me that. I didn't even have to see that.

Just in the Greek text I'm holding, it will tell me. By the way, P46 puts the word hymon in here, but it's by a corrector.

That kind of information is available to all of us. From thousands of manuscripts. Thousands of them.

This is P46. Very important when you get into Paul's writings. But obviously, we don't have a whole lot of papyri, because papyri doesn't last long.

So, around the 4th century, that would be around the year 300, during the 4th century, between 300 and 399, you have the creation of the great codexes.

One of those, a lot of you may have heard of, is called Codex Sinaiticus. Codex Sinaiticus.

That's what it looked like. Still an unsealed text. All capital letters. No room between words.

Nothing. Actually, what you have here is probably sentence breaks. That's the first indication of things like that.

You have a few corrections written in here. This is Codex Sinaiticus. I very quickly just mentioned to you that the story of the finding of this manuscript is fascinating.

Absolutely fascinating. For a long time, this was the earliest text of the

New Testament that we had by far. This dates from, let's say about 350.

For a long time, this was the earliest one that we had before the papyri were discovered. The discovery of it is a fascinating tale.

It really is. Codex Sinaiticus. You will run into it a great deal in your studies if you begin to get into the text.

Another of the great unsealed texts, Codex Vaticanus. This is 2

Thessalonians 3 verses 11 -18 followed by Hebrews 1 -2.

Again, it is a normal unsealed text, but you notice it's a whole lot easier to read.

The letters are much clearer. You can still see the prosse bryus up here, a little more ornate here at the beginning.

Also coming from the same time as Sinaiticus. And the third of the big three, big three unsealed texts,

Codex Alexandrinus. This is Mark chapter 9 verses 2 -29. Mark 9, 2 -29.

All unsealed texts written on vellum, all dating from the 4th century.

Alexandrinus is considered to be later than Sinaiticus and Vaticanus by maybe 50 -100 years at the outside.

I said I would show you the difference between an unsealed text and a minuscule text. Well, here's a minuscule text.

You can see here that we're no longer dealing simply in capital letters, but we're now using smaller letters.

We're breaking up between words, starting to put some punctuation here, there, and everywhere.

This is a minuscule text. This one is minuscule text number 623. It dates from A .D.

1037. That's Jude verses 3 -25. Now, with all this material, you'd go, well, now it sounds like you're saying that we've got the whole thing just sewn up here.

What's the whole issue of textual criticism? Well, I think it is important that we recognize the truth of the situation that faces us so that we can have a firm faith in why we do believe that we know what was originally written.

There is a pie -in -the -sky mentality amongst a lot of Christians that says, don't tell me about the problems. I don't want to know about those.

But no two of these 5 ,000 manuscripts is letter for letter, word for word, identical to any other one.

I mean, if we all sat down right now and I photocopied off a couple of chapters of the

Gospel of John, and we all scattered abroad this building with a pen and paper and copy, hand copied, the very same thing and brought them all back, would every single one of our handwritten copies be identical to everybody else's?

You know it. Would not. I can give you incredibly good examples just recently of where I have messed up doing this kind of thing.

I took a Hebrew final recently and when I got it back,

I had missed a bunch of points on a translation and the professor circled where I had skipped from one word on this line down to the same word on the next line and lost the whole sentence in between.

So I didn't translate it because I skipped it. It was just an error of sight. I made a mistake. Well, if I can do that while translating, you can certainly do it while copying.

And so we look at these 5 ,000 manuscripts and we realize that we need to engage in some examination of these manuscripts to determine the original reading.

So what are some of the kinds of errors that have been made? First, we'll look at these and then discuss how it is that we can know that we have the original text.

Let's look first, I believe it is on your handout, at 1

Timothy 3. Verse 16.

Does anyone have a King James version of the Bible? And does anyone have a New American Standard version of the

Bible? Could you read the King James version of 1

Timothy 3 .16? 1 Timothy 3 .16.

And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the nations, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

New American Standard, Henry? And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness.

He who is revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, take nothing more.

Anyone notice any difference between the two? You should have. The King James reads,

God was manifested in the flesh. The New American Standard reads,

He who, right? He who was manifested in the flesh. You say, well wait a minute, that's a pretty big difference.

Well, let's look at how big the difference actually is. The word that you see here, in this

Greek text, is the word hos, which means he who. Okay, there's hos. This is the

Greek word for God. Now, remember

I told you that, what were they originally written in? Were they originally written in a small text, or in the unsealed text?

In the unsealed text. Now in the unsealed text, hos would be written like this, and the word for God, what was known as a nomina sacra, and that means it was contracted down, it was a sacred name, and it would be contracted down when it was written.

And guess what it would be written as? That's theta sigma with a line over top.

Now, you're reading somebody else's handwriting. Can you mix those two up?

It's written on papyri. Papyri will have lines in it. Can you mix those two up?

You sure can. Now, the evidence for God is very strong.

In fact, I can tell you that the evidence for God is listed in this Greek text, is the corrected version of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Codex Beze, D, Psi, the majority of Greek manuscripts, and even the

Vulgate. So it's got a very strong backing to it.

But it's very easy to see how the difference came about because the two words are written so very much alike.

There are other examples I've given to you. In 1 John 3, verse 1, the

King James does not have the phrase, and we are. It talks about, see what great a love God has given us that we might be called the sons of God, and we are, is what the

New American Standard says. The King James doesn't have that last phrase, and we are. The reason is, something called homoiteleuton, similar endings.

The word right before that phrase, and we are, ends with the exact same letters as the last word in the phrase, and we are.

And somebody, somewhere along the line, did the same thing that I did on my Hebrew text. I looked up, and I got the ending of the wrong word, and I missed what was in between.

They did too, and hence those who copied off their manuscripts did the same thing. In Romans 5, verse 1, there is a difference only between two letters, an omicron and an omega.

But the difference is, some translations say, we should have peace with God, therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God.

And other translations say, we have peace with God. And those of you who know Greek know that that is the difference between indicative and subjunctive.

That is all it is. Now, I have given you somewhat of a humorous example from Codex 109.

Codex 109. Let me read this to you. What is perhaps the most atrocious of all scribal blunders is contained in the 14th century

Codex 109. This manuscript of the four Gospels was transcribed from a copy which must have had

Luke's genealogy of Jesus in two columns of 28 lines to the column. In other words, you have a scribe and he is copying a text and it has the genealogy of Jesus.

Here is the page it is on. It has two columns like this. Each column having 28 lines.

You are supposed to read down here and read down here. Instead of transcribing the text by following the columns in succession, the scribe of 109 copied the genealogy by following the lines across the two columns.

So he went straight across like this instead of going down the column. As a result, not only has almost everyone made the son of the wrong father, but because the names apparently did not fill the last column of the exemplar, the original, the name of God now stands within the list instead of at its close.

In this manuscript, God is actually said to have been the son of Aram. The source of the whole race is not

God, but Pharaoh. So this scribe blew it. But we see that.

It does not affect the text of the genealogy in Luke. It is obvious. You look at it and you get a good laugh out of it and say, this guy had a long day.

He had a fight with his wife before he came to work. You do not know what happened to the poor guy. It was dark that day.

His candle blew out in the middle. He did not know what he was doing. Who knows what could have happened to him. What are some of the reasons there were scribal errors?

There are errors of hearing. A very common one in the New Testament is between homone and haemone is how we would pronounce it today.

But our pronunciation of Greek is artificial. Back then, as far as we know, these two words, one of which means of you and the other one which means of us, would have both been pronounced the same way.

For example, we would say haemine and homine. They would just say haemine. Let's say you were in what was called a scriptorium where you had a person reading the text up front and then you have five or six people copying it.

That eventually started happening after you no longer got your head chopped off for having one of these manuscripts around. Well, what if you just were not really listening all that close and you were not following the context?

You could obviously write down one or the other in the place of what actually should have been there. So errors of hearing were common.

Errors of sight. You see, in one manuscript we know of, the same word ended on the end of two lines.

And there's an entire verse missing from one of the manuscripts because they went to here and jumped down to here and continued on in the verse in between and lost.

An error of sight. An error of the mind. You may be trying to take a lot of chunks down at once.

And so you read a whole sentence, you start writing it down, by the time you get to the end of the sentence your own mind has messed the whole thing up.

It happens a lot in the Gospels where you're really familiar with Matthew's account of something.

And you're transcribing Luke. And Luke doesn't say it exactly the same way Matthew did. But you end up putting it down the same way

Matthew did. Error of the mind. An error of judgment. Sometimes marginal notes would end up being stuck into the text.

Let's say you were in one of those scriptoriums again and the guy's gotten done with the book. And now he's going around checking your work.

And, ah, you missed this. What happened? Did you blank out there for a while? Brain dead for a few seconds? Writes it into the margin.

Fifty years later someone comes along and they look at that and go, oh, that's supposed to be in the text. And they put it in. Well, that's fine.

That's what they were supposed to do. But let's say you got your own copy of 1 John. And you're reading through chapter 5.

And you're reading through this section. And you go, you know, what that's actually referring to is that's referring to the

Father and the Word and the Spirit. And so you make a note in the margin of your Bible. I see there's a note in the margin of your

Bible right there. And I've seen Benny's Bible. It looks like Codex Diazicus or something like that.

I mean, you know, it's got pages falling out. We all do things like that. Well, let's say fifty years from now someone wants to make a copy of your

Bible. And they come on along and you've got this note in the margin. Now, how are they supposed to know whether it's supposed to be there or whether it's just a note in the margin?

And we feel that certain things, like the explanation about the angel stirring the water in John chapter 5 and the famous Comma Johannium in 1

John 5 -7, that's how they ended up in the text. They were originally marginal notes that early on were copied in.

Sometimes your environment didn't help out a whole lot. Listen to this. Something of the drudgery of copying manuscripts can be learned from the colophons or notes which scribes not infrequently placed at the close of their books.

A typical colophon found in many non -biblical manuscripts reveals in no uncertain terms what every scribe experienced.

He who does not know how to write supposed it to be no labor, but though only three fingers write, the whole body labors.

A traditional formula appearing at the close of many manuscripts describes the physiological effects of prolonged labor at writing.

Writing bows one's back, thrusts the ribs into one's stomach, and fosters a general debility of the body.

In an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, a colophon complains that a heavy snowstorm was raging outside, that the scribe's ink froze, his hand became numb, and the pen fell from his fingers.

It is not surprising that a frequently recurring colophon in manuscripts of many kinds is the following comparison.

As travelers rejoice to see their home country, so also is the end of a book to those who toil in writing.

Other manuscripts close with an expression of gratitude. The end of the book. Thanks be to God. Now, can you imagine being that poor

Armenian scribe in the middle of a snowstorm where you don't have central heating? You're sitting there, it's dark at night, you've got a candle flickering, and you're attempting to make a copy of another manuscript.

It is so cold that your ink freezes, your fingers are numb, and your pen falls out of your hand. Do you think someone in a situation like that might be prone to not exactly get every single letter exactly right?

Yeah. He might. He might. But, acknowledging all of that, acknowledging all of that, let me show you something.

This is the UBS 3rd edition, Hebrews chapter 7 verses 22 through 8 -4.

Now the UBS New Testament only mentions variants in manuscripts that affect the meaning of translation.

They don't list every single individual variant. It doesn't seem to be a teeny weeny little variation, unless it's in a number of manuscripts.

Please note something. There are no variants on this page. Now I know you probably see footnotes down here, but these are simply cross -references and discussion of punctuation.

There are no major variants amongst the 5 ,000 manuscripts of Hebrews chapter 7 verses 22 through 8 -4.

In fact, 85 % and I'm being conservative here, 85 % of the text of the

New Testament is completely, utterly, perfectly pure. No question.

No question. 95 % of that remaining 15 % is easily resolved by examination of the manuscripts.

Now if you multiply 95 % times 15%, what was left over? You know what you've got left of the text where we've got some real textual difficulties?

3 quarters of 1%. 3 quarters of 1 % require in -depth textual study.

And when we know text types, dates, the kind of errors copyists made, provides us with a near certainty of the reading of the chosen text.

Let me show you what, for example, the Nestlé Alain text looks like. Here is 1

Timothy chapter 1 verses 5 through 17. This text gives you almost every kind of variant there is.

I want to show this to you to demonstrate how picayune some of these changes actually are.

For example, in verse 5, the whole citation is a difference simply between whether you have an aorist participle or a present participle.

That's the only difference. That's the only variation that's found. Sometimes it will be the word and.

Is the word and here or not? Never, ever, does any doctrine of the

Christian faith rest upon a disputed textual variant. Never.

For a number of reasons. First of all, no doctrine of the Christian faith depends on simply one verse in the first place. No doctrine of the

Christian faith rests simply on one verse. Secondly, the text is incredibly pure.

The rest of the ancient documents don't come anywhere near this level. Anywhere near it.

At all. And like I said, we're looking at maybe three quarters of one percent to where you have in -depth textual study required.

But let me point something else out to you. I believe that the presence of variants in the

New Testament text is God's way of having preserved the text. You say, how in the world do you believe that?

I'll tell you why. The fact that there are variants in the text actually provides us with the means of correcting human errors.

The fact that we can look and see what kind of errors are made, the fact that the text comes to us from all over Europe, Palestine, North Africa, and gives us different perspectives and different families of manuscripts that are related to one another, that is what gives us the ability to arrive at the original reading.

And it also demonstrates that no one at any time could have simply come along, gathered up all the manuscripts, and made wholesale changes.

You see, if all we had was simply one text that was produced by one group in one place, we would have no way of knowing if that was what was originally written or not.

Because we would not be able to answer the question, well how do you know that in 700 A .D. they didn't decide to change the whole theological structure and edit everything they didn't like out.

They couldn't. There was no way they could have gathered up all the manuscripts to do it.

Not only that, but every time there is any type of a break or error in someone's writing of a manuscript, that error sticks with us.

In other words, every time a scribe of a manuscript made a mistake, we know about it.

They didn't change it. They didn't try to fix it up later on. The error is still there.

You say, well you mean that's good? You bet it's good. Because you know what that promises us? That promises us that the original reading is there.

Dr. Kurt Alland is the leading world, no question, leading scholar in New Testament textual criticism.

This text is called the Nestle Alland text. He is the leading world scholar.

Listen to what he says. This confirms the conclusion that any reading ever occurring in New Testament textual tradition from the original reading onward has been preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified.

Any interference with the regular process of transmission is signaled by a profusion of readings. This leads to a further conclusion which we believe to be both logical and compelling, that where such a profusion of readings does not exist, the text has not been disturbed but has developed according to the normal rules.

None of the composition theories advanced today in various forms with regard to the Pauline letters, for example, has any support in the manuscript tradition, whether in Greek or in the early versions or in the patristic quotations from the

New Testament. At no place where a break has been posited in the Pauline letters, does the critical apparatus show even a suspicion of any interference with the inevitable depositive tell -tale variant.

In other words, from the beginning of their history as a manuscript tradition, the Pauline letters have always had the same form they have today.

What's he saying? He's saying there are a bunch of scholars running around today saying, well actually you see 1

Corinthians is sort of a part of this letter and then they put this letter in and then somebody adds this section in here and this begins this verse and what he's saying is every time one of these scholars comes up with one of these theories, when you go to the text itself and you look at where this break supposedly happened, there's no variation there.

Hence, from whenever that book was written, it's always existed in the way that it exists right now.

But the first point is the main point I want you to hear. Did you hear what he said right off the bat? This confirms the conclusion that any reading ever occurring in the

New Testament textual tradition from the original reading onward has been preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified.

We know that we have all, every word of the original text in our possession.

Now, for example, in this one right here where the text chooses

Labone over Pauline those are the two possibilities. One of those two is original.

No question. Now, we sometimes end up sitting around, if you happen to enjoy studying textual criticism like I do, arguing about which one it is, but one of the two is the original.

No question. No question. And that is extremely important.

Extremely important. Okay? So, that is a very, very quick trip through the subject of textual criticism.

Now, having discussed the issues of whether we know today what was originally written, looked at some of the texts that we have that are available to us, how do we get that from Greek and Hebrew and to English?

I mean, we have amongst the group here tonight, I've seen a New King James, a

King James New American Standard. Someone's got to have an NIV. There's an NIV back there.

Anything else wandering around out there? Any RSVs? We've got a Greek Interlinear for those who are scared to learn

Greek. I'm glad there aren't any

RSVs out there. I called up the Revised Standard Version. I've got some problems with the

RSV. And you've got ASV and you've got Good News and Today's English Version and just a plethora of English translations.

And some of them sound a little different than others. So what's the thing? And of course, your Mormon comes along and says, see, there's 50 different Bibles.

Well, those aren't 50 different Bibles. Those are 50 different translations of one Bible. We must remember to differentiate between the

Bible as it was written and the translation thereof that is ours today.

Now, the there is, how many of you are in any way bilingual?

You know more than one language? A couple of you. How many of you even took a Spanish class in high school?

Okay, there we go. If you know anything about translation from one language into another language, you know there is more than one way to translate words, phrases, et cetera, et cetera, from one language into another.

It is the same in regards to translating Greek, Spanish, into English. Let me give you an example.

There is a German phrase, a German saying that the German people would recognize and know.

Morgenstunden hat golden Munden. Morgenstunden hat golden Munden. Now, what does that mean?

How would we translate that into English? Well, we have to make some decisions when we translate as to what's going to be our main goal.

What are we shooting for? And you sort of end up saying, you end up with a spectrum. Over on this side, you have the very literal translation.

Even to the point of following the Greek word order. And Greek word order is not the same as English. All the way out to what might be called a paraphrase, way out here, like it doesn't even hardly have any connection with the original at all anymore.

And then over here, let's say we are shooting more for meaning than we are literality. Okay? So you have got a spectrum.

Now, for example, the King James is very literal. Frequently following the Greek word order, the

Greek idiom and everything else. Whereas, out here on the meaning side, you'd have like the

New International version, NIV. Now, if the King James version translators were translating

Morgenstunden, hot golden munden, they would translate it, morning hours have gold in their mouths because that is literally what it means.

Morning hours have gold in their mouths. But that really wouldn't mean a whole lot to any of us, would it?

Because, see, this is a saying amongst Germans. And guess what? We have a saying that has the same meaning.

And those of you who have already heard this know which one it is. The early bird catches the worm. Now, if the

NIV translated Morgenstunden, hot golden munden, it would translate, the early bird catches the worm.

But that's not literally what it says, but it is what it means. And the translator has this difficult task at times of balancing between literality, what the text actually says, and trying to communicate the meaning of what the text actually says.

And your various versions will end up following someplace along here. Now, your

New American Standard Bible is going to be far, far, much farther over twenty years your

NIV is going to be more toward the meaning. Let me give you a good example. Someone with the New American Standard, look up Luke 9, 44.

And someone with the NIV, is there anyone with an NIV out here? You've got an NIV? Look up Luke 9, 44.

Luke chapter 9, verse 44. In the

New American Standard says, anyone? Go ahead.

Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.

Let these words sink into your ears. The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.

That's the NASB. NIV says. Listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you.

The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. Okay. Notice the difference.

The NAS, now the Greek literally says, let these words sink into your ears.

So when was the last time someone walked up to you at work and said, let these words sink into your ears?

Well, it hasn't happened to me recently. That's not how we talk.

But that is literally what the Greek says. But the NIV doesn't give you literally what the

Greek says. The NIV gives you literally what the Greek means. The Greek means, listen carefully to what I'm about to tell you.

That's what letting words sink deeply into your ears means. And so, each translation makes a choice as to where in the spectrum of literality or meaning it's going to go.

So, what should you do? Well, you should take Greek. Since I teach

Greek, you should take Greek. And some of you have, and I'm proud of you for doing it, but not everybody has the opportunity to study

Koine Greek and make a translation for yourself. So, if you are limited to the utilization of an

English text, then what would be the obvious wise thing to do? The obvious wise thing to do would be have several translations.

And if you encounter something that confuses you in the translation, then compare what the other translation says, and then maybe the third translation, and the fourth translation, and you will then be getting four different attempts to communicate the meaning of that particular passage.

That will normally be sufficient. Okay? Now, there are various lexical aids that you can utilize.

You can use exhaustive concordances, and there are a lot of things available to you like that. But normally, if you have,

I would suggest the King James, NASB, NIV, and maybe something like the

Amplified or something like that. Comparing those four would give you a real good shot at understanding what is there.

So, that is why you have different translations, is because the Greek language is extremely expressive.

Even in the Old Testament, there's going to be more than one way of rendering a Hebrew phrase or a

Hebrew sentence, and your different translations are going to differ because of that very fact. It does not mean you have 20 different Bibles.

It means you have different ways of translating from one language to another. This is hardly ever an issue in, for example,

Europe, where the Europeans, by and large, are not monolingual. Europeans, by and large, are frequently bilingual.

We'll know English and German and maybe Dutch all at the same time. And they realize that there's more than one way to translate, so it's not really a big issue amongst them.

Guess where it is a big issue? In old U .S. of A., where there's a majority of the population is monolingual.

And if God dared to write the Bible in anything but English, shame on him. And you say, well, that's ridiculous.

Yes, it is. But you will encounter people in your own churches that think that the

Bible floated down in English form and landed, you know, on a satin pillow someplace and was just put into publication from there.

They honestly think that's what happened. So that is the reason why you have various translational situations.

Even in situations where, for example, we have the famous or infamous, depending on how you want to look at it, paraphrases of the

Bible that are not translations. A paraphrase is not a translation. Kenneth Taylor's Living Bible is not a translation of the

Bible. It is his idea of what the Bible is saying. It is a paraphrase. Use it for what it's worth.

Sometimes it says wonderful things. Sometimes he had a bad day that day. It goes one way or the other and realize it is not a translation.

It is not fit for study or anything like that. It is simply a paraphrase, one person's idea.

We now come to three what are actually predominantly theological issues.

So far this evening we have been working on a lot of historical issues. But now we come to three theological issues, the big

I's. Inspiration, inerrancy and interpretation. Today entire denominations, churches, associations are ripped asunder by this issue.

That is not necessarily bad. For in the history of our church in the

United States, the sad fact of the matter is that when the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture have been jettisoned by a church, history tells us that church is doomed.

Today those churches that have over the past hundred years jettisoned the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture, those denominations are little more than country clubs today.

The gospel is hardly ever heard inside the doors of those churches. And the vast majority of the people who line those pews are, in my opinion, unregenerate, have no idea what the gospel is or what the teachings of the

Bible are. That is simply a fact of history. So I don't think it's all that necessarily bad that people fight about this because it's worth fighting about.

When you stop fighting about it and compromise on it, you die. Your church is dead, or will be soon.

It may walk around for a little while like a chicken that runs around with its head cut off, but your church is doomed.

You no longer have a source of authority. So inspiration and inerrancy and interpretation are extremely important things.

Let us begin with inspiration. There are lots of theories of inspiration roaming about our world today.

Some believe that the Bible is inspired in a term that they would use natural inspiration, like Shakespeare.

Shakespeare is inspired and so are the writers of the Bible. In other words, these individuals would not in any way differentiate in any qualitative way between the

Scriptures and great literature. We have mystical inspiration. That is, that since believers wrote

Scripture, what they believed is Scripture because they're believers. Which would also mean that since I wrote the handout in your hand and I'm a believer, it's

Scripture too. The idea that Scripture is mainly Scripture just for believers is just sort of this mystical concept that any of us can write

Scripture. We have partial inspiration. This is a popular one. Only those sections that could not have been known naturally are inspired.

Historical facts that would not have been known to an individual naturally might be supernaturally given, but those that would be known are not really under the purview of spiritual inspiration.

A very, very popular one, I would say this is the majority view of the churches that are commonly called

Protestant these days, sadly enough, because the reformers certainly didn't believe this and would roll over in their graves if such was their ability to do so if they knew that those people who followed them and in fact bear their names as in, for example,

Lutheran, believe things like this. But the idea of inspired content that the concepts of scripture are inspired but the words are not.

The concepts that the struggling writers of scripture attempt to express in frail human language are given to them from God.

But frequently they fall far short of doing true justice to these because they end up making errors, sinful men that we are, and hence we can look at the writings of scripture and go, way to go, guys.

You did a good job in reflecting upon these inspired concepts that God gave to you.

And yes, gentlemen, a religious word speaks through to my heart as I struggle with you to express these things and that's all wonderful and nice and gives us all nice warm fuzzies, but what you end up with is no solid foundation.

No solid foundation. Then going past where I am, we have the concept of dictation.

That all of a sudden we have a concept of sitting there at Corinth and he decides to write a letter to the

Romans and all of a sudden his eyes get glassy and a strange light comes into the room and his hand begins to move.

And he becomes a fax machine. A human fax machine from God.

And you say, you laugh and everything is And I do too because of a simple thing.

I can't believe how you believe that if you've read it. Paul talks about, pray for me.

I'm frightened going to Judea. And we read in the Psalms where the psalmist languishing in Babylon having seen his children killed and his nation plundered.

And his anger and his hatred says to the Babylonians, blessed are they that take your litany.

smashed their heads on the rocks. And I go, that wasn't dictated.

That's a human heart in pain and anguish and hatred. So what do

I believe? I believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of the scripture.

Which means God used the writers as individuals. Made use of their peculiar styles and mannerisms, yet the result is still what

God had from eternity intended it to be. My God is big enough to use the pain of that psalmist's heart to express his word.

My God is big enough to use Paul saying, languishing in prison saying, pray for me.

Writing to his friends saying, bring me the parchments and the cloak. It's cold.

It's cold here. And I want some books to read. And that's Paul speaking.

But that is what God from eternity had determined would be there. And he has a purpose for it being there. So yes,

I believe that every single word of scripture is God breathed. Its origin is

God himself. And yet, I also see that God used human beings to express this.

Now that does not mean that the result is necessarily errant simply because man is sinful. So people will say, hey, if God used men to write the bible, then there must be errors in it because men are sinful.

And sinful men are sinful because men make errors. But I respond, does that mean that Jesus Christ had to make errors because he was perfect God and perfect man?

No. God can overcome those difficulties or barriers that may stand in the way to our thinking.

So I believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of the scripture. That does not mean I am an absurd literalist.

You see, one of the favorite tactics of the enemies of God's word and the inerrancy of God's word is to say, well, if you believe in inerrancy, that must mean you believe that everything is literally true.

Well, what do you mean by literally true? Well, you must believe that since Jesus said that he is divine, that he has leaves.

That is the absurd literalism that they wish to force upon you. And that is ridiculous.

You can believe in plenary verbal inspiration of scripture, absolute inerrancy, and recognize that the

Bible contains different kinds of literature. The Bible contains historical narratives.

The Bible contains parables. The Bible contains epistles. The Bible contains teaching.

The Bible contains poetry. Lots of poetry. The Bible contains apocalyptic literature that uses signs and symbols.

We can recognize that and still believe in absolute inerrancy. You do not have to be an absurd literalist to believe in inerrancy.

But, someone will attempt to tag it to you as soon as you say, yes,

I believe that the Bible is inerrancy. Just be prepared for it. Now, it is one thing to preach wonderful sermons about it and get all excited and say,

I believe in inerrancy. It is another thing to substantiate said teaching from scripture.

Please look at 2 Timothy chapter 3 verse 16. Let's back up and get a context.

It is always a good thing to do. Verse 14. Paul, speaking to Timothy, says,

But you remain in that which you have learned or have been taught and have become persuaded of, knowing from whom you learned it, and that from a child you have known the holy scriptures, which, that is, the

Holy Scriptures, are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

What are the scriptures able to do? They are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

That is a stupendous claim. Now, let's be honest with the text. Given the period of time we are looking at here, let's be honest with the text.

time we are looking at completely and utterly consistent with the underlying perspective of all the

Old Testament writers, and most especially with the perspective of Jesus Christ himself, which is, all scripture is theanustos,

God breathed. That is the NIV translation, by the way. All scripture is

God breathed. And the Old Testament because it is

God breathed, it is profitable for teaching, instruction, reproof, correction, and righteousness in order that the man of God may be perfect, complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

You are the man of God and you want to be thoroughly equipped for every good work? What do you need? Do you need seminars? Do you need second blessings, spiritual experiences?

No. You need the scriptures. They are the scriptures.

You need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures.

You need the You need the scriptures. need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures. You scriptures. need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures.

You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures.

You need the

You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the scriptures. You need the are talking

USA complicated. In conclusion. From all points of approach alike, we appear to be conducted to the conclusion that the term

Theanoustos is primarily expressive of the origination of scripture, not of its nature and much less of its effects.

What is Theanoustos is God breathed, produced by the creative breath of the Almighty. And scripture is called

Theanoustos in order to designate it as God breathed, the product of divine inspiration, the creation of that spirit who is in all spheres, the divine activity, the executive of the

Godhead. The traditional translation of the word by the Latin Inspiritus Adeo is no doubt also discredited if we are to take it at the foot of the letter.

It does not express a breathing into the scriptures by God. What it affirms is that the scriptures owe their origin to an activity of God the

Holy Ghost and are of the highest and truest sense His creation. It is on this foundation of divine origin that all the high attributes of scripture are built.

What Paul is saying is the reason the scriptures can make you wise in the salvation by faith which is in Christ Jesus and the reason the scriptures are sufficient to make the man of God thoroughly capable and equipped to do the work of God is because the scriptures are created by God, they come from God.

This is exactly what Peter said in 2 Peter 1. Turn with me there. 2

Peter 1 verses 20 -21. 2

Peter 1 verses 20 -21 in the NIV reads as follows. Above all you must understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. That is by far the best translation I have ever seen. No prophecy of scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation.

Prophecy never had its origin where? In the will of man. Scripture is not the wonderful high musings of man upon God.

That is not what scripture is. Scripture is not the result of men's thinking about God, contemplating

God and His works. Peter says that prophecy never had its origin in the will of man.

So where did it come from? Men spoke where? From God. Origin is again

God not men. Men spoke from God and how did they do this?

What was the circumstances of their speaking from God? As they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit of God. Now do we have a description anywhere in scripture of the exact mechanics by which scripture is given to us?

No we do not. God does not deign to describe it to us, even if we could understand it in the first place, which

I doubt we could. But what he does say is that the result of the writing is

God breathed. That the men are not speaking from their own will, they are speaking from God and then here is a clincher that is important in regards to the doctrine of inerrancy.

As they are carried along by the Holy Spirit. Now it has been alleged to me recently, for example, by both atheists and Lutherans.

I am not trying to pick on the Lutherans, there are a lot of great Lutherans. But by an individual who is very liberal in his theology and beliefs and attends a

Lutheran church. And by an atheist who has been writing to me. It just so happens that they are totally disconnected from one another.

They both address the same issue. Both have alleged to me that when

Matthew and Luke cite the prophecy in Isaiah, where Isaiah comes up to Ahaz and he says,

Behold, a virgin shall be with child. To give birth to a child.

Emmanuel. The whole prophecy there. That is cited by Matthew and Luke in regards to the birth of Jesus.

Both of these people have said that Matthew and Luke were wrong. That is not what the prophecy was about.

They were just wrong. They saw something in it that wasn't there. Now they would not say that Jesus was not necessarily born of a virgin, but what they would say is that Matthew and Luke simply misunderstood the prophecy.

How does 2 Peter 1, 20 -21 fit in with that? Are we wrong in regards to the prophecy?

Are we to believe that as Luke writes from God, carried along by the

Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is going to carry him into error, misinterpretation of what the

Holy Spirit has already inspired in Isaiah? Is this consistent?

Is this a possibility? It does not seem to be so to me. Indeed, I might very honestly ask of the atheists,

I cannot ask of the atheists, the atheists do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that it gives us any real direction, so I cannot ask him.

But I have to ask the religious person who still attempts to hold on to the Bible in some way, shape, or form, excuse me, but if you believe that Luke and Matthew are wrong about that, why do you believe they are right about Jesus?

Why do you believe they are right in interpreting Jesus' death if they cannot even get Isaiah's prophecy right? I don't know.

I don't know. Now, we see the scripture's claims here.

We have had it brought to our attention that for example, Paul in 2

Timothy 5, I believe it is 2 Timothy 5, cites Luke as scripture.

We know that Peter talks about Paul's writings as being scripture. Of course, the modern liberal critic doesn't believe that Paul ever wrote that.

That was put in a lot later on. In fact, that is evidence that it obviously had to be later, because they couldn't have believed that.

You see the vicious circle of the circular argument coming back at us again. But what is most important to me, especially in dealing with modern liberalism and in dealing with those cults that claim to have a close relationship with Jesus, to have a better knowledge of Jesus than you poor people who just have the

Bible, is asking this question. Is your church's presentation or your personal belief consistent with Jesus' own view of scripture?

If you are going to claim that Jesus is anybody special at all, especially if you are going to claim that he is your

Lord, don't you think you should share his view of scripture?

Does that not seem logical to you? And yet, many who claim that Jesus is

Lord, think they are more intelligent than Jesus in regards to the scriptures.

Let's look at what Jesus believed about the scriptures. First of all, Jesus viewed the scriptures as being historically accurate.

For example, in Luke 11 51, he says that the blood of the martyrs from Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, would be held against this generation.

Now that is in itself a tacit recognition of the Old Testament canon. Are you aware of that?

For the blood of Abel, where was that story found? The book of Genesis. Zechariah is killed in 2

Chronicles. And in the Hebrew order of the canon, the first book of the

Hebrew canon is Genesis. The last book of the Hebrew canon is 2 Chronicles.

That would be like us saying, from Genesis to Revelation, the whole thing. The point being that in reference to judgment, you can't get much more serious than we start talking about eternal judgment.

When you start talking about eternal judgment, it is not time to be playing with metaphors and fables and myths.

You are talking about someone's eternal destiny here. In reference to matters of judgment, the

Lord Jesus here refers to historical incidences. His audience would have thought them as absolutely historical.

There is no reason to question that they were. And yet many scholars today would question that Abel ever existed.

Such was simply a myth. But Jesus refers to them as historical individuals. In John 8 .56,

he says, Abraham rejoiced to see my day. Abraham was a historical person to him. In Matthew 11 .23

-24, if the miracles that were performed in you have been performed in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have abided to this day.

In talking to Capernaum, in talking to those cities in which he had performed his miracles, he refers back to Sodom, Genesis 18 and 19.

Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone. You don't really believe that happened, do you?

I think Jesus did. I think Jesus did. In Luke 17 .26

-32, he refers to Noah, Lot, and guess who? Lot's wife. But that is just a myth.

God doesn't turn people into pillars of salt. But again, in the context of judgment,

Jesus says, remember her. Now, if I was preaching to you all, and I said, in context of judgment, now remember what always happens to Wiley Coyote whenever he chases the roadrunner around a bend.

He ends up going down the cliff. So you've all straightened up now. Would it hold a whole lot of water for you? Probably not.

Oh, but they might argue. These people at that time believed that Lot's wife really was turned into a pillar of salt.

And so, just because they believed in a myth and Jesus just accommodated himself, excuse me?

The Son of God, the Lord of Glory, accommodated himself to them? Used what he knew to be falsehood just because he knew it would work for them?

Excuse me? Oh yes, that's what he did. Luke 4 .24

-27, he refers to both Elijah and Elisha's historical actions, their ministry in Israel.

In Matthew 12 .41, he refers to the men of Nineveh. Will stand up at the judgment with this generation? Nineveh?

Jonah? Whale? Seaweed and air? Repent? No, come on, give us a break.

He didn't really believe that happened, did he? He believed it happened enough to use that as a sign of his own resurrection.

And that happened. Secondly, Jesus viewed the scriptures as being accurate in regards to authorship.

In Mark 10 .3 -5, he discusses Moses' writing of the Law of Divorcement found in Deuteronomy 24, which 80 % of your modern

Old Testament scholars will tell you was not written until the days of Josiah, 700 years after Moses' bones had turned to dust.

Oh well, Jesus was pretty critical. He didn't know as much as we do about these things. In Matthew 22 .43,

we're told that David wrote Psalm 110. A lot of people wouldn't say he did. Many times he refers to the

Law of Moses and Moses' writing of it. Jesus viewed the scriptures as the very Word of God.

In Matthew 19 .4 -5, we read, now listen closely. Haven't you read that in the beginning the

Creator made them male and female and said, for this reason a man will leave his father and mother?

You say, well what's the point of that? Two things. Not only does

Jesus view the Bible here as the Word of God, the very spoken Word of God, the Creator said this, and hence applies it in the discussion of divorce and marriage.

Obviously a very important topic. But the fascinating thing to me is that if you know anything about modern critical scholarship, you know that modern critical scholarship believes that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are two separate and contradictory accounts of creation.

Modern critical scholarship views Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 as contradictory, totally separate in origin, stuck together by some redactor or editor down the line who just didn't do a very good job putting these two things together.

Did Jesus believe that? Where did he quote from? First he says, he made them male and female.

Where does that come from? Genesis 1 .27. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother.

Where is that from? Genesis 2 .24. The Creator said both of them. Contradictory?

Not for Jesus. Genesis chapter 2, the result of a long period of redaction?

No, the Creator said that. Matthew 22, 29 -32.

You are in error because you do not know the scriptures and the power of God. But about the resurrection and the dead, have you not read what

God said to you? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead but of the living.

Are those the words of a man who believes that the scriptures are simply become the word of God when you experience them? He says, have you not read what

God said to you? And then he bases his whole argument on the tense of a verb. I am the

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not I was. I continue to be the

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not I was. They are still alive. But can you imagine the

Jews coming back? Oh, but sir, we did not experience the passage in that way.

Can you imagine someone in the Old Testament? They have just broken the law of Moses. The young man who went out to pick up sticks on the

Sabbath day, remember? Remember the story in the Old Testament? Remember what happened to him? They killed him.

They stoned him. But can you imagine Moses, right before he condemns him to death, the man says, but sir,

I did not experience it in that way. It did not become the word of God for me in that way. Oh, well, okay,

I see that. I would not want to be bigoted or narrow -minded and insist that this passage actually means only one thing.

So that is okay. But now be careful now. If you ever experience that commandment in that way and then go out and do that, we are going to be in trouble.

You say, no one could believe that. Eighty percent of your old and New Testament scholars in our seminaries in America believe that.

But they never say it that way. That is right, they would not. You are right, they would not.

In John 13, 18, 17, 12, Luke 24, 25 -27, 44, the idea that the scriptures must be fulfilled is incredibly important to the

Lord Jesus. There is no way in his thinking, in his teachings, that the scriptures could not be fulfilled.

That is an impossibility. The sun may as well stop its movements and the earth stop rotating around the sun and the seasons end and God become untrue as the scriptures be unfulfilled.

If that is the view of the Lord Jesus Christ and we as believers accept him as our

Lord, we trust him in saving our soul for eternity, who in the world are we to question what he believes about the scriptures?

You say, that does not carry weight for an atheist. I realize that for the atheist.

But what I cannot even begin to conceive is the person who prays and who openly acknowledges,

I am a Christian, I believe Jesus is Lord, but rejects

Jesus' own view of the scriptures. I do not understand that. To be perfectly honest with you, in my opinion,

Christ -centric liberalism, liberalism in the Christian church is far more of a threat to the church and its evangelical thrust and our presenting the gospel to the world than all the atheists you could ever find.

Inerrancy. Inerrancy is the logical outcome of what we have been discussing in regards to inspiration.

What is the definition? The holy scriptures as written by the prophets and apostles under the direct operation, and I said inspiration here using it in a different way, that is naughty naughty of me, under the direct operation and shall we say direction of the

Holy Spirit were without error of any kind whether factual, historical, theological or ethical.

Let's note a few points. Inerrancy is not claimed for copyists or their work but only for the autographs.

I know there is a whole group of folks that run around and they have got their

English translation the only one. I am not sure which edition of the

King James Version they have because they are different from one another, but they have got only the King James Version and if you have anything else, you read

Greek, shame on you. I have had them tell me that, that studying Greek is sinful.

Do you have the new American standards? You are satanic. I have had a man or someone in the room who was staying there when he told me, tell me

I was lost and bound for hell because I didn't use the King James Version. Inerrancy has nothing to do with that.

Inerrancy has to do with the scriptures as they were written, not with something in a translation or language that isn't even going to come into existence for 1200 to 1400 years after the writing of the scriptures.

We are talking about the autographs. That is what inerrancy is about. It is not about copyists. We have looked at the manuscripts.

Even if you happen to be one who favors the quote unquote textus receptus or the majority text, if you study it, you have got to recognize that even the textus receptus contains readings that are not only blatantly erroneous, but that even if you simply take the majority text, there are certain variants that split that thing right down the middle.

You still have to end up making decisions. We have got to deal with facts here.

Inerrancy is referring to what we talked about earlier in regards to the scriptures being

God breathed and that would refer to what they actually wrote. That is point number one.

Point number two, in a theological realm, inerrancy is simply the acceptance of the fact that we are judged by the word we do not judge it.

It is an acknowledgment of our creatureliness and finitude. I am not saying that we simply blindly close our eyes and just ignore everything else.

We obviously haven't done that this evening, have we? We have looked at things. But there comes a point in time when, especially in regards to the spiritual teachings of scripture and the inerrancy thereof, we have got to recognize that a lot of folks that reject the teaching of the

Bible do so simply because they refuse to submit themselves to the authority of God. They emphasize their authority, their autonomy over God's authority.

Now, if we are going to talk about inerrancy, then we are going to have to realize the fact that there are entire books published.

I have got them in my library, listing the contradictions of scripture.

It is not just the atheists that publish them, I am afraid. For my systematic theology class in seminary,

I had to read a systematic theology, Otto Weber's Foundations of Dogmatics.

In there, almost as a side note, assume that everybody already knows this if you have got a little bit of gray matter between your ears.

Now, it is obvious that the Bible contains many different words, many different witnesses, and obviously is therefore frequently contradictory with itself.

But we need not worry about this because it is the religious word that speaks through that we are really searching for.

Many people attending Protestant churches in our valley will tell you, of course,

I mean, James and Paul are contradictory to one another and the important thing is digging into the meaning of the contradiction.

And I go, I'm sorry, that doesn't make any sense at all. When I examine these supposed contradictions,

I discover a number of things. Normally, it is based upon misunderstanding the text. Frequently, these supposed contradictions are due to an ignorance of context, background, history, language, something.

Or they are allegations of contradiction where the person making the allegation also almost has to claim omniscience to make the claim.

They almost claim to have had to have been there themselves. Let me give you a good example. King James, who has a

King James again? One here and one here. You look up Acts 9 .7, you look up Acts 22 .9.

Let's all take a look at it. Acts 9 .7,

Acts 22 .9. Who has Acts 9 .7? Could you read Acts 9 .7, King James Version? And the men were journeying with him among speeches, hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

Hearing a voice, but seeing no man. This is in reference to Paul's encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.

Acts 22 .9, King James Version. Now those who were with me indeed saw the light, and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of him who spoke to me.

Okay, Acts 9 .7 says, hear voice. Acts 22 .9 says, don't hear voice. The very first, quote unquote, contradiction ever brought up to me by Mormon missionaries.

It is also one of the standards that you'll find in your beginning atheist text, shall we say.

Well, what do you do with it? Those of you that don't have a

King James Version are going, what do you do with what? There's no contradiction in mine, but of course the atheist says, well that's because they saw it and they changed it and they fixed it.

But no, the contradiction is only in translation. It is only in a, just a misunderstanding of what the

Greek is saying. The difference between the two is that one of the two passages refers to hearing with understanding.

The other refers to simply hearing as in we can hear the air conditioning, it's running, but there's no understanding or information in it.

Or if you hear someone talking in another room, for example, you might hear the talking, but you do not understand the words that are being spoken.

This is even more clearly brought out in the Greek when you recognize that when Paul relates this to some individuals, he uses the word

Saul and he spells it in the Hebrew spelling. And there seems to be an indication that the men that are traveling with Paul could not understand the

Hebrew or Aramaic language. And therefore it may be referring to the fact that they had no understanding of the language that was being spoken.

However you want to work that out, the point is that there is not a contradiction there when you look at the

Bible as it is written. The vast majority of the supposed contradictions that will be raised and presented to you can be disposed of simply by examining the context and language of the passage under consideration.

I have reams of publications like Biblical Errancy that attacks the

Bible and supposedly provides all these contradictions. Some of you know I have engaged the editor of Biblical Errancy in debate and have demonstrated in debate that his allegations are simply untrue and do not stand up to solid examination.

But if we will examine these things and that's where some things like lexicons and dictionaries and some things like that might come in handy for you.

One last thing to look over and that is the subject of interpretation. It's obviously good to keep that to last because why should you discuss interpreting something until you know what you're supposed to be interpreting, where it came from, whether it's accurate or not, etc.

Now I have provided to you, and Alpha and Omega provides as a separate sheet, a guideline to interpretation.

Just some basic things to think about when interpreting a passage of scripture. For example, what is the background of the passage?

And I will admit right off the top, to do this kind of interpretation requires work. Nasty four letter word, there's a whole movement in Christianity today that makes you think that you don't have to do work to understand the

Bible. Guess what? They're wrong. God gave you a mind and he gave you the ability to use your mind and to use that mind in the study of the

Bible. You say, oh you're being patronizing. I'm just amazed at what

Christians are willing to swallow. Bible study requires work.

It is the most rewarding work you will ever do in your entire life.

But don't let anybody fool you into thinking that you lay back on the beach and you pray a prayer and God zaps you and all of a sudden now you've got all the ability to just whip through this book and just come up with all sorts of things.

You know most of the people who teach that are people who come up with some of the most wild and wacky things from scripture that are not there obviously.

Just don't be taken in by it. What is the main theme of the book? I remember once on a youth retreat, the pastor stood up there and you know how pastors are wont to say things that just make you feel really dumb and stupid or that really convict you?

I like having a pastor that convicts me a lot and my pastor does that a lot every single time he preaches.

Actually it's the word of God that does that and if you preach the word of God you could be convicted. But he said something. He said you all believe the

Bible is the word of God right? And we all go yeah sure. Okay how many of you right now could stand up and give me simply an outline?

The book of Galatians. Galatians yeah that's in the

New Testament. Yeah right. I did read it once. I know I did. Good question.

What's the main theme of the book? What is the author's purpose in writing the book?

What is the author's background? Who is this author? What is the historical setting of the book? Of the writing of the book?

What kind of literature is it? Parable? Poetry? Apocalyptic teaching? What is the reader's understanding in context?

To whom was it written? If you live in Corinth is that going to affect how you understand this? If you're writing as Paul, you're a former

Jewish rabbi writing to a bunch of heathens in Corinth, is that going to affect the interpretation of the book? Yeah it is.

Usage of other scriptural concepts. Are there quotations from the Old Testament? What's the context of it? How is it used?

The immediate context. Read the passage in at least three different translations. What immediately precedes and follows the passage?

Are any definitions provided by the immediate context? What is the main argument of the entire chapter?

What is the main point of the passage itself? What is the consistent understanding of the passage in this context?

And in the broad context, does my interpretation make this passage contradictory with the author himself? Other biblical passages?

Plain common sense? What are the passages in Scripture bear directly on the issues raised in this passage?

The above steps are normally sufficient for most purposes of interpretation, but be aware of something.

Let me warn you something right now. There is an underlying assumption in everything we just said that is not shared by the vast majority of commentators today.

You know what it is? The Bible is inspired. Asking questions like does this make the passage contradictory with other passages assumes inspiration, inerrancy, that the

Bible is not going to contradict itself. You see, you've got to realize when you pick up the vast majority of commentaries that are coming out today, the author of that commentary does not share your presupposition.

Most New Testament scholars are going to say, well, Paul and James disagreed on the doctrine of salvation.

It's clear. James specifically contradicts

Paul's teaching in James 2. Now, I don't believe that interpretation of James 2 is a possibility.

Why? Because I assume that the book says it's inspired, and I'm going to operate on that assumption, rather than assuming the book is wrong with what it says in the first place.

Recognize that. That's part of it. I also provide to you here further avenues of study that you could delve into should it be necessary.

For example, listing the key words in the passage. Are their meanings clear? How do the translations differ at this point?

Going to a concordance for the meanings of the words in the original languages, using that concordance to go to a Greek or Hebrew lexicon.

Examining the usage of the word in the original language by the author than in other books. How does Paul use the term to know?

One of the assignments in the Greek class I'm teaching right now, one of the possibilities of the assignments is, for example, to examine

Paul's usage of the term gnosko over against maybe the term eidon, both of which can be translated to know, but which have different nuances.

It's a fascinating study. If it's a New Testament passage, see how terms were used in the

Old Testament. If Old Testament, see how the concept is picked up by the New Testament. Determine if the phrase in question is an idiom of the language, that is a common phrase that might have some different meaning.

You can go into word studies, syntactical studies, textual studies. There's a lot of other things that you can do to dig into the meaning of that particular passage.

Well, we have covered a lot very quickly. I hope that primarily what

I have done, other than hopefully providing you with some real seminal thoughts, some seeds that you're going to take and run with, is that I've challenged you as to really how much is out there.

I believe Christians should have a burning, burning desire to know the word of God and to know about the word of God.

And I believe we have a stewardship and responsibility to our culture and to our nation to be good students of the word of God.

I think the church has predominantly failed on that issue in the broad commercial sense.

But I hope that I have given you some challenges tonight that you'll pick up and run with. I also hope that you realize that I'm not going to close this thing out without allowing you to ask some questions.

So, are there some questions? Yeah. We'll start with me. The number of apocryphal books that have been accepted in the

Catholic Bible, is it not true that not all the apocryphal books are accepted in the Catholic Bible? Well, I guess that would depend on how you define apocrypha.

There are only a certain number. Obviously, there were, you know, I suppose if you define the apocrypha in a wider range, you might say that.

But that's just all a matter of definition as to what you define the apocryphal books to be. The apocryphal books that were in the

Septuagint aren't all included in the Catholic Bible? As I recall, yes. As I recall.

I wouldn't be dogmatic on that. I have two questions.

One, your example in Acts, are there two different Greek words that Paul uses there in both passages?

No, the Greek words are in different cases. Which, if you know Greek, you realize that the case that the word is put in can affect its meaning and function in the sentence.

How was the Codex Sinaiticus found? Well, like I said, it's a fascinating story, but I'm afraid it's too long of a story to go into.

I can refer you to some reference sources to where you can read about that rather interesting story.

Yes, sir. Just for reference, Septuagint, you pronounced it

Septuagint. I understood the way you talked about it, and they're both the same thing.

Why is there a difference between the two? I mean, I've heard scholars pronounce it Septuagint. Why do people who live in the southern

United States never pronounce an R? It's a different way of pronunciation. But they are the same.

When you were talking about the canonization of the New Testament, where is 3

John? Is that part of 2 John? Good question. I was referring there only to the

Muratorian fragment, and 3 John, of course, is a very short, short book, and whether it's included in 2

John is really unclear at that point. It was later in gaining general and wide acceptance because of how very short it actually is.

Yes, sir. In the late 40s when they found the Dead Sea Scroll, you were saying that, that's really exciting news because we had been studying the

Bible all along, off these pretty late... The Old Testament.

I referred specifically to the Old Testament being the earliest manuscripts we had of the

Old Testament up to that point were from 900 years after Christ. Okay, so about 900 AD, and we had been studying them.

So the exciting part is that they found the Dead Sea Scroll, and the Dead Sea Scrolls were the original pieces?

Oh, no. No. These were simply Old Testament manuscripts. Manuscripts of the Old Testament prophets.

That were 100 years BC. So in other words, all of a sudden we've just jumped back 1 ,000 years.

Well, identically, I mean... There was no major changes at all between, for example, in the

Isaiah Scroll, between the two, no. So in other words, the point was, the text had remained the same over a 1 ,000 year period of time.

If we were to believe that there had been major corruptions, they would show up in that situation, but they didn't.

Now, some of the texts at Qumran were themselves not in the greatest shape as far as coming from different various sources.

But by and large, for example, the Isaiah text was incredibly identical to what we have today. The Mazarites did a great job.

Let's put it that way. They really did. Yes, sir. Yeah, there's...

Well, back when they didn't have 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John and Jude and Revelation and all, eventually they did.

There's also folks that used to have like 1 Enoch and Jubilee. Do they still?

And if they do, who are they? Okay, you're referring to like 1 Enoch, Jubilee and things like that which are in what are called the

Pseudepigrapha. The Pseudepigrapha are another collection of books ranging from somewhere between 100

B .C. and 100 A .D. And these texts were never in real serious consideration in the

Christian church as far as canon. My memory somewhere in the back tells me that some maybe of the

Coptic churches have somewhat of a different perspective on them, but I couldn't even really be sure about that.

But I don't think... They have never figured very prominently in canonical discussion. And I don't think they've ever found a place in the canon of Scripture of either the

Jews or Christians. Was it from the area of North Africa where there was the...

They're predominantly Palestinian, which is why they never really figured real big in canon discussions because of the fact that in Palestine they were just never considered to be in there.

And Palestine didn't even have the Apocrypha. So obviously the

Pseudepigrapha was even beyond the Apocrypha as far as that went. But in North Africa there would be more of an interest in them.

Now that does not mean that these books were not read. It does not mean that... We all have other books in our libraries other than the

Bible. It doesn't mean we consider them other books of Scripture, but we read them. And for example,

Enoch is cited and quoted by Jews. He knows his audience is going to be familiar with that.

And there are allusions to Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal books in New Testament writings, but not as Scripture.

I mean, if Scripture was being written today, I could make allusions to the Arizona Republic or to other things that would be common between me and my audience without necessarily implying that those things are

Scripture. So they're obviously familiar with them, but there's a difference between being familiar with a book and considering it to be

God -breathed and absolutely authoritative. Yes, ma 'am.

You were saying that on the interpretation of Scripture that we're assuming that our basic assumption is that the

Bible is inerrant and God -breathed. Consistent with itself, I would say, is probably the main assumption.

But you said 80 % of the scholars who write commentary do not hold that assumption.

How do you know that? You buy their commentary and then you get into it and say, oh gosh, this guy's wrong.

How can you know? You find a friend who has lots of commentary and you spend a lot of money on that. It's really hard to say because even within the confines of a commentary set, you will have very, very wide diversions of opinion.

Talk to people who have lots of commentary. That's all I can say. You can look at where the people went to school. That will sometimes tell you, but it won't always tell you.

For example, a lot of people would look at me. I have a master's degree in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary and go, ooh, liberal.

Because the seminary, predominantly from a conservative perspective, has that label to it.

They'd go, ooh. Let's put it this way. They would look at me and say, you're a graduate of Fuller and you believe in what?

I would be the anomaly. So you can't always tell. You could have someone who graduated from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School or Dallas Theological Seminary, which are very conservative, who since then have gone wacky.

You just can't honestly tell, but sometimes you can look. You never know. Sometimes you can go to a school that's not considered,

I don't consider Fuller Seminary to be liberal, liberal, liberal, but it's definitely left of where I am, and yet I'm still as conservative as they come, and yet you can have it go both directions.

You just find someone who knows something about the books. Sometimes you can find specific authors, and you'll know where those authors are coming from.

The Dating of the Meritorious Canon. 186? 186. And the

Shepard Ernest, if I'm reading it correctly, they're not regarding that inscription. Right.

Some people did consider it, but they're always a small minority, and the

Shepard is predominantly rejected because people remember the people who wrote it. They knew they weren't apostolic.

Barnabas, too, is what I recall. Okay, Jerome translated the Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin.

Okay, is that a pretty accurate translation? It was originally. But you see, the

Vulgate text that Jerome translated became extremely corrupt over the centuries. So by the time of the 1500s, say the time of Desiderius Erasmus, who printed the first Greek edition of the

New Testament, the Vulgate had become exceedingly corrupt. In fact, about 50 years before Erasmus, a fellow by the name of Vala, who's sometimes called the father of textual criticism, had noticed something.

He had the Vulgate text that everybody was supposed to use. If you're a Roman Catholic, you use the Vulgate text. But then he started noticing that Jerome's commentaries had a different text.

And he reasoned, well, the Vulgate's been copied over and over and over and over again, but Jerome's commentaries probably have not been copied over and over and over again because they're not going to be read as much.

So the probability is that Jerome's commentaries are more accurate to what he originally wrote than something that's been copied over and over and over and over again in the

Latin Vulgate. And he was right. And he actually printed, or wrote up, corrections to the

Latin Vulgate text based on Jerome's commentaries and wisely died before publishing it.

Because if he had, he would have been killed. He would have been burned to death. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't have

Jerome's original script? When was that translated? Between about 395 and about 410.

I see. So that's not a very accurate way of going by somebody's commentary and then rewriting it.

Well, actually, as long as the text was there, it actually was rather accurate. His commentaries were very, very, very old and had not been copied over and over again.

No one really cared about them, so their text was pretty accurate. Well, obviously, we're not dependent upon the

Latin Vulgate. We go to the Greeks. Definitely. Several things.

When you mentioned that you were conservative, maybe one reason why you're so conservative is because you're used to defending your faith against cults.

Then, I'm trying to remember, I think if I remember correctly, God himself wrote on the tablets of stone the

Ten Commandments. Now, to somebody who you were ridiculing earlier as talking about these great concepts come from God, and they don't think that God can get very involved in writing down word by word, maybe you should remind them of that incident and find out if they really believe that.

They wouldn't believe God did that. They would believe that's a mythological amplification of the authority of the

Mosaic Canon written thousands of years after his faux pas. So they'd specifically deny that incident there.

They'd say it's wrong. There's one other little incident that maybe is an interesting example of God inspiring speaking through people in John 11, 51, where the high priest is plotting to put

Jesus to death. He's plotting to put Jesus to death, and he gives a prophecy, and he didn't even realize that God was speaking through him, but because he was a high priest, and that's an example of God's sovereignty of speaking through them.

Well, the donkey was not exactly the normal way of God, either. You're right.

You're right. We are in perfect agreement on that, but it's sometimes hard for conservative

Christians who have been raised to believe in the Bible to get into the mindset of that person that would say, but wait a minute, why do you believe that God actually did that?

Can't you see the metaphysical significance of God writing on the stone? It means that this is important stuff.

It doesn't mean he actually did it. They look at you like, aren't you enlightened? Isn't that what they say about Jonah?

They say that because it has symbolic truth, therefore it could not have been any different. And that is the whole problem with liberalism itself, is the concept that God can be true in the spiritual realm, but not in the historical realm.

I've answered them by saying that when we use an analogy, we make up an illustration, but when

God wants to make up an illustration, he makes it happen. Well put. One last question, then we need to be dismissed today.

Your comment in Jude 3, the ones who are all delivered to the saints, obviously run up against groups that will say, well, it may have been once delivered, but we've lost it since then.

How do you deal with that? Well, it depends on what lost it means. If it's a theological thing, then you can deal with it in that direction, but tonight we've primarily been dealing with the fact that the scriptures have not been lost, that we can with confidence state that the original readings, word for word, are still there.

We may have to decide between two variant readings, but one of the two is exactly what was originally written. Again, I have yet to find someone who makes that claim and is willing to sit down with me and let me teach them textual criticism so they can make a decision for themselves.

I've offered to see if people want to sit down and we'll talk about this, but they've never really taken me up on it. I guess the facts are probably the best way to deal with that.

Okay, I thank all of you for being here this evening. It's been a long evening together, but I hope it has been a blessing to you.

Let's close with a word of prayer and thankfulness on our hearts for the word of God. Our Father, we, at the end of this evening, again confess that your word is forever settled in the heavens.

God, we thank you that the scriptures are able to make us wise in the salvation by faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

We thank you that in your providence you have protected and kept your scriptures, that you have,

Lord, just simply revealed yourself by your grace in this book that you have given to us.

God, I pray that you will place a fire in every Christian's heart. Here this evening, those who would listen by tape at any time,

Lord, place a fire in our hearts to know your word, to obey your word, to be open to the reforming and changing influences of your word.

Make us students of your word, God, so that we may share the life -giving message it contains with those around us.

I thank you for these that have been here this evening, for their faithfulness and their desire to serve you and to learn.

We just ask that we would be witnesses of the love and grace of the Lord Jesus Christ tomorrow and also this week as we go about our separate ways.