Lesson 10: Qumran Caves and the Old Testament, Part 1

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Lesson 10: Qumran Caves and the Old Testament, Part 2

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Today we are in lesson 10 titled the Qumran caves in the Old Testament Lesson 10.

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Yep Should be page 32 and you're in your notebook should be

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Excellent. Okay, let's pray before we begin Father again we give you thanks for this day for this place to meet for the freedom to do so for the fellowship that we enjoy for The salvation that is ours for the confidence that you have given us in your word

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We thank you that you have given us your word and preserved it for us in doing so you have kept your promise and you have ensured that truth and wisdom might be communicated to us that we might know the righteousness of our

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God and the redemptive plan of our triune God and we thank you for that and we pray that today you would help to instill in us a confidence in exactly how it is that you have done that help us to see your

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Preserving work in giving us your word that we may give honor and glory to you for your work in Revel in revelation and in revealing to us the truth and revealing to us yourself

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We thank you that you are the one who has Purposed to reveal yourself and then you have preserved that which you have written for us

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We give you glory and thanks in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen And we are in lesson 10

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I mentioned last week that this was going to be my final week in teaching and it may still be we're gonna see where we're at at the end of this lesson because I know how much time that I need to do

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I need to go over the content of the Dead Sea Scrolls and and what that tells us about Old Testament reliability and our certainty in the

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Old Testament and But before we do that Well, all of that I guess is to say that we might end up dividing this this into two lessons

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So we'll see by the end of today if that's if we're gonna get to there or not And if not, then we'll be back here again next week finishing up with the

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Qumran caves in the Old Testament so lesson 10 Let's begin with dealing with some objections that might come up in our study to this point

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Because we have talked about the doctrines of inerrancy infallibility and inspiration what makes God's Word authoritative

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What has he promised to give to us in his Word and how has he done that? We've looked at the transmission of the text how how scripture was written down how it was copied some of the issues that come up in copying and how manuscripts were

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Transmitted to us and and how it is that we have those today We talked about textual variance and the kinds of textual variance

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And so now that there are we've kind of covered all of that It's good to deal with some objections to New Testament reliability, and I have them here listed in your in your lesson

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I just want to go through these Objections and talk about how it is that we would answer this answer these because this might be something that would come up as you're

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Sitting across the table having coffee with somebody and you begin to have a witness encounter and talk about scripture and what scripture says

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They might raise some of these objections to the reliability and the certainty of scripture. So we're gonna deal with these objections

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I have had this car. I have had that encounter Sitting across a table having coffee with somebody and you start to talk about spiritual things and they raise some of these objections

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So we're gonna deal with them. Here's the first one objection one The New Testament was subject to changes by men with political theological religious or patriarchal agendas

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There's a lot packed into that But basically all of progressive Christianity would find a home there and that first objection that the

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Bible was changed by men with political theological religious or patriarchal agendas

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Meaning that over the course of time through the translating and the transmission process Intentional changes were made to hide certain truths or to include

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Certain doctrines that were not part of the original text or the original intention of the writers

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All right, so how would you deal with that objection? What do we covered so far that would help us to answer that objection?

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I got an idea Yeah Rick says we don't stick to any one particular translation

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Look at all of them yeah, this this objection really goes to the heart of the text itself not necessarily the the

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Translation of the text this would go to you look at the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts and those reflect changes that were made by men with Political theological religious or patriarchal agendas nobody

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I got all day we Ready go ahead. Yeah Yeah, it does demonstrate a small view of God we could go back to our doctrine of preservation and say but Scripture has promised

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God has promised to Preserve his word if God has given that word. He cannot allow it to fall into corruption or error

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He cannot allow it to become uncertain so that we would have any uncertainty in Scripture the God who has inspired this would himself preserve it and he can he can do so in such a way as to guarantee the

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Legitimacy of what he has and the faithful transmission of what it is that he has revealed Yes Yeah, he has allowed some people to pervert things about his word.

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Yep, even teaching and things that they write down Here's how I would I would answer it I would say it was impossible due to the number and location of the manuscripts and copies

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Remember this we talked about this last week What would need to happen for me To make changes to this morning's daily be the police blotter that has me listed there for being arrested for theft

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What would be required to do that? It would be virtually impossible simply because of the rapid distribution of the manuscripts

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The the multiple copying of the manuscripts the widespread copying and and spread of those manuscripts would make changing that impossible people who raise this objection seem to think that the manuscripts that we have of the

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New Testament are kept in the basement of a monastery where some Renegade monk can go down at any time and just erase something and write something else in that's not how manuscript transmission works because the way that God has preserved his word for us and preserved it from corruption of religious political theological and patriarchal agenda

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The way that God has preserved that is that when something was written It was rapidly copied multiple times and spread and distributed widely

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So nobody had access to any document to make those changes with that agenda. Does that make sense?

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This is the way that God has preserved it and it's important to keep that in mind the New Testament manuscripts were copied

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Frequently they were copied quickly and they were rapidly spread as well and the rapid distribution of those put them out of the control all of those manuscripts out of the control of any one person or any one group

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Of people who even might have had an agenda to change them changing. It would have been impossible It would have been just as impossible as me rounding up every copy of today's

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Daily B and changing the police blotter so that that that would be erased from history and Saying that it was

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Lanny Keller who was arrested changing the name in there because I have some Agenda to hide hide the truth and to lay the blame on somebody else.

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It would be impossible to do that That's that's the answer to that Yes Yeah The objection is that It would be like the

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Dan Brown then Dan Brown Conspiracy regarding the Da Vinci Code that Jesus had a wife and kids and he never really died on a cross and this was hidden to Us by the early church who were trying to promote celibacy

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And so they erased that from the original Gospels included sections that showed that he was that he was single and they did this hundreds of years after the original documents were written where some people say that the original because Jesus lived in an

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Eastern culture that Obviously Jesus taught reincarnation the fact that that's not in the Bible is only due to the fact that people had a religious agenda to remove ring the teaching of reincarnation from Scripture and Replace it with teaching like it's appointed unto man wants to die and after this comes the judgment

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So that's what I'm talking about an agenda that there would be some nefarious men who would want to change Scripture How has

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God preserved his word from anybody who might have a nefarious intent to make those changes? That's was the idea behind that Okay.

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Yeah, go ahead Nathel. God allowed certain people to make changes

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Well, I think Lanny Lanny pointed out that God has allowed in his providence for people to corrupt

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Passages of Scripture and even to write those things down So it's not it's not like you can't find heretics in the early church who would have quoted

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Scripture and used it to treat to teach False doctrine so people have taken Passages of Scripture and corrupted the meaning of those passages.

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I think is what Lanny was was getting after But yeah, but there's no we have no this would let me answer before you say something

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Let me give you the second objection to this might with my second answer to this objection Which might help clear that up and that would be that there's not a shred of proof that anybody maliciously motivated changed anything that was ever written

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There's we have no we have no document from the early church that says reincarnation is true

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There is no Copy of man use many no copy of Matthew floating around that has

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Jesus being married with children Right the textual variants that we have are the transposing of words or letters sometimes sometimes the the

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Accidental omission of a word or a letter or a spelling change the wrong division of words

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Misspelling of words. Those are the type of variants that we have not variants that say Oh, by the way, Jesus married and had seven children and he moved to Spain and never died on a cross

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That's that's not in any copy of Matthew Mark Luke or John that we have So that's not the type of variance that we have you would in order to prove this objection

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Somebody would have to produce a manuscript a trail of evidence that would show that these changes have been made over time

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It's like evolution. The transitional forms are missing. We don't have the original We don't have the the any of the transitional forms that would show that this manuscript has changed over the course of time

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Right, and so the people who would raise this objection you'd have to say what is your proof of that? What manuscript do you have?

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What trail of textual evidence trail of textual variants do you have that would that would indicate that these changes were made you or you?

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Just accept this by faith It's a good way of putting it back in their lap. Jenny. Yeah Yeah, very good point

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So Jenny raised the question for those who are listening by recording Isn't it isn't part of the objection or there's sort of a sister or cousin to this objection would be the objection that yes

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There might be no evidence in Matthew Mark Luke and John were changed but the early church excluded other very legitimate

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Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas the Gospel of Barnabas the Gospel of Mary the Gospel of Peter and other pseudepigraphal and Apoco Not apocryphal.

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That's a different different group of writings Pseudepigraphal or false writings of the early church other competing

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Gospels that there was some political religious motive behind Excluding all of those other really good

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Gospels And of course, these are the Gospels that always come up around Easter time, right? The Gospel of Thomas discovered

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Jesus never rose from the dead and Gospel of Thomas says so etc So, how would you answer that objection then?

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We're actually going to get to that when we talk about the pseudepigraphy and how the early church determined what was canonical How did we choose how did they not choose but discover which books were divinely inspired?

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That's really the question. So that's a little bit of a different objection, but you're right Some people will say that it wasn't necessarily that we would allege that a manuscript has been changed

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But we would allege that certain manuscripts were never considered for canonicity Because of what they contained that the early church didn't like them.

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Yep And that's a whole different study that we'll do when we get in the next section dealing with canonicity

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All right. Any other questions about that first objection? All right

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The second one the Bible has been translated and retranslated hundreds of times and with those translations inevitably comes

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Mistakes and errors. Have you heard this one? The Bible has been translated and retranslated hundreds of times and every translation just perpetuates all the mistakes of the previous translation

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And so it's like mutations in a genetic code They just keep piling up and piling up and piling up until you have like a poodle at the end of that did genetic malfunction

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That's the allegation All right. How would you answer that that the Bible has been translated and retranslated hundreds of times?

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And so with those translations comes countless errors and mistakes that have crept into the translation process, yes

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See, this is based. This objection is based upon a misunderstanding of how we get our text how

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I got the NASB the NASB is not a Translation of the RSV which was a translation of the

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King James which was a translation of Swahili Which was a translation of Bangladeshi, which was a translation from Spanish Which was a translation from Latin, which was a translation from Egyptian, which was a translation from hieroglyphics

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Which was a transition from Arabic, which was a translation from Hebrew, which was a translation from Greek That's not how that process went.

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The Bible you hold in your hand is an English translation of Greek and Hebrew texts So it's not multiple translations.

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It's one translation There have been multiple copies. That's what we've been talking about Right understand the difference between the transmission of the text through copying and the corruption of the text through translation.

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Those are two different issues So our English translation the Bible you hold in your hand is a first -generation

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Translation from the Greek or the Hebrew text unless you're holding in your hand a paraphrase as if you're holding

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The living translation the Living Bible the message some sort of a paraphrase the amplified expanded

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Version of the Bible or something like that. Those are paraphrases those are those are rewordings of based upon an

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English text and not necessarily a translation of the Greek and Hebrew texts and They're not me on most of them have most of those have an agenda behind them

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Okay, any other questions about that and that objection? Yes, Thomas.

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Oh yeah, I think that the I think that the Paul would you know this?

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I think that the Catholic translation is a translation of the Latin Because there are sections of the

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Catholic Church Unless I'm mistaken that view the Latin as their go -to text for Translation there is a

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Catholic translation that translates from the Latin. Okay?

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Yeah Yeah, the Latin Vulgate All right objection number three.

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Oh Rick. Did you have a question? No, okay objection three? We don't have the original manuscript. Therefore. We can't know for certain what was originally written

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This is objection sometimes comes up and don't sound like this. They'll say well, you know, you don't even actually have the original manuscripts

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There's no original manuscript of any Bible book a book in your Bible So you have no idea what that is therefore since you don't have that to compare to the latest or the whatever trend whatever

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Manuscript collection you do have you can't know how many changes have crept in in that period of time Because use the fact that all the quotations that have been made like the early church fathers quoting the early documents after the first and second century

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Yep, that is a way of answering that because we do have quotations from manuscripts that are earlier than some of the earliest manuscripts that We have sorry say that again

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The Dead Sea Scrolls. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that that deals mostly with the Old Testament It does it does bear upon the issue of the the faithfulness of the transmission of the text.

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Yeah, that's later on in this lesson So, can we know here's how

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I would answer this objection first We certainly can know what the original document said because nearly all of our knowledge of ancient history comes from ancient manuscripts

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There is there is no ancient manuscript that is with which we of which we have the original document whether you're talking about Tacitus or Socrates or any anybody else we do not have the original writings of any ancient manuscripts so the

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Bible the New Testament particularly talking about the New Testament now is in the same class as any other ancient document in those

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Terms and yet doubt is only cast upon the New Testament not upon any of those other ancient writings Nobody doubts that we can know for certain what the original writings of the other ancient writings said

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Based upon the fact that we don't have the original documents that standard is only put forward for the New Testament Not any other ancient document

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Many of the manuscripts of the New Testament Sorry, many of the manuscripts of those other ancient documents are fewer in number than the manuscripts

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We have of the New Testament and many of the manuscripts are further removed from the original than our New Testament manuscripts

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Are you remember the graphic we put up? It was several pages back in your it was the comparison of Homer's Iliad with the other

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Yeah It's a bank on page 22 Showed you the difference the distance between the original writing and the earliest copies that we have the early extant copies that we have as well as the number of manuscripts that we have and so you can look at that list of Herodotus and Plato and Pliny and Tacitus and Aristotle and Sophocles and Homer and you compare those with the

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New Testament the New Testament None of those are even a close second to the New Testament yet nobody doubts that those ancient documents accurately reflect the what was originally written and Our copies date within a hundred years of the original writings.

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This is unheard of in the world of ancient documents That's another point that needs to be made there And yet nobody doubts the authenticity of those other writings.

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So that's the answer to that we don't have the original manuscript there for we can't know for certain what was originally written and the the

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Exercise that we did where I suggested that we take the Gospel of John and all of us make a handwritten copy of that We could destroy the original and then take all the copies that we have here made of the

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Gospel of John by handwritten all the hand Written copies and compare them one with another Would we be able to come to a pretty good certainty as to what the original document said?

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By comparing all those handwritten copies Even though we would be guaranteed that no two handwritten copies in this room would be the same

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And further we would be guaranteed that no copy made by anybody in this room would be a perfect representation of the original document there would be various variants that would creep into that in the copying process simply because of the nature of What it means to copy a document by hand

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Does that make sense and yet we could we could take all of those copies compare them together and be absolutely certain of what the original document would have said

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Yeah, Peter. Oh I see what you're saying.

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There's a logical contradiction there If you're going to if you're going to object with number three, then you can't object with number one.

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Yeah Yep, very good Okay, number four tens of thousands of errors exist in our copies.

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Is that a true statement or false statement? By the way, it's true.

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Okay, we have a true She doesn't think it's true. What? She just I this is she's a contrarian

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She's a Canadian and a contrarian so therefore she has to say false if we say Fahrenheit she has to say

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Celsius This is the way it is Okay, so somebody says true. Somebody says false. Do we have errors in our copies?

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We have variants. That's different than an error Correct. Okay, so there is something in the even the wording of this objection that you should

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You should stop and look at the objection and say what does this objection mean? What is being asserted here? What is the premise behind the objection?

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The premise behind the objection is that? That an error that a that a copying variant that a copying mistake would necessarily

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Interject an error into the text Right and the gospel writers are coming at things from different perspectives so if we're not talking about when we're talking about the

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Transmission of the text themselves. Is it fair to say that there are tens of thousands of errors in those documents?

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No, we will say that there are tens of thousands of variants when you consider all of them put together

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Right, we're talking about a variant. That is the if the same variant in ten different manuscripts

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It's the exact same Spelling difference in ten different manuscripts than what the other might maybe majority of the manuscripts would would read

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We would count that as ten variants not as one variant count that as ten variants So we do have tens of thousands of variants in the tens of thousands of Manuscripts and copies and quotations that we have of the

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New Testament documents Okay, so the rest of the objection tens of thousands of errors exist in our copies therefore we have no idea

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What was really written the text are too corrupted to be reliable the text are too corrupted to be reliable.

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What is the most? Corrupted manuscript analysis that we have done in this class The cookie recipe was the most corrupted manuscript analysis that we have done in this class and it was corrupted beyond The level of any kind of textual variants we find in the

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New Testament. I mean I I Butchered that to the point where it should be obvious to everybody that almost every kind of variant possible is represented in those six manuscripts even even though I Intentionally corrupted that and I corrupted it on a level that is unlike anything we find in the

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New Testament in terms of the frequency And the kinds of corruption that is there would you say that you they are too corrupted to be reliable again

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I asked you could you take those six manuscripts and come up with what you think would be a workable chocolate chip cookie recipe

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Yeah, you could You could even with all that corruption you could do that. So that's the first answer to that objection the second is

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The numbering of these errors is a bit misleading. We don't first we don't talk about errors versus we don't call them errors

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We call them variants. It's very important to get that. Correct. We're not talking about copying errors We're talking about talking about copying variants because some of them are not errors

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Some of them was we talked about were intentional changes for the sake of clarity But to be aware of that, we know what kind of changes were made we can we can account for those

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We can deal with those in terms of considering them when we're looking and comparing manuscripts Second 99 % of those

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Variants hold no significance whatsoever Remember they are spelling changes word order changes missing letters skipped words, etc.

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We're not talking about change radically altered doctrine. I'm not talking about Flipping entire meanings on their head things like that.

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That's not what we're talking about my first version of my book had a my first book the truth or territory had a

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Corruption error deep in the book where I was making the case that Jesus was the

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Messiah and that the signs that he did prove that he was the Messiah and I Inadvertently left the word not in there flipping that doctrine entirely around saying

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Jesus was not the Messiah Because I inserted the word not there and I didn't catch it in any of my proofing

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Deidre and the dozen times that she went through it didn't catch it in her proofing Finally somebody I don't even know emailed me and said

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I don't think that you're meaning to say Jesus was not the Messiah But on page whatever it was of your book you have this So I immediately went in and eliminated that and re -uploaded a new manuscript so that I would get that right

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But early versions of my book claim that Jesus was not the Messiah That's not the kind of variance that we're talking about in the

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New Testament Right Matthew arguing in one version that Jesus was not the Messiah and another copy of Matthew arguing that he was the

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Messiah Alright a third answer to that objection is that we know the kinds of errors that were made

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They're easy to spot and we can accurately reconstruct the text of the New Testament just like we did with the cop Chocolate chip cookie recipe

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Okay, any other questions that you have there for that fourth objection? Yeah, Jeff, yeah, very good, right we have

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Does the Nestle Nestle all end up do that There are critical texts of the New Testament that are produced that will give you the entire

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New Testament text and then where there is A variant this is what Jeff was saying And it will tell you what the variant is and will tell you all the other renderings or readings of this and the manuscript history for it and then it will rate the variant in terms of whether it is legitimate believable whether it is actually in competition for legitimacy in that passage or whether we just recognize it as a spelling mistake and and move on and So you can that is a good objective analysis that you can look at your

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New Testament new you can read There's a variant here and then you can go do your own research to find out what kind of variant is this?

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How significant is it? How prolific is it in the manuscript tradition? Yeah, a critical

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New Testament text. It's usually usually gonna be a Greek text. It's Nestle all and The name is escaping, you know, what's that?

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Okay, the USB 5 the na -28. These are Nestle all in Greek text of the New Testament will give you textual variants

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You have to have some ability to kind of identify Greek words and phrases and tell what's what's a variant what's not

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So it's not going to be something that you can just if you only read English you're just gonna be able to pick it up and and be able to really do work in it, but Those critical texts of the

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New Testament and by critical we're not talking about Critical in a negative way, but the critiquing of it and the evaluating of the variants that text is available

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They publish those yearly and now there's brand new research being done with Coherence based

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Genealogical method or methodology C B G M Yes I'm not even sure

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I got the acronym right and I've listened to James White explain this a dozen times and I'm not even sure I get it but it's a it's a whole different way of approaching the variants of the

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New Testament the transmission of New Testament text to try and Get back to it's a computer simulated modeling of New Testament text to try and get back to what was originally written and to evaluate textual variants based in based upon whether a

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Textual variant belongs with a certain type of tradition or text like a text grouping if you have a certain group of manuscripts that all kind of flow out of this one copy those would be evaluated and it comes back into dating and Authorship and where it was found and all of that stuff has to all that stuff weighs into those computer models of it

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But that's not something I want to get into because it's it's way over my head. I Have a hard time

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Understanding it even when they dumb it down to the point where people like me should be able to understand it I just it kind of I catch just a little bit of the mud that's thrown over my head that hits the wall

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Do you have a question if l? Okay objection number five God's revelation is like a game of telephone and we all know how unreliable or oral communication is and can be

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God's revelation the scripture of the transmission scriptures like a game of telephone. You're gonna play this game by the way You know that isn't grade school

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You know what? We're talking about where I go whisper something and Landy's there about my 49ers winning the Super Bowl and beating the

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Oakland Raiders in The Super Bowl or Las Vegas Raiders wherever the city they're playing in this year Beating them in the Super Bowl and then

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Landy doesn't like that So he turns around and says to Vince something entirely different that the Raiders are gonna beat the Niners in the

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Super Bowl And then Vince he doesn't even like the Super Bowl So he tells Ben something entirely different about this being a tennis team and by the time it gets all the way over here to the other side it's

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Jim thinks that Ryan should bake chocolate chip cookies for next Sunday school class That's how the message is changed and so the objection goes that you this is how the

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New Testament was translated in an oral fashion like that where one person told somebody else and that this is what copying manuscripts does it's

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Intentionally changed like a game of telephone How would you answer that objection? Because it seems to be compelling at first glance

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Until we analyze the differences between the transmission of the written text and the transmission of an oral statement.

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Yes Okay, that's a good question

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Are they? Critiquing here the fact that God would have told the Apostles and the Apostles would have gotten it wrong and writing it down or are we?

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Critiquing the transmission of the text of the text itself in copying and passing on from one generation to the next

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I've mostly heard this objection raised in with the latter that we're talking about one one copy being made and people

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Intentionally changing this or passing along an oral tradition so that the the oral tradition of Jesus for instance in the first several

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Decades first few decades of the first century You know mark wasn't written until probably 15 years.

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I think is the earliest I've seen mark dated 15 years after the time of Jesus well for 15 years people were passing along doctrine and statements of Jesus in an oral culture not in a a written culture

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And then you had so you have that happening when the Gospels were written the all this stuff passed along and people got it wrong

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But then once the Gospels are written and the New Testament documents are written you have this being transmitted generation to generation

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And that's just like the telephone game. That's the objection Yeah, wouldn't

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Yeah Yeah There's a commonality of the story because the people who are passing along the oral traditions are alive together and can double -check one another

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That's that's part of answering the oral reliability of the oral tradition in the early decades of the first century.

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Yes, Julianne Most of those many of those who would have seen it would have been eyewitnesses

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Yes, not eyewitnesses to everything we would say that probably the disciples were eyewitnesses to more things than anybody else those 12 men

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Okay, let me give you a couple of differences between the Bible the transmission of the Bible in the game of telephone with telephone the transition is the trans

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The transmission is linear from person to person

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There are no witnesses or checks on what is said because in the game of television

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I tell Lanny I whisper it into his ear and then I walk away and he whispers it into Vince's ear and Then Lanny walks away.

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There's no I am NOT there to double -check what Lanny whispers to Vince, right?

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And nor am I or Lanny there to double -check what Vince? Whispers to Ben or what

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Ben whispers to? Ryan eventually, there's no checking of the transmission of that as it is transmitted

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So changes can be made in that process of telephone without anybody being able to double -check what's being transmitted

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In the oral tradition. Are you with me so far? With the New Testament transmission of the text.

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We don't have that Instead what we have is an original document that everybody can read

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Many people did read then we have people making copies of that document and people at that time comparing those two documents before the eyes of everybody to be able to authenticate that this is a legitimate copy of that Manuscript and then you have other people making copies of that manuscript able to double -check it with Sometimes that original and sometimes the original of that copy in that process

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So the transmission of it would be more akin the transmission of the New Testament would be more akin to this

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All of us here are able to hear everything that is said and I make a statement to Lanny Jesus Christ is the

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Savior of the world and then I give the microphone to Lanny and he says it to Vince into the microphone

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So all of us can check it Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world and then Lanny hands the microphone to Vince and Vince turns around and says that to Ben in the hearing of everybody else in this room and it works its way around the room in that fashion till we get to the end so that if any corruption comes in to what between what

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I said to Lanny and he says to Vince and Vince says to Ben if at any point corruption is introduced into that it can be identified it can be called out and it can be destroyed or corrected immediately

35:43

So if that's how you're gonna play the game of telephone then yes It is very akin to the transmission of the New Testament But that's typically not how people play the game of telephone with the transmission of the

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New Testament we have the ability with people at the time we were making the copies to check and double -check what is being said and what is being written and There was not an agenda to change things in the early church

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The agenda of those who transmitted the text in the early church was to keep it as faithful to the original as they possibly could

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The intention being always to honor the Word of God that was the intention of the transmission of that text never corruption so Emily yeah, that's exactly right

36:51

Yeah, because as I said before I'm not trying to convince you that God has preserved his word. I'm trying to show you how he did It I'm beginning with the assumption the scriptures inspired.

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It's inerrant. It's infallible. It's preserved for us So now the only question is how did God do that over the course of time and what bearing do these variants have in?

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That process how do we identify them? And how do we have this confidence? So you're absolutely right you can answer these objections to somebody but it's just going to come up with another

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They're just going to be able to come up with another objection Or they're not going to see it because as I've said before The problem the core of unbelief what is behind people's unbelief is not a lack of evidence.

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What is it? It's a love for darkness. It's always a love for darkness. They want to suppress the truth and unrighteousness

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So they love darkness. That's why they suppress it. That's why they suppress the truth And so yeah, you can only answer these objections so many times in so many ways

37:37

The purpose of bringing up these objections to help you identify. What what are some of the presuppositions behind them? What is being assumed?

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What is being asserted and we could identify what those presuppositions are so that we can address those?

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Because it's not just a matter of regurgitating facts Sometimes you have to take the argument that is offered itself and dismantle that and show what's behind that All right

37:59

Any other questions or objections Yeah This we've talked about this

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Mike is saying we would answer a question with a question So if somebody raised an objection like this a good

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He said a good way of answering it would be to say obviously you've studied this give me an example of what you're talking about Most objections fail when you ask for examples or specifics because most most of these objections are people repeating what they have heard from other people

38:46

Right, so people are repeating what somebody else told them Well, I had a college professor who said this and that college professor what he learned it from so -and -so, right?

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Well, how do you know that what was told to him was true? Didn't something break down in the transmission of that oral tradition? Dan Yeah Right Yeah, yeah there there is a good point to be made there that we are we are swimming in translations of scripture in English Yep, it is a good thing.

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It is a good thing and and I'm gonna We're gonna talk about translations and the good and bad and translations before we're done with our study

39:48

All right. Any other questions or comments? Okay so I know

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I know that I need about 30 minutes to get into the Qumran caves and the Dead Sea Scrolls and I'll have some pictures for you next week of the

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Qumran a village and the Qumran caves and where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and then we will go into The significance of the

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Dead Sea Scrolls and what they teach us. So we're gonna close a couple minutes early It's not a couple minutes

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So it is a couple minutes early, but not nearly as early as you deserve after all the times. I've kept you late So let's pray and we'll be done for the day father we do thank you for this time that we've had as we have discussed your word and your sovereignty your

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Providence and giving it To us and again, it is just our desire that this would continue to confirm in our hearts Your word is truth as true and that we may have confidence in it trust it love it believe in its sufficiency and live and practice in our lives in such a way that Shines forth the light of the truth into the lives of other people