The Reliability and Canon of Scripture

Welcome, Prayer, and Introduction to the Evening

Tyler, I'm one of the pastors here. I want to welcome you to our church building. Thank you for coming. If you haven't been here before and you need to use the restrooms Hopefully that's already done with but if you find yourself in need of the facilities they're outside this door and behind the fireplace out there and Also outside of these doors in between these doors.

You will find an offering box and we are going to be taking an honorarium for Dr. James White, so if you could leave something in there, that would be much appreciated. If you are Somebody who came here this evening and you are in Christ if you have set Christ apart as Lord in your heart we hope that tonight is a blessing to you and that it and just Gives you more reason to to give a hope for the answer that lies within you that you will be bolstered in your faith and you will be encouraged in the Validity of our Bible and the history of our Bible if you find yourself on the flip side like coin and you Have yet to bow the knee to King Jesus.

We want to welcome you here and thank you for coming Even though this might be different for you. And we want to let you know that we are unapologetically praying that you will indeed bow the knee to King Jesus.

So that is our hope that is our prayer. Again we we thank you for coming. We know that the Word of God has been questioned At every turn seemingly in in our world today that the veracity of the Word of God has been under fire.

And so we do hope that you will Leave here knowing that the Word of God is trustworthy. We stand wholeheartedly in agreement with Paul who says that God has given us an understanding of himself that What may be known about God is plain to us because he has made it plain to us in Creation in our own understanding and so we don't see any reason to try to prove God to you this evening.

But we do want you to leave with an understanding that God has revealed himself to us not only in a general way, but in a very special specific way that he has given us his word and it is a trustworthy reliable source.

And we do hope that you leave here with that Understanding and that God would do a work in your heart and and draw you to himself. That is our hope and our desire. Before we get started I do want to just mention to you that The we have the written word that we're talking about tonight Which explains to us the living word Jesus Christ and tomorrow night if you want to know more about him We're gonna be meeting back here again for a Good Friday service at 630.

If you want to come and celebrate his resurrection with us. We will be here on Sunday at 930 for Sunday school and 1045 We'll have our main service where we will gather for that celebration of his resurrection.

We want to invite you to those and then following that we're gonna spend three weeks Studying this this very same thing the reliability of scripture. We're gonna be calling that little three-week miniseries confidence in scripture.

So if you guys are into this kind of thing, which I'm assuming you are because you're here We want to invite you back to join us for that. So I'm going to go ahead and open up in a word of prayer and then I will introduce our speaker for the evening.

God we thank you that you are a good and loving and gracious God. We pray to you who are the the first and last the Alpha and the Omega The one and only God of this universe. We thank you that you have given us your word that it is trustworthy that it is reliable.

We pray that you would speak to us tonight through dr. James White that you would give us better understanding of where our Bible came from that you would help us to Have trust and confidence that it is indeed the Word of God.

We thank you that you have spoken to us through your prophets through your apostles and We pray that we would all leave here with that understanding that there is truth that it is Knowable and that we would be in Christ when we walk out of these doors.

God, I thank you for your love for your grace for your church and for how you have taken and you have bought your church with your own blood you have. You have laid down your life for us. You've taken it up again and you have left us with your Holy Spirit God work in us tonight, and we pray that you'll be lifted up and honored that you'd be famous in this building in this city in this valley that your truth would go out and People would come to know you because of the the ministry of your Saints.

I would pray these things in your name. Amen. So I'm assuming that most of you are here because you are familiar with dr. James White and his work. He is an author of over 20 different books Including the King James only controversy letters to a Mormon elder the Forgotten Trinity all great books.

He has engaged in over 175 public moderated debates with all kinds of bigwigs the the biggest names in Roman Catholicism and Islam and Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness and Atheists he has gone the rounds with pretty much everybody.

He is the director of Alpha and Omega Ministries and for nearly 40 years He has been the host of his podcast and radio show the dividing line 40 years that's before I was born. That's quite a long time.

That's a lot of faithful ministry to the Lord. He has been married to his wife Kelly for about the same length of time 39 years. He has two children four living grandchildren. We are thankful to have him here tonight, so please join me in welcoming dr. James White well.

Manuscripts, Papyri, and the Early Text of the New Testament

It's it's four and a half grandchildren, we're hoping to Welcome a little boy into the world in September. Appreciate your prayers for that. My daughter is experienced two miscarriages in a row so we are praying very much for this this little boy and.

I.

Those who know my son-in-law Eric and my daughter summer are all hoping that The little boy will come into this world because the combination of those two people is going to be really weird. There's just no two ways about it.

It's going to be going to be going to be a wild time. It's good to be with you. I am on what we call a road trip.

I.

In 2019 I flew a hundred and sixty-five thousand miles. I taught in Durban South Africa Johannesburg Samara, Russia. Yeah, it was 28 degrees below zero in January. That's a great time to go to Samara, Russia, by the way.

I.

Actually spent about two and a half months in London. During that time traveling and then speaking there as well. I can get my I can get I can get pretty well pretty well anywhere in London on the tube.

It's it's an amazing place to be and I consider myself to have escaped from Melbourne Australia in December of 2019 when you consider how close that was to when things went upside down. That really was somewhat of an escape.

But.

So I was doing a lot of traveling and in fact, I was doing a lot of debating that year. I did. I didn't. I figured it would only take about another year two years to get to 200 debates and Then everything changed as we all know.

And I don't I don't wear face diapers. And so I don't fly anymore and So, you know, we were doing stuff online and that's fine but I Could spend the whole evening just Encouraging believers with the stories that I've been told from the people that I've been talking to.

Here in Utah down and in Southern, Utah, I spoke at Cedar City last Wednesday, I believe it was and Just just getting to see people and shake hands and look at people and and hear their stories. And so now I I have that pretty GMC truck out there that I pull a fifth wheel around with and.

Here we are.

It's a little bit different than then Heathrow Airport in London but you get to meet all sorts of neat and wonderful people and it's. You know you you you go with where the Lord puts you and take advantage of the opportunities that you that you have.

I'm on my way up to Idaho. I will leave on Saturday heading up. They're Gonna be up in Moscow doing a bunch of stuff with Doug Wilson. We're gonna be recording man rampant and doing a sweater vest dialogue that we've been doing for about a year and a half two.

Years now, we're also be debating each other on the subject of pedo communion, which is a real interesting subject but again demonstrating that you can have deep friendships and yet disagreements at the same time.

And so we'll be doing that and then I'll be heading home from there. Playing a tag with all of the nice big semi-tractor trailers and things like that along the way by the way. I just today had a sign made and Just today.

I got it taped onto the back of my.

My.

Fifth wheel and It is it says let me see if I can remember it. Bible questions, let's talk. CB channel 15 handle Diagnetus and So I'm really going to be interested on Saturday. We install the CB radio.

How do you CB radio installed on my my truck of course? I'm old enough to remember when CB radios were really cool you know, I was I was on a CB radio when I was in probably that would have been like Before I was driving my freshman year in high school back in 1977 something along those lines anyways.

But I I decided I need one of those things because those trucks, you know, especially when you're climbing hills Sometimes get angry with me. So I'm like, what did you want me to do? And so I thought you know, I wonder I wonder how many people would would fire up their units and talk to me.

So I'll let you know I'll I'll report on my my little CB missionary adventures over the next a couple weeks worth of travel, but anyway this evening I Am as was introduced one of the pastors that apology at church.

We are planning a church up in Salt Lake City. That's one of the main reasons they come up here. But I've been coming to Salt Lake City for a very very long time the first time I in drove up the the 15 was in a 1964 Dodge Dart.

No, two body panels were the same color and It did not like driving all the way from Phoenix up here it was running pretty rough by the time we got up here, but I've been coming up here for a very very long time and In in the intervening decades I have had the opportunity of teaching Greek and Hebrew.

I have been a critical consultant on the New American Standard Bible translation. I Do a lot of work and what's called textual criticism the study of the manuscripts of the New Testament some of which are on the screen.

Right now.

So other than being the director of Alpha Omega Ministries and a pastor of apology at church and a Grandfather, which I'm really enjoying more than almost anything else I am also the professor of church history and apologetics at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Conway, Arkansas with Jeffrey Johnson Owen Strand and some other Men there and so that's the background that I bring to us this evening.

Obviously in much of the work that I have done both in regards to Mormonism as well as debating men like John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg and Bart Ehrman it has been in the defense of the veracity of the text of Scripture.

And so for example, we have on the screen right now some of the Fascinating little Nuggets of information. For example the one on the bottom left the two columns that's the end of first Peter in the beginning of second Peter in manuscript p72 and I saw that page during the papal visit in 1993 in Denver, Colorado and.

I.

Remember the excitement that was mine to be able to read that Manuscript, it's the earliest copy we have of first second Peter and Jude. So if you've ever read first second Peter and Jude Then you are looking at the earliest handwritten reference to those materials it's also this was interesting to me during the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code craze anyone remember the Dan Brown everywhere I went every airline gate I went to.

Somebody was reading the Da Vinci Code and then they put the movie out and all the rest of stuff and it was all fiction. But everybody thought that it wasn't fiction that it was the real thing. And if you remember the story the idea was that the deity of Christ had been made up By Constantine and that up to the days of Constantine Constine's around 325 AD.

Up until that period of time everybody thought Jesus was just a regular man and that he was married and and all the rest this kind of fun stuff and During that same time period I was going around giving presentations and I would show This particular page because the second Peter 1 1 contains what's called a Granville sharp construction it's a special construction the Greek language and Jesus is called our God and Savior Jesus Christ here in p72 right at the beginning.

It's on the right hand side of the page there and The significance of that is this is written between 175 and 200 that means 125 to 150 years before Constantine. So much for Dan Brown making millions of dollars off of lies.

Right next to that is the long tall dark Little piece of a manuscript. I saw that manuscript. I have a picture holding it in at Macquarie State University in Sydney, Australia a number of years ago, and it's probably from about 275 to 300 it's it's from the book of Acts and the only reason I show it primarily is because a friend of mine took me and and we we met the curator and he got it out and he and I started talking papyrology and How you date?

Papyrus, maybe know how you dated papyrus. You just walk up to and say hey you want to go out? To see if anybody's still still awake. Most of you just had dinner or something like that taco time is sitting there bubbling in your stomach and all the bloods down there.

There's nothing up here so I could get away with saying anything right now.

But.

No, we were talking about Dating how you date papyri and things like that and I could just tell That I had I had provided a real service to this gentleman because it was plainly obvious that his wife had gotten tired of that subject about 35 years earlier and So he was really looking for somebody to to have a nice conversation about Papyrology with and so we did over on the right hand side is p66 and I like that particular picture because Most of the time what you see in a in pictures of manuscripts and more and more of them are becoming available.

Thanks to what's called CS NTM the Center for Study of New Testament manuscripts in Dallas. Dan Wallace is the head of that. They're going around and they are making high quality Digital photography of all these manuscripts, and that's vitally important.

There were some there was some stuff that was lost even in The Iraq War and Afghanistan there's probably been some stuff lost in Ukraine. War destroys manuscripts and fires destroy manuscripts and floods and bugs and everything else and So it's vitally important that we have high quality digital photography.

Super high resolution of these manuscripts so most of the time all the pages are separated from one another. But here you can see what the book looked like initially and this is actually the beginning of the Gospel of John and you can see notice how the bottom corner is.

The bottom right corner is damaged as is the upper right corner, but the left-hand side is the spine. So you can understand most of our books your Bible will probably have the same pattern of where because you put that on a shelf.

What's the what's the first thing that's getting hit? It's that outside part of where the pages are the inside part has the whole binding to help protect it. But the outside part does not and most of your manuscripts will have your papyri manuscripts the ancient ones this is from around the year 200 and Sometimes I have people look up that and go wow.

It doesn't look like it's really very good condition, and I look at them and say what are you gonna look like in 1800 years? It's doing a whole lot better than you will and so. That's actually John 1 1 you can you can I use that one too because in the beginning was word was with God word was God and there you have that long before Constantine as well.

I like taking shots at Dan Brown just as a fun of it. And the last one up there over on the left-hand side the red colored one. May well be it most people think it is the Earliest portion of the New Testament we possess so in other words.

It's in real life. It's about the size of a credit card and It was Imagine imagine this with me for just a moment. You've got a guy in the night early 1930s in a basement in London. And he is he is shuffling through little pieces of papyri that have been brought to England from.

Egypt and.

If.

You look at it. You can see all you're getting is the middle portions of words on a couple of different lines. So you don't really have any way of coming up with a context or anything like that. So to be able to figure out what this is means you really know your stuff you can read.

Most seminary graduates Would not be able to read what's on the screen right now. The reason for that is that for the first 900 years the transmission of the text in New Testament It was written as you can see as a single line of capital letters.

No spaces between words and almost no punctuation. Think about that in fact when you get to the end of the line you just simply start the next line you don't even worry.

About where you break.

So the words can be broken at really interesting and unusual places and. So that's what you have here in what's called p52. Which is the manuscript on the left-hand side. And what's fascinating to me about p52?

When it was discovered it was sent to the leading papyrologist of the day. Three of them put it at around the year 125 and One said it was about 8595 in the first century. Now when you date of papyrus you you go 25 years each way.

So it's a 50 year date range. So p52 has been dated as early as 125. Which is extremely early because of what it is a a manuscript of. It's from John chapter 18 Versus 31 to 34 on this side 37 38 on the back side now.

Why is that significant? Well because if you lived in the 1870s German scholarship had convinced everyone That the book of John was written probably around the year 175. It had nothing to do with anyone who knew Jesus because it had such a high view of Jesus that had to be due to an evolutionary process over time of a Gradually increasing view of Jesus and so German scholarship was absolutely convinced that the gospel of John had been written about 175.

Until you find a fragment of it from 50 years earlier. That sort of ruins everybody's day and lots of books get thrown in the trash, which is good.

But.

And it's I it is ironic to me anyways that this if you think about what John chapter 18 contains This is Jesus discussion with Pilate where Pilate asks him. What is truth. And Here the earliest fragment of the New Testament that we have Comes from from a book like that.

Now just with me for a moment, please realize we have.

Portions of.

The New Testament. Vast majority of the New Testament in those first 100 and 200 years. By the way, the book that is the the gospel that is the earliest attested. Most attested is John not mark.

And.

The book that has the least attestation manuscripts, which makes sense because the nature of the book is the book of Revelation. Book of Revelation struggled for acceptance in the canon that makes sense.

We'll talk about that a little bit more later on.

And.

So we only have two papyri copies of.

The.

Book of Revelation and what's really interesting just in passing. I'll just give you this information. You can use it to amaze your friends. Over the weekend as you're getting together with folks in the church or whatever you can you can say Hey, did you know this and they're gonna look like you like wow, you are really sharp.

If you'd want people to look at you and think that way then then great you can use this. But the two earliest papyri manuscripts we have now a papyrus doesn't necessarily contain the entirety of a book.

Obviously p52. That's not all John. That's all there is to it. There's nothing more. But what it does tell us in 125 is that John chapter 18 was just like John chapter 18 is in later manuscripts as well.

So it's an important witness along those lines, even though it's a very small fragment but in in the two papyri of Book of Revelation. We do have Revelation chapter 13 and What's in Revelation chapter 13?

Well, what's in Revelation chapter 13 if we were to stop? Any guy riding by the road out here on a Harley? Okay, and we were to ask him What's the number of the beast? He's gonna go.

Six six six.

You know, right everybody knows six six six, right? Well, what's interesting is that's in Revelation chapter 13 and what's interesting is in the two earliest papyri manuscripts of the Book of Revelation.

It's six one six. Six one six. Now, I'll tell you you're old enough to remember. I remember when when people were very very strongly arguing That the beast was Henry Kissinger. Anyone remember when the beast was Henry Kissinger.

Now the amazing thing is Henry Kissinger is still alive. He's 147, but he's still alive. It's it's astonishing that he's still around.

But.

Everybody has added up somebody's name to 666, right. Every time there's a presidential election. You know Hillary's name added up to 66 and Obama's name added somebody. I is a Trump. It doesn't matter Who it is.

They all add up to 666 so what if it's 616. And Dan Wallace at Dallas Seminary. This is his joke. So I blame him for it. He says he thinks the number of the beast is 666 and six one six is the number of the neighbor of the beast.

Think that one through now some of you are laughing because everybody else is but you have no idea why that was funny at all. I know you because I know I knew my mom. That's how my mom got through all jokes and then two weeks later Jim I got that joke, you know, yeah, that's good.

That's good. Mama says that's wonderful.

So.

Anyways, by the way, six six six and six one six are just Greek and Hebrew versions of The name Kaiser Nero just so you know, that's that's what that's about. But that may challenge your eschatology one way or the other.

Anyhow, so we had why I put these up here other than me being able to get you to tell you some stories and I like people you look at the bottom of the page here and your Bible and it says certain manuscripts say this and certain manuscripts may say that how many is have us have ever seen any of those Manuscripts.

I like to be able to show folks. These are them. These are what some of those manuscripts look like and in fact, here are some of the.

Later.

Manuscripts for example on the left-hand side. There is a close-up of a section from John chapter 14 in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Sinaiticus is a when it was discovered anyways by Count von Tischendorf.

How many of you know who count von Tischendorf was how many have ever heard the name of count von Tischendorf? Marley have you heard of count von Tischendorf? Okay, all right I just want everybody to know Marley's my friend and When if I get too tired to finish up Marley's going to come up and tell you about frozen.

So there you go. That's that's how we'll finish off. So anyway Count von Tischendorf what a fascinating you would think a German scholar. Looking, you know publishing a Greek translation of the Greek translation of the Old Testament and traveling the world looking for manuscripts.

He really believed that the Bible is the Word of God and he really believed that eventually they would find earlier and earlier Manuscripts would help them to defend the Bible against German rationalism.

But what most people don't realize is that in all probability it was Constantine von Tischendorf. That was the model for someone that you all probably know a whole lot better than him. Remember any movies back in the 1980s about someone looking for ancient treasures?

A guy named Indiana Jones. He was modeled after Constantine von Tischendorf. Didn't know that did you now now you now, you know and Codex Sinaiticus was found by von Tischendorf and It's a it's a really funny story.

I've got to tell you it quickly. He had found some ancient material there and it's it's called the Monastery of St. Catharines to even get into the monastery. You have to go up over the wall in a basket all right, and they obviously their their their library was incredibly ancient and and just amazing and When he first visited he he found one of the monks taking some fragments to the kitchen to be burned.

In helping to cook food and when he looked through it, he realized these were ancient fragments. And so he sort of freaked out and well, you shouldn't freak out when you're visiting a monastery and the monks never get out.

And so they sort of clammed up and like, okay. This is a weirdo and they wouldn't really tell him much more about it and things like that. And so he kept coming back and he kept visiting and it was years later.

That he's come back. And again, he still hasn't found anything and it's the last night. He's going to be there and so he had published an addition of what's called the Greek Septuagint the Greek Septuagint is the Greek translation of The Old Testament done about 250 200 years before Christ.

It was the Bible of the early church.

And.

So his the monk that was the steward who was taking care of him. It would take him to his room and provide him with food and you know, you know the guy that got that dirty job. He gave him a copy of the Septuagint as thanks for Helping to take care of him during his visit and the monk said started looking at us.

Oh, I have one of these. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let me show it to you. So he takes him to his cell and.

He.

Reaches up into the closet and he pulls out this large volume wrapped in red cloth and he lays it down he pulls the cloth back and Von Tischendorf is looking at Codex Sinaiticus Which was written? around 325 AD.

Now there is this would be the earliest manuscript of the New Testament known so von Tischendorf Having learned his lesson and having matured. Sort of goes. Oh, yeah. Hey, that's that's really interesting mind if I.

Take it back to my room and you know, just sort of thumb through it a little bit. Take a look at it.

Yeah, okay.

So he goes into he goes in closes door. Now. This is my interpretation. Okay, I cannot prove this historically from the historical documents. All right, but this is what von Tischendorf did. But silently because you're in a monastery, okay, because that's that's the way you need to do it and he did not sleep that night.

And it wasn't just the Old Testament. It was the whole Bible. From Genesis to Revelation now, there were some parts missing. It's. It's old it's really real this point in time, okay, and so. The next morning he he asked if they can buy it and they say no and how it eventually ends up in London where I saw it in 2005 in the British Museum is a long and sordid tale involving czars and Backroom deals and all sorts of other stuff along the lines.

But it's all online today. If you go to codex sinaticus org, you can zoom in on the text like that and and see the different Handwriting styles and things like that. The one in the middle in the blue is codex vaticanus, which is in the Vatican Library.

It's contemporaneous with Sinaiticus. And the one the right is codex alexandrinus. I've seen both sinaiticus and alexandrinus in the flesh. When I walked into the viewing room At the British Museum, I was stunned.

I was the only one in the room. There was nobody else there and there's codex sinaiticus. There's codex alexandrinus over here. There's a Tyndale Bible original 1611 and I forget I think maybe a Wycliffe translation behind me millions and millions of dollars worth of Astonishing things and they're just under glass and nobody else around.

I thought this is really dumb. Someone's gonna walk in here and and blow everything up and we're gonna really miss this stuff. So anyway These are the manuscripts you'll notice they look a whole lot nicer and.

And that's because this is done after the peace of the church after 313 AD Christianity becomes a religio licita a licit religion and so you can have professionals Do the copying without risking their lives and so on and so forth.

And so you can see the quality of the manuscripts that are produced after that point in time, but anyway, so.

Oops.

Cease and desist sir I'm gonna need to use this. So we've got this will be the only video clip I play. So well no, there's one other but We're gonna go old-school and I'm just gonna hold the microphone over the speaker.

That's how we'll get the audio. In 2009 you can see I look a little bit different there in 2009 I debated Bart Ehrman. Bart Ehrman is the Leading English-speaking critic of the New Testament in the world today.

Really, he did his PhD under Bruce Metzger at Princeton Seminary back in the 70s and We did a debate on the reliability New Testament you can watch it on on YouTube and During the cross-examination. I asked him a question Based upon the fact I had spent months and months and months Listening to his presentations and take it listening to his classes and reading all of his books and everything else.

And he did absolutely none of that in regards to me. Which wouldn't is not unusual at all, but I asked him a question and I want you to listen to the leading critic of The reliability of our Bible well at least of our New Testament listen to what he says About the New Testament, I did not expect him to say this, but here's where it here's where it came.

That's not what I wanted to do. All right, let's try this again and hit the right button this time. You discuss the length of time that exists between the writing of Paul's letter to the Galatians and the first extant copy that being 150 years.

You describe this time period as enormous. That's a quote. Could you tell us what term you would use to describe the time period between say the original writings of Suetonius or Tacitus or Pliny and their first extant manuscript copies very enormous.

Sorry ginormous would be a good one ginormous ginormous. Okay. Right. I mean ginormous doesn't cover it the New Testament. We have much earlier Attestation than for any other book from antiquity.

That's that.

Now Suetonius Pliny these are Latin historians writing contemporaneously with the New Testament and.

So.

We know when they were writing because they tell us when they're writing. But on average any work that's contemporaneous New Testament the first Manuscript copies that we have. So the first physical evidence we have of that book averages between 500 and 900 years later.

Okay, remember I told you about p52 how what what was its date 125 from John. So that's within 100 years less than 100 years. But for all these other books the average is between half a millennium 500 years and 900 years almost a full millennium.

And so I asked him would you come, you know compare the two ginormous and then he says the New Testament has much.

Earlier.

Attestation than any other book of antiquity and he's the leading English-speaking critic of the New Testament. I think that's very important for us to keep in mind because unfortunately in the vast majority of Universities and college settings you don't hear that part.

You hear all about the unreliability the possibilities of change, but you don't hear this part and I think that's an important thing to To keep in mind now. Let me just do it. This is this is the summary screen.

From an hour and a half presentation I do on manuscripts and variant readings and I explain how variant readings arise and all the rest of stuff I'm gonna summarize it real quick. We still have to talk about the canon, too.

There's a lot of stuff under all of this is just simply to wet your appetite to get you thinking to to get you some some. Hopefully much more in-depth way of thinking about these things than what's normally commonly going on in our society there.

How many variants are there you're here? You'll hear people from you know Bart Ehrman will say 400 ,000 to 500 ,000 variants in the New Testament. There's only a hundred and thirty eight thousand two hundred words in the New Testament.

So if you got 400 ,000 variants 500 ,000 variants, that sounds like three variants for every word. That's not what that means they won't tell you that's not what that means and people repeat that and Religion reporters.

Oh my goodness. Where do we grow religion reporters today? I mean, it's got to be a very dark secret lab someplace that. To get religion reporters because the things that they will repeat uncritically is just astonishing but that's the site kind of stuff that you're going to hear and I remember when my daughter went to Glendale Community College briefly after she graduated from high school she had an vile nasty anti-christian teacher in a Philosophy of religion class or something introduction to religion class or something just a nasty nasty guy.