The Reliability and Canon of Scripture

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 facility 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 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 the 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 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

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

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 installed a

CB radio had a 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 in 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 1st 2nd

Peter and Jude So if you've ever read 1st 2nd 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 is 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 was 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 the 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 anybody 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 was some there was some stuff that was lost even in The Iraq war in 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 a 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 1 ,800 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 for the fun of it And the last one up there over on the left -hand side the red colored one

May well be 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 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 of the

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 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 52?

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 a 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

Verses 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 pilot where pilot 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 sure 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 of 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 Relation It's six one six Six one six now,

I'll tell you if you're old enough to remember. I remember 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 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 616 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 in two weeks later Jim I got that joke.

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 in your Bible And it says certain manuscripts say this and certain manuscripts may say that how many of 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 gonna 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

Konstantin 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 Konstantin 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 edition of was 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 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 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 what 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 1700 It's old. It's really very old 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 Sinaiticus 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 on 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 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. So 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 catch 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 a hundred years less than a hundred years but for all these other books the average is between half a millennium five hundred 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 So there's a lot of stuff under all of this is just simply to whet 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 four hundred thousand to five hundred thousand 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 four hundred thousand variants five hundred thousand very 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, it was 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 a vile nasty anti -christian teacher in a

Philosophy of religion class or something introduction to religion class or something just a nasty nasty guy and She tried to endure it and eventually she'd been to all my debates and stuff

She someone just recently tried to insult her on on Twitter Does anybody know sheologians my daughter of the summer and her okay few of you know she's been going at it for quite some time now and Someone tried to insult her on Twitter recently to say oh, you know that summer

Jaeger is James White's daughter The Apple didn't fall very far from the tree on that one.

I'm like yeah, it's exactly right It's exactly right so she eventually you know

He made some dumb statement about the languages of the New Testament that she knew wasn't true And so she challenged him on it his best response was to Google it

Which tells you but the point is that these kinds of professors are all over In the public educational system, and so they'll throw these numbers out, and they'll say there's 400 ,000 500 ,000 variants know what they're right

You know what the vast majority of them are In the English language unless you're from Mississippi or Georgia You are supposed to say an apple

Right they say Apple down there, but we we're supposed to say an apple you're supposed to put that n in there

Greek had the exact same thing it's called the movable new you're not supposed to have two vowels crammed up against each other and Scribes really struggled with that Well that doesn't mean anything it doesn't impact the meaning of the text at all

So there's a large number of them are movable news and in fact 99 % of The scribal errors that have taken place in the transmission of the text of New Testament You could not explain to someone if they did not read

Greek They don't impact the meaning of the text at all now there are about it depends on how you break it down But there are about 1500 variants that do impact the translation and Could be original so for example if you have a manuscript if you have a reading in a manuscript from say like 1300 years after Christ and it's the only manuscript that has this reading and No other

Greek manuscript contains it and none of the Translations that were made because remember the

New Testament was translated into Latin the Hiddick Coptic Boheric all these other languages in the first couple of hundred years after it was written and Those are really important because they can tell us a lot about what manuscript

They were translated from what kind of manuscript they were translated from and what it originally read So if you have a manuscript that has a unique reading, and there's no versional support for it

There's no earlier manuscript support for it is from like the year 1300 that doesn't have any possibility of being original

Because it's left. No history, and it's it's left. No trace of its reading in history. There's actually an example of such a reading

That's that's really interesting Because It was in a manuscript that a man named by the name of Desiderius Erasmus used and we'll get to we may get to Erasmus later on but Erasmus was a

Dutch humanist scholar who public who printed and published Not printed first, but printed and published the first Greek New Testament in 1516 and that was a very important Greek New Testament because it happened to have been picked up by someone by the name of Martin Luther and Martin Luther in studying that Greek New Testament is actually

Greek Latin diaglot. It had the Greek on one side and Erasmus is Latin translation on the other That's when the light started breaking through When he started recognizing, huh?

When attention agate do penance, but over here, it's metanoia. Tay repent.

They don't mean the same things, huh? So Erasmus was was important and and his work was important and it's his

Greek New Testament that pretty much With only a few changes ends up being the basis of the

King James translation of the New Testament But one of the manuscripts that he happened to obtain in Basel Switzerland and working on his

New Testament Was a manuscript that had a singular reading in Ephesians chapter 3 Where all of the manuscripts talk about the administration of the mystery of the ages his one manuscript said the fellowship

The fellowship if you look at your King James your new King James is at this day. It says fellowship all

Manuscripts all ancient translations all commentaries and early church fathers Don't say fellowship, but it's in the

King James because Erasmus got hold of that one. Now, we know that it can't be the original but There's where it took place so 99 % inconsequential there might be about 1500 that we have to deal with and we do it is

The most thoroughly documented work of antiquity not only the earliest attestation

It's the best attestation and the most attestation of any work of antiquity Very important.

It's spread all over the world quickly. There was no controlling authority. I don't care what YouTube says. I Have no earthly idea

There are so many conspiracy theories But the reality is the New Testament was written by multiple authors to multiple off audiences at multiple times in multiple places

So there was never a time when any one group could control the text of the

New Testament in fact, the process was the gathering together of the

New Testament over time and So if you go to the Chester Beattie library in in Ireland In Dublin, you'll be able to see manuscript p46 and That is the earliest collection of Paul's major epistles

Well that took some work to do because when he wrote his epistles he sent them To places that are a long ways away from each other.

You know Colossi is not next door to Rome and So obviously there was a copying process going on and eventually a collection process and so what you get our gospel manuscripts with Matthew Matthew Mark Luke and John and Then you get

Pauline collections and you get collections of like 1st 2nd Peter and Jude p72 which we saw earlier and eventually that all comes together to form the

New Testament, but that took time and So in those early years there was no group that could come along and say, you know, we don't like the we don't like the doctrine of The resurrection and so we're gonna take the doctrine of resurrection out.

We're gonna put something else in Does anyone remember? Always struggle with her name.

I'm sorry She out on a out on a limb

A Shirley MacLaine Shirley MacLaine. Okay. I don't know why I struggle with her name, but Shirley MacLaine And most of you younger people are going.

Okay. He's going back in danger in history again but Shirley MacLaine was this actress and She did this movie about her getting into the new age

And she had a spirit guide and all the rest of stuff and and she was you know in the movie

She was walking along the beach and her her guru is telling her to say I am God.

I am God I am God and everybody in the United States is in front of TV going. No, you're not. No, you're not. No, you're not and But she would tell people that the

Bible used to talk about reincarnation But they took it out at the

Council of Constantinople Now I just say

I like to say that and then stop and look at folks Because we all go Huh because we all realize

I'm Not sure what happened to the Council of Constantinople So I can't really say well that didn't have the

Council of content because I don't really know what happened I didn't know there was a Council of Constantinople.

See that's how it works you see and So people make this kind of a claim as if the

Council of Constantinople which had nothing to do with reincarnation whatsoever Had even had the capacity to make changes to the

Bible it was impossible in fact by the time the Council of Constantinople p52 and P72 were already probably buried in the sands of Egypt someplace.

He couldn't get to him to change him so all these theories and you know

Many plain and precious truths have been removed some scriptures according to the LDS Church and my my Muslim friends are

Absolutely convinced that all the stuff about the deity of Christ or that was added in at a later time and so on and so forth

There was never a time when this could have happened And if it happened to later manuscripts

Then as we found the earlier manuscripts, there would be these huge differences between them, but there aren't there aren't

So let's let's keep that in mind as you as you think about these things This thing is about to rip my ear off so in a few few moments if it comes off one more time, we're gonna go to go to this baby because Me and Britney Spears microphones do not get along really well

So I'm not saying anything about whoever normally wears this. I'm not saying you're Britney Spears or anything

Just saying you know Anyways any later editing was now clearly in comparison with ancient manuscripts.

That's a point I just made is if there was this kind of editing process at a later point in time These earlier manuscripts that we discovered would would demonstrate that and there are not there is no evidence of that So but who wrote it?

much of our scholarship based upon Skeptical deconstruction now deconstruction has become a real popular

Phrase in our society now. It's used primarily as a synonym for apostasy but it's been around for a while and In essence what

I would say as I look at modern scholarship is whatever we conclude it can't be what the faith has always said it is and I experienced that in seminary when

I when I went to when I did my first master's degree, we were poor as church mice and Just so happened that our first child came along right as I was looking at going to seminary so that shot down moving anywhere to go to seminary and So there was one seminary in Phoenix For me to go to fuller theological seminary now fuller today is so far off to my left that I wouldn't even be able to See them, but they were pretty far off to the left of me back then though they were much more conservative in the 1980s than than they are now and I experienced this

I I saw this firsthand It is a fact that in much of modern scholarship

Whatever You you when you have any type of controversy about authorship or Anything in the

Bible the one answer that will not be considered by people on the left is The answer that Christians have had down through the history of the church

That's the one it can't be and you won't even you want to take a look at and I can tell you in my debates

Barterman never read a word of anything. I said John Dominic Crossan Wouldn't have known where to find anything that I had ever said he was a by the way,

John I I told John Dominic Ross and he was my favorite heretic and he sort of liked that he was just a nice little

Irish monk and We just loved on him. We took him on a cruise actually

And we debated on the resurrection on the cruise, but all of us Christians in the group. We just treat him

Just loved on him. He didn't know what to do with us because we were just completely weird to him I mean we were like aliens from another planet

You you come out of a cell where you spent the entire? 1960s studying the Gospels and you run into a bunch of evangelical believers like who are these people it was pretty weird anyway

But none of these people ever even Bothered to read anything that we had to say and the vast very the time when

I encounter people on the left They've never even read entire tomes of scholarship on the right on the very subject

They're addressing because they're absolutely convinced. We have nothing meaningful to say We study their stuff all the time

They do not listen to the other side so when people say all the vast majority of scholars say that's meaningless

The vast majority of scholars don't study the vast majority of scholarship. You couldn't keep up with it even if you wanted to So be careful when people use argumentation like that if Christians believe something down through history that makes it wrong modern men are

So much wiser and insightful than the ancients ever could be that's just an absolute given

How could you trust anyone who didn't have an iPhone? I mean seriously how could anyone have any knowledge of the world without an iPhone?

Oh, I just got a text message. Oh, well. I boy our our attention isn't really all that good and I Would you agree with me that Plucking people's toenails out without use of anesthesia would be a really good way of dealing with text message spammers

I Thank you, I'm thinking about making a making a move toward that It was bad enough when they called you

But now when they text you like really and especially when they don't even have your name You know they use somebody else's name.

It's like Anyway, sorry We continue on The earliest documents attached particular authorship to the

Gospels though the books themselves do not identify their authors You know you could argue a little bit John on that one and and some things like that, but the earliest documents the earliest material we have outside of the

New Testament identifies the four Gospels as Matthew Mark Luke and John and Does not recognize any other

Gospels you know people today was oh They're all these Gnostic Gospels a look at some of them later on the reality is those had extremely small distribution and not amongst

Orthodox believers that had any belief similar to what you find in the New Testament at all

The Pauline corpus has shrunk a good bit in modern times resulting in far -reaching theological consequences what

I mean by that well Bart Bart Ehrman only believes that seven of Paul's epistles are genuine

So can you imagine what happens if you're writing a commentary even if you're writing a commentary

You know he does believe that Paul wrote Romans But if you're writing a commentary on Romans, and you don't believe

Paul wrote Ephesians Can you see how that's going to impact your interpretation of Romans?

Many times Christians that come up to me. I went to the Christian bookstore What are there such things as Christian bookstores anymore?

Do you have a Christian bookstore around here? No, no see see that use of man.

I'll tell you the world has changed Okay back back in the horse and buggy days we had

Christian bookstores and people would go and they buy a commentary and They start reading the commentary, and it's like where are they getting this stuff?

I what? and people don't realize that so much of what is written today is written from a perspective of Breaking the text apart and not not viewing it as a harmonious whole in any way shape or form in other words what you get

In the commentary is going to be very different than what what you get from the pulpit most of the time And that bothers people

And this is one of the reasons for that So what is the basis of denying apostolic authorship of various books like Ephesians and Colossians?

or one of the real obvious ones is Everybody says well look at 1st and 2nd

Peter There is no way that Peter is the author of 1st and 2nd

Peter why? Well you you might be able to sort of detect it a little bit in in a good consistent

English translation But the reality is if you translate 1st and 2nd

Peter from Greek itself They are nothing like they are radically different One of them is just filled with complex participial constructions, and the other one has almost none at all, and it's like So so scholarship says see clearly 2nd

Peter is a Apocryphal work, and it's pseudepigraphal. It says it's Peter, but it's never that Peter blah blah blah blah blah and That is what's taught in the vast majority of Bible colleges and seminaries

And so that's what you end up with in vast majority of pulpits as well in in large number of denominations the problem is

While Peter certainly would have been familiar with Greek You sort of needed to know at least enough

Greek to get by To be a fisherman. I mean if Roman soldier came by and yelled at you in Greek You need to know what he was yelling.

That'd be a good thing You say wouldn't the Roman soldier be yelling in Latin. No he'd be yelling in Greek Greek was lingua franca of that day

He may have known Latin if he came from Rome or something but many of the

Roman soldiers didn't come from there and the universal language at the time was Koine Greek and so but he probably wouldn't have been real good at writing it and So if you read his epistles in one two epistles.

He specifically mentions the guy he's dictating it to Even Paul mentions his amanuensis his scribe.

They're not writing it themselves Now Galatians may be the one it one

Exception to that rule Because Paul says he was what large letters. I'm writing to you

Now was it a large letter or that he was writing in large letters because that seems he seems to have had some problem with his eyes

And this was such an emotional letter. He's writing it himself possibly But even he mentions some of the people who were his scribes so if Peter is dictating the letter

Is it possible that Peter dictated the letter in Aramaic and Left it to the scribe to render it into Greek now if that happened at what point is

Inspiration the issue you see because remember 2nd Timothy 316

Does not say that men were inspired by God does it?

What does it say all Scripture is Theano stoss it is

God breathed. It's the scripture. That's God breathed not the author and Peter himself said that he says no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophets own

Interpretation the prophet wasn't sitting around going. I need to get a revelation today

I need to come up with something today, and I'm just thinking about this that Okay, I think it's coming.

Okay. All right here. We go and starts writing He says no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophets own interpretation, but men spoke

From God as they were being carried along by the Holy Spirit Men spoke from God as they were being carried along by the

Holy Spirit So Where is what what is what does our term?

Inspiration mean unfortunately that's a Latin term that means to breathe into that's not what it means That's not what the

Greek is. It's not God taking men's words and Blowing something special into it It's actually when you're speaking you hold your hand from your mouth you feel the breath from your speaking that's what it's saying scriptures are it's

God speaking and So when you when you keep that in mind you can have variation you have variation between Paul's letters

Philippians is different than Ephesians Romans is different than Galatians They're still

Paul's style But you can tell that he's in a different mindset. I mean

Philippians is a pistol of joy Galatians is not and So you can see that in that in that type of a context you keep that keep that in mind now

In general why do they deny authorship word usage studies are cited first That is well notice that if you take the genuine epistles of Paul And then you compare the words used in writing first and second

Timothy There are major differences and so we don't believe Paul wrote first and second Timothy now think about that for just just one second

Because that is that's the kind of argumentation you will get Graduate level courses and everyone in this room should be able to see right through it should be able to see right through it

Think about it if you're writing a letter like Romans To a church where you know not only is it going to be read in the capital city

But it's going to be copied and distributed all over the Roman Empire Because it's there in the capital city lots of Christians would come visit

Rome They find out Rome has this epistle from him they make copies and they take those copies back to their churches.

All right So, you know, this is a really important letter that I'm writing

Now compare writing to your dear son Timothy It's not being written to a church

It's being written in light of you. You're suffering your persecution second Timothy says my times up Do you use the exact same vocabulary?

When you write to a friend in an email that you would use in writing a formal theological paper for public reading of course not and yet that's the argumentation and Because it's taught from The professor who's got all the degrees everybody goes.

Hmm. Sounds good to me. Okay, I want to I want to pass this class so, all right, there we go and When I would challenge that kind of stuff very often you'd realize the professors hadn't been challenged on that kind of stuff before should be

In general word uses studies decided first, however in reality form criticism Based upon individual theories about the situation in the early church formed the foundation of most skepticism

About say the authorship of the pastorals or the rejection of eyewitness testimony in the Gospels So Bart Ehrman will not only studies mentioned word study usage but Bart Ehrman has a theory of what the early church looked like and It's different than what the church looks like in 1st and 2nd

Timothy Therefore 1st and 2nd Timothy could not have been written by Paul They're written in a later period of time because of Bart Ehrman's theories as to what the church looked like Well, how would you come up with the theory as to what the church looked like unless you use?

The Christian documents to tell you what the church looked like But they don't I'm serious.

You're sitting there going. Come on. These are credentialed scholars. That's the point That's the point exactly

So given the nature of Western scholarship, which emphasizes the new in the innovative

Never the consistent of the traditional That which breaks down old views is promoted while solid sound reasonable defenses of historical views are looked down upon and scorned

And if any of you have ever tried to submit a dissertation topic in Western schools

You know that what they want is something new and novel not something. It gives a deeper defense is something we've already believed

So the way we do scholarship encourages heresy That's just that's just the way it is.

That's that's just that's just the reality Solid answers do exist, but they are simply ignored as if they are

Irrelevant For example all four canonical Gospels gives solid sound simply irrefutable evidence of a first century origin

They come from the first century and in fact One of the most fascinating more recent evidences that helps to Okay, mr.

Sound man. I'm switching I'm just about to go I Start speaking in tongues or something and this is a cessationist church, so we can't do that So am

I stop it? We'll just there we go all right one of the most fascinating things is developed recently is

You never would expect this to happen, but the the Israelis have put together a massive database

Based upon the bone boxes that have been excavated from graves all around Israel And you see that what the

Jews would do is they put a body in a sepulcher they leave it there for a year and Then they'd come back in and they would collect the bones and they would put bones

Bones in a bone box and they would inscribe on the box whose bones are in it and frequently They'd put more than one person's bones into a bone box

Because there are only so many tombs. You know you can have outside of Jerusalem for example and so Someone got the bright idea one day.

There's a lot of names on these bone boxes Why don't we collect all of them and create a database? Have you ever noticed how many

Mary's there are in the New Testament? Never knows Mary and the other Mary and Mary Magdalene, and you know

The the studies show that in the first century if you were standing in the middle of almost any City Street in Israel and it cried out

Mary 40 % of the women would turn around look at you, but what's fascinating is when you look at the names found the

Gospels and Then you look at the Israeli databases for the first century. They're almost perfectly in line

Someone writing the Gospels in Rome wouldn't know that they wouldn't know what names to use

So if it was made up someplace else it wasn't it was written by the people that were there at that time

Fascinating stuff Indeed solid arguments can be offered for a pre 70 date for all the

New Testament writings, and they can Linguistic studies historical elements all support this assertion yet to be in today

You have to support late dates for their writing and reject traditional authorship if you want to get a job in Almost any of the quote -unquote big seminaries.

You can't no one should be able to Assert that you are a traditionalist in any way

Likewise every word used to study that says Paul did not write the pastorals can be turned on its head by starting with a different original

Dataset the presuppositions used must be Examined and they almost never are

Remember the vast majority of scholars have never given a second thought to the other side. They haven't they've never been forced to So don't be intimidated by the vast majority of scholars say

Because of my experience once you press them and you can I've done 175 debates with them you can watch

They are left going well, but everybody believes that really no, that's why we're debating now let's get into the can of scripture real quick because I realize

I'm going long and I apologize for that, but I Blame Marley you told me to say all this right gonna keep the girl watching.

She's gonna be twitching pretty soon Is he talking about me yet? No, okay, okay? But why do we have the books in the

Bible that we do given the Bible covers 1 ,500 years and has over 40 authors associated with it three different languages

Lots of other books were written during that time and are they're not included in the Bible The Bible even makes reference to some of the books that were written at that particular period in time

Should they be included? It's amazing how many people? When they see that the the Bible makes reference of the books go.

Oh these books are lost lost from what? Why do you think they should have been there if the

Bible is being written today and Jesus were ministering in Utah boy would he find this a weird place and Someone cited an article in the

Salt Lake City Tribune That attacked Jesus's teaching on the Sermon of the Mount does that make everything the

Salt Lake City Tribune ever printed part of scripture Of course not and yet. It's amazing how many people that I encounter they well look

Joshua, why don't we have that and there's all these prophets writings. We don't have yes. It's an ancient document.

You have any idea Did you realize that ninety nine point nine percent of everything humans wrote?

Before the time of Christ has disappeared into dust. I mean, that's just the reality

Why should you expect to have it the only reason you should the only reason we've got we've got is because God wanted us to Have what we've got

It took a miracle to preserve that stuff for all that period of time The can of Scripture now, here's now so if anybody watched the value line today, sorry, this is where we do repetition

Because I actually talked about this because of another issue going on in the church today But most of you didn't so you're gonna be good

The can of Scripture is a theological topic that is almost never treated theological when

I was in seminary Every discussion in the can of Scripture was based on simply looking at history well, the early church used these criteria and you know, you have the

Muratorian fragment from route 187 and then you know you've got Athanasius and it's 39

Festal letter in the late 4th century and and you know these are the standards that they used and wasn't written by an apostle or associated with the possible and And it was always just a matter of looking at history

But think about with me for just a second, what is the canon is The canon merely a historical accident or is that not a theological concept if we believe that God inspired the scriptures

Did he inspire every book that's ever been written? I think they're all asleep.

I finally did it It's just out like a light did

God inspire all books ever written Did he inspire at least one book

So if he inspires at least one book, but he doesn't inspire all books

Then naturally a canon comes into existence that says that's the one book he inspired

He doesn't have to sit down and say here's the canon If you inspire one book

Then the canon is going to contain one book and the author is going to know that canon perfectly, isn't he?

I've written 24 books Or written or contributed to 24 books. And so I remember those processes.

I remember those late nights I remember those early word processors that I used.

I remember dot commands and monochrome screens You young people are going fine.

I Had to be quiet at night while I was typing my first books Because the dinosaurs walking by outside Marley caught that one didn't you like that one

Marley? Hmm, okay

So I remember writing those books. I have an infallible knowledge of the canon of my writings, but I've not written all books

God has inspired only a certain number of works with a certain number of individuals and by that act of inspiration he has created the canon now,

I never had to open up a Word document and Say the canon of the writings of James White and put my first book in and my second book and other than stuff like that I didn't have to do that.

It was the act of writing that created it and the canon Since it is speaking of what

God has done Supernaturally if inspiration if that which is they are new sauce

God breathed is a divine act then God knows he's engaged in that divine act because it's an exercise of divine power and So it'd be just as clearly known to God What the canon is as that God is the one who parted the

Red Sea? Because that's an extension of his power. He did that and he did that purposefully and for a reason and So we often approach the issue of the canon as that the can is just sort of this

Ancillary thing over here rather than connecting it directly to the fact that the scriptures are themselves

Inspired and because they are God speaking. They are absolutely unique. There's nothing else like them.

Nothing else like them And if you say well, I think you're getting a little bit beyond yourself here.

Think about what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 22 when he was arguing with the

Sadducees and They were questioning the resurrection because they didn't believe in the resurrection

When Jesus responded to the Sadducees, he said have you not read what was first of all, he says you're wrong

He he was not a modern educator He said you are not knowing the scriptures know the power of God now they would have been very offended by that but Jesus said it so sometimes being loving and Being direct are the same thing and then he says have you not read what was spoken to you by God saying?

I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and God of Jacob. He's not the God the dead but of the living

So his whole point interestingly enough Was that what had been written back in the

Pentateuch in the writings of Moses? 1 ,400 years earlier Had been so accurately transmitted to their day that he could base his argument upon the tense of a verb

Because the argument was he is the God of Abraham not he was the God of Abraham Okay Now that is an accurate understanding of the force of his argument, but in the process we missed something

We missed something do you hear what I said, and I I Quoted it correctly.

Have you not read? What God spoke to you saying he's talking to Sadducees Somewhere around the year 30 to 33

AD This was written around 1400 BC There may have been some old men there, but they weren't that old

Have you not read what God spoke to you Now normally when you say have you not read?

What's the next part of the sentence gonna be what I wrote to you? or if you say

Did you not hear? What I spoke to you all parents know that line.

It's sort of secondary. I didn't do it every every day especially with teenagers There's no teenagers over there, so we don't have to worry about it

But that's not what Jesus said have you not read what God spoke to you

Saying he held men in the first century Accountable to what had been written 1 ,400 years earlier as if God had spoken it directly to them to ever catch that You tell me what

Jesus's view of Scripture was Does he have the modern view of Scripture that we don't really know who wrote these things

And we don't know if they've been transmitted correctly. No he didn't I've never understood why people call themselves

Christians and say I'm trusting in Jesus for my salvation But you know when it comes to his view of Scripture.

He really wasn't up as up to speed like I am Huh? What? Think about it

So when I talk about the canon in this context And I'm talking about it being inspired and God extending divine power to bring this into existence is that Anything more than what

Jesus himself believed about the scriptures? It's not So the can of Scripture is a theological topic so What is the canon?

well, you know canon means a rule or a standard against which something is judged or measured it kind known could be like a

Like what we'd call a meter stick or a yard stick to measure things by The term came to mean an authoritative listing of books or works by a particular author

The Protestant Canon as you probably know contains 66 books the Roman Catholic Canon Contains 73 or 74 depending on how you connect books together

And was not officially made the canon of the Roman Catholic Church dogmatically until April of 1546

April of 1546 a long time passed before that happened.

That's important to keep in mind now The Protestant can of the

Old Testament is simply the Jewish canon without the addition of the apocryphal books. So in other words We know from certain sources that the

Jews had laid up in the temple certain books that made the hands dirty because they were holy and The apocryphal books which

Rome has made part of their can of Scripture were never laid up that way They were actually written during the intertestamental period but two years before Christ The books that you and I have in our

Old Testament canon were laid up by the Jews in the temple and viewed as being their canonical Scriptures How is the canon?

Determined and that's the big issue It's in Bible study classes all the time And I'm just going to stop right here and let the pastor who's going to be doing these studies for the next three weeks.

He said three weeks Yeah, y 'all y 'all just want to answer answer these questions later on.

I should just skip over it now No, in fact, that's why you maybe asked me to do this.

Okay. All right If you want a more in -depth study come back and and and ask these questions

But this is a this is a very common question. Is it not? how do we get these and you know, why is it 66 and not 69 or 78 or whatever else a vital distinction in fact is often lost when this topic is discussed and this is important and I can almost guarantee you've never heard anybody else talk about before Unless you've read

Michael Kruger's books or you've watched the presentation that dr. Kruger and I did a g3 in 2018

God creates Canon by inspiring some writings and not others

Canon then is a part of Revelation itself. It is an artifact of Revelation not an object of Revelation now, let me just stop you for a second

Why is this important? If you think that the

Canon that is the table of contents in the front of your Bible is An object of Revelation then you have to ask who gave it to you who gave it to you

If you say it comes from councils then councils have the ability to give divine revelation long after the

Apostles are dead You see where that goes Do you see what the result of this is?

So if you recognize that the Canon is an artifact of Revelation It's an it is brought into existence necessarily by the divine act of inspiration itself

Rather than being an object of Revelation where an angel comes down with a golden index

Who would have thought of that? Now this one consideration alone

Completely changes the nature of argumentation one must use to respond to claims regarding the

Canon Man's knowledge of Canon is passive not active Man or the church does not create

Canon but simply seeks to recognize it You're recognizing what God has done by giving that divine revelation

You're not trying to create something called Canon or canonicity The church doesn't have the ability to do that and the church didn't claim to have that ability in the ancient church

It's the modern Roman Church and others like that direction That think they have that ability

Is that the right direction? I don't know which direction I'm facing that direction. Okay. All right Well, there's a few people down that direction to that There's some interesting groups down there.

Um Especially in southern, Utah, hence we have two views of Canon which will designate

Canon one and Canon two Canon one is the can as created by God's active inspiration

Just in the same way is that when I wrote my books the Canon comes into existence I don't have to do anything.

It just is and I know its content perfectly God knows the content of his act of inspiration

Canon two is Canon as passively recognized by God's people led by God's spirit over time and beyond geographical boundaries

Disputes about Canon two do not in any way destroy the existence of Canon one

Any more than doctrinal disputes prove there is no objective revelation of doctrinal truth.

This is extremely important Let me let me illustrate this there are disputes about Canon two

The early church, for example Struggled with the book of Revelation Now you may go

I don't like I don't like that. I don't like to know that think about it the other other direction Would you rather have had the early church going?

You know, we don't have nearly enough books with ten headed monsters and sea serpents and all sorts of stuff like that Let's go find some more

Wouldn't you have rather had the church going? Are we sure John was associated with this? What's what's the actual meaning of this?

What's it's actually communicating now, I'll be honest with you If the early church had seen what the modern church has done with the book of Revelation I'm not sure it ever would have been in the cannon.

Oh Apache helicopters, huh? Oh, we have no idea what those are. So out with you it was a book that had a meaning at that time and In fact, the the best commentaries on Revelation are the ones that are going to take you deeply into the

Old Testament because it's filled With Old Testament symbology, that's where it's drawn from just take the time to do that to work on it

But the point is there were disputes Hebrews some of the really shorter epistles and you can understand why some of the shorter epistles would struggle because They wouldn't be as widely distributed.

It wouldn't be as widely known and the first time you run into it. You're like I've never heard of that one before and so there's skepticism and there needs to be

That's an appropriate thing But those disputes and there were disputes in the

Old Testament, too Not so much amongst the Jews initially but Esther doesn't name the name of God and so after The destruction of Jerusalem and it was called the

Council of Jamnia There was some questions about why doesn't Esther named the name of God, but that was that was

Way down the road that that type of thing took place Those disputes do not in any way invalidate the fact that even if we have confusion

God didn't and So the next question has to be this one, which I assume is the next question

So if there is a reason for God to make sure his people know his word Then it would follow that he would exert the same power used to bring the scriptures into existence to bring about that knowledge

Is there reason to believe God would lead his people to know his word? Well How about Isaiah 55 9 to 11?

For as the heavens are higher than the earth So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts and your thoughts For as the rain the snow come down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bare and sprout

And furnishing seed of the sower and bread of the eater So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth

It will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it

God has a reason for giving revelation He has a reason for giving revelation

Without accomplishing what I desire and notice in the New Testament Romans 15 for for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction

So through perseverance and encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope It's written in earlier times, but it's written for our instruction and it gives to us

Hope and in first Corinthians 10 11 now these things happen to them as an example and they were written for our instruction

Upon whom the ends of the ages have come So here you have this concept this idea.

Oops. Sorry about that. We're not going to be doing a Parker for the night. Sorry We are run out of time.

So there is Reason to believe that God wants his people

To know what he has given to his church as scripture So I'll close with this

I'll close with a story about the white question the white question and I didn't come up with that.

I mean I came up with a question, but I didn't come up with calling it that I'll finish with this story and I think it was 93 or 94.

I Flew back to Boston and I did two debates with Jerry Madatix. Jerry Madatix was the first Ordained PCA minister to leave the

Presbyterian Church of America and become a Roman Catholic and He and I have debated

I think 13 times over the years. I think the last time we debated Was at the

University of Utah on the I think the immaculate conception of Mary or something along those lines anyway we debated the

Apocrypha and Justification by faith and one was at the beginning of a weekend and then long afterwards

Make a long story short. I had been we were spot We had been on a radio program on W EZE in Boston We were supposed to go back on it and then we were told at the first debate that it that the radio program had been

Canceled. Well that day I'm out driving with my hosts We turn the radio on and there's Jerry Madatix on the radio program and they're asking where I am

But I have been told it'd been canceled we had both been told it'd been canceled So we went racing back to the house and we called in and I did the rest of the radio program on The telephone from a bedroom.

I've got a picture old black -and -white picture actually of me doing this They had color back then but it was a black -and -white picture

Yeah, it's one of those things, you know the smoke and and Jerry is just still man.

He is just still firing on all cylinders. Jerry never stops debating His wife.

Oh my I just feel for her. Not only that she had 14 children, but um he just never stops debating and He had not stopped since I had gone on to other things

I live the rest of my life Jerry doesn't and so he's boom boom. Boom. Boom. We're going back and forth and all of a sudden the question came to me

I'll never forget it And I said Jerry, let me ask you a question. I said how did a

Believing Jewish man 50 years before Christ came know that Isaiah and Second Chronicles were scripture and it got just as quiet as it did in here just now

Now on radio, that's not a good thing. Okay, I grew up doing radio. That's called dead air

You don't want dead air because people change the channel when dead air comes along. All right, and So it got quiet.

Now. Why did I ask the question because he was insisting we needed to have the infallible definition of the

Roman Church to be able to have scripture and So I said, okay Then had the believing

Jewish person know that Isaiah and Second Chronicles were scripture 50 years before Christ Got quiet the host a woman said

Well, we're gonna take a quick break and come back with an answer to that question on the backside of the break

And so off we go off to a commercial We come back from the commercial.

So James, what were you saying to Jerry? So I repeated the question Dead air

There is no meaningful response from Roman Catholic perspective in fact, this became known as the white question and I've heard so many apologists discussing this in fact, the amazing thing is

I haven't list I haven't bothered to listen to it because this was from Almost 34 30 full years ago, but I but last month

Roman Catholic apologists did a program specifically on the white question Because they they can't come up with an answer

Because if they say well the Jewish Magisterium Defined what scripture was back then the

Jewish Magisterium rejected the apocryphal books that they've canonized so they can't go with that One interesting answer that was given to me was one guy said well you can use the

Urim and the Thummim You can use the Urim and the

Thummim the the the dice on the the breastplate of the high priest And so you'd have to go to the high priest and is

Isaiah scripture is the second chronicles of them, right? There was a process between Malachi and If you ever struggle to remember which the last one was just remember the last

Italian prophet Malachi Boy they are asleep. Okay, let's just go ahead and finish this up.

So between Malachi and Matthew You have about 400 years and No angels came down from heaven

No, golden indexes were dropped down in in supernatural events but within 200 years

The scriptures had been laid up in the temple and by the time of Jesus's ministry Have you ever noticed something no

Jewish person ever said to Jesus, but that's not scripture And he held men accountable to scriptures

Over the course of about 400 years when you look at the early church Right around 200 years after the birth of Christ You have what's called the

Muratorian fragment that lists about 87 % of the New Testament It may be more because it's a fragment there might there might be some stuff that's missing that's around the same time as the laying up of the books and then around 360 or so you 367

I think the 39th festival letter of Athanasius he's not claiming to create Canon. He's just simply writing as the the bishop in Alexandria He is writing a letter to all the churches specifically about when the date of Easter is going to be

But in the process he said and by the way, you know, there's lots of books floating around like that Here are the work the books of the

New Testament and it's the same Canon you and I have today He wasn't saying I'm defining these I'm creating it

No, these these are what we've always believed and don't believe any of the rest that stuff and it's about the same time period

And there's no angelic visitors coming down from there's no golden indexes and no Moroni's or Nephi's or anything like that at all same process

If it worked for Jesus, don't you think his Apostles would and his church would pretty much have the same experience.

Yeah Exactly. Exactly. All right. I went a whole lot longer than I thought

But Marley told me to so I just I had to I had to do it. And so I hope that's helpful to you

I did not have a discussion with you all about how you want to Are you all gonna come up and correct any of my errors and stuff like that?

You were thinking that you've got them written down there. You're gonna be covering them over the next Okay. All right, that's probably

That's a wise idea. So did you want to you want to close the word of prayer? How do you we didn't discuss how you wanted to how to do this?

So thank you very much for your attention Well, it's it's critically important that we do think

Deeply about these things many of us are associated with Bible churches like this one we put

Bible in the name of our church if you're not from a Bible Church you're probably from a church that has in their doctrinal statement that we believe the

Bible is the Word of God and It's important that we think about these things because we will be challenged on them

The fact that I'm sure many of you have never really Studied this in depth because You read the

Bible you hear God's voice through Scripture it kind of proves the point that God's Word does accomplish its purpose doesn't it and the

Lord Jesus Christ said his sheep will hear his voice and many of you have experienced that by Reading the

Word of God and God is so powerful and so good so kind to speak to us, isn't he? And so thankful we have resources in the church like dr.

White also Michael Kruger both of them I've been reading a lot of them preparing for The series coming up.

But before we get to that sermon series, we have of course this week starting with Tomorrow night.

Good Friday. Come back if you can at 630 tomorrow night for a Good Friday service or Resurrection Day Easter Sunday join us

Sunday morning. We'd love to have you This is just a really amazing time on the calendar for the

Christian to remember Christ's final sacrifice and of course his resurrection That means everything to us because without the risen

Christ nothing else matters But he is risen and we celebrate that knowing well, let's pray together and do not forget to Drop something in the offering box for dr.

White Gas isn't cheap And when you're driving a truck hauling a camper, it's even more expensive that way, isn't it?

So let's support him Let's get him down the road and show our appreciation that way. Let's pray

Father, thank you so much for this evening we've had this time that we've had to look at your word to consider how it is you have spoken to us and Preserved your word how it is that you have given us this amazing gift the special revelation

That tells your amazing story that points to our Lord our

Savior Jesus Christ God we love you, and we thank you that you have chosen to save us

You've chosen to speak to us and you've chosen to keep us by this word that we look to to learn more about you

And why it is that you've called us to live this life and to live it in light of the reality of the gospel

God we thank you for your church. We thank you for the many members that make up the one body of Christ and It's just so evident how we need each other

We thank you for the special gifts that you've you've given that help us that sharpen us in our thinking

And we ask that we would have great conversations Flowing from this discussion tonight that we would have conversations with our neighbors and that we'd have conversations with our family members about What the

Bible is and why it is so important that we look to your word God. We love you We thank you we ask for protection and safety for dr.

White as he travels and give him an effective ministry while he's on the road and when he returns back home