The New GTY Assault Bible, NA29 Due in 2021, Billy Graham, then Back to Ehrman/Licona

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. Got a lot to get to today. It is, it is, yes, it is sometime in March. Yeah, it looks like the 8th. Thursday, the 8th of March. There we go. Can you believe how far through 2018 we already are?

No one's listening right now because you're either at the Ligonier Conference or the Shepherds Conference. So this will all be listened to on archive. I would imagine, I'm not even sure why we're doing live feed.

The “Assault Bible” and the Shepherds Conference Preacher’s Bible

But for all of you sad people that didn't get to go and all of you sad people that are wishing you had the Assault Bible. See, what happened this morning is someone tweeted from the Shepherds Conference because everybody at the Shepherds Conference got this new preacher's Bible, five pounds, seven ounces.

Okay. Now my, I've got an M500 50 caliber Magnum pistol. I mean, that thing is a beast. And when it's fully loaded, it's five pounds. This thing weighs more than an M500. Okay. I mean, I've seen some little preachers that would not be able to weigh, they'd go like this and fall straight back because it's way too heavy.

Just break their arm off right there in the pulpit. It'd end up on Babylon B or something like that. The Roger Rabbit Bible. Yeah. That would be another comparison to it. Yeah. Anyway, they tweeted, I think Nick at the Shepherds Conference tweeted a picture of a little teeny New American Standard and said, this is my concealed carry because everyone else is lugging around this thing, which, you know, hey, I think it's really cool that someone just arrived, by the way, that someone, you know, Shepherds Conference.

Wow. Give those babies away. Congratulations. That's great. But since they referred to a concealed carry New American Standard, then I referred to this new preacher's Bible as the assault Bible, you know, because we've got the assault weapons issue going on right now.

And so I referred to it as the assault Bible and Phil Johnson ended up mentioning that from the pulpit. I hope no one took that wrong. But it is interesting that this is happening in California. I mean, Grace To You is distributing assault Bibles in California, and you cannot expect a certain level of—waving at the studio audience here—you cannot expect a certain level of what we would call common sense in Sacramento.

So I'm a little concerned about what may happen to the folks at Grace To You once the folks in Sacramento find out that they're distributing assault Bibles. You know, I have a feeling there could be, you know, legal ramifications very, very quickly.

So just better be careful. Just better be careful over there. So some folks have asked me, well, you know, are you going to get one? You know, and I was offered one very kindly. Appreciate that. And I declined only because I haven't preached from a paper Bible in a very long time.

I have nothing against paper Bibles. I love paper Bibles. I have an Allen New American Standard. If you know the Allen brand, top level, top level. And I love buying paper Bibles for other folks. And there's some great makers out there.

Ever been to evangelicalbible .com? Oh, goodness, you can go pour there so fast. You could be out on the street, but have the best Bible around while you're out there. I hope it can keep you warm. But so I already have really, really, really, really, really nice paper Bibles.

I mean, look, you know, we've got, you know, our friend, you know, found this one for me. And it's got the, I love this. I love the, you know, the yap that sort of covers the whole thing, you know, and, and, you know, this is a beautiful New American Standard here, you know, and, and so I have really nice paper Bibles.

I don't, I don't preach from them. And the reason is, I didn't bring it in here, but I have a 12 .9 inch iPad Pro with fonts yay big. I can put that thing on the pulpit at PRBC. I could fall into the baptistry and still read my notes from the baptistry.

Okay. I mean, it's, that's how big it is. And if you are a speaker, then you know that when you do, and I, I don't move around as much at PRBC as I do at a lot of other places. We don't have a whole lot of acreage to move around up there anyways, but you've got to be able to find your place pretty quickly when you're getting back.

And that iPad Pro is perfect for that. I mean, it's just, I even posted a screenshot of what my iPad looks like when I'm preaching from it. And so, you know, why, why take one from somebody else, you know?

But I, I would imagine that at the end of this Shepherd's Conference, an enterprising wise chiropractor should set up a booth right toward the end, because there's gonna be a lot of crooked spines. Now, we could have a charismatic come along and, and heal crooked spines, but it actually, it's just be a, be a waste of time.

You should have a chiropractor go over there and for, you know, all he had to do is charge, you know, small, he could make a killing because everyone is going to be so out of, out of place after dragging around that beast for, for as long as they, they're gonna be dragging that beast around.

So I called it the Assault Bible. That's what it's, yeah, Summer, Summer Slissy says, you could have given it to me. Sheesh. Well, I thought, dear, that I, I bought you a really nice Bible. I guess it wasn't as nice as the Assault Bible.

So, well, there goes my happiness. Um, anyway, uh, the danger of, uh, of, uh, watching your Twitter feed while you're, while you're doing the program. Anyway, um, I'm gonna sort of stay on that theme for a second.

NA28, UBS, and the Coming Textual Criticism Updates

A, um, uh, announcement was made, um, just recently. And I mean, just within like yesterday or the day before that, uh, people have been asking me, um, I have said when the, when the, uh, NA28, is this the NA28 or is this the NA27?

Uh, this is the 27. No, five, uh, 27. So when NA28 came out, um, I said, you know, I wouldn't invest too much money, uh, because something tells me NA29 won't be too far down the road. Well, it's, it's going to be a little bit down the road, but they're, they just announced 2021, 2022, somewhere around that timeframe for the next edition of the Nessie Ollentech.

So right now it's Nessie Ollentech 28th and UBS 5. So NA28 UBS 6 is due in 2021, 2022. And it's fascinating. It's fascinating and frustrating for me because the specific two books that they mentioned, which will have the greatest number of changes, Axe and Mark.

So what that tells me is they're working on Mark and that's the information I need for my P45 project. And it's not going to be available before I need to be done. And that's incredibly frustrating and it is going to limit, uh, what I, what I can do.

Um, what they mean by that is there is a, you know, so here's, here's Nessie Ollentech 27th, 28th, same size. So this is a manual critical edition of Greek New Testament. A lot of people look at this and they look at all the footnotes and they go, wow, that's a lot of information.

But you gotta understand this is a super, super, super brief summary. Um, right now they're working on what's called the ECM, Editio Critica Mayor. And that is Axe. Okay. Came out a few months ago. That's Axe.

And that's why they say Axe because when NA28 came out, all the changes were in the general epistles and revelation, not revelation, just general epistles. So small, relatively small amount of text. Then they came out with Axe.

So it's there. So this is telling us that the next element that's going to come out will be Mark. And so the Nessie Ollent and the United Bible Society's texts will reflect the changes that are made here.

Now remember, if you're not familiar with a lot of this stuff, when we say changes, you know, I've given the example how here in the Nessie Ollent 27th edition in Jude 5, if I showed you Jude 5 in Nessie Ollent, if I showed you Jude 5 in Nessie Ollent 27th edition, this would say the Lord delivered a people from Egypt in Jude 5.

The Nessie Ollent 28 says Jesus. But what you'd see in here is while it would say Kurios in the main text, in the footnote, you're going to see Jesus and the manuscripts that it's in, so on and so forth.

All that's happened in the 28th edition is the Jesus that was in the footnote is now in the main text. The Lord that was in the main text is now in the footnote. It's not like they just came up with something no one had ever seen before.

I could have dragged in here my father's Nessie Ollent text from when he took Greek from Kenneth Wiest at Moody Bible Institute back in the 1950s, and I've got his Nessie Ollent. I think it's 23rd, if I recall correctly.

23rd or 25th. I think it's 23rd. Look down at the bottom of the page. They're in the notes. Jesus. It's not like you can't make this stuff up. The text has got to be the text. So when they talk about changes, that's what they're talking about.

So Acts introduced, you know, again, Acts is a fairly decent-sized book. There weren't all that many quote-unquote changes, and what the changes are, are readings that used to be in footnotes are now in the main text, and readings that were in the main text are now in the footnotes.

It's not like they've just decided to come up with new stuff. So if it's going to be Acts and Mark, that means the next big set that's going to come out in the ECM, which you can't carry this around very easily, you know, that type of thing.

Eventually, it will all be available electronically. Eventually. Probably, honestly, toward the end of my life. It's at least another 20 years, I would say, before that will be fully available. And even then, and I'm not going to get into this right now, the temptation is great because it's what I'm working on.

But even then, because most of these changes are based upon utilization of what's called CBGM, coherence-based genealogical method, as the databases being utilized by CBGM grow, they will immediately have to start a revision process.

And I can just hear, because I was looking at something in Channel, and a traditional text, ecclesiastical text, Advocate, was being quoted in Channel. And I can just hear those types of folks going, oh, such a naturalist, so on and so on.

Can't you just ever get the text in a final form? And that's tradition speaking. What we're talking about here is the wonderful... I mean, folks, if one radical Muslim group buys a bomb from North Korea, and if you don't think the North Koreans wouldn't sell it, you're nuts.

That's the real danger with this whole mess. You could see so much of this progress, not only in examination of the text of the New Testament and collation of manuscripts, but medical advancements, everything else.

Man, the surface level of societal stability is very, very, very shallow. And all that could come to a screeching halt. I mean, war and famine and stuff like that. Right now, we have the blessing of God in relative peace that allows this type of stuff to be pushing forward, but that could end tomorrow.

So when I say 20 years from now, that's assuming that the Lord grants peace and the continuing ability to do these types of things. But it is a blessing to have this kind of information. It is not, as some people say, well, you can just never come to a final conclusion, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We are shedding more and more and more light. And I'm sorry, this traditionalism that you all want to promote cannot drag itself out of the very conservative Facebook forums that it thrives in and engage meaningfully in the marketplace of ideas.

It really can't. And that's one of my major objections to it. So anyway, one of the things real quick that is really interesting is they also mentioned, remember I showed you the Tyndale House New Testament that Crossway put out?

And I mentioned to you it's a little bit different because they will use variant spellings that were used in the ancient manuscripts rather than the way we've standardized things today. And then the order of the epistles.

So there's the end of Acts, and the next book is James. Yeah, it's a completely different order. And so the general epistles come before the Pauline epistles. So you go all the way through 3rd John, and then there's Jude, and what comes after Jude?

Romans. And so the canonical order, it's not that they've put in new books or taken books out or anything like that, but the order is different. And what's interesting is NA 29 might do the same thing, which will leave you thumbing through for a while going, where did Romans go?

That type of thing. But they may do the same thing. And it makes me wonder why, which came first, chicken or the egg here? I mean, were there discussions that prompted both these to do that? Or is it because Tyndale House did that, that the guys in Munster go, that's not a bad idea?

I don't know. But that's what they're talking about doing. So I do not believe there's anything inspired about the canonical order of books. That's why I've always repudiated the misapprehension of the words in the book of Revelation, taking out the book of this prophecy.

Well, that's the whole New Testament because this is the last book of the New Testament. So it's a whole thing. No, it's talking about Revelation. And to try to stretch it out beyond that is highly problematic.

And the order of the books, we don't know the order they were written in. There is absolutely no foundation for trying to say, well, you've got to have it in this order. Even the Jewish people did not have the order that we have.

The last canonical book of the Hebrew Old Testament is 2 Chronicles, which is why Jesus' statement that from the blood of Abel to Zechariah son of Berechiah, that's from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. In other words, the whole Old Testament canon.

If I said from Genesis to Revelation, same thing Jesus was saying as far as the Old Testament canon was concerned. But the order in which we have placed these books is primarily functional and somewhat arbitrary.

So if they change that, as long as they do it for two or three editions in a row, after that, no one's going to care. The question is, what English translation is going to follow that? It would take an English translation with some bravery because there would be, it's one thing if it's your Greek New Testament, only geeks are worried too much about that anyways.

But you change your ESV and all of a sudden James is no longer where James is supposed to be. And there's just going to be a lot of folks that are going to be jumping up and down and try doing that with King James.

You'll have to hire extra security at your publishing house, because that's what's going to happen. Anyway, real quickly, I guess I'm going to do this just so that Rich doesn't have to waste much more of his time on this particular subject.

Billy Graham, Judgment, and the Limits of Human Discernment

But evidently, we've had folks who during the program on our YouTube channel, when we have comments open, which talk about inviting, I've always said the comm boxes are internet ignorance aggregators.

And I've watched some of the comment channels on YouTube videos I was watching, and it was just astounding. Sadly astounding. I mean, absolutely destructive of post-millennial thinking. No, things ain't getting better.

Look at this mess. So evidently, we've had people there calling the office, I had somebody in Twitter, you know, doing the same thing. And I'm just demanding that I go on the air and send Billy Graham to hell.

That's what I've got to do. I've got to go on the air and send Billy Graham to hell. A couple things. Most important thing is, I don't have that power, right ability or position and I am not stupid enough to pretend that I do.

That is not my role. That is not my place. And the older I get, and the more I see of the behavior of people, especially people who call themselves Christians on the internet, who absolutely think that your faithfulness is determined not by your identification of true teaching versus false teaching, but somehow by your ability to read the hearts and minds of men and determine who's going to heaven and who's going to hell.

So in other words, somehow the internet has given us the ability to read minds from afar, to read hearts from afar, to see people's spiritual state from afar. Now, personally, I think that the best indicator we have in this life of a person's spiritual state can be sort of brought out by what Jesus said, he who endures to the end shall be saved.

So in other words, there's this observation of a person's life over time. And sometimes even then what we see publicly is not what the reality is in private. We only see certain things. And today, oh my goodness, with the fake news and everything else.

I mean, I see stuff these days. I see I just saw, was it Moeller that mentioned it? Or somebody did. New editing capacity that can't even really be detected in, you know, we all joke at the, we all laugh at the Photoshopped pictures where you put your face on something.

And people have done that to me over and over again, making memes of me and stuff like that. But you can always sort of tell. Evidently, they're coming up with ways of doing that where you can't. And it used to be, and I think it was Moeller now that I think about it, it used to be that visual evidence was considered to be that, you know, here's a digital video of this guy, you know, trying to break into this place, that's X, Y, and Z.

With this new technology, it doesn't even require, you know, the wizards in Hollywood to put you in places you've never been, doing things you've never done. And I've mentioned briefly in the past that I really, I think from a God's law perspective, you're supposed to be able to face your accusers.

And they are supposed to swear before God and they're supposed to face you and so on and so forth. I'm just simply, I will not believe evidence brought against anyone that is electronic in nature anymore.

I just won't. And I'll tell you why. We already know that there are people hacking into other people's systems, there are people who've already been brought up on charges, where the government itself had gone into their computer systems.

Hey, once you've got hold of my computer, anything on that, you can change anything. And I'd have no way on the earth of being able to refute it. And none of the rest of us, almost none of the rest of us would either.

And so in this modern age of, you know, accusation and stuff like that, I think it's wisdom to be incredibly skeptical in light of fake news and everything that's going on, the ability to create falsehoods.

Be skeptical. And the nicest thing as a Christian is it's not my job anyways. We are never, the only context, the only context in which we are called to make any type of judgment close to that is when the local church engages in discipline.

And of course, local church is not going to engage in discipline over the internet. I mean, the only people that you can discipline are the people who are members of your church. They are individuals that you know and that you live with and you can examine and you can, all that kind of stuff.

So anyway, that was a bit of a distraction from this issue of people absolutely demanding that I make a public statement condemning Billy Graham to hell. Don't have the power, don't have the ability. What I can say is when you live 99 years in the public eye, that's a lot of talking and activity for people to be able to go through and to find things that they disagree with.

Did I disagree with Billy Graham's eventual, not original, but eventual cooperation with Roman Catholicism and what seems like a fairly fully documented, not ecumenism in the sense of embracing Roman authority claims or sacramentalism or anything like that, but basically oversimplifying the demands of justifications so as to work together with Roman Catholicism?

Of course. Very troubling. There is the clip from his conversation with Schuller that sounds like a rather blatant form of inclusivism that would not be consistent with earlier statements. Is that problematic?

Certainly is. Once again, my position is you focus upon the teaching, you refute the teaching primarily positively first and foremost. In other words, the best way to refute a false teaching is not simply to say it's wrong here, here, and here, and here.

What you first have to do is present what is true here, here, here, and here, and then compare that with that teaching. That is edifying to others that builds people up rather than just simply tearing down.

There are a lot of people that think that polemics, apologetics, you tear down, you tear down, you tear down, and just assume that people know what the truth is rather than taking those as opportunities to speak the truth about these things, attract God's people to that truth so they can then see why they don't want to believe these things and why they shouldn't believe these things, but to do so with a focus upon the positive presentation rather than a negative presentation.

That's our suggested way of approaching things. So the whole concept, I mean, it does remind me a little bit of something that someone said recently. You know, all the criticism about how you go about evangelizing Muslims and so on and so forth.

And someone put up a meme at one point that's been quoted a lot. I prefer James White's way of evangelizing Muslims to your way of not evangelizing Muslims. And in the same way, we can and must examine public invitation systems, utilization of emotional mechanisms to cause people to make a decision for Christ.

Anyone like myself who's been in megachurches knows the results of all that. You have gone out on outreach visits and you've talked to people who walked the aisle, shook the hand, signed the card, and they now live a life of religious hypocrisy.

They've been told that they have eternal security. They've been told that they're right with God because of what they did that one day, and they don't care about Christ, they don't care about His way.

They haven't carried their cross across the room. They've never picked it up. And so you try to bring the Word of God to bear to them, and they just don't care. They're religiously calloused. Is that a problem with the invitation system, the utilization of emotion, the minimalization of the gospel, the removal of the call to repentance and the full range of discipleship, and of course, the embracing of the entire anti-lordship system of salvation, which is so, so deeply detrimental to a biblical understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

All of that, completely true, definitely. This is what troubles me, is that then people will go, aha, so that must mean Billy Graham is in hell. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. This isn't a biblical phrase, but I think it's a biblical truth.

And it was first said to me by now my fellow elder at that time, just simply the pastor of the church I was looking at becoming a member of in 1989, I think. My fellow elder Don Fry is the, and I'm sure he didn't come up with it himself.

In fact, I think he said, as someone has said, but I'll never forget when he said to me, God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. God can draw a straight line with a crooked stick. And the reason I say it's a biblical truth is that every single preacher I know of, in some way, shape, or form, is a crooked stick.

None of us have got it all figured out. None of us have a perfect balance. We've all got blind spots. And so if God couldn't draw a straight line with a crooked stick, he'd not be drawing any straight lines at all.

And so once again, this, and it's, let's be honest, it's primarily amongst Calvinists, this desire to somehow utilize the death of Billy Graham to, I don't know what, just shock people? Just get people all, you what?

What did you say? Shock people by saying, well, he's in hell because he preached a false gospel. Well, I remember back in the 70s, listening to Billy Graham crusades, and I heard a lot about repentance and faith toward Jesus Christ.

I heard a lot about the doctrine of sin. I heard a lot of gospel. And today, would I do things the way that Billy Graham did them? Probably not. But once again, you just have to, you know, I sometimes worry about people that are sitting around on their computers who probably haven't done, probably think that posting memes on Facebook is the same thing as evangelism, who have some type of a personal vested interest in condemning Billy Graham to hell, rather than going, you know, I'm thankful because I know people that will say, I was saved at a Billy Graham crusade.

I know Calvinists who will say, God used Billy Graham to expose me to the gospel. I've learned more about the gospel and a proper balance to the gospel since then, but that's what God used. He used a crooked stick to draw a straight line of what it meant to believe in Jesus.

And if we believe the Holy Spirit's the one that applies specifically the truth of God to our hearts to bring about regeneration, are you going to say that it requires an absolutely perfect presentation of that?

Or can the Holy Spirit use whatever He chooses to use to bring about a person's regeneration? There's this vested interest, this need to, instead of be focused upon, you know, we have a better way. We have a way that's more glorifying to God.

We have a way that puts fewer impediments in the way of the Holy Spirit. We shouldn't want to force the Holy Spirit to use a crooked stick, but there's a vast difference between wanting to make sure that our message is straight and is in perfect accordance with the Bible and then never actually announcing it and never actually proclaiming it.

And when someone else is proclaiming the gospel, all we can do is stand back and condemn them and criticize them, rather than coming alongside, maybe even being encouraged by their zeal, but then in grace showing them a better way.

Oh, we can't do that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Can't do that. So for all of you that want me to take the role, according to John 5, which I was just preaching recently, all judgment has been given to the Son.

I ain't taking his place. And if you think you can, shame on you. I don't want to stand before the judgment as you. I say this to my fellow Calvinists. Recognize where there were problems, deal with those problems positively, but stop being the Holy Spirit.

Stop being the Son of God. You are not equipped for either one, and you don't want to ever have to be accountable of that. Next, real quick. I mentioned last week that we were going to start looking at some teachings from the Christ in Me group, but I only have the one audio file, and I have not been able to edit it yet to be able to start getting into it and start looking at...

Well, I only have the second part of an audio file. For some reason, I don't even know how I got it. This is so weird. I've got so much stuff going on that I don't even remember how I got this. And it's the second half of a video that I've seen, and I want to actually deal with the audio part that came just before in the video with the audio that I have, because it was a very interesting, I think it's important to understand, attempt to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ.

This is what this group is doing. For those of you who don't remember or weren't here when I mentioned this, there's a new cult group developing in South Africa, and it is fascinating to be able to watch the genesis of a cult group in the modern era.

They've only been around for four and a half years, and their theology is still evolving and changing. I sat down a year ago at Northwest with a fellow PhD student in the School of Theology there, and he was, that's the group he's working on.

And I said, dude, this is going to be a little tough, because you put down what they are teaching now, and a year from now, it's going to be different. And I was right, it is. And so that makes it real challenging, still well worth pursuing, just to document the evolution.

Well, one of their teachings is that there is a difference between Jesus and the Christ. The Christ spirit can dwell in all of us. We have this Logos, this message that we are to bring to the world, so on and so forth.

And Jesus just happened to be one of those who bore this word. And so they go to Isaiah 9 -6, this was their Christmas presentation. They go to Isaiah 9 -6, and they try to make that distinction by saying, unto us a child is born, that's Jesus.

Unto us a son is given, that's the Christ. And so I want to be able to play that and then go into the Hebrew and demonstrate that's absurd, because it is, but I don't have it yet. So I'm not putting it off.

Like I said, I'm not going to do it or something like that. I just need to have all the materials that I need to be able to put that together. And it takes a long time that I haven't been able to get to it.

So we will get to that as time allows. So wow, there's a lot of stuff already that we've covered. The only way we could make it even wider is if we open the phones, and we're not going to do that, because I need to get back to the Bart Ehrman-Michael Licona debate.

So stop looking at Twitter. You're never going to get to this. Thankfully, at least when I'm on this camera, it's over there. When I'm at this camera, I can sort of glance down at it and see it a whole lot easier.

And so it's probably best for concentration to stay over here. For those who weren't with us on the last program, a debate took place a couple weeks ago, another debate, there've been a number of them, between Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona.

Even Bart mentioned in this debate, his favorite debate with Mike Licona was the debate where Mike Licona had laryngitis and could hardly say a word. And therefore, as Bart Ehrman said, I beat him speechless.

Well, that's true. It was rough to try to listen to Mike Licona talk like this. It was very, very difficult. I felt very bad for him. I forgot how many years ago it was, but that was a very, very, very tough situation.

But anyways, there've been a number of debates they've done. And we have, as carefully and accurately as we have been able to do so, more than once attempted to delineate and to explain the differences in apologetic methodology between how Mike Licona will debate Bart Ehrman or William Lane Craig would debate Bart Ehrman or anyone in that evidentialist camp, and how someone such as would debate Bart Ehrman, depending on the topic and what the issues are.

And I started an introduction last time, because this is a huge, huge area, and I think it's vitally important. And I'm sorry. I know there are some people who feel like, you know, we just need to leave that stuff to you professionals.

But the problem is, that's the attitude that has resulted in the massively high rate of deconversion of our young people when they go to university. You can't leave it to the professionals. This stuff is going into the brains of our young people straight through this.

And you can't hide this. You can't hide from this. You can't live in a cave anymore if you're going to be engaged in proclaiming the gospel in our society. You know, if you want to start a convent or something, a monastery out in the mountains, and put up cell dampening towers, you know, I suppose you could do that.

But we've all seen how that works historically. And so we have to be dealing with these issues, and it needs to be the whole body of Christ, not just the specialists. As I've said, my grandparents' generation didn't have to deal with alleged contradictions in the synoptic gospels on the level that we have to today.

But it's not just the Bart Ehrmans. The Muslims borrow all of Bart Ehrman's stuff. I've mentioned when I debated one Muslim at Duke University years ago, three of the four books he had on his desk were by Bart Ehrman.

And so it's not only religious people that will utilize this information, but the agnostic, the atheist, so on and so forth. And it raises, I think, vitally important subjects that should be a normal part of our conversation.

I'm a little concerned, to be honest with you, that most Christians can carry a Bible around, even really big Bibles, heavy Bibles, and never think about asking the question, why are there differences between the gospels?

Now, I realize the reason for most is that you read the gospels concurrently. They sort of sounded alike. You really didn't think much about it, but you can't duck those issues anymore. Bart Ehrman pretends that he's introducing us to something we've never thought about doing before, and he says, well, the way you need to study the gospels, you need to study them in parallel columns.

Well, who invented that? The Christians did. I mean, go back to origins, Hexopla, and stuff like, we've been doing that stuff forever and a day. Down there, don't worry about it. Down there is my, no, don't worry about it, is my synopsis of the gospels published by Christians.

I've mentioned a billion times before. Oh, stop that. You can't see it anyways. I'm hiding it. Nine years teaching through the synoptic gospels using a parallel where you can't dodge the differences that exist between them.

We've been doing this for a long time. And yeah, it can be uncomfortable to people. I mean, there are, Ehrman brings up the standard list, and there are tough things to deal with. Very tough things to deal with.

Trying to harmonize in a fair, historical, textual, consistent fashion, the birth narratives, the resurrection narratives, it's not easy to do. And there are people in the church that'll just honestly tell you, I don't want to think about that stuff.

I just want to come to church and read my Bible, and I just don't want to think about any of that kind of stuff. Well, I'm afraid the day when you could have that kind of easy, relaxing Christianity has passed us.

You know, maybe back in the 30s or 40s or something, you could have gotten away with that. But not so much anymore. And so we started looking at an example, and I didn't get it done. I didn't finish it off.

And so I need to do that. And so I'm actually going to back up here, and I am going to pick up the speed of Ehrman's comments. So I'll play them at 1 .2, so we can get a little bit done a little bit faster.

But here is what we looked at last time on the program. The Gospel writers want to emphasize different things. And the problem with thinking that they're all accurate is that it means that you read one of the Gospels as if it's saying the same thing as another one of the Gospels, when in fact they might be emphasizing different things based on the different stories that they've heard.

Okay, so, you know, I'm almost, he talks so fast. I'm going to go back to just normal speed. We talked about this last time. We saw the presuppositional nature of Barth's argument, specifically that they can't be accurate if they have different emphases.

And we point out examples of why this is just simply an incoherent position to take. I mean, it's a presuppositional assumption of the error of the text that you're examining. It's unfair. But there it is in his own words.

And now he's going to give the example. And he has used this example many times before. And one of the reasons I wanted to focus on this first, rather than just starting at the beginning of his presentation, or actually spending some time looking at a couple of points in Mike Licona's presentation, because there's good things that he has to say.

He says good things. We have fundamental disagreements on certain things, which means we're going to end up emphasizing things differently, but he says good things. And then going through Barth's presentation, I'm trying to sort of give you an example ahead of time, an overarching theme, in essence, of what you're going to see if you take the time to listen carefully to what Bart Ehrman is saying here.