Stone Choir Cult Attacks Plus More

Very rare diseases floating around the waiting room at the ER. I don't need those. And, uh, so I didn't do that, but, um, saw the ophthalmologist this morning. And so that's why my eyes look super puffy, uh, because first they do the numbing drops, which sting, uh, and then they, uh, so my, they did the, uh, dilation, so I'm sure I, my eyes are nice and big and everything's sort of foggy and fuzzy at the moment.

Um, but, uh, no retinal tear, no retinal separation, uh, basically a long story short, and Hey, for those of you who are getting into your sixties, I didn't have this information. So maybe a little helpful to you.

The vitreous humor in your eyeball, uh, shrinks with age and as it pulls away, it can damage things by pulling the retina with it. Uh, or sometimes it can pull away and the retina stays right where it's supposed to, um, but when you think about it, you don't have, uh, sensing nerves in your retina.

Uh, you only have light sensing nerves that they don't sense pains. They don't transmit pain signals. They transmit light signals. So if something happens inside your eye, such as the vitreous humor pulling away from a part of the retina, uh, that would cause pain, but the only thing that those nerves can report to your brain is light, hence the flashes that I flashes light that I saw and still see a little bit, um, only once it's very, very dark inside.

Um, but, uh, I, well, the first thing the doctor said was cataracts and I'm like, I don't like that, but he basically said pretty much everybody at your age has them. Um, the question is how fast they develop.

And with a rather deadpan look on his face, I did get him to smile a few times. I did my best. I really did. Um, but, but he said, I would say you might want to have these dealt with cause my wife had had a cataract and she had the whole lens replaced about 10, 15 years ago, probably about 15.

And it was fast and she's had great vision ever since then. And, um, but he said, uh, yeah, probably between 40 and 14 years from now. So between, between 76 and 102, okay. You say so now I almost, I almost feel like trying to talk him into it.

Just simply, um, I am sadly getting to the point where I'm contemplating donating my, uh, telescopes, at least all, but one of them, uh, the, the smaller, lighter, easy to set up one that I can look at planets and stuff like that with I'll, I'll keep, but the big ones, um, my vision just isn't sharp enough to really do that much with them anymore.

Um, so, but then, you know, the other option would be talk him into replacing at least one of them and, uh, get good vision back to be able to use the telescopes, who knows, um, probably won't do that, uh, probably won't do that at all, but anyway, so that's good news.

I was very concerned that the upcoming trips to Conway and Jonesboro, uh, at the end of next month and, uh, then, uh, to Livingston, uh, not all that long after that, I'm going to drive back, be home just a couple of weeks and drive all the way back to Louisiana.

Um, that those might get messed up by the, all this, but, um, if they're gonna get messed up, they're not gonna get messed up by my eyes anyways. Who knows what else could, uh, could go wrong. Um, but, uh, there you go.

Hey, just saw a picture of Joe boot. Um, at least he's not wearing those salmon colored slacks. That's much better, Joe, much better. Um, still, you know, the Brown and those shoes, I don't know, guy, but anyways, uh, filming worldview curriculum in Lexington, Kentucky today with my colleagues.

Well, good.

The Constitution, Executive Power, and the Death of the Legislative Branch

Uh, we need all of that that we can, uh, we can possibly get. Um, all right. Tons and tons and tons of stuff happening, uh, in the world, obviously, as everybody knows, I, um, uh, I was, when I was driving over here and yes, I'm driving through a fog right now, but it's amazing what you can see even through a fog.

Uh, you know, I'm thinking and, and my fellow elders, um, mentioned this on apology radio, um, on the Thursday, I think it was, yeah. Thursday afternoon. I, and I've mentioned this, I mentioned this to them on Monday at the inauguration, I was like, you know, look, I appreciate all the positive stuff that's happening.

I appreciate defunding Planned Parenthood. I appreciate there's two genders and I, you know, all this stuff I appreciate, but I just have to, have to recognize this is supposed to be being done by the, um, legislature.

It's supposed to be done by the legislative branch. This isn't the role of the executive and it's not the role of the judicial either for that matter. And I just can't imagine what we would be feeling and thinking if things had been different in November and all this stuff was being done in reverse.

Um, and I also can't help but think that the American populace is so fickle and has such short memories. What's going to happen when the other side gets back in power and has both the Senate and the house, because they're even more radical.

Um, it's just not how the way this isn't the way it's supposed to be done. Uh, we are electing kings now instead of presidents. The Congress is worthless. Um, the left will not, there is no such thing as bipartisanship.

When I was young, people worked together for the good of the country. That doesn't happen anymore. Uh, so the legislative branch is pretty much dead. Uh, the judicial has taken over a lot of that. And so who controls court means everything now.

Uh, that's why you, that's why you saw the left put pure ideologues that have absolutely no place being on the court, on the court. Um, and the executive branch has become the Royal branch, the, the king.

And, um, if you rejoice in it now, you're not going to have a whole lot of basis for griping about it when the other side's doing the same thing. And it obviously can't last. The, um, the constitution was written not by, not, not fully by Christian men.

There's no question about that. Um, but it was written in a Christian milieu and it utilizes Christian categories of government law, mankind, male, female. And hence, I don't know how long it can last, um, in a context of secularism.

And people on the right and the left right now are secularists and they, they operate within that context. And, um, that's, yeah, that's, that's rough. That's ugly. And, um, we'll see what happens with it.

Outreach to Mormons and a Possible Preaching Emergency

Um, all right. So wonderful time at church last night, Jeff got done preaching. He comes down, stands next to me. I think there's a song going on. It was, yeah, it was after the supper. And I looked at the clock and I went up to Jeff and I, uh, he leans over for me to talk to him and I go, you feeling okay?

He goes, yeah, yeah.

Because, because I, the chance that there was a chance that I have to preach yesterday evening, this afternoon, he had called me Saturday night, said, I may be coming down with something, just give you a heads up, start thinking about something that, okay, I appreciate it.

And so I had some thoughts in mind. And, and, uh, yesterday morning, uh, we do outreach to the Mormons, um, at various ward chapels around the Valley. There's hundreds of them. And we just stand outside the entrances, um, to the parking lots, obviously.

And, uh, talk to people if they want to talk, pass out tracks, they want to stop, take a track. And so I went out, um, my son-in-law heads up our, uh, our outreach to the Mormons. And so my, most of my grandkids were out there.

So I went out and, uh, had a fairly lengthy conversation with the young man. Didn't, at the time did not feel like it was overly useful, uh, to be honest with you, but you never know, uh, there have been many times I, I remember talking to a woman once came up to me and said, you know, you, there's no way you could remember this, but years and years ago, you all were outside the general conference and you were passing out tracks.

And man, we said horrible things about you, you folks. And we took tracks and tore them up and threw them away. But that was what started my journey out of Mormonism. So you never know. Uh, you, you can't tell by that particular conversation at that particular point in time.

And, uh, so it had already been a, um, you know, long day, uh, with the outreach and the outreach, the ward chapel is farther away than the church is. And the church is 35 minutes one way on freeways.

Uh, it's about, it's about 35 miles. And, um, so I get home, uh, last night after a good service, good time with the And I sit down at the computer just to sort of check stuff, wondering what I'm going to do, depending on what happened with the, uh, eye appointment this morning.

And lo and behold, Corey Muller has decided to come after me. And I'm not sure, uh, what, uh, you know, causes. Richard are, are, is, is, uh, I, I don't know that you have access to this, uh, to, to my laptop.

Um, since you're remote, I'm not sure if, and I, I certainly don't have it since I don't, since the ATEM is not on, so I have no way of getting to it. Um, so I'm not sure whether that's even a possibility or not.

He says one second.

Okay.

1001, 1002, 1003, you know, slowly that goes. Um, well, well, Rachel, I've, I've got it. I've got it up here on my screen. We'll see if he can track it down and, um, and, uh, put it up there for you. But I, I get home and I sit down at the computer and, uh, there it is.

And here's, uh, here's Corey J. Moller. Now those of you who don't know who Corey J. Moller is, he is an excommunicated, uh, Lutheran, uh, excommunicated for general hatred of mankind is what I had been told.

Um, the video of his excommunication was posted again today by somebody, um, online. Uh, but he is the head of the Stone Choir cult and it is a cult. And, uh, I don't know what I said yesterday, honestly, to, uh, trigger this, but I offer you this advice, Host L. Uthroy, which means as free men, those of you who are wondering from Peter's epistles, retire, take what remains of your legacy and let it stand on its own without continuing to tear it down.

If you decline, I can assure you that absolutely nothing will remain when you and we are done. Hmm, now it sounds like it's supposed to be a little bit on the threatening side, don't you think? Uh, I can assure you that absolutely nothing will remain when you and we are done.

Done with what? Who knows? Um, but, uh, you know, I, I don't take real well to being, uh, threatened by cult leaders. And, uh, I didn't take too well to that. And I said, I'm going to stand firm against people like you and your movement, as long as the Lord gives me a breath and the ability to do so.

And, um, I will train younger men to take up that task when I'm no longer capable of doing that because, um, you know, I, and I said in a later tweet, you know, you, you sound just like Joseph Smith and he does.

Um, there, there's, there's a lot of parallels between this movement. Now what's, what's different of course, is this movement isn't really in person very much. It's primarily online, um, which allows it to spread widely, but it gives it a very different character.

A little bit actually harder to fight in some ways because electronic access to people is ubiquitous now. And, uh, but you know, he was claiming to, you know, that he teaches the scriptures, you know, and all the rest of this kind of stuff.

And I'm like, yeah, Joseph Smith said the same thing. Charles Taze Russell, Judge Rutherford, Ellen G. White. They all, you know, they all said that they were teaching the scriptures purely and all.

The rest of this stuff.

I challenge you to find a single lie in anything we've said on the Stone Choir podcast and all the rest of the stuff. Well, this was late last evening, so I had written two or three responses and I went to bed.

I had to get up this morning, get ready for a important doctor's appointment, see how things are developing and going and what's going on in my eye. And so after they put the drops in, you know, the numbing drops and all that type of stuff, hard to see real clearly.

But thankfully I was still able to pretty much read my phone because it was a busy place and so you have to sit in this waiting room, then you go to that place and do this and they take pictures and all that kind of stuff.

And so all of a sudden, up pops this, I don't, you know, it may have even been before I left the house this morning now that I think about it, where it started anyways. Up starts, up comes this statement from Corey Mahler about the name Yahweh.

Now let me back up just one second. Um, last night when I responded to him, one of his responses to me was, I'm sure you'd have leveled the same slander against Luther among others. I, I, I guess he's talking about the fact that he's excommunicant.

That, that's public knowledge. That's not slander. That's a fact. He is an excommunicated man. Um, the problem, Mr. White, is that you are now defending, what you are now defending is neither the gospel nor truth.

You are defending the sinking ship of liberalism. You are defending a false god you have chosen unwisely. Um, I feel like looking for the holy grail, uh, that last line, but you are defending the sinking ship of liberalism.

Hmm.

Now, some people thought that that's a small L. And so some type of liberal theology or something along those lines. Now he's, he's talking about, um, in his own way, the post-war consensus stuff, globalism, denial of sovereign nations, stuff that of course I don't defend or promote in any way, shape, or form.

Um, but in his mind, you know, when you're a cult leader, what you define as most important and what you say is connected to something else just is, because no one can question you. Um, and so for some reason he thinks, and I'm, since I oppose his white nationalist, ethnic animus, um, cult-like perspectives, that that makes me a champion of post-war consensus and the rest of that kind of silliness.

And a false god. I mean, the, the, the confusion and the category catastrophe that is Corey Muller and his people is pretty, pretty amazing stuff. And so, um, I had a number of people even last night saying, just, just ignore this.

Guy.

You know, he, he's not worth, you're taking your time. And I, and I'm like, no, no, no, I disagree. Um, in fact, uh, I, I wrote to a guy who, who said you're, you're wasting your time. And I said, he is a cult leader.

He is building a cult. It is best to keep an eye on what he's up to. He had said you should block him. I said, it's best to keep an eye on what he's up to. True believers must be warned, like those that Paul fought against, he and his followers, uh, sneak in.

Paris duo. I put the term from Galatians for those who would want to do that type of thing. Sneak in in this modern period through social media. Their goal is to draw away disciples after them. And again, I gave the quote from Acts 20, 30.

They are Lukoi Barais, savage wolves. When Paul warned the Ephesian elders about such men, he did not tell them to block those folks or ignore these false teachers, but to expose them, resist them, rebuke them and protect the flock no matter what the cost.

And I think that's what we need to be doing as well. And I can't help but think about going back to the parallel of Mormonism. Um, I have it in my library over in the other room. Um, the first book seeking to expose and repudiate Mormonism, I guess you'd call it first anti-Mormon book, was by E .D. Howe, Mormonism Unveiled.

Off the top of my head, I think it was 1834. And the vast majority of LDS doctrine that is significant today didn't exist in 1834. Joseph didn't start getting his polytheistic ideas until about 1838. Uh, 18, oh, Rich says 1835.

Okay. Um, and so, you know, Howe's book is very useful, very interesting. You know, given when it was written, uh, it wouldn't be all that useful or interesting today in the sense that the Mormonism he was responding to, that's not how it stayed.

It changed over time. Um, but I've often thought, what would it be like to live in the time period where a cult was starting? I suppose you could argue we all, always live in the time period where a cult is starting.

Uh, we just don't necessarily know it. And when you think about early Mormon history, the Danites, you know, it would have been really hard back then for people to get hold of information until Smith started, you know, a printing, you know, got a printing press and started doing a newspaper and publishing revelations.

And, you know, it made it a little bit easier for people, but still in comparison today, it would be really hard to track down original sources, have really good argumentation and stuff like that. But today we have a cult starting right under our noses.

And most people are like, eh, block them, ignore them. Too much negativity out there. Or on the other side, it's like, oh, you're being too harsh. I mean, these guys have, they've got good production value.

Well, so do the Mormons. They've got all the money in the world to have the best films and slick as can be, man. Have you ever seen the Ensign magazine? You know, uh, production value has nothing to do with truth at all.

But I think that's, that's where we are is we are, we are in a situation where we have a cult starting and the cult is not centered in a location. It's not trying to form a actual physical church, but is a cult of the internet.

And that kind of stuff already exists in, you know, a lot of the Black Hebrew Israelite stuff transcends one particular area. And you've got a lot of things like that within, within the electronic realm.

But here's a, here's a cult that sneaks in, spies out, goes through the back door, um, via means of, of the, the iPhone and the Droid and so on and so forth. And, uh, gets, you know, steals converts, pulls, pulls them away, uh, gets followers for themselves.

And that's what Stone Choir is. And he's like, well, just show me where I'm wrong. And I'm like, oh yeah, I really want to spend a lot of time with all your stuff. But then he just comes along and provides me with the perfect example.

It's like, what? Um, so, so I think I saw this this morning. Um, let me, uh, see, I, hey, I did that myself. I blew it up a little bit. Here's, um, here's, what was it? Uh, what was the context? I had, um, I had specific, I was responding to someone.

And I had, uh, well, I, I was responding to him. Oh, no, this is what I, I responded to this. Okay, here, here he says, the Lord God, whose name is most certainly not the demon Yahweh, rank Judaizing is a sure mark of the apostates.

I'm not sure if you can put that up, but, um, I, and I, my response to him was, man, I wasn't asking for examples, but since you've provided to me, great, fine, wonderful. The Lord God, whose name is most certainly not the demon Yahweh, rank Judaizing is a sure mark of the apostate.

So if you make reference to Yahweh, a name that appears over 6 ,000 times in the Old Testament, in the original language of the Old Testament, which is Hebrew, um, then evidently you are some kind of a rank apostate.

And I saw someone else mentioning that they ran this particular tweet past Grok, the Twitter AI assistant, and even he made mention of Martianism. When I say he, it made mention of Gnosticism, Martianism, um, things like that, which is an accurate analysis.

Um, the real Gnostics, not the Valentinian Gnostics who tried to very specifically mimic Christianity, um, but the regular Gnostics, probably their mythology developed prior to encountering a lot about Jesus, um, it's a mishmash.

I mean, there is no single Gnostic systematic theology, but the Gnostics who didn't try to look like Christians, uh, identified Yahweh as the Demiurge. Um, Yaldabaoth was another term they used, and this was a lesser deity, almost a mutation, in a sense, uh, because he had come about, uh, by Sophia, wisdom, um, not remaining faithful to her consort.

It's a really messed up system, obviously, it's very strange. Um, but, so there was a anti -Yahweh element to Martianite Gnosticism, and, uh, you wonder if that's not, I doubt that's the origin of this, but it's a fascinating parallel that takes place.

And so, I'm sitting here, and I responded, um, I think, yeah, I think what I wrote, yeah, five hours ago, and I just put, cult leaders doing cult things, and then I quoted Deuteronomy 435 in Hebrew, and I have that in, um, in accordance here, so I want you to see, because, you know, I put the Hebrew in there, but for me, anyways, it's not all that easy to read in Twitter because of the line stuff.

Um, you can put it in correctly, but it won't stay that way when it, when it, uh, everybody else reads it, and so the Hebrew frequently, because Hebrew is obviously right to left, not left to right, the line, the line spacing is differently, is different, line orientation, justification, stuff like that.

So, I put Deuteronomy 435 in, and I also put in a text from Jeremiah chapter 10, but here is, and if it's possible to go full screen on that, um, because it's just, for me, that's way too small for me to even see it from here.

Um, there we go. Um, so this is, I've told you, don't worry about putting me up, let me blather here a second. Um, this was one of the verses that we had on our Witnessing with the Word t-shirt, and, uh, this was a t-shirt we made in the 1980s.

Um, silk screening was still a fairly new thing back then, and this was definitely one of them, Deuteronomy 435, where you can see, um, so, uh, to you, it was shown, uh, that you might know that Yahweh hu ha Elohim, ein 'od milvadu.

So, that you might know from Yedah, what, what is it you might know? Yahweh, he is ha Elohim, the God. That's an article. He is God. He is the God. There is none besides him. Now, most of the disputation, I would assume, because when you're, when you're involved in apologetics, you have to predict what your opponent is going to be, how they're going to be responding to various points you make.

And so, in general, you will find so much garbage about the name Yahweh online. I mean, you can find anything and everything. You know, I had someone come up to me at church a couple years ago, hey, I heard someone say that Yahweh was a demon God, and I, what, what in the world?

And I'm like, yeah, what in the world is, is that all about? Part of the disputation is about pronunciation. I had a guy on Twitter just this morning say, well, where did the A and the E come from in Yahweh?

When you look at Yahweh, the, you need to remember, if you go back to the Isaiah scroll, found a Quran, you will find that it is consonantal text only. Just like the earliest Quranic manuscripts are consonantal texts.

Semitic languages are consonantal. No, that doesn't mean that you don't have vowel letters that can function in that way. But the dots, dashes, and various and sundry other items that you see underneath and mixed in with the letters, even on the screen in front of you right now, were added primarily by the long after they were originally written.

That's why, for example, Anthony Buzzard is wrong with his argumentation in Psalm 110 when he says, well, this, this can't, this actually disproves deity of Christ because it's Adonai, not Adonai, and Adonai is always a human, but of course, whether it's Adonai or Adonai was dependent upon the people who inserted the vowel pointing at a later point in time, and of course, they were the Masoretes, and they were Jews, they already knew how the Christians used Psalm 110, and so they vowel pointed it to try to substantiate their side of things.

So what you get is you get the argument that, well, we don't know what letters. You know, they put the vowel pointing for Adonai so that you'd be reminded to read Adonai, my Lord, rather than reading Yahweh.

But the reality is, for people who aren't trying to sell books, aren't trying to start a cult, aren't trying to draw disciples away after themselves, the most logical, reliable, predictable pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, Yod-Heh-Wau-Heh, right there, Yod-Heh-Wau-Heh, right there, four letters, the most logical way of pronouncing that is Yahweh.

Now, if you want to argue Yahweh or something, then you have to make that type of argumentation and go for it if you want to. It doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is, this is the covenant name of God, and when it says, you know, I will exalt your name, O Lord, in the LSV, that'll be, I'll exalt your name, O Yahweh.

And the Jews stopped pronouncing the divine name. And so, when the Greek Septuagint, over here on the right, was translated into the Greek language, it says, Hati Kurias Hathaiasu. So, Kurias, Lord, is your God.

And you can see the same thing, Deuteronomy 6 .4. This is very important because this ends up being cited by Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, etc., etc. This one is God, and there is none besides him.

So, the Greek translation is accurate, but instead of, you know, there is a term, Adonai, which means Lord. So, how would you differentiate that? The Greek Septuagint really doesn't. You don't have any way of really knowing where the Tetragrammaton is being used just from the Greek Septuagint itself.

It uses the term Kurias. Now, of course, Kurias is the term used of Jesus. No one can say Jesus Christ is Kurias, Jesus Kurias, except by the Holy Spirit. So, Kurias is obviously extremely important because of the fact that it represents the divine name.

And when you can demonstrate that the Old Testament is being quoted in the New, and the divine name was in the original, then that's extremely significant when you get to the Old Testament, the New Testament text, and what the writers are communicating to us about who Yahweh is.

And so, just go back to last year's debate on is Jesus Yahweh, and you'll see why that is very, very important. So, most of the argumentation will be, well, it should be Jehovah, or it should be this.

We know it's not Jehovah. Jehovah is a three-syllable word. This isn't a three-syllable word, so it's not that. But that's generally what the argumentation is. Well, we don't know the pronunciation, blah, blah, blah, blah.

That's irrelevant. Yahweh is the best pronunciation by people who aren't trying to sell books. And then how it is then used in the New Testament is extremely important. And the fact of the matter is Yahweh, he is God.

This is the God of the Old Testament. Once you start saying the God of the Old Testament, the God of the New Testament are different gods, you have graduated to full-blown Gnosticism and are the heretic that everyone knew you were all along, and your mom probably knew that, too.

So, anyway, so there's Deuteronomy 435. Yahweh, he is Elohim. And by the way, for those of you who witness to Mormons, this is the verse, you're looking at the verse on the screen right now, that got me kicked out of the Visitor's Center at the Mesa LDS Temple many, many years ago.

They've closed that Visitor's Center down, opened a different one up across the street now. But I was asking two elderly missionaries to explain this to me, to explain how I was using the King James Version of the Bible, their version of the Bible, showed it to them.

I'd show them how LORD, L-O-R-D in all caps, is Jehovah. And in 1901, the Mormon Church, First Presidency, put out an official statement identifying the Father as Elohim and the Son as Jehovah. And you can go ahead and take that down.

And that actually probably goes against Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith didn't understand these things. Joseph Smith could not read these languages, did not have access to these languages. And so, when I showed them, in the LDS Temple ceremonies, Jehovah and Elohim are separate and distinct individuals.

But in the Bible, they're not separate and distinct individuals. There's only one God, Yahweh. And so, they asked me to leave. And this was the verse that got me in trouble at that particular point in time.

So, this is one of two. I also went to Jeremiah chapter 10, which we talked about on the Vine line just last week, and talked about how that likewise identifies Yahweh and Elohim. And so, if you're talking to a Mormon, this is valuable stuff to use.

But I am uncertain of exactly what Mahler's problem is. I would assume it is some kind of the Jews are so terrible, terrible, terrible, terribly, terribly, terribly bad that the name of God that they used, we can't have anything to do with that.

So, here's the next thing that Mahler posts. And I'm like, well, here we go. Nothing like providing me with all the examples I could ever want of just how messed up your theology really is. God not only caused his word to be translated into Greek, but he then went one step further and destroyed the Hebrew language, which remained extinct for nearly 2 ,000 years.

God could not have been more clear. The scriptures are Greek. Now, this is fascinating. Now, we know Mahler is a cultist. We know he's a cult leader. Okay, you can't take anything he says seriously. But it struck me as fascinating.

So, God inspired the Septuagint? Which one? Which one? There is no one Septuagint. Anyone who is familiar with the history of that venerable ancient translation knows that there isn't just one of them because it wasn't all done at one time.

The mythological story that was passed around, even amongst Christians, was that 70, or in some versions 72, scholars were brought together. They all went into caves. They translated the entire Old Testament, came back out, compared their translations, and they were word for word the same, which demonstrated that this was a tremendous miracle.

And therefore, this is how God wants the Old Testament scriptures to be understood because this took place before the birth of Christ. And the problem is, of course, once you actually work with the Septuagint...

Where did I put mine? Well, did I take that in the other room? Why would I do that? I don't know, but it looks like I did because... Yep. Wow, that's weird. I thought for sure I had left at least one of them in here for illustrative purposes, shall we say.

But no, it done be gone. I'm not going to run into the other room and grab one. Anyone who spends a lot of time... And if you work with New Testament citations of the Old Testament, you will be spending a lot of time with the Greek Septuagint because at least 85 to 95, depending on whose study you're reading, 85 to 95 of the citations of the Old Testament in the New Testament are from the Greek.

And there are some differences between what is cited... For example, we've talked about this many times on the program. Hebrews chapter 8. Hebrews chapter 8, Jeremiah chapter 31 in the Hebrew, though I was a husband to them, but when it's cited in Hebrews chapter 8 in the Greek, it's though I did not care for them.

And this is a textual variant in the Hebrew between ba 'al and ga 'al. Bet and gimel look somewhat alike, at least they're not completely different. And so it's just a one letter difference. And you can see the manuscripts that have the different readings.

You can see that represented. There's something called the Gertungen Septuagint that is, as far as I know, the most extensive critical text of the Greek Septuagint. So it gives you all the variant readings and stuff like that.

You can get it in Logos, you can get it in Accordance. And you'll be able to see the cross-contamination between the various traditions, between the Hebrew Masoretic text. There was no Masoretic text at that time.

There was what we would call a Proto-Masoretic text. The Masoretic text really develops long after the time of Christ. And it certainly existed in its earliest form in the days of Christ. You see that in the Isaiah scroll, or Leviticus scroll, where you have scrolls that were written 100 years before Christ, and now that we can read them, they've been discovered, are basically unchanged 1 ,000 years later, 900 years after Christ, when the first great Hebrew codices become available.

So you do not have to have corruption, but you can have corruption. It's not just a necessary element of the transmission of the text in handwritten form. Anyway, the textual history of the Old Testament in the first century is extremely complicated, extremely complex.

The vast majority of people have not ever read Immanuel Tov or anything like that. To have any type of background in that area, it's not easy to discuss and to go through. But the point is, there is no one Greek Septuagint.

You know that the translation varies greatly in its quality. So the Pentateuch, well done. Um, Psalter, yeah, really can be. Major prophets, yeah, but yeah, you get into some of the historical books and some of the minor prophets, and not only do you have questionable translation, but questionable text.

It didn't all happen at once. Maybe the Pentateuch was done at once, and then some of the major prophets after that, and the Psalter, you know, the more popular stuff, and then later stuff comes later.

And it's not all done by the same group of people. It's not of the same quality. It's not all done at the same time. So there isn't just one Septuagint at all. So is Corey Mahler actually pretending that the Septuagint is inspired?

Now, the Septuagint was the Bible of the early church. There's no question about that. Um, very early on, as the gospel went into the Greek-speaking world, and then into the Latin-speaking world, the bridge that allowed that to happen was the Greek Septuagint.

Sure, the New Testament writings are in Greek, but they're in Koine Greek. Septuagint is very much readable to a Koine reader, but there are some eccentricities. There's some, there were some developments in the 200 years, but not massively different.

And so having the Septuagint allowed for this transition, and, you know, when you start having early translations of the Christian scriptures into other languages, whether it be the old Latin, Syriac, Waharic, Sahitic, Coptic, all that kind of stuff, those are very, very important witnesses to the development of the text of the New Testament.

But you have the same thing happening with the Old Testament, not as widely. And what ends up happening, and this has a huge impact on things, follow the line here. As in the history of the church in the New Testament reveals, a division developed very early on between the church and the synagogue.

John tells us that anyone who confessed Jesus was going to be put out of the synagogue, and we see this later in history taking place. And then you have persecution against the Christians by the Jews.