The Fundamentals of Islam (Part 2)

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In this lesson, Pastor Keith deals with the alleged corruptions in the Bible that are claimed by Muslims. he also dives into the often uncharted waters of textual variants and textual criticism. If you plan on interacting with Muslims, you need to hear this message. He also spends some time on the King James Only movement.

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The Fundamentals of Islam (Part 3)

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We are in, tonight, week two of our study of Islam, and I wanted to begin right at the end of where we left off last week.
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Last week, we ended by talking about the fact that the difference between Islam and Christianity is that Islam is Unitarian, and that Christianity is Trinitarian.
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Islam is Unitarian, Christianity is Trinitarian.
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Now, all of my astute Bible students, which you all are, you're all very astute, I want to ask you what, and I put this on the board to have you thinking about it when you came in, what are the three foundations of the doctrine of the Trinity? Who can give me the three foundations? Who can give me one, the first one? I had you guys, I wrote them down last week, put them on the board for you.
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Who remembers the three foundations? Who remembers the first one? OK, not saying who the three persons are, but what is the first foundation? Yes, God is one in being, or you could say essence.
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All right.
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What did you say, Teacher Pat? Yes, that was my wife.
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That is right.
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God is one in essence or being.
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What is the second foundation to the doctrine of the Trinity? Does anyone know? I'm sorry? Well, substance is the same here.
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This is all the same.
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He is one in essence, being, substance.
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These are all three synonyms.
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What is the second foundation? He is three in person.
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Thank you.
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Jennifer's getting ready to raise her hand.
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So God is one in being, essence, or substance.
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I like to use the word substance.
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My only problem with using the word substance is people tend to think of substance as something tangible.
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And the spirit, obviously, God is spirit.
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Spirit is not tangible, so that confuses people.
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But what I like to say is the stuff.
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That gets it real down to the nitty gritty, doesn't it? The stuff of God.
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There's only one stuff.
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That sounds very, very silly, I know.
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But that's what we mean.
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We say God is one in being, God is one in essence, God is one in substance.
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That which is God, there's only one of.
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But that which is God is shared by three persons.
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Does everybody get that? That which is God, there is only one of.
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But that which is God is shared by three persons.
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Now, God is one in being.
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He is three in person.
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Finally, what is the last foundation stone? No, doesn't do the Holy Spirit, because we're going to talk about that in a minute.
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Co-equal and co-eternal within the Trinity, within the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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There is an equality and eternality that is shared.
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The Father is not above the Son within the Trinity.
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Now, he is above the Son in the economy of Christ humbling himself and coming as a man.
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Thus, he prayed to the Father and obeyed the will of the Father.
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But yet within the Trinity, there is an equality and an eternality which is shared.
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That's what that word putting the co in front of it means.
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They share an equality.
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They share an eternality.
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So we understand God is one in being.
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He is three in person.
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And these three persons are co-equal, co-eternal.
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Somebody said the word distinct.
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Who said that? All right, Miss Charlotte, that's another good word.
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They are distinct.
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That gets us away from the false teaching called modalism, because modalism fails to make a distinction between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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The modalism would say they're all the same, just in different modes of being.
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All right.
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So that's another good word to put up there.
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They're co-equal, co-eternal and distinct.
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Now, the reason why I'm starting with the doctrine of the Trinity tonight is because one of the great failures in the Koran, one of the great failures in the Koran is the understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.
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But not on this level.
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It is on a much more base and simple level that the Koran makes a tremendous error in regard to the doctrine of the Trinity.
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My reason for starting with this tonight is simply to show you that the doctrine of the Trinity is somewhat deep.
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It is somewhat difficult in the sense that it speaks in terms that are heavy and thought provoking.
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And it makes you think.
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However, if I just asked you, and this is why I was going to get back to this.
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If I just asked you who makes up the Trinity, that one should be fair.
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Who makes up the Trinity? The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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Right.
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That one was easy.
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Everybody pretty much got that one.
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This one is probably the more difficult.
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If I asked a hundred Christians, I would shudder to think the percentage that would be able to give me.
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And this is not something I invented.
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This is the historic doctrine of the Trinity.
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This is how it's been explained ever since the Council of Nicaea, even before that.
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God is one in essence, three in person.
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These three persons are co-equal and co-eternal.
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This is this is very, very foundational doctrine.
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But most people just don't go this far into depth of thought.
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But if you ask most everybody in Christianity, who are the persons of the Trinity? Ninety eight out of one hundred would say Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
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Right.
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So of the two, this one's the easier one.
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Right.
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That's not what I'm that's not my point.
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I agree.
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I agree.
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This part is essential for understanding it.
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That part is that part is the more basic.
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My point is the Koran messes up this part.
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You see, this part is the more difficult part.
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This part is the part everybody gets.
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Yet Islam and the Koran doesn't get this part right.
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Everybody take out your Koran.
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Oh, wait, you don't have one.
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I have to read it for you.
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But if you want to take a note in the Koran, and I refuse to call it the Holy Koran.
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In the Koran, surah five, surah five.
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Remember, they don't they call the chapters surahs and the verses.
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I surah five.
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I have one sixteen.
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Surah five, I have one sixteen says this.
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I want you.
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I'm just going to read it the first time and see if you catch it.
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After reminding him of these favors, Allah will say, oh, Jesus.
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It says Esau, but that's the name for Jesus.
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Oh, Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to the people, worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah? He will answer glory to you.
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How could I say what I had no right to say? If I had ever said so, you would have certainly known it.
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You know what is in my heart, but I know not what is in yours, for you have full knowledge of all the unseen.
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Beloved, who is the Trinity according to the Koran, Jesus, Mary and the father, not Jesus.
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Listen to it again.
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I'll read it again.
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After reminding him of these favors, Allah will say, oh, Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to the people, worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah? You see the point.
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Who are the three gods? Who are the three within the Trinity? According to the Koran, God, Mary and the father.
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Esau and Miriam, or in English, God, Jesus and Mary, this is part.
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Father, son, Holy Spirit, this is the part we get, this is a part that has not really been contentious.
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Now you might argue and you say, well, hey, the Catholic Church, they put Mary on a pretty high pedestal and there are people who venerate Mary.
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In fact, the Roman Catholic Church does give Mary veneration.
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And they lift her up, they pray to her, they pray the rosary, Hail Mary, full of grace.
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And they say those words, that prayer to Mary.
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So could it easily be.
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That Mohammed.
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And seeing Christian worship, seeing the veneration of Mary that the Roman Catholics have done for hundreds of years.
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Seeing the veneration of Mary, not understanding what is happening when he hears that they believe in a trinity, would then assume the trinity is father, son and mother.
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Obviously, the question is this, though, if the Koran was inspired by God.
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Wouldn't God know who Christians believe were the Trinity? Such an error would never be allowed to go into the book word inspired by God.
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This demonstrates that Mohammed did not even understand Christianity.
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It demonstrates that he did not even understand the religion that he was opposing.
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For he was teaching that the Trinity made of the father, the mother and the son rather than the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
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This is a major implication as to the reliability of the Koran.
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If Mohammed did not even understand this most foundational aspect of the doctrine of the Trinity, how then did he understand anything about Christianity at all? I submit to you, he did not.
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So just starting with that, I want to say because this is where we didn't get to last week, we had finished talking about their understanding of God and our understanding of God.
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The Muslim understanding of God is unitarian.
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The Christian understanding of God is Trinitarian.
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We understand God as one in essence, three in person.
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Those three persons are co-equal and co-eternal and distinct.
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And those three persons are the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
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Islam does not understand even that.
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They do not even go there.
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So starting there or ending from what we talked about last week, let us move on now to the second.
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If you have your worksheet, did somebody come tonight without one? OK, I have a few pennies or here you go.
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You'll just pass them to anyone you see.
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We looked at the history of the Arab people.
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We looked at the history of Mohammed.
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We got down to the doctrines.
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The first one was the doctrine of God.
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That's where we stopped last week.
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Tonight, we are going to look at the doctrine of scripture.
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If you want to write that down, the doctrine of scripture, as we said last time, the Muslims believe that the Quran is the infallible word of God.
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This is not a Quran.
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I picked it up as I said it, and I hope you didn't think I was picking up the Quran.
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This is a Bible.
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Muslims believe that the Quran is the true word of God.
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However, they also believe that other writings have been revealed by God.
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The three writings that they would say have been revealed by God.
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First is the Torah, the books of Moses, the Torah, T-O-R-A-H.
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The second would be the Zabur, Z-A-B-U-R, Zabur.
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These are the writings of David, the Psalms.
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The third that they would say are inspired by God is the Injil, I-N-J-I-L, the Injil is the gospel, the Gospels of Jesus Christ.
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Now, now you're going to ask if they believe that Moses's books are inspired and they believe that David's book is inspired and they believe that the gospels are inspired, how then can they not believe the same things that we believe about Moses, David, Jesus and the Bible? Because while they say these books are inspired, they also say that scripture, Christian scripture and Jewish scripture, which you hold both in your hand when you hold a holy Bible, have been corrupted.
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That is their argument, that the Bible that you hold in your hand has been corrupted.
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They claim that the Torah and the Injil were both misinterpreted by Jews and Christians and that the Koran was given to clear up the misunderstandings.
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Because the Koran to the Muslim is the final revelation from God, it supersedes all earlier revelation.
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That makes sense, right? If they believe that the Koran came last and that it is the final word, anything that comes before it that disagrees with it, it's wrong and the Koran is correct.
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In fact, that question was asked, I believe it was Shabir Ali, but I could be incorrect on that.
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But I believe Dr.
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White, in asking one of his opponents, I believe it was Shabir, he said, how do we know which parts of the Bible are true? If what you're saying is correct, if the Bible has been corrupted, how do we know which parts of the Bible are true? And this was the answer from his from the opponent, the debate opponent, the debate opponent said, as far as it agrees with the Koran, it is correct.
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Wherever it disagrees, it has been corrupted.
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Well, that is.
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That's that's what ran away in my brain, my brain.
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Convenient, that's what that's convenient to say.
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Well, where it agrees with what we have, it's right where it disagrees.
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It's wrong.
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If so, facto, that's where it's wrong.
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In fact, going back to what we talked about earlier, to the position on the Trinity, they would argue that Christians did believe at one time that there were sects of Christians that did believe that the Trinity was the father, the mother and the son.
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Even though this is very difficult to prove from history, because the doctrine of the Trinity is easily demonstrated in the earliest of Christian documents going back to 325 in the Council of Nicaea, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
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But they would argue that there have always been Christians who the Trinity to them was the father, the mother and the son.
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You see, because they have to do that.
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They have to make that argument.
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They have to say that the Koran is correcting an error.
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And we say, well, we didn't have that error.
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Nobody ever believed.
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Oh, no.
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Well, there were some who did.
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And this is correcting them.
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But why not correct the vast majority rather than maybe a few in a sect somewhere? Doesn't make sense.
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Yes.
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Oh, sure.
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Sure.
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And I'm going to get to that when we talk about corruption.
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I'm going to get to the fact that this is not something that just the Muslims say.
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In fact, this is probably going to take up the majority of our time tonight, just talking about the idea of corruption, because when you talk about the Bible being corrupted, this is not something that Muslims invented.
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This is something that is used by Mormons.
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Mormons say we have the the the more Book of Mormon, which they say is what? What is the Book of Mormon? Everybody knows the commercials.
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When I was a kid, I see these commercials, the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saint.
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We have another testament of Jesus Christ.
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It was always we have another testament of Jesus Christ.
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Why do we need another testament? Well, it it lets us know what was left out.
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It gives us this information that we didn't have it.
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It fills in the blanks and it it helps with anything that may have been lost or corrupted.
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You see, we see that throughout.
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We see that teaching is very prominent within major religious sects.
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Now, the Koran, the problem with the logic of the Islam, the Muslim, is because though the Muslims claim that the Koran comes along to fix the corruptions in Scripture, the problem is the Koran never reinterprets passages from the Torah or the Injil.
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In fact, instead of reinterpreting them, it simply denies them.
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It's one thing to say that you interpreted this wrong, for instance, if they say you interpreted the crucifixion of Jesus wrong, it didn't happen to forgive sins.
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It happened because he died as a martyr or what have you.
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If they made that argument, that's one thing, but that's not the argument they make.
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The Koran comes along and it doesn't reinterpret the Koran comes along and flat out denies what the Bible says.
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In fact, I'll read to you a verse from the Koran and you tell me what it says.
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You listen close.
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Surah 4, 157, they said in boast, we killed Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.
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But they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them.
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And those who differ therein are full of doubts with no certain knowledge, but only conjecture to follow for of a surety.
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They killed him, not what did that say? So Jesus didn't die on the cross, it said it was made to appear to them that he died on the cross, but surely they killed him not.
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Well, that's not a reinterpretation.
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That's a flat out denial.
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All four of the gospels demonstrate Christ died on the cross.
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Every one of the New Testament books referenced Jesus Christ having died for the forgiveness of sin.
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The entire New Testament is wrapped up in this one phrase from Paul who said, if Christ is not risen, then we above all men are the most to be pitied.
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We understand this.
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We understand that the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the gospel, according to first Corinthians 15.
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So they deny, not reinterpret, but they deny the gospel because they deny the very foundation of what the gospel lays upon.
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It lays upon Jesus Christ's death, burial and resurrection.
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That is for four one fifty seven.
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So do they simply reinterpret the Bible? No, they take whole chunks and deny them.
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Now, based on that, we're going to talk about something tonight and it is possible that what we're going to talk about tonight is going to upset you.
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But don't let it.
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When I say it might upset you, I might show you some things that might be new to you.
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And I brought along with me a King James Bible.
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So, you know, I'm serious.
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There are certain things that you need to understand.
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And beloved, in August, is it in August? When we have the Bible conference in August, I think, or is it September, September, the Bible conference? We're having a Bible conference.
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I'm going to be teaching.
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And so is Shane Waters.
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He's the pastor of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church, which is across town.
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We're going to be sharing the pulpit that week and we're going to be preaching on the subject of textual criticism.
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Why such a thing? Why in the world? I mean, why not preach on, you know, how to have your best life now? Why would you preach on textual criticism, pastor? That's so that's so dry a subject.
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Well, beloved, first of all, it's not a dry subject.
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But second of all, it is where the arrows of the enemy are pointed right now.
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It is what Mormons are using.
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It is what Jehovah's Witnesses are using.
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It is what those atheists who oppose scripture are using.
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It is what people like Bart Ehrman, the agnostic instructor of religion at North Carolina University, is using.
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It is what the Muslims are using.
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They are saying, you don't know your Bible enough to know that there are certain parts in your Bible that have textual variations.
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And you know what? Most Christians don't, particularly those that grew up on this.
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Hey, I grew up on a King James Bible.
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That's great.
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I want to talk to you tonight about something.
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I want to show you some things.
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And if you leave here upset, don't be upset with me.
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Because every one of you needs to know this stuff, every one of you needs to know how to stand against what we're going to talk about tonight, because when they talk about it being corrupted, there are parts of the Bible where there are textual variations.
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And if you don't understand the history of these variations and the situation that brought them about, you're going to be left unable to give a defense for the hope that is within you, which is what Peter commands us to be able to do.
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That day when they bring them to bear upon you.
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We don't want to stick when I was a kid, you know, when mom was saying something you didn't want to hear, you stick your fingers in your ear, you go, la, la, la, la, la.
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I can't hear you.
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La, la, la.
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Right.
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We can't afford to do that.
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We can't afford to stick our finger in the ears and go, I can't hear you in your Bibles.
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If you have it, I have King James.
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I assume most of you don't.
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But if you do, it doesn't matter.
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Just everybody turn to first John.
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Five, seven, first John, chapter five, verse seven, this is going to take a minute because I'm actually going to write this verse on the board.
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Let's see what translations we have tonight.
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How many ESPs we got? God bless you, you're all among the elect.
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OK, let's see who else is teasing.
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How many, how many NASPs? Yeah, that's right.
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I'm asking for how many NASPs you got.
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OK, you were first in line.
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How about that? All right.
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NIV.
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OK, I got a couple of those.
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King James.
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That's OK.
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I got I got one.
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I got one for us.
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All right.
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I need somebody with an NAS.
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First John, chapter five, verse seven.
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I only want you to read from the NAS.
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I want you to read.
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And I'm sorry to take the time to do this, but it's very important that I do this.
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Take the time to read to me what it says.
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The first, the first, just the whole verse.
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Sybil, would you first on five, seven? Yes.
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And you can see your body first on five, seven.
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Wow.
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The NAS does something totally different there.
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I wasn't aware of that.
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Somebody with ESP.
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You got a thank you.
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That's what I was looking for.
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There are three that testify.
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Apparently, the NAS just skips, but in theirs, it's verse seven.
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And that's important, too, because that's a totally this.
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Honestly, if you're trying to teach this and everybody had different Bibles, just throw you off.
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Yours says in verse eight, there are three that testify.
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But in theirs, it says in verse seven, there are three that testify.
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OK, however, both of them stop here.
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Right.
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There are three that testify and goes on to say what? Please finish the sentence, if you would, Mr.
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Spirit, water, blood.
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These three agree.
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All right.
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There are three that testify spirit, water, blood.
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These three agree or something to that effect.
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Is that what the ESP says? The ESP says this part in verse eight.
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Right.
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This is seven.
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There are three that testify.
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It stops eight spirit, water and blood.
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These three agree something to that effect.
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Everybody sees that.
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Right.
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Listen to King James Version.
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Listen, listen to this.
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Please listen.
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As we listen to the NAS, one of the best English translations, the ESP, another great English translation.
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This also is considered to be one of the great English translations.
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Don't you hear the difference? First, on Chapter five and verse seven, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the Holy Spirit.
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And these three are one.
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And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, the water and the blood.
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And these three agree in one.
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Did you notice that there is an entire sentence in here that is not in any of your Bibles? Oh, I read it again.
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But just just think on it for a second.
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Everybody just had a big, oh, moment.
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If you've never looked at this, this will slap you in the face.
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The first time a Muslim says, well, hey, you believe in the Trinity because in the King James Bible, but it's not in any of the other Bibles.
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Oh, we're going to get there.
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We're going to get there.
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And I will tell you, if you come to the Bible conference in August, September, whenever I'm doing it, you'll hear me talk pretty much the same thing again.
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I cannot talk about this enough because, first of all, I hope to have twice as many people here at the conference and they'll need to hear it.
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But you need to hear it more than once.
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In fact, I recommend you to look up if you have a computer or if you're if you're getting one or whatever, what is called did not spell that correctly.
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It's two N's, comma, this is hard to spell, it's yohanium, it's two N's, yes, comma yohanium.
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There are many great places to look up on the Web, but I will tell you, there's equally as many bad places.
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If you shoot me an email, most of you have computers have my email, shoot me an email.
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I'll give you some of the best information on it if you would like it.
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But I'm going to give you a rundown tonight.
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What's the time in 20 minutes? I'm going to explain the.
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Well, OK, let's go back and read it again, shall we? Let's do that.
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First on Chapter five and verse seven in the King James Bible, the KJV.
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I'm going to write the KJV in red or in red.
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You know that it's the inspired letters.
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I have no I have I have I have.
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I mean, I mean, I don't put this out there just for because it's important, I will say random things about the KJV.
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Because even though I think the KJV is a wonderful English translation, I think it has been robbed from the church by people who call themselves King James onlyists, and it has been used by them as a bat to beat separation in the church.
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And beloved, it never was intended to be that way.
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The ones who translated it never intended to be that way.
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And that's why I'll make statements about the KJV, because I stand firmly against anyone who would use one 17th century English translation to divide the church.
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And that's what they've done.
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This wasn't the first English translation and it wasn't the best.
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Which one came before this one? The Geneva Bible, which one before that, the Wycliffe translation.
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So there's plenty of English Bibles that came even before this one.
32:33
Yeah.
32:35
All right.
32:36
So first on five, seven, four, there are three.
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I'm right shorthand here for there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the Holy Ghost, I said Holy Spirit earlier, I read it and the Holy Ghost.
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And these three are one.
33:26
Now, that is the end of verse seven, verse eight begins and pretty much the same as this one, and there are three that bear witness on earth, the spirit, water and blood.
33:35
OK, so verse eight is pretty much the same as this.
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This is the part that's obviously most difficult for there are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word and the Holy Ghost.
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And these three are one.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Orthodox Christianity, do we believe this? Yes, we do.
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Yeah, Orthodox Christianity, do we believe that there are three that bear witness in heaven, that those three are called the father, the son and the Holy Ghost? Yeah.
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Do we baptize in the name of the father, the son, the Holy Ghost? Do our creeds and confessions confess that we believe the father, son, the Holy Ghost? Absolutely.
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So is there anything Orthodox or rather back that up? Is there anything unorthodox about this statement? No, there's nothing unorthodox about it.
34:29
But that don't make it scripture.
34:34
Well, let's let's first talk about why it's even there.
34:38
Let's first talk about why it's even there, and then we'll get back to the link.
34:42
Well, the word, this is what Jesus is called in all of John's writings.
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So but if you're but if it's if it's an attempt to insert into John's writing something that John would say, then you would use John's identification for the son.
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John consistently calls Jesus the word.
35:06
Right.
35:07
So if this was an attempt by someone to insert.
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This is a good way of making it sound like, hey, this is something John himself would have written.
35:16
Right.
35:17
I mean, it would certainly sound that way.
35:19
All right.
35:19
Now, let's just let's just break this down.
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We understand this is true.
35:23
We understand this is Orthodox.
35:24
We understand all that.
35:27
The question, though, is, is it scripture? This verse, this entire section from here all the way to here.
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Did not exist in any Greek manuscript in the first thousand years of the church, there is no record of it at all in the second thousand years of the church, there are only bits of records of where it might have been found the late earliest that I remember.
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And I and again, when I do this in August or September, I have all my notes that I'm doing this for memory tonight.
36:07
The earliest I remember is going to be the 16th century.
36:13
Now, there may be one or two earlier than that, but here's how the Bible was originally written in which language? New Testament, New Testament originally written in which language? Greek.
36:28
So New Testament is written in Greek.
36:30
Right.
36:31
How long? If you figure the Bible is written anywhere from the year, let's say, fifty to ninety five, the Bible is written in between the years fifty and ninety five.
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If you have a later date for revelation somewhere, ninety, ninety five.
36:45
OK, I don't I put everything prior to eighty seventy, but that's a whole other discussion.
36:51
But if you say the Bible is written in within a 50 year, forty five year period and in the first century, second century, the Bible is start to be translated into which languages? Who said what? Latin, Latin and Coptic, Syriac and a few other languages, but primarily Latin.
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Now, by the time of Jerome in the fourth century, the Latin Bible, remember, Jerome wrote what was called the Vulgate.
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The Vulgate was the Latin translation of the Bible.
37:34
Jerome's Vulgate, he was the one who translated.
37:37
The Latin Vulgate lasted until the time of the Reformation, approximately for a thousand years, the Latin Bible was the Bible.
37:55
In fact, when they started translating the Bible into other languages, there was an uproar because the Latin Bible had become pretty much what the King James version is to us today.
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But that's the inspired text.
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That's the one that's been given to us.
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We've been using it for a thousand years.
38:13
It had twice as much heritage as the King James Bible.
38:16
You can imagine we've only had a King James Bible about 400 years old, right? Sixteen eleven, two thousand, four hundred years old.
38:22
They had two and a half times a thousand years, over a thousand years.
38:29
This is the Bible, man, it's in Latin.
38:31
Everybody knows it's in Latin.
38:33
Problem was priests couldn't read Latin.
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People couldn't read Latin.
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Latin was the language of learning.
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Unless you had gone to school, you spoke whatever the language was, dialect was in the place where you lived when they started translating the Bible into English.
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They said, no, that's the common tongue.
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The common tongue could never fully express the great truths of the Latin text.
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That's the same thing that said the King James.
39:02
Oh, you can't translate it into a modern language because the modern language could never fully express the truth that the King James expresses in that majestic language.
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You see the same arguments.
39:13
There's nothing new under the sun.
39:14
It just rotates through the same arguments said again.
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Anyhow, the point is.
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Somewhere in this thousand year history.
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This text is inserted into the Latin Bible.
39:29
Oh, you mean to tell me that words got inserted in the Bible that were not originally there? Yes, because up until 1960, there were no such things as copy machines.
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All you had were copyists.
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Men who sat at tables many hours a day and they did their copying word by word, letter by letter, and they made.
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Now, some of you have probably heard the story of how in a copyist scriptorium they would count the letters on the page and if the letters on the page didn't match up to the letter in the original, that they would tear that one up and throw it away.
40:16
Well, that did happen in some scriptorians.
40:19
But in most they did the same thing you do when you make a mistake, they scratched it out and wrote something else above it.
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I've got pictures of the Codex Sinaiticus, one of the earliest vellum manuscripts.
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I have pictures on my computer where you can actually see where the manuscript copyist made a mistake, drew a line through it and wrote the word above it because I ain't starting over at the beginning.
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If I got to this end of the page on a vellum manuscript, we ain't starting this over.
40:52
But they also did what was called marginal notes.
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Beloved, have you ever given your Bible a marginal note? Have you ever taken and written it by hand? Well, let me ask you a question.
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How do you differentiate between your marginal notes and your Bible? Well, your Bible is printed and your marginal notes are handwritten.
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Well, imagine if the whole thing was handwritten and then somebody a hundred years from now picked up what you had read, what you had.
41:19
There was a handwritten section and there was another handwritten section.
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This is what you call a textual insertion.
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A text that was in the margin gets inserted into the text and thus makes its way into the stream.
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But here's the beauty of it.
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There are so many copies, we have over 5700 copies of the New Testament, the greatest attested work of antiquity is the New Testament.
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We have so few of the writings of Homer and the Iliad and things like that.
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We have we have handfuls of those.
41:57
We have thousands upon thousands of Bible manuscripts.
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This is why the errors, the amendations, these problems like this aren't that big a deal.
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Because when we see these insertions, we can see where they were inserted and we can follow the stream of their progenity.
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We can follow the books that came after them because you'll have this whole line that didn't have that mistake and none of them have it.
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And you'll see an insertion here and here's a whole line that do have it.
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You say, well, up until this period in history, this text didn't exist.
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Thus, it could not have been a part of the original.
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That makes sense.
42:41
The beauty of the New Testament is that we have so many copies that it would be impossible to insert a wholesale change.
42:49
This question of 1 John 5, 7, you know, this question goes back.
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All the way to Desiderius Erasmus, because Erasmus was the one who produced the Greek manuscript that was later used as the foundation for the King James Bible.
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He didn't put this verse in his first edition.
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He didn't put this verse in his second edition.
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He finally put this verse in the third edition because the church, which had their Latin Bible, remember, this is the first published Greek manuscript in a thousand years.
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He's pulling together copies of the Greek manuscript, he's publishing the Greek manuscript.
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He didn't want to put this in there.
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Why? Because it's not in the Greek text.
43:35
He told them that this story is argued by some, particularly King James only, don't like this story, but it's it's pretty well attested.
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The story goes like this.
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Desiderius Erasmus, by the time of his third edition, he was getting so much flack, he made the argument, if you can produce one copy of a Greek manuscript that has this verse, one copy of a Greek manuscript that has a verse, I'll include it in my third edition.
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When was the earliest Greek manuscript that had it? The same time as Desiderius Erasmus, it was produced for him.
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It was written and produced for that.
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Don't know.
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We don't know.
44:23
He argued that this should not have been in there.
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Yeah, he argued that it was it shouldn't even have been there in the beginning.
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He argued that this was all it was a sham.
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It was a way of adding something into the scripture.
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He was not for it, but he had made the agreement and went through with it.
44:44
Here's the problem.
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That became the foundation for the King James.
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So guess what happened to King James? It includes it up until this day.
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None of your other Bibles have it.
44:56
Why? Because we're not ignorant of the history.
45:00
I've got two of the greatest books on the subject, Comfort's New Testament textual variation or was it Comfort's New Testament textual? I forget the name of the book, but it tells the whole story of how this all happened.
45:17
The New English translation also tells the story of how this happened.
45:22
New English translation with the best translations.
45:24
If you're looking at textual variations and problems, I'm telling you, folks, if you don't know these things, you're going to get body slammed when that Muslim pulls it out and shows it to you.
45:39
Better you know it here.
45:41
Better you study it now so that you know.
45:48
Yeah.
45:49
Oh, yes.
45:50
All right.
45:51
Now, what time is it? Huh? Eight.
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It's seven.
46:02
Twenty five.
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Do you mean I got five whole minutes? Four minutes.
46:11
All right.
46:13
All right.
46:19
Absolutely.
46:21
There are there are actually what I call the big three.
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The big three textual variations.
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This is number one.
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Why is this one number one? Because they use this to deny the Trinity.
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They'll say, see, the verse that explains the Trinity isn't even supposed to be in the Bible.
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This isn't the verse I ever used to explain the Trinity.
46:41
By the way, if you use this verse to explain the Trinity, don't because they're going to body slam you.
46:48
Why are you using a wrestling metaphor? Because it hurts when you get there's nothing worse than being in the middle of an argument and realize you're the one that's wrong.
46:57
There's nothing worse than the moment that you realize you're wrong.
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The word Trinity is not in the Bible, but this would be the closest thing to a verse that ignociates there are three and those three are one.
47:14
This these three are one.
47:15
That's what the verse says.
47:16
It's clear.
47:17
But the thing is, you want to know how I think this got in there and this is Keith Foskey's opinion.
47:22
He can tell you for what it's worth.
47:24
I honestly think that somebody read verse eight.
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First John chapter five, verse eight, where it says there are three that bear witness on earth, the water, the spirit and the blood.
47:33
And these three are one.
47:34
He did what I would have done as a pastor.
47:35
I would say, hey, there's an analogy to the Trinity.
47:38
And he wrote in the margin of his Bible, well, there are three that bear witness in heaven to the father, the son and the spirit.
47:44
And I could see myself writing that down.
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I could see myself as a as a person who's writing something, writing a textual note and adding a note to my Bible.
47:53
Not only are there three that bear witness on the earth, there's three that bear witness in heaven, the father, the son and the spirit.
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The problem is it gets introduced into the text.
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Oh, of course.
48:10
Absolutely.
48:11
There's no denial of the Trinity.
48:12
It's just this first.
48:14
For instance, let me give you the other two.
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I won't have time to explain it to you, but you'll hear about it in September.
48:21
I'm not going to do this again next week.
48:23
We need to move on.
48:24
We need to press ahead.
48:25
But next, but if you want to spend some time, the big three and they got fancy names.
48:32
Well, two of them do.
48:33
There's the comma, your honey and first on five.
48:36
So there's the adultery.
48:46
The the woman caught in adultery for John seven fifty three through eight, eleven, I think.
48:56
If you look at some of that from John seven fifty three.
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Please.
49:04
Seven, John seven fifty three at the top.
49:11
Can I hold that real quick? If you look at a Bible and I think New American, I'm not sure at the top of this, it says the earliest manuscripts do not include John seven fifty three through eight, eleven.
49:25
It tells you this whole section is not included in any of the earliest manuscripts.
49:32
This is what we call a floater text in some of the old manuscripts.
49:37
It's found in Luke and some of the old manuscripts.
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It's found in other places.
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It's a story that was inserted and we can follow the insertion.
49:46
You say, but I love that story.
49:48
It's the greatest story that's not in the Bible.
49:50
That offends me.
49:52
Look it up for yourself.
49:54
Huh? Yeah, it's got a bracket around it.
49:59
It tells you your Bible doesn't lie to it.
50:02
There's a question about this section.
50:04
You need to know the answer to the question.
50:08
Last one, this one is probably the most important and the most debatable.
50:13
I really don't think first on five seven is debatable, even though I've had debates on it with people who believe it should be there.
50:19
I think the evidence bears too much weight on first on five.
50:21
So in my opinion, I think the evidence is for this one is not even that's why it's not in your Bibles.
50:27
It's like there's not a question we don't even put in there anymore.
50:30
The issue of the woman being cast in front, Jesus, woman adultery, that one, I don't think there's nothing I don't think should be there either.
50:38
I think it should.
50:39
I think it should have went the way of first on five seven.
50:41
I really do, because I don't think the evidence supports it.
50:44
Last one, though, this one is the most difficult and for me, the most the most hotly contested in my own heart, because I don't know what to do with it.
50:55
And it's the last few verses of the Gospel of Mark, what we call the longer ending of Mark, the last few verses of the Gospel of Mark.
51:06
Don't read like the rest of Mark, they have things in it that none of the other Gospels have Jesus saying things that don't even sound like what Jesus would say.
51:16
And there's it's a contested text.
51:19
And I don't know what to do with it.
51:21
I'm going to tell them to say that and I will explain in September when I do the conference, I'll explain what the two sides say about it, I'll explain what the position is on it, but I'm going to tell you of the three, it's the one I don't want to let go of.
51:37
Because if Mark is the earliest gospel and that's contested to some people think it's Matthew, but if Mark is the earliest gospel, then that is the earliest attestation that we have of the resurrection of Christ.
51:53
That's a big deal.
51:55
It's a big deal.
51:57
Now, some people think there's Matthew and what is called Matthew in primacy, there's Mark in primacy, Matthew in primacy.
52:02
Nobody argues for Luke.
52:04
Luke himself says other people have written on this subject.
52:06
I'm writing.
52:07
Nobody really argues Luke was first and everybody knows John was last.
52:10
But the question is whether Matthew is first or Mark is first, there's Mark in primacy, Matthew in primacy.
52:15
I've tended to fall on the side of Matthew in primacy for most part.
52:19
But if Mark is first, then that means the end of his book is the first account of the resurrection.
52:24
And if that is it and it isn't supposed to be there, that is highly, highly important.
52:33
Now that I leave you with more questions than you had when you came.
52:39
Good, because it means you care and you want to learn.
52:43
If you leave here tonight, not concerned about these things.
52:47
Then really, you know, why are you here? You need to be concerned.
52:50
You need to learn.
52:51
You need to look these things up and find out.
52:54
And you need to ask questions, you know, catch me on one that I want to talk about.
53:08
I didn't say there was only three textual variants.
53:11
I said there were three important.
53:14
That one you're talking about, the Lord's Prayer there.
53:17
Well, no, it is important.
53:18
I just make the point in the Gospel of Luke.
53:21
There's a version of the Lord's Prayer and the Gospel of Matthew, the original prayer.
53:25
And those two do not line up and ask the NIV or any of the others.
53:28
But they do line up in the King James.
53:30
And the reason is, is because there was a textual harmonization that went on.
53:34
They they brought them together, even though the Luke passage reads differently in the Greek.
53:40
So I can't sing it very well.
53:43
Well, you need to say, hey, if you need the words, you need words and to hold our confidence.
54:11
And I appreciate the things.
54:13
But don't I mean, I love doing this.
54:16
This is why this is what God called me to do.
54:18
I love to talk about this stuff.
54:20
I stay up till 2 in the morning talking about it.
54:22
I joke with them, but this this is.
54:27
But seriously, these are the things you're not going to go in a lot of places and talk about this stuff, because this is the kind of stuff that causes people to have to really consider what they believe and really take a step back and and see.
54:42
Yes, I think it's important to know, too.
54:44
You went to the conference that Dr.
54:46
White and Barnum or the debate, whether he tried to say that there's thousands of variants, but most of them are just maybe it was well, that that that needs to be understood.
54:57
OK, what time is it? We're out of time now.
55:01
I'll say I'll use that for the end.
55:02
I'll say something.
55:03
Yes.
55:04
Do you think it is important at this point, the timing in regard to when this happened, that this is seven centuries past? Yeah, right.
55:27
Yeah, absolutely.
55:54
When we talk about the Koran is written seven, seven century New Testament, of course, first century.
55:58
There's this there's this hundred year gap.
56:01
There's been there's been councils and Christian councils, understanding of doctrine for hundreds of years.
56:06
And then he comes along and says, no, this isn't true.
56:08
This isn't true.
56:09
Absolutely.
56:13
Yes.
56:14
Seven.
56:15
I gave the dates last week.
56:17
I don't remember off the top of my head.
56:18
Seven twenty two.
56:20
Was it was.
56:23
Yeah, I want to finish with what Jennifer reminded me of and I've got in because of time.
56:29
You might hear someone say this.
56:34
Well, you might hear someone say you might hear someone say that there are so many variants in the New Testament that we can't possibly know anything that it says.
56:49
Now, I heard Dr.
56:51
Bert Ehrman make that claim.
56:53
He's a very smart man.
56:55
However, he's shucking and jiving.
56:58
That's what he's doing.
56:59
I don't know if you're familiar with that term.
57:01
That's an old Greek term, shucking jive.
57:04
He's doing a magic trick.
57:07
He's he's holding the ball with one hand while he's palming the other in the other hand.
57:12
He's doing it.
57:13
He's misdirection because when he says there are thousands, he'll say there's two hundred and fifty thousand variations in the New Testament manuscripts.
57:24
What he will not say, he'll he'll he'll go on to say there's more variations in our words.
57:30
Here's what he won't say, the vast, vast majority, and I can't give you a percentage, but it's like ninety nine percent.
57:41
It's a high, high percent.
57:44
Do not mean anything.
57:48
What do you mean, they don't mean one, they're either misspelled words or reordering of words.
57:59
Is he Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus? Well, that's a variant.
58:04
If one person write Christ Jesus, another person writes Jesus Christ, we have the introduction of a variant.
58:09
If one person writes the Lord Jesus Christ, another person writes the Lord Jesus.
58:13
Well, you have three variants there because you have the original, the second one, the third one.
58:18
And every time those happen, they multiply themselves, you see.
58:23
So when you hear someone make the claim that there's thousands of variations, don't let that fool you.
58:30
There are only a handful.
58:32
I gave you the three most prominent tonight.
58:34
There are only a handful that really are substantial variations that we have to consider.
58:41
And of those, there is not one variant in the scripture that would change any doctrine of scripture.
58:50
There is not one.
58:51
You might say, well, this is this doesn't change or add to or subtract from the doctrine of the Trinity because I've taught you the doctrine of the Trinity and I never use that verse once.
59:01
Right.
59:04
So that's the truth.
59:06
None of these verses that are considered variant verses or verses that are in question would ever add or take away.
59:14
From any doctor, now we have to close tonight, but let me finish just by reminding the Bible is the Word of God.
59:24
In its original manuscripts, and we make that clear in our testimony of faith, we believe the Bible is inspired in the original manuscripts.
59:32
What we have are copies of the original manuscript that have been translated into a language called English.
59:39
If you can read the Greek, great.
59:41
But you're still reading a copy of the original.
59:43
That's what's so great about having so many thousands of copies is we come to a point where the copies don't agree.
59:49
We can then begin an investigation and ask ourselves which one is most likely to be the original.
59:57
Is there going to be times where there's going to be some disagreement? Yes.
01:00:00
But on none of those verses will it ever change the testimony of scripture that Jesus Christ came into the world, died on the cross, was raised in three days and stands or sits at the right hand of the Father as our mediator and priest.
01:00:13
Nothing changes that fact.
01:00:14
And with that, let us pray.
01:00:17
Father, we thank you for this opportunity to have examined this most important of issues, this issue of textual criticism, this issue that is so vital and so many people just go their whole Christian lives, never even consider these things.
01:00:32
And I thank you, God, that you've given us this opportunity to look at these things.
01:00:35
And we thank you for your Holy Spirit who is who has been with us tonight and he's moved among us and he has taught us in our hearts.
01:00:43
And we pray, oh, Lord, that you would just continue to move on our hearts, continue to move us forward, help us to understand, oh, God, that you had a method in having all of these copies be proliferated around the world.
01:00:56
You have all these copies so that no one could come in and make a wholesale change to your text.
01:01:03
We love you for that, Father, we thank you.
01:01:05
We praise you.
01:01:07
In Jesus name, Amen.
01:01:12
All right, ladies and gentlemen.