Biblical Inerrancy Pt 2: Authority

Part two of our series on explaining inerrancy, and this is just a little introduction. There are 19 articles of affirmation and denial. Remember we looked at last week that there were three parts to the document that was put forth by the Congress of biblical inerrancy, Council on Biblical Inerrancy.

There's the short statement, the affirmations and denials, and then there's the exposition. So we're moving now, we're going to start with the 19 articles of affirmation and denial. Article 1 and 2 address the Bible and authority.

They're grouped according to topic. Articles 3 through 5 address the Bible and revelation. Article 6 through 8 addresses the Bible and inspiration. Article 9 through 12 address the Bible and inerrancy.

Now notice how all of these are very closely related, but they are in fact different. Articles 13 through 15 address the Bible and truth, and then Article 16 through Article 19 address the Bible and you.

This is the way they broke it up. In other words, how does this directly impact you? So we're starting with Article 1 tonight, the Bible and authority, and here's the affirmation. Has anybody not seen these affirmations at all before?

Anybody not seen them? A few people haven't seen them. I really am a big fan of how they put this forth in putting in affirmations and denial. We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God, and then the denial.

We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any other human source. There's a couple of key words that you need to keep in mind. Firstly, in the affirmation, the Holy Scriptures are to be received.

Now we're going to spend a bit of time on that, so I'm not going to spend too much time right now, but notice that it's received as the authoritative Word of God, and then also in the denial, notice it says we deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition, or any other human source.

Now that's the short statement, affirmation and denial, on what we believe about the authority of Scripture. Now notice, oh, also you'll notice when I have the statement in quotations and italicized, that's a direct quotation from the book.

I used to have it in black and white, but I was told that the black doesn't show up so well both here and online, so that's why it's all going to be in white, but I'll try to show the difference. All right, the initial article of the Chicago Statement is designed to establish the degree of authority that is to be attributed to the Bible, and the wording of the affirmation and denial make it certain that it is a Protestant statement.

Does everybody know, I don't want to just take it for granted because we don't use, Protestant is a term we don't throw around too often anymore, so everybody know where the word Protestant comes from?

Yes, we are Protestants, all right, or Protestants. It comes from the Protestant Reformation, and it refers basically to any Christian denomination that is not Roman Catholic in general, okay. So we are, even though we are Reformed Baptists, we have Presbyterians, we have Anglicans, we are all under the overall banner of being Protestants because we were protesting the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope.

The church in Rome places traditions and counsels on a par with Scripture, and in some cases de facto, they wouldn't say it, but de facto actually placed the Pope and Magisterium and whatnot above the authority of Scripture, all right.

And when I say de facto, I mean that because they're claiming that because they gave credence to the Word of God, the Roman Catholic Church says, no, we determine what is the Word of God, and they also are the only interpreters of it, which was one of the big problems we had during the Reformation, was they said, no, no, you can't leave it up to the individuals, the church will tell you what the Word of God means, okay.

Now notice that that statement doesn't specify the number of books in the canon of Scripture. This is one of the things we looked at last week, all right. It was a question last week. I'm hoping that we get to it because even though the statement and the Chicago statement itself doesn't deal with canonicity, I put a whole section in here on canonicity, so we'll talk about the canonicity.

I'm hoping that we have enough time at the end of this session, all right. And the reason they didn't put a number of the number of the canon is because there are churches, evangelical churches, true churches now, we're not talking about cults or anything else, there are true churches that include a different set of books in the canon.

Some have, yes, there really are. Some have one or two more, some may have one or two less, and it depends, there's reasons which I'm certainly not going to get into tonight. And that's why, for the Chicago statement, they decided to just not address that area.

For example, Martin Luther would not have included James in the canon, so he just avoided the book of James, okay. So again, de facto, he said that they only had 65 books, right. So the council decided to leave that question open to the individual church's confession or creed.

I noticed, I mentioned this before, of particular interest in the affirmation was that word received, and this is very, very important. The council spent a lot of time choosing words, okay, and this word received follows the earlier councils who addressed some of the ecumenical councils that addressed the canon of Scripture, and the word that they used in the earlier councils was the Latin word recipimus, meaning we receive.

Now, and I hope you'll see as we go through this why that's so important. The idea was the church received what was already Scripture. You can see how this counter is countered to what the Roman Catholic Church teaches.

The Roman Catholic Church says, no, we give authority to the Scriptures because we say what's Scripture and what isn't, whereas the early council says, no, no, we're not doing that. We are acknowledging this is Scripture, but the Scripture was given to us by God.

All right, do you see the difference? Subtle difference, but a very important one. So the church council didn't make a certain document Scripture, they simply recognized that it was Holy Scripture. So when Paul's letter to the church in Corinth was circulating, they looked at this and they said, this is Scripture, and it was received as Scripture.

Now, I will get into a little bit, hopefully again at the end, about canonicity. So if there's any question concerning where the authority lies, the denial of Article 1 says it flat out. We deny that the Scriptures receive authority from the church, from tradition or any other human source.

So again, you can see that this is expressly a Protestant document. Okay, Article 2 is still under the main heading of authority, but it's Scripture and tradition. This expands upon it now. We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture.

That's the affirmation. Notice, supreme written norm, and we'll discuss that a little bit later, by which God binds the conscience. Notice what it's talking about, a norm, all right? A norm is the standard by which God binds the conscience, all right, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture.

So they're not saying that the church can't even enact some norms, but anything that it does enact is subordinate to Scripture. Now the denial, we deny that church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible, okay?

Church creeds, councils, or declarations, okay, all underneath. Now I'm going to expand on this a little bit too. Now notice this article reinforces Article 1 and goes into more detail concerning the matters involved with it.

Article 2 has in view the classical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, all right, which speaks of the unique authority of the Bible with respect to binding the consciences of men, okay? Notice, reinforces Article 1, it's a classical Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura, and it's unique authority of the Bible.

The Bible is unique from every other document. Why? Because it has the ability to bind the conscience of men. Now notice it uses the phrase in the affirmation, all right, supreme written norm. Now this is interesting.

The word supreme was debated at length by the Chicago Council. They went, they spent a good deal of time on coming up with that term. Other words such as ultimate or only were considered and subsequently eliminated by the council, all right?

And what they did, the word supreme was chosen since there are other documents which act as norms within certain denominations. The 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is a norm. If you come to this church and you say, oh, I don't like the 1689, you're welcome to attend here, but you cannot join here, because we, it's our statement that the 1689 is the best summary of the biblical teaching that is out there, okay?

So in that sense it is a norm, but it's not the supreme norm. In fact, right in the London Baptist Confession in chapter 1, it itself says that it is subordinate to the Holy Scriptures, and in fact we even say that, if you ever, anybody ever read the back of our bulletin?

Some good stuff back there, by the way. It gives our, it gives our doctrinal statement, it gives a mission of the church, but it says it right on the bulletin that the 1689 is subordinate to Holy Scripture, okay?

I mean, sometimes I think people say, well, they just filled that up because they had empty space, you know, but no, everything on there is important. So the wording was chosen to show that the Scriptures are above any other written document, okay?

Only the Scripture has the ability to bind the conscience forever, only the Scripture, and any other creed or confession such as the London Baptist will always direct you back to Scripture for the purposes of binding your conscience, right?

Not so with the Roman Catholic Church. They come out with a creed or a counsel, for example, certain things that the Council of Trent became binding, okay? That principle is further clarified in the denial.

We deny that the church creeds, counsels, declarations have authority greater than or equal to the Bible. So there you have what we believe and what we don't believe, okay? Making sense so far? All right, now those are the two articles that pertain to the authority, all right, the authority of the Bible.

The Bible as the Word of God

What I've done here is I'm going to go through some Bible verses that will support the affirmations and denials, all right, and I put the heading on top so to show that the Bible is the Word of God, all right, good old Second Timothy 3, 16 to 17.

This is the gold standard, okay? If you're going to talk about inspiration, authority, purpose of the Scripture, you have to, somewhere you have to, and I like to even start with Second Timothy 3, 16 and 17.

Throughout this entire teaching series, and there'll probably be six or seven weeks of it, what you're going to see is we're going to come back frequently to this because it's so comprehensive that almost every article is going to come back to this verse.

Notice, all Scripture is inspired by God. The Greek word, theonoustos, literally means God-breathed, all right? Inspiration is probably not the best translation, even though this is the New American Standard, my favorite, it's probably not the best.

In fact, if anything, if you want to use that type of words, it would be expired, but that gives a different connotation. So because it's God breathing something out, he's not breathing into something, he's breathing it out, all right?

You can be inspired to write good poetry. There can be outside forces that inspire you to produce something. That's not what happens with Scripture. The God is breathing out from himself his truthful word.

That's why it's authoritative. So 1 Thessalonians 2, 13, for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God, notice the word, received the word of God, all right, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God.

Can there be any question but that the Bible self-authenticates itself? There are people out there who try to argue, well, the Bible never says that it's, you know, it's inspired and it's all through it, and in some cases it's just taken for granted, okay?

So for what it really is, the word of God. 1 Corinthians 2, 10 to 12, for to us God revealed through the Spirit, notice again, now the next set of articles is going to be Revelation, so we're not even going to address that yet, but it was revealed, God had revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the Spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know things freely given to us by him, which things we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts and spiritual words.

Again, notice, can there be any doubt looking at these portions of Scripture that the Bible teaches that it is in fact the word of God? The Bible is authoritative. Hebrews 1 verses 1 and 2, God after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his Son.

Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity and the word of God comes through him, through his agency. John 14 26 is another one of those verses you're going to hear over and over and over again, probably every week we have this study because it is so crucial.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. This verse is frequently misused and taken out of context.

This is not a promise that you and I will have all of our things that we've been taught brought to memory and we'll know what the word of God says. That's what it's used for, but it's not. Who is Jesus talking to here in John chapter 14?

To his disciples. He's not talking to the crowds. He's talking specifically to the disciples and what he's telling the disciples is that the Holy Spirit is going to teach you and he's going to bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.

That promise held for when they stood before kings and princes and it also was true for when they did what? When they wrote the scriptures. When they wrote the scripture, the Holy Spirit superintended that action and that what they wrote was everything that God intended them to write.

Free from error, free from distortion, okay? So that's why this verse again is also extremely important. The Bible is received by the church, not given authority by the church. Second Timothy 1 verses 13 to 14.

Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Notice what he says. Retain the standard of sound words which you have received from me. Guard through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us the treasure which has been entrusted to you.

Notice, the Bible is received. It has been entrusted to us. It's not something that we say, oh yeah, this is the Word of God. No, the Word of God has been entrusted to us and that's what Paul is telling young Pastor Timothy.

You have had these words entrusted to you. Second Peter 2 21. For it would be better for them to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn away from the Holy Commandment handed on to them.

Notice how the scripture says it. How did they receive the Holy Commandment? It was handed to them. They didn't make it scripture. First Corinthians 14 37 and 38. If anyone thinks he's a prophet of spiritual, let him recognize that the things I write to you are what?

Some good ideas that I dreamed up. Let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment. But if anyone does not recognize this, then he is not recognized. Jude 3. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.

I love the opening. This is verse 3 of Jude, because you really get the understanding that these documents that we have, the Holy Scriptures, they're fully divine, but they're fully human. Jude's writing and he says, I wanted to write something else, but I have to write this.

You get right into his head, you know what he's thinking because he puts it right on out there. And it's important, the Holy Spirit allowed him to put that in writing for us. But notice the main point here is, which was once for all handed down to the saints, not over and over and over again.

Sola Scriptura is another. First Corinthians 4 6. Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.

What's one of the things that we see when somebody has a word of knowledge or a word of prophecy for you? Okay, that's not what I'm looking for, but I get it. There is somewhat of an arrogance. This is not for me to say, this is for you.

You've got to do this, alright? And notice, you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other. Colossians 2 8. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

Alright? Sola Scriptura. Deuteronomy 4 1 2. Now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform, so that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which the Lord the God of your fathers has given you.

You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you today, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you. Now, there are those who will argue, well, that was only the word that he was giving them at that point.

Do you think the commands don't apply to the rest of Scripture? I mean, I agree, in the first instance it was what he was teaching them right then and there, the instructions for how to take over the land, but that's the principle that holds true for all of Scripture, because we see it again.

In Revelation, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.

You get the idea? Don't mess with the Scriptures, the canon of Scripture. We moved through this faster than I thought. The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy doesn't address the extent of the canon of Scripture, that's what I was mentioning before.

However, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith does affirm the 66 books, 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament, okay? So, why do I put that up there? Is the 1689 London Baptist Confession, is that important to us?

Yes, it is. Is it equal to Holy Scripture? No. I just thought I did somebody say no. Okay, no. The question often arises then, well then, who put the canon of Scripture together? How do we know what the Word of God is?

Well, firstly, while the Apostles were alive, there was no need for a formal canon. Why not? Because they ring up Apostle Paul, hey Paul, is this... Well, it wasn't that simple, but they could ask the Apostles, is this Scripture?

Okay. However, by the second century, the Apostles are all with the Lord, heresies were arising, and the need for a canon became obvious, okay? Because now, because you did have other letters circulating, alright?

And you had pseudo-gospels circulating, alright? Now, when it came to the Old Testament canon, there was little to no dispute, and the reason why there was very little dispute in these early church councils was because the Old Testament canon had been functioning for years and was generally accepted, and I'm going to show you a couple of things here, alright?

The recognized Hebrew canon consisted of 22 books at the time of Christ, actually before the time of Christ, but it was 22 books at the time of Christ, which is the exact equivalent of our 39 books of the Old Testament.

Let me show you how that works out, alright? They had five books of the law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, so that's five. Somebody want to keep track, alright? That's five books, alright?

The equivalent to our canon, alright? Eight books of prophets, four former prophets, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth is one book, 1st and 2nd Samuel is one book, and 1st and 2nd Kings was one book, so that's four of the eight books of prophets.

Four latter prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Lamentations is one book, Ezekiel was one book, and then you have the 12, which makes up the fourth. What was the 12? All the minor, what we consider to be the minor prophets.

So now you've got what? How many books so far? 13, okay. Then you have nine books of writings or poetry or sayings, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, one book, 1st and 2nd Chronicles, one book, nine more books, nine plus 13 is, okay.

Now, how do we know that this was functioning? There's several different ways. This is a quotation from Flavius Josephus in his writings against Appian. Everybody know who Flavius Josephus was? He was a Jewish historian who was commissioned by the Romans to write history of the wars and of the Jewish nation.

So understand, this is a commission by Rome, he's writing this. And this has been in his book against Appian. For we, that is the Jews, have not a numeral multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, as the Greeks have, but only 22 books, which contain the records of all the pastimes which are justly believed to be divine, and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death.

The interval of time was little short of 3 ,000 years, but as to the time of the death of Moses, till the reign of Ataxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Ataxerxes, the prophets who were after Moses, wrote down all what was done in their times in 13 books.

The remaining four books contain hymns to God and precepts for conduct of human life. So there you have it, an ancient historian who recognized, no, we've got 22 books, it was fully functioning, 22 books, but it's better.

This is Jesus, alright? He says, for this reason, also the wisdom of God said, I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world may be charged against this generation.

This is Jesus pronouncing a curse upon the generation that was alive at his time, alright? And then he says, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God, yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.

Now you say, how in the world does that authenticate the canon? What was the first book of the Hebrew canon? Genesis. Who is the first martyr? What's the last book in the Hebrew canon? Second Chronicles.

Who's the last person martyred in Second Chronicles? Zechariah. Good guess. A to Z, alright? So you notice, while it's not Jesus's point, basically what he's doing, he's going to the canon of Scripture that they know, and he's saying, from the first martyr to the last martyr, all of their blood is going to be upon you.

So he's just, again, just offhandedly authenticating the Hebrew canon. So that's 22 books if you render it by the Hebrew tally, or 39 books if you use our tally.

P .J., also to note, the Chronicles is not the last book if you go from the time, like chronologically.

Right. So that's why it's more... Yes, Malachi is the last book that was written time-wise. No, good point. Good point. So what about the canon of Scripture, the New Testament canon? While there was no one formal council that established the extent of the canon of Scripture, there was a consensus over time, alright?

And the basic criterion was whether the book was considered God-breathed. Notice we go back to 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17, why that's important. So now, how did they determine whether a book was considered to be God-breathed?

Three basic criteria emerged for recognition. First, apostolic origin. This is why it was so important, why there were so many debates about who wrote the book, and why Paul versus somebody else writing Hebrews, as to whether Hebrews was going to be considered to be part of the canon, etc.

But if you look at all of the books, the reason why all of the 27 books are included is because they could see that they were written under apostolic origin. For example, what was the first gospel written?

Mark. Matthew's the first, but Mark's the first one written. Why would they include Mark? Mark was not an apostle. Why is he included? Why is the gospel of Mark included in Scripture? He was a protege of Peter's.

He was operating under the auspices of Peter, all right? Luke. Luke was not an apostle. Why is Luke's gospel included? He was traveling extensively and writing Paul's, writing for Paul. So all the other portions of Scripture that you see, they could all, the early counselors could say this was done under apostolic authority, has to be done under apostolic authority for it to be considered to be God-breathed, okay?

So that's the first criteria. Second, recognition by the church. In other words, by the time, well, I'll give you a little bit ahead. The canon was pretty much set by the mid to the late 4th century. By that time, they could look back and say, which churches held to which books as being authenticated?

And so, obviously, the church in Jerusalem was an important church, the church in Antioch, all right, the church in Rome, and there was other churches, the church in Carthage, there were many others that were fully functioning churches, large churches, you know, involved in missionary efforts, etc., and they would look and say, were these documents recognized by these churches in the earliest days?

And what you find is, it was by the time of the the mid -4th century, the 27 books that we hold to were pretty much all being accepted by the vast number of churches. The third one was apostolic content.

The content has to be consistent with all the rest of Scripture. If it wasn't, it couldn't possibly be of apostolic origin. So, those were the three. Now, there are other criteria that they used, but it all boils down to these basic, these three basic principles, okay?

So, here's where we come in again with John 14, 26. He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you, all right? This is how we know about the Scripture. Athanasius refers to the 27 books of our Bible in a letter dated to A .D. 367, and the Council at Carthage published the same list in A .D. 397.

The Council of Carthage was the first council that really addressed the extent of the canon, and they published a list that included the 27 books of our canon. So, the issue was fairly resolved by the middle to the late 4th century.

Questions? Yes?

I have a question. So, you're talking about how, you're saying how true evangelical churches have different canons. Yes. I know, like, also we were saying the verse in Revelation, they're saying not to take away or add to the books of Scripture.

Would adding different books or taking away certain books be considered taking away or adding to the Word of God?

What a good question. Yes and no. It's talking about... even scholars in our circles today would come up with a statement and say, we have a fallible list of infallible books. In other words, because the Scripture itself doesn't say this should be included or that doesn't, it's how it began to function and whatnot.

So, I don't think it would fall under that same... that's where you... those admonitions are really talking about those who know what it says and are willfully saying, I don't like that, pulling that out, or adding something to authenticate.

For example, we know that there's some churches who use certain books of the Apocrypha because of the teaching that's in it, which is against the rest of Scripture, but it supports something that they're doing.

That, I think, is the thrust behind those warnings, not where we were kind of left not with a definitive list. And the debate goes on that, too, as to why did God do that? Anybody want to answer that?

Why did God not give us a definitive list? Why did he just publish a list? Nobody wants to answer that? I'm not either. I don't know, but he didn't give us the infallible list, you know, so that's why you need to be... and that's why we need to be approached... whenever we approach a study like this, we need to be very cautious, you know.

I mean, understand, too, that there are translational differences, too. You know, there is certain, like for example, a whole 16th chapter of the Book of Mark is questionable whether or not it even belongs there.

So I wish I had a definitive answer, but I don't. Any other questions? Yes?

I know it's been altered, the first John. Yes. How can we match that with, let's say, other books?

Well, there's a difference. We go back... why do we have so many translations in evangelical circles? Because we are constantly trying to get the most accurate translation, and to do that, we have to go back to the original languages.

Remember, the Bible is written in Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew, okay? And the more we learn about the ancient languages... oh, and by the way, ancient Greek, Koine Greek, is not the same as modern Greek, so it's not... you can't just go to Greece and say, okay, what does this mean?

Because it's not exactly the same. And ancient Hebrew is not the same as Yiddish, okay? Yiddish is a cross between Hebrew and German, okay? So that's why any pastor who studies uses multiple translations, and especially going back into... we have all kinds of Greek and Hebrew aides, you know?

Like, I have a Greek New Testament, I have a little companion volume to that that is an exposition of the Greek New Testament, and you go back and try to get the best translation you can. What happens when you have the cults is they're intentionally changing the translations to fit what they believe.

That's where the admonition comes in about not adding or taking away, alright? But if we make a mistake, God's not looking, you know, waiting for you to make a mistake and then hit the smite button, you know?

So that's why... and there can be some disagreements on it, you know? Plus, you have to understand, too, that some of the teaching of Scripture is hard. Remember what Peter said, Paul taught some difficult things, hard to understand, and that's going to cause some problems.

All of that is meant to drive us into the word to study. Yes?

Wouldn't that also be considered when people say, you know, God spoke a word to me, and God directly told me X, Y, Z, that's also adding to the word of God, because now you're speaking on behalf of God?

Yes. I believe exactly that. Now, in the defense of those brothers and sisters who I think are genuine believers who say those things, they would put a caveat that it's not a canonical revelation. But I appreciate that they're trying to make a distinction, they don't want to mess with the word of God, but how can you have revelation from God that's not canonical?

How can you have revel... Any revelation from God has got to be infallible, and if you're not ready to say that this is infallible, then don't say it came from God. That's my position. Yes?

Just to kind of add to it, Michael mentioned, like the first Sean thing, I know that some people say the New American Standard is corrupted because that one verse that people... that's in the King James about the Trinity, or the implication of the Trinity, that's not the New American Standard, but that comes down to the branch of the, whatchamacallit, the scrolls or whatever that's based on, right?

So that's another important thing to know, the two different branches of the original transcripts.

See, and again, one of the reasons why I prefer the New American Standard is, you know, having spoken to somebody who is on the advisory board for the translation, who most of you know, Dr. James White, the... any translational differences is an attempt to be as accurate as possible.

I'll give you... I'll give you another example. How many people know Philippians 4 .13? I can do all things through him who strengthens me. All right, what does the King James version say? I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Christ... the word Christ is not there. It's a pronoun. Now, is it wrong? Technically, it's wrong because the word Christ is not there, but is the impetus of it? It's correct, because you still get the idea that who's the him?

It's Christ, but... and they do the same thing with with 1st John, all right? The New American Standard certainly affirms the Trinity, it's just not in that particular verse, so you just have to be careful.

Any other questions? I hope that answered your... I mean, catechism goes much deeper than this. I just threw this in because the questions came up last week, okay?