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Oh good evening everyone and welcome to Sovereign Grace Academy for our new term survey of how we got the Bible and if you are visiting or if you're tuning in to this online whether it is during the live stream or whether it is during the recording if you have any technical difficulties please let us know we do have someone monitoring the class right now via YouTube so if you're watching this on Facebook and you have any problems switch over to YouTube and you can ask a question or let us know if the sound is not coming through or something like that well good evening everybody we do have an actual class it's not all online and this is one of our bigger classes and I'm thankful to have you all here as we said tonight is called a survey of how we got the Bible this is an eight-week course and in just a few minutes we're going to be going over the course syllabus this class lasts an hour and a half and we do take about a five-minute break right at the hour mark so be prepared for that and like to begin this course with a word of prayer so let's bow our heads and go to the Lord our Father and our God we come to you in Jesus name we thank you for giving us the opportunity to be in a class where we can learn about our Bible how it went from the hands of the writers and received into our hands through a process of inspiration canonization transmission and translation and Lord as we look at each of these subjects and we seek to find out more about them I pray Lord that you would guide us and direct us by the power of your spirit for Lord if I do not have your spirit then my teaching is in vain and those who are hearing do not have the spirit then they won't be able to truly understand so I pray Lord that your spirit would be the teacher I pray that you would give us all a mind and a heart to understand and Lord I pray for our students in the classroom as well as those who are coming online I pray that this would edify them encourage them and educate them by the power of your spirit and we pray this all in Jesus name and for his sake amen so we are continuing tonight or starting tonight with our class on how we got the Bible and I want to give an overall introduction to the course because it may be that some of you have a question and the question might be something along the lines of why take a class on how we got the Bible and if you're here you probably answered that question in your own mind but I want to give you some thoughts maybe beyond the things that you've considered as to why you are here I think there are three reasons why every Christian should know how we got the Bible the first reason is to be informed to be informed if we claim the Bible is the Word of God we should have a basic understanding of how it came to be one of the biggest problems and Christian thinking today especially in the evangelical world is a satisfaction with ignorance we don't know and we're okay with not knowing and that has led to many problems such as the entry intrusion of things like well-known and historically documented heresies making their way back into the church because people don't know that their heresies because people don't know their Bibles and people don't know the truth we've never had more information available to us than we do today and never has it been as free or readily available as it is today and yet it seems more than ever Christians are willing to live as it were with their heads in the sand now of course I'm not talking about you you're in class but in general the problem is a satisfaction with ignorance studying the the the history of the Bible is so that we can be informed so that we can know this thing that we hold that we call a Bible how did we get it how did it go from Moses to me that's a phrase you'll hear me say over and over and over because Moses of course wrote the first books of the Bible how did it get from Moses to me some 3500 years later that's a question every Christian should at least have considered and tried to be able to answer but so often we just take things for granted the second reason for this class after to be informed is to give a defense to give a defense those of you who are familiar with Sovereign Grace Academy know that we have eight core classes and the eight core classes include a class on apologetics well this class is taking the place of the apologetics class that we did two years ago and the reason why it's taking the place of it is because the apologetics class that we did while good I felt like needed some updating and when I began to look into what is it that we're really facing today what great apologetic issue are we really facing it's the question of the tenacity veracity and historicity of the scriptures standing on the Word of God and part of how we do that is knowing how we got the Word of God so it is this is an apologetics class first Peter 315 says sanctify the Christ sanctify Christ is Lord in your hearts always being ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for the hope that is within you and do so with gentleness and reverence Christians should be able to explain intelligently the basis of the Christian faith and that certainly would include why we trust the Bible lastly as an introduction to the course why do we take this class the third reason is to have greater assurance to have greater assurance if you've never ever studied the history of your Bible this class will challenge you in some ways in fact some of the things we're going to talk about may even be uncomfortable and difficult but it is my firm belief that a study of how we got the Bible will ultimately give you greater assurance that the Bible that you hold in your hand is accurate and truly represents what God originally gave to the apostles and the prophets and that's what this is about having that greater assurance if you've been in any way connected to the online world and seen so much of what is being said out there so much of what is being said is an attack against the Bible how do you know that what you're reading is what Moses actually wrote how do you know that you you have 27 New Testament books and not 28 what about the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene or what about those 12 books in the Catholic Bible that don't exist in the Protestant Bible these are questions that this class will ultimately answer and give you an ability to address when you're faced with those questions so that is the reason for this course and that's why we have a class on how we got our Bible and now what I'd like to do is I'd like to turn our attention to our syllabus if you're here we handed these out before we began the class and you will note in the syllabus that it is a two-page syllabus on the front gives our overview and objections and our objectives and our requirements and on the back it has our course schedule so let's turn our attention first to the front you'll notice that it has my email address and my phone number on it but let me just say this we have started a new website SovereignGraceAcademy.org and my interactions with this class are going to become almost exclusively through that site because it has a forum where I can go in and post information and you can respond with questions or comments or whatever after I've made those posts and it's going to make it to where everyone can see what's happening and ask questions and in case somebody asks a question somebody else needs the answer to it's going to be very helpful however if you have a personal issue something that you don't want posted on the website you still have my number you still have my email address you're still welcome to email me but I have found over the last year that email has become very difficult for some people are not getting my email some people it's going to their junk mail some of those things are happening so the website I do believe is going to be the better method for keeping everyone together and if some of you have tried to register for the website as I know Rebecca told me earlier and it's not letting you in I have to go in and confirm you for some reason that's that's happened with four or five students so far and I'm not sure if it has to do with the email address or whatever but I have to go in and confirm it once I confirm it you'll be able to access everything after every class I'm going to put up a post that is going to have the link to the audio and video of the class in case you need to go back and see it as well as any handouts that I give out in class there will be a digital copy on the website all right so if the website is really going to be helpful and I want to thank a person her name is Sarah I want to thank her for being a blessing to me by putting this website together she heard that we had this need she's not a member of our church is somebody who knew me from the online from an online relationship and built the entire website for us and I'm very thankful for her contributing to Sovereign Grace Academy so thankful for that so this class the course overview says this course will survey the inspiration canonization transmission and translation of sacred scripture students will be introduced to concepts such as text types textual variation and translational methodologies special attention will be given to the transmission and translation of the English Bible and the reason for that is I don't see anybody in here who speaks who doesn't speak English might speak a second language but I don't see anybody here who doesn't speak English so as English speakers we tend to focus on the English Bible the required text that you are required to have are a copy of the scriptures you have to have a Bible and you are allowed to choose whatever translation you want at the end of this course you may find yourself looking at a different translation just because after we talk about translational methodologies you may find that your copy of the passion translation may not be the best one so if that's what you brought with you you know you may find that you want a different one but as of right now any translation that you have will satisfy the requirement for the class but if you need a Bible and you don't own a Bible as always if you're part of this class in the physical state come and see me I have Bibles I would love to give you and the other book that you have to have is how we got the Bible by Neil Lightfoot this is the third edition revised and expanded if you have a different edition the page numbers will be different I found that out recently because I was looking at some notes from an old edition and it was a totally different page totally different chapter setup so you really need this one if you don't if you didn't get this one send it back and get this one as this is it's not gonna it's not gonna work if you don't or it's not gonna be easy for you if you don't you also have suggested texts now I brought my pile of suggested texts with me I'll go through these very quickly question of the canon by Michael Kruger this is this book is worth its weight it's very good and when next week when we talk about the canon I'm going to be referencing that a lot King James only controversy and the King James Version debate this is by James White this is by D.A.
Carson two very good books and the D.A.