Platt Prays for President Trump, TR Advocates Create Textual Mythology

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and greetings welcome to the dividing line coming to you live sort of hopefully as long as the lights stay on from Flagstaff Arizona I've been coming up here for years normally in May June around this time period if you're not familiar with the great state of Arizona there are only a couple places you can go here to get high altitude training there's actually there's actually one place

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I've never been in the eastern part of the state that I should get over there at some point where you can get up around 9 ,000 feet then you've got

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Mount Lemon and Mount Graham in the southern part of the state and then you're here in Flagstaff and Flagstaff the city itself is around 7 ,000 to 7 ,200 feet and then you can do what's go up to what's called

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Snowbowl Snowbowl Road road up to the ski area and that'll get it gets you up to about 9 ,200 feet above sea level so that's about the best we've got and as I go up to Colorado and climb 14ers up there which are 14 ,000 feet well it's better than as my mom used to say it's better than poking the eye with a sharp stick

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I find myself using that phraseology a lot anymore poking the eye with a sharp stick anyway please forgive the the background the fact that I need to use the computer it's gonna do that it's sitting on a bed

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I'm sitting on a bed I'm leaning forward which means my back's gonna be spasming by the time we get done with this probably but that's the best that we can do

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I wanted to sneak this in right now thankfully a major storm is passing right now

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I planned my ride this morning perfectly I was literally rolling my bike up onto the little porch of the little cottage that I'm in here in Flagstaff what a big old thunderclap hit and then the lightning and then the rain started coming down and we could get some more of it it just started to lighten up just before we started so wasn't expecting that but what a weird spring this has been especially in Arizona I mean it's

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I think it's supposed to I think we're finally talking like Tuesday of next week 103 the records 115 not even just been this global warming stuff's really really interesting like everybody keeps saying anyway we wanted to sneak a program in from up here in in Flagstaff Lord willing we'll be able to do something on Thursday as as well so most of you saw well not most of you

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I I don't know what percentage of our audience actually uses

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Facebook or Twitter there are some people that don't use either there are people who use both some people use only one or the other but over the weekend a number of pictures were posted

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I posted some and summer posted some and Jeff posted some but we had the formal installation service at Apologia Church and so I joined

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Jeff and Luke and Zach we have four elders a number of deacons good group of guys and that was a wonderful time

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Eric and summer and the grandkids got to come down that made it all the more special to have them have them there and of course they have

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Clementine especially has lots of friends because summer was at Apologia when she was young and she remembers them and so it was it was great that we had the opportunity of taking the picture of the whole family but it took a lot of effort to corral the kids to get them all there given that there are about 10 ,000 other kids that they can be playing with all at the same time after the service is over so anyway but the funny thing is

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I mentioned and this is not overly serious we'll get to the serious stuff later on but I mentioned on Facebook yesterday that I I've never

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I don't think I've ever set up a poll in Facebook it would be interesting

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I think we get a lot of participation from people if we did but some folks have been doing a poll where you're eliminating my books so my books are competing against my books and you know it'll get down I guess to my most popular book or something but of course it all depends on which books you put up against which other books but I guess you can do that kind of stuff on Facebook I like I said

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I've not done it myself well someone is doing a webcast thing and I guess this happens every once a while because I I started hearing something about one a few months ago that I really wasn't sure what was going on but this one has been popping into my my feed a bit more often and lo and behold yesterday this program was up against the briefing and we won like 71 29 or something like that on on that one which only all that proves is that dr.

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Muller's fans don't do Facebook very much that's but because the way that the brackets

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I guess it's because of you know n -c -double -a thing and get these brackets and stuff

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I guess because the way the brackets are set up at some point over the next couple days we will be going head -to -head with apology a radio and I pointed out now this seems highly ironic to happen right after Sunday is someone trying to split the church

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I mean just what's going on here and I don't know what's gonna happen there between the dividing line and apology a radio but I sort of win on either side yes

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I sort of like this idea because I win matter who wins and then as you go farther through the bracket on the other side of the bracket is sheologians and so it's it's possible that whoever wins from apology radio and dividing line will end up going head -to -head with sheologians and that's weird because if it was dividing line and sheologians then it's father -daughter and if it's apology radio and sheologians apology sheologians is recorded at the apology of studios so no matter what we sort of win all around if you just want to take a positive positive view of things

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I suppose but anyway so that's something I've been watching up here but it was a great weekend and very very much looking forward to what the

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Lord has in store which I think is going to include a lot of challenges a lot of challenges as I observe this election cycle going on I just my personal feeling is that the election cycle is just going to become a constant

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I mean 2016 sort of didn't just end with 2016 it sort of has been going on and now it's just sort of morphed into 2020 and I just think that's what we're going to be facing in in the future which is rather depressing in many ways when you think about it given what's going on but as you look at what's what's coming our direction

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I think there's be a lot of challenges and I really encourage anyone as you well know

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I strongly believe in local church membership I do not understand how anyone can read the

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New Testament see the New Testament talking about church discipline talking about putting people out you have to have a church role to do that you have to shepherds need to know who the sheep are to be able to act as shepherds etc etc etc and so you know everyone running around doing what's right in their own eyes just is not a

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New Testament concept at all but I think it's become all the more important as we need to stand with each other encourage each other and support each other in in the time to come as we if we stand firm on the truth we're going to need each other in a way that we have not ever really needed each other in the past here in Western culture and so I strongly recommend that you be a part of a very solid and committed local body of believers you're gonna need that so with that said the the story that broke as I was coming up here and again

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I'm gonna be honest I've only seen and heard elements of this story from Facebook and Twitter which is not a good thing as far as accuracy goes

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I for example have not had the opportunity of reading David Platt's statement any of the rest that kind of stuff but obviously most of us have seen the video clips of President Trump walking out on the stage at David Platt's church and David Platt praying for him and as from what

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I understand and all these things are subject to controversy and everything else from what

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I understand that was not a planned event that the

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I guess the president has a team that goes to wherever he's gonna be going before he gets there obviously and they come to the church evidently during the service so that my understanding is as David Platt is finished sorry about that I'm really surprised that that happened it's not supposed to but anyway yet another sales call yes

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I love sales calls um so as David Platt is leaving having preached and then they're going to have the

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Lord's Supper so maybe there was a period of setting up I don't know what the what the story was but he comes off stage and they call him over and the president's could be here any moment yeah put yourself in their position you know if you're in church leadership someplace you're a deacon and elder somewhere um okay they don't really have classes about how to handle this it's not one of the not one of the things that you get to practice for in seminary is when the president shows up at your church between the sermon and the

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Lord's Supper and so I didn't hear all of it but the what

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I did hear it seemed like David Platt provided a perfectly fine prayer and then one of the reasons

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I'm mentioning this is you know I was seeing it all through my feed and then last night

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I happened to be listening to the Todd Starnes show now

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I normally don't listen to that kind of stuff yeah you're hearing some sounds sorry it's it's on my laptop that's that's

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I can't find a way to turn them all off anyway it's just the way it is um

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I don't really don't listen to Todd Starnes with any regularity but I had caught something on the

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XM channel I was listening to that he was gonna have Dr. Drew on to talk about how bad things are in Los Angeles as far as rats and human feces and just diseases and cops getting sick having to deal with people and that that if you if you go to a park anywhere there you have to bring a rake to rake up the needles

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I mean our major cities are in bad shape and there's a reason for it's a worldview issue this is what this is the result of humanism this is the result of viewing man as nothing but a highly evolved animal or that's not even a proper term there is no such thing as highly evolved in a purely in a purely evolutionary worldview anyway just horrible stuff going on and and I can verify part of it because when

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I ride at home I ride along the canal and what's nice about the canal is that it's got underpasses that all the major roads there's only one road

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I can do about a 70 mile loop and cross one road in all that time which is really nice and the underpasses are nice except they're now becoming homeless cities and honestly there there have been times

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I've come up on one at three o 'clock in the morning there are 25 people down there I I crossed the road

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I'm not I'm not risking it I can't risk it it's it's it's it's bad stuff going on in there but very often

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I'll run into crews one or two guys in a truck and so I have to walk my bike past them because they're not wide enough to drive past them and they're trying to clean these things and I've just started asking them so how many needles today and the last guy

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I talked to last week as I'm walking past his truck you know eight so far eight so far and he this was the first one he was in and so I just got a message rich that said my internet connection is unstable maybe you could give me something and it's back okay so it should have not used the it dropped for a house like it should not you should have used the present tense it should have used the past tense it was unstable anyhow

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I'm in a hotel I'm stunned that this is working at all to be perfectly honest with you so I don't even know how long we get to go get go here anyway um so I'm wandering here but there are some bad things going on in our in our cities

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I see that in Phoenix since evidently in Los Angeles it's much worse and there's a reason for all this and it goes back to worldview and all that has to its 22 like 2020 election too but the point is he was gonna have dr.

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drew on and of course I was on dr. Drew's program a couple years ago on the transgender thing and then his program got shut down well he's talking a lot about this that's the only reason

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I was listening and I just hadn't turned it off when the next subject that Todd Starnes came up on was the

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David Platt thing and what was interesting is I think Starnes is sort of Fox's Christian news guy but it was very evident he didn't have a clue who

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David Platt was didn't know him by his church he was really rough on Platt but he rather accurately predicted that Platt must have a number of social justice people in his congregation because he did read from a statement that Platt put out

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I think on Monday that said I recognize that some of you are very upset that I prayed for President Trump and I'm like can you imagine what would happen if Todd Starnes had known about the microaggressions song which came out of Platt's church he would have had a field day with that and so I guess

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I have not been taking the time to go looking for it but I guess there is a great deal of conversation as to whether it was appropriate for David Platt to pray for the president of the

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United States who requested prayer and came to a church requesting prayer what are you gonna do are you gonna say no

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I would hope if Barack Obama had showed up at anybody's church that you would you would pray for the leaders

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I mean you know okay it's the it's the one text that's been looked at but it needs to be looked at there's a reason for it 1st

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Timothy 2 first of all then I urge that in treaties and prayers petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men and how many times we've been over this one we've been over it many many times why because it's the context of verses that are inappropriately used by those who attempt to deny the particularity the specificity and the harmony of the atoning work of the

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Sun in other words those promoting universal atonement and so they ignore this part and this jump into verse 4 ignoring what came before what comes before is a general urging to the church prayers petitions thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men and so again who pair pontoon on throw pone all men either means that you have to sit down with the phone book some of you don't even know what one of those is anymore oh man that makes me feel old but there are people in this audience that have never seen the phone book okay okay sit down with an exhaustive

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Google listing of phone numbers and pray for every individual person or what it shows is it as much that in their context the people would have heard that said as a statement that you are to pray for offer up petitions for thanksgivings for all kinds of men and that's exactly what then follows in verse 2 for kings and all who are in authorities that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life and all

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God in this indignity so the exhortation is that we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we are to pray for all kinds of men even if we

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Zoom and reconnect back up to the room and see what happens. Well, it lasted for a while.

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Let's see what happens here. You guys get to see, well, there were some people that asked about the

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RichCam. So you got the RichCam and let's see. James, can you hear me?

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Hear me? Yes, I can. Much better. Let's put you back on the screen. That seems to have fixed it.

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So I'll let you continue on from there. Well, I'll pop the chat thing out here.

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So if that happens again, I've got the room number in the clipboard and we can just go from there.

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But where was I when it fell apart? All I can remember is

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Max. We lost about 30 seconds,

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I think. Okay. So we were in First Timothy 2 anyways. Yeah, correct. Okay.

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All right. So, sorry about that, folks. So back to First Timothy Chapter 2, the first three verses, well, first two verses give us the context that Paul is telling us to offer prayers, petitions, thanksgivings on behalf of all kinds of men, including even those men that were persecuting the church, telling the church to be quiet, telling the church to abandon its unique message of the

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Lordship of Christ, things like that. So we are to pray for kings and all who are in authority.

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It's right there. How do you miss that? How do you not see what is right there in the text?

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And if the president, no matter what you think of him as an individual, asks for prayer, then you pray.

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Now, that doesn't mean you pray for his policies.

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I mean, if Barack Obama asked the church to pray for the success of his promotion of gay marriage and partial birth abortion, if any leader today asked that we pray for those who are, you know, such as in Illinois, New York, these basically infanticide bills, these types of things, then we would be under obligation to say we will certainly pray for you, but we cannot pray for the success of your policies, and we will pray that you will come to understand that you are under requirement from God to rule in light of his truth and his will and his way.

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And so obviously a prayer could be offered that would be commensurate with that kind of an understanding, and that's what you have in 1

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Timothy 2. And so I think David Platt did the right thing.

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As far as I could hear a couple of clips I heard from the prayer, it seemed to really follow along that line that he would be given wisdom to rule in accordance, not rule, but to lead in accordance with God's law and God's truth.

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But it's obvious that there were people in his church that felt that that was completely inappropriate, as I'm sure there would be people who would think that if Obama showed up at your church that you should not pray those same kind of prayers.

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What you're doing when you're praying in that way is the same thing that you do in the

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Lord's Prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. You know,

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I ran into someone recently that was mocking Reformed theology on the basis of that, by the way.

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He said, why would you even pray that? His kingdom will happen, his will will be done, why is it?

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It just doesn't matter. And it struck me once again how often it is.

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That the man -centered... What is the irony of a man -centered theologian?

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Because as a theologian, that very term should mean that you are God -centered.

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But if you are man -centered in your theology and you try to apply it to God, you're going to end up with strange objections like that one.

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And I hear it all the time. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Believe God's sovereign.

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Those are empty words. No, they're not. No, they're not. The idea that people have is we're trying to somehow talk

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God into being better than he actually is, not recognizing that when we express that desire for the coming of his kingdom, we're the ones that are being changed, not

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God. We're not better than God and inviting him up to our level by the very expression of his will, we're the ones being changed.

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We're the ones that need to be changed. Every time we sin, every act of sin is a demonstration that you want your kingdom more than Christ.

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Every time. Every single time. That you love yourself more than you love

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Christ. So it's the reality. And so the prayer is to change us, not to change them.

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And in the same way, when you're praying for the President of the United States, you're not trying to change

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God's opinion of him. God knows him quite well. Thank you very much. You are unstable again.

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Your attitude, which may be bad. I hear you. Yeah, we're coming back.

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I can hear you. Keep going. Okay. Change our attitude toward that individual.

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Maybe we could be used to bring the message of the gospel to that individual, to minister to that individual.

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President Trump has a lot of Christians around him, and a lot of them we would go about.

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So maybe that'll open a door for David Platt to have something to say to President Trump.

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I don't know. But God's attitude toward Trump doesn't have to change, because God has a perfect attitude toward him.

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We're the ones that have to be changed. And of course, it's our desire. Wouldn't it be wonderful if God were to convert every president of the

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United States to be a person who would rule rightly and would apply his standards as absolutely outside of the realm of what we would think would be a possibility today?

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That might be. We do believe in miracles. And so it would be a wonderful thing to have that kind of thing happen.

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And so it is interesting to watch and observe the reactions that people are giving on this.

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I am thankful that President Trump asked for prayer. Do I know why he did that?

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Do I know what's going on in his life? I've got no idea. But isn't it better than to have someone who just simply constantly mocks prayer?

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Isn't it better to hope, to be hopeful? And I fall into it too, but I just wonder how cynical a lot of us are becoming.

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And you notice it immediately demonstrated the fault lines, the divisions that exist within our churches, which is a very, very troubling thing.

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A very feed that I decided I thought I would comment upon that. As long as this connection holds,

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I'd like to just briefly look at one other quick item here that would be outside the normal realm of things that would be covered by other folks.

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And that is, I don't know, about two weeks ago,

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I saved this particular article. And it was a response to a

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TGC article that was,

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I think, titled, Four Ways to Shepherd Your Flock Through Text Criticism. And it was a response to that article from TGC from the young men out at Agros Church in Gilbert, Arizona.

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And I won't have time or probably connection to go through a lot of things that I could, but there are some.

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It is appropriate, I think, very appropriate, in fact, necessary for anyone who is actively involved in giving leadership of the

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Church to give serious consideration to the Bible translation being utilized in the

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Church, the number of other translations that are being used in the Church, and some of the issues that that raises.

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This is not a big issue 50 years ago. It wasn't a massive issue 15 years ago in the sense that certainly,

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I remember, I don't know if any of you all remember, because now we all use our phones, but I remember when people started producing these

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New Testaments that had like four or eight translations, eight parallel column translation type things.

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And they were beasts. They were huge. They were weapons. Smack somebody with it and wow.

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And so that was popular for a while. And now the reality is most of us have

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Bible programs on our phones and we have access to dozens and dozens and dozens of translations.

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And that does introduce complexities and issues that have to be dealt with.

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And simply ignoring them only opens the door for confusion and also opens the door for people to come in and utilize that area as a means of sniping people from your fellowship.

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There's always, Bible warns us, there are people looking to draw away disciples after themselves.

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And when we ignore issues like this because, well, that's not the most exciting thing or that causes division or whatever else it might be, when we ignore that stuff, then we've got nobody to blame but ourselves when it ends up causing a lot of harm.

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And so we have to be addressing these things. I've been trying to encourage people to think through these things and to be aware of textual critical issues, obviously, for many decades now.

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Because I think it's extremely important. So one of the things that, as I was reading through this article written in response to the

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TGC article, let me just read a portion of it and you'll see what I'm referring to.

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We read, I agree with Delahaye, who was the TGC article author, in that modern

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Christians need to be informed at a basic level of how they got their Bible. My approach, however, is slightly different than the position offered by Delahaye.

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I am on the other side of the discussion. I do not advocate that adopting the modern critical method is the only way to defend against Bart Ehrman.

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In fact, adopting this view is one of the primary motivating factors which Ehrman claims caused him to leave the faith.

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He was unable to reconcile all that he had believed about the text of Scripture. Now, it's very interesting to me that that statement would be made.

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I know a little something about Bart Ehrman. And the fact is that Bart Ehrman's understanding, not only of the position that he left, but that the rest of us continue to defend, is very idiosyncratic.

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I remember very clearly, the first time I ever heard what

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Bart Ehrman was really communicating, and what he really believed about the subject, was on the

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Issues Etc. program when the Lutheran guys were interviewing him. And that's when

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I heard him basically stating that if the Bible were inspired, then

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God would preserve it in perfection. Now that's not the modern, that's not,

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I keep hearing people saying that, you know, I mean, there's an entire series of cartoon movies on YouTube, putting me,

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Dan Wallace, and Bart Ehrman together, as if we have one perspective and one viewpoint.

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And yet, on this key issue, that is not the case at all. I mean,

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Ehrman literally believes that if the Bible were to be inspired, then not only would that be something that has to do with the giving initially of the text through the apostolic witness, but then that there would need to be a providential preservation that would include the impossibility of textual variation.

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I had never heard this before, other than in certain forms of cultic

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King James Only -ism. I remember, I was writing in South Mountain. I remember the context when

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I first heard it. I was like, I was going, what? I couldn't possibly believe that Bart Ehrman was actually saying this, but he did.

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I mean, he literally presented the idea that basically what you have is that right as a scribe is about to engage in homo eteluton, or whatever, you know, just a simple scribal error, not even bringing up purposeful stuff, but just is not paying attention, is about to misspell a word, about to skip a line, that somehow there would be some kind of inspired, supernatural intervention so that he would either wake up, or he'd burst into flame, or automatic writing would take over, or something, and you would have a correction, or somehow no variation would take place.

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And he didn't get that from Moody Bible Institute. That's not where he got it from.

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I don't think he would have gotten it. He didn't get it from Wheaton. And so where he came up with it,

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I don't have any idea. But that's his perspective, and that's a whole lot closer to the people who are pushing some kind of, we need to have one text that somehow is not the result of a critical analysis of manuscripts.

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The problem is there is no such text as that. People pretend that there are.

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People pretend that the textus receptus was not the result of textual critical analysis and reasoning on the basis of human beings based upon a certain number of manuscripts, but that's the reality.

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And you can point to reading after reading after reading in the textus receptus that are idiosyncratic, that, in other words, the general methodology that would give you the rest of the

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TR wouldn't give you that reading, or that reading over there, or that one over there. We've gone over these.

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I haven't seen and maybe it's just because they haven't been pointed out to me, but I have not seen anybody even try to deal with one text other than that TR guy.

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And he's just, you know what he's going to say. It's the TR, of course. But the people who actually want to say that I engage in textual criticism and I engage in preservational textual criticism or whatever other terminology you want to use,

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I haven't found any of these guys that have gone to people and demonstrated that their methodology is consistent in that text and then this one over here and that one over there because it's not possible to do.

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It's impossible. But the other side should be working very hard on it because you have to do that.

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If you don't do that, then you've capitulated and you're basically saying, yeah, well, you know, we just believe we believe and we don't bother trying to defend it.

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So, Ehrman claims he lost his faith of the subject of theodicy.

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That's the first thing. What? Yeah, if you could turn your camera off, that might help the feed.

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Just go with audio then is what you're saying? Yes, just turn your camera off. That should help. I'm just going to put the banner up.

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Hover at the bottom of the screen there. There we go. And you should be able to keep talking.

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That should help. Nobody needs to see me anyway. Okay. That made it even worse.

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Okay. Oh, goodness. Oh, you dropped out.

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James dropped out. Here he comes back. He's back. Okay. You accidentally dropped completely out, did you?

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No, I bailed out because I couldn't understand a word you were saying. Oh, okay.

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Well, you're back and let's keep the video off and we should be able to finish the show with no problem. So, what are you going to put on the screen?

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Just a nice pretty little red thing? Yes, I got the nice pretty little graphic. Nice little red thing.

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Okay. All right. So, where was I? Bart Ehrman. It's a little pop quiz for you.

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You were talking about Bart Ehrman. Yes. Well, I've been talking about Bart Ehrman for 10 minutes.

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Anyway, basically what I wanted to try to communicate is that Ehrman said that he lost his faith because of the issue of theodicy, the existence of evil, and that the textual issues are secondary.

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I don't know whether that's the case or not, but the point is that his specific understanding of what inspiration would involve is idiosyncratic and incoherent, and in no way consistent with any meaningful understanding on the part of Christian scholarship as to the transmission of the text over time.

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And I hope that we didn't lose the other assertion, and that being that those who would say that holding to a particular text is going to somehow solve these problems, any text you're going to hold to is the result of human beings engaging in textual critical study.

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That is the reality. That is the fact. So, the article goes on saying, the supposed evidence that the

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Bible had been preserved was not sufficient to give him confidence that God had preserved the words he inspired. Well, sort of, except from his weird perspective, there could be no variation.

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There would be some type of supernatural intervention that would stop variation from even happening.

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He is not alone in this. There are many Christians who feel the same way and are unsure how to proceed, are then to just trust the footnotes and brackets aren't important.

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That wasn't his view. That's not Ehrman's view. That was not his view then. That's what

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I did, this is the author speaking, shortly before adopting the position I hold now, which as I understand was only a matter of months ago,

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I held tightly onto the belief that the ending of Mark, the woman caught in adultery, 1 John 5 -7, and many other passages did not affect doctrine, so I was fine with them being cast into doubt.

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Notice the terminology, being cast into doubt. That's anachronistic. It's not someone casting something into doubt.

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Notice the mindset that establishes what has yet to be established as the standard, and then using language to defend that.

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I held firmly onto Jesus through my struggle, and he carried me through. The alternative system to the one presented by Delahaye is that the believer does not need to just trust the scholars who tell them that the bracketed and footnoted texts do not belong in their

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Bible. Christians can be confident that God has providentially preserved every line of Scripture, and that every line is available to them now.

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Again, that sounds great, as long as you don't read Erasmus, as long as you don't read

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Beza, as long as you don't deal with the reality of Stephanus' small collation of manuscripts utilized by Beza, as long as you don't deal with the historical reality of the situation, yeah, that sounds great.

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But the problem is, that's the end of apologetics again, because the people on the other side, the

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Muslims and the atheists and the bartermans, aren't going to allow you to do that. You might be able to get away with that within your own group, but history is history.

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Throughout the history of the transmission or copying process of the New Testament, God ensured that the variants and corruptions introduced were not so total that the original text not be found.

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Well, of course, every believing textual critic believes that. That's not even questionable.

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But how do you defend that? I mean, I have a defense of that, but I don't see how anyone holding to tiaronism can even begin to actually defend that historically.

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In every age of copying, God preserved His Word. Every age of copying.

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What's an age of copying? This culminated to a point when the revolutionary technology of the printing press was introduced into the transmission process.

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Instead of hand copying each manuscript letter by letter, Christians had the ability to set in stone the readings that had been handed down year after year.

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Well, printing certainly solidifies, but it does not set into stone the readings that have been handed down year after year.

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And by the way, very few manuscripts were copied letter by letter. The vast majority are copied word by word, others copied phrase by phrase, so on and so forth.

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That's not an accurate understanding of how that happened. In the 16th century, faithful men of God engaged in some of the finest textual criticism ever performed.

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Wow. How do you even substantiate that assertion in light, once again, of reading

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Erasmus and Beza themselves? Given the limitation of what they had, the inconsistencies that they themselves engaged in, have you ever performed as in up to their time?

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Yes. Since then? No. At the end of that period, they produced a

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Greek New Testament that would eventually be received by every Christian domination across the board. This is just fantasy.

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I'm sorry, this is how fables get started and grow over time.

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You just repeat it over and over again. At the end of that period, at the end of what period?

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Erasmus' first edition is the beginning, is before the beginning of the Reformation. This is a process ongoing through the first century of the

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Reformation. Without any particular guidance, and certainly without any ecclesiastical guidance, who was in charge of both

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Erasmus and Beza? Nobody. One was a Roman Catholic and one was a Calvinist, for crying out loud.

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It was not even a directed process. At the end of that period, they produced a

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Greek New Testament. No, they didn't. Come on, guys. Let's at least be honest with history.

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Erasmus produced five editions, Stephanos had a couple, Beza had his number of editions, but they weren't working on a single

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Greek New Testament. They didn't even say that. They didn't make that claim.

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Any honest reading of their own words. Both Erasmus and Beza were far more interested in the

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Latin than they were in the Greek. The idea that this is somehow some kind of coordinated effort by these great textual critics toward this one goal is just simply historical revisionism.

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It's theological revisionism. And Reformed men should not be guilty of theological revisionism, just to try to substantiate a tradition.

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This is bad news. That would eventually be received by every

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Christian denomination across the board. I don't even know what Christian denominations you're talking about. But if you're saying that the

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Textus Receptus functioned for a couple hundred years as a default text, that's true.

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But it wasn't because of being received. There was no reception process.

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There was no review. Denominations did not have access to their own manuscripts by which they did study or textual criticism or anything else.

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This has been documented. We've gone over this. We talked about what happened with the readings in Revelation, for example.

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And that there simply wasn't anybody who had access to the information to be able to know any differently.

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It was the default text, not an accepted text based upon review.

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Despite what you may have heard about Erasmus, Stephanas, and Beza, they were extremely sophisticated when it came to the

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Greek language. Well, what do you mean extremely sophisticated?

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In comparison to what? In comparison to what time period?

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I mean, do we not have so much more than they had then, as far as information available to us?

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We now have the Thesaurus Lingua Graeca. We can look at every single utilization of a phrase over hundreds of years of collected

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Greek documents. They did not have access to that.

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So they did a wonderful job. But again, this is making stuff up. This is like the

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Marvel Universe to try to come up with something here. I mean, this is bad.

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They were extremely sophisticated when it came to Greek language, even though that wasn't their focus. And they had access to many more manuscripts than is commonly stated.

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Such as? Well, we don't know. But we theorize this.

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How about you guys dealing with the fact that Stephanas had

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Bezae Cantabrigiensis, and he included it in his collations in the 1550, which

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Beza then depended upon. And Beza then had D, Bezae Cantabrigiensis, which is what it would be called later on, of course.

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But Beza didn't know that the Beta in Stephanas' 1550 was actually the same manuscript.

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And so there are places where he made decisions thinking there was more than one reading, but there wasn't because they were both the same one.

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He didn't know that. How about dealing with that? You know, this is the historical stuff, guys. Stop making things up.

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Stop making things up. There was no ecumenical council that popishly declared this to be the text

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Christians use. It was simply accepted by all as the preface to the

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Elsevier Brothers' edition of the Greek Testament in 1633 reads, without any meaningful criticism.

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None. And if you say otherwise, show it. Document it.

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Document it. It is because of this overwhelming reception the text became known as received text. No, it was a advertising blurb.

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That's where it came from. To try to say that this was some type of divine intervention is to simply introduce pure fiction into history.

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Fiction into history. So there you go. A lot more can be said about that, but I'm going to remain concerned until the

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Texas Receptives guys stop making things up, stop creating conclusions that do not follow from the facts, ignoring the necessity to engage in particular textual critical decisions, which is what they do.

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Until they stop engaging in those types of activities, I'm going to continue warning people this is the end of Christian apologetics.

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These folks cannot take this argumentation into debate either against me, and I'd be the nicest person they'd be dealing with, they are, more importantly, into debate against Muslims, and the

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Bartermans of the world, and Mormons, and all the rest. And once again, my concern here is

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I believe that Reformed people should be at the very forefront of providing the best and the most consistent defense of a belief in the inerrancy and inspiration of scripture of anyone.

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We have the sovereign God who can preserve his word. I believe that.

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He didn't do it the way that these guys would like him to have done it, but he did preserve his word, and we have to be honest with the methodology whereby he did so.

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If we don't, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face, in essence, at that point.

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Okay, well, with that, apologize for, you know,

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I'm not surprised by that, by the connection issues. It had been really stable before we got started, but, you know,

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I'm in a hotel, sort of a hotel. It's actually a bunch of little cabins. I'm not sure how the wireless works here, to be perfectly honest with you.

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But I was a little surprised, honestly, because it was raining cats and dogs here when we started.

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And, you know, even at the office, it's not so much when the storm's going on, but afterwards when everything's nice and soaked that we end up sometimes having problems there, too.

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So maybe that's the same situation here. I don't know. But we wanted to try to sneak one in.

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Lord willing, we'll try to do so on Thursday. I will be back in the office for that one.

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And then I'm gone most of the next week to California, and I don't think I'm gonna be able to do much of anything that week at all, because we're gonna be recording some stuff, and it's gonna be pretty intense, and I'd only have late, late afternoons and evenings to be able to try to do something.

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But we'll see. Something might come up that makes worthwhile to attempt to do that. So I appreciate your working with us through the technical difficulties.

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Hopefully the conversation was worthwhile. And Lord willing, we will see you on Thursday here on The Dividing Line.