So Matthew chapter 12 and verse 33, either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt, for the tree is known by his fruit. We have been covering on Wednesday nights the matter of how we got the Bible and why we believe that the King James Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God. Now, over the course of just a few weeks, we have looked at verses that define inspiration and promise preservation. And last week, we looked at some of the groups or the men that God used to preserve His Word. We looked at the Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament, the scribal tradition, the church, the Masoretes. And we want to continue the history, really in a rather fast pace tonight, And just emphasizing how God has preserved His Word over the centuries. And I want to make two points before we get into this tonight. And the first is, is that we get our doctrine from the Scripture itself. A little bit more monitor if you can help me. We get our doctrine from the Scripture itself. That is where we determine what to believe. But then we look at history and archaeology and all of that. To see how. For example, I believe in creation because of Genesis chapter 1. If that's all I have. If I had Genesis chapter 1, Genesis chapter 2, if that's all that I have, I would believe in creation. Now, archaeology and science can show me how God did it. It can show me the wonders of what God did. But I don't need science to believe in creation. For that, I have Genesis chapter 1. I don't need history. I don't need ancient manuscripts to believe that God has preserved His Word. I have a Bible that tells me that. But ancient manuscripts, early century translations, archaeological discoveries, they are used to tell the story over the centuries of how God did what He promised that He would do in His Word. Now, I want to make a second point, and it's very, very important. You could spend your entire life just studying ancient texts. And scholars have taken these manuscripts and they have compared them verse by verse by verse. I have never attempted such studies. And the reason why is because I'm not a linguist. I would be way in over my head. So everything that I say about manuscripts is something that I have read somewhere else. And to be honest, to be honest, all right, I cannot prove with empirical evidence that the traditional line of text, we'll talk about that, is the pure line of text. I believe it can be proven, but it's not within my ability to prove it. I can tell you what Bible believers say. I can tell you whatever Bible believer I've read. I can tell you what they say. And there's very learning men, men like a guy named Dean William Bergen and Edward Heal and Thomas Holland and men like this. And in the end, I believe their research where I fall into skepticism. I don't want to put myself forth as an expert at something that I'm not an expert at. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to give you evidence and I'm trying to give you material for you to have the confidence that you have a perfect Bible. It is not enough just to wave a King James Bible in the air and holler about it. You have to know why you believe it and how would you defend it. But you have to know that I can't prove scientifically, because I can't read the manuscripts, even if they were available to me, So I take a position of faith. It is not blind faith, but it is a position of faith. So tonight, a little bit more monitor, brother, if you can help me. I'm taking a crash course on how we got our Bible and why I believe that it is perfect. We talked about scribes. We talked about the Mazarites copying the Old Testament text. Went through a lot of material last week, a lot of material, and skimmed through it. And to be honest with you, I can't tell On a Wednesday night, if I am boring you to tears or if you are listening with such rapt attention, we're kind of a quiet church anyway. We don't shout and run the aisles. And especially on Wednesday night, we're kind of mellowed out on Wednesday night. And so to be honest with you, I have no idea, all right? But I want to be thorough for someone who has never heard the material. But I don't want to be laborious and monotonous wonky in all the details, and I'm trying to strike that balance. This is one of those nights you will find either incredibly boring or incredibly interesting, but I hope that you find it informative. To complete the story, you have to talk about manuscripts. Manuscript evidence is the name that is given to the study of the manuscripts which have been discovered from which we get our King James Bible. Scholars have compared them against each other to determine where they came from, how old are they, where do they agree, where do they disagree with other manuscripts. Now, how do we know that the manuscripts that our Bible came from are reliable manuscripts? How do we know that our Bible didn't come from a corrupt line or a perverted line of text? There's thousands of manuscripts, hundreds of languages, Some are corrupt and some are pure, so how do we know which line our Bible came from? And it's an important question as evidenced by the verse that I read to you. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt, for the tree is known by its fruit. You can't begin with a corrupt text and produce a pure translation. You can take a good text and come up with a bad translation. But you can't take a bad text and come up with a good translation. So we don't begin by looking at the translation. That's the fruit. We back up and we look at the text. That's the tree to see where the different translations came from. I can hold up a King James Bible and I can hold up an NIV. This is the New International Version. And I can show you verse comparisons to show you where they are different. But if I can show you where they came from, this came from one place, this came from another place, then I can show you where it's not just different, but it is corrupt as well. So tonight I'm going to talk about two things. I want to talk about types of manuscripts and I want to talk about trees of manuscripts. Now often you will hear that there are over 5,000 extant manuscripts of the New Testament. And you have to learn words like extant. Here's the reason why. The word extant means still existent or still believing, but everybody knows that. Not everybody knows what extant means. So you have to learn to use words that nobody knows so that you sound smarter than anybody else in the room. So there's over 5,000 extant. Doesn't that make you sound sophisticated? Over 5,000 manuscripts that are still existing. Over 5,000 manuscripts that is of the Greek New Testament. There's a lot of evidence in other languages and other materials. But as of 1968, there were 5,225 known manuscripts which contained all or part of the Greek New Testament. Now, manuscript doesn't mean a complete Bible. A manuscript could be anything that has scripture written on it, whether it's a chapter, a book, a verse, or the entire Bible, alright? And basically, everything that has been found from the earliest centuries that has any scripture written on it is what makes up these manuscripts that are housed in libraries and universities around the world. It's what you do is you gather every bit of information that you can get, and that becomes the material that you work from. Now, types of manuscripts. I'll run through this quickly, alright? The first type of manuscript is papyrus or papyri. The oldest manuscripts are written on papyrus. Papyrus was a reed that grew along the Nile River in Egypt, and they would take it, they would flatten it out, they would dry it out, and that was the most primitive form of paper before there was any paper. And you know that a papyrus manuscript is really, really old because that's one of the earliest forms when papyrus was being used. There's not many of them because you can't imagine that that would be very durable. It wouldn't last. In fact, there are 88 papyrus manuscripts that have been discovered. And the way they catalog it is they number it, P1, P2, P3, P4, P88. So if somebody says P45, do you know what that means? I don't, but that's how they number it, papyrus. Then the second type of manuscript are called majuscules. A majuscule is a manuscript with a particular type of handwriting. Majuscule means big. So it's a manuscript that has big writing. In a maguscule manuscript, it is all written in block capital letters, and there is no spaces between the letters. That is a maguscule or an uncial manuscript. Now, maguscules are written mostly on vellum. They come a little bit later, and that's a big upgrade from papyrus. Vellum. Vellum. Think veal. Veal. Calfskin. So if you have a Bible, and the cover says genuine leather, that's vellum, except it's just your cover. That is in vellum, calfskin. But a scroll would be a leather scroll, a vellum scroll. What they would do is they would take this scroll, and because it's durable, they would sew another scroll to it and make it longer. And then they would sew another scroll, and so you just keep sewing scrolls to each other. And when you sew scrolls together, that becomes a codex. Codex is Latin for book. That's the first form of a book. There are 267 Magical manuscripts that have been found. Almost all of them are in Latin, Greek, 4th to the 8th century. Remember, all capital letters. No spaces between the letters or the words. The reason why is because writing material is very scarce. So if you don't have a lot of writing material, you don't do one-inch margins and double space and all that kind of stuff. No, you cram as much as you can on a scroll. So here is an example. of how a magical reading would appear. It's John 1, 1 through 4. This is how you would read it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in... See how that is? That's how a magical reading would appear. Now, the problem with that is that you can very easily, without having breaks in the words, that can very easily get confused. For example, put the other one up if you would. God is now... here. Or it could say God is nowhere. Right. Right. But that's what you would run into with a magical. Now, there are two magical manuscripts that you need to know about. All right. Two. One of them is called Vaticanus. Vaticanus. It was discovered in fourteen 81 in the Vatican library. Scholars determined it was written somewhere between 350 to 370 AD. It includes all of the Old Testament. It includes all of the apocryphal books as scripture. Leaves out Paul's pastoral epistles about half of Hebrews and the entire book of Revelation. That is Vaticanus. That will be important down the road. By the way, something funny about Vaticanus. Vaticanus includes an apocryphal book called the Epistle of Barnabas. It's an apocryphal book. And here's what I think about the Epistle of Barnabas. And write this down and go home and Google it and see if I'm telling you the truth or just telling you a story. But the Epistle of Barnabas forbids you to eat hyenas. It does. Because it claims that the hyena changes from male to female every year. That's in the Epistle to Barnabas. That's in Vaticanus. The other magical that you need to know about is Sinaiticus. Sinaiticus. A man named Tischendorf discovered this manuscript in a trash can in a monastery on Mount Sinai. Thus the name, Mount Sinai. And he called it Sinaiticus. When somebody refers to the oldest and the best manuscripts, They're usually referring to those two manuscripts, sometimes called Aleph and Bee, but they're always referring to... They are most definitely among the oldest. I would question if they are the best. But we'll talk about them eventually. Now, here's the third. Here's the third type of manuscript that you have, are minuscules or cursus. It is a manuscript where all the writing is in lowercase letters. They're going to start showing up around the 9th century. We're getting pretty late into the century. Then you have lectionaries. I looked in our hymn book, and we don't have a lectionary in our hymn book, but you have picked up a hymnal, and when you go to the back, there would be scripture readings in the back. Anybody ever seen a hymnal like that? And they would have scripture readings, and they would recommend that you read this on Advent Sunday or the Sunday before Lent or whatever it might be. And that basically is a lectionary. It is where somebody has copied scriptures in the back of a hymnal or a prayer book. So here's what they've done. They have found these hymnals, and so they look in the back of the hymnals, and though it's not a Bible, it's got copies of scriptures, and so those readings came from some Bible manuscript that's a lectionary. Then you have church fathers. Church fathers are early century preachers who wrote their sermons or wrote books and tracts and they would quote Scripture in their writing, so that's added to the body of manuscript evidence. We'll look at a verse maybe when we get done that that is the case. So if five guys, if five preachers quote a verse in their sermon and they quote it the same way, and then here comes a guy later on and he quotes the verse another way, that's called invariant reading. That's different. So you've got five guys that say, no, the verse is like this. You've got one guy that says, no, the verse is like this. And then you have to know who you're reading. If you're reading Origen or Jerome or Augustine, some rank heretic, then you're careful about what he says. Church fathers. Then you have early translations. Early translations. From the earliest translations that go back to the second and the third century. Missionaries are going out to different parts of the country and they're preaching the gospel and they're translating the scripture as they go. I'll just mention two of them for you. The Old Latin translation, the Old Latin translation. You'll hear two terms, Old Latin and Latin Vulgate. You need to know they are not the same. The Old Latin was translated around 157, about 60 years after the book of Revelation. It came out of Antioch, Syria. And then there is an old Syriac translation. It's called the Peshitta. It is the earliest translation of the Bible, another language, 150 A.D. Early, early translations. Now, watch this. Watch this. If you take all of the manuscripts, if you take all the lectionaries, if you take all of the sermons from church fathers, and if you take all of their books, and you take all the different translations, you've got over 10,000 resources to draw from. And I couldn't read any of them. And we don't have access to any of them if we could. See, here's what we do in this, is we stand upon the shoulders of giants that have gone before us and have studied these manuscripts. There was a man, I mentioned his name, one of those giants was a man named Dean William Bergen. Dean William Bergen lived in the 1800s. He was a champion of the text of the Bible. He was a great man of God. He was a great defender of the Scripture, a great fighter of the truth. The church owes him a great debt. And Dean Bergen set out to catalog all of the quotations from every church father's sermon, writing, book that he could find. And by the time that Dean Bergen died, he had 16 volumes with 86,489 quotations of verses from all of these church fathers. Thousands of quotes for every chapter in the New Testament. He had cataloged all of that. It is said that he collated quotes from church fathers for every verse in the New Testament. I read that twice. I couldn't verify it. So I don't know if he found every single verse in those writings of those early church fathers, but he demonstrated there is a mountain of evidence in all of those writings. Great evidence from which we get our Bible types of manuscripts. Secondly, I want to talk to you about trees of manuscripts. Here's what I mean. You take all of those manuscripts, you take all of those translations and you have to classify them somehow. How do you know which one is pure? How do you know which one is corrupt? Well, the simplest way is by agreement, grouping all of the material together in one group that agrees with one another, all the material over here that agrees with one another. Anything else would be a variant reading, would belong to something else. And that's basically how manuscripts have been divided. Some say by a family of manuscripts, some by, say, a tree of manuscripts, by a text type. It is all the same thing. And Bible scholars have identified two trees of manuscripts. One comes from Alexandria, Egypt, and one comes from Antioch, Syria. It is the two trees that are in the chart that I gave you. They're called the Alexandrian text and the Antioch text. Alexandria, Egypt, the city was founded by Alexander the Great. It was the second largest city in the time of Christ. In the time of Christ, population of a million people. Had the greatest library, had the greatest university. It was the learning center of the world. A lot of heretics will come out of Alexandria, Egypt. Here's one name that you need to know. A man named Origen. And the text that Origen produces is called an Alexandrian text. But then you have Antioch, Syria. Antioch, as you know, in Acts 13 is where the church at Antioch was located, and this is where most of the New Testament is being written in this area. It is where the missionary activity is going out of that church. Paul and Barnabas are associated, sent out from the church at Antioch. Antioch is mentioned 19 times in the Bible. It is always in a positive light. The text that comes out of Antioch is called a Byzantine text, Syrian text or a traditional text or a majority text. So what you have down through history is you have a line of manuscripts. One is coming out of Alexandria, Egypt, and one is coming out of Antioch, Syria. And I'll give you something interesting. If you want the verses, send me an email. I'll send them to you. But it's interesting what the Bible says about Egypt and what the Bible says about Antioch. I'll just run through it quickly. We'll not take the time to look them up. But in Exodus 12, 10 through 13, it is the first mission of Egypt. And Abraham is lying about Sarah being his wife because he doesn't trust the Egyptians with her around. Not a great first impression. Genesis 37-36, Joseph, the most complete type of Christ, is sold as a slave to Egypt. Exodus 1, verse 11-14, the children of Israel are enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. In verse 15, baby boys are being murdered. in Egypt, a form of infanticide. In Exodus 20 and verse 4, God calls Egypt the house of bondage. In Deuteronomy 4 and verse 20, God calls Egypt an iron furnace. In Deuteronomy 17, the kings are told, don't get your horses from Egypt. In Revelation chapter 11, Egypt is in the same conversation as Sodom. Egypt is not cast in a good light in the Bible. In fact, the first mention of Alexandria Is that six in verse nine, it's in the context of a group of believers and in the next chapter, it'll be those believers, those libertines that are stoning Stephen. Alexandria is not in a good light either. Here's what the Bible says about Antioch. Acts chapter six, first mention of Antioch, one of the men from Antioch is one of the men selected to help lead that early church. Acts 11 and verse 19, Antioch becomes a haven for persecuted saints. In verse 21, the first major movement of the Holy Ghost among Gentiles occurs in Antioch. In verse 26, believers first called Christians in Antioch. Verse number 27, the church at Antioch is sending relief to the poor saints in Jerusalem. Chapter 13, the first missionary sent out of a local church is from Antioch. Chapter 15, the Jerusalem council settles on some sound doctrine, and the first place they send it to is Antioch. Galatians 2, verse number 11, Antioch is the place where Paul sets Peter straight on his church. What is happening is the center of the church's headquarter is being moved from Jerusalem to Antioch, not to Rome, not to Egypt, not to Alexandria, but to Antioch. It becomes the headquarters of the church. There's a big difference between Alexandria and Antioch. You have to notice that the Bible casts one in a negative light and one In a positive light, by the way, it doesn't prove anything, that's anecdotal evidence, but it ought to make you sit up and take notice. And history bears out that these two streams of texts, that there is a pure text that comes out of Antioch, there is a corrupt text that comes out of Alexandria. Now, it'd be helpful to know about some of the men that influenced some of that text. So tonight, just to finish up, I want to talk about three men that came out of Alexandria. In two weeks, we're going to talk about the pure line. Alexandria is the place of higher education. Nothing wrong with higher education, but higher education can become a god. This is where the Greek philosophers taught their students. So they went out and they influenced the world. Gnosticism was born in Alexandria. We talked about that in church history. Gnosticism basically says we don't know anything. We can't know anything. And if we did know anything, we wouldn't know for sure that we knew it. That's basically Gnosticism is what it is. So here's the first guy that comes out of Alexandria. It is Origen. Origen is a very popular teacher in the university there. In fact, he becomes the president of the university at age 18. He was a genius. He wrote and he collected classes extensively. He was also a pagan. He was a heretic. And Origen lived an ascetic lifestyle. Origen never wore shoes, slept on the bare ground, and when he read in the New Testament that some men had made themselves eunuchs for The kingdom's sake, he castrated himself. This is origin. He interpreted the Bible allegorically. He says the scriptures are of little use as they are written. He denied the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. He believed that souls existed from eternity past. He believed in the transmigration of the soul, that soul passes on to higher life forms, depending on what you did in this one. He believed in universal salvation, that we could eventually be saved after they get out of hell. He denied a physical resurrection. He believed that the stars and the planets had souls. He believed that devils would eventually be saved. He was one of the first to refer to pastors as priests. He believed that bishops or priests could forgive sins. He said that people who would have to be lost for a time were those that were unbaptized. He believed in the post-millennial return of Christ. Boy, what a real Bible scholar Origen was. This is Origen. Origen is most known for a compilation of Greek New Testaments that he put together. And it's made in six columns. Six columns. And I want you to listen to this. And the first column was a Hebrew Masoretic text. Then he had five columns of five different Greek translations of that text. The second column was Origen's own translation. That is the one that he did. And that is the one that gets all the attention. Sometimes it's called the 70. Sometimes it's called LXX, Roman numerals for 70. And sometimes it is called the Septuagint. Now, I personally believe that that second column, that Septuagint, is one of the biggest hoaxes Satan has ever played on this whole issue. That's my personal belief. Sarah Berg mentioned in the print shop today reminded me that the translators refer to the Septuagint in the preface to their authorized version. And they do. They don't give it exactly a ringing endorsement. They didn't believe that it was inspired scripture. They believed that it dissented from the original in many places, but they did include it. They mention it in the preface. Now, here's one of the things that you'll read, and I'll just mention this. Sometimes you'll read that Jesus and his disciples read from a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. Remember, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew. That's the language of the Jews. So Jesus and his disciples would have a copy of the Hebrew Scripture. But sometimes it is claimed that between the Old Testament and the New Testament, that 400 year period between, that around 250 years before Christ that a group of Jewish scholars got together and they produced a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and that was supposed to replace the Hebrew Scriptures. The work was performed by 72 scholars, 72 scholars, six from each tribe of Israel. And it was done in Alexandria, Egypt. It's called the Septuagint because Septuagint means the interpretation of 70 elders. Here's what I don't understand. It is called the LXX, which is Roman numerals for 70, but there were 72 of them. And I've never understood why they didn't call it 72. There is a question on Did it even exist? Was there a Greek translation of the Hebrew text before Christ? Here's what I know, is that there are no Greek manuscripts of any Old Testament that dates anywhere around the Septuagint. There's no record in any Jewish history that even says that that thing exists. So it's even dubious, is it even exist? Now, here's why I bring this up. Four hundred and fifty years later, four hundred and fifty years later, after this thing was supposed to have been written, here comes origin and it produces that six column Bible. And the scholars always point to the second column. That's his translation. And here's what they say. They say that origin included the Septuagint there, that that is that Greek translation from two hundred and fifty And I can tell that you're fading away. He didn't make his own translation. He inserted the Septuagint. And that is the evidence for the higher critics that the Septuagint even exists. And if you hear that Jesus quoted from a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, there's no evidence for that. There's no evidence that the thing existed. Origen is the greatest Bible corrupter that the world has ever seen. greatest Bible corrupter that is ever seen. And here's what you do. You take Origen's translation and you trace that thing, and here's what you run into. You run into Vaticanus, you run into Sinaiticus, you run into Alexandrinus, and you run into Westcott and Hort, and you run right into an NIV and a New American Standard Bible. That is where it came from. What I'm trying to show you, just in abbreviated form, that's the fountainhood from where the pollution comes from. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. Look at Mark chapter 1. Mark chapter 2. Let me find it. Mark chapter 1. Alright? Now here is an example of this. Mark chapter 1. Look if you would in your King James Bible in verse number 2. As it is written in the prophets. Prophets. Now here's the reason why Mark said prophets. Because he's written, getting ready to quote from Prophets. Plural. Verse 2 is a quote from Malachi 3 and verse 1. But verse 3 is a quote from Isaiah 40 and verse 3. Okay? Now, not a big deal. Not a big deal. I'm in an NIV, and let me find it. Let me find it here. I'm in Mark chapter 1. Mark 1, verse 2, NIV. It is written in Isaiah, the prophet. Now, that's the New International, that's the New American Standard, that's the New Living Translation, that's the English Standard, that's a lot of them. It is written in Isaiah. That is incorrect. Here's why it's incorrect. Isaiah didn't say verse 2. Okay? He didn't. He said verse 3, but he didn't say verse 2. So how did they mess that up? Did you know that there are preachers standing in a pulpit, preaching from Mark chapter 1, and they're saying Isaiah said something that he didn't say? Now, you've got to wonder, how come somebody don't check that? How come we can't figure that out? Now, here's what it is. Origen was a student of the Greek philosopher Plato. Plato said that Malachi just copied Isaiah, but he didn't copy Isaiah right. And he got his words mixed up. And if Malachi had quoted Isaiah right, then he would have said the same thing that Isaiah said, and so Origen picked that up and he fixed it in Mark chapter 1. And he says, thus says Isaiah the prophet, because he thinks Malachi doesn't really count because it's really just the words of Isaiah repeated by Malachi. Origen started that. And lo and behold, you pick up a modern translation and there is the exact same thing straight from origin. It is in the modern Bibles because that's translated from a West Cottonhort text and that's from a Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and that is a reproduction of origin. And so you've got that thing and it's showing up and there's hundreds and hundreds of other changes that you can look at. And they started with origin, and they show up in these modern Bibles, and why would you want a Bible that's influenced by a pagan like origin? Well, his fingerprints are on it. Well, let me mention Eusebius. Eusebius was the bishop of the church at Caesarea. He was also a historian. If you read any church history from the life of Christ to Constantine, you're probably reading Eusebius. And Eusebius was an Arian. An Arian is one who believes that God is of the same... He's of a similar substance to God, but he's not of the same substance. A JW. Basically, he would believe what a JW believes today. And when Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, he hired Eusebius to produce 50 copies of the Bible on the finest of vellum. And Eusebius was a big admirer of Origen. So Origen is going to have a big influence. He finishes it in 331 AD. And I'll just mention this to you, that one of those Bible scholars believed is Codex Vaticanus. Vaticanus. We'll talk about Vaticanus. Mention one other guy, Jerome. Jerome. And I won't bother you with a biography of Jerome, except to say his real name wasn't Jerome. His real name was Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus. If that was my real name, I would change it to Jerome too. In 382, Pope Damascus commissioned him to produce a Latin Bible. It is called Jerome's Latin Vulgate. It is not the same as the old Latin from way back in 150 BC. But that Bible wasn't Catholic enough for the Catholics, so the Catholic Church commissioned Jerome to produce one, and to confuse people, they called it by the same thing as the old one. You have an old Latin Vulgate, you have Jerome's Latin Vulgate that becomes the Catholic Bible for the Dark Ages. Now, I heard a man preach one time, years ago, at Marcus Point Baptist Church. He was a prophecy preacher, and I wanted to hear him preach. And I went one night and I heard him preach on Revelation in one sermon, preached the entire book, entire book. And he gave a summary of every chapter of what he did. He went to that book and he spent about two minutes on every chapter and he went right through it. And that's what we've done tonight. A thousand years of history in 40 minutes. And if you're skeptical tonight, you don't walk away saying, I'm now convinced that my King James Bible is the inerrant word of God. Because just like I can't prove to you anything scientifically out of Genesis chapter one, I believe it because of Genesis chapter one. And if you show me some evidence, if you show me some scientific experience, it will confirm my belief in Genesis chapter one. And I will appreciate having learned something, but I don't need you to prove it to me in order for me to believe it. I give you manuscripts. I give you evidence. Here's the history of it. Here is how God did it. Here's the fingerprints of these pagans, these heretics on these Bibles. This is what God did with us. And in two weeks, two weeks, we'll look at we'll look at that Texas receptus. We'll look at that. We'll look at all of those manuscripts. I want to show you one example, one example. Go to Acts chapter eight. I want to show you an example of how the text influences the translation. Look at Acts chapter 8, and many of you will know this, but Acts chapter 8, look at verse number 37. And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. Talking about baptism. And the answer to this said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Most of you know that most modern versions just omit the verse. The NIV, the New Living Translation, the ESV, It's just gone. The New American Standard Bible has it, but it puts it in brackets, which says that this was added some time later. And usually all of them have a footnote that says some Greek manuscripts exclude this verse or the best manuscripts don't have this verse. So if you're reading in one of those versions, you're led to believe that this verse may not be part of the Scripture. Maybe it was added somewhere along the line, but the best manuscripts say that it's not there. In fact, in the New International Version, it numbers the verses Acts 8.35, 8.36, 8.38. It just skips verse 37. It just skips it. And that's an amazing thing to me. So if you look at manuscripts of Acts 8 that came out of Egypt, Alexandria, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, the verse is not included. From 300 to 700, those 4th to 8th century, and so many of those manuscripts, that verse is not there. So is it added or is it omitted? But then you go back farther on to early, early church fathers in the 2nd century, in the 3rd century, men like Irenaeus, and you read sermons of those men, and they're preaching from Acts chapter 8, and they're quoting verse 37. But then you go to 400 A.D. and here's somebody out of Egypt that's producing a Bible and it disappears. Well, how did Irenaeus in 150, how did he quote the verse? But it's supposedly not in those manuscripts. Now, that verse is important for two reasons. Two reasons. Hear why. It's a clear statement on the deity of Jesus Christ. But if you're a Gnostic, Or if you're an Arian, you don't believe that. So it would better fit your theology if you could get rid of that verse. Here's the other thing about this verse. It requires faith in Christ before baptism. If you believe, then you can get baptized. But baptized is not doing you any good unless you believe. But if you believe in infant baptism, like the Catholic Church, that that becomes a problem verse. So you go back to those manuscripts, and you look at those manuscripts that come out of Egypt, and that verse ain't there. And lo and behold, I pick up a new international version. And what do you know? It ain't there either. And somebody picked up those Alexandrian Egypt texts, and they used it to translate And since that verse was missing in those manuscripts, it's missing there too. That is the influence of the text upon the translation. Now, I have given you nothing to say amen to tonight, but you can say amen. We're done. That is a crash course in manuscripts. Next week, my wife and I will be out of country. We've had to have a lot of dental work done for many years, and we're going out of country and getting a lot of it done. But in two weeks, we're going to look at the Texas Receptus. What is the Texas Receptus? Where did it come from? Take it all the way up to 1603. Take it all the way to 1603.