Greetings to each and every one in our listening audience. Now friends, we certainly do not want to demonize those who do not use the King James Bible. However, we also want to present an informed apologetic regarding why we at Southwest Radio Ministries do use the King James Bible. And so on this program and the next program, Lord willing, we're going to visit with Pastor D.A. Waite. Pastor Waite, thank you for being our guest. Yes, sir. Thank you for inviting me, Father Spasimeno. You know, I still have one of the early copies of the Defined Study Bible. I think you gave me and Dr. Hutchings a copy of that back in 1998, and you autographed it. It's amazing. I know your ministry has provided so much light and understanding, and we certainly appreciate you and your work. But Dr. Waite, we're going to be dealing with some of the basic issues that often come up, textual issues, translational issues, and we want these two programs to be sort of a classic, sort of a compendium of information on names and texts and manuscripts and so forth, so we're just so happy to be able to visit with you. And I want to start with Erasmus. Who was Erasmus and what was his contribution? Well, first of all, he was a Roman Catholic, but he was not a very strong Roman Catholic. I say that because when the Pope wanted to grant him a Cardinal's hat, he refused it. And that's certainly an indication that he was not too strong, a Roman Catholic. A lot of our enemies that don't like the text of Receptus, they think that we all got it from Erasmus. Well, that's not the case either. We got it from Bezos' 5th edition, 1598. But they go back to Erasmus and say, well, you see, you're just following a Roman Catholic. Well, a good Roman Catholic would never give up a cardinal's hat. That's number one. Number two, Erasmus bolted from the regular Roman Catholic situation because they were for the Latin, of course, and his testament was a parallel Greek and Latin. And so he fled the Roman Catholic emphasis on Latin only and put a parallel with the Greek and Latin. That's the second thing. The third thing about his not being a real strong Roman Catholic is they banned his books. Well, if Rome bans your books, that certainly doesn't mean that Rome is looking favorably on you. The fourth thing, he was buried in a Protestant cemetery. In fact, when my wife and I went to London in that area, we went to the cemetery, saw his grave, and it's Protestant. So what I'm saying is that's the first thing about Erasmus. He was a Roman Catholic, but he wasn't all that solid with the Church of Rome. The second thing that people criticized about Erasmus was he was a humanist. And they almost say, well, see, he was an atheistic, godless humanist that didn't believe even in God. Well, that's simply false. He was a humanitarian. And in those days, he served humanity and so on. But he was not one of these atheistic humanitarians, humanists that we talk about today that so many times is wrong. So those are the two things about Erasmus that people argue about that use the critical text, and they're against us. But certainly, His contribution is another thing. He was probably the greatest Greek scholar on the European continent of the day. He trained Martin Luther in Greek and one of our English translators as well. He searched not only the manuscripts that he had, but he searched the European libraries. Some have said 100 to 200 a different manuscript and checked out and saw what was right and what was wrong, and he developed four or five different editions of his Greek text, and it was the first one to be published. It wasn't the first one to be completed, the Competition Polyglot by Cardinal Jimenez was really first completed, but Erasmus beat him as far as the publication. So that was Erasmus, and he was very skilled at what he did, and as I say, four or five or six different contributions of the Texas Receptus type of manuscript that underlies a King James Bible. That was his contribution to the scholarly world of the Bible. So, obviously, Erasmus had a very high view of Scripture. He wasn't just going to take any old text that came down the pike, but he wanted to know the right reading, he looked through libraries, and he certainly wasn't working for the Pope in Rome, as you pointed out. In fact, that's a criticism that I've heard so many times. It goes on and on and on, ad nauseum, but I really appreciate your scholarship and pointing that out about Erasmus he was moderate to say I guess that's the the least that can be said about him and I think that's very significant So he was I love the Word of God didn't he? Yes, he did and he wanted the plumber or anybody else to read the scriptures and they simple person He wanted in their language so they could read it and understand it and profit by it He has a university of course named by him and of course we were there rather damn different things but he was a scholar and he was a man that wanted the truth and and not simply fiction as the Roman Catholic Church. that had it here before. I know a lot of times people will speak about him, as you point out, being a humanist, and that's kind of in their understanding. That's kind of an attack on him. But the humanists really believed, and I think they called it ad fontes, back to the sources. So he wasn't going to just look at any old manuscript. He wanted to get the best understanding. He wanted to know the original language. He was a careful scholar, and we certainly thank God for the work of Erasmus. And also, I might say, he had copies of Vatican and Sinai manuscripts that went along with it. He may not have seen the actual manuscripts, but some people feel he might have, some people feel he's not. But he saw the type of manuscripts of that particular vintage and that particular varying away from the traditional type text, and he rejected these, wholeheartedly rejected those as being false. But he did examine them. and he saw them to be contrary to the vast, vast majority of the other traditional manuscripts which he held to be the truth and the real reproductions of the originals, copies of the originals, down through the centuries. Well, that's another excellent point that you bring up because I know there are those who say, well, if Erasmus had been around Count Tischendorf or something of the sort, he would have moved in the other direction. But as you point out, he knew these inferior readings and he rejected them. It wasn't accidental. It wasn't out of ignorance. It was out of deliberate knowledge. But, Dr. Wake, we also hear a lot about the Byzantine text. What is the Byzantine text? Well, the Byzantine text comes from the word Byzantine, of course, the Greek empire, the capital, and so on. And that text is a text which I believe is the same as the traditional text, the Textus Receptus, the TR, as we might call it. And this is the text that's widely used. Most of the manuscripts are following it. But there's got a new look on the Byzantine text these days. And of course, people that do not accept the critical text of Westcott and Hort and others and the Gnostics They have adopted what they call a Byzantine text, and they have changed the text receptus about to 1,500 to 1,800 places. And they say that that's what they want to accept, and to throw out the text receptus. Now, it's certainly throwing out 1,800 places is certainly not the same as throwing out 8,000 places, as the critical text has done, as Dr. Jack Mormon's book, 8,000 Differences, has pointed out very clearly. But certainly, we believe that the Byzantine text is not the way to go, and I know that I have some good friends that differ with me on this, and of course we talk back and forth and so on, but I believe the text that underlies our King James Bible, which is the traditional text, is the text that we should go ahead with, and not this divergence in these 1500-1800 places. The Byzantine text was followed and popularized by Zayn Hodges and Farshtad, Arthur Farshtad of Dallas Seminary, my school, and they were there after me. They have popularized this so-called Byzantine text, or sometimes people call it the majority text. But that text, as they say right in their footnotes, is taken from basically Van Soden's manuscripts. And Van Soden was an apostate, of course, wasn't a believer, but he had only about 414 manuscripts. And Dr. Jack Mormon has analyzed this whole so-called majority text, and that's a very good analysis. He calls it when the KJV departs from the so-called majority text, a new twist in the continuing attack on the authorized version with a manuscript digest. And he goes into this Von Soden text, 414, and shows that it's even poorly done as it is. And furthermore, if 414 manuscripts are what they're looked at for their so-called Byzantine text or majority text, That's not a majority of 5,255 manuscripts, which they had in 1967. They have maybe 300 more now, maybe 5,500. But what is 414 a majority of, even if all of them were equal? So I believe that they're wrong-sighted and wrong-headed on their approach to the Byzantine text. But that's basically what it is. When Hermann von Soden Departed from the text receptus in these 1,500 to 1,800 places they depart and they say that's it But another thing brother president on this is is this they say wrongly I believe very strongly that the Texas receptus is an offshoot of the majority text and the Byzantine text It's just a little tiny tributary when in fact the traditional text is the y-tang and the Byzantine majority text is a branch off of that see so they completely changed the the large text and body of truth for the small one. So that's another thing that's disappointing. But certainly presenting text, majority text, call it what you will, is closer to the received text than certainly the critical text, 5,000 differences versus 1,500 or 1,800. But still, I believe that we've got to follow the traditional text. In these differences, they're really not doctrinal issues, are they? I mean, there's no, they don't call it the Trinity or the deity of Christ as the critical text does in 1st Timothy 3.16. They certainly, you know, these differences are not of the same, what should I say, weight or import regarding the basic essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Yes, I believe you're correct on that, and the, for instance, the The idea of Mark 16, 9 to 20, the last 12 verses of Mark, they concur with us on that, and various other things. One of my close friends that's for that position, Dr. Maurice Robinson, we've gone back many, many years together, and he's on that Byzantine side, and I'm on the Texas left side. We eat dinner together, we talk and visit, and he gives me papers where he goes after Dan Wallace of Dallas and others that are critical text people, stands up for the various texts that the text receptor scores with, so we have much in common, even though we have slight differences. Right. Well, friends, we are visiting with Pastor D.A. Waite on this most important issue of Bible translations and Bible text, and we want these two programs to be kind of a standard resource for our listeners, for listeners who want to know a little bit more about text and why we use the King James Bible exclusively on our broadcast of Southwest Radio Ministries. And we're going to continue this interview, but let's pause briefly. Let's get back to our interview with Pastor D.A. Waite. We were speaking, Dr. Waite, about the Byzantine text. Now, just for definition, tell us about the majority text. Is it identical with the Byzantine text or is it kind of in the same family as we look at the majority text? I believe that the two words are quite often used synonymously. They may be different slightly, but The Byzantine Greek manuscripts, as far as we're concerned, is the traditional text. Dean Burgon used the term traditional text. But in that traditional text, he said in one of his books, he said, call it Byzantine, call it majority, call it received, call it any of these other names. It's still a text that's come down from the apostolic age to the present, and as overwhelmingly as the text that is from the very beginning. So Byzantine and majority many times are about the same. Now, as you may know, brothers and brothers, you may know, there are two different majority texts. That's the thing that a lot of people don't understand either. If they're so sure of themselves, why would there be two of them? The text receptus has never stopped continuing the same verses in the same order. There are slight differences in spellings and so on, but basically it's the same text for years, all of a sudden, from Ephesians 5th edition, 1598, for example, right on to the present. But Hodges and Farstad came out with one majority text, And then Robertson and Pierpont came out with a second one. And they have divergences in their opinions. For instance, in the book of Revelation, One of them goes along with the single text receptus type of reasoning on it, and the majority of manuscripts are the way to go. The other one takes a certain key manuscript and follows that along and rejects the majority manuscript. So there's contradictions in that particular group, and so I just want to point that out. The battle, they're not sure what it is. In fact, the Hodgins-Varstead majority text I read in their preface They said, we don't really know whether this is the final edition or not. They're still up in the air. They're still searching. Well, that's what the critical text is still searching. And they'll never come to an end of it. Dan Wallace has spent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars going over and finding these manuscripts, taking pictures of them and so on. And from the critical text standpoint, he says, in my lifetime, I won't have the money, I won't have the time to go into all of them. They're still searching. I think my search is finished. The text of the Underwriters of King James Bible, the traditional text, the text of Receptors, So far as I'm concerned, by faith and by fact, is my text that God has preserved for us. Well, that's exactly how I feel. I've been pastoring for many years, and I'm pastoring at the present time, and I use the King James Bible from the pulpit. Not everyone in the congregation does, but we don't get into any big arguments. But whenever I see something that I think is very obvious, for example, I recently preached from I think it's John 7.53 through 8.11, the woman caught in adultery. I just, you know, and I point out, now some of your Bibles might leave this out, or have the text in small print or whatever, and I tell them why I believe what we have in the King James Bible is correct, and I preach the Word of God. So, my mind is settled and made up. But, Dr. Waite, now we've spoken about the Byzantine text, the majority text, now tell us, of course, about the TR, the Texas Receptus. How is it related to the Byzantine, a majority text, and what role did Mr. Erasmus have in the TR? The Texas Receptus, we believe the manuscripts, the vast, vast majority of evidence that has come down to us has been preserved. In my book, Defendant King James Bible, on page 56, I have a small chart that gives the Ollins, Kurt Ollins, totals of manuscripts that we have in our possession as of 1967. As I say, about 300 more have been added since then. But using his totals, and using Dr. Jack Mormon's analysis of these totals, we come up with a total 5,255 total manuscripts that we have been preserved as of 1967. Papyrus fragments, 81 to 88 of those. And of those papyrus fragments, 13 are Westcott and Hort, but 75 are Textus Receptus. That's 15% is over against 85%. And then the unshulls, the capital letter manuscripts, there are preserved 267 of those. Now, Vatican and Sinai are among those unshulls, V and Aleph. And of the unshulls, 267, only 9 go along with the Westcott and Hort or critical Gnostic Greek text. 258 of them go along with the Textus Receptus, the TR, the traditional text. That's a 3% Westcott & Hort against 97% Texas Receptus. Then the cursors, the flowing hand manuscripts, the vast majority of those, 2,764 altogether. Only 23 go along with the Westcott & Hort critical Greek text or the Gnostic critical text. But 2,741 go along with the Texas Receptus. Now that's a 1% for Westcott & Hort or critical text, 99% Texas Receptus. Then the lectionaries, those portions of scriptures that are read in the churches, 2,143 altogether, only zero actually go along with Westcott North. Every single one of the lectionaries read in the churches, 2,143 go along with the Texas Receptus received text. That's zero percent against 100 percent. If you add up all the percentages, All the totals of manuscripts for Westcott and Hort out of the 5,255, you come only with 45 altogether. Vatican and Sinai and 43 others go along with the Westcott and Hort text. 5,210 with the Texts Receptas. That's less than 1% for the critical text, over 99% with the Texts Receptas traditional text. So that's the sum total, at least as Dr. Mormon has analyzed these manuscripts and compared them and seen what they are and what they aren't. Now that's a tremendous amount of evidence in favor of the traditional text. I don't understand how scholars and people that are thinkers can say that less than 1% of the evidence that God has preserved for us is the way we should go and we should reject the over 99% and throw that out. I don't understand it. I'm mystified by it as well. I've read a lot of material, of course, and as this is a burning issue, and I come up where you come up, you know, when you look at the papyrus fragments, the cursives, the unseals, and just this overwhelming number of weight, you know, going in the direction of the TR, which we have in our King James Bible. You know, I think, number one, spiritually and doctrinally, the King James is superior, but then also textually. When you start counting manuscripts and looking at percentages as you have done and going way back you find an unbelievable support for the TR. So I'm mystified by why they go with a with a so-called critical text. Well, Dr. White, we're going to have you come back for another program. We want to continue addressing these very, very important issues. And friends, we certainly don't want to be pugnacious and combative, and as I say, we're not going to be demonizing people who don't use the King James Bible. But we feel very strongly about the King James Bible, and we want you to know What we believe, scholarship, research, historical studies, manuscript evidence shows, and so we're presenting these programs with Dr. Waite, and I believe he has a very kindly spirit, a very charitable spirit, but also he's a man of great knowledge and insight. He's been in ministry for many, many years. He has a couple of doctor's degrees, and we just appreciate him very much. And we are going to continue with this material on our next broadcast. Thank you so much, Dr. Waite, for being our guest on the second most important interview. You're welcome. Glad to be here with you. Well, I know as we did the previous program, I was just really putting all of this together in my mind, and I think you had a marvelous way of explaining all of these important issues and explaining some of these key words like Byzantine text, majority text, Texas Receptus, who is Erasmus, Was he really a committed Roman Catholic and all of that? And I know that these two programs are going to be a tremendous resource for us and for our listeners as well. But, Dr. Wade, as we get back into our interview for the second broadcast, let's Speak a little bit about the later editions of Erasmus' New Testament. Did they differ measurably from his earlier editions? Did he change his mind? Did he, oh, admit some mistakes in his textual critical work? What's the story on that? Well, he had four or five editions, maybe six altogether, and he started out, he wanted to beat the publishing deadlines, I'm told, and he did it sort of in haste, you know, the first edition, he wanted to get there ahead of Cardinal Jimenez, Complutense in Polyglot, and he did, he beat it, but in haste. He had a few typographical mistakes and different things that he wanted to correct, and so he had a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth. I believe he got the sixth. And one of the things that Erasmus was asked about, the Latin Vulgate, the Latin manuscripts, had no problem with 1 John 5, 7, and 8, for example. And so he said, well, if I can find it in some manuscripts and different things, why, we'll put it in. And he did find it. And so he put it in one of the other editions. So that's at least one of the additions and corrections and changes he made. But basically, it's just analysis and proper spellings and different things. And that's why 1516 was his first edition. And that's why the King James Bible translators used, by and large, the beezers edition fifth edition fifteen ninety eight eighty two years after that's the basis of our king james bible and certainly he had the beezer now in his manuscripts he had erasmus he had the comprehension of polyglot he had stevens he had all these others that had gone before him and wanted to get the thing right and so that's where we believe they did get it right and eighty two years after erasmus and all the different spellings and changes and got the thing straightened out. So that's why the King James translators sought to use Bezos' 5th edition, 1598, rather than Erasmus. And of course, our critical text brethren, whom we love in the faith because God tells us to love the brethren no matter how much they differ with us, they of course attack us and say, well, you take this terrible Erasmus Roman Catholic humanist and his text, and it's horrible. That's the foundation of the King James Bible. Well, that's not the case at all. It's Biza. He was a friend of Calvin, as you know, and Geneva. And, I mean, he was certainly not a Roman Catholic by any means. And that's the text that we use. Oh, that is interesting. And, you know, you just spoke about, quote, getting it right. That, of course, is very important. And that brings me to a very important question. What about the extent by which or to which the Nestle-Alam text went in checking out all of the areas and all of the manuscripts. Tell us a little bit about the Nessel-Allen text and the kind of research they did. That's a very important question, Brother Pardomino, because Dean Burke, as you know, he said, now, we've got the text receptor, traditional text, and if we're going to change it in any way, we've got to do it right. And in his lifetime, he didn't have the men to do it, he didn't have the resources to do it, he didn't have the situation to do it, so we've accepted it as it is, as it stands. He said, if you do it right, you must examine all the papyrus fragments, all the uncial manuscripts, all the cursive flooring hand manuscripts, all the lectionaries, all the ancient versions, all the church fathers' quotations of the ancient versions. All of them must be accepted. Well, take a look at the Nassau Law. What did they do? Papyrus fragments, 81 out of 81, 100% of the others. They did well there. Uncials, the capital letter manuscripts. 246 out of 267, 92% of the evidence, they did well there, but what about the Christians? The Christians, only 202 did they consult out of 2,764, less than 7% of the evidence, horrible. Lectionaries, those that were read in the churches, early churches, they only consulted five out of 2,143, that's two-tenths of a percent of the evidence. a total of 534 of the manuscripts out of 5,255, 10% of the manuscript evidence. Then the ancient versions, they only used 3 out of the 20, 15% of the evidence. Church Fathers, only 72 out of 300, 24% of the evidence, just 75 out of 320 of the non-manuscript evidence, 23% total, 609 out of 5,575, a total 11% of all the evidence, that they used. Now, that's not very much, 11%. But if you want to compare that with the majority text, I don't know whether you want to get into that, but by way of contrast... Yes, that's very important. Yes, go ahead, sir. The majority text, or the Byzantine text of Hodges and Farstad, I looked at their Greek text, the papyrus fragments. They used only 8 out of 81, 10% of the evidence, instead of 100%. Huntsville's Capital and the Mansions, they only used 4 out of 267, that's less than 1%, instead of 92% with the other. Curses, they did use more. They used 414 out of 2764, 15%. Instead of 202, they used 414. They used zero lectionaries, not a single lectionary. The majority of texts used zero evidence. Then the total manuscript evidence, 426 out of 525, only 8% of the evidence. At least the Vessel Island used 10% of the manuscript evidence. Then the non-manuscript evidence, the ancient versions, They use zero out of 20. Zero evidence. they use zero church fathers, zero of the total non-manuscript evidence, zero out of 320. A total of, it's a horrible thing. They use less evidence than the Nestle Island, unfortunately, to take their Bible. Wow, and I would think the church fathers, you know, many of them dealt with theological controversies. They were on top of what was happening in the ancient world. They knew about Alexandria and about Arius and about Arianism and you know, anti-Trinitarianism and certainly the ancient versions and the lectionaries. All of these are very, very important, I would think, and the fact that these have almost been neglected by some of these later texts, I would think that's a real blow against them. It's a blow against them because these men were living during the times and they had it in their hands. many of them, the actual manuscripts of the early church, 150 A.D., some of those early church fathers, and they quoted from the manuscripts they had in their hands that sustained the text that underlies the Canaanite, the traditional text. In fact, Mark 16, 9 to 20, a tremendous amount of evidence in favor of that, and electionaries would read it, also the church father quotations, even though they may have been unbelieving people and didn't, were not, they were heretics, yet if they had in their hands a text that they quoted from that was early, That establishes the traditional Texas Receptus readings. Well, that's true. It's kind of like if a communist or a socialist or a mean person discovers a cure for cancer, I mean, why not? You know, what's wrong with it if it's scientifically verifiable? And the same thing with all of these ancient texts and how they line up with the King James Bible. Absolutely. We've been talking about textual issues. I want to get into another area, and you and I are in agreement with this, and I think there's a lot of confusion today about it, and some people are put on a guilt trip over this issue. But, Dr. Waite, tell us how you feel about Bible lexicons and about these ancient word studies and giving us the meaning of Bible words. Well, I believe that lexicons are simply like dictionaries. And everybody thatís going into a foreign country to learn Spanish or French or German or Swahili or Dutch or whatever the language may be, theyíre going to have to have a dictionary or a lexicon in order to understand perfectly what the meanings and the various uses of those words are. And I believe the same with someone learning Greek or Hebrew. We go into Bible lexicons and so on. I had, both in the University of Michigan in classical Greek and also at Dallas Seminary, New Testament Greek, 66 semester hours of Greek. I could never possibly learn the whole thing without a grammar, without lectionaries, without details. I couldn't translate anything without knowing what those words mean. and the same with Hebrew, 25 semester hours of Hebrew all together. I had to consult Hebrew dictionaries, even though we had the finest teacher of the whole planet at the time, Dr. Merle Frederick Ellinger. He was our teacher, and he knew Hebrew backwards and forwards. But as a student, I had to know that language. And so I had to discuss and look up things where I didn't know anything about it. And the same when I took up Latin and French and Spanish. I mean, I used these dictionaries. Any student of languages must have at his disposal good lexicons. Now I realize, as you said before, if a communist or a socialist or a fascist would discover a cure for cancer, it was a good cure, we'd accept the cure. And I realize that some of these men have problems in their life and so on, and some of these lexicon authors and so forth may have had, maybe they're unbelievers, and maybe they're lost and bound for hell and so on. We know this. But the point is, do they know the language? Do they have a grasp of what the meanings of these words are? It's not a question of their salvation, or a question of their life, it's a question of are they skilled in the language that they have to do with, that they're dealing with. For instance, a lot of people like to say, well, what about the ancient languages, not necessarily New Testament Greek, but what about the classical Greek? Can we learn anything from that? And I say, well, of course. When I took classical Greek at the University of Michigan, These languages, and even Homeric Greek was even before classical, which is a completely different grammar, completely different meanings. I'd be out in the field if I didn't have a good dictionary to look at. And so I have the classical dictionary of Liddell and Scott, and of course a lot of people say, well, they're no good, and their life and so on, but they dealt into the actual use of the word and Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Herodotus, all these different, but how did they use this Greek word? And to me, that's important. So this gives us the nuances and the flavor. And as I preach the word, as we were just finishing up on the book of Jude, for example, the second time through Jude, the last half of this coming Sunday, I go into the Greek and all the different things. I preach verse by verse. And when it got up to a word, I said, this is the word, and it's a Greek word that's used, and here's several meanings and several things how they handled it. And to me, it gives life to the preaching of the word. And so I'm all for lexicons if they're accurate. Now, some of them are better than others. For instance, that one that was a big four, five, six volumes, I have it, but I don't use it. The one that was written by that man in Germany, What's his name? I'm trying to think of the... The father had a lexicon and had a Greek, I mean a Hebrew lexion and his name escapes me at the present time. His son, Gerhardt, his son's first name and I can't think of the last name right now. Is it Cassinius that you're thinking of? Not Cassinius, but another one. Oh my, the Old Testament Hebrew. He's got the thing and I don't go along with that because he's got a lot of new words and new thought. For instance, monogamies. Monogenes. His term for that is unique. Well, monogenes is only begotten, and mono plus geno from to be born. So there's certain things that these scholars don't have up the right way, but you can use them all, and you can use concordances, for example. Why is this word used in this place, and this place, and this place? You get a meaning from the concordances used in the context. But these things are usable if they're sound. I prefer, for example, the analytical Greek lexicon. and the analytical Hebrew lexicon. Those two lexicons, they don't have any problems with their authors, and what they do is they give you the actual word meaning as it appears in the text. For instance, if you're an English person, and you wanted to see the word went, I went to town, and the person didn't know English, how are they going to connect went with the verb to go? But you look under went, and it decides, oh, that's from the verb to go. That's the same way the analytical Hebrew does, the analytical Greek does, It gives you the word as it's found in the scriptures. You look up at that word and say, oh, that's from there. It gives you the root word. You look up the root word. To me, those are the most essential lexicons. We've offered them to many people and suggested and encouraged them to get them. Analytical Hebrew, analytical Greek. But they're excellent. Look, you don't change the King James Bible. I never correct the King James Bible in any way. I simply say, this is more light on it. It gives you more nuances and sprinkles and so on. That's what I do with lexicons and dictionaries. Well, Dr. Waite, this is so informative. And friends, we will continue our interview with Pastor D.A. Waite on Bible texts and translations. We've just been talking about lexicons. You know, as you were speaking about lexicons and dictionaries, I've been very intrigued with William Carey. He's been considered the founder of the modern missionary movement. But one of the things that he did was he, after a while, he produced lexicons and dictionaries in these different languages from India. And I was just thinking of that as you were speaking about the importance, you know, a lexicon is like a dictionary. How can we navigate a language unless we have a dictionary and we can understand the meaning of the words? And I think that's such a good analogy, but what about the pastor, the serious Bible student? He looks at Greek and he says, wow, that looks weird, or he looks at Hebrew, he says, well, how can I ever learn that? Is there any value in a pastor, somebody who wants to do theological research in learning biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew? Yes, I believe there is. Before I go into that, I remembered the name of the man I couldn't tell you about. Okay. Earlier in the broadcast, it's Gerhard Kittel. Kittel, right. Rudolf Kittel, the father. See, Rudolf Kittel was the father. Of course, they were from Germany, and they were for Hitler, and they were Nazis, and so on and so forth. But we don't go, but Gerhard Kittel, in his Greek lexicon, I just don't go along with so much. But let's go back to learning Hebrew and Greek. I don't know why I couldn't think of that. But anyway, I believe a pastor can and should be interested in learning the languages that God spoke and the language that God gave us. I believe that, as it says in 2 Thessalonians 3, 16, all scripture, Pascha Grafei, is God breathed, given by inspiration of God, Theotokos. God breathed, and God breathed out Hebrew, a little Aramaic in the Old Testament, and Greek in the New. And a man of God, who's a pastor wanting to preach his word, to me should be interested in what that word that God gave to us was. Now, we get a good example of it in our King James Bible. There's no question about it. They picked at least one of the many exact and correct meanings. But to see the whole ramifications of it, and the grammar of it, and the means of it, I think it's very essential. And as I say, now, we have a course that I have it on the computer, on our biblefortoday.org, on our internet, on first-year Greek. And anybody that wants to look at it, we go through it. We have some of the men that were very skilled men. Every one of them was a college graduate. It was on a seminary level. And we went through Davis' Greek grammar. It was about an eight-hour course, three hours, three hours, and two hours. And these men were working separately in the different FBI and different other works. But they came in the evening, went through this thing, and that's available. In fact, my son, Daniel Wade, is teaching right now a course every single Friday at 8 o'clock on the internet. And he's teaching a course in Greek. first-year Greek. So these courses are available from us or from anyone, and I think it's helpful. And the same with Hebrew. These same men said, well, Pastor, can I take some Hebrew from you? So I said, all right. So we have a Hebrew course that's available on our internet. It's available also, I don't know whether it's on the internet, but it's on cassette tapes and first-year Hebrew. But these things are available, and I think they give us an insight. The whole picture, just like a person that is without good sight, when he puts on a pair of glasses, he could see more. You can see some things without the glasses, but if you have the glasses, if you need them, and also someone's trying to look at the moon or the stars, he can see a little bit, but a telescope brings it closer, gives it more ramifications. Same way, look at a microscope. He can't see the atom, he can't see this, but with a real high-powered microscope, he can see more. And that's what the Hebrew language and the Greek language, not that we're correcting our English, not that we're being big about that thing and trying to rip apart our Bible, but it gives us insight ramifications and wonderful things that you cannot see just with the one word that we have selected in the King James Bible. Well, that's so well put, and I do want to underscore what you just said, that we're not using Greek and Hebrew to correct the King James Bible. We certainly wouldn't want to do that, because it is the preserved Word of God, but it does certainly shed light on the deeper meaning, the background, the history, the different usage of words, and then one of the things I was also thinking of, Dr. Waite, when you were speaking is, as you very well know, in the Greek language, Greek participles are so fantastically important. We don't have any really understanding of that in English, but the participle structure of Greek sentences is so fantastically complex that a little bit of an understanding of that would certainly help the serious student understand the word a little more profoundly and a little more deeply. That's right, because one of the questions about some people have in the Great Commission, having gone and preached, but they don't realize that the participle, one of the uses of the participle, according to Dana and Matty and A.T. Robertson's Greek grammar, is an imperative goal. So it's an excellent translation. People criticize the King James because of these things, but as you say, knowing some of these ramifications are very important to see what it is. Another thing, if you have a prohibition, a negative command, if it's a present tense negative command, stop doing something you're already doing. If it's an errorous command, don't even begin to do this thing. So these little nuances for Greek grammar, it helps us to understand what is in our King James Bible. Absolutely, I agree. Well, Dr. White, these two programs, you know, we, Dr. Hutchings and I, we wanted these to be standard reference programs and I think you've certainly provided so much information and so much material that's really sound. You've cleared up a lot of the confusion. I'm sure our listeners will be really helped by this information and also by the material that we're offering. So, Dr. Wade, thank you so very much for these programs. You're welcome. I hope it's been helpful.