And I'm going to be doing something I've done here before. It's been a very long time. And we have so many people that are new that have not been here before during the teachings that I've done on some of the aspects of the history of the Bible that I want to cover just one small area tonight. But I think it will be of a big help to you. The Bible is an unusual book. It is 66 different books in two different Testaments, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. We don't know how many writers there were, at least 40, because there are some of the books that we don't know who wrote it. We know who the author is for all of them. The author is the Lord. God is the author of the book. And when we study the history of the Bible, or even Bibliology as we call it in our theology courses, we get into the aspects of inspiration, revelation, things like that, why God had to give us the Bible. There's a very important reason why God had to give us the Bible. Before the Bible, how did people know about God? Mainly through visions and experiences. Dreams, maybe. You find that quite a bit in the Old Testament. But then once we had the Bible we did not need those kind of things and therefore it is a very important part of us understanding. We use some very technical terms when we talk about how God gave us the Bible. We use the term inspiration, which comes from a concept of breathed by the Holy Spirit. That's the term that really the idea gives. He breathed it into the men who were going to do the writing. And we use that inspiration, there's many different theories and concepts and there's a lot of controversy and discussion about it. But our position is that the Bible is, first of all, the inspiration was plenary. Now that term plenary means that it is evenly inspired throughout the whole Bible. In other words, that there are not portions that are more inspired than others. In other words, sometimes there are parts of the Bible that we don't study that much. How often do you hear a message from the Song of Solomon? Not too often, right? But it is just as important as the Book of John, as the Gospel of John. That's what plenary means. But then we also use the term verbal. The verbal refers to how accurate or down to how much detail Do we have it from God? In other words, some people think that God just inspired the ideas, the concepts, and then the writers used their own words for it. We don't believe that. We believe, when we say verbal, that He inspired the very words that were written down. Now, there are two languages, possibly three, there's some discussion about this, but two main languages the Bible was written in. Hebrew for the Old Testament, and some argue it's Aramaic, but that's not a way, a sure thing. I believe it was all Hebrew. And Greek for the New Testament. Those are the two original languages. They are dead languages today. Now, a lot of people say, well, they're dead. That must be a really bad thing. No, it's not. Now, let me explain to you what I mean by a dead language. It does not mean an unknown language. That's a different thing. Or an extinct language. There are some languages that are extinct that have been lost and no one knows what they were. They're completely lost. But a dead language is not an extinct language. A dead language still has the capacity of some people to learn it and learn it just as good as their own language, but it is not in common usage. In other words, no mother teaches it to her child. So, the two languages of the Bible, now you say, well, today they speak Hebrew in Israel. Yes, they do, but it's a different type of Hebrew. They speak Greek in Greece. Well, yes, but it's a modern Greek. Languages change constantly. If you were able to go back in time 100 years and here in America, here in Fort Worth, and talk to people, they're going to say, wow, you talk different. And to them, they're going to sound different, too, because that's how much our language has changed in the last 100 years in many areas, vocabulary, accents, many things. That's just normal. When the Tower of Babel occurred and all the languages came out, They probably were maybe a tenth or less of the total languages today. Today, there are 7,000 languages. Our language came out of other languages. Basically, our language came out of Latin. But you've got Spanish, French, Portuguese, German. No, Greek did not come out of Latin. Greek came first before Latin. Got to correct him back there on that one. All the what we call the Romance languages. Romanian. I could go on. There's about 12, 13 different languages that came out of Latin. They didn't exist in the time of Christ. Did English exist in the time of Christ? No. It developed. See, that's what I'm saying. Languages are always changing. But, God allowed the two languages of the Bible, the Hebrew and the Greek of the Bible, to die. Why? When they die, they don't change. In other words, their meanings are the same. We have words today that today's meaning means something totally different than what it did 100 years ago. Let me give you an example. Gay. The word gay today has a totally different meaning than it did 50, 60 years ago. At that time, it had nothing to do with homosexuality at all. That's why a lot of people when they try to read the King James Bible, they have a hard time because they say, well, that's an antiquated meaning. Well, that's how much our language has changed somewhat. We have means, we have tools, we have dictionaries to figure out those words. We can always figure it out. And it doesn't hurt you to broaden your vocabulary, broaden your capacity of language. So that's a good thing. Now, going back to the Hebrew and Greek, now that they're dead languages, you can still learn them. You can go to a college, you can go to a seminary and learn them so well That you can speak them. In fact, I know, I have a nephew who teaches Greek. He does his devotions in Greek. Because that's how well he knows the language. Some people can speak it just as good as their own language. But it's a dead language. You understand what I'm saying? That doesn't mean it's not knowledgeable, but it doesn't change. Because it's not in constant usage. God did that on purpose. He wanted that to happen. So that, therefore, the meanings of the Bible don't change. It gives it stability in that area. Now, we want to talk about, well, what happened? Well, the original copies, or the original parchments, or whatever you want to call it, that the books of the Bible are written on, do not exist today. The oldest ones were probably Genesis, the Pentateuch. Some might say Job, we're not sure. But that was written probably about 1,300 or 1,400 years before Christ was born, the first copy. And in the book of Deuteronomy, it gives instructions to Moses very much how to do it, what to do with the original, have it next to the Ark and all those kind of things. So that was what we call the autograph, the very first copy. None of them exist today. We don't have a single one for any of the books of the Bible. And there's a reason for that. What would man do if we had them? They would worship them. They would become an idol. And God does not want that. So He set up a system that a lot of people have doubts about, but it's the system that He wanted to use. That's what we're going to be talking about tonight. The system that God used to preserve over the many thousands of years the Bible that we have today. And that is basically copying it. making copies. From the very beginning, God told when the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, we call that the Pentateuch, those first five books that were written by Moses, He also gave instructions inside those books to make copies. In fact, he told the kings of Israel that each king was to make his own copy of that Torah, as the Hebrews call it, the first five books. And he has to keep that with him. And they call it the law also. And they had to keep it with him all the time that he was reigning as king to give him the guidance to make the decisions he was supposed to make as king. Now it's obvious that some of the kings of Israel, especially later on, were not fulfilling this commandment. because they did not follow the law at all. But that was a very common thing. So every king had to make on his own, with his own hand, a copy. Now, at those times, we're talking about thousands of years ago, how did they make copies? By hand. There was no printing presses, no computers, nothing mechanical. You had to use parchment. quill, you know, feather, as your writing instrument, and ink. That was it. And they had special people. Now this didn't happen until about the time when Israel became exiled in Babylon, that they officially started a group of people that were called scribes. They were the ones who were supposed to copy the Bible. And since then, until to this day, The Jews still do not use printing presses to copy their Bibles. If you go into a synagogue, they will have their Bibles there made by hand, copied by scribes. There are two main places in the world where they do that. One is in New York City. The other is in Jerusalem. And they are still making copies by hand today. They trust the system. And I won't have time tonight to get into the system. That's another class entirely that we teach about what the scribes do when they make copies. But the copying of the Bible, and I'm not saying translating it. We're just saying copying it in the very same language. Making copies in Hebrew and copies in Greek has been going on for thousands of years. We call that the doctrine of preservation. And it's just as important a doctrine as the doctrine of inspiration. And I want to give you some verses about this. We'll get into some of this in our study tonight. Because it happens because God promised it. Preservation was a system that God wanted to use to guard His Word. To keep His Word in existence. Now, the doctrine of preservation, we can define it as this. the act of God, by which he keeps and protects the word of God, so that every word is exactly of his choosing and completely without error." In other words, we believe that preservation is just as important as it be plenary and verbal as inspiration was. If you have plenary-verbal inspiration, but not plenary-verbal preservation, we've lost the Word of God. We don't have it anymore. And here's the problem. There's a lot of people who do not believe that it has been preserved. There's a lot of Baptists, even, that do not believe that the Word of God has been preserved perfectly. And we're going to get into that today a little bit and actually explain to you how that was. Now, how was this happening? Well, first of all, let's look at some promises. One of the bases that we have to do with this, let's go to the Word of God. And if the Word of God says it, that should settle it. So, He promised in Isaiah 40, verse 8, "...the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever." That is a promise. And this is in the Old Testament. This is Isaiah. He wrote about 600 years before Christ. Then we have in the New Testament. And this is the Lord Jesus Christ making this statement. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Now, He's also referring to the smallest part, not just the word. When we say verbal, we talk about every word. He's talking about not just the words, but every letter, every punctuation mark. Jot is translated from the Hebrew word yod, which means the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Tittle refers to the marks that go above the letters, like an accent mark that you might have in other languages. Okay? So that's how small it's referring to. It's not just the letter, it's parts of the letter. That's how precise the Lord Jesus Christ is referring to. 1 Peter 1.25, But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. Now, here we can find Old Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the apostles. Now I can show you about 15 or 20 other verses. There's a lot. Whenever you find a doctrine of the Bible, you're not going to find it in one place. It's going to be repeated throughout all of Scripture. And this doctrine of preservation is repeated. For lack of time I'm not going to go into the other verses, but I can show you them. There are plenty. There's no doubt that God has promised to preserve His Word. Now, the problem is there are two different interpretations of what this means. One is the one I've already mentioned. Verbal plenary preservation. In other words, every word has been preserved exactly like God wrote it. We haven't lost anything and it's evenly been preserved. knows there are some parts that are more preserved than others. It's all preserved evenly. And we use this because if we don't have this, we don't have the Word of God. It's been lost. And that's against God's promise because He promised it would not be lost. So that's a very important foundation here. But then today there's a lot of people that teach concept preservation. Concept preservation. And the reason for that is, they say, well, there's a problem here. Men have been doing this copying for a long time. We have what we call the autograph, the very first copy. It doesn't exist anymore. So people made what? Copies of it. And when man makes a copy, if he's doing it by hand, being a human, he's going to what? Make a mistake. So the copy's going to have a little bit of a mistake. Well, we don't have the autograph anymore, so now we have to make a copy of the copy. And then have to make a copy of the copy. And over thousands of years, how many generations have we gone down today? That means that the mistakes have been multiplied. So therefore, we don't have the exact words anymore. We just have the ideas. And that's what's being taught in most seminaries. Even the one here in South Fort Worth, a lot of Baptist preachers believe this. And that means that sometimes they'll get along and say, well, I don't think this was translated just right because, or I think in the original this was not preserved. And what are they doing at that moment? Well, first of all, they're making you doubt that the Word of God even exists anymore. Plus they're trying to attack what the Word of God says by saying, well, I want to change it to what I want it to be. That's a very dangerous thing. Now, I want to take some time to get into some technical aspects of this. Forgive me for this. It might get a little confusing. But I want to try to help you out. That's why I've got some things up here to illustrate this. I work a lot in video, audio. My degree is in cinematography. And we, in our generation, we're used to copies of everything. You buy a book, that's a copy, right? You watch a TV show, that's a copy. Are you actually watching the people themselves? No, you're watching a recording. All of you have iPhones or some other phone, you like to listen to music on your phones? Are you actually listening to the artists themselves actually doing the singing? No, you're listening to a machine reproducing, right? We use it so much that it's become just common. We don't think about it. But what's involved in making a copy? Because we're talking about the Bible being copied. We're talking about voices being copied. We're talking about visuals, images being copied. All those things are very common today. What's involved there? Well, we have to get down to the details. Let me talk about audio only. I'll only be dealing with that today. As you're listening to me right now, those of you who are in this room, are not listening to recording. You're listening to my actual voice. And what's happening? Well, I've got here in my throat vocal cords, right? And as I'm speaking, they're vibrating. Now, we live in the middle of air. People might think it's empty, but it's not. There's quite a bit of substance in this air. Stick your hand out when you're going 100 miles an hour out of the car. You'll find out how strong air is. It's a pretty strong element. So what's happening is, as my voice is vibrating, it's kind of like water, in a way. Now, on the beach, what does the water do? It goes in waves, correct? You go to the ocean, you'll watch the ocean waves. Well, when you're listening to sound, basically you're listening to the same thing in the air. In other words, waves of sound. The vibration in my throat is vibrating the air. It's transmitting like in waves over to your eardrum. Your eardrum then vibrates with that air too and then it's converted to your brain to sound. Most of us know that, right? Everything around us, God designed it in these forms of waves. Even light is in waves. When you see something, your eyes are seeing waves of light. I'm getting technical, but that's why we're trying to get across here. So how would we express that? Well, the scientists use what we call a sine wave. This is what we call an analog waveform to try to describe a sound. Now, this is a very steady sound. It's not varying in any way. It just has the same height every time and the same distance between the waves. This would be a very steady sound. Okay, that's what this is representing. You're seeing each individual wave, the time it takes to do it, and the volume is the height and also the frequency. There's a lot involved. I'm just trying to simplify it as much as I can. But that is the wave, the way you mathematically or on a way of pictorially, our graph representing the actual sound that you're hearing from me. There it is right there. That's the wave. Okay, now let's record it. How are we going to record this wave? Well, that's always been the problem. First recordings ever done. What were they at? What were they? Who was the man who did that? Thomas Alva Edison. The very famous phonograph, as they called it. It was on wax, then we used plastic. I have here a record. No one uses it today, but this is a recording of sound. Now I could not get one in English, forgive me, but this is a ministry that was years and years ago in most of the countries of the world called Gospel Recordings and they provided for people before electronics. Something very simple. What they've done is they take a microphone. What a microphone does, this right here is a microphone, right? A microphone has what we call a diaphragm. As I'm speaking, that microphone moves with my voice with this wave right here. And so what they do here is they take a needle that moves with that and record. If you take a magnifying glass, you can look at this and you see the actual waves of sound on here. If you take a magnifying glass, you'll see it. So let me prove it to you. It's in Spanish. All right. Now, what are they doing here? Well, this needle right here is vibrating, and it's connected to what? Another diaphragm. And it vibrates. It moves the air, just like my voice does. But wait a minute. This is a little bit more complicated. You know what? I can do the same thing with this. This is a piece of cardboard and it's got a needle on the end. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that needle in this groove. It's going to vibrate and you're going to hear it just with the cardboard. Just a piece of cardboard. The most simple audio player you can make. And it uses all the principles we're talking about. Now, what have I just done? I've taken a recording and reproduced it for you. Now, how good is that quality? Now, a lot of different things are variable here. One is my speed of my hand, right? I don't have the right speed, so it's not being reproduced exactly at the same speed they're saying it. You hear that. Now, this is not what we call high fidelity, right? This would not work with music. What I have recording here is speaking, because that reproduces the best using the system. If I had music, it'd be a lot harder to hear. Even while I'm turning this one, I have to worry about the speed I'm turning it. Now, they came along with phonographs later on that had actual speed controllers and got faster and then they had electric motors and got to the point where they got pretty good about reproducing sound. But there were still some problems. And the problem is, every time you make a copy, the copy is never exactly the same as the first one. In other words, Let me show you an example here. Here we have in the dark line the actual waveform of the original and here's the copy. And what happens? The copy's going to be just slightly different. Okay? Well, what do you think of a copy of the copy? It's going to be different. Now, how can I illustrate this in a visual form? Does a lot of you know what it's like to go use a photocopier? Okay, you take a photocopier and you take your original and make a photocopy. It's good, but sometimes some of these photocopies are pretty good, looks pretty nice. But what if I make a copy of the copy? And then a copy of the copy of the copy? Eventually, it gets so bad you can't even read what it says, right? Because every time we're changing this, because we're using what we call an analog system. And that's why people have always said, well, the Bible cannot be accurate because they use an analog system. It's not possible. Wait a minute. Now, over the history then, you have, and I'm sorry this is so small, but it's hard to show this. This is the original. This is the first copy. And as you keep going with copies, what we call, it becomes degradable. When I first started working in film, we were using all analog for everything. At that time, the cameras that we were using, and this is in the 70s, were $40,000 and $50,000. At that time, that was worth more than a house. Because they had to be super high quality. Even the ones that they had on the TV stations and everywhere else. Because we knew that as we're making this film, we're going to make copies of the film. And what's going to happen? It's going to be dropping. So that by the time we send it out to everybody to watch in the theaters, it's still good enough quality. But we had to start up real high. because we knew it was going to be dropping. And they would eventually, the copy that you were seeing in the theater, usually is what we call third or fourth generation. Your first generation is your original, second generation is the first copy, third generation is the second copy of the copy, copy number two, fourth generation and so on and so forth. Okay? So each generation was going to look. And so they said, that's the same thing with the Bible. But wait a minute. When computers came out, they created a new system of recording things. Because computers don't use waves. They use numbers. So what they did was they took an audio waveform and they would sample, that's what we call it. They'd pick points in time. These are points in time as you're moving along. And they would, okay, at this point in time, where is the wave at? And that dot can be interpreted into a numerical formula, what we call X-Y coordinates. I'm sorry, those of you who are in geometry, but geometry is important. You want to be something later on in life, learn that the math classes in geometry you're taking help with these kind of things. And so this is what we call an X-Y coordinate in geometry. So we have a number for each one of these points. Now, these are really highly separated. But actually, what the computer does, it takes a sample 44,000 times per second of the sound. In some instances, it's up to 195,000 times per second. The more times per second that it takes it, the more precise it's going to be, the more exact it's going to be. And so it's recording. Every one of these is a number, OK? It records that as numbers and it files it. Now what happens when you reproduce it? Well, it reads the numbers and then it sends a message out to the speaker to reproduce the audio. Now there's some loss, but not much. But here's the thing. What happens if you want to copy that file that has all these numbers on it? Well, you can copy it exactly the same as the original. There is no change. You can go 20 generations and the 20th generation is exactly the same as the first generation. You guys are in computers, am I right? That's why when we went to digital recording it changed everything. Everything changed. In other If I take, remember that graph I gave you where each copy dropped in quality? Digital is totally different. Oh, there's an example of what it looks like, the waves on a computer. That's the sound waves. And you can actually see them on the screen. But here's the thing with digital copy consistency. The copy number one is just the same as the original. Copy two is the same as the original. Copy three, you can go 20 generations and there's no change. It's a straight line. There's no degradation. Now this is what man has been able to do. Do you think God can do it? Now they're saying, oh, it's impossible to have a perfect copy of the Word of God over many centuries. Wait a minute. We're doing it today. If God promised it and it is possible, then why can't we trust that God has done it? That's our problem. We don't give God enough credit. That's the real problem here. We're saying, well, God promised it, but it's not going to happen because it's just impossible. Well, do you realize how precise the scribes are in making copies? They spend more time checking their work than actually copying it. They're called in Hebrew, It's a Hebrew word for accountant or counters. Why? Because after they finish making a copy, they would have to go and count every single letter in the original, count every single letter in the copy, and they had to be exact. If they weren't the same, the copy was considered bad copy. And not only do that, sometimes they would vary the way of counting. They'd take the copy, instead of counting from beginning to end, they'd count from end to beginning, backwards, just to be sure. Or let's say there's 100,000 letters in this one document. So they say, okay, let's go to the 50,000 mark in the original. Find it. Let's go to 50,000 mark in the copy. Is it the same letter? If it's not, it's a bad copy. Do you realize that in computers we do the same thing? It's called a checksum. Right, guys? Every time you make a copy with a computer, after it copies it, it does what we call a checksum, which basically is adding up, using a special formula, for every single letter has a different number, they would add it all up, and they add up the original, add up the copy, and they compare. If they don't match, the copy's discarded because it's considered a bad copy. We thought we were really great when we got into computers. We come up with this idea. God's been using it for thousands of years with the scribes. It's nothing new, really. And that's why when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls, you see, when they found the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1948, these scrolls were a thousand years older than all the other Old Testament manuscripts, copies. Most of the copies they had before they discovered the old Dead Sea Scrolls were from the year 800 after Christ. These were 200 years before Christ. So they had a 1,000 year jump backwards in time. And so all these people that believe that all this degradation, we're going 1,000 years back, so we're going to find all those errors. Guess what? There were no errors. It was proven. They thought, we're going to have a new Bible now that we found the Dead Sea Scrolls. Have you noticed that no one's trying to print a new Bible based on the Dead Sea Scrolls? Why not? Don't need to. What we had was already good. So if that proved it, we can trust what we have today. What we have today is trustworthy. But a lot of people have a problem with this. Now, here's an interesting verse. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 3 and then verse 7. But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost. The devil is trying to hide the gospel. Are you surprised that the devil is attacking the Bible? He did it in the Garden of Eden, the very first mention of the devil in the very first verse of Genesis chapter 3 says, Hath God said? And then he misquoted the Bible in Genesis chapter 3. If you compare what God actually said in Genesis chapter 2, He said something totally different. If He's been doing that for 6,000 years, why are you surprised that He's still trying to do it today? But then verse 7. But we have this treasure. Now, the context here is talking about the Bible. Okay? That's what the Apostle Paul is writing about. We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Now, he's talking about a treasure stored in what? Clay pots. Right? Earthen vessels, clay pots. Now, if you have a great treasure, will you store it in a clay pot? What do you do with something that's super valuable? Jewels, for instance. Well, you like to have a safe if you can, right? If you can keep it in your home. If you don't, you go to a bank and rent a safety deposit box, correct? And you put your, if something's super valuable, that's where you put your treasure. Because you want to be as safe as possible. But it doesn't make sense to put it in a clay pot, because what? It doesn't seem too secure. But what's God saying? Well, I've taken the treasure that's the Bible and put it where? In earthen vessels. Who's the earthen vessels? Human beings. He allowed human beings to copy the Bible. He gave them the job to copy it. And most people say, well, human beings aren't reliable. They make mistakes. I agree. But wait a minute. We're discounting God's power. Now some of these scribes didn't know God. Some of these scribes didn't accept Jesus as being their Savior. Some of these scribes are in hell. But can God still use someone who's not even saved to preserve His Word? He can. And why? Because when it does happen, when the preservation is done, who gets the glory? He says that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. So if He's preserved His Word, He's the one responsible for it, not us. Now He's used earthen vessels. They're not too reliable. I wouldn't do it, but He decided to do it. Why? Because if it does work, He gets the glory. But a lot of people say, well, if it's earthen vessels, we can't trust it. That's what most people are trying to say today. Watch out. That is saying God lies. That's basically what you're saying. Because if you don't believe that God has preserved His Word perfectly, you're saying God lied. Because He promised He would do it. Didn't Christ say not one jot or tittle? Well, if He promised it. Now, here's the thing. I'm a historian. As a historian, I like to have all the ducks in a row. I like to say, well, I can trace the history of this all the way back to the beginning and have all the recorded and every step of the way there. And you know what? I can't do that. We have a term that we use in history. We use it a lot with artworks called provenance. It refers to the history of a piece of art, for instance. If it's very old art, hundreds of years old, and you're going to go sell it in an art gallery, the person that wants to buy that piece of art will say, what's the provenance? He wants to know the history of the owners. Where has this piece of art been over the last few centuries? And that's a way of guaranteeing that it's real. So the art gallery director who wants to sell this piece of art does a lot of effort to provide provenance. When we talk about the Bible, we don't have provenance. In other words, there are gaps in history. We can't go back and tell you exactly where it all occurred. And the devil tries to use that to put doubt in your mind. All I can tell you is what God promised and the result. That's all I can give you. I can't give you all the steps that He took because they were lost. the steps that were taken and how it was done. Now let me ask you something. If I go and look at a huge, beautiful building, even a very old one, like if I've been to parts of the world like in Athens. In Athens you've got the Parthenon. Everyone's heard of it, you know, those beautiful columns. Do we have the architectural plans for the Parthenon? We don't. Well, then we can't trust them. We can't trust that building. Look at it. It's been there for 2,000 years. Since we don't have the plans, it must be, they really, someone made a mistake somewhere. No, we see, even though we don't have the architectural plans, we see the result. And the result has been proven. It's the same thing with scripture. I might not have all the steps that were taken on how it was preserved over the many, many thousands of years, because it's a long time. But what I do, though, is for number one, God promised He would do it. And number two, I see its impact upon lives. That's another proof. We can go on. But one of the things that we have to do by faith is accept that God promised He'd preserve it, and we do. And it is possible, because I just proved that it was possible, because today with the digital systems we're doing, we're doing it. Man is doing perfect copies today. So if man could do it today, do you think God could have done it 2,000 years ago? Of course. It's just that sometimes we think that we're so smart and those people back then were so dumb. They weren't that dumb. Sometimes they were smarter than us in some of the things they did. So I hope this helps you understand a little bit about the importance of having a proper position on the preservation of Scripture. You're going to have a lot of people try to put doubts in your mind. And saying, well, and see, there's going to be some copies that were bad there. You know, some people sometimes make copies on purpose, changing things. And we find those copies and we say, well, wait a minute. These copies say one thing. These copies say another thing. Well, that's why we're very particular about what copies we use. Especially for the New Testament. There's not as much controversy in the Old Testament on that. But in the New Testament, there's a big fight over that. That's another class entirely. I don't have time for that today. But I hope this helped you out. I hope it gave you some assurance that what we have is the Word of God. Thank you, Father, for the privilege of being here today with everyone. Thank you for your Word. It truly is a treasure. A treasure that has lasted throughout all of our history. Father, we know that when we get to heaven, it will still be there. It is an eternal treasure. Not anything else in this world will survive. You eventually will destroy it all and create a new heaven and new earth. But in that new heaven and new earth, the Bible will be there too, because it is an eternal treasure, and we thank You for it. Bless now as we continue this week. Help us to always have trust in what You've given us. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you so much.