Hello and welcome to another edition of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Fruehle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Wednesday, November the 9th of 2016. And in this edition of Word Magazine, we're going to be continuing, at long last, the series that I had started several weeks ago, giving a review of the sermon that was delivered by Pastor Kerry Hardy. of the Twin City Bible Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a sermon that was on the ending of Mark. Pastor Hardy believes that the traditional ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9 through 20, is spurious. He doesn't believe that it is inspired, doesn't believe it should be treated as scripture. And we started this review, I did part one, in which we looked at some preliminary issues, then we did part two, in which we looked at the external evidence, the manuscripts, in favor and not in favor of the traditional ending. And in this part of the sermon that we're going to be reviewing, we go to part three, which is the internal evidence, looking at the vocabulary, the writing style, the theology of Mark 16, 9 through 20, to try to determine if it is authentic Or is it spurious as Pastor Hardy holds? I know it took me a long time to get to this. I should have done it weeks ago. I just hadn't had time. One thing I was trying to do was I've made a lot of references to Nicholas Lund's book, and I still commend that. His book, The Original Ending of Mark, subtitled A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. And one reason I delayed doing this review is I wanted to finish reading the book and I just had a lot of things come up in the way. I'm teaching three classes this semester and my pastoral duties. My son was home from college one weekend and I just didn't have the time to do it. So anyways, but I'm sitting down now. I guess maybe I was inspired after the big election yesterday and Trump's big win. I want to make Word Magazine great again. So I'm going to try to launch into this edition of Word Magazine. We're going to be picking it up. in Pastor Hardy's sermon at the 29 minute, about 22 second mark. Once again, as always, there's going to be a post on my blog, jeffriddle.net, where I'll have some notes and I'll try to put a link to the original sermon if you want to listen to the original. I'm going to be playing part of it. I don't think I'm going to get to the end today. It's just going to be too much time. He just throws a lot of issues out there. And some things he just he makes allusions to, but I just hate to leave any of these points sort of unexplored. And so I'm going to try as best I can to respond to Get through maybe 15 or 20 minutes of this and then maybe do one more. I thought I projected it was going to be three parts, but now I'm going to revise my predictions as many pollsters did with the election. And I'm going to suggest that I'm going to need a fourth segment. But I'm gonna try to get through as much of this as I can. Again, he's dealing with the internal arguments, and I want to try to deal with some of these initial arguments he makes. And he makes a kind of a three-pronged attack based on the internal evidence. He talks about the arguments about vocabulary, the arguments about the writing style, and arguments about the content. And really what he says about the ending of Mark is very typical of many evangelicals who have embraced the modern critical text. There's really not much that's unique about it. And I think you'll hear these types of arguments very frequently. Yes, even from evangelicals, even from people who are Calvinistic, Pastor Hardy is coming out of the Master's Seminary Bible Church tradition, John MacArthur, and sort of following in his footsteps, rejecting the authenticity of the ending of Mark. And it is striking that these are conservative men, otherwise conservative men, who are challenging the traditional or confessional text of scripture. But anyways, let's pick up Pastor Hardy's sermon and I'll obviously stop it at various points and offer some comments and responses or clarifications. So here is Pastor Hardy turning after having dealt with the external evidence to the internal evidence and his argument against the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20. Let's talk about the internal evidence. The external evidence divided at some level. It's generally accepted by many good conservative Bible scholars that the suspicion thrown on these verses is real, suspicion by the external evidence. But these good conservative Bible scholars also, many of them already agree that the suspicion that's there because of the external evidence is strongly confirmed then by the Of course, in the second part of this review, I refuted the idea that the external evidence is against the longer ending of Mark or the traditional ending of Mark. In fact, I think quite the opposite, as I pointed out. There are actually only two extant Greek manuscripts that end Mark at Mark 16, verse 8, and those are Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The rest of the Greek manuscript tradition includes the so-called longer ending or traditional ending. So anyway, but I dealt with that in part two, and if you haven't listened to that, you can go back and review that. But let's pick up his comments on the internal evidence. Some examples of internal evidence. Argument based upon vocabulary. If you evaluate the Greek, which I know we can't all do that, but if you did, evaluate the Greek text of verses 9 through 20, you would find that if you pull out just the these and the articles and some connectives or proper names that are in there, if you pull them out, There are about 75, then, Greek words that make up this ending. So 9 through 20 is approximately 75 significant Greek words, if you take out the conjunctions and the proper names in the these. Of those 75, 15 of them do not appear anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark. And since a few of those 15 actually occur more than once, a couple of them, There's actually then 18 out of the 75 you don't find anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark. There are also 11 that are used in a very different sense than how Mark's been using them. So if you add that together, what that is as a conclusion, it means that slightly over one-third of the words in verses 9 through 20, one-third of the vocabulary is considered to be non-Markan. Not Mark's, he is a third of it. If you look at verse one to eight, just by contrast, which we know Mark wrote, in those verses, eight verses, so there's 12 after it, but eight before. In those eight, there's only four that he's using, that he hasn't used before. Four out of eight, verses 29 is what it adds up to be. Out of 12, that's a lot. And in addition to the non-Markan words, there are peculiar phrases that are non-Markan. Phrases that are found as well. Phrases that are found in Luke, phrases that are found in John, in Acts, in Romans, in 1 Corinthians, but nowhere in Mark. Something else interesting related to the vocabulary is this. There is a very common Greek word that's used a lot in Greek, like we have our common English words. There's a common Greek word for the word went. It's found three times in the longer ending. But what's interesting about it is it's a very, very common word. Mark didn't use it at all in the rest of his writings. This very common word for went, even though, as we've studied Mark, there were plenty of opportunities to use this common word for the word went, but that was not his choice. And suddenly, out of nowhere, in the last 12 verses, All right, I played that for quite a while, and I'm going to come back and respond to some of the things. Now, he begins with this vocabulary argument. This is very common for people who refute the traditional ending of Mark. They will say, if you look at the words, the vocabulary used in Mark 16, 9 through 20, there are words that are non-Markan, that are not used elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark, from Mark 1.1 through 16.8. There are words in verses 9 through 20 of chapter 16 that don't appear in the rest of Mark, and there are a high volume of these And these show or prove that this ending must have been written by someone else who wasn't the author of the rest of the gospel. Because he uses a vocabulary that isn't similar to the real author. This is what the argument is. And everyone who refutes the authenticity of the traditional ending will go down this path with the vocabulary argument. And we just offer a couple observations on this. First of all, he says there are 15. I mean there are different people come up with different numbers. And then he says even as many as 18 because one of those is repeated three times. If you look at various authors, they will come up with different numbers for this. But here are a couple of problems with the vocabulary argument. Again, first of all, the number is deceiving because some of the words that are usually cited as a non-Markan are necessarily unique words due to the narrative context. Let me give you an example. In Mark 16, 15, the word 11 appears. Jesus speaks to the 11 disciples, and the word in Greek is the hendeka, the 11. The 12 is the duodeka, and the 11 is the hendeka. But why does this appear in Mark 16, 9 through 20? It's the first time in the narrative when Judas has betrayed Jesus and he's no longer among the Duodeca, among the 12. And so the number of disciples has been reduced from 12 to 11. And so because of the narrative context, this is the first time that the word the 11 appears. So that would be an example of, it's a unique word, but it's demanded by a unique context. And we could say the same about some of the other words that are cited as unique, like the word for snakes in chapter 16, verse 18. Well, there's no other place in the narrative where the author had reason to use the word snakes. The word for deadly poison, thanosimon, in chapter 16, verse 18, same thing. There's no other place within the narrative where he had a reason to use this particular word. So, citing words like this, actually inflates the number of supposedly non-Markan words that are used here in the ending. I'd also note secondly on this that some of these supposedly unique words, non-Markan words, are actually words that are used in a related form in the rest of Mark. And let me just give you two examples. One we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about in a moment because it's one he cites. It's one of the Greek words for to go. Poroi omae. And it appears three times in the traditional ending of Mark in verse 10, verse 12, verse 15. And indeed, those are the only three times that this word, this particular word, the verb baroiomai, to go, appears in the Gospel of Mark. However, it appears in a compounded form multiple times in Mark. So it appears with the prefix ek, which means out, ek por oi o mai, it's easy for you to say, to go out. That appears 11 times in the Gospel of Mark. If you add the prefix eis, which means into, eis por oi o mai, to go into, that appears 8 times in the Gospel of Mark. So yes, it only appears in its uncompounded form in Mark 16, 9 through 20, but it appears in a compounded form multiple times throughout the Gospel of Mark. Surely the author of Mark knew this word and he only chose to use it in its uncompounded form at the very end. If I could just use an analogy, let's say we were reading a letter written in English, and in the last paragraph, the author used the verb to investigate. He talked about someone's going to investigate something. someone read this letter and they looked at that last paragraph and they said this he couldn't have written this last paragraph because he used a word here investigate that he never uses in the rest of the letter but if we look at the letter we might find in the first paragraph he used the word re-investigate. In paragraph three, he used the word under-investigate. In paragraph five, he used the word over-investigate. And then in the last paragraph, he just used the word investigate. Clearly, he knows what the word investigate means. In the previous usages, he simply used it in a compounded form. In the last paragraph, he used it in an uncompounded form. So that would be an example of sort of running the numbers up. Clearly this verb is one that isn't non-Markan. And another example of this, a word that's cited, is the verb that appears in chapter 16, verse 17, the verb to accompany, talking about the signs that accompany the apostles. and it's paracalutho. And that's, this is a case where it appears in the ending of Mark in a compounded form. It has the prefix para, the preposition para, paracalutho. And, but there's the verb to follow, which is the root of the verb to accompany, Acalutho appears 16 times in Mark. So it's a bit disingenuous to claim Paracalutho as non-Markan when he's used the root verb Acalutho 16 times previously. So, you know, thirdly, that's the second point, thirdly then, any such analysis of vocabulary in the Gospel of Mark or related to the ending of Mark also must necessarily compare the ending of Mark with other passages within the Gospel of Mark of comparable size, comparable number of verses, comparable number of words. Now, he makes a comparison with verses 1 through 8, and that's a shorter passage, obviously, but also there needs to be some variety. There needs to be comparison with more than one passage. And this is a place where Lund is helpful. He does this on pages 120 to 127 of his book. And what he does when he compares other passages of similar size, he finds that the frequency of the use of words that aren't used anywhere else in the Gospel of Mark are about the same in Mark 16, 9 through 20. as in other passages of comparable size. And so, let me just set a few examples that he notes in his book. He looks at Mark 2, verses 1-11, and he finds 17 words in that passage that aren't used elsewhere in Mark. He looked at Mark 12 verses 1 through 11, the parable of the tenets. He finds 19 words in that passage that aren't found elsewhere in Mark. He looked at part of the apocalyptic discourse in Mark 13 verses 14 through 23. He finds 15 words that aren't used elsewhere in Mark, the same number that are supposedly found in Mark 16, 9 through 20. And then in the account of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany in Mark 14 verses 1 through 9, he finds 20 words that aren't used elsewhere in Mark. No one, as far as I know, is arguing that those passages just cited are not authentically Markan. And yet people are arguing on the same basis that Mark 16, 9 through 20 is not Mark. And let me just say a little more specifically about the verb to go or in the past tense went. Poor oil mine. This is one that's very often cited and Pastor Hardy cites it and says, hey, we got this word. It shows up here and it's not used anywhere else. I've already said it. The big problem with this is that it's used in an uncompounded form. in verses 9 through 20, but it's used in a compounded form, you know, multiple times within the rest of Mark. But I would also point out, with regard to this verb in particular, that if you look at the other Gospels, and again, I'm dependent here and and relying on the research done by Lund, you can look at his book on pages 142 and 143, he looks at the way the other gospels use this particular verb and what he finds is a pattern that in the other gospels This verb is used in a compounded form much more often than it is used in the uncompounded form. So in Matthew it appears 29 times in a compounded form, only 7 times in the uncompounded form. In Luke it appears 51 times in a compounded form. and only 16 times in the uncompounded form. In the Gospel of John, it appears 16 times in a compounded form and only 2 times in an uncompounded form. Remember, it only appears 3 times in Mark in an uncompounded form. In Acts, he even goes outside the Gospels, looks at Acts, 37 times in a compounded form, 9 times in an uncompounded form. So, the pattern that we find in Mark for the usage of this verb is actually typical in that it uses the uncompounded form more often, sorry, the compounded form more often than the uncompounded form. I hope that isn't as clear as much to you, you understand what I'm saying. But again, just on a little more logical consideration, this argument is just shown to be fallacious. It's not a convincing argument. about the authenticity of the traditional ending of Mark. And with regard to comparing it to its usage in the other Gospels, we should look especially at the ending of Matthew, Matthew 28, where the same verb appears in the same uncompounded form twice in Matthew 28, just as it appears three times in the last chapter of Mark. So, anyway, with a little closer scrutiny again, I think you'll find that this vocabulary argument is not as convincing as it might appear at first blush. And if you want to read more about it, I would once again commend the book by Lund. But let's go on. He's going to hasten on and he's going to address some of the style issues. So let's listen to a little bit more from Pastor Hardy. The marked difference in vocabulary between 9 and 20 and the rest of Mark do make it difficult to believe that both came from the same author. Argument based upon style, a little bit different than vocabulary. I believe this is even a stronger argument than the vocab argument, that the style of writing points to a different author than Mark. First of all, the connection between verse 8 and verse 9 is very awkward, especially in the Greek. In the Greek, the verse 9 begins with a masculine term. It's a masculine participle that actually demands to have an antecedent that's masculine. And that antecedent that it needs is the name Jesus. But the subject of verse 8, right before it, is not Jesus. It's the women. Feminine language. So you would expect this new section, then after inserting that verse 8 about the women with language that's feminine and gender, you would expect now this section, a whole new section beginning with the word now and so forth, you would expect from a writing standpoint that they would say something like this, not now after he had risen early, but the writer would say now after Jesus had risen early on the first day, then he. So you've got the antecedent for the he's, but you don't have that here. All right, so let's talk about the arguments for style. And the first thing he mentions is problems with the transition or connection between verses eight and nine. And this is another very typical argument that you will see made against the traditional ending of Mark. And what he points to here is the fact that verse eight is talking about the women, right? It's talking about the women who were at the tomb and who are filled with fear and go away and don't say anything to anyone. And then verse nine begins with a masculine participle. And he's suggesting that there's some sort of grammatical disconnect because there's a masculine participle in verse nine, but the subjects in verse eight were the women. And let's see. How do you approach this? Well, it's just an error in reading the text. The fact that there are women in verse 8 doesn't require that when there's a new sentence that begins that the necessary antecedent for the participle are the subjects of the sentence in verse 8. In fact, grammatically in verse 9, There's an indicator, the use of a post-positive conjunction, de, after the participle, anastas, that indicates we're starting something new. The de is but or and. So it's a, it's a, it's a connecting, or it's a, it's a conjunction. Again, a post-positive conjunction appears after the first word. So we're starting a new sentence and then the masculine participle is referring back to Jesus. The point here is he does not explicitly, yes, he does not explicitly include the word Yesus or Jesus, but he assumes that the reader knows that he is referring back to Jesus by the use of this participle in verse 9. Let me just read how the King James Version, it's a translation I've got in front of me, renders Mark 16 and verse 9 It says now in Jesus and it puts Jesus in Italic and you know the King James Version it does that when the translator supplies a word that's not there in the original text, but they put in italics to tell you that so they've supplied it and Now, when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, well, the verb that's a participle is the verb for to arise. Anastas is the participle. Well, who has risen? Obviously, it's Jesus. Again, this is another place where the discussion on Elan is very helpful. If you look on pages 174 to 180 of his book, he discusses this and he actually points out that this stylistic feature is typical in Mark, that is, he very often begins sentences, particularly about Jesus, who is the primary character in the Gospel of Mark, without introducing his name. but just makes him the antecedent to a participle without explicitly including his name. Lunn in his discussion of this refers to it using a linguistic term that is called And let me just turn and read, I know there was one good paragraph I had marked in here when I read it, I was struck by in his discussion. This is it, it's on page 179. He says, let me just read the whole paragraph. He says, not to mention Jesus by name as each new section of the gospel begins might seem unusual. Several modern translations do not follow Mark literally in this respect, but add Jesus as a fairly regular practice. And he points to the NIV, the New Living Translation, and the New Century Version, in their translation of Mark 1.16, Mark 1.21, Mark 1.35, Mark 2.1, Mark 2.13, Mark 3.1, et cetera. These are all places where it's referring to Jesus, but the word, the name Jesus doesn't explicitly appear. Mark assumes that you know Jesus is the key, is the main figure. So he doesn't mention his name over and over and over again when he makes these transitions and uses a participle to refer to Jesus. Let me continue. This is, again, the quote from Lund. By merely implicit reference, Mark's custom might be perceived as almost downplaying Jesus' prominence. It has, however, been demonstrated by recent discourse studies that the opposite is, in fact, the case. And what he's saying is this is one of the ways, stylistically, that Mark uses actually, counterintuitively, to emphasize Jesus as the key figure. Some of these discourse analysis people refer to such a person in the narrative as the global VIP, a discourse participant who has a supreme status. Here's the last sentence in that paragraph on page 179 from Elan. He says, The more pervasive a character is in the narrative, the less the degree of linguistic encoding. Consequently, Mark's practice in this respect is actually granting Jesus a status in the narrative of the utmost importance. So actually contrary to what Lon, not Lon, but Pastor Hardy and others who deny the authenticity of Mark 16, nine through 20, contrary to what they're saying, the appearance of the masculine participle without the explicit mention of Jesus is actually typical of Mark and style throughout the gospel of Mark. And I would just register just, Logically, on this point, two other objections. First of all, one I would call a logical objection. If you think that the longer ending, Mark 16, 9 through 20, is a later creation, addition, some scribe invented it and somehow it got attached to the ending of Mark, And the person who wrote this ending was trying to complete the story because he felt it was incomplete. Why didn't he do a better job? Why didn't he put the name of Jesus in there? if this is your argument. So it doesn't make sense logically if you believe it was invented. It wouldn't have made sense to the original reader then either. And then secondly, I would lodge a kind of literary objection And that is that modern people, when they read an ancient work, whether it's the New Testament or the Old Testament or other works of antiquity, we often approach such things with our modern expectations. And we have modern expectations of logical coherence in a prose narrative. And our expectations don't always match up I think, with the ancient norms for literature and ancient expectations that readers had in literature. Years ago, when I was doing graduate work in the study of the New Testament, I read a book by a Jewish scholar named Robert Alter. And the book was written, I think, in 1981. It's called The Art of Biblical Narrative. And it's about the Old Testament, but a lot of the concepts and things that he discusses in there are appropriate for the study of the New Testament also. There's a chapter in that book called Composite Artistry. And he makes the point that, again, ancient writers often had different standards of logical coherence than do modern readers and writers. Let me just read one striking passage. This is on page 133 of Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative. He says, the fullness of statement they, that is ancient writers, aspired to achieve as writers, in fact, led them at times to violate what a later age and culture would be disposed to think of as canons of unity and logical coherence. The biblical text may not be the whole cloth imagined by pre-modern Judeo-Christian tradition, but the confused textual patchwork that scholarship has often found to displace such earlier views may prove, upon further scrutiny, to be purposeful pattern. end of the quote. So he's just saying sometimes what seems to be, you know, inconsistent to us may have made perfect sense to the author and may have achieved his purpose. And that might be exactly what's going on in verse nine. as to why he doesn't feel a need to explicitly refer to Jesus because Jesus is the main character. He's the one who's been raised from the dead. Of course the reader will understand when he uses the post-positive conjunction de and then the masculine participle anastasis. He's talking about Jesus being raised from the dead. Then, let's move on now to another aspect of style. We've talked about the supposed contradiction in the transition from verses 8 to 9, and he's going to mention now another supposed issue, and that is related to the description of Mary Magdalene. that also appears in verse 9. So let's listen to Pastor Carey as he discusses this issue. In fact, you have to go all the way back to verse 6 to find the mention of Jesus's name. Sorry, we got a little bit more to say about about Jesus and as he points out Jesus is mentioned directly in verse 6 But not in verse 9, but again, I'm saying that's that's part of the distinctive Markin style And in fact in verses 9 through 11 There's a lot of he's Jesus's name never even occurs at all Jesus's name doesn't even occur until all the way down to verse 19 Okay, now we're getting to the Mary Magdalene argument, so let's listen to this. She is the one, the Mary, that had seven demons cast out of her. That is inserted as an explanatory note, as if she has never been mentioned before, so you'll know who she is. She has already been mentioned, though, three times. Chapter 15, verse 40, verse 47 of chapter 15, and verse 1 of chapter 16. It's considered very unusual, stylistically, that there's all of a sudden an explanatory note for you to understand who she is. Something else in the first eight verses versus definitely written by mark You just need to know this from a style standpoint a little bit of grammar as well the conjunction Oh, let me just okay. He's moving on to to the use of the word chi the conjunction chi Let me come back to make some comments here on Mary Magdalene so so what he's saying is if you're reading or Mark 16 and you come, sorry I just dropped a book there. You're reading Mark 16 and you come to verse 9, you've got this mention of Mary Magdalene. And she's already appeared, she's already been introduced in the narrative by name earlier, including in Mark 16 and the very first verse, verse one. She's mentioned as being one of the women coming to the tomb. But then in verse 9, when she's mentioned, there is an explanation, description of her. Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. So it's, he's asking, Since Mary's already been introduced, Mary Magdalene's already been introduced in the narrative, why do we get this description of her in verse 9 as if we've never heard of her before? And isn't this inconsistent? And let me offer three responses to this. First of all, we've got the same logical problem with if the longer ending has been invented by a later scribe, why didn't he understand that he didn't need to give a description of Mary Magdalene because she's already appeared in the narrative, especially if he's copied the book. It would be a logical contradiction for him to append something that is supposedly such a grievous stylistic error. But then secondly, I'm dependent here again on Lund. He discusses this on pages 140 and 141 of his book. Lund suggests that the possibility, and I think it's a credible possibility, that actually throughout Mark 16, that the author is creating a number of parallels between the content of verses one through eight and the content of verses nine through 20. And so it's interesting that verse one starts with a reference to Mary Magdalene. And then verse nine also has a reference to Mary Magdalene. And so he actually sees this as possibly part of Mark's style. He has a number of parallels between the material in verses one through eight and the material verses nine through 20. But I think more importantly, he notes that this supposed delayed description, the little description of Mary Magdalene is actually something that is fairly common in biblical narrative, particularly in the Old Testament. And let me just turn to his discussion on pages 140 and 141. He gives a number of examples of places in the biblical narrative where you have, particularly in the Old Testament, a character mentioned And then only later in the narrative is there fuller information given about that character. So let me just look at some of the examples that he cites. He gives an example of Joshua. So Joshua is mentioned in the book of Joshua in the Old Testament in chapter 1 verse 1, Joshua son of Nun. But then at the very end of the narrative, in chapter 24, verse 29, he's described as Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of the Lord. So obviously, if you've been reading the book of Joshua, you already know who he is. You know he's the servant of the Lord. But still, at the very end of the narrative, there is a fuller description of this person who's been a key character within the narrative. He also gives the example in 2 Kings of Gehazi, who was the servant of Elisha. And he's simply called, in 2 Kings 4.12, Gehazi, his servant. But then in chapter five, verse 20, there's an expanded description. He's called Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God. So there's an expanded description that appears after the initial mention. He also gives the example of Ruth in the book of Ruth, where she's described as Naomi's daughter-in-law. But then later she's described as, in a fuller form, as the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law. And he gives several other examples. I'm not going to list any more. You can look at his book. So actually this delayed description of Mary Magdalene might well be a narrative device that is typical of the Old Testament and typical of Jewish narrative writing. And so not necessarily a sign of the inauthenticity of Mark 16, nine through 20. He got started here on the conjunction chi, And the conjunction chi, as you know, is very common. Well, maybe you don't know, but anyways, the conjunction and or chi is common in Mark's gospel. And he's going to make an argument that it doesn't appear as frequently in verses 9 through 20 as it does in other places in Mark, including verses 1 through 8. So let's listen to him make that argument. And, which is the Greek word chi, K-A-I, that is used to start at the beginning of a sentence or a clause, it's not always translated in English. In fact, many times it's not. It's a signal in Greek, kai. It occurs in the first eight verses about once per verse. When you get to the last 12 verses, it suddenly is hidden sometimes, you don't see it in the English text, but suddenly it is only once every two to three verses. And yet that has been a style of Mark all leading up to this point. I'm not going to spend as much time on this one. I think once again, you've got the issue of you've got to compare similar passages throughout the Gospel of Mark and note the frequency of the use of chi. And my guess is you would find some passages where there would be greater frequency, you know, once per verse or more than one use per verse. And you might find other passages where the frequency would still be Uh, it would still be there, but it would be, uh, use less frequency. And some of that just depends on the type of narrative that's being conveyed. So I, again, I don't find that to be a necessarily, um, convincing argument, but, uh, he's going to move on to yet another, um, stylistic argument, um, arguing that the style of March 16, 9 through 20, is more prosaic and not as graphic as the rest of the Gospel of Mark. So, let's listen to him proceed to that argument. Moreover, there is a striking contrast between the graphic style of Mark. As we've been going through Mark, it's very graphic, it's very colorful. This last section is considered something very different from that. It's not graphic and colorful. It's a prosaic style that's summarizing some things. There are some biblical scholars named Bratcher and Nida, and I'll quote them a couple of times tonight. They put it this way, listen. The narrative in 9 through 20 is concise and barren, lacking the vivid and lifelike details so characteristic of Mark and historical narrative. Because of these issues of style, even one of the staunch supporters of the idea that 9 through 20 do belong to Mark, a man named Stonehouse, All right, so let me tackle this last argument he puts forward about style. I guess basically what I would say on this is these judgments sound to me to be very subjective. What makes one person decide that Some narrative is graphic and another narrative is prosaic. I mean, this is a completely subjective judgment. Are you telling me that Mark 69 through 20 when it's talking about picking up snakes and drinking poison, that's not graphic? That sounds pretty graphic to me. So, again, I, you know, respectfully would say that I think that is a subjective judgment, and one person might say it's graphic another person might say it's not. I think it's it's it's curious here that the citation he uses from Bradshaw and NIDA. And I'm guessing he's referring to what's called the Translator's Handbook on the Gospel of Mark that they co-wrote. The Nida here is Eugene Nida, who was a leading advocate for dynamic equivalency in translation. obviously a supporter of the modern critical text. So, you know, duh, it's not surprising when somebody who is an advocate for the modern critical text and an advocate for dynamic equivalent translation, that he doesn't believe Mark 16, nine through 20 is a legitimate ending of Mark. So it's not surprising that he supposedly finds that the style is not Marken. You know, it would have been more convincing if he had given us a longer quotation or citation from someone who defended the style and then we could have compared the two quotations. He makes a reference to Stonehouse, I'm assuming this is Ned Stonehouse who taught at Westminster, how he also said the style was different, but he also notes that Stonehouse still defended the authenticity of Mark 16 9 through 20. So obviously he may have said the style was different. Their authors can vary their styles, but the fact that they vary their styles doesn't mean that they are not the people who wrote the passage. We might say a style in one place in the gospel might be different than the style in another place. But it doesn't mean it's not the same author. And I'm not even sure, like I said, I'm ready to grant the style of Mark 16, 9 through 20 is different. I think there are a lot of things that argue for the style being very Markian. I've already mentioned a few of those. All right, finally, let's move on to the issues that are raised by Pastor Hardy with regard to content. We've talked about vocabulary. We've talked about style. And lastly here, he's going to talk about some issues related to content. So he's going to mention several things, starting with the reference in Mark to the meeting in Galilee that is supposedly unfulfilled in Mark 16, 9 through 20. But let's pick up his commentary on problems with the content of the traditional ending. Argument based on content, and I believe this is the most significant issue. I'll give you several examples of some issues related to content. In verses 1 to 8, the angel told the woman to go tell the disciples and Peter that Jesus, risen from the dead, was going to meet them somewhere. We talked about that. There was going to be an arranged meeting in Galilee. Mark points that out very specifically. So if Mark was going to continue writing about appearances of Jesus, it would be natural to expect. that he's going to mention then this meeting in Galilee in verses 9 through 20 never mentioned that by name. There are some appearances, but it's never in their summaries, it's never said where they occurred. All right, so this is another very common objection to the authenticity of the ending of Mark. And indeed, if you look at the Gospel of Mark, if you look starting in chapter 14 and verse 28, there is a prophecy or a statement to the disciples that is made by Jesus that he will appear to them in Galilee, where he says in verse 28 of Mark 14, But after that i am risen i will go before you into galilee and then likewise in mark 16 and verse 7 The angel tells the women disciples, but go your way tell his disciples and peter That he goeth before you into galilee there shall you see him as he said unto you And so the objection that is raised is that uh If Mark 16, 9 through 20 is authentic, why doesn't it have essentially the fulfillment of these statements that are made earlier in Mark? So how do we respond to that? Those of us who defend the traditional ending of Mark as authentic, how do we respond to that? I would say first of all, once again, there's a problem with the people who challenge the ending who say it was a scribal addition. If it was a scribal addition that was created for the purposes of giving an appropriate ending to Mark, and they And it was so important that there be the fulfillment of these statements, then why didn't the authors who supposedly created this supply it to give this satisfying ending? So that's a perennial logical problem. with those who believe that Mark 16, 9 through 20 is a later scribal edition. If it is, they didn't do a very good job, right, because they didn't supposedly include this thing that was so essential that there had to be the fulfillment of these statements of the appearances in Galilee. Secondly, though, we do have descriptions of the appearances of Jesus to his disciples in Mark 16, 9 through 20. And it's very possible that Mark simply assumed that his readers would know that at least some of these appearances took place in Galilee. Just because he doesn't explicitly, we don't have the word, you know, this happened at Galilee, that doesn't mean that Mark didn't assume that his readers would know this. So that some of the appearances, the fulfillment of the statements that Jesus made, that he would appear to the disciples in Galilee, this was implicitly understood as being fulfilled. This is a place, by the way, that Lund discusses this whole issue, the Galilee reference on pages 319 to 325. This is a place where I'm not in total agreement with Lund's analysis. He suggests the possibility that Mark used a literary device called telescoping, where an author would combine multiple events and describing one event. I'm less inclined to adopt that solution because I think it inherently is problematic if you affirm the historical reliability and the infallibility of scripture. And it doesn't really even answer this objection because there is no reference to Galilee. But anyways, I think we can assume that Mark assumes that his readers will know that these appearances happen in Galilee and therefore they are being fulfilled. And then I would just add to that a third point. And it's returning back to one I've made earlier, and that is we don't always comprehend the purpose of the ancient author. We might think it would make the most logical sense for there to be an explicit reference to Galilee, but obviously the inspired author didn't think that that was necessary. And I was thinking of a parallel in the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, you know, at the end, When Paul is on trial he appeals to Caesar and so he's sent to Rome to stand trial before Caesar. There's even a point in Acts 27 where he's on the ship and an angel speaks to him to give him comfort and the angel says, this is Acts chapter 27 verse 24, the angel says, fear not thou must be brought to Caesar. And you might expect at that point that when you get to Acts 28, there's going to be a narration of the trial before Caesar. But as you know, Acts ends in Acts 28 with Paul in prison for two years under house arrest, freely preaching and teaching about Jesus. But the trial before Caesar is never explicitly narrated. And that may be a parallel to what happened here in Mark, where there isn't an explicit mention of Galilee or an explicit mention of the fulfillment of the Statements that are made earlier in the narrative. Although again, I think they are fulfilled and I think most likely that there's an implicit understanding that some of these appearances happen in Galilee and Then I'll just add, finally, that it's kind of humorous, I think, for Hardy and others to make this objection because they believe that Mark ends at Mark 16, 8. And so if you take their position that Mark ends at Mark 16, 8, Um, that means there are no resurrection appearances and we'll come back to this ultimately in this review, but it certainly doesn't, um, solve the problem of the references earlier in Mark, including in Mark 16, seven to Jesus appearing to the disciples in Galilee. Cause there are no resurrection appearances at all. So you talk about an unsatisfying illogical ending. the most Unsatisfying a logical ending is to think that it ends at 16 8 with no resurrection appearances of Jesus at all So that's the first content issue that he raises the next one. He's going to raise relates to Again a very common argument. He's going to suggest that that the ending of Mark was just an attempt of some scribe to summarize other material found in other Gospels, to summarize the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene from the Gospel of John, to summarize the appearance of Jesus to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, or the Great Commission in Mark 28. And the scribe just tried to summarize these things and even threw in a reference to the ascension of Jesus that's in throughout Christian tradition. So let's listen to him as he makes this second argument based on content and see if we can offer some responses. And on that note, this is what many scholars would conclude. Verses 9 through 20 is a summary of various other passages of scripture. Passages we find in Matthew, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, and 1 Corinthians. That's why some of the language is found in those other books. It's best to see verses 9 through 11, for example. 9 through 11 is someone's summary of John chapter 20, verses 11 to 18. So Mark 16 verses 9 to 11 is. the description of Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene. So it says in Mark 16, 9, And when Jesus was risen early in the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And she went and told them that had been with him as they mourned and wept. And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and it's seen of her believe not. So he's saying that is paralleled by John 20 verses 11 through 18 which is the account of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene after he was raised from the dead. It's his summary of something from John chapter 20. Verses 12 to 13 are a summary of a very lengthy section of Luke. A lot of verses in Luke. Luke 24, verses 13, all the way to 35. This author summarized that long section of Luke in verses 12 and 13, even though there's some inconsistencies between the two. All right, so Mark 16, verses 12 and 13 states as follows. After that, he appeared in another form. unto two of them as they walked and went into the country, and they went and told it unto the residue, neither believed they them." And he's saying that was just the scribes summation of Luke 24, 13 through 35, Jesus appearing to Cleopas and the other unnamed disciple on the road to Emmaus. And let's continue. Verses 14 to 18 are a summary of Matthew 28, 16 to 20. In fact, verse 15 is roughly parallel to what we call the Great Commission that's found in Matthew 18, verse 19. So again, here he says that Mark 16, verses 14 through 18, which includes verse 15, where Jesus says, go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That's just a summary of Matthew 28, 16 through 20, which includes Matthew's version of the Great Commission and some scribe just tried to summarize that here in Mark. And then he'll deal here with the final two verses, Mark 16, 19, and 20. Verses 19 through 20 deal with the Ascension. Now that is a very important doctrine, no doubt about it. It is a doctrine that was cherished by the Apostolic Church, and that's proven by the many references to the Ascension in Acts, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrews, Revelation. So this is being summarized by this unknown writer, that cherished doctrine of the Ascension in the session of Christ, seated at the right hand of God, verses 19 through 20. But, verse 20, says something that's not found in any of the other Gospels. And thus it sounds more like a summary statement from the book of Acts, of the Acts of the Apostles, verse 20. And maybe a summary of some things even from Paul's writings. In fact, if you look at verse 20, there are three terms there that I want to call your attention to. In the translation I'm using, it's the term worked with them, the word confirmed, and the word followed. Those three terms, worked with them, confirmed, and follow. Those are three of the terms that I referred to earlier that are not found anywhere else in Mark. They are found. All right, let me go back and try to respond to some of this now. So, again, this is a very common objection. The traditional ending of Mark, Mark 69 through 20, is just an amalgam. Some later scribe thought the ending wasn't satisfying at verse 8, and he just went back and Read the other gospels and was familiar with other things in the New Testament. He just sort of created this patchwork Summaries, so how do we respond to this? And the first thing I would say is I'm troubled by this interpretation because it assumes I think a bias that exists in modern secular academic historic criticism. And that is, it assumes that these gospel writers didn't know, didn't have a uniform understanding of the story of Jesus or the history of Jesus. And they didn't know the material, the traditions that were represented in the other gospels. So what he's saying essentially is, what underlying it is, not just he in particular, but I'm saying that evangelicals have imbibed this because of being influenced by the modern historical critical method. Is there saying that there isn't continuity in early Christianity? That would it make sense for Mark to know about the appearance of Jesus to the disciples on the road to Emmaus or to know about Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene because the Emmaus scene was only known by Luke or the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene was only known by John. It undermines the view again of a unified Catholicity and continuity in early Christianity. Then secondly, I would say it doesn't make sense to me because if they're saying that this scribe was trying to summarize the material in the various other Gospels, he doesn't take things verbatim, let's say from John's account of Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene. He doesn't include the dialogue that Jesus has with Mary where she thinks he's the gardener and asks where the body of Jesus has been taken. None of that is included. Nor is there any other of the sort of special features that are there in John's Gospel. There's no mention of Thomas and his doubts. There's no mention of Jesus' appearance to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, to Jesus' conversation with Peter where Peter is restored. So there's not evidence here that Mark 16 9 through 20 was borrowing Huge chunks from the gospel John and that's the it's certainly not that or that even that he borrowed this account of Mary Magdalene the alternative possibility is that the the ending of Mark is written by Mark and he knows the tradition that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene because it happened and and because it was known in Christian circles and in Christian tradition. I can say the same thing about Jesus' appearance to the disciples on the road to Emmaus. He's assuming some scribe borrowed from Luke 24, but the alternative possibility is that Mark, the author of this gospel, knew of the appearance of Jesus to these disciples, and he gives a summary statement of it. He also doesn't take into consideration those who don't hold this view that the typical view that Luke is written later than Mark as he tells us in his historical introduction Luke 1 verses 1 through 4 and that he made use of sources and eyewitnesses and other material The other possibility is that, not that Mark, or what they assumed to be a scribe who created the shorter ending, the longer ending rather, that he borrowed from Luke. The other possibility is that Luke used Mark and used this brief account and expanded on it, much as we can take the example of the very brief description that Mark has of the temptation narrative, just a couple of verses. but both Matthew and Luke expand upon that and include the narrative of the three specific temptations and so it could be another example of a place if the longer ending is authentic where Luke expands upon material that was originally recorded by Mark. Then I would add to this I just think that the argument here related to the vocabulary seems to me, in verse 20, to be a particularly weak argument. He mentions three words here in verse 20, three terms. One is to work with, to confirm, and to follow. You know, they're all writing in the Greek language and if sometimes here in Mark, Mark uses a couple of words that also show up in Paul or in the writings of Luke or in Hebrews or somewhere else. You know, it just means that it's common Greek vocabulary. It's not, these aren't unusual expressions. And I've already, previously in this review, I mentioned the fact that parakalutho in particular is, the root of that word is known by Mark. He uses the root of it, akalutho, to follow many times earlier in the material that's undisputed in Mark. And so I find that, again, to be a particularly unconvincing, unsatisfying argument. Well, he's going to go on and mention a few other content issues. So let's pick up again with Pastor Hardy. It's very, very possible some of the summary of 1920 even came from some of Paul's writings. Now, that's just a taste of some of the content issues, but I want to go back to 9 through 20. I want to drill down a little bit deeper on two content issues especially. That verse 14, rebuke by Jesus of the apostles, that actually is a very, in the grammar, is a particularly severe rebuke. In fact, that rebuke is more severe than any other rebuke Okay, so he moves on to another content issue so he wants to drill down on this one in particular and he makes reference to mark and Chapter 16 verse 14 which says afterward he that is Jesus appeared Unto the eleven as they sat at meat and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart Because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen and he says this is just not possible for the authentic mark because It's too harsh. It's too severe and There's never anything this harsh that is ever said to the disciples. And how could Jesus have possibly said this to the disciples after the resurrection? Again, we've got a basic logical problem with this because if Mark 16, 9 through 20 was supposedly invented by a scribe as a satisfying ending to Mark, why did this supposed inventor think that this was appropriate to have at the ending of Mark? But anyways, more to the point, is this really so harsh? Is this really harsher than the rebuke that Jesus gave to Peter? Back at Caesarea Philippi and Mark 8 after Peter had confessed you are the Christ, but then He tried to dissuade Jesus from saying that the Son of Man was going to suffer And what did Jesus say to him if you look at Mark chapter 8 and verse 33 Jesus said Get thee behind me Satan for thou savest not the things that be of God but the things that be of men and Mark 8 and which no one disputes is authentic for Mark. Jesus calls Peter Satan. Is that really harsher than the description we have in Mark 16, verse 14, where it says that he upbraided them for their unbelief? What about the Gospel of Matthew? In Matthew 28, verse 17, he makes mention that after Jesus appeared to the disciples that some doubted. Um, isn't that, uh, actually a historical memory that's preserved both in Matthew 28 and in Mark 16 of the fact that even after the resurrection, Jesus had to exhort the disciples and he had to make proof of his resurrection. We can even compare that to John and the appearance to Thomas. It seems to be completely consistent with the traditional Christian kerygma, the traditional Christian preaching about the resurrection. And then I would just add, he makes a reference to the language here, and the noun unbelief is used, apostia, and this is actually a Markan word. It appears in Mark chapter six, verse six. It appears in Mark chapter nine, verse 24. And he also makes reference to the phrase hardness of heart, sclerocardia. This is also a Markan word. It appears in Mark 10 5. Now, granted, there it's in reference to the Pharisees, but that makes it even more intriguing. saying to the disciples who were doubting and whom he had to upbraid even after his resurrection, listen, you've got the same hardness of heart as the Pharisees had. So the Markan language, the Markan style, Here is you know consistent with what we have found elsewhere in the gospel of Mark, so I I don't think that this argument about Mark chapter 16 verse 14 is Can be substantiated so let's move on he's going to make one more argument based on content, and he's going to address Mark 16 verses 17 and 18 let's listen have agreed that rebuke seems out of place after the resurrection. Again, I don't think that rebuke is out of place after the resurrection for the reason that just said, but now let's move on. The disciples are getting over the shock and they're starting to be filled with joy. And neither of the words used there, the terms for unbelief in verse 14 and the term for hardness of heart is ever used by Jesus of his disciples anywhere else. I got a little bit ahead of myself. I'd written my notes down. And yes, as I said, okay, maybe these words aren't used of the disciples, but they are Mark and words. And again, he uses them of, of other people who were questioning, uh, the legitimacy of Jesus as a Messiah earlier in the narrative and actually might be of some rhetorical significance that now he's using the same language to upbraid the disciples, to move them to a place of sincere faith here at the very ending of the gospel. But there's an even bigger one for me, and probably for some of you. It's the content of verses 17 and 18. Very interesting verses. Verses 17 and 18, I think, are the most significant dilemma from a content standpoint. And those two verses have given rise to much grief, much misunderstanding, and I would say even pain and death. Jesus here is represented as having promised five signs that would accompany those who believe. Not just the apostles, it says, mind you, but all those who believe. Five signs, the power to expel demons, the ability to speak in new languages, the ability to speak up venomous snakes without being physically harmed, the gift of being able to drink deadly poison without being hurt, and the power to place hands on the sick who will then recover. Those five signs. Now, there is no special difficulty dealing with at least two of them, maybe even three, especially the two about expelling demons and healing the sick. Jesus did impart such gifts to his disciples. And they did make good use of them. You see that in Matthew 10, Mark 9, Luke 10, several chapters in Acts. But what is interesting about that, here it says, by laying on of hands. It's also true that no laying on hands is mentioned anywhere else in the Gospels when it came to healing somebody. All right, let's, let me just pause here. We get too far ahead of myself. So he says that the real problem, the biggest problem is with Mark 16 verses 17 and 18. And this is what those verses say. Jesus says to the disciples, he says, and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name. Shall they cast out devils? They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents. And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. And he takes exception to this. I think one thing just related to hermeneutics, he doesn't believe that this is addressed to the apostles. He believes this is addressed to all the disciples. I don't think that's accurate. I think if you look at the context and if you go back to verse 14, this is in a setting where he is speaking to the 11, the Hendeka. If you look in verse 14, they're there. Afterward, he appeared under the 11 as they sat at meat. And then verse 15, and he said unto them, this is addressed to the 11. This is not addressed to all disciples. And this is fundamental, I think, to what I believe is Pastor Hardy's misunderstanding. The signs that are described here are not general signs for all Christians, but they are in fact signs of the apostles, things that were given to the apostles to do. And I think that's really key because later on, in keeping with most people who are in the Bible church movement, conservative Baptists, he is a cessationist and he wants to refute continuationism. And one thing I don't understand about people who are cessationists and who want to cast doubts on the traditional ending of Mark, is I think that they are robbing themselves of one of our key passages that supports cessationism. Because this passage teaches what Jesus said to the eleven, to the apostles. And when it says in verse 20 that they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following, that's an evidence of the particular and extraordinary blessings and giftings given to the apostles, but not necessarily given to all other Christians. Now he makes a reference as well, and I stopped it here, he's going to go on and talk about some of these things in the passage that follows. He's going to talk about the fact that, or he may mention the fact that nowhere else are there references to laying hands on the sick to heal them. And I think he's talking about the apostles laying hands on the sick. But certainly, if we look through the Gospel of Mark, Jesus touched or placed his hands upon the sick and healed them. And let me just look at a few passages, Mark chapter 5 and verse 23. It says, this is when the Jairus was attempting to get Jesus to come and see his sick daughter. It says in verse 23 and besought him greatly saying, my little daughter lies at the point of death. I pray thee come and lay thy hands on her that she may be healed and she shall live. Likewise in Mark chapter six, verse five, It says of Jesus when he was in his home country in Nazareth, it says he could do there no mighty work save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. Likewise in Mark 8 verses 23 and 25 there's the account of the blind man and there's it's sometimes called a two-stage healing where Jesus puts his hands on the man We're told in verse 23 and, uh, he saw, um, men like trees walking. And then it says in verse 25, he put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look up and he was restored and saw every man clearly. So certainly, uh, Jesus lays his hands on sick persons and they're healed. And the assumption is that the apostles would be able to do the same things that Jesus did. Along these lines, and I wrote about this recently in my blog, Go to the book of Acts in Acts chapter nine. And you'll see there that Ananias lays his hands on Paul and to restore his sight after Jesus appears to him on the road to Demas. I actually don't think that's a healing either. I think it's more like an ordination, but it's an example of someone who's an apostolic associate, I believe, Laying his hands on on someone and his sight being restored So anyways, let's listen to a little bit more and these were I admit these verses are controversial no doubt about it But I believe they are authentic. And again, I think they're They're a great Piece of evidence for the argument that supports cessationism Let's listen to a little bit more It's never mentioned as something the apostles did when they healed someone. What is mentioned, I think it's Mark chapter 6, there is a mention at least once of anointing someone with oil. Yeah, that's in Mark 6.13, but again, go back and see all the references to Jesus laying his hands on the sick and then being healed. So what they did do is not mentioned here, and what they did not do anywhere else is mentioned here. So this mention of laying on of hands does seem to be borrowed from other passages, particularly from Acts chapter 28 verse 8, where you do have this incident of Paul laying hands on somebody. A man named Publius, his sick father, Paul laid hands on him. And Paul is an apostle. What is recorded in Mark 16, 17, 18 is spoken to the Hendeca, to the 11. Paul's going to be, Matthias is going to be added in Acts 1 to complete the 12. Paul is sort of a 13th apostle, but Acts 28 is absolutely in continuity with the content of Mark 16 verses 17 and 18. And this is another reason to prove its authenticity. And it's also completely consistent with the descriptions of Jesus laying his hands on the sick and healing them within the gospel of Mark itself. But nevertheless, at least there are occurrences of casting out demons and healing people. As far as speaking new languages, which that's what this is referring to, it's not gibberish. We know that from scripture. We studied that before here on Sunday, on Wednesday nights, that the gift of tongues in the New Testament is not a private prayer language. It's not gibberish, anything like that. Anything that goes on in those categories today has nothing to do with the biblical definition of speaking in tongues. It's speaking new languages, known languages. As far as that's concerned, What's interesting about that is the gift is not mentioned anywhere else in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, except this one verse, that gift of tongues. It certainly did, though, take place. We see it in Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 10, Acts chapter 19, 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. We studied here on Wednesday night, discussed the use and abuse of this gift. Let me just add something that just came to mind. Just because something is mentioned only one time in a gospel doesn't mean it's illegitimate or it's inappropriate for that gospel. Let me just take an example. Matthew's gospel is the only gospel that tells us that the wise men came to visit the infant Jesus and they brought the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Historians would call this single attestation. Because that's only attested in one place, Does that mean it's not authentic? Because it's not mentioned in the other Gospels? Because it's not mentioned in Paul's writings? Of course not. And just because this only appears, there's a reference to speaking in tongues only here at the end of Mark's Gospel, and maybe there isn't such an explicit reference in the other Gospels, although there is in the rest of the Christian tradition, like Acts, like Paul's writings, 1 Corinthians 14, etc. The fact though that it just appears explicitly in Mark, is that some kind of evidence against it? I don't think so. In fact, it shows the catholicity of this ending of Mark and its continuity with Christian tradition. About the validity of those three gifts, which I understand is an issue. is still an issue, whether those gifts still operate today. So instead of seeking to make the case here tonight about that, I'm simply going to say this. They are not for today, and I've already taught on that here. Let me give you some quotes. Yeah, again, I already said, I think it's kind of my mind self defeating. for someone who's a cessationist to argue so strongly against the authenticity of the ending of Mark. Because like I said, I think this is one of our greatest weapons in our arsenal against the continuationist. And this brought to mind a passage in Edward Hill's book, The King James Version Defended. And I've turned to this a couple other times, I think in this in various messages that I've given on the ending of Mark and cessationism. But this is on page 168 in Hill's book, The King James Version Defended. and where he discusses the traditional ending of Mark. And he says, it is sometimes said that the last 12 verses of Mark are not really important, so it makes little difference whether they are accepted or rejected. This, however, is hardly the case. For Mark 16, 9 through 20 is the only passage in the Gospels which refers specifically to the subject which is attracting so much attention today, namely tongues, healing, and other spiritual gifts. The last verse of this passage is particularly decisive. Mark 16, 20, he's talking about. Here we see the purpose of the miracles promised by our Lord was to confirm the preaching of the divine word by the apostles. Of course, then, these signs ceased after the apostles' death. Today we have no need of them. The Bible is the all-sufficient miracle. And if we take this high view of the Bible, we cannot possibly suppose that the ending of one of the gospels has been completely lost. But the point here, again, is If you want to defend cessationism, why in the world would you not see Mark 16 9 through 20 as being completely consistent with other passages that support the cessationist position as the New Testament teaching? He's going to talk a little bit more about the picking up snakes and the drinking of poison and which I believe If I could say respectfully, he sort of misses the point on this, but let's listen to what he says and I'll come back and offer some comments. In connection with these three gifts, once again, B.B. Warfield, very respected theologian, he states this, these gifts were part of the credentials of the apostles as the authoritative agents of God in founding the church. They necessarily passed away with it. Early church fathers, Chrysostom, Augustine, both taught that the gifts had ceased by their day. Jonathan Edwards said this, these extra gifts were given in order to the founding and establishing of the church in the world. But since the canon of scripture has been completed and the church fully founded and established, these extraordinary gifts have ceased. as well, that is the view of many other respected theologians throughout church history. Amen, I agree with Chris System and Edwards and Warfield and the others he's going to cite that I agree that the Bible teaches cessationism. Again, I think that is completely consistent with the ending of Mark. Henry, George Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon, Abraham Kuyper and so on. That is the position of our church. But the primary problem to address is that this ending mentions those two other signs, handling serpents and drinking poison. Right? I mean, that's what the rub is for most people. Those who accept the ending as fully inspired and infallible scripture do have to do something with those two. In fact, I'll tell you, they work hard to find those two fulfilled elsewhere in scripture. And they say they find confirmation in two verses, Luke chapter 10, verse 19, Acts chapter 28, verse 3. Luke chapter 10, 19, Jesus tells his disciples something about treading on serpents and they'll be protected. That's not the same thing. I mean, even if you don't like snakes, I think you would agree that treading on one and picking up and handling one are not the same. And that's true. Treading on serpents, not picking them up deliberately. In Acts 28 verse 3, both those verses I gave you have some sort of, they say, confirmation on the serpent side of things, not the poison side. Acts 28 verse 3 is where Paul picked up a bunch of sticks, and after he placed them on the fire, as we know that narrative, a snake came out, fastened itself on his hand, he shook it off without any physical harm to himself, But that's not what this is talking about. Paul did not deliberately pick up a venomous snake and make a video of it and put it on YouTube. That's the two confirmations in the Bible that they try to find for the promise here of safety dealing with serpents. What about drinking deadly poisons without harm? Even a couple of staunch supporters of the ending, including Linsky, are forced to confess that the New Testament offers no example of this whatsoever. Okay. Let's, let me talk a little bit about the, these two issues. So we've got these famous references to, you will pick up. So let me, let me just read it so I don't miss state it. This is a Mark 16 verse 18. They shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, It shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. Now, again, I'm stressing the fact that I think in context, this is referring to the apostles. It's addressed to them. They're gathered in verse 14, and it says in verse 15, and he said unto them. Now, in verse 17, it says, and these signs shall follow them that believe. And he and others take this then to have this be a reference to all believers. But again, there's been this constant theme throughout Mark 16 of the apostles being unbelieving in the face of the resurrection of Jesus. And indeed, this has been what has been very sophisticatedly developed here. Think about the appearance to Mary Magdalene, and she goes and reports to the apostles. And what does it say in verse 11? And they, when they had heard that he was alive and had been seen of her, believed not. The they there is the apostles. And then it says of the two on the road to Emmaus, right? In verse 13. It says, and they went and told it under the residue, neither believed they them, believed. And then you've got Jesus upbraiding them for their unbelief in verse 14. And so he speaks to them. And then he says, then he says unto them, these signs shall follow them that believe. And I think in context here, he's talking about those apostles who believe in the resurrection and then are gifted with these extraordinary apostolic gifts. Certainly we believe that it is wrong Those in the Appalachian hollows or wherever they are who think that this passage sanctions handling snakes or testing the providential care of God by drinking deadly poisons. Certainly, we think that is wrong. Now, we do believe, however, that that was something that was said to the apostles and it was a promise made to the apostles. I believe that the incident with Paul in Acts 28 is in part related to this promise in Mark 16. I think, although he doesn't lift up a snake, but he is bitten by a snake as he's gathering the wood. He does survive a snake bite. He does survive taking this poison into his body. Lund has an interesting discussion of this. He believes that these are also allusions to the Old Testament, that the disciples, the apostles, are going to be like the prophets of old. They're going to be like Moses, who picked up snakes before Pharaoh, or they're going to be like Elisha, who ate the poison that was in the pot and survived it. I'm not sure, he may have gone a little too far with that, but it's a possibility at least. But the main point is a promise to the apostles Um, and even if there aren't later descriptions of the apostles drinking poison or, or handling snakes, that sort of, that sort of misses the metaphorical point is they will have God's providential protection. He will be with them. as it says in Matthew's gospel, to the end of the world. He will be with them and he will protect them and he will provide for them. He will keep them from danger until they're able to satisfy their mission of preaching the gospel and being a foundation with Christ, the chief cornerstone of the Christian movement. Let's listen to a little bit more of what he has to say here. Ratcher and Nida again. The bizarre promise of immunity from snakes and poisonous drinks is completely out of character with the person of Christ as revealed in the Gospel of Mark, the other Gospels, and in the whole of the New Testament as well. Nowhere did Jesus exempt himself or his followers from the natural laws which govern this life, nor did he ever intimate that such exemptions would be given to those who believe in him. So what's going on today, especially in the Appalachian mountain areas, is not biblical. Yet ever so often, there is a report or a video, something on the news, something in the paper, a story of incidents of religious fanatics picking up venomous snakes and handling them or drinking deadly poisons frequently with sad results. And those who try to do this frequently seek to justify their strange behavior by appealing to this verse. I do like this quote from Ernest Thompson. Modern cultists who handle rattlesnakes and copperheads thinking that the scripture has promised them immunity are badly mistaken. I think that's a good way to say it. They're just badly mistaken. All right, well, you know, okay. Are you really saying that if you affirm the authenticity of the traditional ending of Mark, then you are the same as people who twist the scriptures and Go out and believe that they can handle snakes. I just don't think that one of those follows from the other. I accept that the traditional ending of Mark as authentic. I think Mark wrote it. I'm a cessationist. I don't believe this passage sanctions in any way, shape, or form any type of behavior like snake handling. I don't think it's a bizarre promise, however, that Jesus gives to the disciples here. In Lund's book on page 335, he has a quotation from a commentary by Lamar Williamson on Mark. And this is in a footnote, it's in footnote 57, but I was really struck by the quotation. And this is the quotation of Lamar Williamson and his marked commentary, there it appears on page 288, cited by Lunn in his book on page 335, footnote 57. Williamson says, taken literally, these verses can lead to such aberrations as snake handling sex and other forms of religious enthusiasm that occasionally cause death and often bring Christianity into disrepute. Taken seriously, however, these verses promise that those who give themselves to costly, self-denying announcement of the gospel in the world today will find their faithfulness confirmed in tangible ways. And I think he's absolutely right. That's the meaning. It's not a bizarre promise. It is a promise of God's providential provision for the proclaimers of his gospel, for his apostles. Well, I'm looking at the time and definitely this is going to take one more episode to complete this review of Pastor Hardy's sermon. Before I leave this episode though, I just jotted down a couple of notes here and I want to share with you just in general, I think some of the problems that I've seen with persons, whether scholars or pastors, who deny the authenticity of Mark 16, 9 through 20 on the basis of internal evidence. And I'm going to jot these down. I'll put them on my blog, too, if you want to go back and read them. The first problem, I think, is that often their judgments are subjective. And when you say, for example, the style here is prosaic and it's not as graphic as the rest of Mark, that's a completely subjective judgment. Secondly, I think often their conclusions are based on circular reasoning and their presuppositions. So they find words, a few words in the ending of Mark that don't appear elsewhere in the rest of Mark, and they label these as non-Markan vocabulary, and then they say therefore Mark 16 9 through 20 can't be Marken because it uses non-Marken vocabulary. Well, that's a circular argument. It's based on your presupposition. All the Gospels include words that are uniquely used by that gospel writer. But just because he uses words that aren't used elsewhere isn't a sign of inauthenticity, it's a sign of variety. We'll come back to that in just a moment. Number three, third problem. The third problem is that those who make these types of arguments about the longer ending based on internal evidence usually fail to compare Mark 16, 9 through 20 with passages of similar length within the Gospel of Mark. I dealt with that earlier. That's essential. You can't say anything definitive about the vocabulary or the style of Mark 16 9 through 20 unless you carefully compare it with other passages of similar length within the gospel. Number four, fourth problem. I think those who reject the traditional ending on the basis of their study of internal evidence Also, this is parallel to number three, they don't consider similar patterns in the other Gospels. And I mentioned the use of the verb to go, and its compounded and uncompounded forms. Actually, the usage in Mark, if you assume the authenticity of the whole from 1-1 to 16-20, the use, the uncompounded use of the verb to go And the compounded use is completely comparable to how it's used in the other Gospels. So there's benefit from comparing Usage in the other Gospels fifth problem is they don't acknowledge that these studies of internal evidence are based on a relatively small and necessarily circumscribed sample. We don't have book after book after book that Mark wrote. We only have this gospel, which is the shortest of the gospels, and so we don't have a huge cache of his written material. So some of these judgments about style and vocabulary just can't go very far because the writing sample is limited. Sixth problem with their approach. They usually do not take into consideration the possibility of authorial variation in style. That is, writers use a variety of style. I mean, when you took writing in high school or in college, You were probably told, don't be redundant, vary your style, don't say the same things, don't repeat the same things over and over, use the same words over and over. And certainly, ancient authors also could demonstrate some variety in their style. And if there is, again, I'm not necessarily granting that there's that much variety in the style of Mark 16, 9 through 20. But even if there is some variety, it doesn't mean that Mark didn't write it. And then last, seventh problem that I noted with those who challenged the ending of Mark on the basis of internal evidence. I think they often do not consider the possibility that some of the unique elements, like unique vocabulary, might be the result of the author's use of sources or common traditions. So these gospel writers were drawing on sources. Mark, according to tradition, we have all the traditional view, was not one of the original apostles. According to many of the church fathers, he sat at the feet of Peter and listened to Peter and wrote his gospel. Maybe listen to other apostles, others who carried on authentic traditions about Jesus, and maybe he used some of those sources throughout the gospel. Maybe that explains some of the places where the supposedly non-Markan vocabulary shows up. He's not writing in isolation from everything else that's happening in early Christianity. Well, we've begun the review of Pastor Hardy on internal evidence. I think we made it up to the 48-minute mark. maybe 12, 13, 14 more minutes to go in the sermon. And so I will come back and do one more. So instead of a three-part series, it will be a four-part series. I hope that you're finding this helpful and edifying. Sorry it's taken so long. I hope we have tried to make Word magazine great again. and I look forward to presenting another episode to complete this review series very soon. Till then, take care and God bless. As the deer seeks flowing rivers, so I long for you, O God. How my soul longs for His presence, for the ever-living God. When shall I behold His face in His holy dwelling place? Now I feed on tears from weeping, while they say, is your God sleeping? All these things I call to memory and I ponder in my heart How with throngs I moved rejoicing to His temple's sacred court Why my soul be in despair? Why this worry and this care? Open, God, my soul's salvation Him I'll praise with jubilation my heart despairs within me, then will I recall once more as the headwaters of Jordan from the mount of Herm and Por. Deep to deep roars out its sound, waves and rapids surging round. In the day God's love comes freely, and at night His song is with me. To my God, my rock, I murmur, How could you forget me, how? All my foes, oppressors, taught me, Where's your God, they ask me now. Why my soul be in despair, Why this worry and this care? Hope in God, my soul, salvation, Him I'll praise with jubilation.