The Word of God has been under attack for centuries. Back in the Old Testament, when Jehoiakim took out his penknife and cut out parts of the scripture in Jeremiah 36. But I would say that the attacks that we know today are not just from those who are blatantly outside of Christendom, they are sometimes from those who may be within the borders of what we regard as Christianity. Many people today would hold that the Bible contains the Word of God, but they would maybe feel uncomfortable in the statement that the Bible is the Word of God. And that is an essential thing, that every word in the Hebrew Mesoretic and Greek we trust is inspired and therefore worthy of a translation. Malcolm Watts in his article that's published by the Trinitarian Bible Society called The Lord Gave the Word says, The Bible is the eternal Word of God. It has been given by God to man that it might be the absolute, supreme, authoritative, infallible, and unchangeable standard for faith and practice. That's the high view, a wonderful, glorious view of the Word of God. And the Bible has its origin, of course, in divine self-revelation, through its embodiment in written form by supernatural inspiration. And Malcolm Watts goes on to say, it is our firm belief that although the storms of criticism continue to rage against God's word, the humble believer's confidence in it is justifiable, and this sacred volume will always be the book of God. Trinitarian Bible Society would urge, seek to uphold the doctrines of both inspiration and preservation. Louis Garcon, well known a man in Luzon and a great individual. I'd urge you to look up some of his writings. He once identified these twin doctrines in this way. He said that inexplicable power which the divine spirit put forth of old authors of the Holy Scripture in order to their guidance in employment of the words that they use and to preserve them alike from all error and omission. So, that's just by way of introduction. I wanna talk a bit about the history because it's important. It's important to understand where the Trinitarian Bible Society came out from and where we are now. In 1800, a 15-year-old Welsh girl named Mary Jones wanted a Bible. She'd been saving her money for six years to buy a Bible, And when she eventually had enough, she walked 26 long miles along the rough terrain of North Wales to a place called Ballor, where she heard she could buy a Welsh Bible. There she met a man called Thomas Childs of Ballor. He was impressed by the desire of this young girl to have the word of God. And so even though he didn't have a Bible on that day, he arranged lodgings for her. She returned the next day and he gave her three Bibles for the price of one. Her story was one that gained popularity. People were aware of this young girl and how far she had walked. And he asked the question to the other church leaders in that area, if for Wales, why not for the kingdom? And if for the kingdom, why not for the world? And so that same question was brought before the Religious Track Society on the 7th of December, 1802, And following that, on the 7th of March, 1804, there was a meeting of around 300 people at the London Tavern in Bishopsgate in London, and the British and Foreign Bible Society was constituted, and among their number at the time was a man called William Wilberforce. That's how the British and Foreign Bible Society was formed. However, the British and Foreign Bible Society failed to take a biblical stand on three key matters. The first was that they permitted a Unitarian to be a member of their board. The second was they wouldn't open their meetings in prayer because they were worried about offending the Unitarians on their board. And thirdly, they included the publishing of the Apocrypha in their Bibles, no doubt as an indulgence to the Roman Catholic support that they were receiving. Following this, on the 7th of December 1831, 2,000 people left the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Trinitarian Bible Society was formed in Exeter Hall in London. This new Bible Society opened its meeting in prayer and committed to publishing the Word of God without the Apocrypha. That's how we began. Of course, in the following years, You had West Gordon Hall publishing the revised version. I think it's fair to say when it was first published, it didn't have maybe the desired impact. The greatest impact was to come just a little while later. And that was on the back of a man who was mentioned, I think, by Dr. Rideau earlier, called Nessel. In around 1904, the British and Foreign Bible Society switched switched from the Textus Receptus to the text that Nestle was going to prepare. He announced this in a lecture that he gave. He said, after long deliberation, the British and Foreign Bible Society has resolved to give up the received text, not only for its Greek editions, but also, which is still more important, the translations into foreign languages. And you see there a great move away from what they've been operating for a hundred years to the text that Nessel was preparing. He also made a very interesting observation at this very outset of him preparing this text. Maybe you wonder, was there only going to be one edition? We of course know now it's in its 28th edition. And he said, we must not think that the critical work of the text is going to be finished. That's what he said at the very outset. So, he may be, we shouldn't be surprised with what we see now with those who advocate the critical text position. So, Nessel prepared that and the great shame, I would say, and an issue across the world is thereafter, their translations were based on the critical text. And so there's a vast corpus of translations out there that are based on the critical text and dare I say it, anything approaching formal equivalence translation philosophy. And so it continues. This was revolutionary. The Society's Quarterly Record in 1906 observed this. It said, a fact so revolutionary in itself, so important in its character, and fraught with such momentous results to Bible circulation. And I believe they were right. it has had such a tremendous impact. We now live over a hundred years since that, and the main translations in most non-English settings that we go into, that TBS are working in, are places where they don't hold to the TR, and their pervading Bible is a critical text Bible. Let me give you one example, the Amharic. The Amharic is a language that is spoken in Ethiopia. There are 26 million. speakers worldwide and 21.6 million in the country of Ethiopia. They have seven Bible versions that are available to them that various missionaries have attempted. And only one is roughly based on the TR, and that's the 1886 Abba Ruby Bible that broadly adheres to the King James Bible. But sadly, the text of that Bible wasn't very well translated. I'll give you two examples. The word for synagogue in the New Testament is translated as mosque and the word for Sabbath is translated Saturday and has proved very useful for the Sabbath day Adventists in that particular part of the world. So a country like Ethiopia doesn't have a faithful Bible translation and in the Lord's goodness there's a man who is out there right now with a group of 12 pastors on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, proofreading the New Testament and Psalms that is based off the Hebrew Mesoretic and the Greek received text. And I really mention that by way of encouragement. I've mentioned to a few folks already that those who hold to the TR position can maybe be discouraged, can maybe think we're the only ones where we're relatively small gathering, are there more people? Well, I can say to you there are. There are people across this vast world in which the Lord has placed us who would hold to the Textus Receptus. I was mentioning over dinner, there's a group in Inner Mongolia who contacted the Society because they've read some of the articles and they hold to the Received Text. and they've been convinced of these things. There's brothers in Zimbabwe, there's friends in Turkey, there's vast numbers in South America who the Lord is convinced of this position. So don't feel that it is just some vague small group that hold to this. Be encouraged in that regard. And in view of the history that I've set out to you, I hope you can see why I trust and I hope that the Trinitarian Bible Society continues to stand on these things. We're only really worth supporting as far as we stand on the word of God. If we deviate, I would encourage you to go to support someone else. So do bear that in mind. We trust and we hope and we try to be faithful in our translation work. Let me mention our principles then. Some of you may have read our statement of Doctrine of Holy Scripture. This was something that was written to set out the Trinitarian Bible Society's position, so that it might be clear. And I do occasionally wonder, those who like to criticize our position, how well they've read that particular document. It's very interesting hearing, and many of you know the argument well, that if you If your church is founded upon a confession, be it the Westminster, the Savoy Declaration, or the Baptist Confession of Faith, there are those well-known words that we find, the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God and by a singular care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore antithetical and so on. This is in the preface to the Society's statement of doctrine of Holy Scripture. A clear statement, this is where we begin. The Society declares the position that he holds, that it stands for the verbal plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, and that these texts, the Hebrew Mesoretic and the Greek Received Texts of Scripture, reflect the qualities of God-breathed Scripture, including being authentic, holy, pure, true, infallible, trustworthy, excellent, self-authenticating, necessary, sufficient, perpiscuous, self-interpreting, authoritative, and inerrant. This statement is such that those, and if you happen to be a member of the Society, you should have already read it because you agreed to it when you signed up to be a member. So you should know off by heart. But this statement I hope is a clear, and I often go back to it when interacting with people and they ask a particular question because I find it so very helpful. A question that often comes up is which received text do you hold to? Let me just read a paragraph from the statement. The Constitution of the Trinitarian Bible Society specifies the textual families to be employed in In the translations, it circulates the Mesoretic Hebrew and the Greek received text, the textual families, and often that is missed by those who seek to understand our position. So there's just some of our principles. In our translation projects, we're very careful. If someone suggests to us a new translation in a particular language, our first step is to analyze the translations that are available in that particular language. Is there one that is based on the TR? Is there one that can be revised easily? Or do we need to begin from scratch? And so we do an assessment of those particular translations. Then, if we think we've identified one that is suitable, we'll then apply what we would call our textual key, where we're seeking to identify where they may deviate into the critical text, and so we apply that. And then we seek to establish our translators as believers, as Christians, and we have a spiritual questionnaire so that we might know where they stand doctrinally. That's how our translations roughly and very swiftly as an overview begin. We also have a number of different types of translation projects. There are some who are individuals. There are groups in parts of India, for example, around 200,000 people. And they have a great burden that their tribe would have a faithful translation of the Word of God. One in particular had the UBS, the United Bible Societies, come along and wanted them to translate the Bible. And they began working with them, but they had the authorized version. And they began to compare what the UBS representative was seeking them to follow with their authorised version and it didn't match up and they became deeply concerned. And as a result, they departed from working with the UBS and now working with us. And that's just through that tribe's individual study. And the tribe, sacrificially, would give and look after that translator for the duration of his translation work. so that they can have a faithful edition of the Word of God. We take that so much for granted. We have so many English translations, a lot of them are not really worth the paper that they're written on, but we take it for granted that we can go into a store and buy a faithful translation of the Word of God, but many people cannot do that at all, and it's a great shame. They're around, According to a 2016 survey, there are around 563 languages that have a full Bible, but it's believed there are between 6,500 and 7,100 languages in the world. Of course, some of those languages would be small groups, some of those languages would be dying out, some of those languages would be such that they'd understand another language as well. But of those 563 Bibles, Most of those will be, once again, critical text and dynamic equivalence principles applied in translation. And so there's a tremendous task that the Trinitarian Bible Society are engaged in. And we divide our work up really into five different areas. We have our translation work, and we have our publishing, we have distributing, we have upholding, and we have promoting. are limited in the number of people, but we try to do as much as we can. We have over 40 translation or revision projects across the world, from, as I've mentioned to you, the Amharic, all the way to a work in Chinese, and Chichewa in Africa, Shona in Africa, and there's a whole vast number of languages. And each of these individuals or groups are persuaded of the TR position. There's just one project I wanted to mention, mainly because some of you know the person who's involved with it, and it's the Persian or the Farsi. This is the Farsi New Testament. It's a printer's proof, so it's not bound, but this came through just a week ago, and Lord willing, this will be published and distributed around 7,500 copies and we trust we'll be able to get some of them into Iran as well. Please pray for that. I know some people argue that people who hold to the TR can't really do a work amongst Muslim people, but we trust that by distributing the word of God, we're able to bring the wonderful and glorious gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So please do remember that in your prayers and our dear friend who labors on that particular project. We also are able to distribute the word of God. Last year we were able to distribute 1,655,803 scripture portions. That would be the gospel according to John or something similar. And 72,199 Bibles across the world. We receive letters pretty much every day people requesting Bibles, and there continues to be a great need that we only meet a very small part of it. There's a great hunger, we might not see it, at least in the UK, we don't see very much of it. Christianity is not in a very good state in the United Kingdom. But in other parts of the world, there's a great hunger for the word of God, so please do pray for that. pray for our translators, pray that the Lord would bless the stand that the Trinitarian Bible Society seeks to make, and this conference has been for us a great encouragement. We pray that the Lord may be able to have more meetings like this, where people who hold to this position may meet and encourage one another, and others may be convinced of how essential it is to hold to the, received text and the Masoretic Hebrew. And that if you start to jettison the underlying principles for the received text, you begin to jettison pretty much the authority of the scriptures. So thank you all and it's been a great joy to meet you. And if you want to be kept up to date with our work, please do go online, sign up for our email updates. and we would ask you to continue to remember us in your prayers. I'd also say as a special dispensation, we have a voucher code for you. I'll put it at the back tomorrow, that if you want to purchase something online from the TBS, you'll be able to do so at 10% discount. and free shipping as well, so I come bearing gifts. But thank you all very much, and if I could just close by quoting Isaiah 55 and verse 11, where we read, so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. You should pray. Dear Lord, almighty God, we thank thee for thy infallible word. We thank thee for thy word, which is a guide for our lives, in which we read the wonderful gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray, dear Lord, that thou would be pleased to bless the distribution of thy word. We pray, dear Lord, for those who would seek to hinder its access into various countries, those who would seek to downplay the work of those who would hold to the received text. Oh dear Lord, we would pray that in our actions we would glorify Thee and that everything would be to Thy honour and glory. In Christ's precious name, Amen.