Revelation 22, verses 18 through 21. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the seven plagues written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, May God remove his share from the tree of life and out of the holy city that stand written in this book. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming swiftly. Oh yes, come Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints, amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And it has been so encouraging to have these scriptures taking root in our hearts and building our faith and transforming our ability to take on the mountains that you set before us. Father, in ourselves we are nothing, but through Christ we can do all things. And so, Father, we desire to be used and to be instruments in your hands for the advancement of your kingdom. I pray as we even understand this last section of Revelation, that this too would transform our lives and enable us to be better equipped to be your foot soldiers. We pray that you would anoint me, enable me to faithfully deliver your word, to not have any errors. I just pray, Father, that you would be glorified in this preaching of your word. In Jesus' name. Well, it may seem hard to believe, but these are the very last words of the book of Revelation. I'm actually probably going to give a couple of thematic sermons. I haven't decided yet whether I will do that or not, but I want to present to you Revelation as a whole as a war manual. If I don't preach on that, I'll at least put it up on the website. I want to deal with some of the music in this book. Some of this music is absolutely amazing for the advancement of his kingdom. I'm not going to preach actually on the The remaining interpretive principles that are in this last section here, I have already put those up on the web. So it's just some housekeeping details I wanted you to be aware of. But these last words of Revelation give a knockout punch to Roman Catholicism, to Eastern Orthodoxy, to Islam, to Mormonism, to other modern heresies. I believe they give a knockout punch to modern evangelical and as well as liberal ideas on textual criticism that have strayed so, so far from the Reformation. The Reformers considered these verses to be very, very important to the issue of textual criticism. And this paragraph also ends with some very encouraging parting words of grace. But let's dig into the issue of canon first of all. The idea of canon is just a word that deals with the science of understanding what books belong in the Bible. Contrary to the command of God in verses 18 through 19, The Mormons have added the Book of Mormon to the canon. You can't do that. You cannot do that. God curses anyone who adds any book to the canon after the Book of Revelation was written. Muslims claim they believe the Bible, but they've added the Quran to the Bible. And I've actually used this verse along with my favorite other verses in scripture to show that God said the canon would be finished in the first century and never again would be added to. And they're kind of stumped by that. They don't know what to do with these words because they know they can't just throw it out. They try to say it's corrupted and you can deal with apologetically on that. But here's a verse that indicates that what they are doing by adding the Quran is inviting God's judgments upon them, and God's judgments have come upon the Muslims. Roman Catholics claim that they have the authority to add the Apocrypha at the Council of Trent, and as a result, they have elevated the authority of the church above the authority of Scripture. Ellen G. White, the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist cult, and if you look at her writings, it really is a cult. I don't buy Martin's view that it's not a cult. There was a branch off that became more evangelical, but there is a huge section of the Seventh-Day Adventist cult that treats her writings as a direct word from God. One of her followers, said this on their webpage, WLC believes that the ministry of Ellen G. White fully meets all of the criteria for being a true prophet and that it is the duty of Yahuwah's people to accept and live by the teachings in her writings. I say, no, her writings do not meet all of the biblical criteria of a biblical prophet and they for sure are not authoritative. How do we know that? Well, these and many other verses. These words from the Apostle John are a rebuke to anyone, evangelical or not, who claims to have an authoritative revelation from God for the church. These words absolutely rule that out. Now, of course, there are many who say these words have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the canon. telling people don't mess around with the book of Revelation, but there are three hints in this passage that indicate that he is dealing more broadly than simply with the book of Revelation. He is dealing with the closing of the canon once the book of Revelation was complete. Now I've written a 500-page book on the canon that gives you many, many other scriptures that I think nail things down a lot more clearly than this one does, but I think these are clear enough that I have dogmatically stated in your outline there, these words relate to the closing of the canon. How do I know that, and why is it that so many reformers use these scriptures to teach exactly the same thing? Well, let me give you three reasons. First of all, the word used for book and verses 18 and 19 is Biblion, not Bibli Darion. Biblion is the word we get Bible from. It was the word that was used earlier by the book of Revelation, where it calls it the big book, whereas Bibli Darion is what John received for his revelation. Bibli Darion was the little book that was received from heaven that he would then communicate. And so the specific word that is used for book here It is a word that was used earlier for Canon. If it had just been referring to adding to, or taking away from the book of Revelation, he would have reused that word, Bibli Darion. Now, of course, Bibli Darion was immediately included in the big book of Canon the moment it was written. So it's referring to both. But these verses are finishing a long discussion that John has had earlier related to the closing of the canon. I believe you should not interpret these words outside, you know, in isolation from the rest of the book. And let me give you a brief review of what we have looked at in the past. In chapter 5, we saw that the Old Testament, which had been closed for over 400 years, and which the Old Testament prophets had said would remain closed until the Messiah came, was opened by Jesus, proving that Jesus was the coming Messiah. He was the prophet like unto Moses. He was the one who would now issue forth a flurry of prophecy and a flurry of prophets. And the Old Testament canon was called by the apostle a biblion. It was a big book. It was the book that Jesus authorized prophets to once again add small books too. So AD 30 really was the long awaited time of new prophecy being added to the book of the law. Next we saw in chapter 10 that in precisely, and this is a very key point for people on this debate, in precisely the same way that Ezekiel ate the little book of God's revelation to Ezekiel that he would later write down, and just as Ezekiel ate that book and it was sweet to his taste, John eats the little book of the prophecies that God wanted him to write down, and that little book was sweet in his mouth. John's eating of the little scroll, or book, parallels Ezekiel's eating of the little scroll in Ezekiel 2-3 on many levels, and let me just quickly outline them for you. Both books were delivered by an angel. Both prophets were commanded to eat the little book that is given to them. Both books taste sweet and yet afterwards produce bitter judgments. Both books are connected with a prophetic commission to prophesy judgments. Both scrolls or books were written on the inside and outside, which by the way, was unusual. That was not something you would ordinarily find. And so you've got two places in history where you've got a scroll written on both sides, Ezekiel and in John, very significant. Both scrolls are little in comparison to the big scroll that they are being added to. And in both situations, the eating of the book was the reception of the revelation from heaven that would later be written down by inspiration. So I believe that it is crystal clear that the little book of Revelation plays exactly the same role that the little book in Ezekiel played. Before either prophet could prophesy the contents of his prophetic volume, he had to be inspired. And it was symbolized by the fact that he was receiving 100% of what would be written by eating that book. That's what it symbolized there. But what was eaten by both prophets was the content of their respective books that would later be added to the canon. They had to prophetically receive by inspiration what they would prophetically give out by inspiration. In Ezekiel 2 verse 9, The prophet was given what was called the scroll of a book. In other words, the whole book was not given to him, but it was one scroll of a collection of scrolls. The Hebrew is Megalith Sefir, and the Jewish translator, the Septuagint, rendered that Hebrew expression as kephales bibliu, or volume of the book. So Ezekiel's prophecies comprise one of the volumes, of a much larger book, the canon. And in much the same way, the little book of Revelation, the Bibliodeion, is the last volume or scroll of this growing book of the canon. Now you might question whether the canon is referred to as a book in the scripture it is over and over again. I'm just going to give you some sample scriptures The entire Bible is seen as either the book, Psalm 40, verse 7, the book of the Lord, Isaiah 34, 16, the book of the law, Nehemiah 8, 3, Galatians 3, 10, the book of this law, Deuteronomy 28, 61, the book of the covenant, Exodus 24, 27, or other similar titles. So over and over again, the whole canon is referred to as a book singular, even though it's composed of a whole bunch of other volumes that make up that book. And it's really the same way that we use the word Bible. Bible comes from the same word, biblion, that's used in Revelation 22. And so our English reflects the difference between Bible, referring to the canon, and small books, referring to the individual volumes that make up the canon of the Bible. And in my book on canon, I show how the moment a scripture was being written, the words were at that very moment, by prophetic authority, added to the canon. This happened as Moses was writing the Pentateuch, bit by bit as he wrote it, It was included in the book of the law. So for example, God commanded Moses, write this for a memorial in the book, Exodus 17, 14. And you see other phrases like that. It's being written right into the book of the law. When Joshua wrote the revelation God was giving him, it says, and he wrote these words in the book of the laws of God, Joshua 24, 26. And people agree, that was a reference to the Pentateuch. So when he's writing his revelation that God gives to him, he doesn't just write it in his little scroll, he's writing it right into the canon, into what was previously just made up of five books. And this means that contrary to Roman Catholicism, the Bible was not canonized hundreds and hundreds of years later. It was canonized by God's authority the moment it was written. The church does not have authority over the canon. It is God alone who can canonize a book. And each prophet who wrote after Joshua wrote into the book of the canon. For example, Isaiah 34, verse 16, you look at some of the commentaries on that, and it says, seek from the book of the law a Lord and read, And then he proceeds to quote his own prophecy that he's just written in that chapter. And commentators point out that he's referring to his own chapter that's just a few minutes before been written down as being part of the canon, as being part of the book of the law of the Lord. So it didn't have to wait for some later church council to be decided as Scripture. And so this distinction that I am making between the big book of Canon, Biblion or Bible, and the small book of Revelation being received from heaven to John, the Bibliodeion, it is not an artificial construct. It is at the very, it's embedded into the very heart of Revelation from chapter five through chapter 11, is copied from the scenes in Ezekiel, follows the pattern of the developing canon all the way through Scripture. So that's the first hint. A hint that's much more developed in my book, but it means that these words close the Biblion. They close the Bible as a whole. They don't just close a small volume of Revelation. Second, when I preached on chapter 10, I gave extensive proof that chapters 10 through 11 dealt with the closing of the canon being prophesied to occur very soon. And the very soon time of that closing was then specified to be AD 70, the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple. Now, Jews would not have at all been surprised by this linkage of the closing of the canon together with the destruction of Jerusalem, because that's what was prophesied to happen in the Old Testament. Isaiah 8, Daniel 9, Zechariah 13, there's other passages that do this. And in any case, chapter 10 of our book here, John said that AD 70 was the time when, quote, the mystery of God that he declared to his slaves the prophets would be finished. And the word finished in Revelation 10, verse seven means to be terminated, to be ended. So he's saying that's going to happen here soon. So thou, he gives to John immediately this book from heaven. He eats it. He is then to prophesy that book. And then he goes on and describes, after this book, just like Ezekiel gave, he describes the last two prophets who would die in Jerusalem in 8070. And I won't reiterate what I said back then, but I think those sermons detailed that this is not the first time he's talking about the closing of the book. John has already been dealing with the opening of the book, of the canon, and then adding to that canon by his prophets, the imminent reclosing of that canon, and then the imminent ending of prophecy forever and ever. So these words are merely tying up the loose ends of what has already been thoroughly developed. And then finally, I believe that only a momentous event such as the closing of the whole canon would warrant such awesome curses. There are actually two times when exactly the same words here are used. There's one in Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, and the other one is here. And I think comparing the two is very helpful. In Deuteronomy 4, verse 2, God affirms that once the Pentateuch is completed, that's the first five books of the Bible, that no more laws or statutes could be added to the canon. It didn't prohibit any prophecies from being added. In fact, it guaranteed there would be lots of prophecies that would be added to the Canon, but it absolutely prohibited anyone, whether prophetic or not, from ever adding even one more commandment to the commandments of God. Deuteronomy four, verse two says, you shall not add to the word, which I command you nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I command you. So the focus is on never again adding one single commandment to the laws of God. So Jews, and historically the church has taken it this way as well, the Jews said that the rest of the Old Testament was not adding any laws whatsoever, it was giving an exposition of those laws. It was applying those laws, or it was giving prophetic covenant lawsuits against people who were breaking those laws, but they insisted that there's not a single new law added after Deuteronomy. And people respond, well, that can't possibly be true. Didn't Jesus say, a new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you? Yes, Jesus did. But commentators have pointed out that there are three things that make that absolutely no contradiction to the principle in Deuteronomy 4, verse 2. First of all, the word for new and new commandment is kainos. It's not neos. If he had used the word neos, then there could never have been that commandment given before. But because he used the word kynos new, it's new qualitatively, but it's not new as to content. Second, The Apostle John goes on to make explicit that this new commandment is not new in content because he says that this new commandment is, quote, an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. So the content to love one another, that's the law. No, that was in there in the Pentateuch. You can find it in a number of places. That's not the new part. And then third, everything is resolved when you realize that the newness of it is in Christ's last words, a new commandment I give unto you that you love one another as I have loved you. For the first time in human history, we have a perfect keeper of the old commandments in the person of Jesus Christ, a person that we can model our keeping of the law after. It's not the law that was new, but the tangible expression of it in a perfect human that is new. So again, it does not contradict the historic interpretation of Deuteronomy 4 verse 2. What was being closed off in the Pentateuch is not what's being closed off here. What's being closed off in the Pentateuch was the laws of God. Now, he once again uses the same words to close something off, but what's being closed off is much broader than simply the law of God. What's being closed off, if you look at the text there, is, quote, the words of the prophecy of this book, Biblion, Bible. God was not going to give any more words That's the first part. He was not going to give any more prophecy. That's the second part. He was not going to give any more canon. What Romans 16 calls the prophetic scriptures would end when the last words of revelation were written. And the precise date that was set in chapters 10 through 11 was just before the temple was destroyed in AD 70. So this is why the reformers and the Westminster Confession used these two verses along with a few other verses to prove that the 66 books of the canon, not the Roman Catholic canon, the 66 books of the canon are the only rule of faith and life. Nothing inside the church or outside the church could add to these scriptures or take away from them. Well, let's take a look at the judgments that are pronounced upon Mormons and Muslims, and Roman Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox, or anybody else who wants to add any authoritative word to God's words. Verse 18 says, I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the seven plagues written in this book. Now he appears to refer to judgments that are written in the book of Revelation. So why does he use the word Biblion instead of Bibliderion like he had used earlier? was because Revelation was a part of the Bible already. It didn't have to wait for three centuries to become a part of the Bible. And as we saw in chapter 10, the moment John ate the small book, the Bibliadereon, it of necessity became instantly part of the big book of the canon, the Biblion, just like it did in Ezekiel, just like it did in Isaiah, just like it did in absolutely every prophet who gave scripture before. So far from disproving the canon view of the early church and the Reformation, the reference to the seven judgments of revelation being in the Bible proves the Protestant theory of how the canon developed, which, by the way, is the position of the vast majority of church fathers in the first 1,500 years of church history, as I show in my book on canon. It is Rome that left the Catholic faith, not the Reformers. It was the Eastern Orthodox who left the Orthodox faith, not the Reformers. But back to our question, what will Muslims and Mormons receive for adding to the canon? Well, simple, they'll receive the seven plagues that are written in here. Plagues, by the way, which cover so many afflictions that they could be said to summarize all of the curses that you find in Deuteronomy 27 through 28. Some of those plagues were delivered by demons. are Mormons and Muslims afflicted by demons. I think if you've done much work amongst the Mormons and the Muslims, you realize there's a lot of demonic there. It's a demonic stronghold. I've talked to a number of Mormons who say they talk with these, what they call angels, but they're very clear when they're describing what they are. They're clearly demons that have afflicted them. The demons in these plagues brought incredible abuse to men, women, and children. Do women and both groups experience abuse and trouble. Yes, they do. I feel sorry for women in Islam. as well as in the cult of Mormonism, but the same is true in Roman Catholicism. If you've studied the treatment of nuns in the Roman Catholic Church, you can see similar abuse in many of the convents. Franco Maggiore's wife was involved in rescuing many of these nuns out of those convents, and many of them that were rescued had basically been sexual slaves there. And so anyway, there can be abuse there. I consider the requirements of celibacy itself to be abusive of both men and women, and it has inevitably led to abuse of others. Do Muslims experience war and some of the other plagues that are written in the Bible? So yeah, so plagues, plagues, that's the first thing that is promised. Second, verse 19 says, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, May God remove his share from the tree of life and out of the holy city that stand written in this book. So to be removed from having a share in the tree of life at a minimum means you can't have close friendship or fellowship with God. The commentators say, you know, it's probably more than that. It's dealing with being cut off from heaven. You might be outwardly in the church, you might be outwardly partaking of communion, but you do this kind of stuff, you are not going to be partaking of the tree of life in heaven. That's basically what it's saying. So hostility to the true canon is inconsistent with the nature of true Christianity. And the next metaphor certainly shows that. To be removed from the holy city means to be cut off from the bride. Why? Because the city symbolizes the bride, symbolizes the church. And down through history, you know, people have been in the church, those who have had bad views of canon. or who have had bad views of textual criticism, they have been at least outwardly in the church. But God protects his canon with such severe judgments that he says you are in danger of being cut off from the body if you add to or you take away from those scriptures. Some people in charismatic circles tread dangerously close to the line on this issue. I listened to one local charismatic who used the first person singular as if it was God himself speaking to an individual, and he gave a 10-minute monologue to this person as God speaking, and speaking very authoritatively. It sent shivers of fear down my spine because I think it is a violation, or at least treads very, very close to being a violation of this passage. Let's move on to the second thing. These same words relate to our treatment of textual criticism as well. And this is where it really gets scary for evangelicals because they're involved in non-reformational approach to the text of scripture. Now, what do I mean by textual criticism? Have you ever noticed how some Bibles add words that are not in the majority text? and or take away words that are in the majority text. What in the world is going on with that? Well, since the time of the Reformation, old copies of the scripture have been discovered in Egypt, where the climate is much drier and keeps parchments better. And the New American Standard Bible, the NIV, ESV, some of the other modern versions, they ignore the testimony of 5,000 plus manuscripts that have been used by the church over the centuries, and they have chosen to follow a much smaller handful of what they call the oldest and the best manuscripts that were not used by the church. Now, sometimes the readings that they have follow just one manuscript, sometimes two, sometimes maybe a dozen or more. But they ignore the unified voice of the majority text. Why do they do this? Well, they say, these are older manuscripts. We're wanting to get as close as we can to the original autographs that were written by the apostles. And that sounds like a noble thing. We want to get to the original as well. But actually, it's gotten a lot more complicated since then, since they have found quite a few papyri. that are even older than Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and some of these oldest and best that they used to refer to, and some of these readings are just majority text readings as well. So even liberals are beginning to recognize that the majority text is equally old, but they still prefer the Egyptian text and say that they're better. So anyway, this kind of puts us into a bind. We do not want to fall under the curse here. So maybe we're falling under the curse because we're following the new King James. Maybe we're fall under God's curse if we use the NASB. We want to avoid that. We want to live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God. So how do we know? How do we know what is the true text? Well, Rome tells you, just trust the authority of the church. They claim to have authority over the Bible. King James-only people, they say, well, just trust that God's providence worked through Erasmus. Just one individual, who, by the way, was not a Protestant. He was a Roman Catholic. And they said, just trust God's providence worked through him to preserve the text. Now, he had just a handful of manuscripts, which happened to be actually pretty good manuscripts. So if you follow the King James or the New King James, you're gonna be very, very close. to the majority text, but their reason that is given by the King James only people, it's not the text itself so problematic, but the reason that they give is abandonment of the Reformation principle because they have one person, and it's a man, it's not God, who is determining the text. Okay? One person that we need to trust. The Romanists tell you, trust the church. King James-only people say, trust Erasmus. New American Standard Bible, NIV, ESV, many modern evangelicals tell us to trust the expertise of modern textual critics who have favored the oldest manuscripts. And actually, what this amounts to is trusting a committee of five liberals when they vote and they present something in the United Bible Society text or the Nestle-Allen text, which ought to seem a little bit strange that evangelicals are going to follow the vote of five liberals on determining the text. So the question is, why should we trust five liberal scholars just because they're experts? The reformers had a different position. They all said, you cannot trust the church, you cannot trust a single individual, you cannot trust a committee of individual, no matter how expert they are. What they said is that the Bible must be its own authority. And what do they mean by that? How on earth does it work out in practical terms? Well, thankfully, the Bible has given us enough predictions of how the transmission of the text would happen and enough warnings about the heretics who would attempt to corrupt the text that we can figure out the true text of Scripture down to the very letter. And let me outline just a few of the biblical presuppositions that I use in my book, and I won't give you all of them, but just a few, so that you can see, okay, we can have an absolute confidence, and we are not determining the text. We're just saying, okay, Lord, this is the way you've said it's gonna happen, what text line up with this? And so that's how we're gonna examine this, to avoid John's rebuke. First presupposition is that a proven false witness should not be received or trusted. Now, what do I mean by a proven false witness? Well, the falsity of the witness has to be so clear that even the witness's supporters grudgingly disagree with that witness many, many times and just disagree. They don't trust that witness on many points. That's a pretty high bar for me to try to prove, but I think I can prove it. First of all, let me take a look at the Scripture references in your outline. I'll just mention one. Deuteronomy 19, 15-21 says you're not only to reject the false testimony that was given of a false witness, but you're now to treat that false witness as unreliable altogether. And I've given some other scriptures that are in there. Well, every Greek manuscript is spoken of by textual critics as a witness to the original text written by the apostles. So let me take a few minutes to prove that every critical edition of the New Testament and every modern version that's based on those critical texts has, by their own admission, treated the Alexandrian texts as false witnesses. All of the Alexandrian texts, without any exception. I'm gonna prove this to you. It's not just me, it's not just the majority text people saying, hey, these are false witnesses. What I'm going to demonstrate to you is all of these modern critics who support them and love the Alexandrian text. deviate from every single manuscript in the Alexandrian tradition without exception and do so many, many times, treating that as unreliable because even in their favorite Vaticanus, they deviate many times. because it's so obviously and blatantly false. So I'm not painting a straw man here. We're going to have a high bar on seeing who's the false witness, who is not. Now let me start with our own very reliable manuscripts first. These are the manuscripts that have been used over the centuries by the church. It's not simply the majority text, though it is that, but it's the majority of manuscripts used by the church. That's why I call it the ecclesiastical text sometimes. And sometimes it's referred to as Family 35. There are other names given to it. But how reliable are these manuscripts? Gordon Fee tries to lessen the criticism of the Alexandrian problems over here by saying, hey, everybody's got the same problem. There are no two manuscripts that are identical, even within the majority text. That is absolutely false, blatantly false. I have seen with my own eyes. I have compared these documents. I can give you the numbers and names of documents scattered all over the empire. Actually, two empires, and Constantinople, London, Trichola, Bologna, Vatican, and other regions that are word for word and letter for letter identical throughout entire books of the Bible. It is absolutely false to say there are no two manuscripts that are the same. These are not, because they're such far-flung regions that these manuscripts are found, there is no way that they could have been copied from each other. They are independent witnesses to the ecclesiastical text that we have been using. Now, in contrast, there are only about 200 manuscripts in the Alexandrian tradition, which is the most trusted tradition of the modern eclectic textual critics. But among those manuscripts, there are not even two manuscripts that are alike, not by a long shot. I think there's probably not even two pages of these manuscripts that are alike, and certainly there are no Alexandrian manuscripts that are word for word the same as the modern Greek Bibles, like the United Bible Society Greek text or the Nestle-Allen Greek text. These editions are purely theoretical texts. They disagree even with their favorite Alexandrian text numerous times, their favorites being Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, and Alexandrinus. Now, the Alexandrian text comes from Egypt. It's oldest in part because, hey, the climate there was very dry. So parchments tend to last longer. But they also lasted because they were not used very much. What does it say about a book that you rarely used? It says that you don't value that book. My Bibles that I use every day are getting worn out. Oldest does not make the manuscript best, and in their better moments, modern textual critics will agree. For example, everyone agrees that P66, P stands for papyri, it's one of the papyri, P66 is probably the oldest, almost complete copy of the Gospel of John. It dates from AD 200, way older than Vaticanus, their favorite. And yet this manuscript, everybody agrees, has on average two mistakes per verse in it. It is atrociously inaccurate copy. Or to use the language of witnesses, it is a false witness over and over again, utterly untrustworthy. And yet on occasion, the critical text will follow even P66. Now get a load of this. Of the approximately 200 Alexandrian or Egyptian manuscripts, the manuscripts differ from each other 28,500 times. That's a lot of times for 200 manuscripts to disagree with each other. The figure is actually a lot worse if you were to add in the so-called Western text. We're just going to stick with the pure Alexandrian text. Since there are about 200,000 words in the New Testament, that amounts to about one in seven words just within the Alexandrian text where they are contradicting each other. These are witnesses contradicting each other. One in seven words. That's unbelievable, and yet they are supposedly the best manuscripts. Of course, they do have a response for this. Their response is, hey, we ignore the vast majority of these Alexandrian manuscripts because they're so obviously and hopelessly messed up. But here's the problem. They give the illusion that the Alexandrian text is the purest as a group. Not just one or two, as a group, it is not. Even their supposedly best and most accurate two manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, differ from each other 3,000 times in the Gospels alone. By all counts, these witnesses are completely discredited and should not be trusted. In only 7% of the times that Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, their two best ones, only 7% of the time when they disagree do they side with Sinaiticus. 7% of the time. 2% of the variance that they side with Alexandrinus over against Vaticanus, in less than half a percent of the time do they go with other Alexandrian manuscripts over against Vaticanus. So the bottom line is one manuscript is their chosen best representative, Vaticanus, and yet they deviate from Vaticanus nine percent of the time. So that means they're treating their very, very, very best witness as being a false witness 9% of the time. You see where I'm going here? It's not a very good record. Wilbur Pickering gives even more reasons why they're the most corrupt witnesses and least to be trusted. I'll just mention a couple of reasons. Where do all of the Alexandrian manuscripts come from? They come from the very region where the early church fathers said all of the heresies were cropping up. They come from the very region where the church fathers complained these heretics are corrupting texts of Scripture. They are very careless in their copying of those manuscripts, and they ought to know because as late as the third century, They knew exactly where the original still resided, and they named the churches where you could find Ephesians or 1 Thessalonians so that you could compare your copies against the original. There was a reason why the maturity text used by the church for the 1500 years was so unified. The church wanted to preserve every letter that God gave to them. And church fathers quoted these last words of Revelation to put the fear of God into Coppius from even accidentally changing the text. They had a high honor for the text, and they sought to preserve every word. But the first presupposition is this. If everyone agrees that a witness has deliberately perjured himself, He should not be trusted on any of his testimony. He should just be thrown out. And the fact of the matter is that everyone agrees that even the best of the best of the Alexandrian witnesses are treated as false witnesses by even their most fierce advocates. In contrast, it is easy to tell what the precise meaning of the ecclesiastical text is, despite the fact that there are so many of those manuscripts Any deviations can be immediately spotted and there's a whole society of biblical texture critics who have been collating manuscripts showing the absolute trustworthiness of those witnesses. The church Manuscripts labeled F35 are incredibly faithful witnesses. Now, related to this issue of witnesses is another principle. 2 Corinthians 13 verse 1 says, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established. And I've given you some other scriptures that say, hey, it's not enough to have a single witness. you have to follow this principle. Paul said, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word shall be established. And yet the NIV, New American Standard Bible, ESV, and many other modern versions follow the UBS of the Nestle's text in leaving out words or adding words, get this, based on the testimony of one manuscript over and over again. For example, Only Vaticanus leaves out the word Jesus in Matthew 4, verse 23, whereas over 1,800 manuscripts leave it in. Now, that's how many manuscripts we happen to have of Matthew. Some books you have more than others, but over 1,800. So here they are. They're ignoring the witnesses, 1,800 witnesses. They're following one witness, Vaticanus, and leaving out this word. It's the only one that leaves out the word Jesus. Despite the fact that they admit, well, yeah, 9% of the time Vaticanus gets it wrong and we disagree with it, but here we're going to agree with it. They're following one witness. This is the kind of problem that we're facing with. How often does this happen? Well, far more often than you would guess by looking at the UBS apparatus, which is not complete. If you do your own comparison of manuscripts, you see it is not complete. In fact, sometimes they make up a reading out of thin air with not a single Greek witness. Pickering says this, we have over 1,800 Greek manuscripts of Matthew, but in 34 places in Matthew, UBS 3, that's the third edition of United Bible Society Greek, UBS 3 prints a text not found in any manuscripts used by the editors. This is called a conjectural emendation. They say, well, it must've been there. We don't have any evidence for it, but we're just gonna say this is what the word was there. He goes on, Codex W alone is followed once, Codex P alone once, D alone once, C alone four times, L alone four times, Aleph alone 18 times, and B alone over 40 times. This means that of the 104 times in the Gospel of Matthew in which the third edition of the UBS Greek New Testament gives a reading 34 times it makes it up out of thin air. There is no Greek text. And 70 times it follows one Greek manuscript. Acts 18 and 12 is another example. There's not a single Greek manuscript in existence that adds the word chief or first to city, and yet UBS has it. Nestle has it. It's a conjectural emendation, and by the way, it is followed and translated that way by the ESV, the NIV, and the New American Standard. ESV many times does the same in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. All you have to do is look at the bottom and say, oh, there's no Hebrew manuscripts to support this. It's a conjectural emendation. I find it astounding that evangelicals would follow no witnesses, come up with a reading out of thin air, but it happens. It happens all the time. Here's the point. Not even one witness is enough. We have thousands of witnesses, right? But the Bible demands at least two or three. Now, this also contradicts the third presupposition, which says that God predicted that every word of Scripture would be perfectly preserved in every age till the end of history. Now it's true, our text warns us there are going to be people out there who are going to try to corrupt the text. They're going to try to add to it. They're going to try to take away from it. But the Scriptures that are in your outline promise they will not succeed. Psalm 12, verses 6 through 7. The words of the Lord are pure words. You shall keep them, O Lord. You shall preserve them from this generation forever. In Luke 16, verse 17, Jesus said, it's easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for one tittle of the law to be deleted. Tittle was the smallest stroke of the pen in forming a letter. And I've given several other scriptures that promise there will never be a time when the scriptures are not available to the church in their entirety. Okay, so if we believe this presupposition, if you think the scriptures are clear enough on that, then you're forced to adopt the majority text. You have no choice, and liberals will agree. They don't agree with the presuppositions, because they're unbelievers, right? But they would say, I'm sure every one of them would say, hey, if those presuppositions were true, those ridiculous presuppositions, if they were true, yeah, you'd be forced to follow the majority text. There'd be no way around it. I don't know a single modern textual critic who follows the Alexandrian text, who claims to know for sure what the original text of the entire New Testament might be. They speak of various degrees of probability and guesswork. Many admit upwards of 4% of the New Testament may be in question. But more importantly, they believe God preserved the text, at least if they're Reformed people or evangelicals. God did preserve the text, but he preserved it by burying it and hiding it from the church for 1,700 years in Egypt. This is B.B. Warfield's, you know, he's a Presbyterian, so you're supposed to subscribe to the Westminster Confession. He said, yeah, I believe. I believe that the Confession's right. God has preserved His Word, and the way He preserved it was by hiding these manuscripts carefully in the sands of Egypt. Well, the next point completely rules out that mode of preservation. The next point says, God holds us accountable to live by every word of Scripture in every age. How could He hold you accountable to live by every word if He doesn't preserve every word? Impossible. For example, Jesus said in Matthew 4, verse 4, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Romans 15, 4, everything that was written in the past was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. Isaiah 59, verse 21, holds the covenant people accountable to read every word from this time forth and forevermore. We cannot exactly read a word that God has not preserved. And there's only one theory of textual criticism that claims that God has preserved every word of the New Testament in every age in such a way as to make it possible to live by every word. It's the majority text theory that I hold to, that the Puritans and the Reformers held to. The others just say, well, yeah, there's been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years where the true text has been lost. We say, no, that is not true, and it's not confessional. The next presupposition is that God had a special protective providence over the Bible that makes it completely different from his providence over other ancient books. Psalm 119, 160 says, the entirety of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous judgments endures forever. Psalm 12, 6 through 7 says, the words of the Lord are pure words. You shall keep them, O Lord. You shall preserve them from this generation forever. and the rest of the scriptures there, shows that God preserves his word in a totally different way than he providentially deals with other literature. Now, in contrast to this presupposition, the modern textual criticism experts claim we should treat the transmission of the biblical text in exactly the same way that we treat the transmission of other ancient secular texts, like Homer. or Chaucer or Shakespeare. It's a clear violation of this presupposition. We're approaching it in terms of the infallible word of God. It's the only way that we can sort through these issues. And you've got to wrestle with these Bible verses. The Bible is not just any book copied by any people. It is a supernatural book, supernaturally preserved in a very special way. And the majority text theory shows that special way. The next presupposition is based on the fact that God ordained the church. to be what he calls the pillar and ground of the truth, 1 Timothy 3, 14 through 15. He committed the care of the Scriptures to the church over and over. And he also warned the church, hey, there are gonna be heretics out there who are gonna try to change the text of Scripture. So I'm not gonna go through a lot of those. You can look them up on your own. But there are three logical conclusions that you can draw from that. The first is that knowing these admonitions, one would expect that the church would be hyper careful, hyper careful about how they copied the scriptures. Second, heretics would likely not be careful because God predicted they would not be careful because they don't believe the scriptures, right? So you'd expect them to play fast and loose with the scripture. And third, it is thus not at all unreasonable to assume that the ecclesiastical text, in other words, church text, the majority text, is superior to the text not used by the church. And it also makes sense of the relative unanimity that can be found amongst the majority of manuscripts. Okay, here is the problem. The modern school of eclectic criticism stands in diametric opposition to this presupposition. They presuppose that godly, devout scribes would be very motivated to change the text. I mean, it's weird, it's weird, but they are forced to believe this in order to explain away how it came to be that for over 1,000 years, you've got unanimity within the church that differs so much from their Alexandrian text. They're forced to say this. Even evangelicals say this. For example, evangelical scholar Gordon Fee Evangelical Gordon Fee, he says, for the early Christians, it was precisely because the meaning was so important that they exercised a certain amount of freedom in making that meaning clear, and he goes on to say, by changing the words of the text. What? Makes no sense whatsoever. They honor the text by changing the text? I don't think so. Kurt Allen says that devotion to Christ might make them add words and phrases to give a more polished effect. What he is saying is devotion to Christ is going to make them disobey the words of Revelation 22, 18 through 19, in order to make a more polished Greek to come out. That's exactly what he is saying. I don't think so. He insists pious scribes would be troubled by problems in the scriptures, would seek to minimize such problems by trying to harmonize apparent conflicts in gospel accounts, by alleviating scriptural difficulties, by replacing unfamiliar words with familiar ones, etc. And thus, Alan, who by the way is a gross heretic, and yet he's revered by evangelicals. It blows my mind, but anyway. Thus, Allant explains away the smoothness of the Greek and the ecclesiastical text by saying, even though there's no evidence of it, the church scribes must have been embarrassed by the coarse Greek over here, so they tried to polish it. They tried to make it look a little bit better, so as to honor God. Because this is so dishonoring, the real text is so dishonoring, they've gotta make it a little bit better. That's what he's saying. You can tell he's an unbeliever with attitudes like that. Well, church history falsifies the ridiculous views of these critics and substantiates the biblical presupposition. The church fathers were very zealous to guard against even the slightest deviation from scriptural usage. Polycarp, very, very early, he said, whoever perverts the sayings of the Lord, that one is the firstborn of Satan. Justin Martyr claimed that the heretic Marcion changed the text of both Paul and Luke, and he was outraged that anyone would have the audacity to change a single word of Scripture. He didn't think you could play with the Scripture. You had to copy it exactly. As a result of this perverting of Scripture, the church was even more careful to compare and check the manuscripts for accuracy. Gaius, in the later 100s, named four heretics who altered the text, then had multiple copies of these altered texts prepared by their disciples. And in my book, I give many, many pages, many examples of the history of church fathers comparing the copies that they were copying against the originals because they wanted to preserve every word of God. Pickering, by the way, does a fabulous job in his book and showing the history of that as well. The next presupposition is that scripture claims to use pure and beautiful language that clearly communicates. Psalm 12, verse 6, the words of the Lord are pure words like silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times. You can't get more pure and rid of dross than to be purified seven times, right? Psalm 19 describes the words of the Bible as, quote, perfect, sure, clean, true, pure, and right. Proverbs 30, verse five says, every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. Adding any of your words to God's words all of a sudden makes those words impure. Now grammar, it is true, is in large part convention, but scripture indicates God supervised the very details of grammar when the Bible was written. Let me try to prove that for you. And I'm only going to give you a sampling, but you can see this honoring of the details of grammar. There is significance to a phrase. Hebrews 12, verse 27 makes a theological point about the phrase, yet once more. Significance to the voice of a verb. Galatians 4, 9 makes a big point about the passive voice being used. Scripture makes a big deal over the tense of a verb. John 8, 58, before Abraham was, I am. In the number of a noun, Galatians 3, 16. Not seeds as of many, but as of one, and to your seed who is Christ. To individual letters of a word, Matthew 5, 18. One jot or one tittle. So when you read some of the scriptures like that, you definitely get the strong, strong impression that the Bible's not going to be grammatically awkward or garbled, messed up, or careless, because every letter counts. And yet, let's take a look at their presuppositions. And I'm talking about evangelicals as well. Modern textual critics affirm the exact opposite. They assume that the apostles would not have been capable of beautiful Greek. They're peasants, after all. How in the world could they write? Well, they don't know what kind of training that they had. And they say it's much more likely that scribes much later polished the Greek to make it look better than that polished Greek would be made more corrupt. In fact, one of the oft-repeated proofs that the majority text, in other words, the text that we follow, is an imposter, that it can't be possibly the right text, is because of the beauty, the smooth flow, and the polished nature of its Greek. They think it's obviously the work of embarrassed scribes. They don't have any evidence for it, but they just can't believe Scripture could be that perfect, that good. As one example, evangelical textual critic J. Harold Greenlee says, Byzantine readings, that's our readings, the majority text, Byzantine readings are characteristically smooth, clear, and full. Listen to how they're describing our text, and they say, this proves that it can't be the right text. Okay, let me start reading again. Byzantine readings are characteristically smooth, clear, and full. A conjunction or an appropriate word may be added to smooth out a rough transition. The text may be changed to clarify a meaning. A difficulty of meaning or reading harder to understand may be alleviated. The theology or the meaning in general may be strengthened. One of the most common characteristics of the Byzantine text is the harmonization of parallel passages. In other words, there's no contradictions. Greenlee intends this as a proof. Somebody had to have changed the text. Otherwise, how could it have been like this? How can you explain the difference between these two sets of manuscripts? Well, is it not possible that the crudities and the roughness of the Egyptian text came as a result of non-Greek heretics butchering the text and non-caring heretics making theological changes? And Pickering, in his marvelous book on biblical textual criticism, gives evidence that the copyists of those texts did not know Greek, crystal clear. They did not know Greek very well, and were indeed the heretics that the church fathers warned against. Kurt and Barbara Alland are liberals who admit that the majority text is stylistically polished, conforms to the rules of Greek grammar, whereas the Alexandrian text has numerous examples of stylistically embarrassing Greek. So which text, which witnesses meet this presupposition of Scripture? It's clearly the majority text that the church used. Now, I'm gonna skip over the other presuppositions in my book, but let me quickly add a couple of other summary thoughts. Why are there fewer Greek texts in the Alexandrian tradition? For two reasons. First, no book was written by an apostle or a prophet to churches in the realm of Egypt, in the realm of Alexandria. And so, They received copies of each of the books much, much later than the other churches did. The copying process had a huge head start in the regions where the epistles were originally sent. Well, that's where the majority text dominates, so statistically that makes sense. But second, if the texts dug up in Egypt were copied by heretics, they would tend to be shunned by the church and would tend not to get copied. No wonder there are so few. There was a good reason those texts never got copied by the church and eventually died out. To me, it is ultimately weird that evangelicals have resurrected what God successfully killed for over a thousand years. They've resurrected it. In fact, you know, Sinaiticus, the second favorite manuscript that they have. Where did Tischendorf find it? He found it in a wastebasket that they were using to kindling and lighting fires. The monastery had no respect for that text. They recognized it as a defective text. It should have stayed in that wastebasket. But there's one more point that I would make. Modern versions don't even follow the bulk of the 200 or so Alexandrian manuscripts that have been found in the last 200 years. And you can verify this yourself by reading Metzger's commentaries and the decisions made by his committee of liberal scholars. that the evangelicals blindly follow. In 90% of the passages that modern versions deviate from our majority text, they do so based on the weight of one manuscript, Vaticanus. In another 7% of the time, their disagreement with the majority text is based on the reading of Sinaiticus, 2.5% of the time they follow the reading of Alexandrinus, and less than half of 1% of the time do they base their readings on the other 200 Alexandrian texts. Now, this means they're not always following the consensus of the oldest Alexandrian manuscripts. This means it's utterly ridiculous to speak of the UBS or the Nestle's text as being the Alexandrian text. It is not. It deviates from the consensus of Alexandrian manuscripts over and over again. It is a purely theoretical text that was formed by the vote of five liberal scholars with liberal presuppositions, and yet evangelicals follow this messed up theoretical text. You'd be much better off following the King James or the New King James. Now, modern textual criticism is a mess that adds words here, takes away words there, contrary to the warnings of John. Certainly, no major doctrine is affected. That's what evangelicals always say. Hey, don't worry about it. No major doctrine is affected. That's true. There is no major doctrine that is affected, but there are a lot of minor doctrines that are affected, and I can share with you some of those. Certainly, people can get saved with any version of the Bible that is out there. ESV, NASB, they can get saved. They can grow in Christ through that. Certainly, only 4% of the New Testament is affected. But here's the point. Jesus did not command us to live by 96% of the words that Christ has given to us. He commanded us to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. The bottom line is that modern versions have been created by people who no longer believe the Reformed creeds on the doctrine of the preservation of the text of Scripture. This is not a Phil Kaiser doctrine. This is a Reformation doctrine. If you look at the discussions of those who wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Scripture proofs that they provided to prove their statements, it is clear they believed every jot and tittle of God's Word has been preserved in every age. Not one word has been lost. Let me give you some examples. Westminster Confession of Faith says, the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek being immediately inspired by God and by his singular care and providence kept pure in all ages are therefore authentical, so as in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto them. Notice it wasn't kept pure for our age by being hidden for 1,700 years in the sands of Egypt. Confession of Faith says it was kept pure in all ages And what does the church appeal to? Not some theoretical text that's, you know, who knows what it is, buried in Egypt. No, they are to appeal to this text that has been preserved in every age. An unpreserved text does the church no good. Rather, the Reformers insisted, we are to appeal to the manuscripts that God is preserved in the church throughout every age. The Savoy Declaration, 1648. The London Confession of Faith, 1689. The Philadelphia Confession, 1742. They all have the same statement. The Puritan Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, they were all agreed. The Reformers on the continent were also agreed. For example, the Helvetic Consensus Formula of 1675 of the Continental Church says, God, the Supreme Judge, not only took care to have his word, which is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, committed to writing by Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, here comes the clause, but has also watched and cherished it with paternal care ever since it was written up to the present time so that it could not be corrupted by craft of Satan or fraud of men. Therefore, the Church justly ascribes to it His singular grace and goodness that she has, and will have, to the end of the world, a sure word of prophecy and holy scriptures, from which, though heaven and earth perish, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass. I don't know how you could get a statement more clear than that. There is absolutely no wiggle room. The modern evangelical church and even the modern Reformed church has abandoned this Reformation principle on textual criticism, and it shows in the debates. When I listen to the debates with Roman Catholics, many of them lose on the canon issue already, but even if they were to win on the canon issue, Then they say, well, what about textual criticism? Who do you go to? What authority do you go to? And the evangelicals appeal to the vote of five liberal scholars, and Roman Catholics say, no, no, no, you need to appeal to the inspired church. And what do the reformers say? The reformers say, no, we need to look to God alone. We don't determine the text. We recognize what fits the statements of the Bible itself. So they had a presuppositional approach. And if you want to delve into this subject more, have confidence. We have every single word of the New Testament. Read my book, Has God Indeed Said?, or read Pickering's book, The Identity of the New Testament Texts. Get the fourth edition. It's a great, great edition. It's not a trivial issue. Now, just to reiterate John's admonitions again, this time translating the word biblion as Bible rather than book. to make clear what book he's referring to. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this Bible. If anyone adds to them, may God add to him the seven plagues written in this Bible. And if anyone takes away from the words of this Bible prophecy, may God remove his chair from the tree of life and out of the holy city that stand written in this Bible. Now, next point, and we're gonna hurry on. These words relate to the authority of Scripture over the church, which is the Reformation principle, Protestant principle, rather than the authority of the church over Scripture, which is Rome's principle. Rome claims to be the mother of the Bible, the creator of the Bible, and therefore to have authority over the Bible, but notice the absolute wording of this prophecy, which claims to have authority over everyone. I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the seven plagues written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, may God remove his share from the tree of life and out of the holy city that stands written in this book." So nothing could be clearer. than that the authority and judgment of this book stand over anyone and everyone who might add to the canon. Rome claimed to have the authority to add the Apocrypha to the Book of the Canon at the Council of Trent in 1563. Now they have to claim that they have that authority because even they recognize that Rome did not acknowledge the Apocrypha prior to Trent, did not acknowledge the Apocrypha to be a part of the canon. A radical change occurred at the Council of Trent in 1563 by a vote of 24 in favor, 15 opposed, 16 uncertain and abstaining. So 24 voted in favor, 31 did not vote in favor. Okay, so even Rome's so-called inspired vote to include the Apocrypha was a minority vote. The translator of Rome's Latin Vulgate, Jerome, he did a great job, by the way, was crystal clear that though the Apocryphal books had helpful history in them, and we agree, they were not inspired, they were not a part of the canon. My book shows how the vast majority of church fathers said that the Apocrypha had never been treated by the universal church as scripture. Here's another example. The official notes of the Latin Vulgate Bible called the Glossa Ordinaria said the same thing. And what's significant about this? This was a study Bible that represents a compilation of the church's official positions from the time of Jerome all the way up to the 15th century. David Oritz says of these marginal notes, the ordinary gloss, known as the gloss ordinaria, is an important witness to the position of the Western Church on the status of the apocrypha because it was the standard authoritative biblical commentary for the whole Western Church. It carried immense authority and was used in all the schools for the training of the theologian. Okay, since the gloss ordinaria explicitly rejects the apocrypha, It was the church's official position to reject the Apocrypha until the Council of Trent changed that. Here's a representative sample of what the prologue to that study Bible says. It says, many people who do not give much attention to the Holy Scriptures think that all the books contained in the Bible should be honored and adored with equal veneration, not knowing how to distinguish among the canonical and the non-canonical books, the latter of which the Jews number among the Apocrypha. Therefore, they often appear ridiculous before the learned, and they are disturbed and scandalized when they hear that someone does not honor something in the Bible with equal veneration as all the rest. Here, then, we distinguish a number distinctly. First, the canonical books, and then the non-canonical. And the prologue goes on to list what? The Protestant Bible. not the Catholic Bible, and then they list what does not belong in the canon, which is what Rome says belongs in the canon, and Eastern Orthodoxy as well. Throughout the official study Bible, when an apocryphal portion begins, there's a note that says basically, you know, there's good history here that helps us to interpret the Bible, but it says like this, here begins the book of Tobit, which is not in the canon. Or here begins the book of Judith, which is not in the canon. So it is crystal clear that the Protestant canon was followed by the church for 15 centuries and then got changed by Rome. We are small C Catholics. Rome abandoned the Catholic position. And interestingly, the Roman Catholic Modern Encyclopedia, they admit that. that previous to Trent, they did not treat it as Apocrypha. They don't care. They said, church has authority over the Bible. They can add to the Bible, take away from the Bible anytime they want to. But these verses assert the opposite. It is Scripture that has authority over everyone, including the leaders of the church. We are slaves to Scripture. We must not add or take away. By adding the Apocrypha, Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy stand under the condemnation of these words, and anyone that joins those communions stands in dread risk of receiving these same judgments. Of course, this judges Mormonism and Islam and anyone else who claims to have authority to take away or add to Scripture. So, these verses settle the issue of canon, they settle the issue of textual criticism, they settle the issue of authority. Next, these words help to settle whether or not we live beyond the age of God's law and judgment. You've probably heard that. That was for the first century. We're no longer under God's law. We're no longer judged by God. And yet, these warnings here are warnings against anybody who would add to the canon after the canon was closed, which logic tells us these plagues are gonna fall on people after AD 70. So there goes out the window the argument of non-theonomists who say that none of these things apply and God's judgments don't apply to nations anymore. They don't apply to people anymore. Only conclusion you can come to is exactly the same plagues that God brought against Israel and Rome are gonna continue to be brought against anyone who stands against and refuses to bow to his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that makes sense. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. But again, that makes the book applicable for all time. Yes, most of the things written in it were fulfilled in the first century, but individuals, families, churches, nations are still subject to God's law, can still be judged by Christ. Next, verse 20 indicates once again that the coming of Christ and the closing of the canon were contemporaneous. He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming swiftly, literally, yes, I am coming soon, oh yes, or amen, you could translate it, come Lord Jesus. Now, because I spent an entire sermon on that phrase earlier in the chapter, I'm not going to comment on it much here, but this is the third time he has given the same testimony in this chapter. And the amen or the oh yes, come Lord Jesus shows the eager anticipation that the church had for the beginning of the kingdom in 80, 70, the first resurrection, the first judgment, the binding of Satan, the progressive binding of demons over the course of time, the gospelizing of the world, the fulfillment of the great commission. They were at the stage of conquest that Joshua symbolized when he crossed the Jordan and began possessing his possessions. So did Joshua have war successfully before he crossed Jordan? Of course he did, just like the church had successful missions before 8070. But that first generation of Jews was really reluctant to cross the Jordan into Gentile territory. and they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years. The second generation eagerly embraced their calling of conquering Canaan. That was true of the 144,000 survivors in Israel and the rest of the remnant throughout the empire. They were eager to take the conquest of the world for King Jesus. May we have the same enthusiasm for Christ's kingdom that they did. And then finally, these words indicate that the curse is only applied to fake Christians or tares, not to the elect. He ends the book with this pronouncement, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all the saints. Amen. And amen means so be it. Now that benediction is one of many proofs that this book is not apocalyptic literature. Many commentators are puzzled. You could read through it. They're puzzled. How is it that a benediction, which never belongs in apocalyptic literature, could begin the book of Revelation, could end the book of Revelation? In fact, it is so incongruous with apocalyptic literature One commentator here said, these verses appear to come from the hand of a redactor. In other words, even though there's no evidence of it, he said, because it's inconsistent with my presupposition that this is apocalyptic literature, this can't be here. This can't be a part of scripture. But if this whole book is what I have said it is, if it is a prophetic covenant lawsuit in the style of Old Testament prophetic covenant lawsuits, then the benediction fits perfectly. The book is not apocalyptic literature, but it's prophetic covenant lawsuit literature, and thus it is perfectly appropriate to begin the book with a blessing of grace, to end it with grace. Now I want you to notice that this grace comes not just from the Father, it comes from Jesus. Jesus is God himself, God the Son, and he's the one who purchased that grace. And here that grace is guaranteed to all of the elect. The grace that the Father ordained, that Jesus purchased, will be infallibly applied by the Holy Spirit to all the elect. And what does grace encompass? Absolutely everything. It's a reversal of the curse. Horatius Bonar points out that in this book, Grace pardons, liberates, enlightens, strengthens, purifies, comforts, conquers, brings us safely to eternity. Now he gave a whole sermon on just those words right there from the book of Revelation, but it's such a fitting way to end the book of Revelation and to end the canon. And interestingly, the last word of the Old Testament is not blessing. Look it up. Last word of Malachi is curse. And it's the word harem, you know, that people are throwing around nowadays, that referred to the wiping out of the Canaanites. Well, it's saying the same thing's going to happen to Israel in 8070. They're going to be wiped off the face of the map. And it predicted the very curses that the book of Revelation has just pronounced, but it also predicted that after the Messiah cursed Israel, the Messiah would then rise as the son of righteousness, S-U-N, rise with healing in his wings, Malachi 4, verse 2. So without Jesus, here's the point, without Jesus, there's nothing but curse. But where the Old Testament ended with the word curse, the New Testament ends with an amen being pronounced upon the grace of Jesus. that would gradually reverse that curse in history. And I love the comments of H.E. Dana on this last verse. He says, this ritual refrain that closes the book of Revelation is a fitting climax to the New Testament, indeed to the whole Bible. It reveals the living and triumphant Christ as he enters the halls of time to bless with his dynamic presence the succeeding generations of men. Christian hope sweeps forward on the pinions of faith to a holy moment When the promise heralded here shall be fulfilled in tangible reality, but it's already been for many hundreds of years, a glorious spiritual fact, the living triumphant Christ of the apocalypse did indeed come quickly to begin his irresistible march toward that universal conquest, which shall be the triumphant realization of the vision of hope, which inspired the celestial choirs to sing. The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. To this angelic anthem, the Christian heart responds an antiphonal refrain. All hail the power of Jesus' name. Let angels prostrate fall. bring forth the royal diadem, and crown him Lord of all. To him be the glory forever and ever, amen. And all God's people said, amen. Let's pray. Father, what a tough passage, what tough words from your lips, and yet we praise you that you protect your word, because your word is the foundation for our lives. Help us, Father, to live by every word that proceeds out of your mouth, to value it, and to go forth with confidence and faith that you have indeed preserved every jot and tittle of your word in every age. We bless you for that. What a blessing it is. And Father, I pray as we exit this service, we would do so with a renewed vigor to take the kingdoms of this world for the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that we pray. Amen.