for this series and we have spent considerable amount of time really since the beginning of the year looking at Bible basics for discipleship and we have been working our way through these specific words six words for understanding the Word of God if we want to add illumination as our seventh this has been more or less our outline our guide to as we have worked our way through what some might consider Bibliology. But again, getting back to Bible basics, how important it is in our culture today that doesn't seem to want to dive deep into anything or to do the necessary work in a lot of areas. It's important for us as Bible believers to be theologians. Every Christian is a theologian or is supposed to be in some way. Not that everybody goes off to seminary or teaches in a world of academia, but all of us have a responsibility to know why we believe what we believe. And I know this goes back to some very, very basic things. that we maybe have learned from our childhood, but we have worked our way through these words, and we are currently on translation, and we're looking into Lord-willing interpretation. But 2 Peter 1 and verse 19, once again, we have also a more sure word of prophecy, that ye take heed as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts, knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation, for the scripture came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." So once again, in our world today, in our culture, especially with all of the new technology, it seems that there's a drive, there's a push toward everything that is new is good. Everything that is progressive is better. Progress is always for the betterment of mankind. We could get down to evolution and this false theory of evolution that man is constantly improving upon himself in every stage of evolution. Man gets a little bit better and a little bit better until eventually man, according to evolutionary theory, man reaches some sort of state of perfection and ushers in, I guess, some sort of peace and prosperity. this utopian fantasy dream that has been so much a part of liberal politics and progressive politics and has creeped into the church in neo-orthodoxy and in progressive Christianity. And so anything that is old is immediately considered irrelevant, out of touch, Not in with the times. And one of the worst insults that we could receive today is that we are not up to speed with the times. We are not in tune with the here and the now. That's one of the worst accusations that we can receive according to our culture. Well, I don't agree with all of that. Not everything that is new is good. Not everything that is old is bad. As a matter of fact, the more we become untethered from our past, the less we know why we are here, where we are going, how we even got here, the less we respect those who laid the foundation before us, the more arrogant we become, the the unwillingness to look at those who have gone before us and learn from their collective wisdom, from their experiences, it's dangerous for a nation, it's dangerous for a culture, it's dangerous for a society. But when that gets into the mentality of the church, then the church becomes all about trying to stay relevant and trying to market itself like the gospel is some sort of commodity. And Paul warns about peddling the gospel. So the Bible is relevant for this very day and will continue to be relevant. And the Bible speaks to eternal truths. The revelation of God are eternal truths that are relevant for every society, every culture for all time. And so We have to go back again to the basics and not be guilty. I think it's C.S. Lewis who coined the term chronological snobbery. And we must not be chronological snobs. I'm a coffee snob, I'll admit it. But I don't want to be a chronological snob. And one of the things that hurts ministries even is when they forget the foundations of how they got to where they are at, and all those who have gone before, and there can be a great disrespect. We've seen it in the youth culture. It's been a part of every culture in every generation, but it seems like even more now, the levels of disrespect for those who are older than them. It just, again, having been in education for 19 years, Actually, more than that, if we think about the years we spent in Terre Haute, really over 20 years in education, in some way, shape or form, involved with education, the levels of disrespect that we saw among parents, unbelievable. The things that parents would allow their kids to say to them and laugh. And that disrespect for authority, that disrespect for those who are older, it has even gotten into the church and the disrespect for the Bible and for the eternal truths of God. So Revelation is where we were several weeks ago, back in January, and we worked our way through. Revelation is God making Himself known to man. Inspiration, God's method for delivering His Word to man. Preservation, God's protection of His Word. Translation, communication of God's Word into languages from the original languages. And then interpretation, the correct understanding of what God said. We include with that illumination, obviously the Spirit of God and His work in guiding us into all truth and helping us to understand the word of God, and then application, which again, I believe is probably the hardest of all these. I know translation becomes sometimes the most controversial, but really, I think the hardest of all these is application. And I know application even has its areas of controversy as well as interpretation, but application is obeying, living, and following God's truth. So we've looked at translation philosophies. And again, my point here is not to create some sort of Controversy, my point here isn't to start us down some slippery slope. My desire is not in any way, shape, or form to shed any kind of idea regarding compromise on the truth of the word of God. That is not at all what I am trying to do here. I'm trying to strengthen our faith by helping us to understand how God has given us his word and preserved his word and how we are to properly interpret and apply his word. We believe and I believe in our covenant, our statement of faith, our constitution declares that the Bible is the word of God, the inspired, infallible, authoritative word of God. Okay? So, we're not trying to create any kind of controversy or any doubts, but we do need to understand, when it comes to translation, there are two major philosophies. One is dynamic, which is less formal, less literal, becomes more interpretive, and can lend itself to paraphrase, whereas formal equivalency is more literal, word for word, in text and syntax. All translations use both. Some use more than the other. And we have to accept the fact that there are differences in languages. And when you're going from Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, the original languages of the Bible, into any other language, there is going to be some interpretation There is going to be a translation philosophy that affects how those words are translated from the original into whatever language, English, Chinese, Spanish, whatever it might be. There's going to be a philosophy, there's going to be a way of looking at that text, and there's going to be a translation and interpretation philosophy that is going to be applied, okay? Textual criticism then is the study of the text of scripture. Let's not let that be a scary term. Textual criticism, it can have a negative term, a negative connotation, but textual criticism is not in and of itself necessarily a bad thing. It is, first of all, analyzing the manuscripts, looking at the manuscripts, determining what time in history that they were copied, Where did they get distributed? Comparing them with other manuscripts. And then we have higher criticism, which then gets down into the form of the text and what tells us about the process of writing, the transmission of the text, and it does have some subjectivity. And that's where we have to continue to be careful that as more modern translations come out, that there is a proper translation philosophy, and there is a proper interpretation philosophy, and that the foundation of that committee usually is based on the view of the Bible as the inspired, infallible, authoritative word of God. without error in its original autographs, okay? I've used the Passion Translation as an example. Passion Translation is one man who doesn't even know the original languages doing a paraphrase of the Bible. And there are a group of churches, and I even know someone who at least used to attend a church, I don't think she attends there anymore, She attended a church that used the Passion Translation. It's not even a translation. It's a paraphrase by one man who doesn't even know the original languages and basically did his own interpretation of the text as he was writing his translation. Dangerous stuff. We know that there are the Jehovah's Witness Bible, the One World Translation, where they clearly go in and they change text of the scripture and they do not follow the original text but you know you can take a Jehovah's Witness Bible the one world translation and you can turn it around and you can show them from their own translation that they are wrong and you can actually point them to the gospel I'm saying I'm not saying that that that's the best or the only way only method but that one world translation is a obvious translation that is in error. They have misinterpreted and mistranslated John 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. They add the little article A, and they say Jesus was a God. All you've got to do is go back to the original manuscripts, back to the manuscripts, the original language, I mean, in the manuscripts, and there is thousands of manuscripts with clear evidence to the text saying, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God. That little article A is not there. Well, then there's also a interpretation that comes into play, because you have to understand the Greek language. And the way John structured in the syntax, in the word order, in the way he wrote in the vernacular of the Greek, the Koine Greek, you cannot insert the little article A. in that verse. So they are wrong on several different points in this whole process. That's an obvious area of mistranslation, misinterpretation, of error. But we have to understand those terms. And then we spent some time looking already at the Western, the Byzantine, and the Alexandrian families of texts. And I won't rehearse all of those. And then this is not a family of texts per se. Western, Byzantine, and Alexandrian are families of manuscripts. The majority is really a translation view that says a translation should follow what the majority of manuscripts have written. So it's not necessarily a family, it's a way of saying this is the best translation. I went through our statement of faith. One of the reasons I'm dealing with this topic is because we have this in our statement of faith, and I believe it's important for us to understand why it's there and what's the reason behind it. And I won't read it all word for word again, but this is part of the reason I'm dealing with this. so much is because I want us to know why we have this in our statement of faith. And if we're not careful, what do we do nowadays? We just read through things, right? How many of us read the user's agreements on that little piece of paper that comes in the box with our coffee maker or the mattress that you bought and it has that big long tag on it. How many of us read those things? How many of us read those waiver forms down to all the nitty gritty of the legalese? The user terms, what do we usually do? We just click the box, I agree. Somewhere in there it may say that they're going to take our children and I don't know, I'm just joking, I'm just joking, right? In Minnesota, you don't know, right? Some of these laws that are being passed, Minnesota just passed a law where they take the rights of the parents away if a kid runs to Minnesota now and wants to transgender. In Minnesota, I think it's Minnesota that just voted for this, or is it Washington State? Or is it California? I think there's another one, Minnesota or Washington State. We're in one of those liberal states that just voted to overstep parental rights and a transgender kid can run away from home wanting to transgender, run to that state, and the parents don't even have to be notified. And the state can take authority over that kid and mutilate their bodies and pump them full of hormones, sterilize them and all that, and not even let the parents know. That is evil. That is pure, unadulterated evil. That's happening right here in America. But anyway, we don't read all the details sometimes in those user agreements and those waiver forms. And we gotta be careful. So here's something in our church constitution, our statement of faith, and we are thankful for new members. And we go through, and one of the things I love about our membership process is we take time with individuals. And we get their testimonies, and we have them read the Constitution, and they understand our statement of faith, and we have an opportunity to have questions and answers. I love that. It's so important and helps us in unifying our body as a local body of believers. We talked about the 1611 King James. Here's an example right out of the 1611. You see the marginal notes, and you see the differences in the English language. Obviously, they don't spell everything the exact same way that we do. Letters look a little different. And then we took some time to look at how this interpretation and translation philosophy comes into play. So we have here an interlinear at the top. And just to give an example again, of where words in the original language are translated, sometimes with three or four words. Look at in 1 John 1, 1, this interlinear, I have it in the green. The beginning is one word in the Greek language, arche. We have heard, akuo. We have seen, horao. We have looked upon, theaomai. So that's an inner linear showing us where a translator, in this case the King James translators, had to look at one Greek word and determine what is the best way to put that into the English language. and to do it with accuracy without losing the meaning of the text, what God intended to say. A right translation philosophy, those who come to a manuscript and want to translate it correctly will come with the attitude that God has in His Word something to say, He meant what He said, He said what He meant, and I don't want to distract from what God said in His Word. I want to translate it accurately. And thankfully, there are good, accurate translations. But we have to respect, thankfully, the King James translators here who were very, very cautious and careful, very respectful of the text. They searched out the King James translators. They were extremely careful. And this is one of the the ways in which we can appreciate the King James translators. So we have here in this book the pictorial history of our English language by Dr. David Beal. We have in here, he reports the King James translators and their philosophy and the effort that they made to make sure that they were translating correctly. And I want to make sure I put this, I read the right section here. I have it marked. Well, I thought I had it marked. There it is. Okay. So we have 54 scholarly men that were ordered by King James to translate what we know as the King James Bible, the King James Version. The work formally began in 1607. So the first publication was 1611. So they spent at least four years working on this. They weren't just doing this haphazardly. When the work formally began in 1607, the number of translators actually engaged in the work was about 47. So it went from 54 to 47, because several died before the work's completion. These men were the best biblical scholars and linguists of their day, men of profound and unaffected piety. The revisers were divided into three groups, Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge. In the Jerusalem chamber at Westminster, one company of 10 translated Genesis through 2 Kings. Another company of seven translated Romans through Jude. At Cambridge, one company of eight completed 1 Chronicles through Ecclesiastes, while a second company of seven translated the entire Apocrypha. At Oxford, one company of seven men was responsible for Isaiah through Malachi, while a second company of eight rendered the Gospels, Acts, and the Apocalypse, Revelation. So each translator worked, first of all, individually on an assigned chapter or small portion of scripture. He then submitted his work to his colleagues for review and necessary revision, leaving nothing to individual fancy, but drawing from the collective wisdom of a host of counselors, Each company, as soon as it had collectively completed its rendering of any one book, sent a transcript of it to each of the other five companies. Do you think that they were being careful and diligent to make sure they were accurately translating? Yes, we have to respect that. We have to understand the carefulness and the diligence in which they took to translate accurately the word of God. We could talk about the manuscripts that they had available to them. Three of the most ancient and significant Greek manuscripts were not available. They did not know about Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, or Alexandrinus at the time of the King James Translation. Those became known in some cases 200 years later that those manuscripts were discovered. They did use the Antwerp Polyglot of 1572, Tremelius' Bible of 1579. They referenced Luther's German translation. They looked at Italian and Spanish translations and several Latin versions. They used the best Hebrew and Greek manuscripts available at that time. Even the Syriac New Testament and the Aramaic Targums were available. and they referenced those as well. In both equipment and method of translation, the King James was produced according to the highest standards of scholarship and the most advanced knowledge available in that day. The translators themselves, in their preface, humbly described the benefits of such work. Translation is that, openeth Translation, it is that openeth the window to let in the light, that breaketh the shell that we may eat the kernel, that puteth aside the curtain that we may look into the most holy place, that removeth the cover of the well that we may come by the water. Were they not careful? Were they not diligent? Sure, we have to respect that. And that's why it has been used of the Lord. But saying all that, were the King James translators inspired? Were they inspired on the same level as a Paul, a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke, or a John? Were they inspired in that same way? That's where we have to be careful. I know and I've read church constitutions, statements of faith, that essentially say the King James version is inspired. That is something that we must reserve only for the original autographs. Otherwise, we have to believe in a continual inspiration or a double inspiration. And then I'll get to your question, Hank. If we say that, we have to be careful here, because if we say that, then The King James Version can fix the original manuscripts. The King James then becomes the more accurate it becomes as a version, as a translation. And I want to be very careful how I say this. We have in our hands the Word of God. But if we say that the King James 1611 is inspired in the same level as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, those writers, the King James translators and the writers of the New Testament are inspired in the exact same way, then we're allowing for continuing inspiration or double inspiration, which then means that that opens the door, it cracks the door open, opens the window, for other people to receive new revelation and inspiration. So when the Passion Translation comes out, he is essentially saying, I have received, now I'm not saying I've read this, but I'm saying this is his mindset. This guy who wrote the Passion Translation, he's essentially saying, I received the same level of inspiration as a Matthew, a Mark, a Luke, or a John. If the King James translators had that same level of inspiration, then what's to say that the Passion Translation can't claim the same authority? You see what I'm saying? I'm just saying we have to be careful. We have to understand this translation philosophy, this interpretation philosophy, or we have to open ourselves up to error, and we have to crack that door open, which can be very dangerous. Okay, Hank, you had a question? Yes. Yes. Yes, they included the Apocrypha. They did not, they separated it as non-inspired, but it was included because it was considered historical reference. Right. It was, and I'll get to that here in just a minute. Good question. Okay, I'll get to that in just a minute. That's why we can look at the 6,000 manuscripts that are out there, and we can see that there is so little difference. There's different percentages that are argued. The differences among 6,000 manuscripts, the argument is in the neighborhood of 10 to 15% in differences. And they're almost all of that 10 to 15% almost all is word order, syntax, it's not affecting any major doctrine. Okay, so often what we see where there are other sections or verses, like in the Byzantine, the Byzantine family has more of the additional text. Those were not added by copyists, by scribes to try to take away from the authority of scripture. They were added for clarification or by accident because they were copying in a room As I mentioned last week, you take one person reading from a manuscript and you have all of us out here with our inkwell and our feather dipping into an inkwell, writing on papyrus, animal skin, vellum in a darkly lit room with no coffee or caffeine or Mountain Dew or Code Red or Red Bull. All right. And what happens? As they are reading and the people out in the room are copying, their pen drifts off, they fall asleep, they add a word that was in somewhere else. That's why they would bring together the manuscripts. Well, even those ones that had mistakes in them would sometimes get brought home and then circulated. Why? Because even that was a valuable manuscript because they didn't have the opportunity just to go and make another copy and they didn't have the delete button. They didn't have computers. They didn't have a copy machine, a printer and all the digital tools that we have. For them to have a manuscript that maybe added an extra word or had a little embellishment here or a marginal note that was off to the side that somehow got stuck into the text. That was still a valuable manuscript they could use, that they could read from in their family devotions or, you know, wherever. They didn't have all the plethora of copies and multiple ways in which to access the scriptures. So sometimes those things got into, but that's why we have 6,000 manuscripts that we can compare and we can go back to even the third century and see Alexandria's, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, thank you, and we can compare. Compare that with manuscripts found hundreds of years later, and we can see, oh, there's a lot of evidence to this particular text. But again, the percentage is so small, it's amazing, it's miraculous, it's supernatural. That's the testimony of the preservation of the word of God. And the differences don't affect any doctrine. Okay, so this is translation. This goes to show a little bit of the technique that has to be used. And then I went through this last week. This is the very preface of the 1611 King James. And they talk about their translation philosophy. And I don't have time to read through it at all like I did last week. But they even avoided words that would be considered Catholic, because they hated the Catholics. But they also avoided words that would sound Congregationalist, because they didn't like the Congregationalists. So they were trying to even choose words accurately, but trying to avoid words that sounded Catholic or words that sounded Congregationalist. And they talk about that in here. And they talk about the importance of marginal notes for clarification of the text. It's very, very interesting. Again, we don't have time to re-read all that. So then we went to this, and here's where I want to come back to again. I believe that the word begotten is an extremely important word. I just, we can argue all day long, monogamous. There's no English translation that truly captures all of the meaning of monogamies. Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God. He is the unique, only Son of God. Unique in what way? He is very God. He's the God-man. He's God incarnate. So I think that's a very important word. I love how the King James uses begotten. New King James, begotten. But notice the ESV, they don't keep begotten. I'm not saying the ESV is a horrible translation. Like I said last week, I don't believe it needs to be. turned into the pits of hell. I don't think that the ESV translators were trying to somehow come up with a different translation that would undermine the full authority of the Word of God. I don't believe that. I watched a video of the ESV translators. They were men, God-fearing men, who were trying to accurately interpret, translate as they were translating, and they were trying hard, they were talking, I watched the video, and they were very, very clear that they believed in the authority of the word of God, the infallibility, inspiration of the word of God. But I think that this is a little weak, NIV, I believe it's a little weak. Now, someone came to me after Sunday school, and they have an NASB that is before 1995 that has begotten in there, so somewhere. They updated, but the NASB 1995 has begotten. I haven't looked at the NASB 2020. They have a new publication, the NASB 2020. I haven't looked, but I would imagine it has begotten. And then we have basically what is a paraphrase, the message. It's just a paraphrase. But they did try down here with one of a kind Son of God. But you can see how weak, if you were to read through that, you can see how weak that is. That allows for way too much interpretation by the translator. It becomes subjective and the interpretation gets written into the translation. And I think that can be dangerous. We need to be very, as close to formal as we can. So that gives you an idea of some of the differences in translation. Okay. I'm gonna step away from my notes. Okay, so this comes back to one of Hank's questions, and what you were saying, why the differences in the manuscript families, okay? King James has Lord Jesus Christ, New King James, which is translated from the TR. with a little bit more understanding of the Hebrew language. So from what I've read, it's either five or seven places in the New King James where there is a little bit of a change in the text because of a better understanding of the Hebrew that the King James translators didn't understand. But the New King James basically just takes out the these and the thous and modernizes the language a little bit, but it's still based on the TR. Notice here, the NASV leaves out Christ. Notice here, the NIV leaves out Christ. Why? That's why I have this question. Some people will say because they were trying to take Christ out of the Bible. I don't believe that that's what they were trying to do, okay? I don't believe they were trying to be like the JWs who were literally trying to take the deity of Christ out of the Bible. the evidence shows, and because of the JW's theological teachings, they are a cult, they are a false religion. It was clear what they were trying to do. Why is Christ missing in some versions? This is where you come to the difference between the Byzantine, which is 95% of the manuscript families, of the manuscripts versus the other two families, the Alexandrian and the Western, okay? Why is Christ missing? Anybody have any idea? Ran out of room on the page. Some of it, some of it literally is. Very well could be. They're on papyrus. They're on animal skin in a big room. Making copies. They're not in a nice air-conditioned room with a copier or a printer. All right? But those who say that they were trying to take Christ out of these newer translations, then why is it in all these places? NASB, NIV. So what happens is a scribe, and Erasmus talks about this. Erasmus talks about this as he's compiling the TR. Okay, the Texas Receptus and his many editions of it. Erasmus even talks about how scribes, as he's looking at manuscripts, and he's collecting manuscripts, and he's starting to see little variations, okay? And you've got to remember, too, that the uncial manuscripts were all capital letters, no punctuation. Left to right. Say space. No printers, no copiers, no lots of digital copies that we can make. So we're talking about a scribe possibly looking at a unsealed manuscript with all capital letters, no punctuation, no space in between, and they're going along, and they've written Lord Jesus Christ how many times? Maybe hundreds of times. They get to a manuscript, And as they're copying, and they just add Christ, because they see Lord Jesus so many times that they just add Christ. How many of us have done that? Typing along by memory, writing by memory, all of a sudden you find yourself adding words. Oh, I just wrote that five times somewhere else, and you gotta scribble out, oh, I didn't mean for that. I've done it, I've typed it in. It doesn't mean that they were trying to change the word of God, okay? There are things like the JW's One World Translation where they're deliberately trying, there's clear evidence that they are a cult, a false religion trying to change the word of God. Some of it, this literally comes down to translation philosophy and interpretation and accuracy, knowledge of the language. But a lot of it is just simply the scribes in the Byzantine family of manuscripts The scribes were writing Lord Jesus Christ, and they added Christ, okay? Yes? This one here? Yes. I have a question. Yes. In the King James Version, Right. Sure. Sure. All caps, everything. Everything all caps. So somewhere along the line, I forget when, they added the chapter and verse divisions, and then somebody along the line decided to capitalize, well, there were no red letter additions in the manuscripts. In the manuscripts, there weren't the words of Jesus in red letters. Someone along the way added, why were they adding these things? for clarification, for readability, for better understanding, for organization, as we develop more and more tools, the printing press has developed, people are saying, how can we make it easier for people to read the Bible, to have it more accessible? Copies upon copies, okay, well, we can get too far on that and make it too readable by doing what? By making it more of a paraphrase. by trying to take all of the work out, I will interpret in my translation for you. And so we end up with the passion translation, we end up with things like the message. I forget some of the other ones that are out there that are just, they're paraphrases, they're very interpretive translations. They're not following good formal equivalency in their translation philosophy. So I know there's a lot more we could say here, but I don't believe that there was the attempt in most of these translations, with some exception, I don't believe that in most of these translations there was a deliberate attempt to try to take Christ out of the Bible. It was just a scribal, transmission where they had written Lord Jesus Christ so many times, they just went ahead and added it. So, quick example in the King James where there is, there is formal equivalency, or if I can say it this way, where there is interpretation added by the King James translators. First Corinthians 14. First Corinthians 14. All right? When we get down to tongues, did I? Yeah, there it is. Okay, 1 Corinthians 14. I believe you will begin to see about, where is it, verse 13? You'll see an italicized word, 1 Corinthians 14 and verse 13. What's the italicized word? Unknown. Why is it in italics? It's not in the original. Why did the King James translators add that? Why? Clarification. They wanted you to understand this is an unknown tongue, but what does that do? There's an ambiguity now. What do they mean by unknown? Unknown as in the person who is speaking that tongue doesn't know it. The person who's listening to it doesn't know it. How have some people decided that unknown means? A new language, an ecstatic language, a heavenly language. Only the spiritual, you really are close to God, can mumbo-jumbo a bunch of words, and then that's true spirit-filled tongue speaking. Well, what were the King James translators trying to do? They were simply trying to clarify, explain, help understand. So there's where there's some interpretation added into the translation. But we understand unknown, to be added by the translators for clarification. We know that tongues means the person is speaking in a tongue they never learned. There's an interpreter. In Acts chapter two, it was understood as the apostle is speaking. It was understood in the languages of the people without the apostles even speaking the language. It was heard by the people in their different dialects. Okay, so the King James translators are trying to help clarify, trying to help add some understanding, okay? Almost out of time. Here's where the deity of Christ, here's an example of the deity of Christ. King James, this is John 118, God at any time, the only begotten son. God anytime the only begotten Son, NASB, God the only Son, NIV, the one and only Son who is himself God, ESV, God the only true God who is at the Father's side. Which of these has the most clear statement accurately translated from the manuscripts in the original language, from the original language? Which ones have the strongest statement regarding the deity of Christ? Some would argue the NIV, some would argue down here. Is the deity of Christ in that verse? Yes. Is it in that verse? Yes. But it's very clear down here. It's clearer here and clearer here. Yes, it's there, but I would say it's even more clear here or here or even down here. God is used twice. Okay? So there are some who would say, if we argued, please, don't misunderstand me when I say this, okay? There are some who would argue that, well, these versions are taking God and Christ and deity out of the Bible, well then, why is it ambiguous here? Why is God not restated here, but it is restated here, and here, and here? So is God being taken out of the Bible here and here? Of course not! Of course not, but God is repeated here, here, and here. So again, we have to understand proper translation, proper interpretation techniques. Yes, Earl. Yes. Right. Right. Right. Right. John said that the world couldn't contain everything that would be written, but God gave us specific books inspired. Yes? Right, you're right. The Revised Standard Version would say made instead of virgin. That's a bad translation. That's a bad translation of at least that one verse and that one word, because virgin is clearly the word that is chosen. But you'll find that, whoops. You'll find that a lot of these will still include virgin, but there are some versions that use made, and it does, you're right, it does affect the deity of Christ. It's a good example of where bad translation, bad interpretation is used. It's good. All right, and then we'll close with this. Sometimes all that is being done is trying to Update the language. Holy Ghost, we don't get upset when somebody says Holy Spirit. Are we changing the word of God when we say Holy Spirit instead of Holy Ghost? Do you to wit, how many of us say do you to wit? Thee thou thither. We use love for charity, right? But why did the King James translators use charity? Because charity implied action, doing. Love is an action, it's a choice that results in an action. We use charity now to talk about the action of what? Giving to a non-profit, to a church, to an action that serves, meets a need somewhere. And then real quick, why so many translations? Well, money and markets. I mean, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson, Brodman-Holman, on and on and on we can go. They all want their own publication, right? They all want their own copyrighted. They want sales. I mean, you could buy a study Bible by just about every brother and their cousin. It's ridiculous. A lot of those study Bibles are not very good. And some of those notes I wouldn't trust. But are the notes inspired? No, the word of God is what's inspired, not the notes. I have some good study Bibles, but I still have to make sure that I'm interpreting the Word of God and applying the Word of God, not just reading the study notes. Why so many translations? Well, we've increased our understanding of the original languages of manuscripts. Sometimes it's just simply pride. I want mine. I mean, King James himself was doing it as a matter of pride. He wanted to have his version, his King James. He wanted to have his name on the Bible. The King's edition, okay? Against the Anglicans, against the Congregationalists, against the Puritans, and then sometimes it is just a desire to put it into the common vernacular. But we gotta be careful about versions that distort the language or try to do too much interpretation. All right, we went over time. I'm sorry. Hank, can I follow up with you afterward or later? Okay. We are out of time. I know I left a lot there on the plate. We'll talk about it again next week, and then we'll talk about interpreting the Bible, and then, Lord willing, in June, Earl will teach a series of lessons. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you, Lord, that we can trust that you have preserved for us your very word. The inspired, infallible, authoritative word of God, help us to be faithful to it, apply it to our lives, and to live it out. Bless now the service to follow, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for being here, and we'll get the service started at 1045.