lets us get going, and we'll start with a little quote here that Dave found in his readings. This is the battle for the Bible, Harold Lenzel. Some of you are too young to know that. When I was a young Christian, I just got out of engineering school. I'd been saved a few years, went to church, GRBC church, and the pastor there gave me some weird answers, and I thought they were weird answers, but I wasn't smart enough to know that they were weird. He told me that the Bible was not accurate, when it came to things like history, geography, and all those kinds of things. I thought, well, I guess I never thought of it that way. I just thought the Bible was true in whatever it said, you know. Anyway, my neighbor who built houses, I went to him. He was mentoring me. I said, you know, is that really true that the Bible is not accurate when it comes to matters of history and geography and those kinds of things, only accurate in matters of faith and practice? He said, oh, I know what's going on. He said, your pastor is bought into Fuller Seminary. Well, Fuller Seminary had come out with a new doctrinal statement. And the doctrinal statement changed to only a few words. It said, we believe the word of God is inerrant in all matters of faith and practice. Sounds good to me, doesn't it, you? What they had changed was, we believe the word of God is inerrant. We believe the word of God is inerrant in all matters of faith and practice, which means it's not inerrant in matters of history, geography, et cetera, et cetera. So be very careful when very positive statements Often when somebody writes a very positive statement, it's because they're hiding the negatives. This came out and he was ahead of his time. He took great heat for doing it. He called it the battle for the Bible. It was the battle of that era, whether we'd buy into Fuller Seminary or the historic position that the word of God is infallible, inherent, all those kinds of things. Anyway, through it, one of the quotes is from Martin Luther near the end. And you got to love Martin Luther. You just got to think the world of the guy. Obviously, he didn't have everything right because he didn't believe everything I believe. So he must have been wrong. But anyway, if I profess," this is what he wrote, "...if I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I'm really not confessing Christ. However boldly I may be professing Christ, where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved. And to be steady on all the battlefield besides is merely flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point. And that's what Linzell said. He was at that point. They weren't arguing over virgin birth or whatever. And so you could agree with everything. But the point was, at this point in history, was the inerrancy and infallibility and what it really means. That was a great book. It's a little timely, but as Dave would tell you, it's like reading today. The guy just was ahead of his time. He knew exactly where it was going, what would happen, and he was right on. He was smart enough to discern that. Sometimes people who are right on are ahead of the curve and everybody thinks they're dumb. Winston Churchill was that kind of a guy. He knew exactly what was going to happen, just nobody else could see it. And so you want to be that kind of person. We're studying the Bible, Bibliology. We went through its authority, what it says about its authority. That was 1A. You have the notes from last week. morning session on Wednesday. We didn't get as far as we got on the evening session last week. So there's just going to be a little bit of a break, but you're going to pick it up real fast right here. And that is, we went to the Bible's view of its credibility. And last Tuesday night, we got through the first two points. We remember inspiration was one of the points that we made in the authority section, to be God-breathed. Inerrancy. Inerrancy means to, it is It is true without error. And so we gave a bunch of verses. And those of you who are not here that night, I'll give you my notes and you can pick it up. The Bible claims to be absolutely every part of scripture, every subject covered. The Bible claims to be absolutely in error. Let's say free of error in its original manuscripts. That's what I think you believe. And I know that as I read the scripture, that's what it claims to be. And so when it talks about geography, history, matters of faith, matters of practice, whatever it talks about, it is without error. So it's to be truthful. And that's an important discussion there. Then we also studied infallibility and the difference between inerrancy and infallibility is just the definition. This means to be trustworthy. All right. You can go to the bank on it. It doesn't let you down. You'll never be disappointed by it. The Bible claims to be inherently authoritative because the contexts are impeccable. You can't No matter how hard you scrutinize them, no matter how negative an attitude you have as you approach them and attack them, you won't really be able to find flaws in it. It's impeccable. Now, many people will tell you it's full of flaws. You've heard it. I've heard it. Just remember, if you had enough time and their hearts were open, you could show every one of those that that's not a flaw. But it's impeccable. It is without contradiction. Second Peter 121. You have a more sure word of prophecy. You have a more sure. So we have this book right here. The Bible says It is more sure than all the words of the prophets. So when God revealed truth to Isaiah, can you imagine being Isaiah and God says to you, let me tell you something, write this down. He writes it down, you know, there must've been something. I don't know how that all happened. You think that was sure? Absolutely. It would be great if, if, if God just tapped you on the shoulder and spoke to you, he said, God just told me that, you know, the Assyrians are going to get captured or whatever. That is a sure word of prophecy. You have something even more sure, he said, in your hand, even more trustworthy than that. The Word of God is inerrant and it is infallible. And so that's important. The question is, but don't all Christians believe this? And we asked that before about authority. And the answer is absolutely not. We're just going to listen. We're not really up to there. So don't worry about that on your sheet there. The liberals. When I talk about liberals, some people don't always identify what I'm talking about. What's a liberal? When I'm talking theologically and biblical terminology in churches. Are there any liberal churches in Waterloo? Okay. Are we liberal? Hopefully not. If you are, I'm glad you're here. But anyway, I'm not. All right. What's a liberal? Are there any liberal churches in Waterloo? Absolutely. A lot of them. Are there any liberal Baptist churches in Waterloo? Absolutely. You know, so making you Baptist doesn't mean you're not liberal or Methodist or whatever. What's a liberal? Yes. All right. They make themselves, the ultimate liberal makes himself the authority over this book. The ultimate liberal does not really believe there's a God. He will talk about gods and gods are to them, the people, the gods you make up in your mind. And if that's what it takes, then it's a God to you. So you have a God. So did the Canaanites have gods? That's a trick question. I thought there's only one true God. So when they say Baal was their God, was that a God? with a small g. So in one sense, you'd say, yeah, that was their God. And in another sense, he wasn't a God because he wasn't really a God. He wasn't real. The liberals think the same thing about the God of the Bible. You and I would say, yeah, the Canaanites had all these gods and we can talk about that. But we know there really wasn't a God. They were just the figments of their imagination, little pieces of mud and plaster that they made them into. The liberals think that this book was written by somebody like that. Really, there isn't a true God, a real God, a living God. It's the one that you guys made up, I made up, Paul made up, whoever made it up, that's all right. So that's a liberal. And they do not believe in inerrancy or in infallibility. They believe that this book contains the Word of God as it does something for you. You like to read it and it makes you really feel good or somehow helps you through life and whatever, then that was a message that's important for you. And it kind of contains the Word of your God. And they love the Bible and they think it's a great thing. And, you know, just read it and get out of it what you want. And whatever, but they don't believe it's without error and they don't believe it's totally trustworthy. It's kind of what you make out of it. And so they're looking for the truth in their Bible. They don't believe that it is truth. They don't believe it is inerrant, infallible, Bryant. Not in my opinion, because they also don't believe if you don't believe there's a God, how can you believe, really believe there's a God? I mean, a real God, Jehovah, God, a living God, creator, God, whatever phrase you You try to modify every word you say so that you get them in a corner and you can't. Oh, yeah, I believe in creator God. I believe in, you know, so whatever you say, they're going to say it with you. But they really don't believe in God, the true liberal. All right. So the liberals don't believe it. In history, our current history, when the battle for the Bible was going on, there was a group called the New Evangelicals. Basically, you were an evangelical or you were a liberal, all right? The evangelicals used to be the same as the fundamentalists. In other words, there was a day when you believed the Bible to be true and errant and all the fundamental truths of Scripture, and there was this group that had taken off called the liberals. Well, there was a group. Coubideau was one of the guys who came up with this phrase in Ocking Day out of Boston, and so came up with the phrase, New Evangelicals. And they tried to be kind of middle of the road. We're not liberal. We're not like you funny fundamentalists. You know, so they were a real attack there. And that's what Fuller Seminary became at that time. Fuller Seminary then came up with this, yeah, we believe the Bible is inerrant in all matters of faith and practice. You know, sounded great. But when it comes to history, it's wrong. When it comes to this, it's wrong. When it comes to that, it's wrong. So they became that way. Those who were discerning, like Lenzel and many others, John Wickham and people who've been around a while, said it won't be long. It just won't be long. And the neo-evangelicals will be no different than the liberals. And I'd love you to pick up Christianity Today. I read it every week. I just got some quotes here, in fact. And that's exactly what happens. In fact, in Christianity Today, it doesn't matter if you're whatever you are, if you call yourself a Christian. I don't mean Catholic. I mean, anything goes. You're all the same. We're on the same boat. We're all going to heaven. In fact, the Seventh-day Adventists are, Mormons are now our brothers. I mean, they just keep getting bigger and broader and bigger and broader. So when the Mormons are part of us and the Jehovah's Witnesses and, you know, on and on the list goes. And not everybody who writes in Christianity today believes that, but it's getting that way. So they don't believe in it. The neo-evangelical basically said we're going to critically look at the text and figure out what it says. And so they came up with a Bible, as you know, not too long ago, where the words of Jesus were in red and the words that Jesus might have said were in pink and the word of Jesus that People claim the word Jesus' word, but he really didn't say it because we are so smart. We know he didn't say it. They're in another color, purple or something like that. They have four colors. When you get all done in a whole gospel mark, there's not one thing that Jesus really said. And they're smart enough to know that. And so they make themselves the judge. So that's the truth is not everybody believes in inerrancy and inspiration. And you just have to know that. And you might be surprised as you talk with people, because they're going to talk right with you. They're going to, you're going to read doctrinal statements. We believe in the inerrancy of the scripture in all matters of faith and practice. And that sounds so good to me. And then a discerning near realist. I know what you're saying. You're pulling the wool over my eye, buddy. You know, what you're telling me is you don't believe in other areas. So those are things we have to be aware of. Now, the next question you have on your sheet is, but we don't have the original manuscripts. So how do we know what is the text? And you don't. Even here I have my Greek, but it's not the original manuscript. Nobody has the original manuscripts. We might argue why or try to debate why did God not preserve the original manuscripts in some museum somewhere so we could always go back to the original writings of Paul or Peter or whoever it is. I think there's one more seat right there. Yes, thank you for Phyllis. And so what you have is a whole bunch of manuscripts. we're going to think about it. And this is called textual criticism. I just want to hit it lightly. I know it's a deep subject and you don't even want to go there, but I think it'll, it'll intrigue you. Textual criticism, the word criticism is used in theological terms to be a positive word. We're going to be a critic of this. We're going to analyze it. Textual analysis, we might even say, is the attempt to recover the original form of the Bible from the divergent copies that do exist. Okay. So you realize, by the way, I had a sheet, I didn't bring it with me. How many copies do we have of Plato? I think I said that last week. How many copies do we have of Caesar crossing the Rubicon? How many copies, you know, if you look at even Shakespeare's plays and so, we have virtually no copies of it and we all believe it's true. We have 5,300 Greek manuscripts and by Greek manuscripts, those are old, old manuscripts before the year 1400. Basically, anytime you do correct textual criticism, all these things are before the printing press because once the printing press came we can mass-produce it and that was never a question after that but before that they were all handwritten so we have 5,300 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament we have 9,000 different versions where the Greek New Testament was translated into Syriac, Latin, Coptic, whatever it is so we have 14,300 various manuscripts, old old manuscripts that would claim to be the Word of God, or a copy of the Word of God is a good way to say it, or a translation of a copy of the Word of God, or something like that. Now, if you put all 14,300 together, and it was total confusion, what would you conclude? I don't know what it says. But if you put 14,003 of them down, and they all said the same thing, John 3,16 always came out the same. If you had 14,300 of them, what would you say? I don't have the original, but there's a pretty good chance Since it's 14,300 to zero, that John 3,16 says the same thing. I have a pretty good confidence that it's right. So that's called textual criticism. What you will find is whenever you debate that, everybody, without even thinking, is talking about the New Testament. Why don't we talk about the Old Testament? Why have you never heard of or studied textual criticism of the Old Testament? Pardon me? They were so good at preserving it, it basically is not a debate at all over anything. Then the Dead Sea Scrolls came along and just blew it away by proving again that even an older manuscript by hundreds of years was identical to what the Jews had done. So textual criticism doesn't hardly even, maybe in all of my theological training, all the things I've ever read, maybe twice I've seen where somebody says, you know, there's a variant there in this manuscript from that twice in the whole Testament that I know of. Anyway, very, very small. But in the Greek New Testament, there are some. And so you have to understand that a variant is any time If you look at all the copies, 5,300 of them, maybe 5,299 of them say yes, and one of them says no. That'd be a variant, all right? Now, let me tell you how they count them, because the liberal will tell you, or many people who are trying to attack the Bible will tell you, there are thousands and thousands, and they have this big number, like 960,000 variants. You know how they do that? Let's say, In John 3.16, there are 5,299 texts that say what we read. And somewhere, somewhere in all those manuscripts, there's one that has one word different. Maybe it's, I don't know what it'd be, but just one thing different. How many variants would you call that? One? What's wrong with you? That's 5,299 variants. And that's how they come. So there's 900 and some thousand variants out there and you go, oh man, wow, I can't trust this book anymore. You know, just look at the way they count them. And I don't have the, for the life of me, I can't figure out whoever came up with that system, but I sure wish you could count my money. But anyway, it'd be a nice way to look at it. So there are some variants. What I'd like you to do is, and I guess that's why I had that there. You could understand why if a whole bunch of people were copying from copies of copies and copies and copies, you would expect, and they all look like this, you would expect There'd be all kinds of variants. All right, if I gave you all the whole New Testament written like that, I said, now come back next week, I want it all rewritten on another piece of paper. What are the chances that you could rewrite the whole New Testament without making one mistake? Not one place you wouldn't make some word plural that right now is singular. But one place you wouldn't just change an A to an E or something like that. What would be the chances? Anybody here want to try it? It'd be a good test. You'd get an A for the class. No, I wouldn't give you an A anyway. But anyway, he was ready to do it. It's amazing that there aren't millions of variants. Because that's what they had to do, sitting there in those cold cells and whatever. By the way, the Irish were the key to it all. How the Irish Saved Civilization is a great book by Thomas Cahill. They, in the day when we almost lost it, were the ones who pulled it through. And they were Catholic monks. God uses all kinds of people to do whatever he wants done. And he used them to preserve the word of God in a very special time. So those are the variants. Now, the principles by which, let's just point out a variant. Why don't you turn in your Bibles to Matthew 5, and some of your Bibles will point these out and some won't. Matthew 5, 22 says this, But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of judgment. In my Bible, there's a little one before the word without a cause. Some of your Bibles may have that, some don't. The Bibles that have them are telling you there's a variant there. That little phrase, without a cause, is not found in some of the Greek manuscripts, but it is found in the majority of the manuscripts. So it's in there, but it wanted to point it out that it isn't in some. If you would add them all up, I mean, sometimes when I bring this to people's attention, they get all scared that they don't have the Bible. I just want you to know the number of, this is one of the more significant ones, and really at the end of the day doesn't make a lot of difference if it says without a cause or not. It makes a little difference. Anybody who gets angry with his brother is in danger of judgment versus anybody who gets angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of judgment. There's a little difference because sometimes you maybe should get angry at your brother. You ever get angry at your brother for the right cause? Absolutely. So, without a cause seems to be the right reading, and it's a majority reading. So, you will find that there is some of that going on, and there are other places as well. I'll just say this about textual criticism. There's all kinds of things there. By the way, in your Bible, it may say in the notes, N-U or M. There are basically two kinds of Greek manuscripts. There are the Nestle's United United. That's where in you come from. Nestle is what this is. This is the Nestle's New Testament United Bible Society has one. They're identical. Identical. So that's in you. M stands for majority. The King James came out of the majority text. And basically it's almost impossible to find a for anybody who wants to pick up a New Testament to find it in Greek and in the majority text. But there are some coming out. Anyway, the point is this, and if that all scares you, let me just reassure you, when you get all done, no major doctrine rests on any questionable text. Like if it was without a cause or not, oh no, the deity of Christ is on the line there. No, it isn't. No major doctrine. Someone said it's purer than ivory soap. What's ivory soap? 99 and 44, 100 percent pure, something like that. It really is minor. At first it really bothered me when I found out about this as a Christian. Oh boy. You know, those liberals are right. Whatever. And I'll tell you, I've done a lot, a lot of hours of study on this. And the older and the more I study, the more confident I am we have the word of God. Are there a few places where I don't know, does it say without a cause? I don't know that. I can't tell you dogmatically I'm confident it's in there or it's not in there. I don't know, I'm not smart enough. And the truth is no man is smart enough to know that. It's in the majority of the Greek text. There are a few where it is not. But when there's 5,300 of them, it's in some but not others. And there's all kinds of principles. So I just wanted you to know about that. Only of all the variants, if you even count them our way of variants, it's one, not 5,299. Of all the variants, which really, when you count them our way, are very, very few. Only, you know, one-tenth of one percent even amounts to hell beans. Usually, if you could write Greek, the difference between you and we, for them, if you could write it in Greek, if I put them up here in Greek, you probably wouldn't know the difference. They look identical, except just a little bit of squiggle at the beginning. Well, when you are copying of copies of copies of copies, and I had to copy you, and I don't know how you wrote, So I didn't know if that was a that or a that, you know. So that's where they came. A lot of them are we versus you. And when you think about it, most of the time that would not make a lot of difference in the text anyway. We versus you, that kind of thing. So I just want you to know that exists there. And I'm convinced and I trust you are convinced we have the word of God. Do we have the originals? No. Why? I don't know. Maybe we'd worship them and we all go to the Museum of Babylon to look at them or something and bow down. I don't know what we do with them, but Anyway, probably God says, no, trust me, I can preserve my word without originals. And he did. There's no book that I know of in all the world that is as well documented and as accurate. As the Bible. Nowhere, anywhere. So we do have a more short word of prophecy and we have one that is well taken care of, by the way, this is a little you can see that that's kind of textual criticism. There was the original and some two guys copied it. They probably got it right. So they each had two guys copy it. If you just take that down for 1400 years, and now we're down to 5,300 of them that we have, who knows how many were lost. I mean, just humanly speaking, you'd expect there to be all kinds. You ever play telephone? Go 10 people. What are your chances of getting the same message? You know what God did? He did a miracle of preservation. 1400 years, guys copied. copies of copies of copies of copies of copies. When it's all done, we have exactly what they started with, with a few variants that don't really make a lot of difference. Any questions on that? Textual criticism. Allen and Black are some guys, really smart guys from Princeton, who really are very smart. They really are. The liberals do all the work on this, because us conservatives, we believe the Bible's true anyway, so it's not an issue to us. But anyway, they really are smart. And they know Greek like you and I wouldn't know anything. And I remember the quote from him, and I don't have it in my files, who we would all consider the greatest of the greatest of the greatest of the greatest when it comes to Greek. If he says it, it's got to be true. And he said, the truth is, I really don't know which variants are right. If he doesn't know, how would I know? And how would you know? So don't worry about it, because it really doesn't affect anything. Significantly only a few verses minorly never a doctor never a position whatever textual Christian. Let's go to the next question Do we have a credible translation? That's the next question we have and so we want to take a little time to think about that when it comes to translation First of all, we noted the difference between translation and paraphrase. What's the difference? Okay, give me John 3 16 in your words God loves me so much that he was willing to give his only son to die for me And he basically said the same thing It was kind of personal. You could put your own name in there or you just kind of change a few words that make more sense to you for whatever reason. That's a paraphrase. You wouldn't want to go to the bank on her paraphrase. You wouldn't want to stake your life on it, you know, because she just did her thing. But it's probably helpful. And once in a while we do that in our study. Write it in your own words. Don't we say that? Write out this verse in your own words. That's a paraphrase. What's the translation? You take it from the original and then you try to be accurate in translating it into French or Spanish or English, in our case, or whatever it might be. That's the difference. First of all, we have to know that. Now, how do we know we have a credible translation? Anybody believe you have a credible translation? Some guys did it. Do you trust those guys? It would be nice if God inspired them in their hands. But it wasn't that way. And the guys who did it weren't always that good of guys, trust me. Most of them were sinners by birth. Some of them were saved sinners at that point. Some of them were not saved, probably. Probably smart guys like Alan and Black and some other guys from Princeton. Maybe saved, maybe not. You trust him? You walk around with this text and say, did you know what John 3,16 says? You talk like you believe it's inspired and infallible. And all you got is a translation of an inspired and infallible text. How do you trust it? Well, I just like to talk a little bit about translation and At least my understanding of it. I don't think I'm the only guy. Cause obviously I studied from other people and whatever. So it seems to me, and there's, you ever go to the bookstore and try to buy a Bible. I just want one, you know, now I got to make all these, I keep going to the grocery store and buying cereal. I remember the first time my kids were growing up, go get some cereal. The kids like walked on this aisle, 5,300 different kinds of cereal, which one do they? I don't know. We got at Cheerios and got out there. You know, I couldn't even find Cheerios, but you just want something to be simple and it's not that way. And it's getting worse. You know why? Because we're all concerned about the word of God, right? Man, imagine translating the Bible and getting it published. It's got to be worth money. It is worth tons of money. That doesn't mean everybody who translates it is bad, for sure. How do you know you have a good one? How do you make a choice on that? I'd just like to suggest to you a couple of things. All right. First of all, the, uh, Translation you get will depend upon the text that is used. I don't know if that's in there or not. The Greek text is used. The Old Testament is all the same. There's only one Hebrew text. No questions. Everything's accurate. And as I said, even then, it's very, very minor. But there is a broad general field called the majority text. King James was translated as a majority text. Sometimes they call it the Texas Receptus, the TR, but those are really two things, but they're awful close. called a bunch of different things, that group. And some of them are translated out of the NU, Westcott and Hort, it's sometimes called, different things that are called, which is the critical text. And so it will make a little difference. So sometimes if you have an N-A-S-V or the N-I-V, and you read Matthew chapter 5, 22, and I have a King James or a new King James, and I read Matthew 5, whatever is 22, I think it was. Yours might not have without a cause, and mine will. So I'll listen to you read it and you go, da-da-da-da-da. Anybody who gets angry with his brother will be in danger of judgment. I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you forgot a phrase there. It's without a cause. You say, no, it's not in my Bible. Just understand that's why. One was based on Westcott and Hort, one was based on majority text. So that's very rare, but occasionally you'll find that in your Sunday school class or something. That'll help you to understand it. But the text used does determine what the translation ends up with, at least in those few minor places. Another one, by the way, is Romans 8, 1, 2, 3, and 4. There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. The phrase, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, is not in the older manuscripts in verse 1. Ah, horrors of horrors. But in verse 4, you come right back to it. And it is in all the manuscripts there. So that phrase, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, is found in all the texts. So it's not really an issue there either. So the text used. Another one is the translators who did it. And that makes a difference. Why would that make a difference? Let's say Richmond Hewclumb translated it versus Joe Blow who hates God, doesn't believe in the deity of Christ, not you, you're not Joe Blow, doesn't believe in the virgin birth, doesn't believe in the blood, doesn't believe in miracles. If he translated versus me, what would be the difference? Well, hopefully it would be the same, but probably I'd have a tendency to prove, you know, I'm not afraid of the deity of Christ. I'm not afraid of virgin birth. I translate Isaiah 7, born of a virgin. You know what the liberals do with it? Born of a young lady. Makes a lot of difference when you read it, doesn't it? Any young lady can have babies. How many virgins have you known that have that virgin? You see, that makes a world of difference. So the ones who translated, so you kind of look at who translated, were they conservative, kind of liberal? You know, who were they? that would make a little bit of a difference. By the way, why in the King James do we have baptism and deacon instead of the translations of those words? Yeah, the guys who translated it were all Anglicans who believed in infant baptism and an office called deacon, the office of deacons. They had to translate it the way their theology fit them. And so they put new words in the English language that had never existed. If you look at the English dictionaries, those words that never existed until the King James Bible came along. So the translators. The third thing is more important. Maybe I have it up here. And that is the style of translation or the type of translation. There are three types. Some would say there's two types. Some say there's three. The first is formal. The formal style tries to be linguistically pure. And so grammatically, structurally, linguistically, the words that are used, whatever. And so they'll go, this word means that, and this word means the, and this word means brother, and this word means, and they click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. This is past tense, this is future tense, and they just click, click, click, click. And they get all done, they took a Greek structure, words, and just put it in English. And sometimes Greek structure is a lot different than English. They might put the pronoun at the end of the sentence, whereas we'd put it before the verb. So you're reading along, you have the verb, the pronoun at the end, it's like, What happened there? You see? So they are trying to be very formal, be very linguistically pure, structurally pure, whatever. Nobody does that perfectly, but the new American Standard did that as well as any translation that has ever been done. In fact, the old American Standard was even better. The American Standard of 1901 is the most accurate formal translation, most people would say, in all the history of mankind. But you can't hardly read it because they just put it the way it was in Greek, and we don't read Greek, we don't have verbs there, we don't have pronouns at the end, etc, etc. So, I love it, but it's hard to read, because you go, wow, he speaks weird, got his verb in the wrong place, whatever. So there's the formal kind, it's literal, it's accurate to the words, accurate to the text, accurate to structure, and so that's a very formal word, word is called literal, rigid almost, that kind of a thing. And most of us love it. Most of us who are literalists love it. It just tells you what it says and you might trip over your tongue saying it, but it's exactly the way it was. Way at the other extreme is what's called functional or sometimes called dynamic equivalence. Dynamic equivalence. That is to say, and two things you're working on in translation. One is reliability. I want a translation that's reliable. It's true to the text, right? The other is I want something that's readable. I can read it. Right? I don't trip over the word order and I don't trip over words that I've never seen before in my whole life. Whatever. This one went with reliability. We will be as reliable as we can. This one said we will be readable and yet reliable, but they would sacrifice a little bit of reliability to get the readability. And that is not to say it's not reliable, but they, they took a little liberty. Okay. For example, the one that I always, get upset about is it talks about the flesh in Romans. And that's the Greek word. And they translate it, old nature. That is pure theology. There's no phrase old nature in all the old or New Testament. The Bible never talks about an old nature. It talks about the flesh. To me, that's important. To them, it was not. They said, well, flesh, no one will understand that. We'll translate it old nature and no one will understand what we're talking about. Well, that's their option. But they made it readable. They did not make it reliable. in my opinion on that point, but that's a different kind. And the NIV is very much that way. Most of the newer translations that are freer and so they are very, very free. Okay. The third kind is called complete equivalency, which tries to kind of blend them a little bit, both reliable and readable and took a little bit of time to try to do that. And the King James has historically been there. And the New King James has tried very, very hard. And they will say that when they translated, they tried to be very complete and whatever. For example, I'll just give you some example. You say, well, we always want NASV. That's what we like. Word for word. In the Greek, it says in first John, he saw him nose to nose. That sound good? Nose to nose? That's kind of gross. I was nose to nose with that guy. We would say what? Maybe eye to eye or face to face. and it's translated, the Greek is nose-to-nose, it's translated face-to-face. Okay, is that wrong or right? Structurally it should be nose-to-nose. I mean, formal equivalence should be nose-to-nose, but they understood you wouldn't know what it's talking about, so they went face-to-face. Almost all translations did that. You say, well, okay, whatever. For example, it says, your sins will be whiter in snow. Please translate that for me to an African in the Central African Republic who has never seen snow. And by the way, do you ever see an African and Central African Republic? This was because we lived there. When he gets dirty, what color does he become? Ever wear black clothes? What happens when they get dirty? They become white. So how do you translate whiter than snow when they say, who wants to be white? I don't want to be dirty. I want to be blacker than coal, you know? So, The functional would say don't translate it whiter than snow. He won't understand snow, first of all. And secondly, white is not when he reads that he will pick up. I'm dirty. He will wash me and I will be whiter than snow. I'll be dirty. Translate it some way, such as whiter than the yucca plant or blacker than coal. In other words, translate the meaning, not the words. See the difference? Try to get the concept across. That's why I call it a dynamic translation. It's trying to go with the flow and be dynamic. Okay. And the truth is none of them are completely formal. None of them are completely functional. None of them are really complete. And you're just constantly, as you translate, making calls. But I just want you to see that is why NIV is much easier to read. Everybody would tell you that. Oh, I love the NIV because it's easy to read. A lot of the new translations are very easy to read, but they sacrificed a lot of accuracy to get there. Now, if they're great people who think perfectly, you're safe. But if you've got some liberal who isn't perfect, you might get in trouble, all right? So most of us have been raised under King James, and the new King James is there, and we're comfortable. But that'll help you to understand. But the point is, I'll never forget it. We had a family in our Awana group at Lakeshore Baptist Church in Grand Haven, Michigan. Young Christian, I'm leading it, da-da-da-da. And this Catholic family shows up. They go to Mass every time, and they're just gung-ho. And they got this little girl who wants to go to Awana. All right, that's great. And so we hand them an Awana book and a Bible. Our priest said, we can't read King James. Can't have verses in translation. We have to have a Catholic translation. The horrors of horrors. They're going to read the Douay version. They're going to read the Catholic Bible. They'll never get saved. So I got the Douay version, the Catholic version. Take away the notes. You know what John 3.16 says in the Douay version? And so we let her memorize all of her verses out of the Catholic Bible. And they were basically identical to King James. The point is, for all of our argument over translation, oh, the NASV, you've got to go formal, whatever. For all of our bravado about that and all of our, you know, fighting, if you would, we don't really fight. At the end of the day, I would just gladly hand anybody a Bible. I don't prefer the Catholic Bible, I don't recommend the Catholic Bible, but if that's the only one I'd have, I'd read John 3.16 out of it to them, all right? And it's going to talk about the same thing that ours does, take away their note. And the truth is we have the privilege of very accurate translations. Wycliffe, I'm sorry, yeah, Wycliffe, I was reading that in Christianity Today, is trying to translate the Bible into the languages of people. People groups don't have the Bible in their translation at all. We're fighting over which translation. They don't have any. They got to read it in some other language. Imagine if if today I brought the Latin Bible to you and said, OK, from now on, we're just using Latin. How long would it take you to understand truth? We have a wonderful, wonderful privilege of a great, great translation. One last point under do we have credible translation? There is a group or there's a position that says one versus many authoritative translations. There's a group called the King James only in English, a group in English translation. So there's only one authoritative translation that is the King James as it was given in 1611. I just hope you read the history of the English translation and the history of the King James Bible. And I suspect that we won't go into it, but I, I feel comfortable saying It's only, any translation is only as accurate as the text used, the translators who did it and the style that was used. And to say you have to, in fact, if you've ever been with missionaries from that position in other countries, they do not translate out of the Greek or Hebrew. They translate out of King James. And so you ever see the French Bible in King James? Kind of strange. It really is kind of strange. So there is that position out there. And there's some great people. I have many friends who go to Pensacola College, which is the hub of it now. And they are great people. They love the Lord. They lead people to Christ. OK. So any questions on translations? Read every Bible. Realize in its translation. These are the three that probably are the most widely accepted among conservative circles. NASB never did gain a lot of power just because it's too literal. And most of you don't like to read it. Personally, I love it. At the bottom there, hopefully, it says, the Bible is absolute truth. It is not relative or debatable. It is credible. And the older I get, the more I study, the more I am convinced you have a credible Bible, textual criticism, translation. We can find flaws here and there. We can argue over this, that, and the other thing. But at the end of the day, you pick up your Bible. There are some translations, as Al points out, that I wouldn't recommend you pick up. But by and large, you pick up the ones that are the standards of our day. And in the Spanish Bible, the Greek Bible, the German Bible, whatever, God has done a marvelous job of giving you and me a text that I can go to the bank on. No book has ever been preserved like this one. So, we sometimes argue over the one out of a thousand variants and forget about the 999 that were right on. Any questions on that? If it's credible, And it's absolute truth, not debatable, not something that's relative. What must we do? Obey it? Read it? Believe it? Go to the bank on it. Just go to the bank on this one. You can trust it. As it is indeed the Word of God. You better read it the way it's written. You better interpret it the way it's written. You better trust it because it's not debatable. And don't let anybody try to convince you, well, I don't trust that word, the Bible. Let's go on. We've got a few minutes before we'll take a little break. And let's go to the third point in our study of the Bibliology. What does the Bible say about itself? It says it's authoritative. It says about itself that it is credible. And it has been divinely, providentially preserved for us. And so I walk around today with something that I call the Word of God. I call it the inerrant, the inspired, infallible Word of God. Case could be made that Really, I should say, it's a translation of the Inverent, Inspellable, Inspired Word of God and all that kind of stuff. But you can go to the bank on this one. And that's a really, really positive and neat thing to do. But the next one is the Bible's view of its progression. How did the revelation change? Now, the reason I bring this up is because as you study and as you listen, you'll find statements by people who say, well, let me read a little bit here, if you don't mind. Truth on two hills. What happens when church and culture conspire to ignore the meaning of words? Dr. Walter Kaiser, the president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, writes, in my judgment, the most dramatic moment in the entire 20th century came in 1946, when W.K. Wimsatt, I bet you none of you even knew that guy, did you? And Monroe Beardsley published an article entitled, The Intentional Fallacy. That, by the way, was in the Sewanee review, all right? I bet you all get that too, don't you? Here's what they said. Whatever an author may have meant or intended to say by his or her words is now irrelevant to the meaning we have come to assign it. On this basis, the reader is the one who sets and determines the real meaning of the text. In this article, you recognize called formalistic criticism. In other words, what the guy who wrote it really intended it to mean. He wrote so many years ago, I mean, do you guys really believe that nonsense? It means today what I read into it, what I think it means. So he does this to show that the Supreme Court has gone that way, it's called judicial activism. So what did the Constitution mean when it was originally written? What did those guys mean when they used that word and that sentence in that way? What did they mean? It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what they meant, doesn't matter what they intended it to mean. Because they wrote some years ago, we are judicial activists today and our Supreme Court feels it has the right, many of them at least, maybe not all of the justices, that they have the right for intentional fallacy. The Constitution of the United States is a living document that needs to be reinterpreted in each generation. We seek continually to redefine the very words of our founding fathers, words that were chosen with great care and precision by them to mean something. You say it only happens in the Supreme Court, right? No. Outside the judicial mainstream is the phrase that's used for many of the judges that are being appointed. You know why they're not appointed? They're outside the judicial mainstream. You know what that means? They interpret it the way it was written. and they're not up-to-date and up-to-speed. Anyway, you go down. Unfortunately, you say that's only in the Constitution. This article goes on to show that not only is our culture doing it, but our churches are doing it. Aren't they? Give me an example where we do that. How about like, hmm, the Anglican Church is arguing over what now? Ah, homosexual pastor or priest or whatever they call them. And some of them say it's okay, biblically, and some say it's not okay, biblically. How do they justify it? And they say, well, that's what it meant back then. That's not what it means now, because our culture has changed, the meanings have all changed. You say, that's nonsense. Go down to, I had a lady in my office today, just left the church and started coming to our church. I said, why are you doing that? Well, we just hired a female preacher. I can't stand it. She said, don't you like women? She said, actually, I like women better than men, you know, because women are smarter than you guys. No, she didn't quite say it that way. You know, she says, because the Bible doesn't teach it. I said, well, how do they how do they do it there? And, you know, many churches that do it, how do they do it? Intentional fallacies. What did it mean for Paul when he said it? It meant exactly what he said. What does it mean for us doesn't mean that anymore. We adjust it. So I'm going to talk here about the progression. And that's why I have to bring it up, because there is a an argument out there that we talk about progressive revelation, progress, the development of revelation. What do we mean by it? The Bible was written over the course of how many years? 1500 years. Excellent. How many authors? 40 plus. Did I write that in there? Okay. You got Mike's note. All right. So we usually say 40 plus because we're not sure who wrote this one and that one, but we're pretty close. All right. So as you imagine 40 different people writing over the course of 1500 years, in other words, it didn't all come at the same moment by the same guy, right? Even at the same moment from different guys, right? So there was a progress. What we mean by the progression of revelation is the Bible progressed in its revelation to man God. In other words, God revealed his truth to mankind over a period of time. In other words, he didn't tell you at all the first day, right? Didn't tell mankind at all. We were fortunate. I woke up one day when I was born and had the whole Bible, but Abraham didn't. You see, it's like with your little kids growing up, you tell them a little bit about this and then a little bit older, you tell them a little bit more and then you tell them a little bit more and you just keep adding more and more to it. All right. In the progression of revelation, did God change what he had written before. By that, I mean what these guys think it means. Did God adjust or redefine what he had previously said? So when he said to Abraham, I'm going to give you all this land. You just stand there and look around north, south, east and west, and someday it's all going to be yours. It's going to be yours forever. To all your kids and your generations forever. What did he mean? Well, most of us would read it and think, well, he meant what he said. said, Abraham, look at the land. You're going to get the land. It's going to be yours forever. How can that be true since we now have the church? How can that be true? So there's a whole school of theology called Covenant Theology, the Reformed Presbyterians, and I was raised that way, who say that when he said, this is your land, he meant land. You can touch it with your feet. But he redefined it later on in the New Testament. to mean something different. So what he said to Abraham and what Abraham understood him to mean was one thing. But what it means to you and me is totally different. What it means to you and me is that it's going to be the church age and that it's not a physical piece of property that Israel will someday always have. But it's a spiritual thing in your heart. So by progression of revelation, they mean this. God has progressively redefined what he meant when he said something back there, just like the Constitution of the United States. So what he meant to Abraham about giving him the land was later redefined in the New Testament. I can give you some quotes in just a minute by them where they use the word redefine. He redefined it, redefined it. Who is Israel? In the Old Testament as defined as God's chosen people who were the descendants of Abraham. Who are the, who's the Israel in the New Testament? He redefined it. That's what they would say, right? Exactly. And they redefined it. So it's the church. In fact, I have a commentary I just read the other day. It said the first thing in Genesis was about God's unveiling of his church. And it meant by that Israel is the church and the church is Israel. So they redefined, they changed. In other words, the revelation has constantly changed its meaning. Hopefully you don't believe that. But some people do. A lot of people do. The second one is he corrected it. What he said previously apparently was so confusing to people that he had to correct it. You've heard this been say, but I said to you, so I'm going to correct what you said. We won't go there. The third one is he contributes to it or expands it or extends it. In other words, by progression of revelation, he gave Abraham a little bit of seed thought. And he gave him a little bit more and gave him a little bit more, gave him a little bit more. And he gave Moses some and we have that recording. He gave David some and we have that recorded. And in other words, it just progressed one time. But what he said down here, Revelation 21, never redefines what he said back there, never corrects what he said back there, never changes what he said back there. He just gave us little pieces at the time until we got the whole thing in. Everything is a unit. And what it meant to Abraham is what it still means. And we have more revelation. We have fuller revelation. It has progressed so we have the whole shooting match. It's a great thing. And he didn't. So can you understand that? I just wanted to point it out. You look like you're confused. But trust me. It seems like who in their right mind would think that? Trust me. We are a very small minority who believe that progression of revelation means He just kept giving us more and more and more and more and more. But He never changed what He said back there. He never corrected what He said back there. He just added more and more and more. Now, He changed how He has dealt with people. There's no question about it. And He told us that. And it says it. Okay. Does that make sense? Very confusing. All right. That's what I just wanted to get it out here. Let me read you a couple of quotes. This is on with the people of God redefined. So the people of God are redefined what it meant to Abraham, what Abraham understood it to mean. Now we're going to redefine it in non-ethical categories with the people of God redefined in non-ethical categories. It was obviously important that the law which had so much been identified with ethnic Israel as such, also had to be redefined. And so the law, and that's the way I was raised, said, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. What's Sabbath? Seventh day. What day of the week is that? We call that Saturday, don't we? The Bible in the Old Testament said, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. How is that understood in the New Testament by some people as they redefine the law? Remember the Sunday. Seventh became first. Sabbath became Sunday. And so they will read the same text. And for Moses and his people, it meant you better watch the seventh day. But for us in the new Israel, the new people of God, the church, it means Sunday. That's why as a kid growing up, I couldn't play bond Sunday. I couldn't wait in the street stream because my dad said, remember the Sabbath day. To him, Sabbath meant first day of the week. when really the technical definition is seventh day of the week. As a kid growing up, I thought it's kind of strange. They redefined it and they do it all the time. So reform, Presbyterian and Lutheran and whatever, they will redefine words very easily. They will quote whatever from the Old Testament. You say. What do you mean, Sabbath day, we don't even show up to church on the Sabbath, do we? Now, you might still believe that on Sunday is a day of rest. Find that in the New Testament, find that in the Bible, that's fine. You might still believe on Sunday you should be in the house of God. I hope you do. All right. That's fine. We all believe that. But that's because the New Testament talks about the first day of the week, et cetera, et cetera. We do not base it upon that. So that's what it means. Here's another quote by Dunn. It would provide vital confirmation that Paul was not so much in the business of abandoning the firm guidelines of the Torah as transforming them, transposing them by freeing them of their specifically Old Testament meaning. In other words, Paul redefined with the Old Testament in it, etc, etc. And anyway, bottom of that page, the Bible is full and final. God's full and final revelation to mankind. I believe it says that about itself. It's full and it's final, and therefore it is not partial. It's not changing. You know, a hundred years from now, when your great-great-grandkids read Romans 3, John 3, They won't say, you know, when my dad, my great, great grandpa read that, he thought it meant that salvation was by grace or faith, but God's redefined it. And now it means that we, whatever, you know, it'll be the same yesterday, today, and forever. What it means to me today, it'll mean to my grandkids. Hopefully they read it right. And it'll always be the same. That's kind of nice. You know why? What's the advantage of that? Continuity. Can you imagine otherwise? All right. Well, what does it mean today? I don't know, probably means the same thing I meant when Paul wrote it. What did it mean then? We'd always have to be these smart people, we'd have to somehow redefine things and change things and correct things. And that's why the Supreme Court has such a hard time. What does it mean when it says that? They never ask, what does it mean to them? It means, what does it mean to us today? And so you have to be really smart to do that. And I'm just kind of dumb. I just didn't read it the way Paul meant it. I think that's what he meant. OK, let's go do it. Time's up, little break, enjoy, and we will come back.