A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. Hello once again. Welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle. I am your host and I am broadcasting here today from beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. It is a tremendous day outside. There's low humidity. It is a beautiful day outside. I'm doing this Word Magazine commentary today to reflect on a recent sermon preached by John MacArthur. I don't know why, but somehow lately John MacArthur has been much in my mind, attention. I just finished reading the biography of MacArthur that was written by Ian Murray. And it's been published by Banner of Truth. Very interesting that Banner of Truth would publish a biography of MacArthur, given his dispensationalism, given the fact that he does not follow the regular principle of worship. And Murray, in fact, critiques both of those things within the book. But he sees MacArthur being broadly Reformed in the sense of Calvinistic. But one of the things that Murray did not address in the biography of MacArthur was MacArthur's views on textual criticism. And one of my pet theories these days is that MacArthur has had a huge influence in popularizing among evangelicals the validity of modern textual criticism. You see this in particular in the MacArthur Study Bible. I haven't examined his commentaries that came out of his expositional sermons, but I imagine the same thing is reflected there. But if you read in the MacArthur Study Bible the notes on passages like the Pericope Adulteri, The Woman Caught in Adultery, John 7, 53-8, 11, or the ending of Mark, Mark 16, 9-20, other disputed textual passages, MacArthur has a tendency to validate the work of modern text criticism, to say that these passages, these disputed passages, so-called, are not actually part of the text of Scripture. Well, on the first Sunday of June, 2011, MacArthur preached his final expositional message in the Gospel of Mark, which was the last book in the New Testament that he was preaching verse-by-verse through, completing a multi-year program of preaching verse-by-verse through the New Testament. And I certainly commend him for that. I really admire the fact that he did expositional messages through all 27 books of the New Testament. But I found this final message that he did quite interesting. Again, it was on Mark 16, 9-20, and he titled it, The Fitting End to Mark's Gospel. I think what was interesting about the message was the way in which he introduced his views on text criticism, and what he essentially argued in the sermon was that Mark 16, 9-20 is not part of Holy Scripture. Instead, it is a spurious addition. It's orthodox, but it's not scriptural. And, he argues that Mark actually has its proper ending, its fitting ending, at Mark 16.8. I want to dip into a couple of points in the I would encourage you to go online to his Grace TV website and they have a tremendous archive of all of his past messages and you can listen to the message in toto for yourself, that'd be the dusting. They also have a manuscript of a transcript of the message that you might also enjoy listening to. But let's pause here at this point and just listen to some of the introductory remarks that Pastor MacArthur has to say on the ending of Mark. "...to put a camel through the eye of a needle." You say, why in the world are you telling us all this? Are you enjoying it? Is it helpful? Okay. Why am I telling you this? Because here we are at the end of Mark and we've got this long textual variant stuck on the end of Mark that we know did not appear in the original autograph written by Mark. That's why it's in brackets. And by the way, look at the bottom of the page after verse 20 wherever you are. Do you see another paragraph there in different type? That's another ending that showed up. A short one. So you have a long one and a short one. Why is this here? If it's not in the original, Why is it here? Well, I think there's a pretty obvious answer. Verse 8, remember verse 8 from this morning? This is Mark's closing statement, they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had gripped them and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid, period. That's it. Can you understand that folks started to say, you know, that just doesn't seem like an ending, that seems like stopping. not ending. The language is dramatic. The resurrection is shocking. The women are convinced of the resurrection by the empty tomb and by the angelic announcement. It has dawned on them in their terrified bewilderment. They're gripped by the wondrous reality of the resurrection and a few steps later, they're characterized by great joy. They're speechless. And oh, by the way, so is Mark. I like that. Verse 8 says, they said nothing to anyone. That was good enough for Mark. OK, we're back now to try to make some sense of what we've heard here from Pastor MacArthur again. His assumption is that the Gospel of Mark ends at Mark 16 and verse 8, and that what we consider to be the traditional ending of Mark, or what some scholars refer to as the longer ending of Mark, which is Mark 16, 9 through 20, it appears in translations like the Geneva Bible, the King James Version, the New King James Version, that that is actually a spurious ending, it's a textual variant, it's not part of the original text of Scripture, and this we'll see, some things we'll listen to in a few minutes. MacArthur believes this because this so-called longer ending does not appear in what he considers to be the most authoritative early manuscripts of the Scriptures, mainly two codices, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, two ancient manuscripts of the Bible that omit these endings. Of course, what I would say, what he fails to mention, is that there are plenty of manuscripts, in fact, the vast majority of manuscripts, thousands of manuscripts that include Mark 16, 9 through 20 and have the fitting end of this Gospel at verse 20. MacArthur even goes so far as to give some validity to alternative endings to the Gospel of Mark, the so-called intermediate ending or the shorter ending of the Gospel of Mark that appear in of very, very few manuscripts, but he gives these equal validity with the Ecclesiastical text, which includes verses 9 through 20. I don't know about you, but to me this is troubling. We've had a textual tradition. We have affirmed that the Gospel of Mark is in the canon of Scripture. We have affirmed not just that the Gospel of Mark is there, but the Gospel of Mark as it has been received throughout the ages, not just beginning in the medieval period, but going back to the beginning centuries of the Christian movement, that the Bible and the Gospel of Mark have ended at Mark 16 and verse 20, But now, in this modern era, it's really a modern idea that we would remove this part of the Bible, that we would put it in brackets, that we would introduce alternative readings that have been rejected by the Church as false and spurious, and we would put those on par with what was received within the traditional text of Scripture, is a bit disconcerting. In the rest of the message, McCarthy is going to spend some time talking about the external evidence and the internal evidence for the proper ending of Mark's Gospel. And this is something that is essentially scholarly language that he introduces for how you determine the validity of a textual reading. You do two things. You look at what's called the external evidence. That is, you look at the manuscripts that contain the readings. That's called external evidence. What manuscripts contain this ending? What manuscripts omit this ending? And he's already said he believes the earliest manuscripts do not contain this, and therefore, there are a lot of logical leaps here. And therefore, it was not contained in what he considers to be the original text of scripture, the original autograph. And then the second thing is internal evidence. By internal evidence, you don't look at the manuscripts, but you look at the text itself, the words, the vocabulary, the syntax. And you ask yourself, does the language, does the theology, Does the narrative flow, does it fit with what you find elsewhere within the Gospel of Mark? So, there are two categories, again, that most scholars use when evaluating text to determine the validity of the text. The external evidence and the internal evidence. MacArthur presents some of this, and again, I have to commend him, I think, for educating his congregation and teaching them something about textual criticism. I think he's right to do that. I don't think we should hold back on it. It's just that I don't agree with the conclusions that he reaches. But let's listen into a little bit of what Pastor MacArthur has to say about the external evidence for the ending of Mark. Endings existed, they existed early, but even by the fourth century, Eusebius says the Greek manuscripts do not include these endings, the originals. Now, if you happen to have a King James Bible or a New King James, you will find verses 9 to 20 in the regular flow of text without brackets because the King James and the New King James are based on a medieval text. a medieval text, based on later texts. However, since that time, we have discovered the earlier texts. So, all the later translations, NAS, NAS Update, ESV, NIV, etc., etc., etc., are all based on the more ancient texts. That's why if you have any of those, it's bracketed because the earlier texts omitted it. The external evidence indicates that this doesn't belong and it's pretty good evidence. There are some other endings floating around too, by the way. Some others you don't need to know about. So, we would say external evidence argues for exclusion, not inclusion. And that would pretty much cross the board with textual scholars. Okay, how are we supposed to respond to MacArthur's arguments here about the external evidence? I mean, the first observation I would make is his disparagement of the traditional text. Yes, the Greek manuscript of the New Testament upon which translations from the Reformation era, like the King James Version, were made, They were printed for the first time in the medieval era. They were beginning with Erasmus in 1516, but then later, more clearly Protestant scholars like Stephanus, like Beza, printed and so the manuscripts obtained a fixed form, but they weren't created in the medieval period. No, there were manuscripts that had been preserved by the Eastern Church, then they had been carried into Western Europe after the collapse of the Eastern Empire, and they had been preserved, they had been used, and so there's a line that traces these manuscripts back to the earliest days of the Christian movement, when they were accepted as canonical. Mr. MacArthur doesn't really deal with the nuts and bolts of the external evidence. And let's just survey for a minute what the external evidence essentially is for the Gospel of Mark. It's really not as complicated, I think, as some might think that it is. There are really only four options for the ending of Mark. First of all, there are a handful of manuscripts where the Gospel of Mark ends at Mark 16 and verse 8. In fact, you can count them literally on one hand. There are only three manuscripts, three ancient Greek manuscripts where Mark ends at Mark 16 and 8. And those three are Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and another document that is known as 304. Now, there are some translations, non-Greek translations, but they had Greek sources, obviously. Among those are the so-called Sinaitic Syriac, although other copies of the Syriac have the traditional ending. The Armenian not Armenian, or Armenian rather, not the followers of Jacob Arminius, the translation that was in the language of Armenia. And the Ethiopic versions also end at Mark 16a. But again, only three, only three extant Greek manuscripts in Mark at Mark 16 in verse 8. And several scholars have pointed out, among those Maurice Robinson who teaches at Southeastern Seminary, John Berrigan and others, that if you look at Codex Vaticanus, it's odd because this manuscript is written in three columns and Mark 16, 8 ends in the middle of a second column and it leaves blank the all of the second column and all of the third column, which is unusual for the document in general, which tends to start the next book right at the ending of another or have it end at the end of a page. But there is a conspicuous blank there as if perhaps it was intended to be added. Maybe it's a break in the copying of it. And so, there's a major question about what happened with Kodak's Vaticanus in particular. So the one option, I said there are four options, the one option is to end Mark at Mark 16 and there are only three extant Greek manuscripts that have that reading. And MacArthur is telling us that that is the original reading based on three manuscripts. The second possibility for the ending of Mark is the so-called intermediate or shorter ending that follows Mark 16.8. And one of the things we notice these days is the popularity of promoting this ending. It now appears in the notes for the English Standard Version of the Bible. But did you know that this ending, this additional ending, only occurs after 16.8 in one manuscript, Codex Babientius. Now, there are a few other manuscripts that include the so-called shorter ending, but then they proceed also to include 16.9-20. Among those are Codex L, which is Codex Regius, Codex Psi, also known as Codex Athus Lauri, 083099274 in the margin, 579 and L1602. So just a handful of manuscripts that have the so-called intermediate or shorter ending. But then they proceed also to include the longer ending. The third of the four options would be to have the long ending Mark 16, 9 through 20, but there's one manuscript, Codex W, which has an insertion or an expansion after verse 14. It's called the Freer Logion. And if you look at the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, they include that ending in the text along with the intermediate shorter ending and the longer ending. The fourth option would be to just have the ending of Mark be as it is in the traditional text. To have Mark 16, 9 through 20 be the appropriate ending to the Gospel of Mark. Now, this is the reading that is supported by all the remaining continuous text manuscripts lectionaries and most of the versional witnesses to the gospel of Mark. The strongest and earliest evidences of this come from a codex called Codex Alexandrinus, which dates to the 5th century AD. Also, Codex C, which is also known as Codex Ephraim, which dates from the 5th century includes the longer ending of Mark. Another one that includes it is Codex D or Codex Besa, which dates from the 5th to 6th century. Codex Theta, which is also known as Codex Chorodephi, which dates to the 9th century. The longer ending is also included in an important group of manuscripts known as Family XIII, which date from the 11th to the 15th centuries. By the way, there's a fallacy in saying that because Um, Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, which some date to the 4th or 5th century, we're not, to be honest, sure, uh, without any shadow of a doubt, what the proper dating is for those manuscripts. Um, based on orthography and other things, scholars speculate as to what the date is, but we're not 100% sure of that. But, but, uh, Codex A, Codex C, Codex D are also from the same era, so they are just as ancient witnesses. But it plays into another fallacy. The validity of the reading is not based on just the earliest reading. Let's take the Hebrew Bible, for example. The earliest manuscripts we have for most of the Old Testament only come from a document that dates from over 1000 A.D. Now, we know that much of the Old Testament was written hundreds and thousands of years B.C. Just the fact that a manuscript is old doesn't mean that it's not based on manuscripts. It was copied from manuscripts, a continuous line back to the earliest witnesses of the text. And in fact, from the Jewish tradition, the exemplars from which translations were made were often destroyed. And so you may have a manuscript, a medieval manuscript, like the Family 13, which actually preserves a most ancient witness to the text of the New Testament. Secular scholar Keith Elliott says that there are about a thousand ancient manuscripts that attest to the long ending. And again, sometimes traditional defenders of traditional texts are accused of wanting to weigh manuscripts, or want to count manuscripts rather than weigh them. But listen, we've got only three manuscripts that end Mark at Mark 16A. We have thousands of manuscripts that include the long ending. That has to count for something. Dan Wallace says that 95% of all Greek manuscripts and ancient versions have the longer ending. What about the church fathers? MacArthur cites Eusebius who lived in the 4th century. as saying that he knew of manuscripts that ended at verse 8, but he also says that he knew of manuscripts that end at verse 20. And John Bergen, the old defender of the traditional texts of scripture, an English bishop, Anglican bishop and scholar, says that Eusebius was probably referring to liturgical endings, lectionary endings that ended at verse 8 readings. liturgical worship that ended at verse 8 and might not have been speaking about the gospel of Mark per se or in total. We know that Jerome from the 5th century also mentions Greek manuscripts that were without the longer ending but he included it in the Vulgate and so this tells us that someone who was much closer than we are determined that the longer ending was the appropriate ending and so he included it in the Vulgate. In favor of the longer ending, Justin Martyr from the 2nd century, we have his writings and he quotes from Mark 16 and verse 20. There is a 2nd century witness to the longer ending. Irenaeus, who also is from the 2nd century, fully quotes in his work Against Heresies, Book 3, Chapter 10, In verse 5, he fully quotes Mark 16, 19, and he says this, at the end of his gospel, Mark says, and so the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was received in heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. Maurice Robinson concludes that the doubts about the inclusion of Mark 16, 9-20 really rests on the authority that is granted to two manuscripts, that is Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Certainly, I think that's a very shaky kind of decision to make. There's a great Dutch scholar, Jacob van Bruggen, And here's a quote from his book, The Future of the Bible, printed by Thomas Nelson in 1978. Von Brueggen weighed in on this matter of the ending of Mark on page 131, and he said this, quote, there are only three known Greek manuscripts that end at Mark 16, 8. And one of them has a large open space after verse 8. That's what excited Vaticanus, who already mentioned that. He continues, all the remaining Greek manuscripts contain verses 9-20 after Mark 6, 1-8 and most of them do not have a single note or insertion of other data. Mark 16, 1-20 has both the authority of the majority text as well as the authority of oldest text. If it still remains uncertain whether Mark 16, 9 through 10, 20 is well attested textually, then very little of any of the text of the New Testament is well attested. I don't think you could say it any stronger than Von Bruggen does. Well, that's a discussion of the external evidence. Let's turn now and listen to a little bit of what Pastor MacArthur has to say about the internal evidence regarding the ending of Mark. Also, internal evidence. You're going to enjoy this. Internal evidence. Let's look at this long ending. This long ending. Now, after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene from whom He had cast out seven demons. By the way, what is said here is true. That isn't the argument. The argument isn't whether it's true, the argument is whether it's included. I hope that what I say to you is true, but it's not Scripture. She went out and reported to those who had been with Him while they were mourning and weeping. When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it. After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. They went away and reported it to the others, but they didn't believe them either. Afterward, He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at the table and He reproached them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who had seen Him after He had risen. And He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved, but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned. These signs will accompany those who have believed in My name. They will cast out demons. They will speak with new tongues. They will pick up serpents and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover. So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went out and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word by the signs that followed." Now let me just say a few interesting things about this. The internal evidence here also argues for exclusion. The transition from verse 8 to 9 is awkward. Verse 9 begins, now that necessitates continuity with the preceding narrative. However, what follows in verse 9 does not continue the story of the women. He's talking about the women and then it says, now, after he had risen early on the first day of the week, he first appeared to Mary Magdalene. There's no transition there. It's abrupt. It's a bizarre change, lacks continuity. He should be continuing the story of the women based on the word now, not jumping to the appearance to Mary Magdalene. Also, in verse 9, there's a masculine pronoun. Masculine pronoun expects he as its antecedent, not the women. Why would there be a change in the pronouns? I'm just going to go by these quickly. Why would Mark also identify Mary Magdalene as the one from whom Jesus cast demons, seven demons? Why does he introduce her here when she's already been mentioned three times in the narrative? You don't introduce her at the end of the story. The angel spoke of Jesus' promise to appear to his followers in Galilee. All the appearances that are recorded in this postscript are of appearances in Jerusalem. Furthermore, the vocabulary is not consistent with Mark. It doesn't even read like Mark. There are 18 words here that are never used anywhere by Mark. The structure is very different from the familiar structure of Mark's writing. The title, Lord Jesus, is used here in verse 19, never used anywhere else by Mark. There's no reference to Peter here, although Peter was mentioned in verse 7. And then you have some strange themes, the theme of not believing in verses 11, 14 and 16. The theme of gospel proclamation, verses 11 through 20. They don't exist anywhere in Mark. They seem out of bounds for the subjects that occupy him. Then you have thrown in signs. They don't appear in any of the four gospels, in no account post-resurrection of Jesus. Is there any discussion of signs like picking up serpents, speaking with tongues, casting out demons, drinking poison, laying hands on the sick? So, both internally and externally, this is foreign to Mark. You say, well, where did this thing come from? Okay. How are we to respond to some of the things that MacArthur here says about the internal He does say that what you find in Mark 16, 9-20 is true, he says, but it's not scripture. Just a general question I would have is, if you really believe that, then you should be arguing for taking Mark 16, 9-20 out of the Bible. You should be up front about it. You should, all those, whether evangelical or liberal scholars, should take Mark 16, 9 through 20 out of the Bible, particularly evangelical scholars and pastors. It should be removed, it shouldn't be preached on, it shouldn't be read from the pulpit as scripture. I know he's not saying that it's untrue or it's not edifying, but if it's not scripture, then we shouldn't be reading it from the pulpit and we shouldn't be preaching from it. He says in the internal argument, he says that the transition between verses 8 and 9 in the traditional text is awkward. And I agree that there is some awkwardness there, but let me tell you what would be even more awkward. It would be even more awkward if you were to suggest that Mark's Gospel ended at Mark 16, 8. And this is a notorious problem for the argument. And that is, in Greek, this would mean that Mark's Gospel would end with the Greek word gar, which is called a post-positive conjunction. Sentences don't end with the word gar. books don't end with the word dar. This would be like an English book ending with the word for or therefore. And so there's a grammatical objection on internal grounds to the argument that you could end Mark at Mark 16a. But there's also an argument on narrative and theological grounds that would make ending the gospel at Mark 16a the thing that would be weird or bizarre. For one thing, this would mean that there would be a gospel with no resurrection appearances. It would be the only one of the four canonical gospels that does not end with the risen Jesus appearing to his disciples and speaking with them and commissioning them. It would mean that the promises that Jesus made to see his disciples and speak with them at Mark 14, 28, Mark 16, 7 would be unfulfilled. Some conservative scholars have suggested that the zeal to cast doubt on the ending of Mark might in fact reflect an anti-supernatural bias among liberal theologians who want to find some textual basis for a gospel without resurrection appearances. And I think evangelicals who have embraced modern textual criticism have essentially been like the Trojans, welcoming a Trojan horse into their midst, not understanding that there is a theological reason why many liberal scholars don't want the traditional ending of Mark. They want a gospel without resurrection appearances. David Parker is probably the foremost modern secular text critic today, and he wrote a book called The Living Texts of the Gospels in which he said, or he asked this question, does the tone of the longer ending with its censure of unbelief even suggest that the lack of resurrection appearances in Mark had led to a claim that belief in them was not necessary to Christian faith? Question mark and end of quotation. You understand what Parker is saying is he's speculating that the ending of Mark was added in response to, by the Orthodox, in response to people who were saying that you could have the gospel of Jesus without the resurrection. And so Parker is making the ending of Mark at 16.8 as an evidence for a resurrectionless Christianity. And if we end Mark at Mark 16a, we are in danger of opposing that same idea. Let me respond to a few more things that McCarthy says. He puts a lot of emphasis on the word now in verse 9, but I went back and looked both at the modern critical text and in the Transparent Bible Society version of the traditional text of scripture that I have. And the word now doesn't appear in the Greek text. It appears in the New American Standard Bible, the English word now, but the Greek word noon, translated now, doesn't appear. And so I think he's arguing for a contradiction here based on an English translation and not on the Greek text. Yes, there is an account of the women and no, from verse 9 on the narrative of the women in particular is not continued, but there are other things, appropriate things that do follow, like the apostles, the work of the apostles, the appearances of the risen Jesus to the apostles that are completely appropriate. He also mentions in verse 9 something about a masculine pronoun being out of place and because it's not a proper reference grammatically to women. Again, I looked at the modern critical text in Greek and I looked at the traditional text in Greek. I combed through verse 9 and there is no masculine pronoun in verse 9. Let me just read to you what it says in the traditional text. There are no masculine pronouns in that verse. I think maybe it was a misstatement. Perhaps he meant a masculine participle, Anastas de. And he's asking about the reference for that. Well, of course, it's not a reference back to the women. It's a reference back to Jesus. Jesus Christos would be a masculine appropriate antecedent for a masculine participle. And Jesus is the one who rose early on the first day on the Sabbath and on the first day of the week. first to Mary Magdalene, and so I don't find that to be awkward in the least. I wouldn't expect that Anastas, a masculine pronoun, would refer back to the women. He's not talking about their resurrection. He also takes issue with the explanation relating to Mary Magdalene, describing the fact that she had been one from whom Jesus had cast out seven demons? Why did he introduce this? Why does Mark introduce this information late? I would say I don't know. I mean, yes, she appeared earlier. Maybe he thought it was important to signify the fact that she was among the redeemed and she had been forgiven much and she had been restored of much. And Christ, in the providence and wisdom of God, She was among the first to see the risen Jesus. I don't know. I don't think that's a very strong argument. We could probably find other places in ancient writing where a character is introduced earlier in the narrative, but more information is revealed about him later in the narrative. I think just off the top of my head about the Gospel of John. The very ending of the Gospel of John in John 21-24 There's a reference to John being a faithful witness to the things that he's written. Well, that's new information about the Apostle John that appears at the very end of the Gospel of John. That was thought to be inappropriate. I don't think it's inappropriate for new information to be added about Mary Magdalene here. He also mentions the promises earlier in the narrative that Jesus would appear in Galilee. Those are unfulfilled. Well, they're unfulfilled if you chop off verses 9 through 20 as well. At least you have the fulfillment of Jesus, the risen Jesus, appearing to his disciples. MacArthur also mentions some kind of verbal arguments. He talks about 18 words in Mark 16, 9 through 20 that aren't found elsewhere in Mark's gospel. He mentions the title Lord Jesus in verse 19. Don't you think, though, that the most appropriate place to refer to Jesus as the Lord Jesus would be after his resurrection? That makes sense to me. Just a word about the vocabulary argument in general. This is a very small sampling, essentially, of a man's writings. Mark is the shortest gospel. It's only 16 chapters long. There have been some scholars who have done studies where they have taken other patches of Mark's Gospel, twelve verses like this, and studied them, and they found similarly that you can find unique uses of vocabulary. If we took a sample of your writing, in one part of your writing, you might use some words that you didn't use in the previous writing. That doesn't necessarily prove that you didn't write the whole thing. And it's a fallacy of an inadequate sample to make the argument. And then he mentions other things. There's no reference to Peter, he says. But there are references to the apostles going out and preaching and doing signs. And so Peter would be among them, and so that would be a reference to Peter. He mentions the theme of not believing. The gospel proclamation sign, I'm going to come back to some of those things in a moment. But I don't believe any of those things are inconsistent with the rest of Mark's gospel. In fact, I just did a simple comparison of some of what you find, the language, in Mark 16, 9 through 20 a couple years ago. And I just pulled it up and was looking at it. Let me just say, on the other hand, you can argue, some people have, that much of the language in Mark 16, 9 through 20 is completely consistent with what Mark has spoken earlier within the gospel. Let me give you a few examples. In Mark 16, verse 9, and then verse 17, there's a reference to casting out demons. It's the verb ekballo, to cast out, the word daimonia, for demon and this also appears in Mark 1.34, Mark 1.39, Mark 3.15, Mark 3.22, Mark 6.13, Mark 7.26, Mark 9.38. This is Markan language. In Mark 16.14 it says, and he rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart. The verb that is used here for rebuke Onigizo is also used in Mark 15, 32, which talks about when Jesus was crucified, that he was reviled or he was rebuked. This verb only occurs nine other times in the New Testament, but it is a Markan word used in Mark 15, 32, and assuming the validity of the longer ending used in Mark 16, 14. The word hardness of heart, sclerocardia, is also used in Mark chapter 10 and verse 5, where it says, because of the hardness of your heart, Jesus says, he wrote to you this precept. The noun only appears in one other verse in the New Testament, Matthew 19, 18. And so, sclerocardia is a Markan word, Mark 10, 5, and it's used in Mark 16, 14. The gospel preaching Again, MacArthur makes much of this. In Mark 16, 15, Jesus says, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. First of all, the phrase, into the world, the preposition eis, the object, ton kosmon, is a Markan phrase. I'll point to a few examples in a moment. But also, the idea of preaching the gospel. The verb keruso with the object ta euangelion, preaching the gospel, is a Markan phrase. We see it in the very beginning. Mark 1.14 says, now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee preaching the gospel. And it's there a participle keruson ta euangelion in Mark 13.10. Jesus said in the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. The verb keruso here in an infinitive form with the noun gospel. Mark 14 9 Jesus says surely I say to you or barely barely I say to you wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world He's saying this of the woman who anointed him. And there it's again the verb for preaching, eruso, it's the noun as an object, the gospel, ta euangelion, and here also the prepositional phrase ais, in this case it adds the adjective halam, in the whole tan cosman world. So it fits. This is Markan language. that is used in Mark 16.15, the Great Commission in Mark. Likewise in Mark 16 and verse 19, it says, it speaks of Jesus being received up in the heaven and sitting down at the right hand of God. And we can compare Mark 14.62 in which Jesus says that you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power and coming with the clouds of heaven. And it's used some very similar language of Jesus, the Son of Man, sitting on the right hand, even as it appears in Mark 16, 19. And so, there certainly is abundant internal evidence in favor of the integrity of Mark 16 verses 9 through 20. Let me just sum up some of the things that are problematic about jumping to the conclusion that we should follow modern criticism, textual criticism, and we should, again, taking Mark 16, 9 through 20 out of our Bibles, or I think equally insidious is what I see as a current movement reflected in the notes of Bibles like the ESV, like the New Revised Standard Version, which is also in the RSV tradition. That is the inclusion of the shorter intermediate and What this tends to communicate is that there's confusion about the text of Scripture, that no one really knows where the Gospel of Mark ends, and I don't think this adds one bit to our ability to affirm the authority of Scripture. It's also a matter of important doctrinal concern. I know one of the things that happens very often among those who embrace modern textual theory is they keep assuring us, oh, we can have these debates about the text of Scripture, but no central teachings of the Christian faith are at stake here. Well, is that true? What about the doctrine of the canon of Scripture? If we have here verses 9 through 20, 12 verses of scripture that aren't really scripture, but which are just a pious intervention into the text of scripture, this is alarming. The longer ending of Mark is essentially equivalent to some of the smaller epistles that we have. Would we remove 2 John, 3 John. Would we remove 2 Peter? Would we remove the book of Jude? I think we would have one of the more Christians up in arms with any attempt to remove whole books of the Bible. But what we're essentially doing in dismissing the longer ending of Mark is we are dismissing a significant part of the text of Scripture that has been received by believers. I don't believe that the Church chose the Scriptures, but the Scriptures chose the Church, that it's been received by believers as the Word of God. And I think there are good explanations as to why some men might have wanted to remove verses 9 through 20. I already mentioned the fact that some might have wanted to have had a resurrectionless Christianity, but I think part of Mark's ending that MacArthur seemed to be very troubled by, the reference to the work of the apostles in Signs and Wonders, is also perhaps a reason that it might have been omitted. Perhaps it was omitted by those who didn't want to see the exercise of signs as only something done by the Apostles. They wanted to say that this was something that they, as Christians, could exercise. I know this idea has been put forward by some different scholars. Hills, who wrote the King James Version, has this little section in his book where he says, it is sometimes said that the last twelve verses of Mark are not really that important, so that it makes little difference whether they are accepted or rejected. This, however, he says is hardly the case. For Mark 16, 9 through 20 is the only passage in the Gospels which refers specifically to the subject which is attracting so much attention today, namely tongues, healing, and other spiritual gifts. The last verse of this passage is particularly decisive, that's Mark 16 20. Here we see that the purpose of the miracles promised by our Lord was to confirm the preaching of the divine word by the apostles. Of course, then, these signs ceased after the apostles' death. Today, we have no need of them. The Bible is the all-sufficient miracle. And if we take this high view of the Bible, we cannot possibly suppose that the ending of one of the Gospels has been completely lost. I know that McCarthy has taken a strong stand against the charismatic movement. I read and propped it in his book, Charismatic Chaos, but I would hope that maybe he would be in tune with the fact that Mark 16 20 is a strong scriptural aid to his argument for the cessation of extraordinary spiritual gifts after the time of the apostles. And there might well have been a doctrinal reason why some in the early church might have wanted to remove this part of the scriptures in order to blunt the argument against their practice. We have to receive that at least as a possibility. Again, there are many things I respect about John MacArthur and about his ministry, but one of the things I think that has happened with his ministry has been a popularizing of evangelicals accepting the modern critical text. I think this is very evident in his views on the ending of the Gospel of Mark. I think we ought to consider these things. I would encourage you, again, not just to rely on the little few excerpts that I play, but go to the Grace to You website, listen to the whole message yourself, and consider yourself what is significant about the text of Scripture. Consider whether it would be appropriate to have the Gospel of Mark end at Mark 68, or whether it is appropriate instead to defend the traditional reading of the Gospel of Mark, the reading that is affirmed in all but a handful of Greek manuscripts. The ending of Mark that was seen to be canonical by the Church Fathers, that was seen to be canonical by the Reformation Fathers, the Puritan Fathers, and really has only come to the question in about the last hundred years, and then more keenly among the evangelicals, really, in the last 25 to 50 years. Anyway, God bless you, and we'll hope to post another one of these work magazines before too long. Take care and God bless. And the whisper with devil's spell Should threaten to undo us We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to shine upon us. The Prince of Darkness, true, we tremble not for him. His praise we can endure, For all his doom is sure, One little word shall fail him. The spirit and the gifts of earth to Him who with us died, let good men give their love. The body they may kill, but through the fighters' will, his name shall live forever.