We will have the my wife's gonna be working on the prayer list Folding them there. They're ready to go. I don't know why I didn't get here and print them up Probably because I got here five minutes before the service now We're going through our history of the received text And this is not an easy As again, it's not preaching, per se, as it is teaching. What we've done. Is go through the. This chart, we're kind of working our way down on these old. Bibles. In fact, that's what we're doing here on the right and left. the old Syriac, the Gothic, the old Latin. I think we'll deal with those tonight. And then what I'm going to do is get into the actual Greek manuscripts and how the textus receptus, this right here, was compiled or how it came together And then from there, we'll start looking at the history of the English Bibles, which goes down. I don't think do I have the second page? No. So at the bottom there, you're going to have all your English, like the Tyndale, the Coverdale. The Great Bible. Some of those other does anyone have their list, this list? Josh, do you have it right there in your file system? What are those Bibles there at the bottom, the English ones? The Matthew, great bishops. Geneva, and then comes the King James. Amen. So that's kind of where we're going. And then we'll give a little bit of the history of the English translations and really what happened. During that time in the suffering to get the Bible into English, it's terrible, but. They were burnt at the stake for translating God's word. So maybe we'll kind of get into some of that, the price that was paid. So what we did is we were looking at the original autographs. That's what we say. Obviously, we don't have them. And we looked at the Greek manuscripts, what they look, what they're called. That's the ancioles, the capital letters. And then we have the minuscules. They're the small letters. And then you see there, there's like 2,937 of those manuscripts. I think the unseals are less. Remember the yeah, there's only two hundred sixty three of those. Of course, these are in museums. My wife reminded me we were over in London and we went to the British Museum there and saw a lot, some of what they had. The Greek lectionaries, there's a museum of the Bible in Philadelphia. I went there one time. These are what they read in church, as you can see in the Greek, and these were what they would teach out of readings. And so you compile that all together. Two thousand two hundred eighty Greek lectionaries extent. They are what we call the Byzantine type of text or the received text found in the Reformation Bibles. Now, we're going to get at to that one called the old Latin version or Itala. Now, you've probably heard of. Are the Latin ballgate from Jerome. This is nothing to do with that. This old Latin. was in 157 AD. That's very early. There are no old Latin New Testaments in existence today, only fragments, 60 of them. The books of Jude, 2nd and 3rd John are missing entirely. I think I have a few of these things up here for you. So the ancient church leaders will be quoting from this Bible. So it's found in some of the quotations of the ancient church fathers or leaders. Now, there is a difference between the old Latin in the West and the old Latin in Africa. And the old Latin in Africa will. Contain corruptions. So we're not concerned with that old Latin. But there's an old Latin in Italy. And I think earlier I mentioned that it was called the Atala. The Atala. So the old Latin. also was up in Italy and Europe. And it was closer to the received text than the old Latin in Africa. So even textual critics have to recognize that these older versions are closer to the received text from which we got our Bible. So we're talking about testimonies in history of Bibles and other languages that are equal and like our Bible, but very different from the modern versions. It the old Latin continue to be used by Christians. separated from Rome. Our forefathers, called the Waldenses and the Albigenses, used the old Latin Bible. Then came Jerome's revision. That's from the Catholic. So the old Latin representatives, for the most part, dropped out of notice, unfortunately, amen? Some of them, however, held their ground and continue to be copied down to the 12th and even the 13th century. So what they said about the old Latin, if you look in Bible cyclopedias, it says this only among heretics isolated from the rest of Western Christianity could an old Latin text have been written at so late a period. Now, just so you understand who was writing that, the Roman Catholics were calling us heretics and our Baptist forefathers. So they wanted to replace the old Latin with Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Now we move on to the next one, the Syriac Peshita. This is what some of this looks like. And. This is a very important, also important. This is from Antioch of Syria, what we read right in the Bible. The famous missionary church. In 1870, Bishop Ellicott said this. It is no stretch of imagination to suppose that portions of the Bushida might have been in the hands of the Apostle John. So it can go back all the way to the time of the apostles. Man, I blew it. I was supposed to give you the Byzantine Empire. Oh, well. I'll pick up with that some other time, right? I was talking to you about the Byzantine Empire. Maybe I'll I'll close with that, but. Sorry about that. The Syrian Orthodox churches still use the Fashida. Even some parts of southern India. And according to their tradition, the Bushida was actually translated by Mark or Jude. There are about 350 ancient manuscripts. Of the Syriac Bushida, and they represent the received text, the Greek text underlying our Bible. The Syriac Peshitta Version, which is the historic Bible of the whole Syrian church, agrees closely with the traditional text found in the majority of the Greek New Testament manuscripts. Until about 100 years ago, it was almost universally believed that the Peshitta originated in the 2nd century, and hence was one of the oldest New Testament versions. Because of its agreement with the traditional text, the Peshitta was regarded as one of the most important witnesses to the antiquity of this traditional text or the received text. However, the modern critics want to discredit this witness. They want to nullify the testimony. And they're simply stating, denying that it is an ancient version. So that's how they attack the Bible. Now, there's one on your list or one that's not on your list. It's called the old Georgian. It would look like this. The Georgians of Mountainous District between the Black and Caspian Seas. were evangelized from Armenia in the early fourth century. So Kurt and Barbara Alon, remember, there's a Nassau Alon text. They are textual critics, but again, they have to recognize these ancient versions. So they say it was a it was the first Georgian translation called the old Georgian. and it was made from the Armenian. The extent Georgian manuscripts represent the traditional text or received text. Go to 1st Timothy 3. This is one of those controversial readings that the modern versions take out, don't they? Even like the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons, they don't want 1 Timothy 3.16 in their Bibles. Why? It says this. Let me get there. And without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. What does that tell us? Jesus is God no wonder these modern versions and these false cults want to take this out Just like John 1 1 they want to change it in the beginning Was God Sorry In the beginning was the word and the what and the word was a God Instead of God a God small G. I So that's in modern versions. So they take this out. Now, this is why, okay, you have the testimony of these early Bibles being translated from the Greek manuscripts that were available in the churches. And they have this in it. And this is why it's in our Bible. There's witnesses, there's testimonies of this being the word of God. So don't believe this. Maybe you have some kind of side notes in there. Be careful of these notes in your Bible because the older manuscripts or the best manuscripts Your antennas, spiritual antennas better go up when you read something like that, because they're about ready to attack the word of God. So I wanted you to see that Georgian Armenian. But here's one that we do have of the. This is called the Gothic Bible. This is very important. That's on your list there on your chart. This was a missionary Bible. This is the second and third centuries. OK, you may know a little bit about this history. The warring Goths and the Visigoths swept down from Scandinavia to southeastern Europe, north of the lower Danube and west of the Black Sea. And from here, they raided the crumbling Roman Empire. In 410, they invaded Rome itself. In an invasion into Cappadocia in Asia Minor, they took captive the grandparents of Ophelius or Wophelia. Wophelia is a man. And his name means little wolf. Doesn't mean he was or acted like one. He lived from 311 to 383. God touched the heart of this man. To carry the gospel to the very people who had enslaved his grandparents. He became known as the apostle to the Goths. His burden was to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. And for this purpose, he invented an alphabet. This is amazing. He invented an alphabet from Greek, Latin, and Germanic, Runic. And since there was not Gothic words for many Bible terms, he extended the language so that the Word of God could be translated properly. The Gothic version was widely used across much of Europe, including France, Spain, Northern Italy, and Germany. Many manuscripts of the versions were certainly produced during the 5th and 6th centuries in the writing schools of northern Italy and elsewhere. But only eight copies, most of them quite fragmentary, have survived. The Ostrogothic kingdom of Italy was of relatively brief duration from 488 to 554 AD. And by the middle of the 6th century, it was overthrown, succumbing to the power of the Eastern Roman Empire. The survivors left Italy, and the Gothic language disappeared, leaving scarcely a trace. This translation was taken directly from the kind of Greek manuscripts found in the vast majority of the received text. The witness is powerfully, this witness is powerfully to the fact that in 350 A.D. there were many traditional text, received text manuscripts, and that these had long held a place of esteem among God's people. Ophelia's roots in Asia Minor should be also noted here. The path from Antioch to Asia Minor to the world beyond was the route of the God honored text. There is a path to follow. There is a line to follow. There is a passing down of the truth of God's word. And then we have the Slavonic Bible. 850 A.D. This translation of the Slavonic Bible was begun in the 9th century by two brothers, Cyril Constantine and Methodius, who were missionaries to the half savage Slavonians. They were from the Byzantine Greek Empire, which prior to the schism from Rome in 1054 was being revitalized by successful missions among the Russians, Bulgars and Slavs. Cyril Methodius invented an alphabet again called Cyrillic. and began the translation. The invention of the alphabet and the publication of books in Slovenian resulted in the spread of literacy and the Christianization, at least of many Slovenians. It is difficult now to tell to what extent these missionaries preached a saving gospel of grace as opposed to a sacramental gospel. We do know that the desire to produce Bibles in indigenous language was not characteristic of sacramental missionaries or Roman Catholic. Not only did Roman Catholic missionaries not produce native translations themselves, they did everything they could to hinder those who would produce such translations. I think I just read everything. Now, the Romont Bible or the Occitan Bible, O-C-C-I-T-A-N. These were used by the Waldensys, the early Baptists. So these Bibles date back to the 12th century. This was the language of troubadours and men of letters in the Dark Ages. It was the predecessor of French and Italian. The Roman Bibles were small and plain, designed for missionary work. This version was widely spread to widely spread in the south of France and in the cities of Lombardy. It was in common use among the Waldensians of Piedmont. And it was no small part, doubtless, of the testimony borne the truth by these mountaineers to preserve and circulate it. Copies of the Roman New Testament, located at the Cambridge University Library and Trinity College, Dublin two of the seven surviving copies The Romont New Testaments represented the traditional text and contain the Trinitarian statement. This is another one attack go to first John 5 7 First John 5 7 Why do they want to attack this? Because this is a very, very clear statement of the Trinity. For there are three that bear record in heaven, who the father, the word and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. You can't get any clear statement of the Trinity. No wonder it is erased from modern versions. They want to attack this statement. But again, you go back to these older versions, you find 1 John 5, 7, because they were translating from the Greek manuscripts that were in the churches that were found in that time. It looks like I can give you something on the Byzantine Empire. before we end, because that's the last ancient version I'm going to cover tonight. Let me give you a little bit of history of the Byzantine Empire. The traditional text or received text is also called the Byzantine text. So you got to kind of what we're talking about here is synonymous terms, traditional. Received Byzantine. Now this text, this Greek text, was preserved in the Greek Byzantine Empire. Now, what I want you to learn from this is the providential hand of God. Remember, God is involved in history. So we need to see the providential hand of God. You probably are going to recognize some of this history. The capital city of this empire was called Byzantium until it was conquered in 330 AD by Constantine and renamed Constantinople, or New Rome. So are you with me now? You understand the history? The Byzantine Empire was the eastern half of the Roman Empire, which survived. within ever-narrowing boundaries for a thousand years after the Western half crumbled into various feudal kingdoms. So we're talking about a thousand-year empire that continued after the Roman Empire crumbled. In the late 4th century, Emperor Theodosius I made Christianity the sole religion of the empire. There we go again, state churches. And Constantinople became the religious center of the eastern part of the Roman Empire, while Rome remained the center in the west. In 1054 AD, the Roman Catholic Church split from the eastern section. The Byzantine Empire lasted from roughly 452 to 1453 AD. There you have a thousand years. At which time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. Now the Byzantine Empire received the Greek New Testament from the area most saturated with the apostolic churches and the most zealous for the sound faith. That's what we need to see. In A.D. 565, the Byzantine Empire covered all the sections of Asia Minor and Europe where the early apostolic churches have been founded, including the cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, Caesarea, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, Thessalonica, Philadelphia, Smyrna, Thyatira, Athens, the province of Galatia, and Rome. That pretty much covers a lot of the New Testament. Amen? While the Greek language died out as a living language in the Roman Empire, it remained so in the Byzantine Empire. That's what we need to see, why it's so important. Having received the Greek text from the part of the world most saturated with these apostolic churches, it preserved that text for more than a thousand years. There's the preserved Word of God. This lasted until the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in 1453 AD. At that time, the Greek Orthodox Christians were dispersed to the West and carried with them the precious Greek manuscripts and their knowledge of the Greek language. In God's providence, this was exactly the same hour in history in which movable type was invented in Europe. A mere three years after the fall of Constantinople, the Gutenberg Bible in Latin was printed and books began to be multiplied in Europe. During the last half of the 15th century, Bibles were printed not only in Latin, but also in German, Italian, French, Dutch, Swedish, and other languages. The Greek New Testament was printed in 1516 AD. Until the middle of the 15th century, Constantinople still stood, sorely pressed indeed by the Muslims, but yet independent. A Christian Greek kingdom retaining the ecclesiastical literature, the language. Then came the final overthrow and dispersion of 1453. The Greek scholars and ecclesiastics, who then filled Europe with the news of their calamity, became the channels for transmitting to all the West the precious remains of early Christianity. And Providence prepared the church with the new art of printing to preserve and diffuse them. It was thus that Constantinopolitan manuscripts, the representatives of the common text of former age, became the parents of our received text. If one cannot see the providential hand of God in these events, in regard to the preservation of scriptures, I do not understand how it could ever be seen. The Byzantine Greek New Testament was the basis for the received text printed in the early 1500s. So brethren, we have so many witnesses That's what we need to understand. When it comes to the Greek manuscripts, they were copied and preserved through the Byzantine Empire, through the faithful churches. But not only that, they were copied and preserved through the translations of these ancient versions that today can be studied alongside our English, per se. Wow. They came from the same source. They came from the received Greek New Testament. So again, this kind of prepares the way for us to understand, you know, we're not just talking about, amen, bless God, I believe the King James and you ought to believe it too. Why? I don't know, just believe it. You know, it's not, You know, that's what they're going to say about us, right? Well, they're just a bunch of ignorant, you know, kind of like Hillary Clinton. You know, they cling to their Bibles and their guns and a bunch of basket of deplorables over there. I see John over there carrying and got a Bible and a gun. I think I do too, amen. Anyway, what I'm getting at brethren, I understand that you may not be required to take the time to kind of go through all that preachers do and understand the history of the Bible and the history of the manuscripts. But you ought to have some knowledge and understand that we're just not, you know, foaming at the mouth and slinging and snot everywhere and preaching up and down and rolling on the aisle and talking about the King James. No, we do that and we study, amen. We don't do all that, but we do believe there is evidence, clear evidence, a clear testimony, a clear witness that you can go to even today in the museums of the world. Now, sadly, you're not gonna be able to do that, and they're not gonna let you see them, and they're not gonna let you study them. Only, you know, very few get that privilege of even looking at them, let alone handling a manuscript. But they were handled. They were studied. And they were put into the received text, and that's where we got our Bible. So that's where we're gonna head back now to, okay, you heard of 1516, all right? How did they translate, or where did they get the Greek New Testament received text? We're gonna find out who did that. We're going to find out how they did that. So we're going to start studying first. We went to the ancient versions. Now we're going to the Greek and study about the received text. And then we're going to find out which Bibles were translated in English because obviously I can teach you about Spanish. I, I studied for 20 years or really more because It's been 30 years ago. So I've studied over 30 years about the Spanish Bible. I can talk all day and all night. If you want to stay around, I got a few more hours. We can talk about the Spanish Bible if you want. But it's the same arguments. It comes from the same source. You know, way back in the 1500s, they had access to the received text. And so every language and every translation has a source. So what I'm telling you tonight is, all right, if we have to go to 1881, when Westcott and Hort did their revision based on the Vaticanus and when they found those Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and if we have to go to them, And we have to go to those manuscripts, which are supposedly older and better. Where was the Word of God for 1800 years? That's what I'm saying. It doesn't even make sense that the Word of God was hidden until Westcott and Hort found it and produced the critical text that's followed by all modern versions. I mean, that's what you have to believe. That God did not preserve his word, that God was not faithful, that the people of God were in ignorance, they didn't really have the Bible. But brethren, do we see men like Wilfilia and some of these other missionaries that literally created alphabets, taught people their own language, and then translated the Bible into their language. You think they were just a bunch of ignorant people? No, this was God giving them wisdom. This was God's hand all over it. This was God getting his word out in all these different languages. So I praise God for this witness. And I hope that it solidifies more the basis of your faith, that when we stand up here and we say, we have the word of God, we believe this to be the word of God. We don't accept modern versions. Maybe now you could say, preacher, we understand why a little better, why we say this and why we have these convictions, why we only preach from the King James Bible. That is the goal of what we're doing on Sunday nights. Obviously, we're not going to go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. But we're getting there to the received text and the English translations. And then we'll be done in before the millennium. Amen. Before the rapture, Lord willing, we'll be done. If not, you can continue on when I'm gone. No. All right, let's go to the Lord in prayer.