Okay, we're in this series on apologetics, and I'm prepared. I've got a plan here. I'm working, and I'm prepared to move on, but I really feel like I'd like to just kind of stop today and just sort of catch our breath and make sure everybody's okay with everything. The whole purpose of this series, in my mind, is how can we be best equipped to answer the genuine, legitimate questions of unbelievers who want some answers about questions they have. Some of them are good questions and some of them are bad questions, but they all think they're good questions. And this isn't about arguing and beating people over the head and stuffing things down people's throats, but it is about having an answer, as the Scripture says, being ready to give an answer. The first question that we've looked at is, how do we know the Bible is an unusual book, that it's an extraordinary or supernatural book beyond other religious books? And to my mind, in my planning of this series, we finished that. We finished it last week with a discussion of the King James Only controversy and the whole translation thing. But we've been moving fairly quickly. Some of you don't believe that. And it seems like forever. But we have been moving fairly quickly through this stuff. And I want to make sure that all the questions are answered and that there's nothing just kind of you're wondering about. As a teacher, that's what I do for a living, let me remind you that there's no such thing as a stupid question. There really isn't. Okay. I've gotten a couple. But the only ones I really think are stupid are the students, the questions asked by the students who raise their hands and ask a question, the answer to which I just gave a few minutes ago when they weren't listening. Those drive me nuts. But that couldn't have happened here because I just started talking. So if you raise your hand and say, what are we studying in Sunday school these days? Then that would be a stupid question. But anything else would be fine. Now, let me start narrow and open it up for questions. And I'll take questions as long as there are any. And when there aren't any, we'll just move on. because I don't want to bore you either. Okay, last week we talked about this, the way God has preserved His Word and the whole manuscripts thing and the translations and so on, in connection with the King James Only issue. And as I said, there are good reasons to be King James Only and there are extremely bad reasons to be King James Only. And there are even heretical reasons to be King James Only. Are there any questions about any of that? Anything you've come across, wondered about, heard? Any questions about that whole King James issue? Yes, sir? Why is it such a big deal? Well, there are good reasons and bad reasons why it's a big deal. The good reason why it's a big deal is that we believe in the verbal, plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible, and the specific words matter. We also believe in the priesthood of the believer and the illuminating work of the Holy Spirit as part of his indwelling of the believer. And that means that you don't have to go to the priest to find out what the Bible says. You can read it for yourself. And since that's true, you are responsible to read it for yourself and to learn what you can and to ask questions and so on. That being the case, if the Bible is verbally inspired and if all believers should have immediate access to it, immediate meaning without a mediator, then it really matters whether you have the Bible in your language. And if it's accurate. That's the good reason that it's a big deal. There are bad reasons that it's a big deal. The worst reason that it's a big deal is that there are people who want a following. And more than one of the groups that I've talked about in the last couple of weeks are in that category. And I won't say which ones. But there are people who just want a crowd. And this is something that they can make a living on. and they will answer to God for that. There's something about an under-shepherd who walks into the fold and scares the daylights out of the sheep that tells you that guy should be in another line of work. And there are those out there. Another bad reason is ignorance. How many of you have studied any foreign language at all, ancient or modern? Okay, most high schools require a year or two of a foreign language. You've done translation work. You know what translating is like. There's more than one way to say a concept in the original language. Just say it in the receptor language. And there are times, I mentioned this briefly, when saying it word for word would be wrong because you want to communicate the concept, the meaning. And I use the illustration of idioms. And in German, we say, I'm taking you in my arms. And in English, we say, I'm pulling your leg. And both of them mean the same thing. But when you translate, you're expected to provide what translators call the dynamic equivalent. You use different words to say the same thing. And some of that is cultural, and some of it is linguistic. Well, people who don't understand that think that there's only one way to translate into a target language and that it's even theoretically possible to have then a perfect or inspired translation. And just anybody who knows language just knows that's not possible. So, some of it is ignorance and some of that is laziness and some of it is bad leadership on the part of local assembly pastors. I don't want to step on too many toes here, but one of the things that really, I think I may have mentioned this, one of the things that really fries me is I drive by these churches and it says A.V. 1611, and they're not using the 1611, and they couldn't read the 1611 if they had one. And they want to make a doctrinal point about it. And it's just the ignorance that surrounds it. And I want desperately to believe that it's ignorance and not malice, but it's at least ignorance. And another bad reason why it's such a big deal is the devil likes to stir up God's people and get them taken up in their time involved with things that don't matter. There are things we ought to be fighting about. The fundamentals of the faith we ought to be fighting about. We ought to be fighting about. That's not the only way to spend your time, right? That's a very fundamentalist statement. There are things we ought to be spending our time on. Evangelism, edification of the brothers, One of the things that just frosts me in this church and every other one is the number of people we have who not only never lead anybody to Christ but don't care if they do or not. Now look, it ought to be a big deal in the church when somebody gets saved. I'm stepping on toes here. It ought to be a big deal in the church. But in our church, it's too big a deal because it happens so rarely. It ought to happen all the time. and 98% of our new members. We interview, the elders and deacons interview these people. I know who they are. You know where they come from? They're move-ins. Well, that's great. I'm glad we're reaching the move-ins, and Greenville has a lot of move-ins, and yeah. What about the lost people in Greenville that we ought to be reaching? What about those people? We're not doing it. Now, there is something to get excited about. And the other thing that frosts me is the number of people who view church as a spectator sport. And in this church, I will say, there's a much lower ratio of those than in almost any other church I know. And I've told this illustration before, but years ago, Pastor Conley said, you know, we ought to do something to tell all the people who are volunteering their time around this place that we appreciate them. Let's have a dinner. Let's have a banquet, a nice banquet with expensive food, and let's decorate the fellowship hall, and let's have a big banquet. And so he asked the church secretary at the time. He asked her, he said, give me a list of everybody who does anything around here. The Sunday school teachers, the choir, the ushers, the door greeters, the nursery workers, everybody who does something around here and doesn't get paid for it. And we discovered that we needed a fellowship hall roughly three times the size that it was. And if I remember, it was something like 80% of the active attenders. And we were just floored. And that's good. That's really good. I talk about this a lot and some of you are tired of hearing me say it, but one of the things that revolutionized my view of church as a student was when I realized the purpose of the church is for me to exercise my gifts for other people. And if I go home at the end of a church service and am blessed by the sermon and strengthened for the week and I haven't ministered to anybody, I haven't done church. My job, every service, is to find somebody who needs what I've got and to give it to them. And until I've done that, I can't leave. Now, you imagine what the church would be like, this one and every other one, if that's the way we did church. You're looking, you're going, OK, who is it? Somebody's here. Ah! People glomming on to each other. There are things that we ought to be diligent about. And the devil loves to distract us from those things by this garbage. And I used the word garbage in connection with the doctrine involving bibliology and I meant it because that is garbage. It's a waste of time. And the amount of ink that has been spilled and the passions that have been exploded and the language that has been degraded by this controversy is deeply sinful. Have I made myself clear? This is not my pulpit. I don't want to just preach my stuff, but I tell you, this really fries my socks. I don't even know what that means, but that's what it does. Any other questions on the King James issue? Yes, sir. One of the concerns that have been expressed with the multiplicity of translations today is that There isn't a biblical sound anymore. In a younger generation, I mean, when we, we grew up in the King James, right? And it sounded like the Bible. And now you read three or four different, and I've been doing this for years, you read different versions and your sense of the flow and the text of Scripture is diluted because you're reading it in so many forms. I always memorize from the King James and I require my students to memorize from the King James because that's school policy at Bob Jones. But I know a lot of students are memorizing from ESV is just really popular today. Some New American Standard. Mount Calvary is using the New American Standard as a standard version over there. We use the New King James in our order of worship. There are questions about memorization. I like the idea of people memorizing the scripture in words and language that they understand. Contemporary words and language. I don't mean hip, I mean contemporary. I can remember memorizing a bunch of verses from a Bible doctrines class when I was a college student. And there's one that I memorized faithfully and could recite and always got right on all the tests. And it was 15 years later before I knew what that verse meant because it was just couched in 17th century language. I think it's good that people memorize living words And they are living first because they're breathed out by the Spirit of God, but they're also living because they are alive in the context, the cultural context in which the student lives. And if part of the purpose of memorizing scripture is to share it when you don't have a Bible handy, shall not prevent those that are asleep, you know, it doesn't fly real well, pardon the pun, on the street. So I'm all for memorizing in a good modern version. I don't have any problem with that. I think a student has benefited if he does all of his memorization from a single version. And I can't prove that. It's just a hunch I have. I will say that this idea of the dangers of a multiplicity of versions, I remember thinking at one time when I was much younger, well, pretty soon we're going to have all these versions and nobody's going to know what the Bible is anymore. That's kind of a straw man. Everybody knows what the Bible is. It's not really a problem. Since when is? abundant grace, multiple versions. Since when is that a problem? I think we should be grateful for what we have and use it to the best of our ability. And avoid the bad ones. And there are some bad ones. There are very few bad ones. There are some that are not good translations. But if you understand that they're not translations, they're commentaries, things like today's English version, Good News for Modern Man. It's a great, it's a, not great, it's a fairly decent commentary, it's just not a translation. So I wouldn't call it a bad translation, I'd just call it a commentary. Yes, sir? Which one is true? They're all true. By the way, did you see the article in the paper yesterday? The religion page, the Saturday paper? The side article, it's always on some essay by some liberal religionist. And the headline was, how do we know the Bible is the Word of God, is of God? I thought, oh, great, just like my Sunday school series. And there were two answers given. One was by a liberal Protestant, and the other was by the pastor of the Unity Church in Missouri, which is a cult. And the first guy said, well, you can just feel it. And the second guy said, well, if it's consistent with peace, love, and happiness, then it's true. And if something in the Bible is not consistent with that, then it's not from God. I thought, well, those were very helpful answers. I wanted to write in and say, come to my Sunday school class. But that would be viewed as self-serving. What's true? It is a fact that the church is gifted. Everybody in the church is gifted from God. And that some people are gifted in different ways than others. And we need everybody. We need people who can sit down with the Greek and the Hebrew and the Aramaic and say, this is a good translation and this is a bad one. And the fact that the church needs people like that doesn't really interfere with the priesthood of the believer or your direct access to God. You need to get advice from gifted people in the church as to what's reliable and what isn't. And I don't think you ought to do your daily devotions out of good news for modern man. I think you ought to find out from people who know such things what the good translations are and use them. But the fact is, given the nature of language, the richness and roundness of language, there are lots of perfectly true ways, good ways, to translate the original message. And we can benefit from all of those. I have software we can put side by side, you know, and you got six or eight translations side by side, verse by verse. Compare them and see what you learn. And I do that in English as often as you do. Yeah, I can put the Greek over there if I want to. And the Hebrew, the Hebrew wouldn't be all that helpful to me anymore, frankly. Hebrew is only happy when it sees you in its rear-view mirror, you know, going away fast. That's the way Hebrew is. Read them all and compare them, all the good ones. There's more than one right, correct way to say these concepts in the target language. And so we can benefit from all those things. And it really isn't scary. It's a very healthy situation. Imagine if you had no scripture. God has given us just this abundance, abundance, and we act like it's a problem. Yes, sir? Is that what's happening in the reading of the words of Jesus in the different Gospels? Variant readings? It depends. What do you mean? Well, I don't have any in mind, but I understand that the Septuagint is the one that's most often quoted in the Old Testament, but there are some cases in which Yeah, there are different Gospels, parallel statements of Jesus, and they're given in different ways in the different Gospels. There are multiple reasons for that. Some of that is textual variance, the actual Greek text. Sometimes a copyist who's copying Matthew and saying there, we'll remember the one from Mark, and he'll think, ooh, that's wrong. He said it differently. And so you get textual variance sometimes. Sometimes it's linguistic. Jesus is speaking in Aramaic. We're virtually sure. And the writers use whatever Greek words they have in their toolbox to record his words in Greek. So the words of Jesus in the Gospels are a translation. And one of my favorite illustrations of that is the passage where it says, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Matthew and Mark use the word in Greek for a sewing needle, an everyday needle like you'd find around the house. Luke uses the word for a surgical needle. He's a doctor and he's drawing from his experience. And I asked my students, so which one is really the word Jesus said? Which guy misquoted Jesus? Well, neither misquoted Jesus because he was speaking in Aramaic and they were translating on the fly as they wrote it in Greek. And so, when they're translating, they pick the word that occurs to them when they think whatever the Arabic word for needle is. So, some of it is translation issues. Some of it, I'm quite sure, is Jesus is an itinerant preacher. Now, hold on. Don't get offended here. But I think of it as a little bit like a politician. He's traveling around and he's giving kind of the same speech over and over again. Now, Jesus obviously gave multiple speeches and sermons and so on. But I suspect there was a lot of giving the same devotional or the same sermon in multiple places. And so these speeches would become a very common oral tradition. Well, you vary your speeches from location to location. And if Matthew is writing down one time he said it and if Mark is writing down a different time he said it, it might be a little different. He would say things a little differently from place to place. You do audience adaptation and somebody would just say it differently. So there are lots of reasons for there to be variations, and none of them affect the reliability of either the words or the thoughts, because you can say the same thought with different words in different places. And there are probably some other factors that come into play there, too, but that's three right off the, quote, top of my head. Anything else on the King James thing? Yes, sir? Yes, Mr. Fowler. Yep. Can I name a name? Jack Hiles preached on more than one occasion that if you were led to Christ out of any English translation other than the King James, you were not really saved. That's heresy. That's false teaching and we should have called him on it. We're trying to be nice and we shouldn't have been in that case. Continue, I'm sorry. I take comfort in the fact that time is clearly on our side here. I mean, look, it's been 400 years, 396 years, five, come on. In another 1,000 years, surely it won't be an issue. I mean, can you read Beowulf? You can try, but you need help. Time's clearly on our side, but I wish it would hurry up. Because it's a little irritating. It really is. I'm really thrilled about the fact that it really hasn't seemed to take root around here like it could have. And I know there are King James only people around, but as I said, there are good reasons to be King James only. I'm just upset about the bad reasons. Anything else on the King James? And I'll broaden it a little bit. Okay, any other questions you have in mind about the whole extraordinarity of the Bible question? How do we know the Bible is supernatural and not ordinary? Anything we haven't covered or any Question you have about things that we have covered. Any dangling thoughts in your mind? Yes, sir. Curiosity question. Curiosity question. From the Jewish historian or, I wouldn't say anthropologist, but geologist, whatever, when they discover or what is their attitude toward finding any New Testament copies when they are doing their archaeological diggings and come upon stuff that they obviously realize... Yeah, yeah. Jewish archaeologists are digging in Palestine, Israel. What do they think when they dig up New Testament stuff? Well, they're all different, of course, Jewish archaeologists. They're individual persons. Most of them are thrilled to have any kind of ancient artifact. And the Israeli government is thrilled to have any kind of ancient artifact because it gets some attention, it gets some money, it gets some tourism. And obviously, if they're Hebrew scholars, they'll turn it over to New Testament scholars. There are plenty of New Testament guys, Christian archaeologists over there working. They don't try to hide it or destroy it or, you know, gather them all in a pile and burn them. But obviously, they get a lot more excited when they find what we would call the Hebrew scriptures. Is there something you've heard or something? No? It's a big fellowship over there. Everybody's working together, and they're excited about what they find. One thing you've got to realize is that archaeology is not Indiana Jones. You can dig with a brush and a pick. I mean, I don't mean a pick, but like a dental pick. All your life, all day, every day, in the summer, they shut down in the cold weather. And literally the most exciting thing you might find is a little broken piece of clay one day. And you don't even know when you found it that it was the best thing that's ever going to happen to you in this incredibly boring career. And, you know, King Tut's tomb is once in a lifetime. It's once in history. So they get pretty excited about every little scrap they find. And I mentioned the Baruch Bolai, you know, these little hardened clay seals. And they found a bulla, looked like a little rock, a little stone, that said Baruch on it. And I mean, that was big stuff. You know, ooh, look at my little rock with three Hebrew letters. It's the most exciting thing the guy ever found. So you learn to have low expectations when you're in archaeology. And anything you find is great. You're just real glad about it. Still holding out on the Ark of the Covenant. Still waiting for that. I want to get a taste of that manna. Yes, sir? What? Oh, that comes up every few years, every few months. They think something else about the Ark of the Covenant. Oh, Noah's Ark. Oh, yeah, they keep working on that, too. I'm extremely skeptical that a structure of wood... I understand ice. Sure, it could be preserved. But before it was ice, it wasn't. And before ice is ice, it's water. And water is very destructive to wood. It speeds the fermentation rotting process. It feeds the microorganisms and the bugs that feed on the wood. I'm skeptical that Noah would have walked away from the ark and not used the wood for anything. He had some serious house building to do as soon as the water's gone, right? I'm very skeptical that they... I've seen all these little shapes in satellite photos and Air Force pilots and former astronauts and all that, and I'm just real skeptical about the whole thing. And the fact is, if they found it, somebody would come up with a really good reason why it doesn't prove anything, and then we'd just move on, so I'm not gonna waste my time on it. But it would be really cool to find it, wouldn't it? Anything else on, uh, is the Bible an unusual book? I've got one more question. It's probably going to be the last one we have time for today. Okay, we've been distributing Dr. Bowder's book on the Da Vinci Code. How many of you have read it? Did you read anything in there that surprised you? The whole Jesus being married question. Bauder concludes that he was not, and that is just, I mean, that's easy. There is literally no evidence. The evidence that the Da Vinci Code people are using, the strongest evidence they've got is that there's an apocryphal writing that says Jesus kissed Mary. Well, I don't want to go into too much history here, but I've kissed a lot of women I'm not married to. Most of that was a long time ago. That's the big deal. That was a form of greeting, the holy kiss. You kiss people on the cheek in the Mideast. Just be glad you're not in Russia. The men kiss each other on the lips in Russia as a form of greeting. I just don't think I could be a missionary to Russia. I'm sorry. Lord, please, anywhere but there. But it's a form of greeting. And of course, you kiss your disciples, you kiss everybody. You just kiss like crazy. And it's not passionate. It's just a form of grieving. And that's literally the strongest evidence they have. That's it. So, he addresses the question, was Jesus married? And the answer is so obviously no that it seems a shame that he has to take up three or four pages to answer the question because it's just not worth that much space. But then he turns to the question, theoretically, could Jesus have been married? Is it theologically possible that the God-man could have married someone and even fathered children. And Bauder's answer is, yes, it is theoretically possible although it did not happen. And most people who read that go, you know, because it sounds very, whoa, sacrilegious, yes. And that comes from two problems in our thinking. One is the idea that I think we've inherited from the Protestant heritage in Roman Catholicism, which is that for all our talk about the bed being undefiled and so on, sex is really a little dirty. And really holy people don't do that sort of thing. And we inherited that from Catholicism. You know, priests are celibate. And the official line today is that they're celibate so they can concentrate on their work. And the Catholic Church says that priests aren't married. Now the spin they put on it is that it's so they can concentrate on their work. Mary is a perpetual virgin because, you know, she's perfect, right? Immaculate conception. And she's perfect. And surely she and Joseph wouldn't do that. And there is this, even as we say, oh no, it's great, you know, we send people off on their honeymoon, have a good time, we still think, a little dirty. Really holy people don't do that. And that's part of what's wrong with our thinking. Another part is a failure to understand, and I'm laughing as I say this, a failure to understand the person of Christ as God and man. And that is not a flaw in your thinking. because nobody understands this, nobody, including guys who spend their whole life studying it. Let me just observe before I go into what he says, the point he makes. Let me observe that his position is not new and it's not particularly controversial. Very few theologians have actually written on this subject, but of the few who have, throughout church history, the great majority have agreed with him. And that's what makes the Da Vinci Code book so stupid because their point is, that they repressed this evidence because they knew it would be devastating to Christian theology, the concept of the God-man, when in fact, we have admissions all through church history, rarely, but they're there, that it wouldn't have been devastating at all, that theoretically, there would have been no theological problem with it whatsoever. Now, you want to hear why? For those of you who haven't read the book, he explains it very clearly. Well, as clearly as you can explain something like this. Jesus is one person, and I've just made him finite, by drawing a circle. We have to forget the whole finite thing, okay? That's our first problem. But Jesus is one person. He is both human and divine. He is both God and man. And this makes it look like He's 50% God and 50% man, but He isn't. He's 100% God and 100% man. Now, part of our problem is He's infinite, and we have trouble with anything infinite. The other part of our problem is there is literally no other person in all the history of the universe who has been like this. The Father has never been like this. The Spirit has never been. Michael the Archangel has never been. You and I will never be, even after we're glorified. He is absolutely unique, so there is nothing to compare him to. And as soon as somebody says, well, it's kind of like, you can just say click, because it isn't kind of like anything. It's unique. And we have great difficulty with infinity and we have great difficulty with uniqueness when there's nothing to compare it to because we learn by comparing the things we know. So, he's fully God and he's fully man. Now, theologians long time ago came up with a couple of words to describe these concepts and the words are not biblical words. Words are only useful when everybody agrees on what they mean. So, this is one of these artificial constructs which is the way language is. We're going to use this word and this is what we mean by that. They say He is one person, but He has two natures, a human and a divine. Now, what is a person? A person is simply a being with self-consciousness. And we typically say the three attributes are mind, will and emotions. You can think, And no, you can choose and you can feel. And we would say animals are not persons. Now, if you have pets, I know you attribute thinking and feeling and choosing to your little furry members of the family. I'm not going to get into that. We have a furry one in our house who is not a member of the family. Doesn't want to be and we don't want her. Person. Now, we use the word person today as an equivalent of human being. Human beings are only one kind of person. There are angels and there is God. So when I say God is a person, sometimes my students go, but yes, He is. He is a being. I wouldn't say creature because that means a created thing. A being with mind, will, and emotions, including self-awareness, self-consciousness. Jesus is not two persons. He's not a God and a man. and put together, and there's two of him, multiple personality disorder. Now, what is a nature? A nature is simply... I'm simplifying some, but not to the sacrifice of accuracy. A nature is simply a list of characteristics. Now, ordinarily, persons have just one nature. You have a nature. Different people are different, right? Some people are very intelligent, some people are not. characteristic of their nature. Some people are outgoing, some people are not. Some people are happy, some people are always depressed about something. Some people love to ride in boats. Some people are scared to death of water. Those are all characteristics of the person, and every one of you could list characteristics of your person, and that is your nature. And you could list the characteristics of other persons that you know well, and that is their nature. Now, where it gets tricky is Jesus is the only being ever to have two natures. How does that work? Well, as man, he can get tired. He says at one time, something that is a great surprise to people, the disciples say, when are you coming back? And he says, well, I don't know. Whoa, how does that work? It's his human nature. On the divine side, he is omnipotent. Now, how can you be tired and omnipotent at the same time? I don't know. He's the only one who's ever had two natures. They are distinct. They are not mixed. And the theological term is they do not communicate one with another. So, when Jesus sits down by the well because he's tired and he's thirsty, God is not tired. Jesus is tired. Is Jesus God? Yes. His divine nature is not tired, the person is tired. When Jesus knows what's in man and has no need that anyone tell him, that is a function of his omniscience. The human nature is not omniscient, the person is omniscient. If Jesus gets married and has babies, the person gets married and has children. The divine nature does not get married. This isn't a person. It's just a nature. It's a list of characteristics. And so what are his kids like? Are they smarter than everybody else in school? Well, they might be smart kids. They might not be smart kids. But that is not a function of the divine nature. That's a function of the human nature. Having children is a human activity. God, in heaven, there's neither marriage or giving marriage, right? God is not a sexual being. So Jesus, as a human, has children, and they would be ordinary human children, and there would be nothing wrong with His doing so. And His descendants today, did He have any, would not have any claim to Messiahship or deity. They would be ordinary human beings. That's the theory. And I wrap all of that up by saying, we think we know what we're talking about, but we're probably wrong. because this is infinity and this is uniqueness and that's really hard for us. Yes, ma'am. No. No. Absolutely not. That's entirely wrong. Yeah, that's been taught. You don't get your sin merely from your father. You get it from your mother as well. And I know that mothers would love to believe that the fallen nature is communicated by the sperm. That is not the case. You get your sin nature from both parents. The virgin birth was not about keeping Jesus sinless. The virgin birth was God's choice. He doesn't say why He did it that way. We speculate to some extent. I think it may have been so that there would be a clear statement that this is a unique person. This is not an ordinary person. But Jesus could have been sinless with a human father as well. what the Lord did, what the Father did, was to stop the transmission of sin from Mary to Jesus. Now, the Catholics say they solved that with the Immaculate Conception. Well, Mary was perfect. Mary was sinless. But all that does is move the problem back a generation, because how did she get to be sinless if she had a sinful mother and father? So yeah, women love that idea, but it's not true. And I'm going to take a stand on that. Right, honey? I'm intending next week to start into our second question, which is, I'm going to do next, how do we know there's a God? And I don't think this will need to take nearly as long as how do we know the Bible's unusual. But I want to address it because it's a question that you'll often come across. If next week you have other questions that are still lingering, bring them up. We'll take as long as we need because I want to make sure that you're equipped and you feel confident about answering the questions that you hear. And if there are questions you hear that you don't know the answers to, bring them on in here and we'll have some fun with them. Okay, let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed. Thank you, Father, for the privilege we have of holding Your Word in our hands, of having copies of our own, multiple copies in multiple languages. multiple translations, and all of these things are instruments in our hearts to minister grace to us and to make us more like Christ. We pray that you would help us as we learn these things to be conduits of this learning, to pass it off to others, believers who are in need of discipleship, unbelievers who are in need of confrontation and answers and an offering of grace. We pray, Father, you'd help us to be diligent in the tasks you've called us to. with the information you've given us. For we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.