Hello, and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, the pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. And in this Word Magazine, I have a guest with me. My guest is Andre Jutta, who is from Sweden, and he's here to talk with us about his work with the Swedish Reformation Bible Society. So, Andre, welcome to Word Magazine. Great to have you as a guest. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Good. Now, what city are you in right now in Sweden? Well, I'm living just outside of Uppsala. Uppsala, okay. Uppsala is the town with the oldest Swedish university. Oops. Okay. My American pronunciation. You got the right pronunciation. I didn't recognize it. There you have it. Again, I said I wanted to have you come on to interview, to talk about the Swedish Reformation Bible Society that you're part of. But before we get into talking about that, would you tell our listeners just a little bit about you, whatever you want to share about your family, your faith, your church, what's your perspective on your confessionalism or your faith and so forth. So I'll just turn it over to you for a few moments and have our listeners learn a little bit about you. Sure. Well, I am happily married with three kids, two daughters and one son. We are living here outside of Uppsala, as I said. I didn't grow up in a Christian family. I grew up with a single mother. My mother and father, they weren't married, but they were living together. But at the age of one year, they departed, went separate ways. But later on, my father, my biological father, he actually became saved. He married a woman and they had a daughter, my half-sister. And my half-sister went to, you know, Sunday school. So my half-sister become saved and through her, my father's new wife became saved. And later on, my father became saved. And when I visited them in the summers, They took me to the church and I heard preaching and they talked with me. And I was also in that time, very asking existential questions, what the meaning of life. And I had a belief in God because, well, I couldn't just believe that the world existed out of pure chance. And when I was around 16 or 17, I received Jesus as my savior and was at a meeting. which my father and stepmother took me. Wonderful. Great to hear of how you came to faith. And now what church are you a part of? Yeah. Well, in the beginning, I grew up in a city in the middle of Sweden. It's still very northern. People usually say that about Stockholm, everything is northern. No, actually in the middle of Sweden. called Östersund. It's difficult to pronounce it if you're not Swedish, but Östersund. And there I went to the Pentecostal church and become part of their youth work there. But after a couple of years, when I moved to Uppsala to study and I later on met my wife, her church and I actually met her through I was holding a lecture about the creation evolution debate actually so that's how I met her and my father was living together with his family in that city called Västervik so that's how I met her and then we went to Uppsala and to this a congregation that is called Fyruhøyskyrkan. It's difficult to pronounce it. And that is a ecumenical church composed of Baptist, evangelical, motherland, foundation church. And some other, I think it's, Mission Church, it's called that in Swedish, and they are together. Is it an evangelical church that affirms the doctrine of the Trinity? Yes, yes, yes, of course. and so forth. So it holds to Orthodox Christian beliefs. Wonderful. Wonderful. I want to talk to you a little bit about your background in philosophy and religion. You talked about you were given a lecture, but maybe before we do that, I'll just ask you, you know, for, you know, I'm here in the U.S. I have never been to Sweden. But tell me a little bit about the history of Christianity in Sweden and maybe what is the state of Christianity as you understand it in Sweden in 2022? Well, if you're gonna start with the contemporary state, I must say it's not so good. You know, it's the secular humanism, culture Marxist has kind of influenced Sweden considerably. A lot. I mean, Sweden is one of the most secular countries in the world. I mean, it's really in that way sad. And we see compromise in the church. Just to take an example, it says a lot. I don't know if I told you that I started a newspaper, the Morning Post. And one of the most read articles was about, you know, the Archbishop of Sweden. And she's a woman and we were having interview with her when we asked her about Muhammad, if he was a false prophet or not. And she said, no, he's not a false prophet. This was the Archbishop? Yeah, Archbishop of Swedish State Church, the Lutheran Church. right it's not actually today anymore a state charge because they have separated but it's the former state charge of sweden huh interesting i said that but historically when the Reformation happened in Germany, Lutheranism came to Sweden, right? So it has a strong, historically, a strong Protestant tradition, but now it's sort of, I'm guessing, a post-Christian The Lutheran Church now, you said it sounds like it's radically liberal. So what about evangelicals? I mean, you're an evangelical. How strange is it to be an evangelical? I mean, is it just a complete outlier, something completely strange that you would identify as an evangelical? Yes, unfortunately, liberal powers have influenced the evangelical church in some areas as well. still the evangelicals are much better and much better off in every regard. You can't compare it with this state church where the political correctness has just dominating everything. Truth is not important, just political correctness. I mean, if you look at the history of Sweden, it started as, you know, the Norse, you know, the Norse God, Odin, Thor, Christianity, the first, archaeological evidence of his, of Christianity is around 500 after Christ, actually. And then in 890, when Ansgar came, he had some influence, but it was no real success. But then in the year 900, then you can see a lot more Christian graves, Christian evidence of Christian conducts or, you know, how should we look at it? And then it just grew. Are you seeing in Sweden today, are you seeing a rebirth of paganism, neo-paganism? Yes. I mean, I'll take an example. One of the professors at the university in, is it history? I think he is. He, you know, conducting this, what do you call it in English? You know, this bluff sacrifice to Odin. It's absurd, but it's, you know. So it's the final battle will be. I think we're seeing that to a small degree here also. I mean, there is a rebirth of You know, I think there's a quote attributed to G.K. Chesterton, and it says, you know, when men stop believing in the God of the Bible, the problem is not that they believe in nothing, but they'll believe in anything. And so if there's no vibrant, true faith in Christ, they'll find these alternative, it might be secularism, might be environmentalism or people have a religious devotion to those types of things or a religious, they'll try to find it in neo-paganism, let's worship Odin and even the explosion of interest in like Marvel movies and Thor and You know there's a there's kind of a it's it's it's terrible on one hand but I mean on the other hand it shows a spiritual longing at least they're just looking in the wrong places and it's nice that we have the gospel to offer you know something substantive to offer. Let me switch gears for just a moment. You were kind enough to share with me your CV, and we're going to start talking about your work with the Bible Society in a few minutes, but I just want to learn a little bit more about you. You are a researcher in philosophy and religion, and you did a PhD at the University of Amsterdam, and your specialty was in what's called argumentation theory, and I'd never heard of that before. What is argumentation theory? Yeah, well, yeah, that's interesting. I should explain that all my research has been done on my spare time. I worked as a teacher. Okay. So, but actually there are two types of argumentation theory. One that is a branch from philosophy and another branch that was independent of philosophy. And I studied philosophy, but my PhD and actually in the other branch But they have had some cross fertilization and so on. But the branch from philosophy, there was a bunch of philosophers that felt that formal logic couldn't, it felt unsatisfying because you couldn't, when you try to reconstruct arguments in ordinary informal discussion debates and you formalize it and check, is this argument valid? It didn't fit because the argument could be intuitive, very plausible. And then you start to formalize it and, oh, it's not formally logical, it's a bad argument. And eventually you got, this doesn't work. There are a lot of good arguments that are very convincing, but they are not formally valid. And then they started to work in ordinary informal argumentation. And instead of just having formal validity as the criterion for validity, they started to develop alternative validity, sufficient relevance and adequacy instead. So that's branch. But at around the same time, there was in Amsterdam a guy who worked with pragmatics, linguistics, rhetorics, Franz von Emmeren. He started another view of argumentation. He had a process view instead of these structural premises and conclusions and statements. He had a more dynamic, interactional view. So that was its own branch of argumentation theory. And that was the one I actually happened to do my PhD, even though I started this philosophy. So if I understand correctly, then instead of trying to use formal logic to to make a rational argument, you're using some an alternative method that's about process. I can say this. When you reconstruct an argument, you must also take into account the context of dialectical. Okay. So, for example, if I would say something like this, well, imagine you're out with your wife and you're going to a party. and you have nothing to buy to this guy who's having a birthday. And your wife says, well, you know what, Jeff? We can buy him a book. I mean, if he has it, he can always turn it back. Now, if you put that in formal ways, that makes no real sense, even though it's an excellent argument. But here's two arguments. There are dialectical connections. The first argument says, you should buy a book. It's good. You have a good reading. it anticipates an objection. But what if he already had the book? You don't know him. Yeah, but he can always turn his back. So they are connected to arguments in a dialectical function. There are no formal connection. So you can't reconstruct it in a formal way. Hmm, interesting. I hadn't thought about that before. It's very interesting. Now, you mentioned that you had done talks, you met your wife while you're doing a talk on creation versus evolution. Have you used your philosophical training and argumentation theory to apply that in the Christian apologetics? Yes, of course. Now, this lecture was actually before I've taken my of long education in philosophy. Now, when I have my education in theoretical philosophy, argumentation theory, practical philosophy, and philosophy of religion, of course I use it. And one of the big advantage of it, argumentation theory, is its ability to generalize. For example, Thomas Wasserman, the expert in textual criticism, he accepted critical edition. I actually had, a debate with him, not a formal one, just on Facebook, but it's turned into a kind of debate. And, you know, he has much more knowledge about that kind of stuff, but people that was talking about the debate thought that I won the debate. And that's because I know that's argument, I must, it's implicit premise, critical question there. I know how to, you know, And then I had a friend that also is part of the reformation Bible societies that have more knowledge and could help me. But that's an interesting view. If you know the structure of argument and where the critical points are, you know how to evaluate and you know. That's really interesting. I just did a podcast this week that I recorded earlier and just put it online yesterday, critiquing an article by Tommy Wasserman on... Yeah, I actually saw that. Yeah, the pregnancy adultery. I guess his conclusion in the end is that the woman taking an adultery, is not original, it's not inspired, it's not scripture, but it should still be read in the church. And I said, that's just, that doesn't make sense. I mean, you're going to have chaos. You know, if there's no boundaries for what the Bible is, you could read Shakespeare and say, well, it's not inspired, but it should be read in the church. And this is an evangelical. So anyways, but a charming fellow, I met him in person a couple years back, very nice man. But it's interesting that I know your evangelical community there in Sweden, Norway, I guess is small, There are distinctions, I'm sure, within those churches. We're going to get to the Reformation Bible Society, but you have so many varied interests. I noticed also that you actually have been involved in founding a political party in Sweden. I won't try to pronounce it in Swedish, but I think the translation, at least Google Translate, told me it would be rendered as the Christian Values Party. Tell me about that part of your life and how does that connect to your faith? Yeah, the thing was that we were a group of Christians that you know, we already had a political party that actually was part of the parliament that is called the Christian Democrat Party. And that was actually founded by the founder of the Pentecostal Church in Sweden. And they were against abortion and all these classical Christian things. But we can only conclude that a complete degeneration has happened with the party. They accept the abortion laws, don't want to change them. They go with this gay movement parade, pride parade. And we say, they are not advocating Christian values anymore. We need to start a party that does that. So we started eight people, found this party. I have been written a lot of the political program. It's a conservative party. the only one, I would say. I mean, in Sweden, you can say, oh, we have the conservative. They are just culture Marxist with another name, seriously. I mean, they believe this big government is going to take all your taxes. And they say, oh, Sweden, you get so much from government, it takes a lot. It takes 70% of the taxes. 70%. Wow. Yeah. So I mean, and then you have to beg for, you know, getting money back. to survive from the, you know, you get dependent on the government. You get powers over you. So, you know, of course you take a lot of taxes and then, oh, you don't want to preach that homosexuality is all right in church. Well, then you don't get any back. So it's, our political parties, you know, pro-family, little, small government, Emphasis on the civil society, the civil, you know, I don't know what you call it in English. In Sweden you say civil society, it refers to all things that are organizations that are not the government. Right, right. Wow. Well, it's amazing that you've got these varied interests and you obviously see your calling as a Christian to be involved in the public square, to be involved, and it sounds like obviously a conservative political perspective and a conservative Christian perspective is, you know, it's certainly a minority. It sounds like in Sweden, but, you know, I guess you have to start somewhere and maybe with, you know, like we were talking about, maybe when the secular society sort of runs its course and people get to the, to the end, they begin to wonder, you know, is there something better, a better way to organize life and society and so forth. So let's transition now and talk about the Reformation Bible Society, and you're involved in this. We got in contact by emailing one another related to what I think you call the Reformation Bible Project in Sweden, and As I understand it, you're in the process of working on a revision of a translation of the Bible that would include the Old Testament and New Testament. So tell me a little bit about this Reformation Bible project that you're involved with. Well, this goes way back. This society was started in 1994. It's a long way ago. And we were just people that heard about this debate from the state. You know, I was, I would become a Christian around 17. You know, you don't believe, you know, you're a baby. You believe, oh, the Bible, it's a Bible. The Bible is the Bible. You never think about it anymore in the beginning. And then you heard about, you've written in footnotes that That's reading isn't okay, but what does that even mean? You don't know what it means, but you continue it. But then we heard about this debate from the States, read about books and become aware of it. We didn't know anything about this debate. And then we start, this is important to know, there's two foundational texts for the Bible. This is just supported by 1% and it's, and so on, all that. And at the same time, there was this Bible Society by Lutherans that wanted to translate the Bible by believers, because all the other Bibles in Sweden was not translated by believers. And the foundational text was not made by believers, but by skeptics. The problem was that we tried to influence them and try to convince them to go back to the TR, the Textus Receptus. But they didn't accept that. They continue to accept the critical text. So there we have a Bible called the Folk Bible, the Bible for the people would be translated. And they are Christian Lutherans, but they accepted a foundational text that was not made by the Christians, as you well know. Right. They're using the modern critical text. Yeah. So we thought, no, we must do it ourself. I was like 20 years old and I didn't know anything about Greek. And neither did the other guys. So what are we going to do? Well, we translate the King James Version. Okay. But still, even though doing just that is an enormous work, and we don't do it in our spare time, so we thought perhaps a computer can do it. So we took a program called, it doesn't exist anymore, Army Crew, that could, you know, change words. So we could like do the computer do it for us. But as you realize, that didn't work at all. So, okay, we thought that, oh, that wasn't working. How are we gonna continue? And around that time, we got in contact with the Trinitarian Bible Society. And one of those guys, I don't remember his name, but he was general secretary at that time. And he was going to travel from England to some other country. And he were gonna, take, what do you call it in English? Oh, okay. He was going to stop just for a changing airplane to the next country. So I had a few hours there in Sweden. Right. We met up with him. He said, but you shouldn't do you know, you shouldn't translate King James. You should go for a Swedish Bible. Yeah. That have the Texas receptors. And you must find an old Bible that have that. So you have a Swedish tradition to go on. So we started to follow that advice. And then we found a Bible that actually had that that was King called the 12th Bible. King Carl the 12th. Carl the 12th. Yes. Instead of the King James Version, the Carl the 12th Version. Okay. That's the classic Reformation translation in Swedish. Yes. What year was it done? I must check that up. I'm guessing it was probably pre-King James Version. It was probably done in the... Yes, it was. Probably in the late 1500s. Yeah, exactly. It was actually... first it was King Vasa of Sweden. And he based it on Luther's work. So that was the history of it. The problem was that the Old Testament was not based on the Hebrew text entirely. Huh, was it based on the Volga maybe? Yeah, to a certain extent. So it was a mix. So our idea was this. Okay, we start translating this Swedish, updating it to modern Sweden. but having King James as a kind of big influence, being the kind of interpreter, because translating in a way is interpreting. Yes. You have very good confidence for the King James Version. We use that as a major one, but I have 20 Bibles to compare with, both Swedish and other languages. And during this time, more people heard about this. You come aware of it. Actually, where old Ruthen Lestadianus, Lars Leve Lestadianus was an old revival within the Lutheran Church and they were using the King 12th Bible and they become interested and they had people who knew Greek and Hebrew. So then they become part of the process. So we have people that really knew the Bible you can do from the Greek directly. Right. And it grew and become like 20, 30 people in all become very serious. And it's also become a good quality. And that was very good. I don't think we would have such a big impact. I mean, I've been told by big Orthodox that they only use our Bible. For some reason. So I'm curious with the Carl XII Swedish version, is that a translation like did our older people in Sweden, like people in their 80s, 90s, whatever, would they remember that as the Bible that was read in the early churches years ago? I think it's a little bit too old for that. I think that we have another Bible version called 1917. Okay. But unfortunately, that was based on the critical text. Really? All the way back in 1917? Yeah. So, but is it the Carl XII version, did it have an impact on like the Swedish language and poetry and literature? Yes, yes, yes, yeah, sure it did. For example, if you can read Yohanni Akoma in that Bible, Okay. Yeah, sure. They had, but the Old Testament was influenced by others. So, and that was a strong reason to continue to have the King James Version as you could check. Sure. So, no, and the interesting part was that now we started this Reformation Bible Society, A strength was that we had Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans. So no one could say, oh, the theology was just from that party. And in the beginning, this was interesting. We thought that this may be a problem. I mean, I'm a Baptist, believing, you know, adult Baptists, and they are, you know, we believe in, you know, healing Baptists, and could it be a theological discussion? But actually, we're not. even once, not even once, did we ever have a theological dispute about the translation. We had dispute, but it was never about theology. It was always, always about the younger generation versus the older. Oh, but that word doesn't sound good. No, that's too old. Nobody knows. Oh, but we should keep this. It's a good, you know, new tradition. You know, it was always about that. So you guys have completed the New Testament. yes and the old testament will be finished probably next year okay and is the if you went into a swedish bookstore a bookstore in sweden rather um would you be able to find this on the shelf or how accessible is it we had we printed 26 000 13 000 was sold and the other was given to evangelical work And everything is being bought up. So you have to do a second printing in order to get it out. What year was the New Testament printed? The first printing... a couple of years ago. We have had some update on the... I'm going to check if you have written the exact... date somewhere. It's okay if you can't find it. That's all right. It was a couple of years ago. and they have had a second painting now, but it's all sold out, so it went very well. Let's say you went into a Lutheran church, a mainline Lutheran church in Sweden. What would be the translation of the Bible that they would be using there? They will be using the folk Bible that is the folk Bible. Yeah, it means the people's Bible. So if you win it, then if you went into an a typical evangelical church and like Tommy Wasserman identifies as an evangelical, I'm assuming goes to an evangelical church and but one that would accept the modern critical text. What translation would they use the folk Bible or another one? Well, mixed. Most would use the folk Bible, but unfortunately, some would use Bible 2000, and that is the worst translation ever, in my opinion. Bible 2000? Yeah, it's, you know, it's when you read the Bible, a wind of God was over the water. Okay. And heavenly creatures, beings come down. What? Okay. I mean, it's like that. Yeah. So it's using a dynamic equivalence method and taking lots of liberties. And I guess probably the text is probably a mess also. They probably have all the, you said they got the footnotes that say the oldest manuscripts do not include this passage or whatnot. They all understand the best. Given that your project is not finished yet, like in your church, what translation? Do you all use the folk bible? What do you use? We have another translation called 1981. And so, but I think that some use Reformation Bible, New Testament, but if they want the whole Bible, that's the full Bible, because they know that it's made by Christians. Right, right. So there wouldn't be a church, there wouldn't be an evangelical. Well, you said there were some traditional Lutherans who used the King Carl XII version still, right? Yes, they actually were, but they are a special movement. And they're living in the northern part of Sweden, in special, very high northern. Is the northern part of Sweden considered the most conservative part of the country, perhaps? Yeah, maybe. If you talk about the state church, then I would say yes. The phrase just came to my mind, you could be a King Carl XII only-ist. I would like to see T-shirts made up with that. I'm a King Carl XII oneliest. I think we talked about this a little bit already, Andre, but I was going to ask you, and you mentioned it as a young Christian, you personally just reading the Bible in your church notice the footnotes and you know sometimes you know we we've made that argument here and that that having all these critical footnotes and taking verses out of the text out of the traditional texts and relegating the footnotes and so forth that the overall impact of that is that it undermines confidence in the authority of the Bible. But I'm curious, why are you personally so interested in this as a Christian man? Why do you think this is an important issue for believers in Sweden? Well, I think you made the point in your debate with Mr. White. You asked him, is there any verse in the Bible that we know cannot be changed. I mean, and he can't say, yes, if you accept this Reconstructivist view, we cannot say this, yes. And if you cannot trust the Bible, then we have nothing, in my opinion. I mean, We say God is not alive, you can trust God. But if you don't know what he said, it doesn't matter, does it? Yes. You can trust God, but you never know what he said. I mean, it doesn't work. And the problem with White's approach is this idea of, oh, here you have the science. They've done this and that. But wait a minute. Sure, we should look at science. A Christian view must have a Christian philosophy as its foundation. A Christian view must assume that God does things. We must see God through history. And if he says, I'm going to preserve my world, then we must trust that and believe that he has done that. And then we must ask, how did he do that? Then a scientist can ask that question. How did he do it? And we look at, well, we have here a tradition all the way from the beginning. And that's the only way it can be done. Because, I mean, we can't, I mean, we can ask why, okay, if you found a manuscript that said, oh, actually, Jesus didn't die on the cross. It's older. It's the oldest and best manuscript. Yeah, I mean, exactly. Right, yeah, it's agreed. I mean, I think we are making some success in at least getting some people to think about it, that this is an epistemological issue with respect to philosophy. And for Protestants, the foundation of our epistemology is Scripture. And if we undermine this and we have no idea what Scripture actually says, We've completely undermined our source of authority, any standing we can have to say what we believe or to engage in meaningful apologetics and so forth. I'm going to put, when I post this podcast, I'm going to do a corresponding article on my blog at jefferdl.net, and I'm going to put a link to the Reformation Bible Society website And I perused it, even though I don't speak Swedish, I could make out enough of it. And I saw that you had a number of articles on there from the Trinitarian Bible Society. And you mentioned already that sort of in the beginning that they had an influence. Do you still have a connection with people in TBS? Are they giving you any help in this process? No, not really any longer. We had some help before. I had me and one of the other founder, Boo Hogstead, we had a debate with a Swedish Greek professor. And in order to have that debate, I mean, I saw his argument, knew that this is a weak spot, but I don't have the information. So I contacted an expert on Johan, it was Johan Jakomia we were discussing. And that he was a PhD in Greek and he helped me with getting information that we could answer in this debate. So that was the latest thing I think. So is the, with respect to the Swedish Reformation Bible Society, do you guys have like an annual general assembly? I mean, it's a small group, I'm sure. But do you guys, what's your, do you have an annual meeting? Do you have a newsletter or something like that? Yes, yes, we have that. Okay. Nice. Nice. So make decisions and discuss things. Right. So how can you know, somebody maybe who listens to this in the States or somewhere else in the world, how can they provide support for confessional Christians in Sweden who want to see a traditional Bible restored in Sweden? How can they pray for you? If they wanted to give, how could they give to help support the Reformation Bible Society? Well, first of all, prayer is always a blessing. Pray that the people of God wakes up, understand that this is important, and going back to the foundation of the faith and stop, stop compromising. I mean, we have in some parts, you know, even the leadership, you know, accept people, missionary that, you know, advocates abortion. I mean, it's, it's really sad. I mean, we need to wake up and, and we see this hysterical system, you know, they using this Corona in order to take away people's rights. And there's a lot of you know, our government is, you know, it's like they are trying to destroy their country, in my opinion. Sweden was, from being a very secure and safe country, it has turned out to be one of the unsafest countries in Europe nowadays. In 20 years, they have done that. Is that a result of immigration, you think? Yeah, major irresponsible immigration. calling everybody a racist if they object to it. It's just ridiculous. But, you know, people are, you know, they want to be nice and, okay, so we must accept this politics in order to be good people, which is completely wrong. That's communist way of reasoning. They want to define themselves into being the right people, doing the right thing. No arguments, just defining things. according to their own opinions. But prayer, of course, but also donations. And I think it's written on the website. That's a problem. For example, I have worked with this Bible most of the time for free. But there was a time that they did pay me. And that was a gift to the society and made a salary for me. But, you know, in Sweden, you know, it's. You have to pay at least three times the salary because of all taxes and everything to get a decent salary, so it becomes incredibly expensive. That's a big problem. And then they use they use tax by pay. It takes payer's money to destroy the country, in my opinion. It's really, really sad. I wish we could start like a Christian independent university here or something like that. That's a wish I have. We'll see what happens. Is there any conservative seminary or theological school in Sweden? Well, actually, we have a recently started Scandinavian College of Theology or something like that. And they are actually going to have a seminary with creationists. And that's really, I just, wow, that made me very happy because even old traditional conservative, like Wasserman actually went to that school and had his education at Auroville Missionary School. At least he worked there. I think he went to study as well, but they have accepted evolution. And I also feel that philosophers is doing a lot of compromise here. And I think that, for instance, you know about William Lane Craig, He has done a lot of good works, but now he started accepting illusion and now he's accepting Pelagianism. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, all these things are connected. I mean, in some ways, when you accept an evolutionary view of the natural world, I mean, really, the modern critical text is an evolutionary view. It's just applied in the field of religion and literature. It's just a different application of it. And, you know, Christians, we're supernaturalists. We're not naturalists. We believe in God and we, you know, we've lost, we've dropped the doctrine of the providential preservation of scripture, something we've, you know, emphasized over and again. I mean, you know, one thing though is very encouraging to me because, you know, here we made a connection and, you know, there's something organically happening, I think, all over the world. No one planned it, but there are little pockets, small groups of people in different corners all over the world who are all of a sudden saying, wait a second, we're compromising the Bible. We're buying into these modern methods and we're undermining our source of authority. It's very encouraging to me because if God is for us, who can be against us? It may look grim, but the theology of the Old Testament is always that there's a remnant. There are some who hold on. to the faith, even when it's being attacked, even when it's compromised, and God will not leave himself without a witness. So anyways, I think people are going to be very encouraged to hear about your work, and so we want to encourage you, and you're not alone, and so we're thankful. I'm so thankful to hear about your ministry and what you're about, and I'm sure that other people who listen to this will join in praying for you and for others who are working in the Reformation Bible Society of Sweden. Well, we've been speaking, I think, I don't know, about an hour or so. or close to it, maybe only about 50 minutes, I'm not sure. But anyways, before we conclude this conversation, is there anything else that you want to add? And then how can people follow you and the work of the Swedish Reformation Bible Society? Well, if they are interested in the Reformation Bible Society, they can follow the website. The problem is, I don't know how much, I think most of it is written in Swedish. So that's a difficult part. You can use Google Translate, but you know, it is what it is. For me, I will continue to work with writing paper in apologetics. I have now written a paper a new argument for the existence of God, a new cosmological argument that doesn't depend on the principle of causality. And I will try to get it published. We'll see what happens with that. I have a lot of other stuff going on. I would like to start some kind of institute apologetic institute that we work all over the world so yeah Wonderful. Well, I pray if that's God's will that you're able to establish that institute and train others to be able to be engaged in apologetics. I'd really love to read that Facebook exchange that you had with Tommy Wasserman. It was in Swedish. I probably wouldn't understand it. But anyways, that's very interesting that you had that exchange. I'm glad you're out there in the public square. You know, I think just, you know, you don't have to be an expert, just there's some kind of common sense things about this. And just if somebody can at least ask questions and say, hey, is this wise? You know, that just, that raises questions in the minds of people who maybe have accepted it without critically thinking about it. I think the sad part is that Ordinary Christian doesn't know anything about this. And then they get to hear about this critical manuscript. And then if you don't know about this other possibility, this preservation model, then they lose faith. Yeah. Oh, God didn't Oh, he got to change his mind from it. I mean, it's... Yeah, but we're having this phenomenon that's happening in the U.S. and of course, it's probably always been there. There's always been apostasy, but there's this movement where people are supposedly deconstructing their faith. You know, people who were once professed evangelicals and all of a sudden they're saying, yeah, well, you know, I'm really not a Christian. And it's happened with some high profile people, you know, a guy, Josh Harris, who, you know, written bestselling Christian books coming out and saying, well, I was a pastor, but I'm really not a believer. and so forth. And again, it would be overly simplistic to trace this simply to the rise of modern translations. No one is suggesting that it's that simplistic. But there is a connection between cutting away the authority of scripture And supposedly, again, they keep telling us, this is so we can stay relevant. This is so people in the modern age can still accept Christianity. And it seems to me to be exactly the wrong-headed approach. People aren't going to be, you know, solidified and edified in the faith if we undercut the source of authority. But again, I don't know. I'm personally a Calvinist and I believe in the perseverance of the saints, and I think those people who apostatize were false professors. But anyways, there are people who are immature Christians and they can backslide and they can be discouraged in the faith or their growth can be stunted. If they don't feel like they can turn to the Bible, read it, and what they're holding in their hands is the word of God, not an approximation of it, not an estimation of it, but the actual word of God. Anyways, this is your interview, not mine. I'm talking. Brother, thank you so much for this opportunity. And like I said, I'll put at my blog when I post this, I'll put a link to the Bible Society. And so people can go there and do some exploring and look there. And I'll put a link to your political party also, if people are interested. And is the you said the newspaper is that actually newspaper isn't going on anymore. I want to restart it. It turned out that eventually I was alone doing everything. Yeah, too much. It wasn't possible to keep it up. And I need to make money for my family also. I need to work. I understand. I understand. Well, brother, thank you so much for this interview. God bless you. And I hope that people who've been listening have been encouraged, edified by this episode of Word Magazine. We're going to bring this to a close. Thank you for listening and we'll look forward to speaking to you in the next Word magazine. Until then, take care and God bless.