All right, I know that this topic can become controversial and that is not my goal, that is not my desire. My desire is for us to be able to deal with this topic and to deal with it in a way that unites us as a body of Christ and helps us in appreciating and knowing and understanding the providence of God in delivering us his word, supernaturally, revelation, inspiration, but even providentially and supernaturally in preserving his word for us today. God could have put lightning bolts in the sky with huge letters like the Goodyear blimp or some prop plane flying around with a big sign on the back. And every day we wake up and we look up into the sky and we're told what to do and how to live. He didn't do that. He didn't send angels to take us by the hand and walk us around. He didn't deliver in some mysterious tablets found by only one person to then take that and try to tell the rest of the world and convince them that this is the correct word of God, if you know what I'm saying. Isn't it amazing? 1500 plus years, 40 authors, 66 books, one theme. no heirs, and then he took 12 men, basically, other than Paul, who had a formal education, basically they were unlearned, untrained men, who were taught by Jesus Christ himself, and they turned the world upside down, and they took the gospel, and God spread his word all around the world, using normal, ordinary human instruments like you and me. That's the kind of God that we serve. We don't have any reason to doubt the word of God. We don't have to be worrying or wondering is there something out there that is yet to be discovered that will reveal to us what God really wanted us to know. No we have the word of God. And he carefully preserved it. And he chose to do it the way he chose to do it because he's God. And he desired to use Again, normal, ordinary human beings, like you and me, to take the Word of God to the world. And he impressed upon, with the Holy Spirit indwelling believers, he impressed upon them, bearing witness that these books of the Bible are the very Word of God. The Holy Spirit, with the witness of the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer, as the early church read those 27 New Testament books, they recognize that these 27 New Testament books were the Word of God. And even though Paul wrote other things, even though Peter wrote other things, even though John wrote other things, we know that those 27 books of the New Testament and the 40 books, 39 books, excuse me, of the Old Testament, were the very words of God that God breathed. And yet he chose to use human instruments and keeping their personalities and their literary styles and preserved all that and yet guided them, revealed to them, God breathed to them the very words of God and then preserved those for us today. So the six words once again, revelation, inspiration, preservation, translation, interpretation, we include illumination in there. and then application. We have spent a considerable amount of time working through revelation, inspiration, and then last week we were dealing with preservation. And again, my intent is not to be controversial. At the same time, I want us to be knowledgeable. And I want us to have our faith strengthened, not attacked or attacking each other, but being respectful and really reverential in our understanding of how God preserved his word for us today. We talked about the warnings from scripture regarding adding to or taking away from the word of God. Revelation 22, 18 and 19, I think the question came up last week about are the plagues Are they actually being put upon those who add to or take away from the word of God? Yeah, I think we've seen that. The judgment of God has come upon false teachers and those who have added to or taken away from the word of God. Look at the Jim Joneses and the David Koreshes. Look at many of the different false teachers and the corruption and the immorality and the violence and the wickedness and it's sad. There are so many examples through the years of these cults that have added to or taken away from the Word of God. I'm not sure I'm gonna say it right, but we can recognize a cult. Somebody described it this way. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They add to the Word of God, they take away from the Word of God, they multiply heirs, and they divide the body of Christ. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. So they add to the word of God, they take away from the word of God, they multiply errors, and they divide the body of Christ. A simple way to help us recognize cults. And have we not seen groups that add to and take away from the word of God be plagued with God's judgment? And we can see it individually even when we get away from the word of God, we disobey the word of God and we don't deny the inspiration of God's word, but we practically live as if we don't believe the word of God, then we experience the consequences of our sins, sowing a reaping principle. So Revelation 22, 18 and 19 even could be dealing with those cults and even in our individual lives and assuming a reaping principle. Though, of course, we understand beginning, middle, and the end of the Bible, warnings about adding to or taking away from the canon of Scripture, the 66 books of the Bible. We see the promise of God. We see even the character of Jesus Christ Himself being put on the line regarding the preservation of God's Word, and the scripture not being broken, and Jesus Himself saying that the Old Testament, and obviously even prefacing and pre-authenticating the New Testament with the disciples. We see Christ Himself speaking of a body of truth, and the faith, and the Apostles' Doctrine, and we see God Himself declaring that He would preserve His Word. And then we got into some of the technical. And I don't want this to be overly academic. At the same time, it's important for us to recognize the supernatural, providential way in which God preserved His Word for us today. The Old Testament, Jewish scribes from the earliest days, Jewish scribes were hand Copying from even Moses bringing the tablets down from Sinai which were written with the very hand of God Those had to be copied there had to be a book of the law for when Josiah was king and there was a revival and in the days of Ezra there was a book of the law there was copies of the original Revelation I doubt that Ezra was holding the very animal skin or papyrus or the stone tablets upon which the law was written. I would imagine by that time there was a scroll that was a copy of what Moses had written or God had written on the tablets. We understand that already by that time there was Jewish scribes who were copying and they were doing so in tedious form. Most of us don't even write handwritten notes. We are texting, LOL. Somebody wrote one the other day. I can't keep up with all the acronyms. In my humble opinion, it was I-H, I-M-H-O. And then there was another one that was added to that that I just discovered the other day. We have dumbed the language down to just emojis. And acronyms. And we text. And I love texting. Sometimes you don't want to bother somebody with the phone call. I mean, believe me, I'll talk on the phone. And there's in-person. We need to have in-person, obviously. One of the reasons we come together for church. We don't do the virtual church thing. Though we do have a live stream for those who are not able to be here. But we don't do much handwritten correspondence anymore, do we? We do a lot just by texting, by emailing, typing in a Word document or a Google document. We submit all kinds of papers and things in school now electronically. And the way of the paper has almost completely gone away, though there are some who they still use a paper calendar. I prefer a Google calendar or electronic calendar and having a calendar on my phone. There are some who still carry around a paper calendar, which is fine and dandy. But we have a hard time even sitting down and writing a note in a card to somebody because we're just so not used to. But isn't there something? We've gotten to the point now where we've gotten so far away from a handwritten note or card or letter that it is ultra special now to get a handwritten note, card, or letter. There's something really special about it. And for Kelly, she She has a cousin who is in penitentiary, in prison, and she has written to her faithfully through the years, and it has to be, I believe it, I guess it can be a typed letter, but it has to be handwritten. Yeah, I was thinking, and then they check it for any kind of, even the adhesive for any kind of drugs or anything. Do we understand the painstaking process of a handwritten copy of the Bible? I mentioned about the scribes even taking a bath before and after they wrote the name of God. We have the Mazarites, two brothers who were dedicated to copying the Hebrew text, word for word. We have the ancient scribes, the Masoretes, and then we get into the published editions. Notice, Bomberg's Rabbinic Bible came after what was invented. The printing press, 1450 Gutenberg. So think about it, before 1450, and even then it took a while for that to really become widely used and published. you had to depend upon a handwritten copy of the scriptures. There's a group of people we'll talk about later who they, because it was so hard to get a handwritten copy of the Bible, they would memorize entire books of the Bible and then when they would come together for church or for their assemblies, they would get up and they would quote the scripture to each other because the handwritten copies were so rare. And yet we have 40, 50, 60 copies of the Bible between our electronic versions and our printed versions. And then we can go to websites and we can copy and paste. And I have two or three Bible programs on my phone and on my computer, and I'm using them all the time. And copying and pasting scripture all the time. They had to handwrite, they had to memorize, because it was so hard to even get a copy. And when they would get together, they would quote the scripture to each other, books at a time. Incredible. So by the time 1450 rolls around, the printing press is invented, and then we start to see the actual published editions, Bomberg's, Kittle's, Cayley, or Kyle, pronounce his name, and then Stuttgart. And then we get to, The Greek translation of the Old Testament going back all the way to 200 BC and the Roman numerals LXX, 70, is often used to represent the sub-two agent because 70 men came together to produce the translation of the Old Testament in Greek from the Hebrew. The Isaiah scroll, Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and then the Gutenberg Bible, which was the printed version of the Latin Vulgate, 1456. So that is the, not the full or exhaustive list, but that gives us a very good idea of how God preserved and then published the Old Testament scriptures. Any questions up to this point? Take a quick drink, need a little boost of energy here. Yes. And there's no doubt. Again, what other books, we go back to these Egyptian hieroglyphics, we go back to Hammurabi's Law Code, we go back to some of these ancient literature, and there's nothing, nothing that is even remotely close to the witness of just the Old Testament alone, nothing. No other literature has this kind of witness. What does that say about our God and about his ability to preserve his word? And again, could he have taken some golden tablets with special powers, you know, this whole Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of idea that Hollywood has produced. In human mind, that's what we would have done, right? If the Bible were the work of man, it would be Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of stuff. You'd find it in some cave and it would have superpowers and it would turn everybody into angelic beings. And I'm sorry to give you some of my, I don't like using Hollywood illustrations, but you understand what I'm saying. If man had created the Bible, it would be Indiana Jones kind of stuff. And then you go back to the ancient literatures and there's no witness like this, nothing. They're digging up Artifacts to this day from ancient civilizations that have been buried for years. And they're still trying to discover what this name was and how to match up this time period with this person. And we have the witness of the Bible clearly. And it's published in multiple thousands of copies accurately. It's just amazing. As you can tell, I love this stuff. I love studying the history of the Bible. I love history. I love archaeology. And this was one of my favorite classes in grad school and in seminary. And I appreciated Dr. Barrett. He was the hardest teacher I ever had in my entire life, but he was my favorite teacher at the same time. I learned so much from him. But anyway, John Wycliffe. We get into the New Testament now. John Wycliffe. These are heroes of the faith. And we have many through the years that we need to be thankful for. And I know we don't understand church history. I know we don't, most of us find history of civilization the most boring class. I love history of civ. I couldn't wait to hear Dr. Pinozian. I look forward to that class. I look forward to Dr. Abrams every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, U.S. History. I couldn't wait to get to U.S. history class with Dr. Abrams. I know I'm weird, but I hear all the complaints about history of Civ. I'm just weird like that. But these are, church history is extremely fascinating. It is such a testimony to how God has worked in people's lives individually through history. And we're all crooked sticks that God uses to draw a straight line. All of these men, And in the cases of women that God used, they're all fallen creatures. But many of them, they dedicated their lives to the Lord, even Calvin, even Calvin, who is revered by the Calvinists. Even Calvin had his issues. Even Calvin didn't like the Jews. Even Luther didn't like the Jews. Martin Luther. Can we not respect the people who did great things for God and at the same time recognize that they had faults and failures? Jonathan Edwards was a slaveholder. He did not necessarily want to propagate slavery, but Jonathan Edwards is one of the greatest theologians who we can give a lot of credit to for early American religious history and for the preservation of Christianity in the United States and the propagation of Christianity in the United States, greatly used of God. But Jonathan Edwards was wrong about slavery. We can point that out. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, right? We can say and we can call balls and strikes. At least Nat can. He's got a license to do that. We can call balls and strikes about these people. We can walk and chew gum at the same time about these issues. and not bite and devour one another. Hank, you were gonna make a comment? Yes, exactly. It was a translation of the translation. Oops, I went back too far. I went too far ahead, I'm sorry. So Wycliffe was doing what? Why was he hated by the Catholic Church? Yeah, he was taking and taking it. People didn't know Latin. And he was putting the Bible, the best, the only thing he had, he did not have access to the Hebrew and the Greek manuscripts. All he had was the Vulgate, but he was translating it into the English language, and he was hated for it, hated by the Roman Catholic Church. And his followers were the Lawlords. And they were one of those groups that would memorize the scripture, and they'd get together and quote it to each other, because it was so hard to get a handwritten copy. The Catholic Church was finding Wycliffe's translations, his copies, his translations, They were finding his manuscripts, and they were taking them and burning them. And the Lawlords got to the point where they could not get their hands on an actual handwritten copy. So they were memorizing and quoting to each other. And finally, in 1516, Erasmus, using only about six Greek manuscripts for his first edition. And how many Greek manuscripts do we have today? Over 5,500. In 1516, Erasmus could only get his hand on six. As a matter of fact, Erasmus didn't even have a manuscript that included the Book of Revelation. So he borrowed a copy from a friend. Now, how many of us have a friend that just has a Greek manuscript of the Book of Revelation lying around, right? But these were scholarly people. They didn't have YouTube and TikTok. They didn't have 150,000 channels on their TV and 650,000 web pages, what did they do in their spare time? What did they do? They read scripture, they read books, they studied languages. Boring, right? That's what the kids today would say, but they were smart. Brilliant. And we can go on and on, but Erasmus did not have, for his first edition of his Texas Receptus, he did not have a copy of a manuscript of the Book of Revelation. So he borrowed a copy from a friend, but in that copy was a commentary on Revelation. So Erasmus hired a copyist to take that manuscript and to ascertain, to pull out the actual text of the Book of Revelation from the commentary. Now, I don't know if any of you have used a Bible commentary. Now, most of the Bible commentaries that I use, they have this, the Bible text, and then they have the commentary. But some commentaries, they have the commentary in with the text. He had to go in and he had to discern the text, the Greek text from the Book of Revelation from the commentary notes. As a result of that, there were some unique words and phrases that have continued into our King James Version today. And later, as we discovered more Greek manuscripts, we realized that Erasmus' first edition, though a good translation, it was missing, it was missing, or a good compilation, I should say, that was a good compilation, it was missing some of the original Greek text because the copyist missed some of the text in the, or translated or brought words in from the commentary that were not part of, but as he discovered, as he found more Greek manuscripts, he produced more editions of the TR. So he had the 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Okay? Stop right there. I know that's a lot to process. You have Greek manuscripts, copies of the originals. We have a Greek-speaking world in the early days of the church. And you have all these copies that are being disseminated and produced and spread around the world. And people have them. So there's manuscripts all around. But Erasmus could only get six for his first edition. He had to find one from a friend. He hired a copyist who then figured out what was the text and what was the commentary and missed a few places. And some of that has still been kept in our King James Version, not to say that we have errors in our King James Version. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying we have phrases and words that were borrowed from the commentary and then later in later editions of the TR, Erasmus, as he found more Greek manuscripts and could compare, he produced, well, some of those phrases and texts, they stayed in the TR and then got translated into the English language. It just, it doesn't mean we have errors in the Bible. Don't get that, we don't have errors in the Bible, okay? It's the additions of the TR that filled in some of the gaps in the manuscripts because we're talking about handwritten copies of manuscripts. Okay. Stop there for a minute and let's think about that. How many of us have had to copy from a book or from a dictionary or from the Bible or from any other document, handwritten, and have missed a, ands, and thus, have missed entire words? As a school principal, I would give detentions. Does anybody know what a detention is? Matthew, do you get detentions at school? No, you don't? OK. All right. OK. You what? You invented detentions. OK. So in my early days of being assistant principal, I was in charge of detentions. And I would give the kids dictionaries. And I would make them write the definitions. And I don't know how many times. And there was always that smart aleck teenager who would think that he could get away with copying the same definition, thinking I wouldn't look at it, you know, anyway. But I would make them copy and it would almost, without fail, I'd find errors. They'd miss a word, they'd add a word, their mind would wander as they're writing, as they're copying, and all of a sudden they're drifting off and they're writing something from two words down. Oh, and they realized they were on the wrong word. Do we have 5,500 manuscripts to compare. That is far more than the Iliad and the Odyssey and closer to the original than even the Iliad and the Odyssey. Do we? Yes. So are we missing anything? No. The TR was Erasmus' attempt to compile a Greek manuscript and publish it. A Greek scholarly work of the Greek text, and he had six manuscripts to begin with, and then as he found more, he added and he printed new editions. It's mostly updating a ands and thus, if I can use that as a comparative term. I'm sorry, I apologize, I said the wrong word. He compiled. He compiled from Six manuscripts to begin with. We don't know exactly how many he had by the time he published his 1535 edition. But he later found manuscripts of the Book of Revelation, and so he went through and he fixed, but he chose to keep some of those same texts. It was a compilation. No, he was dealing just with the New Testament. Thank you for that, because I said the wrong word. He compiled the manuscripts into one published edition of the Greek, and he got criticism for it. Erasmus was attacked. Erasmus was attacked viciously by even some of the early Christians, because why do we need a Greek text? Why do we need a compiled Greek text? We have what? The Vulgate. If you can't learn Latin, If we can't just get an English translation from the Latin, from the Vulgate, which was the received text that had been used since Jerome published it back in, I forget the year, 405 BC. We're now talking 1500, so 500, help me with my math, 400 to 1526 is how many years? 1100 years, roughly, right, okay? How dare Erasmus? There were people, there were early Christians attacking Erasmus. How dare you get away from the received text, the authorized text, the Latin Vulgate? We can just translate from the Latin into English, like Wycliffe. We can just, come up with the manuscripts. Why do we need this compilation of Greek text? We can just use the Vulgate, learn Latin, get our own English translation, or use the manuscripts that are lying around. Very few. There were the scholars who knew Greek. It was still fairly rare. What's that? Yes. Yes, they didn't want it in the common language. The more and more that people didn't know Latin, the better for the Catholics, because then they can control the masses, which is what they were doing in the Dark Ages, yes. Right, the priests wouldn't have even known Greek. So Erasmus was vilified even by, I'm talking about born again believers. Now the Catholic Church, right, the Catholic Church, they had their issues because they didn't want the people having the Bible in their common language. But Erasmus was not well liked for even compiling a Greek New Testament. Why do we need this? We have the Vulgate, learn Latin, depend on the church, you know, whatever. Translated into English from the Latin, OK? But William Tyndale stepped onto the scene in 1526, produced the New Testament from the original Greek. Then we had the Matthews Bible. Then we had the Great Bible. Then we had the Geneva Bible. The Geneva Bible was what Bible was brought to the United States. Well, the New World, America. I'll get attacked by the history police. The New World, America. The pilgrims brought the Geneva Bible. They did not like King James. They hated him. He didn't, King James, please don't, I'm not trying to stir up controversy, please. This is, my point is not, I'm just trying to lay out some historical fact here. The pilgrims didn't like King James because they felt he was authoritarian. And we realize that King James' motives for producing the 1611 were not entirely pure, right? King James wanted a Bible version for himself with his name on it so he could say, I've done this for the Christians. Look at me. Sorry. Look at me. Look at me. I'm King James. Look what I've done for you Christian people. He didn't have the purest motives. The pilgrims didn't like him. They didn't want anything to do with King James. They brought the Geneva Bible. And in the Geneva Bible were marginal notes that were Like, for instance, in Romans 13, for an example, there would be, in the marginal notes, things that King James didn't like, because what does Romans 13 talk about? Authority, okay, and then where there were abuses of King James' authority, there would be marginal notes in the Geneva Bible, and King James was like, I don't like the Geneva Bible. It has marginal notes that are condemning of my actions and my authority. So he, again, he wanted to appeal to the Christians, and so he got together the translators for the King James Version, which was produced in 1611. And then we get into the highly controversial modern versions. Now, this is going to have to, we're going to have to have a cliffhanger here. because we only have about 10 minutes. And we'll have to come back, because we're going to take a five-week break. And Dan Clark is going to teach us all about the preservation of the Bible for the next five weeks. Just kidding. He's got five lessons from a creation viewpoint, dealing with different scientific topics. And God's gifted him in a unique way to be able to teach those lessons over the next five weeks. And then we'll come back to this, Lord willing, after Easter. because I'm going to do an Easter lesson specific to Easter. With the modern versions, what are the big questions that come up? The big questions that come up is, which manuscripts? Why do we even need another version? And I'll have to admit, I'll have to admit, some of the problem with all the versions is every publishing company and their brother, their sister, and their cousin want their own version. The Southern Baptists want their version. Zondervan wants their version. Tyndale wants their version. Crossway wants their version. Who am I forgetting? Harvest House? I don't know. All the different publishing companies. They all want their version. And they want to be able to sell it. And again, not all of that is bad. Not all of that is with wrong motives. But can I just leave us with this as we come down to the end here? And I'll zip through a few more slides. Do we realize that among the 5,500 transcripts, Transcripts. 5,500 manuscripts. 98.33% is the exact same. 98.33%. You take the manuscripts and you have portions and parts and different, okay, and they have them all numbered, they have them all named papyrus, then you have animal skins, you have unseals versus minuscules. Unseals were all capital letters. Miniscules had capital letters in, lower letters, and then put in... Why can I not think of the word? I'm sorry, I've only had like 10 hours of sleep in the last two nights total. Sorry. We got in at three o'clock Saturday morning. Got up and went to Eric's tournament. I did get a better night's sleep last night, but I cannot... Punctuation. Why can I not think of the right word? Punctuation. The minuscules begin to add punctuation, okay? 98.33% are the same. Out of 200,000 variants in the manuscripts, most of which were handwritten copies, of the 200,000 variants, they're only in 10,000 places, 90% are resolved. A.T. Robertson, an incredible Greek scholar from years ago, he said the differences come down to the thousandth part. A lot of it is just syntax and word order, a ands and thes. Of that, what would it be, of that 1.77% difference, of that 1.77% difference, none of it significantly affects any major doctrine. And those doctrines are taught clearly in other places in scripture. Even if there might have been a question about that one passage in the variants among the manuscripts, it does not affect any major doctrine, and if there is a doctrine that's touched on, it's supported in other scriptures. Philip Schaff, another great church historian, he said he counted 400 variants, and only 50 of those 400 were even important, but they were supported and maintained elsewhere in scripture. Okay? So I know that opens up a can of worms or a can of snakes. I'm not here to create controversy and division and for us to start throwing tomatoes at each other. All right? There are good men who disagree on this. I'm not considering myself a scholar on this, but I have studied this thoroughly. I've read books. I've taken classes. And I have a long ways to go. There's so much more that could be said. But let's talk quickly about Some of these, just to give us a little bit more detail on some of these men. John Wycliffe, hated by the Catholic Church so much so that 43 years after his death, his bones were dug up, burned, and his ashes thrown into the Swift River. He's known as the Morning Star of the Reformation. He had two translations from the Latin Vulgate into the English language. The second was completed by one of his disciples. Ten years after his death, one of his famous quotes is, all Christian life is to be measured by scripture, by every word thereof. 1526, first translation of the New Testament into English from the Greek language. 90% of the KJV follows Tyndale's New Testament translation. Isn't that amazing? We have, in our King James Version, 90% of which is basically Tyndale's translation into the English language. He spoke seven languages, fluently, seven. He began translating the Old Testament, but then he died. He was martyred in 1536. His closing, his last words were, Lord, open thou, or open the king of England's eyes. And then he has the famous quote, if God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy to drive at the plow, shall know more of the scriptures than thou doest. Incredible, incredible man. This is Sermon Audio. Their headquarters is down in Greenville, South Carolina. And I've had an opportunity to visit their headquarters. It's incredible what Sermon Audio is doing. And I saw the initial stage of the servers where they are keeping millions of sermons. And they are taking their servers and all their storage and getting it off of Amazon and all those other storage and servers because one of these days Amazon's going to cancel the Christian publishing companies and Sermon Audio was looking ahead and saying let's not get into that. So they have a little memorial there to John Rogers who was a personal friend of Tyndale. He translated the rest of the Old Testament that was not completed by Tyndale before his death along with Tyndale's New Testament, half the Old Testament. He completed the translation from the original language again into English 1537, and that's a picture there at the Sermon Audio headquarters of the memorial to John Rogers. All right, we'll have to close here, but this is where we get into some of the issues with the modern versions and translations. There's even a philosophy of translation that comes into play. Dynamic equivalency is less formal, less literal, more interpretive or paraphrase. Formal equivalency is literal, word for word text. In syntax, please understand, all translations use both. You have to, okay? You have to when you're translating. I had to do some Greek to English translation in Greek class, and I was horrible at it. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. And I got graded on it. And Dr. Newts bled all over my paper. Because Dr. Newts, he knew Greek backwards and forwards. He was one of those guys who brought his Greek New Testament to chapel and read out of it. You know, intimidated us preacher boys. And you just do. There are times where it's not word for word. You have to figure out what is the Greek, because they would have fewer words or more words to express Well, we use love, and we say it for all kinds of different love, definitions of love. Greek would have three or four words for love, again. And then you have differences in language. Clayton's got a Spanish and English Bible. And he has in his hands, probably with him today, he has a Bible that has the Spanish and he has the English. And that Spanish version is translated from the original languages. And there are times where his Spanish translation is different than our King James. Does that mean he has the Word of God and we don't, or we have the Word of God and he doesn't? Of course not, we both have the Word of God. They're both accurate translations. And any translation accurately translated is the Word of God. A translation accurately translated from the original languages is the Word of God. Okay? So we are not missing, we are not to be out there thinking, it doesn't mean we trust every modern version. It doesn't mean that we don't use good discernment. I love the King James. I grew up on it. Love the King James. How are we going to ever replace the King James version of Psalm 23, Luke 2? Some of those great texts. the Lord's Prayer, the disciples' prayer. No version of the Bible has the beauty and the eloquence of the Lord's Prayer like the King James does in my book. The Christmas story, there's a beauty and an eloquence to the King James version of the Christmas story. It's hard to read it or hear it any other way. I love the King James. But we're not a King James only church. And we have to be discerning, and we have to understand the facts. And again, that's not for us to throw tomatoes at each other, but for us to be knowledgeable and to strengthen our faith. We have the word of God, and we can faithfully read our scriptures without any doubt, without any fear, nor do we have to get into an angry fight with each other over over things, but we do need to be careful because there are some bad versions out there. I don't have time to get into that. After Easter, I know it's a cliffhanger, after Easter we'll do some comparisons. I have a slide with interlinear and some different translations and we'll see how they measure up and see some of this formal versus dynamic equivalency and how difficult it can be, but there are good people doing good work and we've been blessed by that. Getting ready to go over time. Any final questions or comments? Hope I didn't dig myself into a hole I can't get out of. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. You're right. God knew exactly what he was doing and the timing and the method. We have God's word preserved for us today. Thank you for that. All right, let's pray and then we'll get ready for the service. Lord, thank you for this lesson. May Lord our hearts. We knit together in our minds, Lord, focused upon thee. And Lord, may this not be a topic, Lord, that creates division, but a topic that is one that creates unity and strengthens our faith, knowing that, Lord, you have preserved your word faithfully for us today. And we thank you for that and for the testimony of your word. May, Lord, we be faithful to it. Bless now the service to follow, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we'll start the service in about 15 minutes.