Right.

I, I definitely, I definitely see the continuity and you're 100, right?

If, if you are.

If you.

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

Let's.

Let's get you.

Say that again.

I need that quote.

You are 100, right, Johnny, welcome to the show.

Hey, guys, thank you for having me.

Yeah, really engaging discussion.

Especially the fact that Tom said that I was correct on something because I, I gotta clip that because that's never going to be heard again in history.

Oh, it'll.

It's gonna be heard because Andrew's gonna play it.

Yeah, he's gonna to sample it.

It's become part of the show.

Intro from here.

I gotta remember.

Wait, wait, wait.

Tom, say that again.

Andrew was.

Andrew was.

Right.

Andrew.

Andrew.

I've never heard a dispensationalist say that, but thank you very much.

I 100% agree with you.

Drew, either you or someone out there, please, you gotta, you gotta clip this, this episode, because.

No, he.

I'm 100, right?

He totally agrees.

Like, I mean, this is.

Andrew's not used to having so many people go, yeah, you're right.

What do you mean used to?

I'm not used to anyone doing that.

What do you mean?

I'm only here.

Used to being called the heretic.

Andrew, what is up?

I mean, we are agreeing just way too much here.

I mean, that's great.

Answer.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

Well, we are live Apologetics live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

Now here at Apologetics Live, we can answer any question that you have about God in the Bible.

If you doubt that, well, our challenge to you is to just go to Apologetics Live on Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern Time.

That's New York City time.

And join us.

Just go scroll down to where it says, do you want to participate with the little duck icon for Streamyard?

Join in there and you can give us our most challenging question.

Just remember, one thing I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

We are here as a ministry of striving for eternity.

We welcome you guys coming in.

Tonight's topic that we're going to discuss is a second in our series of dealing with different.

The different apologetics questions that come up when you are out evangelizing, defending the faith.

The first one we dealt with is the.

The first big one that people will challenge us with is that God doesn't exist.

The second biggest one is can you trust the Bible.

And that's we're going to cover tonight.

Now this comes in many forms.

They'll say that the Bible's been corrupted, the Bible's been edited.

The Bible was written by men, therefore you can't trust it.

They will say that the Bible was written by the Catholic Church and they have pedophiles as priests, so that can't, it can't be true.

They all different arguments that people will give why you just cannot trust the Bible because somehow it's just such a, a bad book.

It's a work of fiction, yada, yada, yada.

We're going to get into those different types of questions tonight.

That is the, the challenge.

And if there's anybody listening who thinks, well, you can't trust the Bible, the Bible is not trustworthy, please join us.

Please go to apologeticslive.com Join us live and let's discuss that.

And if you're listening on the podcast or listening when this is not live and you want to join, well, then just join us on Thursday nights, 8 to 10 Eastern Time and come in.

Give us your challenge, whatever your challenge is.

You think that the Bible is the things we're going to talk about tonight.

Well, that's just wrong.

You know, we, we had, we had.

Well, you know, Lacey, I think I have the.

A clip from Godless Grandma when she was trying to make these arguments.

Let's see, let's listen.

I don't look to scientists for authority on history.

I don't look to scientists for authority on morality.

I don't look to scientists for authority.

On, on legal matters.

I only look to scientists for authority on science affairs.

One looks to the experts in the particular field of their expertise.

That we don't, we don't.

I don't take one group of people and make them the authority over everything.

The irony of that is she was talking with me who was more of an expert on textual criticism than she was, and she was trying to make arguments on textual criticism, the arguments of their authorities, ultimately themselves.

But let me bring in my co host, Mr.

Drew Vanita.

How are you, sir?

I'm doing well.

I'm doing well.

Very tired, but I'm doing well.

You're very tired.

Very tired.

There might be reason for that, folks.

The reason Drew is very tired is because he's been very busy smelling good.

That's true.

And he's trying to, he's trying to smell good and he wants you to smell good as well.

And a good way you can smell good is by getting some cologne or perfume from farmsteadcottage.com and if you go there, that is the business Drew is starting up.

If you go to farmsteadcottage.com use the promo code SFE for 10 off.

Not only would you be helping him to feed his family, but.

Well, some of you out there really need to.

Yeah, I'm just saying I won't finish it.

The others around you, you have the cologne.

We're going to be adding a perfume for the ladies coming up.

But we also got wax melts and room sprays.

We got a beef tallow, body butter, and we've got car diffusers now as well.

There you go.

Because.

Because some people just really need to help those around them.

Well, Drew, welcome.

Tonight's topic is.

Is going to be can we trust the Bible?

And as I said in the intro, a lot of different challenges we get when we evangelize with this.

And it comes in many forms.

Oh, now you're in the light.

Well, yeah.

I mean, it's got a dimmer because it was super bright, and I hit the dimmer and it turned off.

Yeah, I liked it better when it was all the way on.

Yeah.

It was just looking at it.

It was, like, really bright on this side.

There was no balance.

Yeah.

That's why when I.

I put the lights in this room, I put a light right here over my head so that it's kind of central.

You know, I did notice that there's no bookcase behind you.

Nope.

That is all gone.

All the.

The bookcases in this room are gone.

The books, what was left is packed and.

And now in storage.

And the bookcases are in the garage.

And most of them.

Two of them, I took with me for storage, and the others are all for sale.

So if anyone wants to come to Philly area, north of Philly, pick up some great bookcases that'll last for generations.

I had.

I had those bookcases.

I made those, I think, like, 30 years ago.

Wow.

You made them?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

And so they were.

I mean, there's one that was almost 4 foot long, so I.

That one I made out of cherry wood, so it was a harder wood.

But the others, I mean, they've had books on them for 30 years.

Heavy books.

And, yeah, they didn't look like there was any sagging in those shelves.

None at all.

I feel.

I do kind of feel bad, because one.

A guy bought two of them, and I just feel bad.

I found out he's going to use it as a TV stand.

He's planning to Cut one of the shelves out so that he could put a TV on.

And.

But he was like.

When he looked at it, he's like, yeah, this.

This is going to hold the tv.

Okay.

It's not what it's for, but, yeah.

I was really hoping you'd use it for books.

There was someone that.

A homeschooler that wanted to pick one up, but she then realized she was, like, two and a half hours away, so.

Gotcha.

Yeah, that's.

That's so.

And.

And Kathy.

Kathy here is saying, if I pull this one up.

Wow.

They.

They were nice bookcases.

Well, Kathy, I think you're not all that far from me.

I.

I believe that you could come by and pick some up.

You know, your pastor would love them.

You know, it'd be a great way to bless your pastor.

Say, hey, you need four great bookcases.

So, yeah, I'm planning on next.

I'll be doing.

Is selling the desk and things like that.

So, yeah, different things.

So.

So with that, let's.

Let me bring in Chuck, who's backstage.

He's becoming a regular here.

Chuck was in early.

The.

The problem, Drew, is that if we keep letting Chuck in, you.

You and I have to get dressed up a little nicer.

He doesn't have a tie on this week.

I.

I will say that something for you that Chuck and.

And you're muted, just so you know.

But the other week, Chuck was in.

He explained why he was wearing an orange tie and how that stood for the.

The symbol of the.

The Protestants.

I couldn't help myself after him explaining that there's all the jokes and the memes when they were voting for the Pope because someone made a meme of, you know, Trump as Pope, to which the liberals went absolutely bonkers.

Like, you know, they had.

They asked him about it, and he was like, it's called a joke.

Like, someone made it.

I didn't know about it.

Like, but it was on the White House.

Yeah, it's funny.

It's a joke.

You know, like, liberals don't have a sense of humor.

But then all of a sudden, when they went into conclave, there were all these memes I saw of.

Instead of the white and black smoke, it was orange smoke.

And I understand that many of the people were putting orange smoke because of Trump.

And I.

And I.

But I didn't get it at first because I didn't see the meme of Trump as the Pope.

So I first, after learning from Chuck what what the orange color stands for versus the green, I actually Thought they were saying that a Protestant won.

So I thought it was hysterical.

And I thought it was so funny.

And then I found out when I was showing it someone that it was actually because of Trump and he's Orange man bad.

And I was like, oh, I thought it was funnier when it was like, a Protestant wins.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, that would have been a lot.

Funnier, I thought, like, so.

So thank you, Chuck, for teaching us that, because even if it wasn't the proper meaning of the meme, it made me laugh.

Well, then.

Then it was well worth teaching you that.

Yeah.

So let's see.

So John is.

Is putting in.

Johnny's just gonna have to start coming in more regularly.

But he says, is God imaginary?

What's the difference between God and an imaginary friend?

My imaginary friend can't do anything.

I can't.

I can't grieve my imaginary friend.

I can't.

My imaginary friend can't create the universe out of nothing.

Imaginary friends, a different gender.

I can't pray to him and, you know, wait and see what happens.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean that.

But that is an argument.

He's making a.

You know, good point.

That's an argument people will give.

And, you know, we kind of covered that with the God exists episode.

But the thing is that people will make an argument that, oh, well, God's just your imaginary friend.

I mean, we.

We've heard this with.

Well, I don't.

When we talk about creation, those who profess to be atheists will say things like, well, I don't believe in magic because God created everything out of nothing.

That's magic.

And.

And it's just like.

Okay, you really think that's a good argument?

And.

Yeah, okay, what created the universe?

Because there was nothing, and then there's everything.

So, like, what created it?

It.

Is it, like, real?

Like someone creating something out of nothing is not magic.

But nothing.

Creating everything out of nothing is magic.

So it's like, if you want to know which one is the real magic.

Yeah.

That's your position.

So I.

I think that that's a bad argument to make.

And, And Johnny is saying, if God exists, then why are atheists saying Sky Daddy even two minutes on Tick Tock Live?

Not.

Not quite sure.

So because they say it, that means he doesn't exist?

Yeah, no, I think.

Well, because I think if this is the Johnny we're thinking.

I'm thinking it is.

This was.

Is this the same Johnny that came in a few weeks ago and actually the one that we had on the.

On the clip in the beginning was, is this the Johnny who was the apologist?

I forgot his last name.

Johnny.

Let us know if you're the same Johnny that was here.

Oh, he's.

He's correcting it.

He's correcting and saying every two minutes.

So now it makes sense.

So.

So if God exists, then why are they.

Why are.

Why are atheists saying Sky Daddy every two minutes on Tick Tock Live?

So I guess what he's saying is, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what they do is they.

They sit there and deny God.

But then, and I think we said this in the God does God exist episode is the fact that what they do is they professing.

Atheists sit there and talk about God all the time.

They don't try to give you an argument for why God doesn't exist or why atheism is real.

They just give you a counter that the.

The Christian God doesn't exist.

Right.

And it's.

It's amazing how they'll often say, like, even with godless grandma, when she was on, she made the point to say she doesn't know if God exists.

It's just a Christian God that can't exist.

Yeah.

So the Buddhist God can the Muslim God, any other God but the actual God.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which is.

I mean, and we covered this last time when, when we were answering that question is, you know, they'll.

They'll sit there and say that he doesn't exist, all while having to adhere to things that can only exist by God.

Right.

Like laws of induction, the uniformity in nature.

So they have to borrow from the Christian worldview in order to make the claim that God doesn't exist.

That's correct.

And here we go.

Live during the show.

Here you go.

Melissa says Drew just ordered the Homestead Cranberry Jam melt wax.

Give them a try if I like them.

I'll get more later.

You know, Melissa, I just saw your order come through on my phone.

There you go.

Now the question is, will you see this order come through?

Tom, who should be here, but he's busy at work.

He wants a beef tallow body butter.

So, you know, you know, I do have.

I have something that I've got to make for Tom and send to him.

So it won't help.

He's actually going to.

He's going to pay you because of.

Remember I said the first hundred dollars that we make, I'm going to give the striving for eternity.

So he's.

I thought there was a thousand.

I keep.

I Keep hearing it as a thousand.

I don't know, but I'm making something.

It's.

It's not a.

It's not a listed item.

It's something that I'm making just special for him.

Yeah.

So.

So here becomes.

The question is, will that help his wife want to be around him more?

That's.

That's going to be the real test.

I'm just saying we'll have to reach out to his wife and see.

All right, so let's.

Let's tackle the topic of what.

This is a field of study that is referred to as textual criticism.

Textual criticism is typically taught in seminaries at a very high level.

It's, you know, when.

I don't know if you guys have ever taken a class in textual criticism, but typically in seminary, when you take classes on this subject, It's.

It's very grueling, it's detailed, it's highfalutin type of stuff, and people do not really argue it at a easy to understand level.

And I think this is one of the reason a name that many unbelievers know is a name Bart Ehrman.

And the reason they know it is because Bart Ehrman is someone who has been writing about textual criticism.

He is a scholar in the field of textual criticism, and he is one who writes to argue that we can't trust the Bible.

And so this is a thing he's writing at a lay level.

Now, if you read anything from Bart Ehrman, I want to give you.

I mean, I don't recommend it, but if you're reading for research, let me give you a little trick.

When you read Bart Ehrman, when Bart Ehrman cites his materials, when he says something and he gives you the citation, he speaks on the technical terms.

It's usually good.

But you'll see that what he does is he speaks over here with the technical and then makes these conclusions that are not technical.

So let me give an example.

He will talk about the fact that there are people who made copies of the Bible who were illiterate.

And that's true.

And he.

And, and he'll give you the citations for where you can find that evidence.

But then what he says is he'll claim, well, see, if people don't know how to read, how could they have transcribed or copied the words properly?

That's actually not true because Bart Ehrman knows, as anyone in this field does, that it was actually those that were illiterate that copied better because they didn't make the mistakes of reading ahead and then skipping a Word or things like that, because we do that when we copy.

I would challenge any of you to.

To go and take some lengthy.

To actually take a book of the Bible and just make copies of it.

And you'll see where you might see the word the here, the word the there.

You might skip a whole line, or you might have the tendency to read ahead to just for speed.

And you read something, thus says the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so you read that and you go to write that whole sentence out and you say, thus says the Lord Christ.

Because even though you read it, you didn't copy it word by word or letter by letter.

But if someone doesn't know the language, what they're actually doing is copying letter by letter.

Yeah.

And you can.

And usually those are more accurate.

And textual critical scholars like Dan Wallace, he can actually.

He'll look at it and he can tell you whether or not this manuscript was copied line by line or letter by letter.

And.

And those.

So what you end up seeing is Bart Ehrman will say something true and then he draws a wrong conclusion.

But people read that and go, oh, well, he's a scholar.

And look, he cited the material.

And yet what he's purposely doing is misleading people in the conclusions.

He gives good evidence in one area and then gives something that's not actually true.

So if you're going to read Bart Ehrman, you just have to know he does that.

Yeah.

And the thing with Bart Ehrman especially, he's one of those like the Bible speaks about, who has had enough light to know.

Because he wasn't always an apostate.

Right.

He was.

He was Bruce Metzger, his last PhD student, and he co authored books with textual critical books with Bruce Metzger defending the reliability of the New Testament and textual criticism.

So he knows that what he's doing is intentionally misleading people.

Yeah.

Which is very sad because in doing so, I mean, the reality is what he's doing when he does that is he is purposely.

He's using his scholarship to purposely mislead others.

Okay.

And it's.

Many Muslims and atheists use his works.

And so I bring this out to say he writes at a lay level.

He writes at a level that.

That people can understand, which we need.

We need believing textual critical scholars to start writing at that level as well.

You know, I wish there was a book that did that.

You know, in fact, I think there is one.

It's called what Do We Believe?

By some guy named oh, me.

Andrew Rapaport.

Yeah.

I mean, that is.

That's the exact Reason why in the, in chapter two of my book, what do we believe, I purposely symbol.

Simpleized, simplized.

Is that a word?

Did I just make up a word made simple, simplified.

Oh, that would have been the proper word.

But why use that word when we can make up our own?

Yeah, sure.

I mean, that's how language starts anyway.

Yeah, go for it.

Yeah.

Well, hey, now, nowadays a woman means whatever we call it.

So language has absolutely no meaning now.

But yeah, I made simple this idea of textual criticism to lay out how we can trust the Scriptures to be a counter argument to Bart Ehrman and I.

I don't know many who write at a lay level.

I think you could look at a Jim Wallace does when he teaches.

He can teach it at a lay level.

Clear.

Understood.

He doesn't always write that way.

James White is another one who talks on this and at a, at a very lay level.

Michael Krueger as well.

Yeah.

So there are people who are doing it and I want to recommend you to, to check out their works as well, because there are people that can give you information.

Rob is, is mentioning Greg Kokel.

That would be a, you know, Greg's another one that you could look to if you get the book.

Evidence demands a verdict or more than a carpenter.

Josh McDowell did that.

Okay.

And it's important to, to have those resources because you want to be able to give counter arguments.

Okay.

We're not going to cover everything that you could cover on this today, but start reading up these things because this is going to be, if you are defending the faith as a believer, you are going to be challenged with this one way or another.

Now, my fun way of doing it, I, I'm, I would be out on the streets doing open air evangelism and I would have people that will challenge me.

They'll say the Bible's written by men.

And really think about this, folks.

What is it that they're trying to say when they say the Bible is written by men?

Yeah.

They're trying to discredit the Bible and its authority and its accuracy.

Because if it's only written by men, men can be wrong.

That's right.

And so the issue is trust.

Right.

Okay.

So what I would do is I would, I want to draw that out.

So I said that I would ask them.

So are you saying we can't trust the Bible?

No.

And you're saying it's because it's written by men, we can't trust it?

Yes.

So are you saying that we can't trust things that are written by men.

That's what I'm saying.

And I would ask it like four different times because I want them to really commit to the fact that it's written by men.

It makes it untrustworthy.

Yes.

And then what I would do is I'd go, do you believe in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution?

And they go, yes.

And I pull out of my preaching bag and I actually bought a copy of Darwin's, you know, book so that I could pull it out of my bag and look at it, and I hold it up, I go, that's funny.

It's written by a man.

To which they now just realized almost everything they believe they learned from other men.

Right.

So what's their response?

Do they suddenly go, oh, well, men could be trusted, therefore the Bible could be trusted?

No, they turn and go, well, he's a trustworthy man.

Okay, so I don't think so.

Yeah, I don't.

But.

So.

Oh, so then you believe that the Bible's not trusted because the authors aren't trustworthy.

Can you support that?

And they, they don't have an answer for that because they haven't had to think about this most of the time.

What you realize is that these people that come up against Christianity, want to argue against Christianity.

They never actually thought through things.

They just hear their, what they get online from some, you know, someone who has some YouTube channel that, you know is attacking Christianity.

And because it's a.

They're attacking Christianity, what they end up doing is going, oh, yeah, that's good argument.

That's going to work.

So I, I like to do things that get them out of that thinking.

So what I do is I'll ask them now that they believe that men can be trusted.

So what's your argument?

That the men that wrote the Bible couldn't be trusted.

And then when they say they don't know, or if I, they say, well, there's, there's errors in the Bible, you just go, which one?

You know?

Yeah, which ones?

Or they say something like, well, the, the, the woman caught in adultery.

That's not original to John, right?

Yep.

Okay, yeah, we know that.

So what?

So, so what?

Like, and you're right.

That is, that is one that we don't think.

And I'm going to say this, and I realize that some people we're going to explain this, but I don't think that the woman caught in adultery or the, the ending of Mark is original to the, to the original canon.

What I mean by canon is you have a, the, the first The.

The autographs, the first copies, that is the original.

Those are what we call the canon or the autographs.

And those are ones that we probably don't have anymore.

We might.

But those were without error in the original.

And the issue is that we do have people who made mistakes in copying.

This is why I.

I give.

You know, I challenge you to make copies, Write out a book, write the book of Proverbs in.

In one sitting and see how many mistakes you actually make.

I.

When I teach this, When I do our weekend seminars and I teach this subject, one of the things I do is I break everyone up into small groups and I have sheets of paper, and what I do is I give everybody a sheet of paper and I ask them to make 10 copies of one line that they have.

And it's interesting because I have purposely put mistakes in there.

I purposely misspell weird words.

And it's amazing how many people, when they.

When they write it, correct my misspellings.

And it's a Bible verse.

There's amazing how many people have memorized the Bible verse.

And because of that, I leave out words and they substitute them.

They put them back in.

So because they're doing the very things that people do when they make copies.

There are some who go, oh, they state, make.

They copy my misspelling.

Yeah, and they stay with it.

They stay with it.

Yeah.

And, you know, so.

So when we get into, like, the transmission of the text, right?

And a variant.

A variant.

Because the Bible does have textual variants, and a variant is just anywhere where there's a.

A different reading and different readings can happen because of a number of different things, right?

So you have the autographs and the copies soon after the autographs, which were written on papyri, which is two leaves that are pressed together and there's lines on them.

And sometimes over time, after it's been folded and passed around, it kind of wears.

So you're looking at it and you go, is.

Is that a theta?

I think.

I think it is.

You know, so.

So we're gonna.

There's a misspelled word there, right?

Or you get someone that.

A scribe that has put a note in the margin, and they take that and they go, oh, well, I think this belongs in the text.

So they take the scribal node in the margin and they add it to the text.

Or you have what we have in English, what that.

What was called the movable new.

James White talks about this a lot.

Which is the most comm.

Variants where in English we have a.

A Apple or an apple.

Right.

Well, the correct spelling is an apple because the N is when we put the n on it, when the next word that follows begins with a vowel or a vowel sound.

Right.

So that's.

But it doesn't change the meaning of the text.

And that's what people don't understand.

So when people say, oh, well, there's.

Or Bart Ehrman makes the case, well, there's more textual variance than there words in the New Testament.

Correct.

That's true.

But they have no meaning.

No, no viable meaning for the text.

Yeah.

And when I took a class with, you know, Daniel Wallace, I brought out the fact.

So the argument that, you know, is made is that there's about 400 to 500,000 what Drew said, variances in the scripture in the New Testament.

Now you got to remember there's only 136,000 words.

So that's like four times as many variances as words.

And it sounds like, well, it's impossible to know what the Bible means.

And this is the argument that Bart Ehrman would make.

You can't.

I mean, there's 4,400 thousand different variances and there's only 136,000 words.

So it's.

You have so many different readings, and yet when we actually look at it, the number of words that have variant readings are quite small.

It's just that for those words, you have a lot of variety.

So let me give an example.

Let me.

And, and I know there's a delay, so I'm going to put this up now.

Everybody in the chat, I would like you to put the spaces in what you see on screen.

For those that are audio listeners, just give us a moment while we let folks fill it in and then we're going to tell you what is on screen.

Actually, I could just spell it out right now.

And those of you who are not driving, don't do this if you're driving, but if you're listening, you could put these letters down on a piece of paper and figure out where a space should be.

So if you have this, because in the original there wasn't spaces that came later, punctuation, things like that.

G O D I S N o W H e R E.

I'm going to do it again for those on the podcast.

And I'm purposely not doing anything where I'm going to give away a way where to put spaces.

So I'm trying to be monotone and G O D I s N o W H e R e.

Now Rob is.

Rob here is saying Amen.

Ray Comfort's track, something gives it.

Gives it.

You know, so Ray Comfort does have a track with this, with the spaces in two different places.

And so I wonder if Rob was trying to get you to say it online.

Oh, I'm sure he was.

And.

And there is a.

Now, where you put the spaces here makes all the difference, because this is unlike what Drew was saying, where you can have something that there's no difference in the meaning.

If you put the space, one space in a different place, you have a radically different meaning.

They're.

They're mutually exclusive.

It's completely opposite meaning.

And so the.

If you put the spaces.

Let me read it one way.

So I'll put up.

I'll put up Rob's thing.

He says that Ray Comfort's track says God is now here, AKA God is nowhere.

You see, depending on where you put the space on this word that.

I've just slammed everything together.

You have two radically different meanings.

One meaning is that God is now here, and the other meaning is God is nowhere.

That is a change of meaning, and it's a big difference.

And as they were adding spaces.

Yeah, I like this.

John Neffert.

John Neffert says a third option is God.

I snow here, John.

I never.

I'll admit I never saw that one.

Now, it is interesting because, you know, Ray Comforts has this as a gospel tract.

And the thing I find funny is when I would give that to people and say, and what does this say?

With no spaces like we have on screen there?

Those who profess to be atheists will always say God is nowhere.

And people who profess to be Christians say God is now here.

And I just always found that as a funny thing with that gospel track, that it.

Your worldview seems to affect the way you see that, the way you're going to insert the.

The spaces.

So.

So this is something that I just want to encourage folks to.

To think about as you.

As you.

You think about some of these things.

Some of it is when they're making copies, some of it is going to be just, hey, you're adding spaces in.

How.

How do we know where the spaces should be?

Well, the.

The context is going to be the answer to that.

Okay, so what we're going to look for here is what's the context?

If the context of this is, well, atheists argue, well, then I know they're going to argue God is nowhere.

But if the.

Are.

If.

If the.

If the context is Paul, the writer of scripture, says, I'm gonna say God is Now, here.

Right.

So context is going to be the thing that's going to give us the answer.

Now, we, we've been talking a bit.

I, I should put up that I thought I, I saved this one.

But some Melissa I think was asking, who's the third guy in here?

Well, he's been a quiet one tonight.

So Chuck, you know, with.

You haven't jumped in like Drew and I have, so.

Oh, here, here's where she said, who, who's the other man besides Andrew and Drew?

So Chuck, any, any thoughts you have before we move on?

Yes, I could talk quite a bit if you want me to.

I was going to say that, you know, the first item that came up, that when an atheist tells me that God is fiction, I'm going to turn around and say, just because of your materialistic world view, your sense of self is fiction.

Right.

It's just one part of your brain fooling another part of the brain that, that the self exists.

So that's how I handle that one.

And I am not anywhere near being a textual critic and I'm more of a very pure presuppositionalist.

Right.

And so if there was another one that came in and it said something like, you know, how do you deal with someone who says that there's errors in the Bible?

You know, first I got to determine what's their world view.

If there's an atheist, I'm going to say, well, they're relying on the immaterial law of non contradiction.

So first of all, in a materialistic worldview, those can exist.

And so I'm going to challenge them and say, well, how can you ground the immaterial law of non contradiction?

Because that's what you're relying on to be universal, unchanged and authoritative.

You don't hear much about the, the laws of logic being authoritative.

And what I mean by that is if, if a, a person or a source contradicts a known fact or contradicts themselves, they're automatically judged without even thinking that that person is wrong.

And so my challenge to the atheist is why do you assume that contradictions proves someone or source wrong?

Right.

And only the biblical worldview can ground that.

Yeah.

And, and this is the thing that folks have to recognize that you're going to the grounding argument.

Now, I'm a presuppositional.

So are you.

Can we doctoral criticism when people are challenging us and still do it in a presuppositional way?

Yes, we can.

So it's, it's not that.

Oh, if I try to defend the.

The reliability of Scripture.

I'm not presuppositional, no, I'm.

I'm pointing out the errors of their thinking.

Because the.

The New Testament is actually.

There's so much evidence for the reliability of the New Testament.

It's way more than any other document in ancient history.

Nobody questions whether the.

The truths of Caesar being killed by his friends and, and, you know, things of Caesar.

And yet we have so much more reliability than Caesar.

In fact, what I really find interesting is how many people really believe the Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code written by Dan Brown, was based off of a gospel known as the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, of which we have one copy in existence, and it is in French and it is missing more than we have.

In other words, you know, like, you take a book that has page numbers, you could tell if you.

If it has page 300, but you only have 57 pages, well, it's missing more than you have.

The argument for the Gospel of Mary Magdalene and people don't often.

Daniel Da Vinci Code doesn't get into this.

The argument they made.

So here's the idea behind the Gospel of Mary Magdalene.

Jesus Christ didn't actually die.

He survived the cross.

He then married Mary Magdalene.

They had children.

Those children became moved to the area of France and they became the emperors of France.

Now, the.

The earliest we see the Gospel of Mary Magdalene appearing in history is at the time that the French emperor is arguing with the Roman Catholic Pope on who is the authority on earth.

The Pope is saying he is the rightful authority, spokesman for God here on earth.

And the French emperor is saying he, as the emperor is.

And all of a sudden you have the.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which says he's actually the offspring of Jesus.

So trump that, Mr.

Pope.

Right.

I mean, I could see how someone could write a book like that to try to justify they're.

They're greater than the Pope.

Okay.

So there's good reason why that may have been written.

However, we only have one copy of it, and it's missing a lot.

So if you're going to argue and people trust that, the way people really think that, that you could trust the book of the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, but we don't have a single copy in Greek, which was supposedly what it came from, but we have a lot of copies, thousands of copies of the New Testament, which we have in Greek.

Right.

And so this is some.

Some things.

So let.

Let's get into.

I want to spend a little bit of time kind of going through some things that That I, I wrote in my book, what do we believe?

So that you guys would have just a basic understanding of what textual criticism is, how we go about doing this science, and just so you could defend the faith in this area, because you're going to get challenged with it.

And by the way, I should have mentioned earlier, but if, if you are watching us live, actually, even if you're not, would you mind doing us a favor and right now sharing this, especially if you're watching live so that others will come in?

Because we're hoping, what we're really hoping for is someone that doesn't believe that the Bible can be trusted, that they would come in and we can actually have a dialogue on that.

And then you get to see, not just learn the material, but see how it's applied.

Melissa asked this question.

She said, what do you say when people say the Bible has mistakes?

And, and this is one of the things we get challenged with often?

So what do I say, Melissa?

I'm going to ask the other guys what, what they say, but it might be similar.

I just say, find me one.

Where are they?

Yeah, I say, I asked the same question.

I said, give me one.

Chuck you anything different?

Yeah, again, I already sort of preemptively talked about this when I was speaking earlier.

But, yeah, I'm going to find out what the worldview is and maybe it's a Muslim.

Right.

And so, yeah, it's definitely helpful to, to ask, you know, where is the mistake?

And, and so you can go down that, that trail.

But I'm getting like, older and tireder.

And so that's why I love presuppositionalism.

It really cuts the arguments shorter.

But, but, and so in a presuppositional way, I will say, I'll say, okay, list out all these mistakes, you know, if they want to list out a bunch of stuff.

And also, and, and then, so my response is going to be, wow, you make the Bible sound even more miraculous because it's the, the biblical worldview is the only worldview that makes sense of our reality, that can ground morality universal and unchanging, as well as the laws of logic being universal, unchanging and authoritative.

So, so, so the more they pile on, I just say, oh, wow, that even the Bible's even more miraculous.

Thank you so much.

I'm kind of unique in that approach, but that's how I do it.

No, but that's a good approach.

I'm laughing because I just saw, I just saw.

Rob had posted this.

He said when we were talking About God is nowhere or God is now here.

He decided to edit it.

Go dis no higher.

And then I think, I think the.

H in there is silent.

Yeah.

And then there's bit.

You know, folks, if you're not watching live, I'm just going to say, like, the chat is funny.

Like, sometimes we can't even get to everything that's going on in the chat.

But there's, there's kind of a discussion between Tom Shepard, who says he can't come in here because he's working, but he seems to be able to type things, and then.

And Danny Kitcher.

So Danny, Danny Kitchard is saying he.

Because they were talking about that the, the beef tallow scent.

Body butter.

So Danny is saying.

Is that why brother Andrew is so popular?

He smells like beef tallow.

By the way, Drew, you know, sister Tara here is saying, where do I order?

Where would be a good place if she wanted to order some of this?

Yeah.

Farmsteadcottage.com and then at checkout, just use the code SFE and you get 10% off your order.

So then you can smell like beef tallow.

That's right.

We're just gonna do everything in beef.

Tallow fragrance for Tom.

Everything should be sent to Tom with beef tallow.

We may even add one that's got, that's got a little hint of a one in it.

So, you know, it's, it's fresh, fresh beef tallow just off the cow, you know, very rare with, with a one right there.

Yeah.

Your dog will love you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I, I, Something says wrong all over it with that.

I, I don't know what.

It just.

Yeah, I, I don't see that being a good thing.

You'd be surprised, you know, so, so at work, we have a whole section in our library that we.

That's novelty fragrances.

And it's just the most craziest things.

I mean, gasoline, diesel, wet dog.

I mean, they so this.

And people, some people buy this stuff for like, gag candles or, uh.

It's pretty funny.

Yeah.

Please say kfc.

I don't think we have that one.

Oh, man.

But we do have.

I think we do have cooked meat.

So we have that.

Okay.

Yeah.

You know, with all this, I think, I think that we've gone awry, so we should bring this back.

I think that what we need to do is just, just.

I think we should play a little video.

So here we go.

If this is going to bring up.

There we go.

You know, some people think they're the king of all Millennialism.

So they like to wear a crown.

They also like to have a championship belt because they win a podcast awards and maybe they got themselves a black belt or two or technically three.

But the reality is, men like Keith Foskey might have all of those things, but the reality is, is a real man make sure that he has his Squirrelly Joe's coffee and a cold plunge.

Get some@restrivingforenerity.org coffee.

You know, some people like to think they're the king of all millennialism, so they need a crown.

That didn't work with you.

Love the end of that.

Yeah, I was wondering why we were watching it again and just threw the gag reel in there.

So I, I bought that little crown on, on ebay or on Amazon and it looked in the picture to be like a, you know, looking like it was a crown, but it was this flimsy little plastic thing.

So when I went to throw it the, the first time, it just went right into the cold plunge.

You know, if you'd have just stopped by a Burger King, you could have got a bunch of them for free.

Well, that's what everyone was saying.

Like, like you should have just got to, to kind get the Burger King ones.

It would have worked better.

The, the paper would have flown.

Much better.

But yeah, so I, I, I, I, we threw the blooper in because, well, that was just too much fun.

So yeah, but if you want, guys want to get some coffee, go to Squirrely Joe's.

And if you want to make fun of, you know, Keith Fosky, well, that's, and I, I did, I did hear Keith is going to respond to that one.

You know, if, if you, if you, any of you follow your Calvinist podcast, he, he did an epic response to my first one where I, where I, I did one about respect and you know, real men, you know, get respect by having their Squirrelly Joe's coffee and a cold plunge.

And, and so he did his, he did one that, if you go into YouTube, your Calvinist podcast, you'll see he, he plays it off and it's, it's him getting as his son is out there, wants to play real, real baseball.

He drinks Squirrelly Joes and that makes him into a man.

And all of a sudden it's Keith instead of his son and, and he's gonna play ball.

And it is really funny.

It, it definitely outdid me, which was the whole purpose.

I knew Keith is more creative and I thought it'd be fun to poke at him and have him poke back.

And he did.

And so I'm waiting to see what he's going to do as a response, because my second one, you guys played last week when I wasn't here, and it was.

It was funny.

This one was the.

The one where I really called him out, though.

And so if you haven't seen it, it is on our YouTube, the one that we just played.

If you're listening on the.

On the audio podcast, you can go to Striving Fraternity's YouTube channel.

And while you're there, you might as well subscribe and follow us.

But the.

It is out there.

So you can.

You can see the.

The ad that we were just talking about.

And.

And yes, Melissa is saying Andrew needs an external mic for when he does commercials.

We.

We didn't realize how windy it was.

And to be honest, I didn't want to have to do it again, so we went with it.

But, yeah, I will try to work on that, Melissa.

So let's get into some of.

There's three things that when I teach on textual criticism, for us to know about is just a very easy to understand level.

It's going to be geography, number of copies, and the date of the copy.

Those three things.

Okay, so let me start with the geography, because I think it's the easiest to understand.

Drew, I have a letter.

It's really important.

I'm going to give you a copy.

You're going to go to Italy.

Chuck, it's a really important letter.

We need to spread it.

So I'm going to make a copy for you.

You're going to France.

I'm going to take a copy, and I'm going to go.

Well, to America.

Why not?

So we all go.

The problem is, Chuck, you're in France, and I messed up yours.

You know, instead of saying God is nowhere, I said, God is now here.

Or is that instead of saying God is now here, I put God is nowhere.

Now, you being a dutiful.

All of us being dutiful at our copying, we take those copies and we spread them out.

But let's expand this and say that it's not just in these three areas, but say there's 10 different areas.

And so I'm in America.

Drew, were you in Italy?

I forget.

You're in Italy, you're in Italy, and France has the bad copy.

Someone else is in the uk, Someone else is in Spain.

All these different places.

And we happen to notice that.

That it's only in the.

The copies that were made in France that it says God is nowhere.

Everywhere else it says God is now here.

Do we think that we could take a reasonable guess just based on the geography of where we find these copies, what might have happened?

Yes, it would be, that's easy.

A coalition, right?

We, we've got the copies from America, we've got the copies from, from Italy and we can compare those.

And then when we look at the ones that come from France, we compare them and weigh them.

We can go, oh, this one was messed up because everything else matches exactly on the other copies.

Except for this part.

Yes, and, and that is a very easy thing to then do because remember, this was a time before the Internet.

I mean, people would make copies in a regional area.

So you'd have people, very few people, this is hard for us in America to conceive of, but very few people traveled more than a mile outside of their hometown.

So you, you'd have people that would bring a copy of the Bible into an area as a missionary and that would be about it.

They didn't have a whole lot of transferring, not as much as we would have today.

And by the way, I see the Shaken Fist is commenting.

We're going to get to his comments.

We're going to, we're going to answer those.

I starred those.

But Shaken Fist be much better if you come on in and join us.

So just go to apologexlive.com and scroll down to where you see a duck icon.

Give permission for your browser to use your, your microphone, your camera and join us.

It'd be much better discussion because what ends up happening here is you'll say something, we'll respond to it.

Then we gotta wait for you to respond.

You know, there's a delay, you respond it much better if you come on in.

So the fir.

The geography can help us, but not always.

But sometimes the geography can help us.

If we see in all the other areas one reading, and as Drew described, a variant reading, and then you see one area that isn't.

And I should mention this, I started this, but when I was taking the class with Daniel Wallace, the issue that I made, where you have Bart Ehrman making the argument that there's 400,000 variant readings in the New Testament, when there's.

And I just looked it up to get the exact number, there's about 138, 200 words in the Greek New Testament.

So it sounds like a lot, but it is an apples to oranges argument because.

And this is what I asked of Daniel Wallace and he, he actually conceded the point that I was making is that we really should not be comparing the 138,000 to 400,000.

We should be comparing the 138,000 to the 6,577.

You say, well, what's that?

Those are the actual words that have variant readings.

See, that makes it very different.

So in other words, the reason I say this is because when people look at this, they say, well, it sounds, it sounds like a lot to have.

If you're having so many words, so many variant readings.

It's, it seems like it's a huge percentage of.

It's, it's several times what it should be, right?

I mean, you, you have 400,000 and the, the number that they're using nowadays is, is actually closer to 500,000.

If you're comparing that to the 138,000, it's, it's, well, it's much bigger.

How could that be?

How could this, how could this actually happen?

The thing that we end up seeing here is that this is not the way to, to view it.

If we're comparing it to what I would argue is the right way to do it.

You're, you're not comparing variant readings to number of words, but you should be comparing the number of words that have variances and comparing those to the number of words in the Greek New Testament.

Now if you do that, where the one way you have there's four times as many variant readings as words in the Greek New Testament.

But if you actually compare just the number of words that have variant readings to the number of words in the Greek New Testament, you're only talking about, well, less than 5% of the new Testament.

Suddenly that doesn't sound that bad.

And we're going to get into why it's even less than this that we have to worry about.

But this is the thing that you see people will do is they, it's, it's, it's a, like a Bart Ehrman.

They play games with the words.

Okay.

And so as we look at this, I just want us to, to realize that some of the way people speak is a misrepresentation.

If someone tells you but there's four or five hundred thousand variant readings of the New Testament, that's fine.

And, and some, a lot of those variant readings, by the way, are things like Lord Jesus Christ.

Lord Christ.

Lord Jesus.

Jesus Christ.

Christ Jesus.

They all say the same thing.

They all have the same meaning, but they're each a different variant reading.

Those are five different variances.

And think about how many with Lord Jesus Christ, just those three words.

Think about how many variant readings we can come up with.

Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Christ.

Jesus.

Lord Jesus.

Lord Christ.

Lord Jesus Christ.

Lord Christ.

Jesus.

All those are variant readings.

And yet you only have three words.

So if you were to look at that, we would say there's three words that have a variant reading.

Okay?

So I hope that.

Right.

Just to help you understand that.

Now when we look at the geography, we see, okay, that looking at the geography, we can see if there's only one area that has this variant.

And when we look at something that has.

Just so you understand terminology, we have something that has.

We go, this is a variant.

There's what we call families of manuscripts.

A manuscript is a copy.

You sometimes get families of manuscripts, and those become manuscript family.

So if you have.

In this case, Chuck's.

All of his copies have the same.

Right.

The same variant in it, that becomes a variant reading.

We're going to call it the Chuck family manuscript, right.

Or the French family manuscript.

But it's going to the what I said we, we.

So what you have is a manuscript family is a family that has the same variants in it.

And so if it's only in one area, we quickly can go, oh, somebody was making a copy in France that either he made a bad copy, or in his case, he got it from me, who's dyslexic, and I gave him a bad copy.

So, so the next thing.

So let me just ask all to those who.

Who are here, Chuck drew any.

Anything that you want to add to that, as far as the variant readings versus words of the New Testament or to the geography?

No, not really.

I mean, I think it's.

You know, architectural scholars have done a really good job and a thorough job of being able to say, you know, like you were talking about families of texts, where they come from, and be able to determine, you know, this variant most likely comes from this place.

And this is most likely what happens.

I think.

I think textual critical scholarship has done a.

A very thorough job in that.

And.

And so I think they've got a very good job without really being biased, although a skeptic is going to say that they are biased.

But when.

And when Andrew had his discussion with godless Granny, you know, she was quoting her experts, Right.

And they were all secular experts, as far as I understand.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, she appealed.

She did appeal to Bart Ehrman.

She appealed to Bart Ehrman.

I don't know.

You might not want to.

He could debate whether he's secular or not.

But, you know, Chuck, you make a really good point, because the field of textual criticism isn't necessarily to prove the Bible.

It's to take the manuscript and go, is the manuscript accurate?

And that, that I think the, the unbiased fleshes out.

When we were talking earlier about the, the ending of Mark and, and the, the woman caught in adultery, and we're willing to say, hey, these copies don't appear really to have.

These aren't supposed to have them in there, right?

And so we are willing to say, okay, yeah, these don't belong here.

So I think that goes to show that we're, that we're being unbiased.

You know, it's an interesting thing you bring up because one of the things I'll sometimes bring up with Muslims is the fact that they will, they'll make the point to say, oh, well, we don't have, we have only one copy.

There's no variances in, in the Quran.

And yet there are.

They.

They just, you know, depending on each different locale has their own variances.

So let me, I want to get to the next two points quickly.

And since the, the, the shaken fist is back backstage, I want to be able to bring him in and give some time.

So let me.

I'm going to be a little bit briefer with the, the, the next two points than I would have wanted to be.

But get my book.

What do we believe?

It's, I think, right there, either on that side or this side.

I forget which one it points to.

But get my book.

What do, what do we believe?

You can get it@restriving fraternity.org you read chapter two to get more details.

So one of the things that we, we talk about is the, the age of a manuscript.

And the reason the age is important is because the, the closer it is to the original, the, the less time there was for variances to occur.

So if, if I write a letter, I give it to Drew and Drew copies that letter and gives it to Chuck.

There's now two different people that handled it.

And there's more opportunity by Chuck's copy that either Drew had, had copied something wrong or Chuck copied something wrong.

So there's a greater possibility that a variant occurred.

And so we can't tell.

It's.

It's not like someone said this is copy 1, copy 2, copy 3.

So there's no way to tell how many.

You could have.

Something that's in the first from that was that someone written in the original was copied in the first century and then it wasn't copied again until the ninth century.

So even though it's ninth century, we would think it's much further from the original.

But it could be the second time it was copied, right?

That's possible, but we have no way of knowing that.

So we would look at it at 9th century and say, well, if we have something in the third century, we're gonna think it's a.

We're gonna put a little bit more weight to it.

Now that third century one could have been copied 50 times.

We have no way of knowing.

But generally, when we're looking at the time, we're going to assume that they've been copied and copied and copied.

Now, by the way, this is not, as people will argue, the telephone game.

If I play the telephone game, Chuck is going to start us off.

He's going to give a long sentence.

He gives it to me, I give it to Drew.

The problem is that with a person like me and my personality, when we.

When it comes.

When Chuck gives it to me, I will purposely mess it up just so that I make Drew say the most bizarre things, okay?

And he's being faithful to it, so he repeats what he heard.

Now, the difference between the telephone game and what we have when we have manuscripts is there is no way for Drew to verify what I heard.

Unless, of course, Drew was to go to Chuck and ask him.

The whole purpose of the telephone game is you don't go back to the original.

But in the case of something written, Chuck writes it, it gives it to me, I make a copy, give it to Drew.

Drew can take the copy he was given compared to the copy that Chuck had and look at the differences and realize Andrew was a really bad copyist.

Okay?

That's the difference we have with something written.

We can go back and compare.

That's why.

Plus say, oh, it's a telephone game.

It's not.

So.

So we look the geography.

Also the.

In our telephone game scenario here, we're only following one line of transmission.

It starts with Chuck, and then it goes to the next person.

Next person, next person.

Whereas with scripture and manuscripts, you have multiple lines of transmission.

So this is getting into the number of copies, because you have more numbers of copies that are multiple lines of transmissions that you can go to and you can verify.

Verify is what I have, what I'm supposed to have.

You can compare to different regions.

You can compare now to different languages, things like this.

So the.

The fact of how close it is to the original helps us.

The third thing I mentioned is the number of manuscripts.

And the reason that helps us is because the more manuscripts we have have the, the.

We have upwards of about 9,000 manuscripts now.

And a manuscript could be as small as A, you know, P52, which is the size of a postcard, or it could be the entire book.

So it's, it's any portion of it.

And so what you have here is the case where so many of the, of the manuscripts are out there.

We're finding more and more manuscripts, but what we're not finding is more and more variant readings.

Right.

As we find more manuscripts, we're going, oh, yeah, we already found that.

We already found that.

And so where that helps us is as we find these things, we can, we can put these into different categories.

And the categories would be this.

You're either going to have that.

Every variant is going to be.

There's a.

The way we measure it is called viability and meaning.

So what we're looking for is viability has to do with.

Can we get back to the original?

In other words, I spelled the word letter L, E, T, E, R.

Chuck, what did I do wrong?

You missed.

You missed a letter in there.

Yeah.

Which letter did I miss?

Another.

You need another T right there in the middle.

That's right.

So you see a spelling error like that, easy to figure.

Now by the.

Well, when we talk about those, spelling errors and punctuation make up the majority of the different variances.

So spelling errors and punctuation are 75% of the variance of the variances that we have.

And I say that to say, when you think about it, I said punctuation.

The original didn't have punctuation.

So every, every single one.

When they, when they give you a, when they count punctuation as a variant, that is purposely misleading to give you a higher number.

The majority of things that we have of variances are punctuation.

That's the majority.

So that's where they get all these variances from that don't affect any of the words.

Okay, so you, you have these, these variances.

75% are spelling.

Okay.

The next largest group are those that are not meaningful.

Now a, not meaningful is ones that we're putting aside the spelling and punctuation.

Not meaningful is things like the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

That doesn't change the meaning in any way.

We know it's being spoken of.

Do we know which was the original?

No, we don't.

But the meaning of the text is clear.

Okay, that's 19%.

And I'm using conservative numbers.

I'm going to give you what the realistic number Is in a moment.

Now that we have more manuscripts, these numbers have been the same since the 1980s.

The next cat.

So 19% are not meaningful.

The large, the next largest one is what we would say is meaningful but not viable.

Okay, what that means is that this is 5%.

This means that 5% of these variances.

Remember I said there's 6,575, 77 words that have variant readings, and 5% of those would be a meaningful change.

But viability means, can we get back to the original?

So this means, yes, it's a meaningful change, but we can get back to the original.

Maybe we can get back to the original because everyone in one geography, geographical area has it one way except for one area.

Okay, we can get back to what it.

What the original was.

That's what the viability talks about.

So the only area we really should be concerned about is the area of meaningful and viable.

In other words, the meaning actually changed and you can't get back to the original.

Now, this area is a little bit more concerning.

Now, if you're going to write a.

A New York Times bestseller, okay, he didn't know it'd be a New York Times bestseller, But Bart Ehrman gave us what.

What he thought was the best argument he had for proof that we can't trust the Bible.

Okay, folks, you're paying attention.

We're going to get the best argument against the reliability of scripture.

Okay?

So I'm going to ask everyone you're watching or listening.

Just put your hands on your seat, hold on tight, because here you go.

We're going to blow your mind.

Bart Ehrman says that the biggest argument is that some manuscripts say that Jesus Christ was the son of a carpenter, and others say he was a carpenter.

I mean, that just.

That just shocked you, didn't it?

I mean, Drew, how many Bible doctrines are based on Jesus being a carpenter?

Absolutely none.

Correct?

Correct.

In fact, Bart Ehrman made a big mistake.

So this is his book, Misquoting Jesus.

What he did.

When he wrote this in a hardback, it became a New York Times bestseller.

And, well, you know, publishers want money, so what did they do?

They asked him to write a softback copy.

But if you're going to put it as a soft.

A soft copy, you.

You need something added for the people that bought the hardcover to now buy the soft cover.

So he did an epilogue in the first printing of the soft.

And I am still looking.

If anybody ever finds a first edition soft cover copy of Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman, please send it to me, please.

Daniel Wallace actually has one.

And in his three debates he had with with Bart Ehrman, he brought this up.

He shows Bart Ehrman his own book.

Because in the first if it.

What he actually has in the epilogue is he says.

Said in there that there is no Christian doctrine affected by any of these variant readings.

Well, that right there just dismantles his entire book.

The whole purpose of his book is to say you can't trust the Bible, and yet he's admitting that it doesn't affect any doctrine.

So they quickly came out with another printing of it to remove that one line.

Everything else was there except that line, right?

And so he, he made the mistake of telling the truth.

Right?

So we're dealing with 1% that's is meaningful and viable.

So the meaning changes.

We can't get back to the original.

His best argument is the fact that the Bible, that Jesus was a carpenter or the son of a carpenter, not a big deal.

So if we go with the 1% that.

Let's go back to the numbers we gave before.

There's 138, 200 Greek words, New Testament, there's 606,577 words that have variant readings.

So 1% of the 66,577 words.

Well, 1% is 65.77.

That's how many.

Using a conservative number we can't get to.

So we have 65 words out of 138,000 words that are concerned.

So that is.475%.

So it's under 0.5%.

That is a very small number.

Okay, but that's not the number to be using, okay?

Because the number that we should be using is different.

As we have gotten more manuscripts we have now, because we're not getting more variant readings, we now have the realistic number is not 1%, but 1/5 of 1%, which is 0.2.

So we take our 65,6577 words, multiply it by 0.2, okay?

Or.

Or, sorry, we, we.

We divide it by.

By that.

So what you end up with here is if you take 1 5th, the 65, 6, 500 words, okay?

And we're going to take 1 5th of that.

Then what we want to do is see from that.

Now compare that to the.

To the 138,000 words, right?

And word.

A fraction of a percentage, okay?

Such a small percentage of the number of words that have variant readings.

And so if, if we do this, what we end up seeing is that this is something that people don't want to, to think about when, when they're arguing for this.

What we want to do is if we, if we were to take our, the numbers, looking at it percentage wise, okay.

We're talking about such a small fraction that I would put this number up against CNN any day of the week.

It would be interesting if CNN could be accurate 1% of the time and yet everyone trusts them.

Right.

So I, I, I'm going to give you guys, before we bring in the shaken fist really quickly, I want to give you guys a chance to share, you know, see what, what your thoughts are with this.

Anything else that you feel we missed?

Nope, I have, I have none.

I concur.

Yeah, I concur too.

I just think the more technology advances, I think it's going to prove out this textual criticism and that the, the Bible indeed is true.

We've got BCGM that's doing that now.

And as AI progresses and, and I'm gonna lay a stake in the sand.

In the sand or plant a flag in the sand and say if we have an I AI that is truly unbiased, it will come to the conclusion that the Christian worldview is the one and only true worldview.

If it wasn't biased.

If it's not biased.

Yeah, that's the caveat.

All right.

Yeah.

And what, what Chuck just mentioned with cbgm, the computer based genealogical method, something they're doing now is where they're actually comparing families of manuscripts and their reliability and comparing textual variants with one another.

It's very comp, very fascinating stuff.

Yeah.

So let me, right before we bring in the shaken fist, let me just go to another commercial here for, for one of our supporters, which is Logos Bible Software.

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With that, let me bring in the shaken fist.

Welcome, sir.

Hello.

How are you all doing?

Good.

Is your.

Is.

Is.

See that it says here your name is Zach.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

All right, so this is much better.

Thank you for coming in so that we don't have to have the delay.

Yes.

So what questions do you have?

I mean, I could put them up, but.

Sorry, go on.

Yeah, I could put them up, but I'd rather you ask them.

Yeah, fair enough.

We're talking about the reliability of the Bible.

There's a lot of Genesis that has clear social, clear association with Genesis.

For Mesopotamian myths, for instance, most of the Mesopotamian myths include making people out of clay to till the soil.

The Enuma Elish even has Marduk using winds to overcome salt water tmr to separate it into half, to separate the sky from the sea, just like in Genesis 1.

Like this.

Also.

Sorry, if you want to comment on any of them, there is.

There's more, but.

Yeah.

Oh, there's a lot more you could do.

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah.

Are you, you.

Where are you from?

Just curiosity.

I'm from America, but I live in the uk.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, yo.

You live in the uk?

Yeah.

So did you gain the accent while you're there?

When I was a kid.

Okay.

All right.

You got the accent that just makes you sound smarter.

Right?

So.

No, no, not in Britain.

Not in Britain.

Not in Britain.

Well, in Britain, the American accent doesn't make you smell sound.

Sound smarter.

It just makes you sound dumber, right?

Yeah.

From the south.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But.

But in Britain, it's the other way around.

Everybody's dumb.

In the north, if you sound like me and you sound a bit northern, well, then you're dumb because you've got a dumb accent.

Okay.

Yeah.

Can you just imagine Chuck taking on a British accent with a Southern accent as well?

Like, hey, mate, all right, pour me up a pint.

So.

So let me ask you a question.

Do you follow.

You follow American politics at all?

Yeah.

Okay.

Do you.

Do you believe that Donald Trump was recently in the Middle East?

Yeah.

Do you know any of the events.

Events that went on with that?

Did he.

Did he meet with the.

The Crown Prince?

Yeah, he did.

He did a trade deal.

He did a weapons trade deal and lifted sanctions on Syria.

And yet, you know, like, the.

The New York Times spoke about that.

Right, Right.

What's this got to do with the price of fish?

No, we're gonna see.

Didn't the.

Didn't the.

Maybe the Boston Times and LA Times, you think they all spoke about it?

The difference is, is we're not talking about talking about one event written by a bunch of people at the same time.

We're talking about two different stories written literal, hundreds of years apart.

And in some cases, like the Eridu Genesis and the Sumerian King List, which mimics the age before and after the flood with like, what's it called?

These being written in stone.

So many fat.

Like some as.

Like as much as over a thousand years earlier.

Yeah.

It's not the same event.

It's not a good analogy.

Okay.

I didn't even finish the analogy.

Said it's not good.

A's philosophy.

Let me just let you know, the link to join is scrolling on the bottom there.

It's apologeticslive.com and just scroll down till you see the streamyard link.

And that's the link to join.

The reason I was asking you though, is because what it shows is that when you have an actual event, people.

People write about it and they have similarities in their writing.

That's not unusual.

Oh, so the.

So they both said that the sky was separated, that the sea was separated into half so the land could make from the sky.

So that makes it more true.

Well, it would show that they got it either from a similar source or it was something that they were eyewitness.

And.

And now why do you assume that those came first?

What evidence do you have for that?

We have the strata layers that they were found in, you know, like in places like Eridu.

Okay, and how does that prove that that's came first?

I mean, considering your earliest manuscript for the Old Testament comes from the second century ce.

Are you sure about that?

I mean, do we have name a manuscript older than the Dead Sea Scrolls then?

The Dead Sea Scrolls are, are the oldest.

Right.

Which is second century.

Nope.

B.C.

oh, you said B.C.

now.

Okay, I, I thought I did.

Sorry, I thought you said ce.

So if you didn't.

Yes, so.

Yeah, so.

So the fact though is that, you know, the, the fact that we find it in a different layer of rock is, if that's your argument, it means.

A lot considering the tells that they're from.

Considering that the way that they built buildings was they collapsed them in on themselves.

So we can say this is Earth City one, this is City two, this is Earth City three, and we can, we can tell from the strata layers and so, you know, other dating things, you know.

Yeah, and so, and we know that because of the bias of the archaeologists, correct?

No.

Oh, but we do.

All right, so radiometric dating has bias.

Well, radiometric dating does because one of the things.

Have you ever, have you ever submitted anything for metric dating?

No.

Okay, so what you have to do when you submit something for radiometric dating is you actually have to provide the assumed date that you think it is and you have to give some information about how you found it.

You know why that is?

Yeah, well, I actually have a friend who took something, two pieces of wood, the same exact pieces of wood.

Right.

And you know why, do you know why that is?

I noticed that you don't let me finish a sentence.

I've got adhd.

It's very hard.

Yeah, so do I, supposedly.

But I, I, I don't seem to be able to cut you off.

So, so the, the, a friend of mine took the same piece of wood and sent it in to be checked and got a 30,000 year difference because they, they, he gave the dates and they matched it right to that date.

Kind of amazing.

But the point that I was trying to make with it is the fact is that we do have, we, we.

Do have those dates though.

And I can tell you why the dates were wrong.

Go ahead.

So we don't breeze past that you ask for the dates because if you're not submitting the dates, you might using the right kind of isometric dating, you don't just use radiocarbon dating for everything.

So you have to submit from what you're saying, what you have to submit is like how deep down what strata layer it was in and how old you think it is, because then it should be tested by a different type of isometric dating.

So if you submit two different ages, they're going to do two different tests with two different isometric.

So they might do radiocarbon, they might do radio potassium, and those are going to come out with two, two very different dates.

Hence the reason that my friend purposely gave it within a range to get the same exact test done.

So the same exact type of test came, gave a different age of 30000 years, which was exactly the range.

Wood can be in, can have different chemicals, different atoms come in.

I can't remember offhand, but they can actually change the date of it.

Mm.

Now the thing is, we lost Mr.

Philosophy.

Well, going back to that when, when I have to give the date of, to when I think it is in order for them to determine what kind of testing they're gonna do.

It just seems kind of arbitrary.

It just seems like, well then they can come up with whatever they want.

Well, it's.

No, because the, the thing is that in a lot of people don't realize that certain of these dating methods can only go back so far.

Okay.

So there is a limit of what you'd be able to test with each one of them.

So if you are within a, if you're going to give it a hundred thousand years, you can't use the carbon dating.

Right.

You, you have to use a different type of dating method.

So each one of them have a range that they could be tested in.

So that's why.

Yeah, it's about the half life of the one isotope degrade, fading into another.

Correct.

And it's about the half life of how long that takes.

Yeah, you know, I, I do recall Andrew, you talking about that story, but then also Jason Lyle talking about when they, they watched a volcano erupt.

They waited until the rocks hardened, they took the harden, they took the rocks, send them in to be dated.

And knowing when these rocks formed.

The.

Dates that came back on these rocks were millions of years old.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can't really radio carbon.

You can't really radio date anything that's that like you've just watched a volcano happen.

There's nothing you can radio carbon date.

Sorry, I keep on saying radiocarbon and a habit.

There's nothing you can isometrically date for something that just happened.

You're not going to get a correct answer and they will be wildly off because of it.

But doesn't that just show the flaw?

No, it shows, no, it shows that the half life of atoms is too long or too short for it to be viable as a test.

Yeah.

So, so let's, I want to get back to the, to your original argument.

You, you assume that the, this one is older.

These myths are older.

Have you, have you actually read each of these myths?

Yes.

You have?

Yes.

Okay.

That's why I asked the question.

Have you read the ones regarding the New Testament, like with Christ and all the different myths, Egyptian myths, that prophesied that they're, you know, the different gods that had 12 disciples that were born on December 25 that were called the Son of God and things like that?

No, because I, I studied Mesopotamian myths, not Egyptian myths.

Okay.

Because one of the things that I've, I find with, with in both cases is that is it weird that the.

Egyptians don't have a flood?

Sorry.

Oh, no, they do.

They do because the flood actually happened.

That's why they have the myths.

Because it was a real event and they.

So what's the, what's this, what's the Egyptian flood myth then?

You caught me off guard with the.

With it, because as far as I'm concerned, there isn't one.

It's like the Chinese flood myth is about the taming of the Yellow and the Yangtze river by a civil servant called you.

Not, not like worldwide flood myth in the slightest.

No.

But, but it, but yet you have.

I mean, why would you have myths of a flood all over the world?

The Yellow and the Yangtze river were extremely violent rivers and would destroy things all the time.

I noticed you didn't answer my question.

What was your question then?

I thought I did, yeah.

You.

Because you're, you're so fast to talk.

You didn't hear it.

I can't help it.

It's really hard to not.

Why, why are there flood myths all over the world?

Because a lot of flood myths all over the world also come from after Christian settlers came.

Well, you're arguing they came beforehand.

You're saying that they were first in China.

You're, you do you, you, you said that the, the proof that that was earlier was that these myths were earlier and therefore the Bible copied them.

And now you're saying that the reason we have them all over the world is because the Bible was written.

You do realize that all over the world is more than just Mesopotamia and China, right?

This aboriginal myth that started after European settlers went over.

There's African flood myths that happened after Europe.

And I'm asking why are there all.

These myths American in world?

The North American Indian tribes and Native American tribes that have flood myths that came from after European settlers went over.

I am not talking about those.

I was talking about the Chinese flood myth and the Mesopotamian flood myths.

That's not all over the world.

But I'm asking the question why there are ones.

European settlers.

So the European.

So, so the Bible is why we have flood myth myths.

Right, but that doesn't mean that they made the myths on their own, is it?

It means that Europeans came over and then they stole myths from them.

But you're, but you're saying there were myths before there was a Bible.

Well, of course there was myths before there was the Bible.

We just can't read some of them.

So then you read, we can't read.

Anything from the Indus Valley, we can't decipher anything from Gobekli Tepe, but cave paintings that tell stories that come from tens of thousands of years ago.

Okay, but we can't sit there and then say that the reason that we have these myths is because of the Bible.

But the myths occurred before the Bible.

Those are mutually exclusive.

I didn't say the whole myths did.

I said bits of the Mesopotamian myths were taken for bits of Genesis.

So let's stop saying that.

I'm saying they're taking the whole cloth and all this stuff.

I'm also not saying, saying.

I'm also not saying that all of these exist because of the Bible.

I'm saying that European settlers went over and told people things, you know, the Silk, the things like the Silk Road and people, you know, going over with guns and forcing people to believe what you believe, like we did with the Incas and the Mayans is really conducive, you know, to making myths spread.

Right.

And that's completely different than a Levantine people coming out of Egypt because they were chased out, because they were, because I think they were the Hyksos.

And then they get chased out of the, into the Levant and live with a group of the people called the Apiru people.

And then what?

They, they take myths from around them to slowly and peacefully take over the Levant.

And we have evidence for all of that.

And it's more logical to just believe that this was a real event that occurred.

Could you point to anywhere in the strata where there's a worldwide flood?

I don't think you can.

Can.

Sure you can.

Grand Canyon.

That isn't, that isn't a strata across the world.

How do you explain rocks that go in a 90 degree angle for quite a distance?

It's called erosion.

You get wind.

No no, no, that would be very level.

That would, that wouldn't be a 90 degree angle.

Yeah, but that goes up.

The planet has probably been around for a couple billion years.

I just.

It can take a while.

I want folks to, to notice when you.

This, this is.

And Chuck's gonna laugh because he's gonna be like, hey, preup.

But I, I'm doing this on purpose.

Chuck.

I want you guys to notice when you argue with the evidence, right?

What's he doing?

He's ignoring anything I give him and just going, well, we.

That doesn't matter because this is what confirmation bias does.

It's.

You do realize you didn't even answer my first question.

You just, you just gave a wrong answer and then asserted that.

That.

That's why I know the answer.

Over the entire world, do we find in the strata a flood?

And you said the Grand Canyon.

That's why I ignored it.

No, because you're ignoring the evidence that is in the Grand Canyon, because that.

Isn'T the question I asked.

Is, is these.

Are there layers of strata in the Grand Canyon?

Is there rock?

Let me ask you this.

Is there strata over the world that shows a worldwide flood?

You would be able to point to that and fight for it.

For as voraciously as you are for the Grand Canyon is considering you are not doing that.

Is there shows.

Not even you can show anywhere that we have a strata all over the world that shows there was a worldwide flood.

Okay, so is there minerals that occur from the Grand Canyon in other parts of Arizona that show that there would have been a great flood?

Men, we're still ignoring the fact that you have no, you have no strata across the world to show a worldwide flood.

Well, we also have no strata that exists in the, in the arc, in the designs that you see in textbooks of the way the strata should be, that doesn't exist anywhere in the world.

Because in textbooks, we're not teaching them exactly as things are.

Because as you progress through the grades and you progress into college, you learn more and more things, and then they start.

Start sending you out in the field and they go, hey, by the way, look at how this is here.

If you look at this particular situation, you can see that this is why it happened here.

Hey, did everyone catch that?

Keep on dodging the question.

I hope everyone just heard that he just admitted that what the textbooks do is indoctrinate you with things that aren't true.

And you go out and do the research and find out what's true.

Are you going to teach a 5 year old PhD geology.

I'm not going to teach them things that aren't true just so that we could later they could learn it on their own.

Completely lied to them.

They just tell them the whole truth.

Because you've got to build the bigger facts upon smaller bricks.

You start with small things and then you build out.

I love when learning those.

I watched a Discovery Channel with all these scientists and they were talking about the minerals in the Grand Canyon and they realized there had to have been a really great flood to get the minerals that spread as far as as they did into Arizona.

And they, they had to.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that two to three was it.

So now.

So just.

I'm going to mute him so I could finish a sentence.

And so the neat thing about it was that in the documentary what they ended up doing was pointing out, but this couldn't have been a global flood because all the evidence that they were saying pointed to a global flood.

But when you have confirmation bias, as Zach has here, you ignore the evidence for the conclusion.

Go ahead, Zach.

You've muted me.

Yes, because you kept interrupting and you.

Said go ahead, but you got me muted.

That was what I was saying.

I was mid sentence when you interrupted.

Yeah, I know I was, I wasn't trying to do that.

I was just.

You said, go ahead.

I thought you pressed the muted button twice.

I was just letting you know, that's all.

Okay, so the, the thing is that.

You still haven't demonstrated where anywhere any strata shows a worldwide flood across the.

Entire world because there's no evidence you will accept.

Like I was trying to say, sometime around the dinosaur era, I can't remember the exact years because I was asking about Mesopotamian myths and I wasn't trying to talk about Triassic and Jurassic geology, but America, half the middle of America, used to be underwater.

So there's a good way to think that that might have happened.

How do you know that's true?

I'm not a geologist.

I came on to talk about Mesopotamian myths.

Yeah, so, so the first off, you're spouting a lot of things, but how do you know it's true?

What's your, your, what's your authority for that?

And how do you know it's true?

You don't even know most of the books of the Bible and you tell me that like I, I have confirmation bias because I, I'm listening to books.

I could tell you exactly who wrote the Bible.

God did.

Oh, God did.

God wrote all of it.

Did he?

Yes.

Did he.

Did he write all the.

Did he write all the contradictions as well?

What contradictions?

Can you name one?

Okay.

I mean, the Genesis 1 story to Genesis, for one.

Sure, go ahead.

What's.

What's the contradiction?

The order that things are made in.

What's.

What's the order difference?

I don't have them to hand because that wasn't what I came on to talk about.

But you said that's a proof of a contradiction, so you shouldn't.

Contradiction.

In Genesis 1, animals are made before Adam because Adam is made on the sixth day and animals are like, what, the fifth?

And then on Genesis 2, animals are made after Adam because Adam then names them.

So Adam is.

No, the.

The animals are made before him so that he can name them.

No, in Genesis 1, in Genesis 2, Adam says, I'm lonely.

So God then makes all the animals.

No, no, God makes the woman after he names all the animals.

And the reason he named all the animals was to show that it says.

That he makes all the animals.

So after he makes Adam, he just does.

He just does.

You can't.

You just don't know where.

Because that's not what it says.

All right, then.

So, you know, this is the thing.

So.

So you have.

On the sixth day, he created cattle and.

And some of the animals and man on that day, but there were other animals named before.

But on the sixth day, he is.

Man gives the names to the cattle and the birds in the sky.

So Genesis 2:15, right?

To Genesis 2:20.

Yeah.

That is where it says the animals were made after Adam.

So.

So very specifically, it said, the Lord said, it is good for the man, not it is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him.

Now, the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and the birds in the sky.

He brought them to the man to see what he would name them.

And whatever the man called each living creature, that was his name.

And what did he make?

What was the.

What was.

The only thing he made after that was a woman.

Right.

But that.

It.

So, so.

So the point is that he created all the animals.

Dude.

No, it says in Genesis makes man, that makes the animals, then he makes woman.

That's not what happens.

It is.

What.

It's.

It's.

It's a.

It's really a simple.

This is a beautiful example of confirmation bias.

It says here that the animals existed already.

He named them.

He named them.

They were already there.

He named them.

What's the context?

The context is about Making the woman.

God formed them out of the ground.

Ground.

When did he form a mount of the ground?

Did it say after?

No, that's not what it says.

Yes, it is.

I'm looking at it right now.

Look at Genesis 2:15 to 20.

We won't just look at it.

We will show it.

Okay?

So that everyone could see exactly what.

The new international version.

It was just the first one.

That happens to be what I have coming up.

So here you go.

So what it says in verse 18 is then the Lord God.

God said, it is not good for man to be alone.

I will make a suitable helper for him.

So who is the suitable helper?

Hold on.

Who is the suitable helper in this context?

He hasn't maimed him yet because he's making the animals first.

He.

Stop with your confirmation bias.

I'm not.

I'm looking at what it says.

Okay, the context.

As it says, verse 22, he found no helper.

And then he.

And then he caused the man.

If you're going to keep interrupting, I'll mute.

Mute you.

I'm just.

Just verse 22, we have the context.

The Lord fashioned a woman out of the rib of man.

Why did you do it after he makes animals.

Okay, so verse 19.

Out of the ground, the Lord had formed the animal.

The.

The beasts of the field.

Now you're saying that this says after.

Where?

Where do you see the word after he made Adam?

Because it comes after he makes Adam.

That has.

No, that is not rational at all.

How isn't it?

Because he's.

He's 15.

It's before verse 19.

That's your argument.

So you.

You.

So, so people, when they speak, never say something that.

That is a past tense thing according to you?

Ever.

Where does it sweep?

Where does it swap between past and present?

Present tense.

Where's it swap tenses?

You're taking it out of context to make your argument.

I'm reading it in order.

Yeah, but there's nowhere where it's not in order.

Yes, it is.

I'm reading it from 15 to.

From now.

From 15 to 22.

To where?

So it says, then the Lord God.

Then the Lord God said, it is not good for man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him.

Out of.

Out of the ground.

The Lord formed every beast of the field, every bird of the sky, and.

And brought them to man.

So because man was already there, so he makes the animals afterwards.

That's not what it says.

It doesn't.

It does not say that.

How?

Because he.

He had Already made them.

He brings them to the man so that he can name him.

Listen to the context.

Listen to the context.

The man gives them names to all the cattle, the birds, the beasts.

And Adam was and was not found a suitable helper for him.

Yeah, because it's a sequential story.

Only if you have to make it that way, which you have to for your art.

Just going, hey, I know you.

I know you're reading the verses and order, but that's not the way they're meant to be read.

Yeah, because the context.

The.

The con.

The purpose of this is not about the animals in the order.

That's chapter one.

The.

The focus here is on the creation of the.

Of woman.

And the whole reason he names the animals is to realize that there's.

They have suitable helpers and he doesn't.

That's the.

That's the context.

So what you have here is.

You have the animals already existing.

There's nothing that says they were created afterwards.

Because what you have is verses.

Nothing that says they were created beforehand either.

Yes, there is.

Chapter one.

Chapter one directly contradicts chapter two.

What do you want about.

Even the way that is different.

Zach, I realize that you hate God and therefore you can't accept what his word actually says.

I get it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I hate God.

Well, sure.

I want God.

God never spoke to me.

He is right here.

And you're denying it.

Yeah, yeah, you see, There you go.

There's the proof.

Okay?

God is speaking right here.

And you are.

You're doing.

You're doing everything you can to deny what God actually said to prove your hatred for God.

How?

I'm reading it in order.

You're reading it out of context.

Say that he made it beforehand.

There's nothing in that context that says that in the slightest.

There's nothing that says it was created afterwards either.

So it's shading.

Out of order to any bit.

It's saying.

It's saying out of the ground, the Lord formed all the beasts.

That is not an order.

There's not an order there.

Your hatred for God, doesn't it.

It says that he made them.

Your hatred for God is why you can't see this now.

I.

I do.

I do have to be fair.

Like, if you keep on saying my hatred for God, I'm gonna get antagonistic.

That's not very nice.

Well, Andrew.

Andrew, I don't like religion.

I don't hate God.

Looking at.

Looking at some things.

I just do want to say before you do.

I.

We.

We got to go To a philosophy too.

So.

And we're gonna.

I'll be quick with this because we're talking about some of this, the.

The order here.

And Zach mentioned, you know, where is there a past tense?

Looking up some of this passage which I have right here, the esv.

And then some answers in Genesis types work that they've done where they actually dig into what the Hebrew talks about and how the Hebrew is using words.

And if you actually look in verse 19 of the ESV, it actually says, now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed.

So it give.

It does give a past tense that he had already made these before man.

So which Bible should we listen to then?

Or do we just pick and choose which verses from which additions?

We look at the.

The Hebrew on up now.

So.

So the.

The fact is.

And you see this, even you want.

You see it right here in the one that you mentioned.

This word right here, formed.

That's a past tense word.

That.

That means they were already.

They already existed.

Right?

Is formed, means he made.

He made in present tense.

It does in biblical Hebrew.

Huh?

It does in biblical Hebrew because it's using different language.

Are you fluent in biblical Hebrew?

I mean, I'm learning, so I'm spotty.

Hey, it's better than most people.

Don't go at me.

Well, I grew up speaking Hebrew.

Well, that's good for you.

But not everybody did.

Most people don't even bother to, like, read these things or learn stuff.

Don't.

Don't deride me for learning to learn Hebrew.

That's unfair.

Well, when you say something that's wrong, why wouldn't I?

I mean, if you say son of ignorance because of your shoddiness, then why.

You know, so you just mean to everyone you see as wrong.

No, you said you want to be aggressive, so I'm just being.

No, I said I was going to be aggressive.

If you keep on saying I hate God when I don't.

Well, that's what God says.

God says you suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

Why can't I agree with God?

He knows everything.

I don't.

Isn't the same as saying I hate God.

Well, he says you do.

Is that.

Yeah.

So let's put it this way.

So, Zach, let's try to get.

I won't be here for the next two weeks, but in June, would you.

You.

Would you come in?

You know, would you want to come in so we can give a.

A longer period of time for discussion?

Yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

I'll think about it.

All right.

So so let us, let us know if you know which.

Which Thursday night works for you so we can give more time so that you could, you know, it'd be easier that way you can flesh out your arguments a little bit better.

So there.

A way to contact me is right there.

Info striving for eternity dot com.

Info striving for eternity dot com.

Because I do have to.

I do want to make sure we give some time for a philosopher.

A philosopher, no worries.

I've got to get off anyway.

I'm in Britain.

It's like nearly 3 o' clock in the morning.

Oh, dude.

Get some sleep.

Well, that's why I was asking about how much longer it was going to be, but like.

Well, that's why.

So it'll be much better if we.

If we start it right at.

At the beginning of the show.

I wasn't expecting to come on.

I was just saying I much prefer.

You do because that way we can have a better dialogue back and forth.

Okay, good.

Well, I hope to see you again.

Right.

All right.

Thanks, mate.

All right, let's bring in A's philosophy.

I don't know your real name, but you got a lot of stars there.

What's your name?

Yeah, my.

I just go.

It's my YouTube title.

If you want to call that Ace Philosophy, just go by that.

So you don't have.

Right.

You don't have a name.

No, that's okay.

My name is Anthony.

Anthony.

Where the A comes from?

Okay.

I don't know what it is about Anthony, but everyone always calls me Anthony.

Like, people have a trouble with Andrew and Anthony.

Well, you know what?

Everyone calls me Andrew.

I know.

Yeah.

I've had, I've had Anthony's.

They'd have the same thing.

I don't know what it is.

I.

Right.

A lot of people call me Andrew for some reason.

So it's.

That's.

That's interesting.

Well, if you.

If you know, Andrew means manly, so maybe, Maybe they just think you look manly, man.

I.

I'm gonna admit, I don't think that's the case.

All right, so what I like anyways.

Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead.

So I'm a Christian, but.

And I used to come at this from a more fundamentalist viewpoint, but, you know, the title of the show is Can We Trust the Bible.

Yeah.

I've come to the thought, the idea that someone can be a true Christian, love God, love Jesus, and yet at the same time entertain doubts about the inerrancy of scripture.

So I wanted to kind of toss that around.

Yeah.

No, that's a good point.

Point.

I think that there's a lot of times Christians have doubt.

I'll give you, for instance, with me.

And so when I became a Christian and I became a Christian out of Judaism, so when I became a Christian, first off, I had to live a secret Christian life because I couldn't let my parents know because they were, they were going to kick me out of the house and that'd be it.

The, the thing was, is, you know, my.

As my background being in more the sciences, I still as a Christian was looking to disprove the Bible.

When I was reading the Bible, I actually, I came up with the idea of the easiest way to prove that the Bible was something that man made up would be in math.

One of the things I know about, if you look at different fictitious books that cover large periods of history, people get their math wrong.

So and so was born then.

So and so is like at the ages.

So I actually ran all the numbers to see if I could find one person that wasn't in Noah's.

Noah and his children that live beyond the flood.

Because if I could get someone that lives beyond the flood, because I figured that would be something that would.

So I, you know, I was somewhat having some doubts in that way.

And I was going through and I did all the calculations.

I thought I got close.

Methuselah was pretty close.

That's Noah's grandfather.

He would have died the same year as the flood.

So maybe he would have been even older if there wasn't a flood.

We don't know.

But he might have died the same year as the flood.

And so, you know, so I, I don't think there's necessarily that doubt is bad.

It's what we do with it and, and how we doubt.

I think that if doubt causes us to study the scriptures and examine things, I think that that's a good thing.

I think that that becomes something that strengthens our faith.

But if we put too much emphasis on the doubt, that could be a problem.

Let me, I'll open up to Drew and Chuck, see if you guys have any, any thoughts or disagree with me.

I mean, the.

Probably the first thing I would say is, you know, I understand having doubts, right?

Is what I'm reading true?

Is what I'm learning about God true?

But that gets actually to the, to the core of it, right?

What is truth?

And what is going to be my ultimate standard of truth?

If I, if I am to learn of God, then where shall I go to learn of God?

Or where Shall I go?

That will tell me of Christ and of salvation.

So we have to have an ultimate standard by which to measure those things.

And so when we look at Scripture and we see the promises of God, the faithfulness of God to His people, Christ who came, who bore our sin, right.

The debt that we owed, he took that upon Himself for us, living the life that we could not live, going to the cross, cross in our place, so that we may, in our repentance of our sin and in our faith in Christ, be reconciled unto God.

Right.

There is no other place where I can go that is going to give me that, that hope and assurance of salvation so that I may come to know God.

So I understand your doubts, but I want to encourage you that we have an ultimate, an ultimate standard, an objective standard.

And that is God's word that he has given to us to show us his faithfulness, his promises, how we are to come to him.

And, and also, most importantly, His Son who came to stand in our place so that we may be reconciled to this, to this one holy God.

And, and just for the record, Drew, I don't know that Anthony said he had the doubts.

I do.

Oh, you do.

Okay, just wanted to clarify.

So good.

Okay.

I didn't.

Yeah, I'd like to jump.

And I can remember back in, way, way back in the 90s, we had things called chat rooms and you would have like a Christian chat room and an atheist chat room.

Right.

And so one time I was in the Christian chat room and I was a Christian at the time.

And then some atheists came in spouting.

What we touched on earlier is that Jesus was just a copy of the dying and rising gods, you know, Mithras and Horus and all that, this.

And it would lay all these, these points out that was just almost perfect parallels of Christ.

And to me at that time was a, was a gut punch.

And I was like, wow, is this like really true?

And so, but as being a truly a born again believer, it didn't cause me to go away from the faith.

It motivated me to dig in and find out what is the truth about what these people are saying.

And then once I found out what the actual writings of these dying and rising gods were, they were no, nowhere close to what Christ is, what his, what the narrative of the Gospels is, are so, so yeah, if someone is not truly born again, I think, I think, you know, doubts can.

I think this was godless granny.

I think this was her issue.

She came across some info that caused her to have doubts and she walked away from the faith.

I know for me, it caused me to dig in deeper and I found the truth of it and it actually strengthened my faith.

Faith greater.

Yeah.

And like you said, godless granny.

I mean, and when she was on this show, she gave all these things to prove she was a Christian.

I used to do a library and I taught and I did this and that and the other.

And, and it was all the things.

She never was a Christian.

So let me, let me say this.

If you, if you're having doubt, not just, just Anthony, like director, you let me broaden it to anyone listening.

A lot of people have.

Have doubt.

There's a couple reasons.

There's some people who have doubt because there's sin in their life and they feel guilt.

They know what they're doing is wrong.

And the doubt is they may be a believer, but they don't feel like a believer because they're, they know that guilty feeling is telling they.

They're doing something wrong.

Wrong.

There's some people who have doubt because they're not saved.

That was godless grandma.

She was doing, doing all these things.

She's doing all the stuff that she thinks are earning her salvation or proving she's a Christian and she's arguing for the fact of, you know, like that proves it.

And yet the fact that she walked away, according to First John 2:19, the fact that she walked away from the faith is the proof she never had it in the first place.

So the question is one, what do you do with your doubt?

Now Michael Smith is asking, is doubt a sin?

I don't think it is a sin, Matthew.

I said, Michael.

Sorry.

Matthew.

Matthew.

I don't think it's a sin.

However, the question is why are we doubting and what we're, what we do with the doubt.

And so for a lot of people that there's sin in their life, they are getting that guilty feeling.

Here's the question I usually ask Anthony of people.

Do you hate the sin that you do or do you hate the consequence of the sin that you do?

And there's a big difference between those two.

An unbeliever hates the consequence.

The consequence of that guilty feeling.

The consequence of someone found them out.

The consequence that someone might find them out.

Okay, but it's, it's generally they don't like that guilty feeling.

But the true believer hates the sin because that's what Christ died for.

What put Christ on the cross was that you and I broke his law and we rightly deserved eternity in a lake of fire.

But Christ came to earth and took our punishment upon Himself.

It is us who rightly deserved that punishment, and he took it for us.

So it causes me to hate the sin that I do.

Do I still do it?

Well, yeah, I do sometimes.

But the thing is, I hate this.

Like, there are times where I.

Where I'm sinning.

I know what I'm doing is wrong, and I hate it because this is what Christ died for.

It's not the consequence as much as it is the sin itself.

And I can't speak for you, this is something for you to think within your own heart.

But, you know, I don't know if this is actually the question you're asking, Anthony, but for a lot of people out listening, it probably is.

Is the idea of, how do I know that I'm really saved?

Because that's where the people go with their doubt and where Matthew, like, with the sin of is it a sin to doubt?

I think doubt could be a sin, but it doesn't.

It isn't always a sin.

But I think the question really, if it.

If the question you're asking is how do I know I'm saved?

Then I would say, say, do you love.

Do you hate your sin or do you hate the consequences of it?

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

And I was.

I see.

I see The.

The time frame is.

Is 8 to 10pm Eastern.

I don't know, like, if you ever go longer than that, but often.

Oh, you do.

Okay.

Especially when someone comes in.

When someone comes in and.

And, you know, I don't know what it is.

Everyone likes to come in in the last half hour of the show and then go.

That's like.

That's why I.

I asked Zach if he could come in so we come in early and spend more time with him.

And.

And you'd be welcome to do that, too.

But, yeah, we can go.

We definitely can go a bit longer.

Okay.

And maybe.

Maybe also in the future, I'll look and try to join in early.

The reason I came in late was because I just saw it late.

So I guess my.

My YouTube algorithm just recommended to me.

I thought I was like, oh, okay, interesting.

But.

Well, you got to come in here every Thursday night, See, and, you know, not miss a show.

Well, yeah, I could try that.

But I actually, I disagree with you all on.

On a lot of things.

Like, and I don't.

I don't try to be rude.

I used to kind of think the way you do, but there's been a.

I want to.

I guess there's a number of ways I could respond to all the points you made.

Well, there's just a lot of, a lot of.

I don't think it's necessarily a person can just think that it's true.

That.

And I'll put it this way, that the Bible just has errors and thus there are portions of the Bible that need to be rejected.

Like if you read the textual critics and you find out, yes, okay, there's an issue here.

Then the honest thing to do is to say I need to reject that and not believe it.

Well, so let me make sure I understand what you're saying so I don't misrepresent it.

So I'm going to rephrase it.

Tell me if I'm right.

You're saying that if we have different textural variances, are you saying we should just reject those portions of Scripture that have variances?

No, I'm not.

Well, no, what I'm trying to say is if it is, if it is proven in some rational, logical, fact based way that some portion of Scripture is either illegitimate or incorrect in some way or false by scholarship or analysis, then the honest thing to do, and I think God would want us to do this, is to reject what's being said there.

Could you, could you give us an example?

I'll give an example on the same page of like, what would textual scholarship say that we should reject this?

Well, I think you did.

You gave one actually Drew, in the beginning.

Right.

Adultery.

Yeah.

So you have the woman caught in adultery.

And the reason we reject that as, you know, the, the truth, the truth of it is, could have, I mean, could the story have happened?

It's possible.

Do we see that as scripture?

No, because.

And the reason being for folks that don't know you brought it up, but we, we never really addressed it.

So the, the, the story of the woman caught an adultery appears in different, in different books, in different sections, in different, you know, like, so it moves around and it's not in the earliest copies.

Right.

And same with the, the long ending of Mark, the.

We see different manuscripts that have a short ending and, and there's, there's actually four different endings to Mark 16.

And so I would, if this is what Anthony's saying, I would reject that.

The account of the, the woman caught in adultery and the long ending of Mark, I reject those as being part of the canon.

Yeah.

Now much of what it teaches we see elsewhere in the Scripture.

I mean, the only.

Yeah, yeah.

The only thing taught in the long ending of Mark that you don't see elsewhere in Scripture would be the drinking of poison.

Yeah.

The biting of a snake and you won't be hurt.

Well, that actually happened with Paul, but it's not teaching that as a, like, I wouldn't accept that as.

Yeah, it's not an imperative.

It's not an imperative that, oh, I can play with snakes.

I'm not going to get bit.

So, Anthony, I don't know if that, if I answered that rightly from what you were thinking, and if not, you're welcome to correct.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Those are exactly the kind of examples I'm thinking about.

I can absolutely see a, a person thinking to himself or herself that, you know, there are these manuscripts, some like just talking about the long en mark.

Some manuscripts have the, the, the, the short ending at verse eight.

Some of them have the, the final verses nine to 20.

And just thinking to yourself, well, what do I believe?

You know, something's got to be wrong here.

So just, it's a question that arises like if this, if there's an error here or a problem here, like that leaves open the idea that maybe elsewhere there are other issues and, and we can't just presuppose any basically that everything is just the word of God.

Well, I think so.

So you're right.

We do, we do the examination and it is hard because most people don't.

So a lot of people don't have the apparatuses to do the work, let alone the knowledge of Greek.

I, I would argue you don't necessarily have to know Greek.

If you have, I mean, you, you could be someone that doesn't know Greek.

You just look at the different readings and go, that letter is different.

Right.

And not know what it says.

But it'd be a lot harder.

But there is a lot more coming out that is more, you know, more tools coming out that can help someone to understand this stuff.

Stuff.

The main thing though is even if we have different variant readings, the meaning isn't.

And, and that's.

I don't know when you came in, but earlier in the show I was going through to show the meaning hasn't changed of the Bible.

I mean, there may be some things that, whether Jesus was a carpenter or the son of a carpenter, it's not a big deal.

Both could be true technically and would be common in that, that day and age, but I would, I might not be able to be dogmatic that he was a carpenter because there is some variances there, but that doesn't change the meaning of the message of the Bible.

You get my Point.

Yeah, because.

Because when we look at.

Yeah, go ahead.

I cut you off there, I think.

Go ahead.

I'm actually having technical difficulties.

I don't know what's going on.

I think my Internet connection is really bad, what you're saying.

I just want you to be aware of that.

If I'm cutting out or anything, it just sounds choppy and, and my end.

But okay.

Yeah, but I'm hearing your responses, right?

I guess an idea I wanted to bounce off of you is are you all like pre suffers, if I'm not mistaken?

Go ahead, Chuck, why don't you answer for all of us?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, absolutely, positively.

Okay.

Maybe I would be me.

Go ahead.

Go ahead.

Sorry.

Yeah.

To me, the precept position is kind of dangerous in the sense that if there is an error, and I'm not saying that there is necessarily, but if there is an error, your, Your, your epistemological foundation blinds you to that truth.

And we can't, you know, fix these problems with that approach.

So why should we?

Like you were when you were talking with Zach, he.

One of your responses was because.

Because that's what God said.

And he asked you what do you mean?

He's like, well, God said that in this verse.

So your, Your priest.

So to a skeptic, he doesn't come at with the same approach that the Bible is the.

Like a book written by God.

God.

So that might not be effective to change his mind.

Let me, I'm going to let Chuck answer your question, but I'm just going to say, actually, if you noticed, Zach came to the scripture with his presupposition, Right?

His presupposition is that there was a contradiction and even though the text doesn't have one, he's ignoring the context to make it say something.

It.

He's trying to focus on something that's a minor thing to make it the major thing so that he can show there's a contradiction.

So he actually is reading it with his presupposition.

But that wasn't really your question.

So I'm going to let Chuck, because I know he, he wants to answer this one.

Thank you so much.

So we understand that the word powerful and that does not return void.

And so we understand that if we quote scripture and to someone and the Holy Spirit, Spirit works through the means of that quoting of the scripture, hearts and minds can be changed.

And so I would say that's my short answer.

Not that we, we don't deal with other types of apologetics, but just that's my short Answer to what?

Your question or to your challenge?

And what you saw with Zach is, you know, what's the authority?

My authority is God's word.

Now, I will admit, and this.

And it probably drove Chuck nuts to listen.

Am I right, Chuck?

A little bit.

I.

I was purposely.

He wants to argue evidence, and I purposely did that.

And I was gonna end before the show ended.

I wanted to talk about this.

I purposely did that to show the confirmation bias, because what we do here in Apologetics Live is not just do, apologize, show it.

I actually wanted to because of the way Zach came in and the way he was arguing.

I wanted to be able for folks to see why we shouldn't argue based on evidence, because what was he doing?

He's like, well, I got this evidence.

Okay, well, I got this evidence.

Well, now whose evidence is better?

Well, he.

He.

He, like the.

The thing that I actually know because I was actually in the place in Israel, you know, I mentioned the biasness of archaeologists, and he denies that they have that.

And yet I was in where Jericho is to where they literally, they.

They.

The archaeologists had dug up and discovered that the Bible actually supported this.

And you know what they did?

They filled in an area that they had dug up.

They actually filled it back in.

So they covered up the evidence that supported the Bible and then said, well, it doesn't support the Bible.

And they changed the.

The date of things.

And so the.

The thing that you end up seeing is that when you argue evidence for evidence, it's, well, my evidence beats your evidence.

And.

And you never actually get anywhere.

You saw a difference.

When I start using Scripture, he wants to get argumentative.

He wants to.

He.

You know why?

Because he can't answer what God says.

See, if it's just me speaking, he could say it.

And it's like, well, that's fine.

It's me against him, but when it's him against God, he doesn't like that.

That.

And now he's gonna.

He's gonna change his way of dealing with it.

Well, if I'm giving you what God says, it doesn't matter that you don't believe God said it, but you're gonna get upset with me just for saying this is what God said.

Well, God said it, I didn't say it.

Your arguments with him, not me.

And, and so, you know, I.

I will admit I was purposely using a evidential type of argument, which drove Chuck nuts.

Chuck, I'm sure, wanted to jump in there and.

And.

And Johnny is asking, are you a presuppositionalist Andrew, I, I would be.

Maybe there's a new term if you guys who are regular here go back and if you're not, you go back to ones we.

We.

I was on a, on, on Adam Parker's podcast where he had four different guys giving an evidential view, classical view, a presuppositional view and a cumulative view.

And you know, I do, I could gravitate easily to the cumulative view.

I think that there's an interesting idea with the way that one is where you're, you're using the evidence, you're using the precept at different times in different ways.

I won't use evidence to prove God exists and he has spoken.

Those are my presuppositions.

I would say that what you saw with a guy like Zach is he's arguing that the Bible's not true and there's all these problems and yet he's using his God given ability to reason to make those arguments.

So his worldview doesn't make any sense unless God exists.

Right.

And, and then as we mentioned earlier, why does everyone argue against the God of the Bible?

I mean, they can accept any godless grandma can accept any God except the Christian God because that's the God that actually exists that they hate and want to suppress.

Right.

So I don't know if that answers the question full.

And well, I'll just break in and add.

Yeah, those are interesting answers.

And again, if my audio is bad, just let me know.

Yeah, it seems like there's a delay, so.

Sorry.

Go ahead, Anthony.

I'm sorry, I, I think I might have to, I'm.

Whatever reason, I'm having connectivity issues at this time.

Okay.

Well, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to really continue much longer.

Let's do this.

Why don't you.

I won't be here in the next two weeks and I'll, I'll mention what's going to be on for next week.

But if you come back in in June and come in earlier, we're here on Thursday nights though we won't be here two weeks from tonight.

So yeah, if you come back in and we can.

One conversation I'd like to have is why you don't have to answer this now or if you want to give a short answer before I leave, I'll listen.

But why should we believe the Bible is a divinely inspired text?

And when I say the Bible, I mean in its current form, the current canon and all that, as opposed to just a historical record that is basically tantamount to like a biography, I don't know, Caesar or Plato or something like that.

Why can't, why should we approach it as something that's like more than just something that some people wrote down that gives us facts about history so it's something to talk about.

Yeah, we could.

And let me just, let me give you the answer quickly just so you have.

But we could do it in more depth.

2nd Timothy 3.

16 says, All Scripture is breathed out or inspired, breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for proof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.

If scripture is the breath of God, the spoken word of God, that's this word for inspired never existed before in Greek.

Paul creates a, a word God breathed.

That's how you hear my words, because I'm breathing them out.

If scripture is the very word of God and God cannot sin, God cannot be wrong, then the word of God must be right, it must be accurate.

Now you're saying in our current form and that would be a longer conversation, but at least maybe I can help with the initial part of it.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

Thank.

Yeah, thank you for having me on and I look forward to future dialogue.

So thank you.

Good.

Yeah.

You're welcome to come back.

Chuck.

I know you wanted to say something, so I'll let you close that out.

Thank you.

Bye.

Thanks.

One thing I wanted to say is that also when we quote, quote the word to unbelievers, it, and especially some certain verses, it, it shuts the mouth.

It stops the sinner from justifying themselves.

And the second thing, and just a quick caveat, I would argue that presuppositional is evidence based.

It's just a different type of evidence.

Right.

It's evidence that it's a transcendental in nature.

And so I have an.

My pinned post on my X account which is Atheist Nightmares is titled the Biblical God is.

And so it goes through this, this, through this transcendental evidence for that we can trust the biblical worldview.

So let me address one thing because Zach, Zach should get to bed at three in the morning, but he, but he hasn't.

So Zach, Zach said.

That's not why I got annoyed.

I was annoyed because you said you hate God.

That I hate God on multiple occasions.

But Zach, if you go back and I.

I did say, you said that, but what was my authority?

I said that it's God who said that.

I wasn't telling you that.

I know this to be true from My, Myself, I was saying that God.

The Bible says that anyone who is outside of Christ, anyone who denies Christ, hates God.

That's what the scripture says.

So it's not me telling you that.

It's.

And I.

And I think that.

And you're right that you say that, because he had said, I said that twice.

And I agree.

You said that twice.

And I, I think that.

And I'll go back and listen if I didn't, but I think that I said that twice as well, that it's God who said it, not me.

My authority is not me.

My authority is God.

So, so I.

I do hope that this, this episode is helpful in, in knowing how to answer the challenge of.

Of can we trust the Bible?

Really quickly, what I'd like to do is a couple things.

Let you know.

Next week, I will not be here.

I will be traveling, and therefore I will not be here.

But this show is in very capable hands.

Maybe not.

So, Drew, I mean, look, I've got years of podcast experience.

Doesn't necessarily mean I'm capable.

Yeah, it means I can talk.

So next week.

And a lot of people wanted to know whether I would cover the issues with G3 if anyone heard me on Dead Man Walking.

If anyone heard me or not heard me, heard John Harris's conversations matter.

Yes, I have opinions on the matter.

I do not care to really share them beyond what I said on Greg's show, Dead Men Walking, because though that show was supposed to be really about ethics and pastors on social media, it did become a bit personal with, with me and, and things like that.

So I, I basically mentioned to Drew and, and Tom, I said, look, I, I know these guys wanted to talk about the issue of the, the legacy pass.

I didn't want to get involved in that.

And I said, well, maybe you could talk about it while I'm.

One of the weeks that I'm gone.

So next week, Drew and Tom are going to share their views.

I don't know what their views are.

I don't know how they feel, what their thoughts are.

For some who don't know, Josh Bice, the president of G3, had to step down because he had fake accounts that were attacking other speakers and other Christians and speakers even of his own conference.

And elders of his own church.

Elders of his own church.

Was I one of the people.

People he went after?

Yes, I was.

Was the things true that he, he had said about me?

No, they're not.

And that's why people use fake accounts.

So, so they, they could try to hide I don't care to get into it.

So for that reason, I thought it was good to let Drew and Tom, who wanted to talk about these issues, do it while I'm gone.

So next week, if you want to know, show some of the things going on there, those guys do their research and, and things like that.

And so that's going to be next week's show.

Because of the way things are, I cannot, I will be out of the country for two weeks, so I will not be able to get to the website and set things up.

So next week I already have the show set up.

I'll be setting the website up tonight so that it's all set, but I cannot set it up the week after that.

Okay.

So next week Drew and Tom are going to be discussing G3.

And actually, I could tell you, look, they, they, they chose this title.

Drew's laughing because.

Okay, Tom chose this title.

Okay.

Or Tom chose part of the title and then I, I added to it.

But Tom, I asked, I asked the guys what should the title be for next week?

And, and it was G3 gospel glory gone.

So if folks that know it's Gospel Glory God.

But.

There'S a subtitle there too.

I added the subtitle to the conference.

That once Stood Firm.

Yeah.

And that, that I added.

Right.

So.

So yeah, so that'll be next week.

After that, the following week, we won't have a show.

And then in, in June, I will be back and, and maybe we'll have Zach for a much longer discussion.

I, I think he was, He's a very.

He seems.

I could be wrong.

He seems like a, a well learned man, someone that I think we could have a good dialogue with when given enough time to, to, you know, kind of go through things.

And so I hope that he reaches out to us so we could.

Actually, what I'd like to do is set up a full two hours for him so he can explain his views and we could, we could dialogue with it.

It'd be, it'd be really good.

And so I also want to mention, for those who are watching a new conference that just popped up.

Well, sort of because of the G3 thing.

Conference culture.

Yeah.

And so this is.

Let me, let me try to remove the things that.

There you go.

So you guys can scan the QR code.

But Jeffrey Rice is, you know, John, basically what happened was James White called Jeffrey and said, hey, since G3 was canceled, can we do something?

Jeffrey was thinking of doing sun maybe in July, you know, the following year.

And so when James White asks, you say sure, we could do that.

So it's called the Roadmap, the road Road map to Revival.

So it's James White, myself, Michael Schultz, who is an excellent preacher, if you haven't heard of him.

Jeremiah Norton from the Apologetics Dog.

Great, great preacher.

Keith Foskey, I mentioned him early.

Great, great friend, good preacher.

Jonathan Burroughs, I don't know.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Claude Ramsey, who is an outstanding preacher, and Jeffrey Rice, who is a good preacher.

So I, out of all these guys I've heard, I've sat under all their preaching except for Jonathan.

Excellent, excellent preaching.

So you can scan the QR code there.

That's, that's there to be able to get the dates.

But, but September 12th to 13th is the conference.

It's going to be in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

There's going to be registration to follow it when James White announced it on his podcast.

And therefore Jeffrey wasn't quite ready with a website and all that.

So that's coming.

We will mention it as we get closer.

We'll give more details as we get closer.

But I did want to mention that now and encourage you guys to, to check that out out.

So let me just let you guys, anything that you guys want to mention with the, the, as far as the show, any points that we did you want to close out with.

I think I'm good.

I do too.

I think it was really good discussion.

And just quickly, if anyone, if, for those who are interested in this kind of stuff, if you want to know more about me, I run the X account called Atheist Nightmare.

And so we have a lot of fun there, especially in the comments and stuff.

And, and so check it out.

All right, so let me, let me just, since, since I don't know if Zach will come back in, I hope he does.

But let me just put up a last comment from him.

There might be more that I missed.

But he said then God would know I don't hate him, even the idea of him.

I hate religion and man striving to change things for his own gain.

And otherwise why would so many denominations.

But I think he means oh well.

Okay, but oh well.

So my answer to that would be this.

If you love God, you would love the true religion of God.

There's only two religions in the world.

There's divine religion and man made religion.

And what he's responding to when he's talking about religion and man changes things.

Man made religion is about doing.

It's all about a system of morality because it's based upon men earning salvation, men doing something to earn righteousness with God.

And so therefore every man made religion because it adds human effort to what God did is always going to be a system of morality do's and don'ts.

Christianity is a done religion.

It was done at the cross.

God himself came to earth knowing that because a consequence against God, sinning against God has an infinite consequence because he's an infinite being.

Therefore the consequence is forever.

Only an infinite being could pay it once in time and have it count for all people.

Only God can do something like that.

Being truly God, he could pay the fine for more than one person within time.

Being a human being who never violated God's law, he can do this for as a substitute for other people.

That's what makes Christianity different.

There is absolutely nothing we could do to earn any merit with God or earn salvation.

It is all a work of Christ.

God in human flesh.

When Jesus Christ died on the cross, Zach, what he did is he died that we might live.

He died on that cross as a punishment of our sin.

In his death we could be set free.

Christianity is not a system of morality.

Christianity is a done religion.

Jesus did it.

He did it all.

There's nothing we can add to it.

And if we think we can add to it, then we're diminishing what Christ did on the cross.

This is why when I was talking to Anthony, the man made religions will say that we should hate.

The consequence of sin gives us that guilty feeling.

Christianity says we hate the sin itself because that's what Christ died for.

So Zach, if you truly love God, then you would love the religion he established.

Religion's not bad.

Man made religion is the corrupt religion that man takes and corrupts and says we can add human effort and make it a system of morality.

That's the religion that I would agree with you, that I hate.

But the true religion and the true God are one in the same and we do not hate.

So with that, I'm going to close out the show.

Remind you guys come in next week.

I'll be anxious to hear what Drew and Tom say.

But.

But yeah, I do.

I'm anxious to know what I'm gonna say too.

And so yeah, it'll be good to show, I'm sure.

And guys, check it out.

Please share this with others.

Share what you're learning here with others.

And I hope that this has been helpful for you.

Let us know if it has.

Let us know if it has.

I do want to let you know my other show the Rap Report podcast, Andrew.

Rap Reports Rap Report.

I know I was not being as consistent and I, I, it probably was now that we have ways of getting the rankings again.

I had been in a bit inconsistent and not and dropped out of the rankings, but I'm back as of now.

When I look at it, we are.

That podcast is ranked 37 in the United States in the religion section.

So out of all the different religion podcasts, it is ranked 32nd, 37th and so.

Or sorry, 40, 41.

It moved up in the last 24 hours and moved up 37.

Sorry, 40.

It's 41st place.

Right.

Actually, let's pull it up and see what it is right now.

Right now it's ranked at.

Waiting for it to come up 40.

So it's, it's ranked number 40 right now.

And it probably, I think that has to do with John Harris.

I'm just saying, I think John Harris mentioned me.

People looked me up.

They found that podcast is my guess.

So I do encourage you guys to check that one out.

And remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next week.