Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. If you want, you can give me a call. All you've got to do is dial 877-207-2276 as usual.

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I didn't switch something here. Okay, so I want to hear from you. Give me a call.

877-207-2276. All right, there we go. No, let me put this over here too. One more thing here. Just doing this.

Where is it? I have all the stuff I have to do before the show to get it ready. Everything should be working now.

Everything should be working fine. All right, all right. Let's get on the phone with Travis from North Carolina. Travis, welcome. You're on the air. Hey, Matt, I've got a question for you.

All right, man. What do you got, buddy? Who had the best finances in the Bible? The most finances? The best finances.

The best financial practices. I don't know. I don't know.

I never really studied that to see who has the best. No, we floated the stock while everyone else was in liquidation. No, we did? Oh, I see. Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. I got you.

Okay, good joke. All right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I had a button. So I'm going to take up a whole lot of time. So I've done a lot of studying where Christianity is concerned, and I would be pretty inclined to say that my faith is pretty rock solid.

But there's something that just kind of is like nagging at me. I hear all these stories about these people who have died and they've spent 40-some minutes in heaven or 20-some minutes in hell and they've got all these great stories. And I'm not entirely sure those are reliable, but I've heard stories of people who remember certain things from a death experience.

And accidentally I was overdosed on fentanyl and I was dead. I was medically dead for three or four minutes, and I don't remember absolutely nothing. And it doesn't shatter my faith, but it kind of like picks at me, like if I was dead, dead. And it says when you're dead, you're supposed to you're either you're present with the Lord or hell or whichever one you're going to. And I don't remember nothing.

And I'm trying to see if I don't know my exact question. But if you could speak to that for a second. Sure, it could be that you experienced something that God did not let you remember it when you came back. It's certainly possible that you had a conversation with the Lord.

No, I can't verify that, but that's a possibility. Another possibility is you experienced nothing because death is the separation of the body with the soul and the body. Now, we don't know exactly how it all works, what levels that it works, but it's certainly possible that people can be dead and their brains are still alive. Because just because your heart stops doesn't mean you're automatically dead. Your brain is still functioning. Your brain still has oxygen in it. Your brain is still aware, just like people who have been had their heads chopped off.

Back in the day, they would hold up the person by the head, by the hair, and they'd watch the person make faces and over their eyes and try and yell, but they couldn't because, you know, no air coming out, and they would hold them up for a minute or two before they went quiet, you know, or just stopped moving. So there's just a lot of variables in there. We can't say how things were and what things were. So, you know, I wouldn't worry about it. Trust Scripture. And when you're dead, dead, you'll meet them, okay?

As they say in the movie Princess Bride, you're just mostly dead, okay? Okay. Okay. Well, I greatly appreciate it. Would you be able to interpret my handwriting on the methods by which we're able to receive letters here at the prison? Yeah, I got the letters.

I haven't gone through it yet, and it looks pretty good. It's just I'm always buried. In fact, during the breaks here, I'm updating stuff on the website during the break, and I just go.

I'm constantly at 100 miles an hour. So, you know, anyway, okay. Well, when I come home, I'm open for work on the website or something. Do you need help? Yeah, that's rarely do we have anybody do that.

They have to know what they're doing. There's a lot of stuff that goes on with it, so just a lot of stuff, all right? I appreciate it, though. Well, I appreciate your time and hearing my prayers, man. Okay, good. All right, man, God bless. All right, all right. Now, let's get to Ebenezer from California. Welcome, you're on the air.

Hey, Matt. Yeah, okay. I was told that you could ask people to talk and so it was about the veneration of saints things. And they kind of told me, you know, because I like to understand their position, like you said. And so, you know, they kind of told me, you know, the saints who have gone before would, you know, participate in the energies, the, you know, divine nature. And so and so as we were talking, you know, they explained, oh, you know, it's kind of like the Trinity. It's not in the Bible, but, you know, it's kind of like, you know, it's not in the Bible. It's that's what it's saying. And then they would give me verses, which didn't quite equate because I would give them, you know, they would the passage that a Catholic Catholics would use would be. We are encompassed, you know, cloud of witnesses don't you know that passage in Hebrews.

And so they kind of agree with that and prayer means the same thing as, you know, kind of put that one how prayer means the siege. But I also I'm not sure where you're going to just like focus and and try formulate a question. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I like what would be your answer? I mean, like, I ain't gonna say what would be your answer? Like, how can I answer these people?

What's the question? In terms of when they say the Trinity is I mean, not the Trinity generation is not in the Bible, but it's kind of like your explanation with the Trinity Trinity is not in the Bible. But you get the Trinity. Okay, the Trinity is in the Bible, you look at it and you deduce it from what the scripture says the Old Testament, the New Testament, I've got an article on this. The Trinity is definitely biblical.

We don't make it up and arrange something. So what the EO are doing, you've got to think in these terms, the Eastern Orthodox people are loyal to the church more than Jesus, loyal to the tradition more than scripture. You have to think in those terms. And when you do that, you'll realize that everything they interpret out of scripture, out of whatever has to be in light of what the Eastern Orthodox Church says. Functionally, the Eastern Orthodox Church takes the place of Jesus. And the Eastern Orthodox Church is the true church and you have to come to the true church in order to be saved.

So look at it that way. So what they're going to do, they're going to say, well, the Trinity isn't really there. It's just like our view of blah, blah, blah really isn't there. What they're trying to do is find a way to excuse the fact that their doctrine is not in the scripture. But the Trinity is in the scriptures directly derived from the scripture. I can show it to people and I do it. So when they say that this veneration of these idols and things like that, it's not the scripture directly, but it's implied.

I say, yeah, it is. It is in the scriptures. You can go to Exodus 20 and you can look up where it says, do not make an image of the Lord your God or anything in heaven and earth. You don't do that kind of a thing. And there's another verse and if I can find it. Oh, man, where is it? And, uh, hold on one sec. Let's see. Here we go. And, uh, it is in Leviticus 19 four.

Yes. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods. And this is the key when it says make for yourselves, because what, uh, what they'll do a lot of times, they're going to say something like, look, you can have things that you venerate just as, uh, the arc of the covenant was venerated and they lifted up the serpent and they venerated it.

Uh, you know, they bowed before it. They're just doing the same thing, but there's a difference because God says, don't make for yourselves anything. When God tells you to do something, there's a specific reason for it. So what they do is they say, well, God told you to make this, so we're going to make stuff. But God says, don't make for yourselves. And that's the key because he says in Exodus 20 verse four, you shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth.

You shall not do it. So what they do is they make little icons of Mary and Saint whoever and whatever, and then they bow before these things and they start praying. And, um, and they just, it was just a reminder, just an object of veneration.

It's just foolishness. And this, I guess here's one thing. It reminds me when I was in Israel, I've been to Israel twice. We went to this one store twice, uh, seven years ago or five years ago, whatever it was.

And last year. And in the back of this one store in Israel was this wall and maybe 30 feet wide, 40 feet wide, this, uh, this wall. On the left were the icons, idols, et cetera, of the Catholics. And in the middle of that wall was a divider. And on the right was the East Orthodox stuff. Same thing, just idols and little things of Mary. And they were for sale.

And I took a picture of it, but I have it someplace where, uh, it's just places for money exchange so that you can have an object to bow down before. And this is, wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Wow. Also, um, okay. Okay. All right. All right. Cool. Cool.

All right. Now, now, uh, I got, I got some, um, to say, uh, but also, um, um, I was also watching this, um, debate. Uh, there wasn't a debate. It was more so an open discussion between the, uh, the gospel truth you heard at the, uh, that channel. Oh yeah.

I've been on there before debating. Yup. Yeah.

So, yeah. So, um, they, uh, it was some Calvinist guys up there and, um, the total depravity and Calvinism. Um, um, so the way the guy was explaining that he was like, regeneration comes if regeneration comes before faith and Calvinism is true. And so he kind of alluded, um, in the sense that, you know, um, God's chosen people, the, uh, the Israelites, we, we are the spiritual Israelites. Um, but so, so, um, what do you mean by, I'm trying to understand what does the regeneration, what do you mean by regeneration than faith?

Cause he said, please, what does that mean? So in order to explain it, you need to differentiate between two types of priority, logical and temporal. So here's the illustration I use, temporal priority. You have a light bulb, you flip the switch, electricity goes into the light bulb and five seconds later, light occurs.

So this is just an illustration. Electricity's in the light bulb. Five seconds later, there's the light. So the electricity would be temporally prior.

It takes time for the effect of its presence to occur to bring about something else. So we've got a break coming up. So I'm going to do is we'll, we'll pause. I'll come back.

I'll say that again and then I'll show you what logical priority is and then you can hope it'll make sense. Okay. So hold on buddy. All right. All right.

Hey, all right. Hey folks, be right back after these messages. Hope you're enjoying the show and uh, we'll be right back. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right. Welcome back to the show. So we're going to reactivate Ebenezer there.

We'll get back on the issue of discussion of logical and temporal priority and what all that means. Let's get back to him. All right. Ebenezer, are you there?

Yeah, I'm here. All right. So let me back up and do this again so we can get the contrast. So temporal priority, the illustration I use is a light bulb and uh, you, you put, you know, for the switch and electricity goes into the light bulb and five seconds later, uh, the, the light shows up. This means that electricity is the cause of the light, but it takes time for the effect to occur.

Okay. Temporal. There's a distance between cause and effect and logical priority. When you flip the switch, the electricity is in the light bulb, but light is there at the same time. Electricity is there. As soon as you hit the switch, boom, it's there.

Now, technically milliseconds, you know, but we're talking about this illustration. When, when the light is there, it's because electricity is there. Electricity is the cause of the light. The light is not the cause of the electricity. Therefore, though they're simultaneous, we would say that the electricity is logically prior.

It is the same. It occurs at the same time as light, but it's the cause of the light. So therefore it is called logical priority. And that's what they mean when they say regeneration precedes faith. They're simultaneous because God grants that people have faith. That he does. And so, uh, it must be that he regenerates them and he causes people to be born again.

That's 1 Peter 1-3. If he causes them to be born again and he grants that they have faith, Philippians 1-29, and that faith is in Jesus, John 6-29, then what the reforms say is that the logical priority is that regeneration precedes faith. Though they're simultaneous, God enables a person to actually believe and he does. Okay. So, okay. So, um, so you're saying both simultaneously happen? Mm-hmm. Yep. Oh, okay. But one causes the other.

One enables the other. Regeneration enables a person to believe. And they do believe.

They actually do believe. All right? So, okay. An example.

Can you just give me an example? Like, um, so, okay, say, say, uh, a person preached in the Word, a pastor, a student preached in the Word, so regeneration would be what? So like they, okay, because the heart has to be pricked, right? So, uh, so that, that would, that would be the regeneration, right? No, regeneration is being born again.

It's being made a new creature. So in Reformed theology, they call it irresistible grace. And what that means is that at regeneration, that's what it refers to, at regeneration, that you, the person cannot resist God's regenerative work. That's what that means, irresistible grace. It doesn't mean that during his life he can't resist God's graciousness. That's not what it means.

It means that regeneration, because God regenerates. Here, let me read some scriptures to you. All right? What I'm going to do is go to 1 John, I'm going to go to John, excuse me, John 1, 12 and 13.

All right? And I'll read to you what it says. Oh, man, I messed up on the verse. There we go. So this is what it says.

Uh, that's what it says here. It says, uh, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. Who were born, and we're talking about being born again, not just born, you know, in a body. So who were born not of the blood, nor the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Because it's in the context of talking about receiving Christ. And that this born, this thing of being begotten.

Okay, that's what it's saying. It's from, uh, and again, it's from ganau, which means to beget. So we're begotten, not of blood, you know, not of blood, nor the will of flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. This is the regenerative work that God does. Now we go to 1 Peter 1-3 in the anti-SV.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again. So he's the one who did this. It's an aorist active participle. Caused us. So what this means is, an aorist in Greek is past tense. Active is voice.

Active voice. God's performing. He caused it on us. He did it. Not us.

We don't do it ourselves. So he caused us to be born again. And a participle is an ing.

Okay? So it's like saying he causing us to be born again. So this is what's going on, is that God is the one who does this. He is the one who brought us forth by the word of his truth. James 1-18. In 1 Peter 1-23, you've been born again, not of the sea, which is perishable, but imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. But the point is that when the word of God goes forth, because it says in Isaiah 55-11, it says, So will my word be which goes forth from my mouth.

They will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. Furthermore, when you go to Romans 1-16, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and to the Greek second. And then we go to Romans 10-17. So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Alright, so the word of God is powerful.

We've got to preach it, teach it. And the gospel, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, justification by faith alone in him, is the power of God to salvation. Faith comes by hearing. God is the one who grants that we have that faith. That's Philippians 1-29. Do we go to Philippians 1-29? What it actually says there is, it says, For to you it has been granted for Christ's sake, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake.

God grants it. Furthermore, when we go to John 6-29, because in verse 28 they said, What must we do to work the works of God? And Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God that you believe in him whom he has sent. It's God's work that you believe.

He granted that you believe. Now, also, when you go to Acts 13-48, it says this. It says in Acts 13-48, When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord.

And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. God grants us repentance. And 2 Timothy 2-25.

Let me go to that. 2 Timothy 2-25. With Gentilists correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth. See, God grants repentance. He grants faith. And nobody can come to Jesus unless it's granted to them from the Father. That's what Jesus says in John 6-65. He says, For this reason I have said to you that no one can come to me unless it's been granted to him from the Father.

All right. I could go through a bunch of verses that talk about man's depravity. And so man's a slave of sin, a hater of God, doesn't seek for God, doesn't do any good, cannot receive spiritual things.

I can give you all the verses that I'm just quoting there. Well, this means that God's going to do this. He caused us to be born again. But it's the same time as the faith that's given to us. We actually do the believing.

But it's the cause of the regenerative work by God's hand that brings us to the place where we can freely choose God when we do. Okay? Hold on, man. We've got to break. So hold on, buddy.

We've got to break back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right. Welcome back to the show. Let's get back on with Ebenezer here. Okay.

Lots of stuff there. Okay. All right. Any help? Huh? Did that help? Yes.

Yeah, yeah, it did. Just one quick thing I forgot to mention about the conversation with the EO guy. What about what about what about because he said he said because I told him I used the NASB and the ESV and he said some passages were missing from them.

Yeah, they can say that. They can say there's passages missing, but there might be because those Bibles use older manuscripts from earlier times which didn't have those. The general rule is that older manuscripts are better than later manuscripts because there were thousands and thousands of copies spread around the Mediterranean area and occasionally a scribe would write in a margin a little note. And later sometimes those notes were included in the text, not very often, but it did happen a few times.

And so the later manuscripts would have some of those notes included into the script where when you go back earlier, they don't. So when people say, oh, you take yourself out of the Bible. They don't understand what the issue is. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Matt. All right, buddy. All right, man. God bless you.

All right. Hey, we have three open lines. If you want to give me a call, you can 877-207-2276.

Jermaine from California. Welcome. You're on the air. Oh, hi, Matt. Yes, I am.

Very good. Just want to continue with that subject I was supposed to get to a while ago, but, you know, just eternal salvation. I know the term one saved always saved comes up, but I've heard several people try to destroy that particular scripture. But from what I've seen, I'm just kind of wondering, is it possible people are trying to correlate people who think they're saved versus someone who's legitimately saved? Like, say, someone who did the sinner's prayer or had some dedication that wasn't genuine.

Is it possible that's what people are doing, where they say that eternal salvation is a lie? Oh, would they say that? When they use the phraseology, it's a lie? Usually they're antinomian.

Usually. What that means is that, well, no, no, no, I don't want to say antinomian. Usually they're legalistic, okay? So I'll just say it that way.

The opposite of antinomian. But they say that you keep your salvation by your obedience, by your goodness, by your sincerity. They want to say, this is their error.

They do this all the time. They say that it's a license to sin. That if you're eternally secure, you just go say all you want.

See? And you can still be saved. But what's happening in their minds, they're thinking that you keep your salvation by how good you are.

But if you can never lose it, you can be bad. Because they don't understand regeneration, the changing of us. Because we are made new creatures. 2 Corinthians 5.17. And if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. That's what the Bible says.

And if we're made new creatures, then there's a change in us. And we don't want to go out and do those things because we're born again. John 3.3-8. So what they do is they forget that issue and they also forget the issue of John 14.23. Which says, Jesus says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our abode with him.

So he and the Father live in us. We're born again. John 3.3-8. We are made new creatures. So what they do is they forget the idea of God's indwelling and regenerative work in us. And then they start saying, well, see, you can go out and sin. But they fail to understand what is going on in this whole issue. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense to me. It just seems like people have a problem with the grace of God.

Yes, they do. You know, I keep hearing, oh, well, if you read your Bible, you'll see that the Bible never says that. It's like, well, maybe your interpretation. But the way I read it, I see that's exactly where it leads. Someone's salvation may look different from what you think in your mind is supposed to be. Here, I've got an idea for you.

Try this. If you've got a pencil and paper and you're right about what you just said, you are. And a lot of people don't understand.

So here's some notes. What I'll do is I'll take them to John 3, 16, for example. You know, God told the world, it gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And I say, does Jesus equate eternal life with not perishing? And they're going to say, well, they're going to have to say yes.

They might say, yeah, that's what you make and you've done enough. You just don't argue. But it says here that if you have eternal life, you'll not perish, right? Yeah, but you could lose eternal life. And I say, does he say, does Jesus relate them? You'll not perish and have eternal life. You've got to go over and over it with them because they have a cult mind. John 10, 27 and 28, my sheep hear my voice and I know of them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand. Does Jesus again relate never perishing with eternal life? Yes, he does.

Okay. So then I can also go and I do this sometimes, go to John 6, 37 where it says, all that the Father gives me will come to me. The one who comes to me I certainly will not cast out. Verse 38, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. Verse 39, this is the will of him who sent me that all he's given me I lose nothing.

That means never perish. Verse 40, he says, for this is the will of my Father that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life and I'll raise them up on the last day. So whoever beholds the Son and believes in him has, present tense, eternal life and you ask him. If you behold the Son and you believe, do you then have eternal life?

Now, depending on what they say, you know, you have to go different directions. But 1 John 5, 13, John writes, these things I've written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. So you can know you have eternal life right now. And you can say Jesus is the one who says that whoever beholds the Son has eternal life. He's possessed by the person and Jesus equates that with never perishing. Are you saying then that he who believes in Jesus can perish? Okay.

Are you there? Okay, so he's pretty self-explanatory. Yeah. Now, they will argue and when they argue, I let them argue, I've given them the Word of God and I'll say after they argue, I'll say, can you give me a list of the things you have to do to keep yourself right with the infinitely holy God? Tell me the list of things you've got to do. And they give me a list.

They do. Well, you've got to believe and you can't do this. You have to keep the commandments. You've got to do this. Worship on Saturday. You've got to worship on this. Whatever it is.

There's a variety of things. And I say, okay. So then I say, so you keep yourself right with the infinitely holy God by what you do. Is that right? I say, man, that is so good. That is so good that you are so knowledgeable and so wonderful that you can keep yourself right with the infinitely holy God by your goodness.

Pat yourself on the back. Okay. Make sense?

Are you there? Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me. Perfect sense to me. I appreciate it, man.

Thank you. All right, buddy. You can tell I do this a lot. I battle this with a lot of people.

And I was doing it literally last night for an hour with an Eastern Orthodox guy. Telling me how, you know, basically you keep your works. I mean, keep yourself.

I have my notes from him, too, and everything. I read them, too. But that's what they do. Okay.

What they do. Well, it's just been my experience. I think people, besides having a problem, they have this ideal of perfection. But we're not perfect.

We never will be. That's why we needed to say you're in the beginning. I've actually met people who say they don't sin anymore.

I just say, spend five minutes with me. I'll cure that. I've accidentally said something falls on my toe and I can feel maybe a curse word coming, but I will stop it.

But the fact that it was coming anyway lets me know. Hey, there's still a sin nature there. You got that right. You got that right, man.

That's right. Okay. Okay, buddy, here's a break. God bless, man. Talk to you later.

God bless. All right. All right. We have two people waiting, so let me get back to the break.

We'll tackle them. If you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276. Be right back. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. All right, everyone.

Welcome back to the show. I just want to remind you that we have a website, karm.org, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. I've written about 6,000 articles, literally, on that website. I don't know exactly how many, but a lot. I've been working on it for almost 29 years, and we do 30 years.

I think we do a celebration. So if you want to check it out, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, karm.org. It's had over 160 million visitors. All right, now, the next longest waiting is Buskman. Hey, Buskman, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, Matt. And once again, I have been one of your fans since those early days of KARM. It's an amazing source of resource if you want questions answered about Catholicism. You helped me out a lot with Jehovah's Witness and Latter-day Saints, folks. And I just want to say on behalf of me and whoever else has been benefiting from karm.org, thank you, Matt, for all those 6,000 articles. It's really good stuff, and I highly recommend you.

Highly recommend you. My question is off of the caller that you just had. Matt, I'm going to put you in a scenario, and you're at a Bible study. You're at a Bible study, a home Bible study, where it's a bunch of believers.

You know them all. You just got done eating a wonderful dinner, and you opened up the Lord of God. Now, you're going to, let's just say, Matthew chapter 22, and you're going to read through the entire chapter. And you start reading, and then the guy to the left starts reading, and the next verse and the lady next, all around the table until you finish Matthew 22. When all of a sudden, Matt, somebody reads a scripture that is not in the other lady's Bible, and the other lady chimes in and says, wait a minute, that's not what my Bible says. In that experience, Matt, what do you, knowing what you know, say to the group to keep the dissension from occurring? Because I've already seen that, Matt. It's easy. You walk over.

I would love this information. Yes, go ahead, sir. You just see Matthew the Bible, and you show it. She shows it to you, and then you walk over to the trash can and dump it in the trash. You say, okay, now let's get a good Bible.

And then when they throw things at you, you've got to leave, but it's one option. You can try that if you want. So, you know, I probably wouldn't suggest that as an option, but the thing I would do at that point is say, is this worth studying?

And hopefully they'll say yes. Because should we then study why certain Bibles have certain verses in them and some of them don't? Is it worth looking at?

Is it worth examining? Because there are textual variants. In Matthew 23, 14, for example, the verse is not found in early manuscripts. Woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, etc. And so that's not there in a lot of older manuscripts.

So what do we do? And there's other verses like this. So if anyone has ears to hear, let them hear. That's Mark 7, 16.

There's another one where there's a problem. Or in Mark 9, 44, where the worm dies not and the fire is quenched. So if we go, for example, to the King James and look at Matthew 9, 44, it's there where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched. But it doesn't have it in brackets the way the NASB does. And let's see if the NIV does. I mean the ESB.

Mark 9, 44. So it doesn't have that. Oh, it doesn't even include it. Oh, it's interesting. That really is interesting. In Mark 9, 44 doesn't even exist in the ESV. It's just gone.

It goes from 43 to 45. And then there's a note. Some manuscripts add verse 44 and 46 which are identical to 48. So now we have an issue. So if people want to get uppity about this, well, the King James is a true Bible. Then if I was in there, I'd say, I think this is really worth studying, this whole thing where you take a week or two or three and go through this and compare the King James with other translations, I happen to know where there's some problems with the King James. The old one was 518, Titus 2, 13 or some other stuff. But then you don't want to do this too much because you might crush someone who the King James is the only true Bible, but if they say that that's a problem, you'd be very, very delicate because you don't want to embarrass somebody in a room.

You've got to be very, very careful. And so you say, well, this is how it generally works. You say, for example, the Gospel of Mark was written very early in the first century, and it was copied because that's what they would have to do, copied by hand. So let's just say they made a copy, two copies, and one went north and one went south from where the copy was made, original. Okay, that means the people in the north will call it the North Manuscript and the South Manuscript, we'll just call it.

That's not how they do it in the real stuff, but this is just for illustration. So the North Manuscript is perfect, and the South Manuscript is perfect. In the North Manuscript, that gets copied three times. The South Manuscript gets copied three times.

In the south one, the third one, there's a missing word. Then it gets copied, and from those copies, they have missing words. Now, someone takes that copy and writes in a margin, just a comment. And scribes would do this sometimes. People, monks in the monasteries, they would write a little note, and they would do that.

You might want to offer correction because they knew something or believed something, they'd write a little correction. And then sometimes those manuscripts would be packed away. And then 100 years later, someone might unearth that manuscript and see the note in there about that verse. Well, what do we do with that?

It looks like someone earlier knew what this was because they didn't have the Internet. They just have this manuscript. So they copy it, and they insert that verse into the manuscript now. So this is the kind of thing that would happen. It's not like, oh, half the Bible is like that.

No, no, no. The Bible is 99.85% textually identical to the New Testament documents. What we're talking about here is very, very few of these possible scribal editions and copyist errors. Like the word the, for example, is just a single letter O with a rough breathing mark over it. Well, the letter O could disappear.

It could be that the parchment that it was written on just got old and it flaked right at that part. Well, no one knows. They just copy.

They miss it. There's different reasons that these kind of things would happen. Okay, so the general rule now is that the newer the manuscripts, the more opportunities there are for editions to be put in. Generally speaking, the older the manuscript, the more accurate it's going to be. So the King James is written in 1611, for example, with manuscripts from roughly the 500s and newer, where later on they discovered, the people who discovered these things, discovered stuff that was even older, third century, second century. And they said, oh, look, there's a slight bit of difference here between this manuscript and that manuscript. And so the older Bibles or the older texts are the ones that they will go with. That's the NASV.

That's the ESV. And this is the kind of thing that needs to be talked about and explained in a study like this so people understand that this really did happen. And then you go to Mark 16, 19, or 9 through 20, and we talk about that, which I did last night as a matter of fact, or two nights ago.

So this is just the reality of it. It has to be understood, okay? Well, what I'm going to do, Matt, is I'm going to make sure that the next study that I attend, and I see that dissension start to rear up, I'm going to send them a link to this discussion. This is awesome, Matt, and I really thank you, because the people that I study with are usually pretty biblically sound. There might be a young Christian in there on occasion, but it's usually among us, what I call eggheads.

And even us eggheads, Matt, will start to rear up against each other, and I can just see Satan trying to tear the family apart through these kinds of discussions. And I'm very grateful for that. You laid it out perfectly. I'm going to make sure that this one gets saved, and I'll have this in my arsenal to send the folks that start to say, hey, this, this, this, during these translation discussions. Thank you very much, Matt. Let me offer this, too.

I mean, I'd be willing to get on the phone with you and put on speakerphone in the study to look at fire some questions at me and say, well, this is how this generally works. That would be awesome, Mr. Slick, really. I would love that.

How would I do that? Contact you through CARM.org? Just send me a $100 bill, you know, and it's easy to do. Did you take checks, Matt?

Just checks, yeah, you know, to Great One, you know, CARM.org. No, just email me at info at CARM.org and say, hey, I'd like to take Matt up on his offer to call in some time with study. Let me know when it would be and stuff like that. And give me your number and we'll just talk and send it out.

There's no big deal. That would be awesome, Matt. And if that happens, I would love that to happen. I will make sure you have plenty of time to, because I know you're a busy man, and I know you've still got a collar waiting, so I'm going to jump off the line. Matt, thank you so much, brother. I greatly appreciate your ministry. Hey, praise God, man. Praise God. All right. God bless, brother.

You too, man. God bless. All right, now next longest-waiting person is Elijah from Pennsylvania. Elijah, welcome. You're on the air.

Hey, Matt. My question today is out of Hebrews 9-23. I saw a video of Kelly Powers and Sean Griffin debating this, you know, Hebrews and stuff, and Sean Griffin brought this up. And Kelly Powers didn't really get his exegesis of this verse. He just went to another verse in Hebrew that completely debuxed what Sean Griffin was saying.

But I would like to see if you can exegete this and explain to me what this means, because Sean Griffin uses this verse to try to prove that Jesus is currently in heaven right now doing animal sacrifices to cleanse our sins, because he believes that Jesus' atonement on the cross was not enough to cleanse us of all unrighteousness. Wow. Yeah. I'd like to have that documented. Yeah, that's from the book of Second Stupidification. Okay. That's where that's from.

Stupidification next to Third Hysterectomy. So, yeah, that's pretty ridiculous, because Jesus said on the cross, John, 1930, it's finished, and he made the sacrifice right there. What it says here in Hebrews 9, 23, it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things bring themselves with much better sacrifices than these. Nothing in there says that Jesus is up there offering animal sacrifices in heaven.

What? And for him to say that the blood of Christ is not sufficient, you've just got to say to him, look, you know, I hope I'm not around you when you say that in public, because I don't want to get hit by the lightning. Yes, so the reason why he says that is because of the part where it says, but the heavenly things themselves require better sacrifices than these. He points out the word, it says sacrifices in the plural, so that's where he's getting this from.

Oh, okay. So, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. So I would ask, this is what I would do, I'd say, and where does it say animal sacrifices there?

Is an animal sacrifice better than the sacrifice of Christ? There you go. What's he going to say? Yeah. See, a lot of times, and I've debated Sean Griffin, he couldn't argue his way out of a wet paper bag if it was pointed down with a chain pulling him and a neon sign saying, exit that way, and it was greased. Okay?

He doesn't know what he's doing. All right? Oh, and there's the music. Yeah.

We got to go. All right, thank you. Thank you, man, so much for this. All right, man, God.

Send me that information. Okay? God bless, buddy. Okay. All right. Hey, folks. Sorry about that. Glenn from Virginia. Sorry about that as well. And people that only adhere to the first five books of Moses.

Ooh, that would be interesting. We'll have to talk about that tomorrow. Hey, may the Lord bless you. God bless you, buddy. Talk to you tomorrow.